Love & Restoration

Written by Sarah Dykema, former Foothill Christian School student and current Foothill Church attendee. Having two boys at our preschool, she shares a deep passion for the ministry of Foothill. Now through her real estate company, she is serving as one of our Corporate Sponsors! You can connect with Sarah by visiting her website at www.sarahdrealestate.com

Love is one of those things that most the time, is unexplainable. The times I’ve found it most difficult to understand is through God’s ability to enable us to love in the hardest of circumstances.

I’m reminded of this during a time in my life, my husband and I were desperate to become parents. We had just completed our Adoption Home Study when a short 5-weeks later we received “the call” for a baby boy.  But before seeing him, we had to meet the birth parents. It was a two-hour drive on a hot summer day.  This wasn’t your average long drive with the windows down, blaring music, while you watched your wind blown hair in the review mirror. Our emotions were everywhere. Between feeling the need to pull over every other exit for a pit stop, and wanting a barf bag for my lap, to say the least, our nerves were stretched tightly.

This would be the meeting in which this couple would or would not decide to “choose” us to raise and love their birth son, as our own. Feeling like pressure cookers about to explode, we figured praying was our only option.

But how do you pray for this? What do we pray for… conversation, outcome, this child’s life, their decision…?  It was then God put a strong desire in our hearts. God was asking us to pray specifically for our ability to love; to love this couple through their story, to love them through their brokenness, to love them through their grief. Not just a shallow love, but a deep love and compassion toward them.

This sounding idealistic, so “Christian” of us, obviously, we would pray that way… when in reality, this did not feel like a natural response. We were being asked to keep this relationship with this couple “open” to our son for future interactions. It was through this prayer, we felt God teaching us and preparing us for a desire to hunger for this type of relationship. This does not come easily, when our immediate selfish response is to protect, isolate, and want to avoid this concept out of fear.

That day we were prompted to pray for their hearts and ours. Humbling us to recognize us as equal. In that short two-hour span of time, through trembling hands and weary minds, God gifted us with grace, mercy, peace, patience, love, joy, as only he can do. He replaced fear with joy, he traded anxiousness with peace, he exchanged confusion with discernment and most of all he taught us to love.

I will never forget the overwhelming sense of God’s presence while we met. Two couples, four desperate people, allowing God to take over and restore… when we allow God to step in and do what only HE can do, miracles happen. On that hot July day, the power of God’s love shown down on us, all of us, and in that moment nothing else mattered…

Arie Dykema, Adopted 2013

2017 – The complete Dykema Family

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