My favorite bedtime story as a child was about my adoption.  I loved to hear my parents tell me how much they wanted a baby.  And at just the right time — there I was!  What sweet joy it was to hear them tell me over and over how much I was longed for and loved.  They announced my arrival with cards that said “I wasn’t expected, I was selected!”  I can’t think of anything that made me happier than to know how special I was to them.

But there’s so much more to the story than that.  Looking back over all that happened, I can’t help but see the hand of God.  I know now it was the Father’s WILL that I be placed in this loving home, and that His work in my life began long before I was born.  My parents married in 1951 and, after a brief separation due to the Korean War, spent the next ten plus years trying to get pregnant.  I don’t pretend to know the heartache that goes with infertility, but I know that God had a plan all along. Eventually, it was discovered that my mom had endometriosis.  I’m not sure if that revelation came before or after my arrival.  But I do know that I was very young when my mom had surgery for a ruptured ovary due to a “chocolate cyst.”

So after years of tears and prayers, through the power of Jesus who speaks through His WORD, they felt led to adopt.  I can’t help but think about what an exciting and scary proposition that was for them.  (Not to mention the financial side of it.)  But God had willed it, Jesus spoke it into their hearts and the Holy Spirit made a WAY.  You see, somewhere in another family there was heartache of another kind —  an unwanted pregnancy, a bastard child.  I was born “Tina Marie” to a married woman and her lover.  But God, in His perfect plan, knew that was not the end of the story.  This child would find a new home, a new family, a new name — “Joni Lynn.”  And in that home, though not perfect, I was raised as a child of God, deeply loved by Him and by them.

One of my dearest childhood photos is of Mom holding a sleepy me on her shoulder after the trip home from the adoption agency in Harrisburg.  She looks so radiant in the picture.  I think her face just glowed with the joy in her heart.  It was the fruition of years of prayers.  I’m so thankful my Mom chose to be a stay-at-home mom. That is precisely why I wanted to be at home with my boys.  I grew up not even realizing how many sacrifices my parents made for my brother Drew, who was adopted later, and myself.  They just made do and we were happy.  We had their presence rather than their presents.  And in case I needed a reminder of their love, in my bedroom at home –and now in my bathroom where I see it daily — is a plaque in Mom’s handwriting:  “Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone, but still miraculously my own.  Never forget for a single minute, you didn’t grow under my heart, but in it.”  Thank you, God, for the parents of my heart!