Part 2 of 4

In the previous post, I reviewed Adoption as a Ministry, Adoption as a Blessing by Michelle Gardner. In the next two posts, we’ll look more closely at some of the topics introduced in the book.

Michelle’s husband, Steve Gardner, chimes in on one chapter called “The Reluctant Father.” He describes his shock at Michelle’s announcement that she wanted to adopt and the arguments he presented against adoption. He writes:

Why in the world would we want to run the risk of ruining a perfectly good family? Our biological kids were just getting to the age where they were demonstrating some independence. Frankly I enjoyed the freedom this afforded us. And how would a new child with unknown issues affect our ministries in Taiwan? Another issue that was in the forefront of my thinking was how in the world we could afford such a costly endeavor. Sure we had savings, but did I really want to empty our bank account for what I saw as a whim on Michelle’s part? After all, there are millions and millions of children in the world without families. What difference could we possibly make?


Steve had more questions:

• What about the size of our house?



• What kind of emotional baggage would a child who had been abandoned at birth and raised in an institution bring to the family?

Similar to many couples in which one spouse is reluctant to adopt, Steve realized that Michelle’s persistent desire to adopt “was not a passing phase in Michelle’s spiritual journey.”

She encouraged Steve to seek the Lord’s will through prayer and personal study. When he told her that he doubted he’d ever change his mind, she didn’t get angry, nor did she waver from her own conviction.

As Steve searched Scripture and God’s direction, his attitude toward adoption slowly began to change. “Every time I opened my Bible it seemed like adoption and the Lord’s love for children jumped out at me,” Steve wrote. “Suddenly I found myself asking a different sort of question. I no longer asked in what ways God had made it clear that adoption was not an option for our family. Instead I began to look at ways He had made it clear that it was.”

The final piece that reshaped Steve’s thinking about adoption was when he began to understand that “adoption is a beautiful picture of what the Lord had offered to me the day I asked Christ to become my Savior…God accepted me bag and baggage with no strings attached. He opened His eternal kingdom to me, not as a slave but as a son, a joint heir with Jesus. It became quite clear that the Lord did want us to open our home to another child.”

The Gardners went on to adopt not only the three children described in Adoption as a Ministry, Adoption as a Blessing; they have adopted SIX additional children!

Michelle Gardner makes a short, yet revealing statement midway through the book:
“How much we would have missed if we had listened to our fears.”

To learn more about the Gardner family and their ministry, please visit Kingdom Kids Adoption Ministries.