It was a starry night when I went camping with my sons. They looked into the sky in awe of what they saw, and one asked, “How big is the universe?” “We don’t know,” I said, “but God is bigger still.” “Cool,” was all he could say. There was a silence that enveloped us as we looked up.

Looking into the sky reminds us how great God is. We realize that He is the Creator of the universe, and that nothing transpires in it (either good or bad) without Him divinely appointing it. And yet, He stoops to taking the likes of us and adopting us as His children.

There are moments in adoption where we marvel at what is happening in our children. As parents, we want to be in control of what happens, and yet we realize that there are things that we cannot control. Our children’s first steps or our children’s first words, for example. We want desperately for them to make the right choices. We moan inwardly when they rebel. Sometimes, we wonder if they will ever grow up.

The loss of permanence affects most adopted children to some degree. We stand back and observe them and wonder when (if ever) they will recover from this. Then, just as we are about to lose hope, they surprise us with a statement that shows they finally want us to be their parents. We thank God again for being sovereign over this whole process of adoption, both highs and lows.

Stars light up the night. They are still there during the daytime, but we are not able to see them because the sun blocks us from seeing them. Were it not for nightfall, we would be oblivious to the fact that they are even there. God allows us to catch glimpses of our children’s adaptation and growth in the dark nights of their pain, as they reorder their lives after being adopted. The same God who created the stars makes the tapestries of their lives into something beautiful.

So all we can do is take a step back and be astounded at how God is has brought our families together through adoption. We are equally amazed at God’s plan of adopting us to be His children. And we labor in the hope that God will choose to use our children’s lives in the big picture of His plan.

We have every night to remind us of this as we gaze up into the sky.