Our children are not our own

I've heard it said that you never really know how selfish you are until you get married. You have to share everything, including things that you want all for yourself! At one point I would have said that was true, but now I fully disagree. I would say that you never know how selfish you are until you share your child with another woman. I know that sounds harsh, which I don't intend it to be, so bear with me.

As an adoptive mom I will forever share our boys with their mommy Kate. She carried them, gave birth to them and then entrusted them to us! I am still in awe of that selfless act and I will forever be thankful for what she has done and her obedience to God. You would think that because of that it would be easy for me to share them, but I am a selfish person and there are occasionally times where I want them all for myself. This doesn't mean that I don't love her in a way that I can only love the woman that gave life to our children. This doesn't mean that I'm full of bitterness and resentment or that I don't enjoy talking to her, visiting her or giving her updates (I really do love open adoption).  It just means that there are days when it feels like it would be "easier" to have them all to myself. But no one said that walking in the will of God would be easy, and if we were looking for easy, adoption was not the path to walk.

Recently I have felt called back to the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel. While going through infertility, I turned to the story of Hannah for hope and comfort. This time, I knew God was calling me there for another reason. As I read Hannah's story, I couldn't help but be amazed at her obedience to hand her son over to God and to allow him to be raised by someone else after waiting so many years to have him. I felt like it correlated so much with adoption. We have waited years for our boys. Our boys that have been shared with us and in return we also share them with their birth family. In every situation, our children are not our own. They are entrusted to us by God for a short time, yet we are selfish and only want to entrust them to God in certain situations where it's "easy" or at least "easier". We'll hand our children over to God when He calls us to raise them knowing Him, but if that means handing them over to someone else to raise them, or maybe take them to the mission field where it's not safe and they could get sick or hurt, we tend to shy away and say that's not God's calling on our lives, that's for someone else.

As I continually learn how to share parenthood, I am reminded that God first shared us with our earthly parents and it is an honor to be chosen to do the same.