The fourth post in my National Adoption Month guest series highlights The Batura Family. Paul Batura is a longtime Focus team member who currently serves as Focus’ vice president of communications. He and his wife Julie adopted their three boys at birth.
My hope is by highlighting these real-life adoption stories, families who are considering and praying about adoption may learn a little more about the process. I hope that readers will see how God uses adoption – both the gritty and the glorious – for His glory.
You can read the previous posts in this series here, here and here.
I leave you with the Baturas’ story, as told by Paul.
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One of the most interesting things about adoption is that it’s nothing like you see in the movies, watch on television or even read in a best-selling book.
One of the most interesting things about adoption is that it’s nothing like you see in the movies, watch on television or even read in a best-selling book.
It’s actually much better.
The arrival of our three sons, Riley (2005), Will (2010) and Alex (2012) were each marked by strings of miracles and a reminder that yes, God does still “swirl in the whirlwind” and direct the storms of life.
Riley was born on a warm Sunday night in the middle of the summer. His birthmother so desperately wanted to parent, but she wanted more for him than what she could give. The night we received him, at a church in Edmond, Oklahoma, we wept together, her tears watering the top of his beautiful bald head.
Will came to us like a bolt out of the blue. We walked through the summer of 2010 with another birthmother who had selected our family months earlier, only to change her mind days after having given birth. We cried in disappointment, perhaps Riley most of all, who lamented the loss of a brother that wasn’t meant to be. But in the tears we attempted to console, reminding him (and ourselves) that ours is a sovereign God of surprise.
My wife Julie, Riley, and I prayed for a miracle.
Five days later a woman from Denver, who didn’t even know she was pregnant, gave birth to a boy. He was soon placed in our arms and quickly grabbed hold of our hearts.
Alex arrived in February of 2012, in Omaha, Nebraska, in the midst of a literal and figurative swirling storm. We had been introduced to his birthmother four years earlier but had fallen out of touch. On the night my mother died (January 12, 2012) we received a call inquiring whether or not we might be interested in adopting this yet-to-be-born boy?
It was a startling contrast between life and death.
Adoption is gritty and glorious. It’s exciting – and scary, too. And most of all, it’s humbling, to be entrusted with a life through the loving choice of another person.
Adoption is also a grand reminder that life is often complicated and even awkward, and most definitely outside of our control. But it reminds us that “every child begins the world again,” and that God is the master weaver who redeems and restores all things.
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