In the rush of every day life, we forget. In the constant face of one demand or another being placed upon us, our thoughts stray from the truth of the foundation that built this family. We began our journey in September 1997. Nearly fourteen years have passed, and those years have definitely held more than enough circumstances to distract us from our original purpose and goal.
We wanted a family. We were serving in a ministry and believed that our life’s purpose was to work full-time with that particular ministry. Those were our plans for our life together. Married in December 1996, we moved quickly to wanting children and planning and trying to have a baby, but we were also made aware of the huge need for foster and adoptive parents in our state. God spoke to our hearts about foster care adoption and ordained our steps during 1997, leading us to meeting our first son in December 1997. He was officially adopted in August 1998, and we haven’t looked back. Our family has since grown to a dozen children, ten legally adopted from foster care and two older “unofficially adopted” daughters. Add ten grandchildren into the mix already, and we have quite an exciting world.
Along with the excitement, there are distractions. We have faced the stress of traumatized, hurt children who became angry, rebellious teens and young adults. We have felt the sting of rejection when our older adopted children push us away and choose a path that we know will only bring more pain into their lives. Daily, we are made aware of the fact that it is not humanly possible to fix some of the issues, heal the hurts, or put a Band-Aid on the deep wounds in their hearts. BUT in the midst of it all, there is a hope.
We have a hope as Christians that cannot be found elsewhere. It is not a temporary hope that wishes for something and can be crushed when it doesn’t come to fruition. It is an eternal hope that lives for more than what we can see with our eyes. We live for the promise that God has given us, the promise that we can have joy in the midst of pain, dancing in the midst of our sorrow, and beauty from the midst of the ashes. God promised that we could have a full and abundant life through faith in Jesus Christ. There is more to life than the temporary things and experiences on this earth. There is true healing through the pain, distractions, and struggles, and we believe that healing is found in the eternal hope of heaven and the abundant life Christ gives us here on earth. That is why we do what we do.
Written by: Melissa Hoffman
