Found and Fully Known

For this post I have to go back to the very beginning – my beginning.  From my earliest memories I knew that I was adopted.  I give my parents a lot of credit for the way they handled this aspect of our adoption story, because I believe it is a difficult one for many parents.  They simply always said the words to me that I was adopted, I was special, I was chosen, I was loved.  So, these are truths I heard, and came to know in my heart and mind from the start.  I don’t remember first coming to the realization that I was not biologically connected to my family and being unsettled by that fact, but rather I always had the sense, even as a small child, that God was watching out for me, and things were as they should be.  My parents were fiercely devoted to me, and I to them, and our large extended family helped to create a firm foundation of security and belonging as I grew. 

While I was growing up and into my early twenties, the knowledge I had was enough for me, and I honestly didn’t give more than occasional fleeting thoughts to the family I was connected to “somewhere out there.”  Then, as my own children came along, and I looked into their faces and saw my own, I began to have a more intense curiosity about the family I came from, and the similarities we might share.  I felt good about who I was, but I began to realize I only knew about myself in part.  After years of being on adoption registries to hopefully make connection with someone from my family of origin, on August 28, 2018, I was contacted by an agency who told me someone who believed she was my sister had also contacted the agency.  I immediately called her, and to make a long story short, she was in fact my sister on my Father’s side.  It was like a whole new world opened up to me; I learned about the 3 brothers and 4 sisters on my Father’s side, and the 1 sister on my Mother’s side.  They are all wonderful people, and by November of that year, I had been able to meet both birth parents and all my siblings.  We have since started the process of forming relationships and making memories together.  I look into their faces and see a reflection of my own, and when I look in the mirror now, I see a reflection of them too. 

When I write a book one day, I will go into all this in much more detail, but was thinking about it in the context of understanding who we are in Christ.  Just as I could not fully know who I was until I knew whose I was, whose imprint was on me, each one of us cannot see who we really are until we know who we are in Him.  All those years, it was as though I saw through a clouded glass, but now I am able to see face to face.  It is much the same when we realize who we are in Christ, who He says we are – we are loved, we are known, we are found.  Each life precious, each life with meaning, each life a unique creation.    It’s not that people who are standing outside of God’s grace don’t experience love, for families and other relationships are a reflection of that love, but we must clear the glass, so we can see and appreciate the picture as was intended to be. 

CS Lewis states it this way:

“The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us.  He invented us.  He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be…It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.”

The story of God’s love and redemption for all of us was being written over 1600 years, as he conveyed though the prophets what was to come.  Then came the ultimate reflection of God’s love in the form of a baby; He became small and vulnerable for us, and ultimately became sin, became a sacrifice, that we might know how wide, how deep, how great His love is for us.  There is nothing he won’t do, no length He will not go to, no pit too deep, no place too far from His outstretched hand.  He pulls us out of the miry clay and sets our feet on a Rock.  He knows you fully, and loves you completely. 

Rest in that, look in the mirror, and see yourself for who you really are.

Oh God, You are great, yet You became small

Your ways are unsearchable, yet You may be found

You are unfathomable, yet You may be known

You are everywhere, yet You are not far from each one of us

Oh God, that You would rend the darkness with your light

And lead us to You