Abba, Father

“My strength in life is I am Yours.

My soul delights because I am Yours.”

You are my passion – Jesus Culture

  

This past weekend I went to Halifax to visit my boyfriend Luke who works and lives a few hours outside of the city. We usually meet up in Halifax a couple times a month for a visit. This time instead of going alone I was invited to travel and stay with the Slysz family (Luke’s parents and sister). We spent a lot of time connecting with friends and family, some who live on PEI and others who used to but now live in Halifax. The family that lives in Halifax now actually used to be my neighbours and when my parents were still married we attended church together. The Slysz’s went to this church too and as a side note Luke and I were little blonde chubby babies in the nursery together. John Wilton, the father of the family in Halifax was the pastor at this little church. It is beyond crazy to have everyone connected in so many ways after years spent apart leading different lives.

We were all sitting around on Saturday night at the Wilton’s playing some worship music and laughing together and I was so thankful and overwhelmed with emotion. I couldn’t help but look around and see the obvious work of God. The restoration and reconciliation. I thought back to a year ago this time and I remember one day driving by my old house where my mom, dad, brother and I lived at the same time we attended this church with all these great people. I remember God was just beginning the process of redemption in my heart and I had no idea then how much healing and peace God had in store for my year. I prayed about my house and my old life, my childhood and these neighbours, I asked God “How could something as broken as divorce ever be restored? You say you will restore everything, I believe you, but I really don’t see how something so permanent could ever be fixed.” I was kind of angry and bitter and just really wished I had grown up differently. I tried to blame all my mistakes on the fact that I didn’t grow up in a supportive ideal Christian household. I thought if I had just grown up a few houses down maybe I wouldn’t be in this broken place trying to put back all the pieces. I resented some of my friends for their lives and sometimes I would get so frustrated if they complained about their parents. I craved a Christian family, a marriage of God to mentor me. I knew in my heart that I desired these things because they were God given blessings and He wanted them for me. I knew that God placed those desires in my heart to be filled; I just didn’t know how He was going to fill them.

Well it wasn’t two weeks later that I went on my first trip to Halifax to visit the Wilton’s. Actually I travelled over there to visit Luke with some other friends of his which is kind of funny now too. I don’t think I ever laughed like I did that weekend. I was so nervous to reconnect with the Wilton’s and I had no idea if we would have anything in common. I hoped my family’s mistakes wouldn’t be a barrier between us not to mention the ten years or so that had past. Two days on that first visit brought more healing and freedom into my childhood memories than I thought was possible. I couldn’t even believe how much fun we had, but also how serious and deep the friendships became right away. We looked through old family pictures and I actually had a sore stomach from laughing so much. 

 Since this first visit it has only gotten better. God quickly showed me how easy and natural it is for Him to restore things, and how if I walked in His path restoration would spring up all around me.

So I guess it shouldn’t have caught me so off guard this past weekend, but I was overwhelmed by a sense of belonging. I was surrounded by three amazing families who have all in their own ways taken me in and loved me. In different ways and at different times the marriages and the relationships have ministered to my heart and brought healing and a sense of family. In many ways I don’t belong there, I am not a true member, I don’t really do anything to deserve to belong, I didn’t earn a place, I wasn’t born into the group and I left the Christian lifestyle behind for a while before. But it’s funny now because none of those lies can even make me think twice about my place there. I was sitting there, completely different, yet feeling so much like I was made to be there. It’s like God has grafted me into these families in so many ways. I am dating Luke, I am friends with all the kids in these families, and I reconnected with the Wilton’s in Halifax after all these years. It’s like God intended me to be there with these people and He has lifted me from my family’s mistakes and placed me smack in the middle of all this grace. I still love my family and obviously am a part of them, but it’s like God has given me this gift in replace of what was once stolen from our family. It’s like this night was God’s plan and in a roundabout way He made sure I still ended up there. 

I was so thankful to belong to a group of such amazing families, and for the beautiful relationship God has given me with Luke and his family. But these feelings only scratch the surface of a much deeper truth and sense of belonging that stems from somewhere else.

It is true that a year ago God starting restoring my sense of family and that He made me belong again. That He lifted me out of brokenness and planted me firm in completeness. It is true that all these families have been such a blessing in my life, but what is even deeper is my belonging to my heavenly family. To my heavenly Father.

The truth that God restored this time last year wasn’t my identity to this group, but my identity in Him. I was grafted in and given the family intended for me. I was given a new name and He started singing a new song over me. Daughter of the King.

In many ways I have been adopted by moms and dads over the years, I have many role models and have been protected by friends and their families. But the “adoption” that makes me tear up as I look around at all my friends, at all the love in the living room at the Wilton’s, is my true adoption by which I cry “Abba, Father”. For I am a child of God. I am a daughter. I am a member of a new family, grafted into a tree that bears much fruit and produces life and joy. And my Father in heaven, in all His majesty, the King in His entire splendor, has been seeking me out and has found me in a desperate orphanage; He saw me and loved me instantly. He knew I would soon be His, but gently, without any force, He let me see Him and love Him back. He let me grieve the loss of one world before raising me into the next. My Father has adopted me into a family and given me all His inheritance. Nothing I do makes Him love me anymore or any less. He surrounds me with proof of my adoption and covers my life in His grace and redemption, all of which point me to Him. And my strength is in Him as Father, not in any other identity. The other things are gifts, they bring much joy, but the thing that will stay with me even through the grave is my adoption into Him. I can be joyful and thankful and I should be. But if everything about that night at the Wilton’s was somehow stripped away, I would still feel the exact same deep sense of belonging, to my Father. My strength in life isn’t His many blessings, or my new support systems. My strength in life is ‘I am Yours’.

As we worshiped and sung songs of praise my heart sang inside me louder than my voice, and louder than the guitar, my heart cried out with joy to my Father who found me in the place I was in. Who in all His mercy, decided to adopt me. Not because I was needy or desperate, but because I was a part of His heart from the time He made me and He could not leave me behind. So much so that He sent His true and only son, His biological son, to die for me, that I may belong again where I was created to be, in the center of my Daddy’s heart, where I cry “Abba, Father”. 

  

Martina Sobey