Happy Birthday Josh!

Today is Josh´s 12th birthday.  Only 11 and one-half short years ago Josh came home to live with us...his forever family.  I am grateful to the caretakers who cared for him before I could.  I am grateful to the doctors and nurses who helped him through failure to thrive, encyphalitus, and pneumonia at his tiny little weight of 3 pound 9 ounces.  I am grateful to his birthmom who chose to have him. 

How blessed I am to be Josh´s mommy.  I can not begin to tell you the blessing that he is in my life.  He is my little buddy.  He likes to just stand by me and rub my back or my hands or my feet even.  Who couldn´t love a kid like that?  He is constantly seeking to serve others.  He´s a good example to the rest of us in the family.

As I think back on those days only 11 and a half years ago that he came home with us from South Korea to become a Holman and live with his forever family, it makes me reflect on how I have been adopted into God´s family. Adopting Josh gave me a new perspective on the passages in the Bible where it speaks of our adoption.

When we first made the decision to adopt Josh, he had no idea who we were or that we even existed, but we knew he existed and we knew we wanted him to be our son.  We chose him and we loved him even before he ever met us or knew who we were.  We made a way to get him to us.  In the same way, God chose us before we ever knew He existed.  He loved us long before we ever even knew who He was much less loved him.  He made a way for us to have a permanent relationship with Him as our Father at great sacrifice.  He put us into his family with all the rights of a born child.  Josh has become who he is in large part because of the parents he has.  Being part of our family has molded him just as being part of God´s family has molded me into who I am.  Josh now loves us, because we first loved him and treated him as a son just as we love God because He first loved us and adopted us into His family and cared for us and met our needs.  Our choosing Josh had nothing to do with what he could offer us, but what we could give to him.  God´s choosing me had nothing to do with who I was or what I could become, it was out of his benevolence and love, it was out of his goodness that He choose me. 

I am so glad to be an adoptive parent as it taught me these things and so much more about the way that God adopts us into His family and how much He loves us.  I am also glad to be an adoptive daughter....adopted by the King.  My girls love to say how they really are princesses, because their Father is the King of Glory.  How true that is!