There is one question I am repeatedly asked at church and other places,
“It’s been five years since you have adopted. Are things easier now?”
Many times I give the short answer and nod my head.
The fact is that many things have gotten easier. However, many more things have gotten much harder.
In the beginning, when we tried mushing a family of five together with a family of three, we were so much more graceful with each other. We knew we needed space and tried to put on a good show. While we knew in our minds we were family, our hearts were not attached and bonds needed to grow. We kept our tempers in check and instinctively knew this was going to be hard. But then, slowly over time, as we were trying to figure out the new “us”, and almost unnoticeable, something terrifying happened: We started to attach and care for each other!
Loving relationships are dangerous business. They have the potential to hurt, a lot. Through them people attach to our hearts and can cause havoc. At times they may cause us to build walls. However, without this audacious endeavor of truly attaching we may forfeit the reward of real and proven love.
I am reminded of the Lord who attached Himself to a cross and died a cruel death. He did this because He had no greater joy than to attach us to the Father’s love. His death made the greatest provision for us: He paid for our sins to take down the wall that had built between the Father’s heart and ours. In His resurrection He proved that nothing could keep us separated, not even the power of death.
In Christ and in His love we can grow in a loving relationships toward God and one another – and may even take a risk or two … or three.
Romans 8:35-39
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Heidi Viars 
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