How Our Church Encouraged Us to Adopt

It was supposed to be a weekend of celebration, an opportunity to mark not only the beginning of Holy Week, but also a time to start planning and dreaming of life with a baby.

Instead, on the Saturday before Palm Sunday in 2005, my wife, Julie, and I cried for hours – mourning and grieving yet another miscarriage and a continuation of years of infertility.

It’s been more than 17 years since that gut-wrenching day, but as we celebrate National Adoption Month this November, I’m reminded again just how instrumental a role the Church played in not only providing us hope through a time of sadness and disappointment – but also how they cheered and encouraged us on our uneven journey as the Lord built our family.

Like so many believers, our faith has always provided us with solace in sorrow and so it only made sense to pull ourselves together that next day and head off to our usual Sunday service in downtown Colorado Springs. Would the Lord speak to us through the pastor or the music?

The church that morning was festively decorated and filled with smiling worshippers. I looked around and wished I could be so happy. Instead, I remember feeling disconnected, nervous and out of sorts. It was only then that I understood what the writer C.S. Lewis once wrote, that “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

As a young boy, Palm Sunday always struck me as something of an odd outlier of a celebration. To go from the soberness of Lent to the festiveness of a royal procession – and then so quickly to the tragedy of Good Friday and then Jesus’ crucifixion and Resurrection three days later seemed like so much of a whirlwind.

As the young kids of the church made their procession up the aisle to open the service wearing their red robes and waving palm branches, we sang the words of the traditional Palm Sunday hymn: “All glory, laud and honor, To thee, Redeemer, King, To whom the lips of children, Made sweet hosannas ring.” The sight of the fresh-faced kids and then singing the line about children was almost too much for me. Would we ever have a child participate in the procession with a palm branch in their hand? After so many years of disappointment, it was beginning to seem increasingly unlikely.

How can your fortunes swing so rapidly, from triumph to tragedy and then to triumph again?

Over the years, I’ve grown to see that Jesus’ wild week is something of a metaphor for our lives. If you’re not in trouble today, hold on – you’re headed for it. But if you are in a dire predicament, don’t despair – the tide that goes out will always come back in.

God is always at work, even in the lives of an infertile couple desperately praying for a baby.

In fact, I’ve come to believe that it’s when God seems most absent that He is often doing His greatest work.

But the very real substance of Palm Sunday is not that good things can come from bad. It’s that God often uses the weak and powerless to demonstrate true strength (1 Corinthians 1:27). It’s a reminder that He turns the wisdom and ways of the world upside down all the time.

On that first Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a baby donkey – hardly a symbol of strength and might. In that scene, I think we’re reminded that all of us are entirely dependent upon God. He doesn’t do things like we do things, which is why we often don’t understand what He’s up to. Sitting in that church that Sunday morning, lamenting our lot and choking back tears, my eyes wandered to a notice in the bulletin announcing the next week’s Easter Sunday sermon. It was to be preached by our pastor, and after 34 years of ministry, it was to be his last. He had selected for his theme a subject that lifted me from my despair: “The Difference a Day Can Make.”

Our pastor’s message gave us hope that next Sunday, and I especially remember him talking about mountains enshrouded with clouds – an applicable illustration for people in Colorado, especially. “Even when you cannot see the summit,” Dr. Stevens preached, “you can be assured it’s still there.” It’s faith – believing even what you cannot see (Hebrews 11:1).

“God may never have answered our prayer for biological children, but now having adopted three times, we’re thankful He saw fit to answer them in His own way. “

Would you believe it was the very next week when a friend connected us to our future son’s birthmother – Julianna – and the grand journey began.

Our pastor and church staff encouraged us through the months of Julianna’s pregnancy. The church choir threw my wife a baby shower. So many people in the church prayed and celebrated with us. And when Riley was born and then dedicated, the entire choir stood behind us as a sign of solidarity and spiritual support.

God may never have answered our prayer for biological children, but now having adopted three times, we’re thankful He saw fit to answer them in His own way. And our church played a major role along the way.

Riley eventually joined the procession with those palm branches, as have his two brothers – and I will never see or sing that song the same way again.

In this post Roe-era, the Church has an oversized opportunity to play a role in ministering to birthmothers and birthfathers – and encouraging families in their congregation to consider adoption. It’s ministry that won’t always move in a straight line, but it’s an outreach of immense importance and one that rests at the heart of the Gospel.

©2022 Paul Batura All rights reserved. Used with permission.