It is all well and good speaking about keeping Christ at the centre of our lives. What we have shared together in the last few blogs makes good teaching, even if I say so myself. However, how does it all work out in practice? After all, teaching is only worthwhile if it is practical and applicable to our daily lives with its challenges, victories and disappointments.
Towards the end of December 2006, I was hit by two completely unexpected events: the death of my mother-in-law and the discovery, at the age of forty-seven, that I was adopted as a baby and had lived in ignorance of the fact until that fateful moment of discovery.
As my late mother-in-law was a Christ-centred believer, the fact of her passing, or, preferably, her promotion, coupled with the great hope of the resurrection and the knowledge that once one has left the body one is present with the Lord, softened the impact of our loss.
The news of my adoption, on the other hand, was not a blow lightened by anything at all. To find out that one has lived the best part of half a century in a lie is not an experience I would wish upon anyone. It is not overstating the issue to say that everything that I had relied upon as fact disappeared like a morning mist being vapourised by the rising sun. Everything, that is, except the Saviour at the centre of my life – the Lord Jesus Christ.
Had He not been there (by invitation) there would have been very little to hold on to that could have been relied upon. Do not get me wrong, my marriage is very secure and successful. My wife has been my helpmeet, and, at times, someone I could lean upon and at others one who could lead the temporary blind and often deaf.
Every story I had been told by the person I believed to be my father, every tale delivered by my newly revealed adoptive mother were thrown into immediate and extreme doubt. Heritage, inheritance, genes and all that one associates with biological family were now an area of confusion and doubt.
What was I to do? What was I meant to think? Was there a particular way one was expected to respond to such unsettling news? Questions. Possible answers were dashing across my cloud-covered consciousness so fast that I could not apprehend them. They teased me from behind clouds of doubt and confusion, playing a ghoulish game of hide and seek.
In the midst of it all, from the moment of finding out and the hours and days that followed, there was one constant, one isle of stability, one rock of salvation. In amongst the shouting voices, the onrush of guilt and the collapse of supposed truth, there stood a Hiding Place and His Name was Jesus.
In the confused tangle of this emotional tumult, He stood. His face was that of compassion, His heart vulnerable to my hurt. I did not need to assume a particular posture or recite a preset mantra or regurgitate some positive confession nor, unbelievably, did I have to rebuke any demons or other nasties. All I had to do to secure Divine help, fellowship and comfort was to be honest, vulnerable and willing for Him to take the load, take my hand and take the lead.
Finding out such a vital truth about one’s origins so late in life (relatively speaking) is a big thing. Emotions can be strong; feelings of betrayal can be demanding taskmasters. Every element within wants to rise in rebellion, wants to stir the waters of life into a raging tempest; the tyranny of bitterness seeks to secure the throne. All seems lost until He stands and says, “Peace, be still”.
For Him to speak to the storm, He needs to be in our boat. He can and will only come aboard by personal invitation. When my life erupted into a storm of doubt, uncertainty and betrayal, He that was invited aboard took control when I stepped aside.
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What an amazing testimony to God’s grace, power, love and His never-failing willingness and desire to be “our very present help in times of trouble” – a practical demonstration indeed of what it means to have Christ with us and in us, not in a vague theological sense but as a constant source of strength, encouragement and ultimate fulfilment. How is it possible to live without Christ?
ReplyDeleteOn the matter of adoption, there is not a consensus of opinion on whether or not children should be told. A recent survey showed that 19% of American paediatricians believe that “children should not be told at any age” (www.aap.org) and it has always been recognized that some children regret knowing, especially if their biological parents are dead or untraceable. Adrian’s previous account (www.parent24.com) says that at around the age that it is usually recommended to tell a child of their adoption, he and his ‘parents’ emigrated from Britain to South Africa and he was their only child. Perhaps they should have told him that he was adopted before they left but in deciding not to do so, they must surely have been thinking solely of what was best for him in South Africa: he was leaving behind his friends and other ‘relatives’ to live in a very different and apartheid culture where English was not the first language of the majority and he had no brothers, sisters or cousins with whom to share his feelings - to then be told that the people he is living with are not his real parents would have been ‘a bridge too far’ for any child. Maybe his adopted parents feared that even as a pre-teenager, he would be pining to return to Britain to find his biological parents which would have been disastrous for all concerned.
It should be remembered amongst all the “tales, lies, doubt, uncertainty, confusion, questions, betrayal and bitterness” that Adrian was not left to flounder in a 1960’s orphanage with its stigma and the derision of his school-mates, but instead was cared for by a loving couple who gave him the many advantages that he enjoys today. To refer in the website to “when the water of the well of upbringing is impure” and to “failing your child in the extreme” seems somewhat harsh when it was this man and woman only who were prepared to take on an unknown child as their own. It was Adrian’s adopted parents who raised him, educated him, supported him and stood by him during the difficult years that many teenagers pass through and it is to them, more than anyone else, to whom thanks and praise should be given.
Just as Adrian has experienced God’s awesome grace in dealing with the shock of his ‘late discovery’, does God now want him to demonstrate similar loving grace towards his adopted parents? Let’s see a ‘blog’ in which Adrian honours Mr & Mrs Tamblyn-Watts for all that they have done for him and in which he openly forgives them for failing to reveal their “unsettling news”!