My Daughter Spoke Words of Grace

I’m an adoption writer. As an adoptee and mama-by-adoption, it’s a subject I know well. I also write on topics of faith and forgiveness, gratitude and God.

I’m a Christian. I love mercy. I get up every, single day with the prayer that my life would be an example of justice and of fairness toward others.

My faith doesn’t make me perfect — far from it — and it doesn’t make me immune to mistakes, heartbreaks, or setback. My faith gives me hope and a confidence that through the ups and downs of this life, God is near.

And so, when I took a few precious moments today to sit quietly in prayer, I was deeply moved when my little girl (who I didn’t realize had come into the room) snuggled up on the couch and said these words:

“Mama, I’m so glad that you love God. I’m so grateful that you are a Believer.”

My eyes teared up. My daughter’s words were pure and spoken from a most tender place within her soul. She leaned over and kissed me on the top of my head. I placed my hand on my girl’s heart and she placed hers on mine. We went on to talk about a host of things including, forgiveness, love, and adoption.

I told Evi that I might not always have answers to her questions about adoption but that God holds every answer. I reminded her that God’s answers come in His time and not in ours. I encouraged her to hold on and to have faith as she moves through the years of her life, as an adoptee.

I’ve learned along my own journey of adoption that answers can appear when we least expect them to, and always — it seems — when we’re best equipped to handle them. That’s grace. Trusting that God knows what is best — that’s faith.

Trusting does not come easy for the adoptee, I’ll admit.

I have pushed for answers in my life. I have fought to uncover hidden stories and truths. I have pushed until the point of exhaustion. All of it was rooted in anger and fear. I was angry over being abandoned and fearful that I would be left again. I thought that I was owed answers and was deserving of explanations. Boxing gloves were on. I was ready for the fight.

Yet, faith and belief have turned those false thoughts around. I wasn’t owed anything. What I needed was to receive the peace that only God can provide. I needed an enduring love to pick me up off of the ground and make me whole again.

Spiritual endurance is a gift — one that I work on minute-by-minute — and one I’m grateful to share with my daughter.

“I’m so glad that you love God, too. I’m so grateful that you are a Believer, Eviana.”

It has been my greatest revelation to know that I am a new creation in God. It’s been my greatest honor to share this truth with my girl. These tender moments of faith-filled conversation between me and Evi are some of the most treasured moments of my life.

We connect beyond the mother and daughter relationship. We’re sisters-in-Christ. That’s the Holy Spirit at work, overflowing between us.

This faith I write of enables me, as an adoptee, to look back on my life with gratitude for every second of the journey. As hard as life can be, and often is, there is no way that gratitude could be alive and well within me, if not for God.

And, my daughter is watching. She’s 8-years old and doesn’t miss a thing. She watches how I move through situations, through difficulties, and how I begin and end each and every day in reverence to the One who makes all things possible. My daughter sees that her mommy is grateful.

Religion has divided countries and people, it has started many a war. I don’t write of religion. That’s man-made.

I write of faith and of feeling. I write of relationship and of a connection to something bigger than me, greater than me.

I write of a great love that crashes through borders and kicks down walls to find me…

To find you.

To find us.

That’s God-made.

That’s unconditional love.

That’s God.

And, that’s adoption.

Onward,

Michelle Madrid-Branch is an author, speaker, international adoptee, and global advocate for women and children; specializing in the areas of adoption, foster care, abandonment recovery, and identity reconciliation. She is the author of Adoption Means Love: Triumph of the Heart. Michelle’s mission is to ensure that the adoption community is heard, seen, valued, respected, and understood. To learn more about Michelle, visit: MichelleMadridBranch.com.