Family & Parenting
We are thinking seriously about adopting and I cannot tell if this is a calling or just a feeling. How do we know?
“And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter: for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful; whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter.”
The book of Esther opens with a displaced Jewish girl in the Persian empire, both parents dead, and one line that changes everything: her cousin Mordecai took her as his own daughter. The Hebrew is deliberately plain. No ceremony, no fanfare, just a man deciding that a child belonged to him. The rescue of an entire people, which is the rest of the book, runs through that single ordinary decision.
“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”
Paul reaches for adoption to describe what God has done for believers, which tells you how highly he rated it. Under Roman law an adopted heir held the same standing as a natural-born one: debts erased, name changed, inheritance secured. Paul says that is your own status before God. A family formed by choice is not a second-best version of the real thing in Scripture; it is the picture Scripture uses for the real thing.
A path forward
Talk to two families who adopted five or more years ago and ask what they wish someone had told them. Ask about the hard parts specifically, because people will tell you the truth once it is clear you actually want it.
Go to one information evening with an agency or your local authority before deciding anything. Calling and feeling are almost impossible to tell apart in the abstract and much easier to tell apart once you know what is genuinely involved.
Pray about this over a set period, a month or forty days, and write down what you notice. Genuine calling tends to hold steady and grow more specific over time, while a passing feeling usually fades once the paperwork appears.
Closing verse
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
- James 1:27
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