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“Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ”
—Ephesians 1:5

The word adopt means to bring a stranger into the family and make him a son and an heir—a joint heir.

I know about adoption; I was adopted.

In 1963 a young girl found herself in a crisis. She was pregnant with me at the age of 13. Her parents were embarrassed by this and decided it would be best to hide her pregnancy by sending her to a foster home.

While she lived in foster care, she gave birth to me and then was able to return to school. The foster parents took care of me while she attended school. After some time passed, she began to want to return home. The only problem was that she was welcome to come home, but I was not. I would have to stay in the foster home and be put up for adoption.

This was a horrible choice for her to have to make, but she made it. At age 15, my birth mother relinquished her rights to me. I was a little over a year old now and by all outward appearances I was motherless, fatherless, and in the county welfare system as a legal orphan, helpless to do anything for myself. I was without hope . . . without even knowing it.

But this was not a crisis to God. He knew me before I was even born and had written all the days of my life in His book. He had a bigger and greater plan for my life than I could ever hope for or imagine.

Meanwhile, a couple who had agonized for years over their inability to have children sat down at their little kitchen table and began to write a letter to the County of San Bernardino saying that they wanted to adopt a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, freckle-faced little girl—a toddler, not a baby. Guess what? They were asking for me!

I was waiting for a mom and a dad and God brought them right to me. They chose me. A few short weeks later, I was brought before a judge to be legally adopted by them. My mom tells me how she had to pay the lawyer with rolled coins.

Everything changed for me that precious day. I was chosen. I was bought and paid for. My name changed and I was a joint heir with the family. I had the same rights and privileges that I would have if I had been born into the family. I was now legally theirs.

I was brought home on July 25, 1964. That date is very dear to me. Only God would have known that 46 years later He would bring my dad home to be with Him in heaven on July 25, 2010.

Isn’t that the way it is in our relationship with the Lord?

  • We were without hope. “You were without Christ, being aliens . . . and strangers . . . having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).
  • We are chosen. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).
  • We are bought with a price. “For you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20).
  • We are joint heirs. “We are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16–17).

I will leave you with a poem that I have treasured for years.

Not flesh of my flesh

Nor bone of my bone,

But miraculously my own.

Never forget for a single minute;

You didn’t grow under my heart,

But in it.

By Fleur Conkling Heylige