As an adoptive parent, or someone considering adoption, you are making a leap of faith into a world of endless joys and challenges. A world of mystery and awe. A sacred world. When you adopt a child, hearts open. Deep feelings are stirred. Things happen that leave you shaking your head in wonder. Everyone is touched by something magical, something bigger than all of us. Many call it God. Others call it spirit, or the holy, or the divine. Others have no name for it, but they know it's present. This guided journal will help you capture and preserve everything about this wondrous time. Simple phrases will prompt you to remember, to record, and to savor your most important memories and experiences at every step along the way, leaving you with a treasured keepsake for you and your child. This book will serve as a perfect guide for any parent(s) adopting a child of any age, through a domestic or international adoption. It also serves as a valued gift for anyone at any stage of the adoption journey.

The framework that surrounds adoption laws, policies and practicees, the beliefs, myths and attitudes that endow it with enhanced and profound meaning, value, and mystery are what author Joanne Wolf Small, M.S.W. calls the adoption mystique. Its power is evident in the dispsaraging attitudes about adoption and adoptees held by millions of people. Important issues remain buried, and most of the affected have kept silent. It is no wonder that we know so little about adoption and its aftermath. The Adoption Mystique outlines the history and background of American adoption culture from a psychosocial or environmental perspective. It looks at adoption through a series of essays that explore the hidden but powerful religious, social and economic factors that affect society's image of adoption past and present.The undercurrent of negative feelings and treatment accorded adoptive families--and adoptive status in particular--remain much the same despite recent reforms. The book not only examines the problem, but leads to an effective solution.

A unique book describing the coersion of pregnant women to surrender their babies to adoption, the personal holocaust suffered by them, and strategies for healing

The Puritans have gotten bad press for their supposed lack of teaching on the doctrine of spiritual adoption. In Heirs with Christ, Joel R. Beeke dispels this caricature and shows that the Puritan era did more to advance the idea that every true Christian is God's adopted child than any other age of church history. This little book lets the Puritans speak for themselves, showing how they recognized adoption's far-reaching, transforming power and comfort for the children of God. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction: Correcting a Caricature 2. The Greatness and Comprehensiveness of Adoption 3. Adoption Compared in the Two Testaments 4. What Adoption Is Not 5. The Westminster Assembly's Definitions of Adoption 6. The Transforming Power of Adoption 7. Pastoral Advice in Promoting Adoption 8. The Marks of Adoption 9. Transformed Relationships in Adoption 10. The Privileges and Benefits of Adoption 11. The Responsibilities or Duties of Adoption 12. Motives for Pursuing the Consciousness of Adoption 13. Warning, Invitation, and Comfort

Explore this stunning quality of God’s grace: It never ends! In this revision of a foundational work, John Piper reveals how grace is not only God’s undeserved gift to us in the past, but also God’s power to make good happen for us today, tomorrow, and forever. True life for the follower of Jesus really is a moment-by-moment trust that God is dependable and fulfills his promises. This is living by faith in future grace, which provides God's mercy, provision, and wisdom—everything we need—to accomplish his good plans for us. In Future Grace, chapter by chapter—one for each day of the month—Piper reveals how cherishing the promises of God helps break the power of persistent sin issues like anxiety, despondency, greed, lust, bitterness, impatience, pride, misplaced shame, and more. Ultimate joy, peace, and hope in life and death are found in a confident, continual awareness of the reality of future grace.

A passionate love affair between high school sweethearts creates an accidental pregnancy during a sultry night on the shore of Lake Michigan. Rebecca's unforgiving parents banish her to an unwed mother's home where she secretly gives birth to a baby girl. Her daughter Judy is placed in the loving care of foster parents before being callously given to Mario and Rosella Romano for adoption on her first birthday. Reoccurring visions and fantasies of her birthmother plague Judy's consciousness for three decades until a life-changing passage into adulthood causes her to question why she was abandoned. What begins as a simple investigation into her medical and ancestral history slowly evolves into a passionate quest to discover her roots. Through good timing, perseverance, and a few small miracles, Judy eventually solves the mystery of her origins. But will the woman she has been seeking welcome Judy back into her life? About the Authors Judith and Martin Land live in Colorado and Arizona. They told the entire story of Judith Land's adoption, from her birth through adulthood, to provide the reader with unique insights into the mind of an adoptee at various stages of her life.

Adoption is one of the most radically inclusive aspects of God's kingdom. All of us belong to God's family Jesus as God's son and the rest of us as his adopted children. In Adopted Kelley Nikondeha explores how the Christian concept of adoption into God's family can broaden our sense of belonging. Drawing on her own story as both an adopted child and an adoptive mother, Nikondeha invites readers to a rich, biblically grounded understanding of adoption that reframes the way we perceive family, friends, and those in need of rescue. As Nikondeha unpacks the implications of adoption and especially its potential to cross socioeconomic and ethnic boundaries'she offers new ways to approach conversations about family, adoption, connection, and the mystery of what it means to belong.