Standing in my kitchen, I was greeted this morning by the sweet, soft voice of my eight-year old daughter: “Happy adoption day, Dad.” It was still early and I hadn’t yet woken up enough to realize the significance of the day. I can’t think of a more beautiful way to be greeted than by my adopted daughter recognizing the significance of my own adoption. My daughter and I share a uniquely special bond. A bond that really transcends words, but a bond that I feel compelled to write about today.
I was adopted 33 years ago, today, on St. Patrick’s Day by my stepmom—my dad’s new wife and one of my birth mother’s best friends. Upon finalization in court, we went to McDonald’s to celebrate with Shamrock shakes—a tradition I’ve keep alive with my children in honor of my late mother, their Mémé, whom they loved. My birth mother passed when I was only two and my adoptive mom when I was 35. Both were deeply loved, tragically lost, and are sorely missed. One might say that I’m unlucky or doubly cursed to have been bereaved twice. But I like to say I am doubly blessed to have had such amazing mothers who loved me with the same unconditional love they learned from their Savior.
Saint Patrick didn’t believe in luck, he strongly believed in the providence of God. He said, “[God] watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.” I have experienced the bitter providence from God’s hand, yet I have also experienced the unexpected blessing of the Father’s personal love and care. I have experienced the good and the hard, the best and the worst, even before I learned sense. But this is life—becoming comfortable with tension and with the perpetual feeling of being pulled apart in two different directions, between the tragic and beautiful, the fearful and the wonderful, between grief and gratefulness.
As I’ve processed my underlying grief and my own adoption, there’s a song by Chris Renzema that has powerfully ministered to me over the last few years. A song that has poignantly captured my experience. That has helped me make sense of my conflicting feelings. That has helped me to wrestle with the paradox and be more comfortable in the tension. That has helped me understand my suffering and my daughter’s. I remember the first time I heard the song. Driving my family to a beach in Ventura, it unexpectedly met me with a surprising measure of clarity, gratitude, and security.
How to Be Yours1, articulates the struggle to accept God’s love—a love so strong, so unconditional, and so unnatural, yet ultimately irresistible. In the first half of the song, he bristles against God’s free, unconditional love. It repeats the following verse twice reinforcing the sentiment. In beautiful and simple prose, it captures the complex internal struggle of a conflicted orphan’s cry:
You say that you love me
Don’t say that you love me
‘Cause I don’t know how to be yours
You say that you want me
Don’t say that you want me
‘Cause I don’t know how to be yours
Yeah, I still act like an orphan, I guess
And my hard heart breaks to confess
That even while you hold me as I cry on the floor
I still don’t know how to be yours
He isn’t yet ready to accept God’s love. He confesses it’s hard to believe. It’s simply too wonderful and too good to be true. He admits his own feelings of unworthiness to receive it. He’s saying, “I hear you. I see you. But even with Your arms around me, there’s too many conflicting emotions and realities that I’m still wrestling with. I’m still reeling; I’m still torn; I’m still so broken that I can’t make sense of it. I can’t accept it. And I’m too much for you to handle.” It reads like a lament psalm. It cries out to God in raw, heart-wrenching, brutal honesty—questioning, doubting, resisting what is most true and what’s even in his best interest. Longing to belong, he wrestles. His broken heart gets in his own way. He puts sticks in his spokes and wonder why he can’t move forward.
We have a special bond, my daughter and I. We have both experienced tragic loss at an early age. Our situations are not identical, but similar. We were both scarred with a significant, primal wound. Deep down inside, we are both angry, hurting, fearful, and confused—a Molotov cocktail called grief. And we both struggle to understand, process, communicate, and deal with these feelings and emotions. We are both strong-willed and independent. We are both meddlers, instigators, and we are both guilty of self-sabotage. We’ve both been hurt, and we’ve both, in turn, caused hurt. And we’ve caused hurt to those closest to us. And we’ve even hurt each other. What she does to me, I did to my adoptive mom in my teen years. We selfishly push others away in self-protection. In our pride and self-sufficiency, we wrongfully think we can insulate ourselves from more hurt. Self-protection is easier and more comfortable than accepting love.
She is, to be honest, the sharpest girl I know. She has been from the beginning. She’s the smartest one in the room. I need to be careful what I say around her. Even when she was young, she comprehended everything said in her presence. And, yes, she would use it against us. But what she has in situational awareness, she lacks in self-awareness. I believe that our similarities help us relate to one another in a profound way. We are the same. I am providentially equipped and uniquely positioned to help her. And, at the same time, she has helped me understand myself.
Ever since she was two years old. She would shockingly say things like, “I hate you,” “You’re not my real dad,” and “I hate my whole family.” It’s how she meddles and manipulates. She knew exactly what she was doing—hurting me and pushing me away. One time, when she was three, when she screamed that she hated me, I responded in frustration, “Fine, then I’ll just walk out this door and you’ll never see me again.” As I headed to the door, she ran over to me, desperately grabbed my leg, cried uncontrollably, and said, “Daddy, no. No, Daddy. Don’t leave! I love you.” In that moment, I saw her for who she really was . . . maybe for the first time. And I saw myself. Behind that strong-willed, ruggedly independent, and confident little girl was a hurting child. She didn’t mean it. It came from the insecurity of a striving heart.
Now, while the first half of the song confesses what is hard to admit, the second half confesses what it hard to believe. The first half of the song expresses not necessarily what it true, but how he feels—the subjective and the sublime. The second half, God responds with objective realities. And like a lament, it questions everything, but ultimately comes around to be anchored in the truth of God’s character. The song moves from complaint to assurance, from man’s admission of doubt to God’s declaration of love. God responds to the brutally honest—even hurtful—reflection in an unexpected way. He says:
So love me or hate me, I’m not going anywhere
Leave me or take me, you still bear my signature
Know me or not, seen or forgotten
I’m not walking out on you
No, I’m not walking out on you
I’m not walking out on you
This chorus is repeated three times, each one louder and more confident than the last. It is powerful because it lists conditions that would normally be deal-breakers in a relationship. But God is communicating his love has no conditions. He communicates, “I see you for who you are and I hear you, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving. There’s nothing you can do to push me away. You’re not too much for me to handle. I’m here to stay.” He is saying as he said in Psalm 46:10, “Cease striving and know that I am God.” I can hear him saying this to Abraham and Jacob and Job, notorious doubters and meddlers.
Adoption is hard. It’s messy and complicated. It’s not for the faint of heart. There’s not one right way to feel about it. Rather, there’s a lot of feelings. Sometimes feelings you don’t understand. Sometimes feelings you aren’t aware of. And sometimes feelings you don’t even know what to do with. There is nothing natural about adoption. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or impossible, rather it is supernatural. As wonderful and and complicated as adoption is, it is a mere shadow of a greater reality. If reflects the supernatural love of the Father. It’s a vertical-theological reality before it is a horizontal human experience (Ephesians 1:4-5).
Often, over the years, when this song comes on in the car, I reach my hand back into the dark void and a little hand grabs onto mine. Together we sing the words. Together we cry. It reminds of us our shared experience, our respective grief, and how God brought us together. It reminds us of the harsh realities of loss, heartache, separation, death, and the bitter feelings of grief, anger, a fear, but also of profound love—unconditional love, super-natural love, love that transcends our pain. As we sing, we hear God communicating his love to us. I’m communicating the same to her. She’s communicating the same to me. And I can hear my mom from beyond the grave, singing to me. Love is stronger than death.
I can handle my daughter’s chaos, her big feelings, her harsh words, and her emotional breakdowns because I am secure in Christ, because my striving has ceased, and because I understand. I know that when she’s pushing me away, she’s actually drawing me closer. She isn’t communicating what’s true, but how she feels. Self-sabotage comes from a heart of insecurity, not hate. It cries out for love. It’s desperate for that love to be articulated and demonstrated because all it knows is grief and rejection, pain and fear. Fear that it will happen again. Fear that this is my lot in life. Fear that I don’t deserve love. Fear that I’m not worthy of such love.
We wrestle with adoption. It’s not neutral. It’s ambiguous and paradoxical. The love that we so desperately crave and need we push away in insecurity and fear. It takes time to contemplate and understand and accept. We say, “I’m still grieving, I’m not ready to move on. I’m not ready to be loved again. I’m still hurting. So I don’t want you to tell me you love me. I’m more comfortable telling you I hate you. I don’t know how to be yours.” Being volatile toward others is often easier than being vulnerable. It’s like intentionally slapping them in the face just to see how they’ll respond. Will they slap us back? Or will they turn the other cheek? Will they hate us? Will they reject and abandon us? But God does the most unexpected thing. He picks us up, spins us around, and tells us how much he loves us. He calls us his children and affirms his love. His love is not only unconditional, irresistible, and unbelievable, it is self-sacrificial. It swears to its own hurt. His strong hands and broad shoulders proudly bear the scars from the wounds we’ve inflicted.
I’m so glad I reconciled with my mom before she passed. There was a time I lost all hope of having a healthy relationship with her. This song helped me process my adoption. So did my relationship with my daughter. I know that being adopted opened my heart to adopting. And in turn, adoption opened the door for me and my mom to be vulnerable and talk about our feelings—something we didn’t do most our our life together. In June of 2017, my mom wrote to me, “I have so much to share about adoption and have only now realized that you know very little about your own adoption. Sure you might remember the judge and you might remember we went out for shamrock shakes at McDonald’s afterwards, but maybe you don’t know why I adopted you.” Before she passed, we were able to sit and have this life-changing conversation. We grew to be incredibly close.
Lament expresses the subjective reality regarding our situation, how we feel. It resents, but in the end, it relents. It opens itself up to be comforted by the objective truth—the greater reality that speaks louder and more clearly, and is more reliable, than our feelings and experiences. Our trauma won’t define or control us. We won’t allow it. Like the song in two parts, we will continually move from complaint to assurance, from doubt to belief, from grief to hope, from insecurity to security, from striving to rest. We choose to build our life on these divine assurances of love.
This song has helped me understand myself, my daughter, and my relationship with my adoptive mother. But most of all, it’s helped me to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, to feel the fullness of the Father’s inexhaustible love, and to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length an height an depth of his incomprehensible love. My striving has ceased more and more over the years. I pray that through my example and instruction—and my vulnerability—my daughter might be able to say the same as the years progress.
- Chris Renzema, “How to Be Yours,” © Centricity Songs, 2018. ↩︎
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