Unreasonable

Yesterday when I went for a run I spotted a flower growing out of a crack in the cement. I stopped, bent down and took a closer look. It was small, but vibrant, growing, living. No soil was visable, no grass, nothing but what seemed like cement that went on forever. Just one soft-stemmed flower, petals small and vulnerable, pushing the pavement aside.

About a week ago I had a conversation with someone about adoption. This person did not believe, no matter how much I wanted to love my daughter, that my love could be as far-reaching for her as the love I have for my biological children. I tried to explain it. But how do you reduce the velocity of your heart, the acres of love that you carry into words? How do you convince someone to believe in something that is unseen, to reason about something unreasonable?

Adoption is unreasonable. It is unlikely and unnatural. It is counter-culture. It goes again every biological grain. It’s not math. It is not two plus two equals four. It’s uncontrollable. And completely, unequivocally unreasonable.

But adoption is redemptive because love is redemptive. And love is the flower, the tender shoot that pushes through miles of pavement, forces her way through everything hopeless and bleak and impossible. Love is wondrously unreasonable.

I am convinced, from my toes to my top, that Keza could not be any more my daughter if I had pushed her out of my body. I know it. I know it in the same way I know that I am a daughter of God, in the same way that I know that He could not love me more.

Love brought redemption. Redemption said that Gentiles were daughters and sons, despite not being God’s chosen race. They were adopted. They became God’s chosen race. I don’t for a minute doubt that I was born in God’s heart long before redemption made a way for me. Love gripped me, tethered me to my Father before I ever reached out for Him, before my lungs ever held a breath of air.

It’s unreasonable. It is only understood when you can believe in something impossible. It is only understood when a miracle can take root and grow.

Adoption is the heart of God. It’s woven into our lives, the redemption and love, power and strength of it, whether we have eyes to see it or not. I can’t convince anyone to believe what has happened in my heart. But I can speak the truth of it. I can lay down and rest in it. I can sit on the sidewalk and watch, with wonder and amazement, that the soft and vulnerable stem is also tough as nails, that love sprouts in darkness.