Cheyenne Antell

Now, not everyone may know, but when I was young, about 2 years old I was adopted.  I feel like part of that has always been with me.  I remember thinking that I wanted to meet my “real” family. My “real” mom, my “real” siblings. I felt like this wasn’t my family, wasn’t my real life.  As if I was meant to be somewhere else, with somebody else.  And I knew it was wrong, and I knew that I had been taken from a bad home, but I couldn’t help from wondering.   Then, one day when I was looking through my bible, I found Ephesians 1:5. “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. “That floored me for a moment.  I thought, “wait, so not only have I been adopted once, I’ ve been adopted twice?” and I realized then, that I don’t NEED to see my birth family.  I don’t even NEED to see my adoptive family, would it ever come to that.  What I need, is to be close to my family in heaven.  My father, God.  My brother, his son, Jesus Christ.  I have a “real” family. They are as real as they can get, and they’re in heaven, waiting for me.  I don’t need to rush. They will always be there.  And my adoptive family will always be there for me here. Realizing that helped me to see that even if you have a problem with family, you will always have an eternal family waiting for you in heaven.  Going to Ecuador, this was shown to me even more. You see children, whose parents do drugs. Prostitution. Who can’t feed their children, but keep having more. Some of them come early to the church, to get away from family problems, and we get to see them, so happy just to be in the house of God.  They may have problems in their homes, but they too have an eternal family waiting for them in heaven. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and seeing just how big it is, in person?  It’s amazing, knowing that your not the only church who thinks this way, seeing the way that even through our differences in language, and actions, that through God, we can communicate, like a family. 

Cheyenne Antell