Way back when on Easter Sunday, I shared some suggestions on how to think through your testimony. And, I invited you all to do it and share it.

Kim emailed me this week.

I’ve pondered it for months, then several weeks ago began writing. It came out as what my husband calls “straddling prose and poetry.” This is a touch more emotional and raw than what I’d usually post online but for the purpose of your testimony.adoption story series, I’d be honored to share.

Grab a cup of coffee while the kids are still blurry eyed with sleep and sit for a few minutes to read the poetry-prose-song from Kim about how she came to know God.

____________________________________________

My birth family

kept me,
raised me under the same roof for 18 years.
We never really talked about
my adoption,
the one that happened
when I was four years old,
in the private of my sun-lit room

on my knees.
Fists folded
next to the pink and white ruffle of my Holly Hobbie bedspread,
I asked The Lord to save me
from hell,
for Jesus to come into my heart.
I remember peace–I knew that it was good and right,
but somehow
even amidst all that was good and right,
it was all wrong too.
I had no idea of what it meant

to invite Jesus
into my life.
And although my mom had been the one
to shuttle me back and forth to church
that morning,
{where I’d heard that salvation message
that I couldn’t pass up;
I mean, who wouldn’t want to
get out of hell free? }
and claimed Jesus as her own too,
you see, she must not
have had any idea
either.
Because when I asked her to walk alongside me
and teach me the sinner’s prayer,
she said it was something
best done
by myself.
So off to my room I went,
by myself.

My birth mom
didn’t show up for that gotcha day,
but my new Daddy did.
And He saw to it
that my adoption into His eternal home
was only the beginning
of our family story–
Only the beginning
of our life-long pursuit of
love
and family
and truth
and beauty
and calling
that includes loving me just the way I am
at every stage–no matter what.

{Not that at most moments I get that.}

He always listens,
knows me completely.
He speaks to me: affirmations of who He is/who I am/who I am
called to be … He leads me through
the painful moments
of my past,
and reminds me that
though not pretty,
He has used them to make me
more beautiful.

My status
as God’s beloved daughter
does not erase
all that is wrong in the world.
It does promise to redeem it.

My Father, though the God of the Universe
and He-could-if-He-wanted-to,
doesn’t wipe away
a painful beginning, or one that is
just
all
wrong. He does
hold me in His arms and wipe every tear,
though.

My soul knows,
deep-down,
His comfort.
Yes,
comfort
is what it really means
to be His child.
On gotcha day I knew.
I knew I was being saved
from hell,
but really is that redemption?

Yes, I would learn, that is the crux
of it.
Relationship with Him.
My Daddy has saved me
from death, from life
without Him.
Existence without
the deepest, truest
kind of
rejoice-with-me, cry-with-me, cheer-for-me, understand-me kind of
intimacy,
that, now unimaginable,
relationally-devoid-path,
that road,
would be hell.

I am saved.

____________________________________________

Kim met and married her husband Patrick while living and working in Asia in 2004. Their first two children, a son and a daughter, both born in Beijing, came along shortly after. Their adopted daughter, Marilla, was born in Henan province in 2010, then joined their family through the China adoption program as a two-year-old last fall. You can catch snippets of the Smiths’ day-to-day lives at home in China, on their family blog, asiaramblin.