My Boy Child Is Fortunate to Turn 8 Today

God definitely has a sense of humor.

If you ever thought that you’d adopt a child to circumvent your mother’s prayer…FORGET ABOUT IT. Really. Forget about it.

Patrick and I used to joke that our gene pools were to shallow to swim in and that’s why we had to adopt, but God knew what He was doing.

Every year this time I write about the one who is the answer to my mom’s prayers – many, many, many prayers, the one who challenges me, the one who stretches me and the one who is probably the most like me. My beautiful son Pearce.

Pearce is a child who from a very early age knew exactly what he wanted out of this world and how he was going to get it and whoa be to the person who got in his way. Enter stage right – his mother. I am still learning how to be his mom. He’s always changing, always moving, always taking things apart, always trying to take charge. He has the best belly laugh when he laughs at slap stick comedy. He’s physical. He’s loving and charismatic. When he smiles, he lights up the whole room. He is being honed and shaped into a future leader. When you think he isn’t listening, he is and can repeat it all back to you. He has little if any fear. He is strong-willed and independent and makes friends easily. He knows exactly who he is.

Funny things is when God spoke to my spirit telling me to adopt again, Erin was a year old, and I was sitting at Anna Jo’s funeral. She was a friend who left behind three little kids and a husband and had entered the hospital with pneumonia. Anna Jo’s life verse was on the program and quoted throughout her service, and I kept thinking what an odd verse for a funeral. The verse kept bothering, and it was because the Spirit was prodding me that this was to be the life verse for my next child.

At that time, I was the happiest mom on the face of the planet bar none. I was content. After having gone through failed fertility treatments and failed adoptions, I was finally a mom. I was the mom to the happiest, chubbiest, funniest, easiest baby in the world, and I really was not interested in going through the adoption process again. It was just too exhausting and emotionally draining. And yet, every time I did anything towards a second adoption, Anna Jo’s verse would be quoted to me, taught in Sunday school, sent to me in a letter, or preached from the pulpit. It was like God confirming that He wanted me to move forward whether I was ready or not. Anna Jo died January 2002. By the summer of 2004 I had made a baby boy’s scrap book. We were not matched. We had not been promised a boy, but I knew in my spirit God would provide a boy. So I prepared for a boy believing God was going to give me the desire that He placed in my heart.

Pearce’s story is unique just as he is unique. He knows his story. He knows God doesn’t make mistakes. He knows that God wanted to match us in a spectacular way to show us just how awesome He is, how capable He is, and how just in control He is. Some people see Pearce and know he’s adopted, but if they saw my cousins on my daddy’s side, they’d not think a thing about it. If they knew me as a child, they would know he is mine. When they see how he idolizes his daddy and wants to always be with him, they’d know there’s no greater love.

On August 27, 2004, William Pearce Mullins made his entrance into the world just as God had planned. God has planned Pearce’s future. He is going to give Pearce hope. He is Pearce’s hope, and the verse God gave me for Pearce is Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, “ declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Pearce says he wants to be a person who has adventures when he grows up, and I know that God has ordained his footsteps, that God goes before Pearce and will protect him in his adventures, and will lead him in the ways Pearce needs to go.

Thank you, God, for entrusting me with this beautiful boy of mine. He is definitely an adventure in my life, and I thank you for the honor to be able to call him “son.”