It was the day before Thanksgiving, November 23rd. I’d just finished a workout and was about to head for the shower when my phone rang. All at once, my plans for the day (and Thanksgiving, and the weekend, and the next several weeks…) went out the window. Our adoption agency was calling to tell me that our baby boy (you know, the one due in mid-December) was coming today.
My husband and I were suddenly plunged into the chaos of trying to catch a flight to the other side of the country on the busiest travel day of the year. We were excited to finally meet our little boy and his amazing birth mom, but there was so much to arrange and plan in such a short period of time. Birth mom and baby were both having some worrisome symptoms, so our little boy was delivered via emergency c-section before we could even leave the house for the airport. We saw the first picture of him right before we got on our flight; he was covered in tubes and wires because he’d come too early, We were happy, but worried, and more than a little overwhelmed.
The first picture we saw of our boy.
We met our son and his birth mama on Thanksgiving morning. The days and weeks that followed were full. We loved on our son’s birth mama and spent hours and hours sitting by his bed in the NICU as he gained the strength he needed to be discharged. Stuck in a strange city all the way across the country, God’s provision was evident. Frustrations were plentiful, but God mercifully provided for our physical, financial, emotional, and spiritual needs as we waited for our little boy to grow strong enough to leave the hospital, and then for permission from the government to travel home with him. After exactly three weeks, we finally made it home to Oregon with our son.
Looking back over the past few months and years, I am amazed at how God orchestrated our journey to parenthood to be one big story about how He never forgot us.
All along the way, as Jason and I dealt with infertility and then with the ups and downs of the adoption process, I struggled to hope in God. It was hard to believe that He was hearing my prayers to be a mom when the nursery was still empty. Sometimes, it seemed like He’d just forgotten.
But, through more than four years of foiled plans and uncertainty, I’ve learned to look for evidence of God's grace in the small things, and trust that unanswered prayers don't mean that God has forgotten about me. God does not forget His people in their distress. So many stories from His Word testify to this:
He remembered** Noah in the flood and caused the flood waters to subside (Genesis 8:1).
He remembered Abraham, and saved his cousin, Lot, during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:29).
He remembered Rachel (Genesis 30:22) and Hannah (1 Samuel 1:19) and allowed both women to conceive in spite of their barrenness.
He remembered his people, Israel, and saved them from their enslavement in Egypt (Exodus 2:23-25).
That passage from Exodus 2 is a particularly poignant description of how God loves his people in their suffering, as he responds to the cries of His people during their enslavement in Egypt:
During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
Exodus 2:23-25
Isn’t that beautiful? God heard them. He remembered his promises to them. He saw them. He knew their suffering.
God heard our prayers for a child and saw our grief through infertility and the long adoption process. He was working behind the scenes for our good and His glory. He knew our pain. He always remembered us.
That’s how we settled on our son’s name: Zachariah, “God has remembered.” To remind ourselves, and to testify to everyone, that God never forgets His people in their distress.
We are overjoyed by the abundant blessing of being Zachariah’s parents. He is a sweet reminder of God’s constant faithfulness.
**Being omnipotent and all, God can hardly forget anything. So, don't be confused when the Bible talks about God remembering something or someone. God doesn't remember like when I finally figure out where I put my missing cell phone; He remembers, never having forgotten in the first place!
Respond
Have you ever felt forgotten by God? Where do you find reminders that God always remembers you?
