Rachel was just a couple weeks old and our speaker in church talked about prayer and how it heals. While Rachel slept in my arms, I looked up “healed” during the sermon and read “to cure, to make whole …”

In that moment, as I was holding my baby – the third one that came after much waiting – I was keenly aware of what God has done through prayers to make our family whole.

I’ve told pieces of our family’s adoption story here. But the short version is God used a hard season of infertility to lead us to adoption. We adopted Cate (2007) and Ben (2009) through smooth, domestic, private processes. We spent years trying to adopt a third time and then let go of our desire after doors kept closing.

God surprised us in 2015 with Rachel.

We think our family is complete. I say “think” because I’ve learned never say never when it comes to God. But here we are, a party of five that God orchestrated.

There’s evidence of God’s faithfulness in my kids’ eyes – the girls have matching brown and Ben’s are blue like Greg’s and mine.

“Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” – James 5:13-16

I wasn’t sick in the physical sense, but I have been sick in the spiritual sense. Along this journey to and through motherhood, I’ve been sad and broken and angry and lost. Yet I’ve also been happy and fulfilled and peaceful and found.

I think of the prayers – the one I cried out to God, the ones my friends said to God in my presence, the ones I probably don’t even know about – and realize that’s how we made it here. Adoption built my faith and my family, but the prayers along the way healed my soul and made my family whole.

That’s the kind of dreams only God can fulfill. Making broken people whole and healing sick souls is the work of our Creator, the one who wants us to shine like a city on a hill.

Shared by Kristin Hill Taylor