I WANT TO LOVE LIKE THAT

Growing up in a Christian home has always left me hanging on for that "transformation" you feel like you don't get.

I'm not sure what I mean here exactly, but it's those moments where you feel like if you had to tell your testimony to someone it wouldn't sound all that meaningful or life-changing.

When I was 6, I "prayed the prayer" on my living room floor with my mom and brother.  It wasn't what I sort of wish it was.  There were no tears, no strong convictions, I was just ready.  I had gone to church since I was 2 weeks old, spent years singing Jesus Loves Me in Sunday school, and I always knew that I was a "Christian."

But when you hit your teens you start to feel as if it wasn't real.  Not that you've been brainwashed, but that in your heart you haven't fully accepted what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ.

It seems as if when people come to Christ later on in life, they have these life-changing and convicting testimonies that make you cry.  They are hit hard with what Jesus did for them and what they've done to not deserve what they get.  And when you grow up your entire life being a Christian, it's hard to make the transition to following Jesus.

It was the Summer of 2009 in Africa when that seed was planted.  When my idea of a "Christian" was changed.  And then it began to grow a bit a year later when our family did foster care.  And, the moment the seed blossomed into one of the most beautiful things, adoption hit me straight in the face.

I couldn't escape it.

Never in my life had I been presented to the fact that I had been adopted.  I'm sure I heard about it, but it never hit me so hard in my life.

People say all the time that things change your life.  But no, this altered the way that I live.  I will never again think of being a Christian or following Jesus or loving like Jesus ever again.

And tonight, I felt it again.

Watching a birthmother hold her baby for the very last time with the woman she chose to be the momma to her baby standing over her as she cried.

It's a vision I will never forget.

And then all at once she has to go, and she hands her baby to her new momma and she says through tears "I'm so excited for you."  And you think of the baby, the precious child that she carried for 280 days, and the way her life is being altered.  And her new brothers and her new sisters waiting at home for their new baby sibling.  And it's all overwhelming Jesus love that you just can't get over it.

When you hit your teens being a Christian your whole life, you search for the tangibile parts of Jesus' love.  You'll either drop your faith or something substantial will go on in your heart and you'll never doubt His love again.

For me, it is this vision.

The picture of a woman holding her baby for the very last time.  The picture of the baby's new mother with her arm around her.  It's the words "I don't want to but I choose it anyways."  And it's the thought of a man nailed to a cross bearing my sins sealing my adoption for ever and ever amen.

I just can't get over that picture.  I lived fifteen years before I felt this love so tangibly.  I grew up singing about it and I knew I was supposed to believe it.  But when you hit the age where you choose for yourself, you see Love differently.

I am transformed.

I am chosen.

I am adopted.

& someone chose the hard thing for me when I didn't deserve it.

& I live today because of the sacrifice made for me so long ago.

I want to love like that.  I want to abandon my desires and love with surrender.

Lord, teach me to love like a birthmother.