8 ~ Identity

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Who is my daughter, and who are her parents? Should she know her biological parents as “Mom” and “Dad”? This has been the source of a great amount of grief, emotional distress, and pain for our daughter’s birth mom as well as for us. This question cannot be answered by asking what parent has the right to claim her or what parent is the most deserving. A child needs an identity that they can belong to. The best thing for our daughter is that she knows that she is a Parton. Her identity as a child is in us. She is not our adopted child; she is our child. She is equal to her siblings born into this family biologically. She belongs, she is wanted, she is worth the work required to maintain her health and wellbeing. We hold her close, making sure that she knows she belongs with us, that she has been valued since she was conceived, and that we will always be here for her. It is my responsibility as her dad to model what belonging to Christ looks like. Did I come from another family? Yes, I did. Do I wear the moniker of that former family? No, I do not. I am a child of the King.

We aren’t hiding anything from our daughter. She knows that she was in another mommy’s tummy in Florida and that Dad came all the way from Colorado to take her back to Mom on a plane. She has seen her video of the nurse bringing her out of the O.R., she loves her baby videos from the nursery, watching daddy and “Grandma T” swoon over her as the nurses cared for her. She loves the video of Mommy weeping, 37 weeks along with her sister, meeting her for the first time in the airport. She knows that she did not start out with us but that she is a Parton, 100%. She knows that we sought her, we longed for her, we prayed for her, and we welcomed her when God brought her to us.

Another important thing to note is that she is not unique in this way as one of our kids. Anne also knows that she was prayed for, expected, hoped for, longed for, and then delivered by God to mommy’s tummy just as Aleah was delivered to mommy’s arms. Joey knows the same of himself, Luke is learning it, and Blake will someday too.

I know that Aleah will seek out her birth mom someday. I know that she will drive or fly away from her mom and dad to meet her birth mom and hopefully her birth dad as well. When she looks into her birth mom’s eyes, and when questions well over her like waves in the ocean, I want her to be grounded in these truths; Mom and Dad love me. Mom and Dad want me. Mom and Dad will always have a place for me.

Brothers and Sisters, we were not born into this family of God first. We were born into another family, and we had a different father. In many cases, the ties to that former family are strong. The former family wants to boast that we are theirs. They have lost us, and they have lost control over us, and they are grieving that loss. Their priority is to claim us as their own in their own conquest. Unlike the birth mom, our former family has no interest in our wellbeing. This is simply a score to settle. What is our only hope when we come face to face with a family that we are drawn to, that we came from, and that wants us back? We affirm corporately that Christ is our identity. He is our only hope in life and in death. We have been born again, and we have a new Father. Our new Father looked for us. He sought us out when we had no value. He raised us up and redeemed us by the blood of His own Son. We shine as sons and daughters and heirs of a King, and the value placed on us by our Father causes the former family to mourn our loss, but it does not make us any less His. We are the Father’s children, and we are Christ's younger brothers and sisters. We are only here because of him.

Romans 11:36

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

My daughter came from another mom and dad. I will not lie to her in that. She may someday seek them out, and I may lose her for a time on that journey. She may test the waters to see if she belongs there. She may believe that she does. She may resent her mom and me for adopting her and changing her heritage. If all of these things happen, we will rest in the assurance that we held her, that we loved her, and that we gave her a sense of belonging. We gave her a new name and a name that represented a family who waited expectantly for her, wept over her absence, rejoiced in her conception, waited impatiently for her birth, paid all of the cost to make her legally ours, and would gladly do it all over again for the joy of being in the same family with her.

Dear Aleah,

I don’t know when you will read this or what children will be in our home at that time. I know this must be very difficult to process all of this and see it on the written page, but I want you to know that while I truly do love you selfishly, and I want you all for myself, I am trying to model what I have seen in Christ in how he treats your mom and I. Honey, if you have ever felt loved, or special, or wanted, or valued by your mom and me, I need you to know that our emotions and actions toward you are only a nickel in the goldmine of how Christ feels for you. and what he has done for you. You were never really ours, kiddo. You and your siblings belong to Christ. We just get to love you and try our best, even with all of our failures, to point you to Christ. He is worthy, honey, of all the emotions coming up right now. Christ is worthy of all of it.

What did Christ pray in John 17? Did he not ask the Father to share and bring us into this close familial relationship that I just described? How sweet is the Father's love for us? How great was the sacrifice of the Son to make us ONE with him? When we struggle against his kinship and fight to prove that we belong in the world, how must he feel? When we are tempted to look longingly after the things of the world, how does the Father react? Is it no wonder that we read of His broken heart as he longs for us to return to him?

If I, being evil, know how to give good gifts to my own children, how much more does the father care for me?

Matthew 7:7-11

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

John 17

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. 20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” SEO Type jargon. Move along ... Hello, and welcome to my not a blog blog! So, I wrote a book, and I want the message of that book to get out regardless of whether or not anyone buys a copy of the book. A blog, so I hear, is a great way to take advantage of SEO and make sure that people who WANT to find content that my book covers will have a clear path to it’s happy little home in the Amazon marketplace and should then be able to walk away with a hard copy, kindle version, or Audible copy of said book. To that end, I will be releasing sneak previews and portions to each chapter over the next several weeks. Can I buy the book today? No, sorry. While it is completed, edited, and proofed, the audio version is currently being recorded by a guy with a much better voice than my own. I have no idea what I am doing in publishing, but I think I want to release it all at once. How did you get your book on Amazon? Well, I am a brilliant author, but I also used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) that allows me to manage and upload my own manuscript(s), audio, and artwork. So what is the book about? Sovereign and Gentle is a window into my happy little family for those of you who don’t know us as well as a deeper look for those who do. The book will even be informative to some of my closest friends, as I don’t talk about much of this content often. The book opens with the prospect of either Julia or myself donating a Kidney, follows that painful journey, and then backtracks to cover some of our struggles with infertility, multiple miscarriages, foster care, and adoption. I even sprinkled in some real estate investing horror stories for you guys. The story is framed by key passages from Scripture that have been especially meaningful to me, and the climax of the book seeks to honor and praise God, who has gifted us in all things to be able to serve him in and through our struggles. Did I discuss the big church from college days that laid me off on multiple occasions and kicked us out of a house after the pastor went up the river? I did, and I don’t think I’m bitter… I think... I’m a work in progress there, but I hope that I framed that experience in such a manner that others who have been beaten up by institutions can find comfort in the one who is sovereign over all things and in His ultimate plan.