Inhaling

New Pics Posted Often Here.
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I can’t figure out what to do with this blog.

I’ve been praying for weeks that God would show me what I’m supposed to make of this thing … to no avail. I’ve got nothin’ folks. A big blank from Him.

You see, something has happened since we started chronicling our adoption — I’ve re-discovered a long-lost love: writing …and reading. Something I had dismissed long ago as “unnecessary” in getting me where I thought I needed to be in my faith has, though, now been revealed as a part of the fabric of whom He has made me to be.

We had a swivel chair in our sun-room growing up that I’m certain was worn soft with the imprint of my tush. It’s where my mom would find me most days … reading. More like devouring.

Our local children’s bookstore, The Reading Railroad, was like a candy store to me. It came second only to our library. The summer our county unveiled its new library building, my best friend Nicky and I racked up the mileage on our ten-speeds going to and from the library and TCBY. We’d get lost between the stacks of books and corner beanbag chairs, only breaking for a sweet treat.  The smell of new, un-cracked books invigorated me just about as much as the feel of worn pages on those that had been read and re-read by all the names listed on the card in the inside cover who’d fostered that book at one time or another.

I loved everything about reading. The experience, the story, the beauty, the mystery, the romance. It awakened parts of my heart that my left-brained self just didn’t entertain for the other 75% of my life when I wasn’t reading.

But … sometime after then, I decided that the love which “story” stirred up within me didn’t contribute to my goal of being a passionate pursuer of God — so I dropped it. Sure, I kept reading and filling my bookshelves. But instead of stories that drew me in and painted pictures on my heart, I read only things that would overtly grow my faith. Less story, more “how to.”

And now, about 15 years later, I’m realizing that in my immature zeal I neglected a part of my God-designed self.

I heard someone say once that reading was like inhaling and writing, exhaling. For the writer, both are necessary. (While I don’t totally agree that having your own web address makes you a writer just as sitting in a garage doesn’t make you a car, I’m at a loss for a better descriptor. People call themselves musicians who perform at open-mic nights, right?)

And as I’ve prayed for direction for this blog, the only thing I’ve heard is that this is a season of taking in, drinking deep, finding Him again in story — both the adventures in His word and the adventures infused with His Spirit in books.

So, for the first quarter of this year I will be doing just that, while my extended ruminations on  Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet hit the sidelines. (Although I likely can’t keep Nate away from posting pictures in the interim.)

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Note from Nate: I’ve gone ahead and taken the liberty. Go here (and at the tab above)
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In the meantime I will employ a marketing strategy of my husband’s and invite you to check back May 1, 2010 for an announcement of “what next.” (As if anyone other than my mother and Nate’s mother will remember to attend the equivalent of my 3rd grade piano recital. Mom, please don’t forget …).

As for the life-and-times of this family with a heart wired for adoption … those adventures have only started . But for now my diatribes will all need to be directed at my poor husband. (Although I have a feeling I’ll be taking a page out of Brett Favre’s book before too long–retire, unretire, retire, unretire.)

I will let you know on the first of May if I’ve been given permission to exhale and where that exhaling might take place …

Thank you for your continued encouragement — both for our adoption and for my “exhaling”.

I’m not sure which was more nerve-wracking: exposing myself to close friends or to total strangers. I’ve invited you to attend my amateur night and given you a designated space to comment. Augh. Did I really just spend 2 years writing a BLOG? But you’ve (whoever you are out there) been wonderfully encouraging lab rats. You’ve carried the mantle of every good first grade teacher: unfettered enthusiasm and eyes that look beyond mistakes to see potential.

You’ve made this little public diary thing really fun.

Let’s not forget what He’s done.

The bitter has become oh so sweet …

See you this spring …

(“Feel free” to — ie. please oh please — leave a comment and let me know who you are. It’s only fair now that I’ve shown you my virtual underwear drawer for you to show me yours. Come on out and introduce yourself! )

My Prayer Today

God, every time I get close to You –I mean really close… so close I feel as if Your heartbeat and mine are One … so close that what was crystal clear becomes blurry and I become lucid to only Your impression … so close that I don’t know if I ever want to leave this nexus of being undone, yet uncompromisingly safe …

… I realize how very little I know You. And I become alert to foundational ways I’ve thought and grids around which  I’ve constructed my life that seem to fall apart under the weight of Your glory. I have a keen awareness in this moment that what cannot stand now while in Your presence will perish in the end. Oh God, I don’t want to go my whole life thinking I  know You and then get to the end and have You say “I never knew you…”

As I stand under the spout of your goodness, I realize I can not leave unchanged. (Which is maybe why I so resist sitting under that spigot.)

So all I can do is ask: God give me Your eyes. Give me Your eyes for my children. Give me Your eyes for my life. Give me Your eyes for my husband, and my friends, and even the people who seem to get in the way of my dreams. Give me Your eyes for the hurting and the broken, the lost. Give me Your eyes for me. And give me Your eyes for You.

Remind me that this work in me is not finished.

Change me from one who strives to be finished and then be used for Your glory, to one who is so very comfortable being unfinished by You, while Your glory abounds.

And grace me with a spirit of expectancy. Rather than being one who strives to “press on” through the wall, give me the humility to expect (and then accept) a breakthrough that only Your Spirit can bring. In an instant, even.

I am needy. And You are whole. Solvent.

Make me new.

So Many Questions

A few nights ago I had a new exchange with Eden. It went like this:

I was cuddling with her in bed before she went to sleep, and I said to her (as I often do) “Eden, you know that one of the happiest days of mommy and daddy’s lives was the day we first met you.” I went on to describe what it was like for us to walk into the room and first see her and Caleb, hold them and play with them. She could probably recite this little story in her sleep, as we tell it often.

I added this piece, though: “Eden, we waited and waited and waited until we could come and get you. It felt like forever, but we were so excited when we could finally leave to come pick you up.”

I’m sure I’d said this before — it’s a key detail (in my mind) to her knowing the great anticipation of our meeting. Except, this time, as I said it, her lower lip began to quiver and big round tears spilled out of her eyes. This cry was different than any I’d seen from her before. She proceeded to say, “Mommy, I waited and waited and waited … and you didn’t come. Why did it take so long? Hannah [the woman who ran the orphanage] told me my mommy and daddy were coming, and I waited and waited and you didn’t come.”

Whoa. How could her little four-year-old mind, not only retain the impact of time spent waiting as an orphan, but articulate it? She didn’t just feel the anxiety of waiting four months upon her arrival at the orphanage for her rescue–but she remembered. And she associated that pain with my re-telling of our end of the story.

I can’t tell you the heartache I feel even now as I type. Those four months felt like years for me, but I would bear even more if it meant my little girl didn’t feel a second of it. She knows about her orphanhood and her adoption hasn’t erased that pain, as I’d secretly hoped it would.

Was it worse for her to know we were coming? Did the promise of a mommy or daddy on the other side of the world infuse hope? Or did it bring despair, as visitor after visitor entertained her with games and toys that just couldn’t bring the same security as being someone’s little girl?

*Our* wait was only half the story. And now … now that I know that her wait made an impression, I can only pray that God uses this pain in her little heart like He has used it in mine; that she would eventually see His hand–father-ing her as only He could do–even while she waited.

I suppose the not-so-ironic thing about it all is that the questions she peppered me with that night have been the same ones I’d been asking God  just a few hours prior. Why has it all taken so long God? Why all the waiting? Why all the delay in promises?

As the world has just absorbed innumerable more orphans from Haiti in the past 24 hours, my heart is heavy with the burden of many, many Edens in the weeks and months to come–who will be old enough to know and feel the loss.

Except what about the ones whose wait ahead is longer? What about the ones who don’t have parents on the other end of that wait? What will they do? How will they heal?

My heart breaks.

“Don’t Leave, Mommy”

He whispered this before I left his room tonight. Just moments before he’d said with an ear-to-ear grin “I get to cuddle with Mommy!”

I’ve been hesitant to post details of some of the attachment struggles we had, early on, with Caleb–and likely will still refrain in order to maintain some sense of privacy in this diary with which I’ve invited mostly-random strangers from places like Malaysia and Lithuania.

But his vulnerable little heart’s request tonight was a watershed moment.

Since I first noticed him jump into the arms of a friend-to-me-but-stranger-to-him (whom he’d met in the parking lot) and, not too long after, grasp the hand of a woman who’d simply offered a smile at the farmer’s market, I had a sinking sense we were facing that which most parents who adopt dread.

Attachment issues.

And, I suppose seasoned moms aren’t as susceptible to all the emotions that can come from a child who responds to their mail carrier in a way most children reserve for their parents only. I wasn’t as mature. I’m too insecure. It hurt to watch my little guy find safety in people not yet classified “safe”. Wet kisses on strangers faces, no matter how enamored those strangers were with my children, turned my stomach.

So Nate & I hunkered down. We hedged in. We guarded Mommy-Caleb time like the holy grail. And we prayed.

Fast forward 4 months, and we began to see the signs of true bonding. My little guy looking for me among a room full of adult legs through which to weave in and out. He asked for me to hold him at night. And although his friendliness to strangers was still evident, it became tempered — sometimes even with a look first to mommy to see if this person was safe.

And tonight, just 3 days away from the six month anniversary of our “Gotcha Day”, I got a gift from God. These words were no magic bullet indicating our struggles with attachment are over, but they were a simple, sweet reminder that nothing is impossible with God.

Now despite this, and that the process to get to “July 10, 2009″ was wrought with many curveballs, our transition home has been a banner experience. So smooth. But as we talk about our next adoption(s), we realize that we aren’t immune to bumps in the road … and, even more so, that adoption isn’t just another road to “achieve” the American dream of the perfect home, career-path, car and family.

However small it may have been, tonight was a little reminder that nothing is forever doomed. No child is permanently scarred. No situation is too far gone for the hand of God.

And adoption … well, it’s sort of like choosing to put yourself on the front lines of the battle. You will likely see some incredible wounds and even be wounded too, as a result.

But you just may get to be one of the first to spot the enemy’s surrender.

God always wins.

2010: A Year To Fall In Love

I am not a New Year’s resolutionist. For as much as I love order and structure (and all that comes with it … planners, new pens, crisp clean notebooks, lists, post it notes), I know myself well enough to know that “goals” only serve to later make me guilty that I didn’t stick to them. So I don’t set them.

That said, I love the New Year …every year. About as much as I love the end of August when Target smells of college-lined paper and plastic pencil pouches, I love the fresh start we get again in January. I was made for new beginnings. Maybe this is an indication that after 17 years of following Jesus I am finally seeing that I am desperate for a fresh start, often.

So my “desire” (note the word choice) for 2010 is very simple: love.

I want to know more of the heart and love of God for me. Seems selfish? Maybe so, but I have recently been tasting the fact that God doesn’t use the same evaluative lens towards me that I use on myself and actually enjoys me. I’ve said this about a thousand times to myself and others but for some reason late 2009 has brought a shift in my spirit to where I’m actually believing it. And it’s a whole lot more fun to spend time with a God who I believe wants to be with me, rather than how I often see Him …as one who is tolerating me and really just waiting for opportunities to point out my failures.

I want to fall in love with God this year. All over again, or new for the first time — I don’t know. I just want to fall more deeply in love.

I couldn’t pray this and not ask that His love would so move me that I resolve (whoops – “desire”) to fall more in love with my husband. We’ve certainly gotten comfortable as roomies. He’s finally stopped creating “holding places” for his things all over this house and learned my motto: there’s a place for everything and everything in its place. He’s an amazing father and we’ve really hit a stride, we see eye-to-eye, in the way we parent and the dreams and passions we have for our children. I’m loving experimenting with new health concoctions and he’s a happy consumer. I’m wanting to spend more time writing and he’s the perfect editor. And I seem to quickly find ways to spend or give away the money he’s just made. Perfect pair, right?

But this is not enough.

I want the same potential-to-move-and-change-me love of the Father to move through my marriage. I want to see Nate with God’s eyes. I want to learn him, and all his nuances, in the very way I long to feel known by God and to know God. I want to love Nate deeply. All over again, or new for the first time — I don’t know. I just want to fall more deeply in love.

And finally, I want my children to know the love of Jesus. My kids are pretty obedient (at least today). They love the order their mommy loves and have fallen quickly into step with our lifestyle. They sleep through the night, take good naps, and when they wake up from their nap early they typically “read” in bed. They only have melt-downs when I’m feeling pride about the fact that they don’t melt down. And they even drink my spinach juice. And on top of it they are happy most of the time. Perfect children, right?

But this is not enough — or even close.

I want my children to fall madly in love with their heavenly Father. I want them to know life through His eyes, not because they were taught to or they should … but because His love fascinated them. More than the mission of Jesus, I want them to know the man. I want them to know joy, real joy. The joy that comes from being loved at your very core by the One who made you. My goal desire is that they would learn Jesus’ love and that it would forever mark them. I want to be a conduit for that love for them.

So … my conscience is nagging me to admit that I also have a very short list of things like “juice three times a week”, “read one novel a month that will stretch my heart and mind”, and “no more sweet treats” that just seemed to come together a few days after the ball dropped. But these are not New Year’s goals either. Just desires for myself. Things I’m taking to the God who–even already since I wrote this list and began to pray for love–has shown me that this year will be like none other before. I’m saying “please help me with these.” These are certainly not things that I could fail or measures of my worth. No, not “goals”. Nope. Just … desires. With action steps.

And now that I’ve written them down for whomever the heck reads this blog (and has not resolved to stop wasting time reading blogs in 2010) to see, there’s a little more accountability. You know, for my desires, that is. Not my goals.

And for the record, this whole desiring God’s love thing really works. 2010 has been the best year of my life so far. These past six days … wow.

(PS. Part of loving my husband, my editor, is not being hurt when he says “you need to add some pictures” to make it more interesting even when it doesn’t really fit into the post. So, here’s some pictures;) Enjoy.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Two thousand nine brought it’s share of heartache … and deep joy. While I’ll never forget the bitter of this year, the aftertaste of the sweet still lingers.

I stand at the starting line of 2010 with great hope — that isn’t fettered by the acknowledgment that more of Him often comes with a cost. And to these — the hope and the cost — I say yes, Lord. More of You.

If you’ve been wondering why our Christmas card has not arrived in your mailbox, it’s because of the snow. And the time spent defrosting toes by the fireplace. And the sled rides. And the ornament making and buckeye baking. The cuddling, tickling, holding, reading and praying are all to blame (read: washing and folding, wiping up spills and making potty runs).

So, finally, here it is. Our year in review (more like 5 months in review), virtual Christmas card:

Pretend This Came In Your Mailbox*

(Come on, can you believe how much they’ve grown?)

*Some photographs included in this montage are compliments of Synergy Photography

“Is Jesus Beautiful?”

Today, as I was putting Eden down for her nap, we cuddled in what she has coined “the beautiful room” (our guest bedroom that holds her pack-n-play where she naps). Just before I put her down she whispered: “Mommy, is Jesus beautiful?”

How could she know? My child is surely not perceptive enough to know that the mommy she woke up to today, snippy-Mommy, mommy-on-the-verge-0f-her-own-tantrum and hiding behind directives spoken very slowly and with a locked jaw and plastic smile, needed to hear that question.

Today is my Dad’s birthday and, I anticipate that, even more than the day he died, this will be a day I’d like to erase from the calendar for at least the next few years when the pain feels so sharp. (Sounds selfish, I know, but it’s where I am today.)

On top of that, I wiped out on my run this morning. (A friend told me once that I had the body of a 13 year old boy …maybe I have his coordination, too.)

My mom said “was it dark outside?”

Did she even need to ask?

Sadly this is not the first time my running buddy has had to peel me out of fetal position after a fall. I wish I could say my lack of coordination is a result of sleep deprivation or flighty-motherhood, but it’s not a new thing. My head, shoulders, knees and toes have graced all four lanes of the Miami University indoor track. Multiple times. My knees still have a scar from when my depth perception failed me and I dove for a tennis ball headed right for my racket last summer. Nope, lighting isn’t my issue.

So, now…the first year without my dad on his birthday, a new shiner, and holes in my running gloves from bracing my fall = grumpy mommy. There is not enough Vitamin E in this hippie house to heal today’s scars.

But when Eden asked that question, this is what came out of my mouth.

“Oh, Eden. Yes. Jesus is so beautiful.

“Sometimes, when you look into His eyes, in your mind …you feel like you could for hours. He’s so safe and so full of life and so loving. God made Jesus’ beauty to be almost overwhelming.

“When you wake up from your nap today, before you read your books or play with baby, ask God to show you what Jesus looks like. I bet you’ll see His beauty.”

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for filling my mouth with words I didn’t feel. And for reminding my heart–through the unknowing little African vessel residing under my roof–that your beauty trumps all.

More Than A Face Lift

We just received pictures that our new friend Fran took just a few weeks ago. (See previous post for details on the face lift to our blog).

Gosh, I love these pictures. She captured the children’s vibrancy that I see every day from our breakfast table to our before-bed cuddle times. It is nothing shy of a miracle that Nate and I are both showered and dressed in something other than loose cotton or dry-fit. All appears right …

I want to climb into them and make them my reality. Everyone looking their best and so happy. The story has been wrapped up with a bow and placed just-so under the christmas tree. We came through the fire and look at us now …

The End.

Not quite.

While I don’t want to at all negate the beauty and glory of God that has come through our family and that I’m daily reminded of as I watch my children nestle into life here, this road isn’t over for us.

The goal wasn’t just to bring home children and create our own utopia. And as much as everything in me would like to erect a white picket fence around this story and call it a day, there is a nagging reality that continues to rear its head in my life. I am here to know Him and, by that knowing, to glorify Him.

Urgh. Most of the time I can shout that truth, but when it comes in the form of something that messes with my pretty-little-life,  I feel resistance in my spirit.

The theme of this blog was always, and will continue to be (as long as I write it), that God makes something out of our seeming ashes. That the hopeless circumstances and even hopeless people of this earth have still yet a destiny from Him, even in the face of defeat. And that hunger, spiritual hunger, is a prize to hold onto with fierce tenacity, despite how uncomfortable it can feel.

So circumstances of this fall (my father’s death and other things) have yet again forced me to re-evaluate what it means to really know Him.

I have had to continually go through an unraveling of my own understanding about what being a lover of Jesus really is. At times I feel like I’m swimming upstream to get my head and mind around the truth that following Jesus isn’t just about Him making my life look good and attractive to other people. For Him to get all the glory intended for my life I need to get out of the way. (Nothing will feel quite right in the meantime.) And many times, for this stubborn one, that means someone or something has to move me out of the way.

But I don’t want to get out of the way. Though I say I want Him to get all the glory, there is a part of me deep down that believes we can share it. People can think He’s great, and I’m great…can’t they? People can want more life in Him …and dream about living my life, can’t they?

For some people, much more mature than me, they can walk in a life that visibly demonstrates glory to God without a need to touch it for themselves. But for me, for the calling on my life at this moment and for my yet still immature heart … His glory must come at the hand of the great undoing of me.

There is much in me that wants to use this blog, since the children have come home, as yet another vehicle for hiding behind a tidy, well-put-together life. It’s the same part of me that has a proclivity toward buying cute new shoes when all else seems like it’s falling apart (my ever-growing shoe racks are evidence of a life of struggle). If the rest of the car looks good, maybe no one will notice that the wheels are coming off.

And His undoing, for me, oftentimes means that my life looks less like these pictures and more like what remains after a nasty kitchen fire. It’s easy to say you welcome the undoing of God when all is well. But standing amidst the stench and ashes can bring forth a sobering assessment of the thing for which you were asking.

But at that moment there is no competition for the glory. It’s just Him.

These children have been one of God’s greatest gifts to us, born out of fire. And because I see how much beauty came from that very fire, both externally and internally, I continue to say “yes” to it. Even though it messes with me.

My true hope (after wading through my hunger for my own glory) is that one day that fire will burn in such a way that all you see is Him when you look at me and my life. Not because I worked for that end, but because I couldn’t help but stare at Him … His firm yet beautiful safety … when all else around me burned. And in that gazing He transformed me into His glory.

Face Lift

I’m one who rarely, if ever, re-arranges furniture. Once I find something that works I see no need to change it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

In the ever evolving blog-sphere, our “skin” has become quite antiquated. It hasn’t bothered me a bit; however, we received some photos recently and I couldn’t resist. Hence, the face lift you see above and to your right.

Thank you to Fran from Synergy Photography for blessing us with your art! You’ve so beautifully captured the children’s vibrancy (and you managed to facilitate the intersection of a hygienic miracle — both me and Nate showered and dressed in clothes other than our workout duds).

I met Fran about a year ago at a Starbucks when I was with another mom who’d adopted…and we struck up a conversation simply because her family looked like my friend’s family and like I knew ours would soon enough. She’s adopted 4 children in addition to her 3 biological children and manages to pull off a successful photography business on top of it all.

This fall Fran contacted me and offered to take our pictures …hard to resist. She was great with the kids and the pictures turned out better than we could have hoped. She does great work.

Thank you, Fran! And thank you God for “chance” meetings like this one.

Receiving

I’ve had a bit of a rude awakening. I sort of expected parenting to be an 18 year state of “comatose”–where you come up for air afterward and assess who you were then and what all those years were all about. I’ve expected to put all of the self-reflection on the shelf, or at the very least be comfortable with bite-size bits of that. Maybe its because of all the moms I hear talking about the end of their lives, the slow burn, that started when they conceived. I subconsciously assented.

But God has shown me otherwise.

He has decided that now, in the midst of grieving for my father and going from a family of 2 (where sometimes just one of those two took himself to the potty and brushed his own teeth) to a family of 4 where I’m now responsible for the vast majority of potty trips, hand washes, and tooth brushes, that I would face my own personal awakening.

Why now?

I suppose for God (who wants to forever reveal that He is all-in-all), a daughter who is having difficulty brushing her own teeth in a day is a prime suspect for a spiritual makeover. Except this time, the theme is that God didn’t come to make me a better version of me, but to make me fall giddy in love with Him.

Even as I type my mind is telling me “but make sure they know that you knew before about His love …. you just didn’t know it that well.” And He silences those thoughts.

Because self-justification crumbles before God. And He knows my every thought. And if I really want to live and breathe the kind of radical life commitment and love for Jesus that I have been asking for … pleading for … I’ve got to let go. I need to set aside my own personal portfolio that I’m constantly wanting to review and revise before God, and just scoot up next to Him. And sit.

And reflect. And remember. And listen. And wait. And receive. And all those things that mothers of toddlers are never supposed to be able to find the time to do.

But when you have an encounter with the God of the universe who gives you fairly particular orders (to enjoy Him, to let myself be enjoyed by Him)– you figure out how to do it.

So here I am on what feels like the rainiest day of the year both on the outside and inside, sitting. Waiting. Listening.

Expecting to receive.

And while I’m here I wonder why the heck it’s taken me so long to come back to this part of the mountain.

Because being in love is a pretty sweet thing.

In fact you just can’t beat being “giddy in love” (in quotes, because that’s the phrase that I’ve sensed from Him …for not just me but for many, many others …maybe you?). Especially when the only requirement is to receive — to sit back and take it in. I’m pretty excited that that’s where He wants me. Of course my provisional mind says, only for a season God. We’ll see how this works and then I promise I’ll go back to pushing really hard. But when I get a moment of clarity, I suspect I’ll see that a day sitting under these rays will set me leap-years closer to where I really want to be, than will a lifetime of the other stuff.

The scary thing is that when I’m in a place like this, I get crazy ideas about saying what I really think and following Him in a way that some won’t find attractive and … taking in more orphans than my house can hold.

Anything is possible for a woman in love.

And I guess these days that’s what I am. Or at least I’m coming here, showing up at the spiritual spa, prepared to eventually become that bride. All I’ve been asked to do is sit back and take in all He wants to pour out.

Not so bad.

Wanna join me?

Turkey Feather Hunt

In a matter of 5 days we’ve introduced all sorts of firsts and my little Ethio-American’s have been soaking it up.

The first annual Turkey Feather Hunt was great fun. We’ve successfully indoctrinated them into family traditions that some might label cheesy but we will presently call “cool”:

And just when they thought the fun was over, we began our 25 of days of advent preparation for Jesus’ first entry on earth. While I could easily do without a christmas tree for many reasons, I have to admit it was great fun to spend our 65-degree November day searching out the perfect one. We landed the closest thing I’ve seen in years to a Charlie-brown Christmas tree, which gave me even more reason to wrap every single branch with lights (if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right). Now our anemic tree is hidden under the weight of something like 40 strands of lights.

“Beautiful, Mommy!” said Caleb. The child loves anything that lights up.

Here’s some pics from our tree hunt:

I Love You More

I haven’t been feeling very thankful. If it wasn’t for preparations for the first annual “Hagerty Turkey Feather Hunt” that we’ll inaugurate, I’m fairly certain I’d be drowning my sorrows in gravy tomorrow.

Although I haven’t spent a Thanksgiving with my dad in years, something about his absence feels more pronounced this week. And I’ve just been in a funk.

But tonight I slipped away to intentionally lift my eyes up. I’m at a coffee shop, my headphones plugged into the awakening at the International House of Prayer (being around others praising Him, even if virtually, inevitably raises my sights). And I’m working on coming up with verses that will be affixed to turkey feathers (not real ones, at least not this year) we’ll scatter around Nate’s parents’ yard for the kids to hunt down. (Yes, I know …this reeks of cheesy, jumper-wearing mom. Maybe my kickin’ boots and hand-me-down skinny jeans will trump all other signs of school-marmy-ness. Probably not. I think I’m too far gone.)

As I look up these verses to glue on the feathers (I know, the whole thing sounds strange — just bear with me for the greater point), I try to engage with what I’m writing.

I spend so much time staring at myself. Thoughts of … what I have done, what I haven’t done, how I’ve failed and fallen short, who I’ve let down and the great chasm between what God wants me to be and who I actually am. They fill my mind more than I want to admit. I want to get lost in the father-love of God, yet 70% of what I think about (couched in good “pressing in”, knowing-God sort of thoughts) is really about how much I fall short.

As much as I can tell, the onset of these thoughts have paralleled our bringing the children home. Motherhood has uncompromisingly tied me to these two little ones, which means many many other things fall to the wayside.

I think I’m ok with the majority of these priority shifts. I didn’t need to spend 2 hours on email every day and, honestly, I’m happy with no makeup and hair-that-does-what-it-wants after a shower. My “long runs” are now 3 miles, and there are times when I wonder if our dust bunnies will form a coup and overtake us–but none of these things are really phasing me. The hardest piece of this transition is letting go of who I was “in God” then and embracing who He is calling me to be now.

I’m having a hard time not looking back.

I used to spend hours alone in prayer each day, and now I’m fortunate to have a full, uninterrupted hour (and by “uninterrupted”, I mean uninterrupted by my own mental gymnastics). I used to “find” Him in the secret and now it seems most of my time has been spent seeking, with not a lot of finding. I end most days wishing for more of Him than I had and resolving that tomorrow will be different. To no avail.

So I’ve been a little lost. Not because being left seeking is bad, but more so because God has moved me into a different season in my life and I seem to be dragging my feet. And then, thoughts of my dad and grief end up getting filed away into that bank of “things I used to know how to process with the Lord but lately can’t seem to figure out how to bring before Him when He’s there and I’m here.” Hence the funk.

But praise God for the turkey feather hunt.

‘Cause I fumble through verse after verse that call me to remember His holy name … and the fog parts. It’s not about my love for you, but Your love for me. It’s not about my failures, but His successes. Not my inadequacies but His sufficiency.

And this truth makes moving with God to a new season so much easier. He is unchanging and I’m a stick in the mud. But I don’t set the pace nor do I determine the season. I’m just called to look at Him. More than look, stare … get lost in the looking.

Recently the children have picked up the bantering we initiated when we talk about our love for them. We both often say “I love you more!” in response to one of them telling us they love us. Lately they’ve been saying “No, mommy, I love you more.” We go back and forth until Nate or me wins. How could a two-year-old’s love possibly compare to the love I have stored up for almost a decade in waiting for them? Eden loves pancakes, dress-up clothes, her “beautiful” (totally impractical) shoes …and mommy & daddy. I lay awake at night overwhelmed with love for her and her brother.

I wonder if God thinks that about me. I want to show Him I love Him more and I’m realizing I spend a lot of my time disappointed in how I’ve failed in that. And all He wants me to do is see how much He loves me. I’ve become obsessively distracted with my own shortcomings, and He wants me functioning in an entirely different realm, caught up in His love for me.

I want to memorialize the past, the place and time when I deemed I was the most “spiritual” … the most connected to Him. But He’s moved on and wants me to come along with Him. And, I suppose, that’s the only way there is to take my eyes of my most favorite subject–me. Tough. But just a few minutes of it tonight has been a deep drink.

I think I found him in the turkey feathers.

Stay tuned for pictures from first annual hunt…

My Electronic “Creative Memory”

I struggle with a constant stream of guilt around this one topic: documenting the cute things my children say and do.

I have empty baby books sitting on my desk and already more files than I can count full of pictures waiting to be uploaded to the site from which I order prints. And I’ve gained a whole new understanding why, as child #2 in my family, my baby book was actually more of a storage space in the form of a book for loose clippings, birthday messages from neighbors I don’t remember and report cards. (In fact, some of those report cards were my younger brother’s–another casualty of parents who fell prey to living family life in such a way that left no time for memorializing it. I think he got a small envelope with his birth certificate as his baby book.)

I think if we scratched beneath the surface of Creative Memories, we’d find it’s actually an association of insomniacs who came together to find something they could do in the wee hours of the night when the rest of us sleep. I mean, who has time for cute borders and spunky fonts?

So my default is this blog, which I hope to one day print for each of my children.

Language acquisition is going really well. So much so, that before I know it, the cute little idiosyncrasies of my Ethio-American children will be long forgotten. So here’s my latest attempt to assuage my own guilt for being so wrapped up in life that I don’t have time to print it out on pretty paper with borders and stamp it up:

• While we were in Nashville for the wedding, I had to share a bed with Eden. The girl lives to cuddle. She takes advantage of any and all opportunities to bury her head in my neck or Nate’s chest and a night where she got to actually share a bed with mommy was enough to send her spinning for days. So, I started calling her my bunk mate (we have nicknames for everything around here). And after we returned at at night, instead of  the “big cuddle” I’d referred to in the past, I’d say “wanna be my bunk mate, Eden?” to queue up her favorite before-bed cuddle time. Well, tonight, she said in proper English as I was getting ready to leave the room: “Excuse me, Mommy, I would like a bunk mate please?” Good thing I’m not teaching ESL for a living.

(Before you start thinking that Eden is the only cute one around here, I will say that at four she is the one who says cute things while her brother, just beginning to put together phrases, is the *doer* of all that is cute. If I can come up with words to describe what the kid looks like when he plays the keyboard, I will do so in the next post.)

• Just this morning Nate left for work in a blazer and khaki’s, not the usual my-clients-are-spread-out-all-over-and-never-see-me-in-person work attire. I said to the children, “Daddy looks hot” just before he left. Late afternoon, Eden said in the back seat out of the blue: “Mommy, Daddy is a hottie.” Now, you’d think she must of heard it from me, but I can guarantee you that wasn’t something I’d said. This simply represents that she is catching on so quickly that she can conjugate the word “hot.”
• And my favorite today reminded me that God is moving in my children … beyond what we teach them or show them. Eden has been battling some health issues, one of which has kept her from being able to handle milk. When we went to pick up our milk today (yes, we own a share of a cow — another story for another day), here’s the conversation we had:

Eden: Are we getting Caleb’s milk, Mommy?

Me: Yep. And one day soon it will be your milk too.

Eden: Mommy, my belly is better. Eden can drink milk too.

Me: Oh really, Eden, when did your belly get better?

Eden: At the prayer meeting.

Me: Hmmm…what happened at the prayer meeting?

Eden: God healed my belly, Mommy. Eden is allllll better.

Now, I should say that we do pray with and for our kids when they feel sick. We lay hands on them and ask for Jesus to heal them. We want them to grow up knowing and believing that God is the source of all healing. And, frankly, we believe that He likes it when we seek Him for things as small as belly aches or soar throats. With that said, the most recent weekly prayer meetings we’d been to … the children danced and sang, twirled and played … but they didn’t have anyone pray out loud for their physical healing. There was nothing that happened that would have prompted this line of thinking in Eden, but for God Himself.

There is a beautiful work of God happening at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City that, as I watch each night, is reminding me that God desires to heal the broken. Me, you, my children. Our bodies, our hearts, our messed up lives. All of us.

And praise God that in our home it’s starting with my little girl.

My bunkmate.

Homecoming

I realized just before we left yesterday that the children may have been thinking that Katya was coming home with us last night. Woops!

Guess it’s good that they are prepared for our family to grow in an instant …

Here are a few pics of the beautiful homecoming for our friends:

Katya and mommy after a long flight:

Katya seeing her dad again after coming through customs:

The Finley Family, reunited (poor Katya looks exhausted). If you have a heart for adoption, but are wondering if you have room for one more –this photo is compelling evidence that you do :

And I think this is my favorite. Not because it includes my children, but because for a year+ we have been praying with the Finley’s (and others in our Wednesday night prayer meeting) for God to bring Eden, Caleb & Katya home. Here are my little American veterans as Katya walked through the doors … yet unknown to them: the bond which unites them to her. That’ll come…

Encounter

This afternoon as I was listening to the CD we put the children to bed listening to through the baby monitor, my mind was brought back to our first days with them in Ethiopia.

Some of the sweetest moments of that week — that was a bit more chaotic than I’d like to remember — were at night after they were asleep. We all shared a room. Eden was on the bottom bunk and Caleb in a pack-n-play. Nate and I would put our heads together and debrief in hushed tones, hoping to not wake them. This children’s worship CD would fill our conversation breaks as we whispered like giddy children. God’s presence was thick. Joy was evaporating off our skin like the effects of rain on hot pavement.

We knew He was near. His presence was unavoidable.

Part of why I’ve been so drawn to adoption is because I have tasted the father-heart of God more, through this process, than almost anything else in my life — from the moment God first dropped it into my mind. Maybe this sounds selfish: we set out to rescue these two because, by doing so, we encountered God. Instead of seeing it basically as self-serving, I believe that God made me for encounter–just like this. He wired me to not just “intellectually assent” to this relationship we have — me and God — but to hunger … to thirst … for His breaking through into my daily life.

I mean we all want this, right? We memorialize stories where we had even a touch of the supernatural. Whether it was a piece of scripture that was sent to us by a friend–at the exact moment we needed it, a “chance” encounter with the person who introduced us to our next job, or even the lyrics of an old song that came across our radio which spoke exactly to where we were at that moment. We want to believe that God intersects the natural. That the ordinary really can be infused with the holy.

But the enemy of encounter is disbelief. And skepticism can so easily trump the childlike wonder that first drew many of us to God (or is drawing us now).

(All of this has been heavy on my brain as God has recently been using expressions of His power to break into my life-full-of-sippy-cups-and-legos. More on this later ..)

Tonight we are plopping the kids into the car for a 4-hour round-trip homecoming celebration. Katya – Kateryna – is finally returning to her home–via an arduous run by her parents through the Ukrainian government’s hamster wheel. All day long, as I’ve anticipated our trip, I’ve been choking back tears. In part because tonight we’re invited into the birthing room. We get to watch as God sets one of His lonely children into a family (Psalm 68:6). We get to see His promise in scripture fulfilled. And in part because my expectations are high. I know I will encounter Him. Adoption is heavy on His heart and He is doing a unique move in these days. And I’m going to drink deep tonight!

I’m finding lately that my hunger for God might very well take me to great lengths to find Him. It’s beginning to supersede my sense of what is practical.

So, 4 hours in the car with two larger-than-life toddlers … it’s nothing, compared to what we’re about to see.

(We have one extra seat in between their carseats that would fit a very small person with a high tolerance for noise and saliva –  drop me a comment if you want to come )

Smitten

The children had their first experience at a wedding this weekend. They were awe struck with the bride (Martha was beautiful!) and tore up the dance floor afterward. In their short lifespan, it could possibly have been their most favorite night yet.

While we were in Tennessee for the wedding, a dear friend took these photos below.

(If you’ve looked at other photos on our blog and are wondering if this is their only outfit …the answer seems to be yes).

When Can We Do It Again?

I’ve been holding it together for just about 4 months now. All that comes with raising two toddlers has taken precedence over absorbing what’s happened in our home. It’s had to. Survival-mode, as I’ve called it.

Overnight we’ve gone from long sits in the sauna, long soaks in the bath, long runs, long evenings to just sit and chat, long times sitting before the Lord … to military showers, early alarms, quick jaunts to dinner after the kids are asleep and the babysitter arrives, and bursts of prayer throughout our day.

The transition has required all of my mental, emotional and physical energy. While my legs haven’t hit more than 5 miles on the road, my calves are often sore from running up and down the stairs all day.

We have a new kind of normal.

In 5 days it will have been 4 months since we first wrapped our arms around Eden and Caleb and, but for the distinct differences in our family appearance, you’d never know it.

Now that I am sinking into a schedule and carving out the necessary time to process the loss of my Dad and the birth-into-our-home of these children, the gravity of God’s work is weighing heavy on my chest.

At night she continues to ask for one-more-big cuddle and he wakes up from his nap, only to be pacified by wrapping his legs around my waist and his arms around my neck. They’re wired for affection from mommy. Who could have given this to them? Did they learn this longing from being in our home … or were they waiting, hungry for cuddles and kisses, before we got them?

Then my mind goes to other places … Eden was severely malnourished when she arrived at the orphanage. Could she have made it much longer? Caleb was admitted to the hospital for a 3-week stay just after he arrived at the orphanage. Would he have survived in the great, big “out there” in this condition? Oh, God, what if they weren’t taken to the orphanage?

And then I think about us.

What if we had conceived a biological child just before beginning this adoption process? What if we had chosen the route of fertility treatments — instead of adoption (a tough decision that took months to wade through)? What if we had zipped through the process, as planned, and had received a referral for different children?

I’m living at the intersection of the divine and the ordinary. I’m cleaning up spills, doing countless loads of laundry and kissing ouchies … of children who–six months ago–had a bleak existence.

The secular world wants to look at me and Nate and say “wow, you did GOOD. what a marvelous thing you’ve done for these children.” And they do. I hear it almost weekly. And I cringe.

I have yet to come up with a brief response that illustrates the gravity of God’s work. We did NOTHING, but cry out to God out of our own (possibly selfish?) longing for a family, and for more of Him, and for His Spirit’s leading in our lives. And He cracked open His divinity and gave us a taste. And just this little sip is about enough to knock me over. Every day. When she says “mommy, stay here?” more times than I can count or he gives an unsolicited sloppy kiss followed by “I love you Mommy” I sometimes can’t breathe.

God, you let us play a part in saving them. You would have done it anyways — in one way or another. But you married our prayers–frayed around the edges–with their need.

Many have said adoption is addicting. And now I know why. I tell Nate that, at the moment, I am a dangerous woman. Because any hint I’ve had of a child in need, an orphan, tends to linger in my mind.

Where did this come from? When I was a kid, I never dreamed about being a mommy. And when I started to conceptualize married life, I would envision a family that was spaced-out in such a way that would interrupt my life and my dreams the least. Motherhood and me just didn’t seem to fit together. It seemed more of a necessary evil than something I’d actually enjoy.

Now, here I am, asking God, like a little child, when can we do it again?

This post feels like 20 others I’ve written, but I just can’t get over it. This is my testimony. The depth of the riches in God. The power of His Spirit to weave our lives with theirs. The intricate details that only He could maneuver. The beauty of aligning ourselves with Him. The sweetness of His redemption. The vigor of following Him. The reckless abandon it calls forth from me.

Eden’s Ethiopia

I keep hearing about families who have adopted older children whose children are now beginning to tell them about their home life and experiences in Ethiopia. I figured Eden, being 4, might have some recollection of her life even just 6 months ago. Now that she’s grasping more of the language, I thought it appropriate to start asking her about Ethiopia.

Well, I didn’t factor in that her 4 year old imagination is rampant and that any sort of leading question on my part could likely turn into an event in her mind. It seems that my peppering has only opened up a whole new fictitious playground for Eden.

Whoops.

Since I started asking her about Ethiopia — even just simple questions like “where did you sleep in Ethiopia?” and “what did you eat in Ethiopia?” — I’ve seen that whatever Ethiopia was to her before has now become the place where all little girls’ dreams come true.

I have since learned from Eden that, in her 3 1/2 short years in Africa, she carried a baby in her belly (that she then breast fed), owned her own home, drove a car (her own), and had a cell phone just like mommy’s.

Tonight at dinner she said: “Mommy, Eden had quesadillas in Ethiopia.”

I might think she was referring to injera (a bread frequently served as the base of Ethiopian meals) if I didn’t already realize the damage my line of questioning had done to this impressionable little mind.

Unfortunately I may have squelched all opportunities to learn the real truth about Eden’s Ethiopia.

While other parents may field their child’s incessant requests to go to Disney World or the closest amusement park, I will watch as my child pines away for her experience in a nation she barely survived. All because she owned her own pink cell phone there … and probably because she isn’t allowed to touch mommy’s here.

Give ‘Em What They Want

This blogging thing is mostly selfish.

For much of my life I’ve wanted to have some sort of crazy artistic expression of what’s inside of me. I can’t draw to save my life and, although I’ve recently picked up finger-painting, my two year-old puts me to shame. I don’t let lack of skill prevent me from interpretative dance in my kitchen, but if I took it on the road I think I’d have about a five-year window before the children we prayed so hard to get would disown me. And, well, I’d probably lose friends too. Though invigorating for me, there’s not really a market for singing old show tunes.

So when I started this blog, I re-discovered writing. And even amidst the unforgiving schedule of being a mom, I somehow find time to write. When I write, I feel closer to God than I do most any other time of my day. I sometimes think He tells me to write.

I wouldn’t call myself a writer, I just am trying out this passion that’s been latent for some years. (Blogs are like open mic night for those of us who want an outlet for what we love. There’s a pretty low barrier to entry .)

But the only problem with allowing my newly-found passion to intersect with the world wide web, is that I am exposed. It’s sort of like standing in your skivvies before an audience of people and asking them to comment.

Well, after I published my post today, my editor (Nate) skyped me at my little getaway coffee shop to say “I think you should add some pictures to your post.”

Pictures of what? Me sitting by myself in a field, to go along with the descriptions of my encounters with God.

Of course he’s referring to the little brown people who have taken over our lives and have made both of us look way more attractive than we ever did before.

“Give them what they want,” he says.

My insecurity surfaces. Urgh …that’s right…I’ve made copies of the key to my diary.

I need pictures to make my post worth reading? I wish I just wrote always and only for the glory of God and didn’t ever think about who was reading this blog or what they might think. One day…someday, I pray.

Nate, when he reads this, will be grumpy because I’ve portrayed him as being a critic of my re-discovered hobby when in actuality he is my biggest cheerleader. He pesters me daily to write more.

So, since I couldn’t quite find pictures of the children that would fit with the last post, I will give you what you want now. Just in a different post.

Remembering

All feels right to me when my life is organized. When my desk is clean, my task list has lots of lines through it and my inbox is empty, my heart is at rest.

I’m quickly realizing that I need to scrap this strategy.

I haven’t really had to have a planning session to come up with new standards for myself, they are just sort of happening to me. How nice that is.

If all the papers on my desk haven’t piled up so much that I can’t shut the doors (it’s an armoire desk), it’s “clean.” If my inbox only has messages from two weeks ago, it’s practically empty. And if I’ve been able to pull away from the house with both kids strapped into their car seats and remembered to brush my teeth and put on deodorant …I feel like I’m going to the prom.

Every time I get dressed in anything other than my nike sweatpants and zip-up workout shirt, Eden says “mommy leaving?” And I used to judge moms who wore jumpers. Those things are a step up from my everyday duds. I’ve started to do laundry twice a week just so I can get more use out of them.

Life seems to have wrapped around my ankle and pulled me along as if I’m hitched behind a pick-up truck.

And I think I love it.

In the midst of this seeming chaos, the Lord continues to remind me that I’m caught up in a work of His doing. This life can appear frayed around the edges, but when I step back for a moment I catch my breath …and remember. And when I remember I think, “Oh, Lord …don’t ever let me forget. Let me write this story on the walls of my life, tell it to my children and my children’s children. Let them know you as holy because of this.”

So I guess as an act of remembrance, I want to go back and write some of the pieces of our story that were too raw to include while walking through them. Consider this “Part 1.”

Remembrance: Part 1

Today we had our first post-adoption meeting with our caseworker. When she asked about the children’s birth dates, I remembered.

Though not the first time I remembered, I think I absorbed it this time. What I’m about to share hasn’t even been uttered to some of my most dear of friends, but for some reason today it feels right and fitting to tell this as a piece of our story. His story.

In the Spring of 2005 I had a moment — followed by a few other moments — where God broke in. It wasn’t mystical, in fact it felt very natural. God spoke to me, not audibly but as a resounding sense in my spirit. As far as I could tell He said to me You will conceive a child this September.

Now while I believe in the voice of God speaking today, I also am wary of what I know even more intimately – my flesh. I can hear things I want to hear and my imagination at times might be just as clear as what I perceive to be the voice of God. So I asked Him for confirmation. Lord, if this is you …confirm it, not once but twice.

The details of His confirmation are extraneous to this story, but they were enough for me to believe with as much of my being as capable that Nate and I would be parents the following summer, 9 months after September of 2005. I thought He was gracious in preparing me, one who might benefit from having more than the typically allotted time to carry a baby. At that point in time we had no idea the challenges awaiting us with fertility. I’m not sure what came as expectation of the Lord and what was the expectation that most all newly marrieds have about getting pregnant. I like to believe it was more the former.

Leading up to this month, I knew that I knew that I knew that I would be pregnant. I had heard from God other times, but never this clearly and never did it carry the grace that this particular message did to spur my prayers on in faith. I wound up thanking God for what He was about to do more than even asking Him to do it. It was going to happen.

In early October I realized that what I had carried with such expectancy, didn’t happen. I was less disappointed at the prospect of not being a parent than I was at my own mis-guided expectations. I didn’t doubt God, but deeply questioned my own ability to hear. God wasn’t unfaithful, I just couldn’t hear Him correctly …I thought. More reason to exercise even more caution than I already did when hearing from the Spirit, I thought.

This month of disappointment grew into 4 years of disappointment. Insult to injury was that it wasn’t just that September that I didn’t conceive, but many fruitless Septembers, Octobers and Novembers followed.

By the grace of God I did not grow bitter. Most of my evaluations of that encounter with Him led me believing that I just didn’t hear Him right. I chalked it up to my humanity against His perfection. We’re bound to “miss” sometimes, right? But there was a very small part of me holding out hope in the mysterious God. I so wanted to one day make sense of that promise. It was a promise, I thought.

Fast forward to March of 2009. We received our referral for two children from Ethiopia after an arduous two years in the hamster wheel called adoption. One of the children was a little girl named Meskerem. We discovered that day that the name “Meskerem” meant September and our Ethiopian sources told us that with the significance Ethiopians placed on name meaning, we could be confident that this one was born in September.

At that moment, sort of grasping at straws, I thought …this had to be it. You see, I could not forget those encounters with God as they were as real to me as the grass on the ground.  I heard “you will conceive a child this September” in 2005, but really God was probably saying I would conceive a child with the name September. I didn’t hear quite right, but it was in the ballpark.

It was as if I needed to make provision either for myself and my fleshly inability to really here, or at a deeper level for God who can’t really speak today because that speaking would require hearing and the very humans He created just can’t be trusted with hearing. But He wanted me to hold out. The phrase that came to me that Spring was so clear and so specific.

Then, just after we passed court in June of 2009, we received little Meskerem’s birth date:

September 25, 2005

While a mother on one continent gave birth to a child, that same child was conceived for another mother, halfway around the world. Little Meskerem’s birth was this adoptive mom’s conception. The day she was begotten on this earth, she was destined to be mine.

Months before our referral I specifically asked that the Lord would give us confirmation that these two adopted children were ours. He knew before I asked and gave me confirmation, 4 years earlier. Prepare. Wait. It will be a long gestation, but you will give birth. Your conception lies at the hands of another mother’s birth.

And today when our caseworker asked me for Eden’s birthday, I remembered. As she asked the question, Eden was crawling from my lap to Nate’s, dress around her waist and bum in the air, just as if no time had been lost between my conception of her and her arrival into our home.

The mystery of God hinges on pain and wonder. The first a cause for greater reception of the other.

“Mommy Stay Here?”

The children are learning new words every day. Nate–gone for just 5 days on business–came back to a bevy of new expressions.

“Sho [sure]” is Caleb’s most recent response to most everything. Pretty much sums him up — ready and game for anything–and a man of few words alongside his verbose big sister.

I’m wondering if Eden’s prayers should be a litmus for what these kids are absorbing from me. Her prayers are like a linguistics parade. Does she understand that prayer is talking to God …or is this just early evidence that she’s a verbal processor like her mommy? (God help Nate.)

Tonight this is what she prayed: Jesus, thank you so much Jesus. Thank you for Daddy and Mommy. Mommy’s on the phone. Eat your salad. Timer going off. Two minutes. Six minutes. Seven minutes. Amen.”

She’s getting her numbers. Don’t you think?

Thanks to Eric Carle, my children know intimately the animals on the endangered species list. They may not know what number comes after five, but they know that Xolo starts with “X” (what the heck is a xolo anyways?). Yesterday when I was asking Eden what she was making with her play dough, she quickly responded “A bed for my boa constrictor.”

Oh, of course.

She still points to the sink and says “please turn on the water in the wash-your-hands” but yet she knows those animals–asking me if her pink shoes were the same color as a flamingo. (Maybe I should have followed the earlier advice of a speech therapist: to label everything in my house.)

Hard to believe, watching them make “smoothies” with their legos or perform mini-concerts for their bears that they’ve been on American soil for just under 4 months.

At night when Eden drills me with the same questions, in the same order … “Mommy, stay here? Mommy sleep here? Daddy sleep here? Eden and Caleb sleep and then wake up and Mommy and Daddy here? And then Mommy and Daddy and Eden and Caleb cuddle time?”…I wonder if this is like every other four-year-old, getting a grasp on their schedule, or if this line of questioning is driven by fear of more loss.

Regardless, I assure her, Eden, Mommy and Daddy will stay right here. We sleep here. Mommy isn’t leaving.

We’re just crazy about them.

Then …And Now

Every once in a while I look back at the pictures we received just after we learned of Eden and Caleb as a reminder of how far they’ve come.

Here’s from early April. At Sele Enat orphanage.

And today. On our back deck.

Happy Birthday, Caleb!

This post should more appropriately be titled “Daddy and Caleb Are Boys” as it seems that birthdays in our home have taken on a whole new meaning.

As you may have read in an earlier post, we decided to celebrate the childrens’ birthdays, which were 2 weeks apart, on one day in-between both birthdays. The combination of an entirely new concept (they don’t celebrate birthdays in Ethiopia), gaps in the language, and gifts that could/would be attached to a specific child (rather than communal) made us decide it was best to kick this first birthday year off without much tradition.

(I should also add that we were initially incorrect about *exactly* when Caleb’s birthday was. We read “6-10-07″ as June 10th…when it was actually, October 6th. Hence, this post–now not quite accurate Oh, and in that post we mention that his birthday was the same as my Mom’s…no longer true of course. But it IS the same as our sweet niece, Mimi.).

We still wanted to make the individual day special for each child — with special prayers, birthday songs and cards. We just left the presents and “cake” (e.g. banana bread) for the joint gig.

Well, the morning of Caleb’s birthday, just before we went in to wish him Happy Birthday, we learned that my father passed away. Since the child didn’t really know one day from the next anyways, we figured we wouldn’t add to his current birthday-confusion by having “mommy twying” (crying) all day be associated with his birthday. Instead, we celebrated it the next day. (I suppose all of this only adds to my grand plan to have a few birthday weeks each year, rather than just one day to celebrate me ).

Now, I can barely keep up with all the clauses and addendums we made to our birthday plan, so I can’t blame the kid for seeing birthdays as some sort of gender assertion day. Each time we said “Happy Birthday, Caleb” or sang Happy Birthday, he quickly responded “Daddy and Caleb are boys.” Maybe if he had siblings whose first language was English they would make up for the obvious gaps his parents are creating in explaining these seemingly weird traditions.

I only hope we can get our act together by Thanksgiving or Christmas.

But for now, we’ll assume this isn’t some indication of a larger schism in his thinking about life and the world.

As for my little guy, we’ve probably seen the most change in him — out of the two — since we’ve brought him home. And while I couldn’t imagine loving him more than when I first set eyes on his picture, he has certainly managed to steal more of my heart each day as he is getting more and more comfortable being in mommy’s arms.

In the Bible, God Himself describes Caleb as one who “has a different spirit in him, and has followed Me fully.” I see even the beginning seeds of this namesake in my own little Caleb–who pages through his bible with wonder and asks us many times throughout the day to “salut” (pray). His sister’s larger-than-life personality (that can tend to take up a room and then some) doesn’t threaten him …he just sits back and laughs at “goofy” (as we affectionately call her) as if to say it’s your time to shine, sis.

Amidst scores of birthday gifts (not even from us), by far his favorite birthday treat was a card that said “Happy Birthday” from my friend Erica and her daughter Madelyn, complete with childrens’ chicken-scratch. He carried it around all morning singing “da da da da” (he’s even composing music at a young age) as if he’d been given a life-size firetruck.

So, although a little late, here’s to the other of the little brown people who have rocked our world.

We love you, Caleb!

 

Love Is As Strong As Death

I’ve been knocked off my feet a bit by my father’s death. I don’t know what I was expecting to feel — or what I thought someone who lost a father at this age should feel — but this certainly wasn’t it. Whether 16 or 32, navigating life “fatherless” is as if somehow your equilibrium is off.

It’s not so much the moments of “oh, I wish I could call my dad about this” or “what would my dad say” that sting–instead it feels more like there is a crack in my foundation and I just can’t get settled. A disc has slipped  and I’m wondering if I’ll ever walk without a limp.

It’s hard to grieve with children around. In many ways, my kids are a wonderful relief. Eden has an uncanny ability of knowing just when to exert her physical humor. Like when Eden got dressed yesterday, putting both of her legs through one hole in her panties so she’s wearing her underwear like a belt and saying  “I’m ready Mommy!” as she brushed past me, bum hanging out, on her way to the sink. All to get a laugh. (We’ve taken to calling her “Goofy Hagerty” and she wears that title like a crown, reminding us almost hourly of her new name.)

And Caleb has this tender side which manifests most when “mommy is twying [crying].” He’s been calling Papa (my Dad) on his “phone” (any rectangular object he can find …well, yesterday it was a leaf) and reporting back that papa is “sleepin” and “wit Jesus” to his mommy who misses her own daddy.

While these little  interludes are sweet, they feel a little like a military shower when I’m needing a long bath.

So here I am again at this coffee shop, staring the fall colors sprinkled across the Blue Ridge, and feeling myself very muted. Wondering why the hard times in my life always seem to come during my favorite seasons.

*********

Today I found solace in the most worn part of my bible. I’m not quite sure why the Lord led me there, but I cracked open Song of Songs and for some reason read it with new eyes today. I read about a woman,–skin taut and hands tired from work in the fields and a not-so-glamorous life–who likely spent her days dreaming about living on the outside as the woman she truly felt she was on the inside. She had an extraordinary virgin youth that was bound by the mundane. Or so she thought.

Surely she’d earn the respect of those who looked through her if she could only get beyond this unremarkable life of hers. It was then that she caught a glimpse of a man who she knew could turn her world around. She couldn’t get enough. She studied him – his eyes, his hair, his complexion. And she worshiped him, despite the fact that he was out of her league. He wasn’t her kind. This only fueled her desire.

How could she not desire him? He saw her in her most raw form and he loved her anyways. Somewhere beneath her sun-wrinkled skin, his eyes got lost in the beauty of her youth. Even more invigorating to her was that this seeming pillar of strength was susceptible to love. He was moved by her. Was it even possible to add to what already seemed so perfect, so sovereign?

How on earth could this touch my heart right now?

If you haven’t put it together yet, I don’t see this as just a love story about a lover and her beloved. This little 8 chapter book has me in tears, yet again, reminded of the love of the Father. My Father. My beloved.

At a time where I most identify (however slightly) with the plight of the orphan, the fatherless, I need to curl back up in the pages of truth.

He loves me.

And my weak (and at the moment very drained) love moves Him.

When we first brought the children home, Nate kept saying we needed to figure out a way to distinguish the word “love” as we so often use it in everyday language from what we were frequently telling the children: “I love you, Caleb.” At the same time that they were learning “Mommy loves me” they were learning that Mommy also loves tea and fresh flowers and Eden’s dress. We were constrained by our language.

I think we did the same thing that God spoke of through the author of Song of Songs. I would hold Caleb at night as he was learning the names for new features on his face and say “I love Caleb’s eyes,” “I love Caleb’s smile”, “I love Caleb’s shoulders.” I wanted him to know that I was learning him …and loving him. Every part of him. Oh, if you could see the way he lights up when I say “I love your eyes. Can Mommy kiss your eyes?”

They love to be delighted in. It brings them security.

And right now, I need to be delighted in. It brings me security.

All of a sudden, a world I felt so on top of since our adoption was complete  (ok, let’s be honest, only for a few brief moments of my life have I felt this way)  has felt so insecure. I’ve felt lost. Side-swiped by my dad’s death.

But the words of the Beloved to his bride are like a balm to me. It might appear (even in my own writing above) that the Beloved awakened in his lover what had been latent, but in actuality He made her remarkable. It was only a dream of hers to break the bonds of the ordinary and have the mark on her life be one not of pain, but of beauty. But His love, breathed into her very frame, made her come alive. Not again … but for the first time.

And in the same way that Caleb’s wide-eyed smile in responding to “I love your eyes” could make my heart flip, my weak glance back when I sense His affection and security moves God. I move God.

So today I’ve taken His words as a charge to me:

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm;

For love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave.

It’s flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame.

Many waters cannot quench love, nor can floods drown it.

Song of Songs 8:6-7

Is it possible that God, as it seems I’ve drunk again from the chalice of bitter, could take me even deeper into the sweet just by His very glance?

He has today. And I’m leaving this dinky little coffee shop–albeit still sad and dehydrated from crying–changed.

If you haven’t at all (or even in a long time) crack open that little eight chapter book and ask Him to awaken love.

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

This is a prayer I pray a lot, repeating what the disciples asked Jesus. And now that I am not only responsible for one, I want just as much — if not more — that my children would develop deep hearts for God and for prayer.

While it’s tempting to wait until Eden is praying for God to be glorified on the earth; or Caleb, that his homeland would be healed of poverty … well, here’s a window into our little prayer time, such as it is *now*:

With a growing vocabulary, Eden, in particular, finds our prayer time as her own occasion to soliloquize using her growing word bank (not quite the concept we’re shooting for here.)… as if to say “Jesus, look at what I’m learning!”

Last night, this was her prayer:

“Thank you so much Jesus.

Ducky flew away, Jesus.

Ducky poopy.

Jesus shinte ["pee pee"] and caca ["poo"] in the potty.

Amen.”

It seems here that she is really grasping that Jesus was not only fully God, but fully man …right?

Not exactly what I’d call storming the gates of heaven with our prayers, but certainly helping us keep it light here at Nana’s house, while we’re missing my dad.

My Dad

This morning my father passed away.

My mind is a maze of thoughts and emotions … and why am I blogging right now? Because I just have to tell someone — even if I never publish this post and it is only read by its Catalyst — of the glory of God rising higher than this seeming defeat.

Probably longer than he should of been (and certainly well beyond the stage where it was cool), my Dad was one of my chief confidants. For this reason, many of the years blend together. When we spent time after dinner sitting in the living room talking through my current emotional hurdle …was it teenage angst or real middle school drama? When was the last time he knelt beside my bed to dream with me about all the things I could do or what the future held? I seem to think it was before I left for college, yet at the same time I so vividly remember stories he told by my bedside which only a young child could appreciate. Seventeen, when I crawled into his lap after getting cut from the cheerleading squad, felt a lot like when I was ten.

My dad was so safe for me.

And that same zest he had for life was what he encouraged in me. This man–who, on a whim, hiked the entire depth of the Grand Canyon with nothing but a can of diet coke–called out of me courage and adventure. The night before I left for a backpacking trip in Europe, I slept like a baby while my father’s excitement for me prevented him from catching a wink. And his part of the trip was only the drive to the airport. When I won awards for running at ages 11, 12, and 13 my dad talked to me about being a college athlete. This not because he aspired to boast of his child’s acclaim; my dad just constantly infused into me that there were no limits. I can still hear him saying (because he said it so often) You can do anything, Sara.

He loved my zeal … even if he didn’t always understand its object. One of the challenges in our relationship was when I began to actively pursue a relationship with Jesus. My dad grew up in the church, but had a period of time in college and beyond where he began to question whether Jesus was who said He was. Little vignettes come back to me of conversations we had over the years. Through it all he honored and respected my ever-growing faith.

He loved to dialogue about things he knew a lot about and things he knew nothing about. My dad would pass up some of his favorites–Jeopardy or a hand of cards–to sit at the table and deliberate. And on faith, we did. Over many years, we did.

The constant theme of my dad’s discourse was “I want more faith, but I just can’t get it”…however, something changed after his cancer diagnosis this past December. While I want to protect the privacy of some of my most cherished conversations, I will say this one thing. My dad was not too proud nor too convinced of his own theory, to, at age 62, recalibrate. I humbly watched as my father, truly my hero, took a figurative bow and asked Jesus to come into His life.

Whether he knew it our not, my dad launched me into my relationship with God. It wasn’t hard for me to get my arms around a Heavenly Father with love enough to endure death. My father here on earth had already made it seem true. At 15, when I asked Jesus into my life, it was only natural to sit before Him in the same  safety which I had with my own dad.

And after all these years, I’ve arrived at a day where my father is living out the reality that our life here on this earth is really just a blip–and when all is stripped away, He is all we have.

When people die, we tend to memorialize them as if they somehow touched some sort of perfection on this side. Well, my dad didn’t come without flaws and (like many children I suspect) I regret that at times I carried a microscope to them. My hero was human. But I praise God that as the weeks and months leading up to this day have unfolded, what fills my mind is such a deep fondness for my father.

He was a great man.

And He was created by a great God.

So I’m finding myself wishing again that I could go back to Saturday mornings mixed with the smell of sweat and scrambled eggs as my dad and his best friend John chewed the cud after a tennis match. I want to crawl into bed and close my eyes while he tells me a story about a land far far away. Oh, if I could have one more sunset ride on a raft with my dad in the ocean …

And while his life and death could appear to be yet another strike against this little heart of mine (that will not cease to believe that God is the God of the supernatural, the miraculous), I see this as as a piece of the mystery that will be unfolded at the end of the age.

When I see my dad again.

In victory.

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed– in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1Corinthians 15:51-52

“One More Big Cuddle, Mommy!”

Each morning, after the children wake up, among a few other daily traditions, we have what we call “the big cuddle.” What started as a sweet excuse to wrap our arms around our little ones has become an elbow-jabbing, hair-grabbing, saliva-dripping heap that ends with something similar to a team huddle. It’s not really a violent thing–it’s just that they simply leave aside all sense of personal safety to get a closer grip on daddy or mommy’s neck and wrap their little brown legs around our waists.

We love it.

I didn’t know it was possible for these children to get more affectionate, yet it seems each week their cuddle-capacity is growing.

And my favorite time of the day is after nap time. They wake up at different intervals (well, I’m not sure if Eden even naps. Each day, when I go in to get her, she is lying in her bed wide-eyed as if she hadn’t moved for the last hour.), so I get a good 1/2-hour with her before Caleb comes out of hibernation. When he finally wakes up, he’s just content to sit in the rocking chair with me, rest his arms on my shoulders and his head on my chest and, well … sweat (he does that a lot).

Eden has taken to saying this phrase both before and after her naps: “Mommy, one mowr big cuddle.” The words are barely out of her mouth before she’s got her arms in a grid-lock around me and her head is smooshed as close as she can get it to my neck. This little peanut says that about 6 times a day. I melt every time.

Sometimes I am overcome with emotion as I wonder if she holds me so tight because of a fear that I might leave or die. Other times it seems like she is making up for lost time. Going possibly as long as 2 years (after Caleb was born) without the embrace of a mother could feel like eons to a child. That’s half of her life.

The story of how Eden and Caleb arrived at the orphanage is something we’ve more recently decided not to disclose. When they were just a “referral” to us, it was easier to share the details, however sparse, of their relinquishment/ abandonment. Now that I am living the reality of a story which I will someday need to tell, unpack, and process with these two little ones, I am realizing it is highly personal. I’m slowly learning to say “that’s something we’re saving for our children when it’s time to tell them” when I’m so often asked what happened to their parents.

I have the utmost respect for Eden and Caleb’s birth-parents and the hardships they must have endured attempting to raise their children in the conditions where they lived. Even if just for a short time. But, now that they’ve been under our roof for just over two months, I admit I forget we adopted them. They’re just ours, like they’ve been there from birth.

We will work on “lifebooks” with our children, that tell the story of how they came to be adopted. We will talk about what we know (however little) of their birth parents and we will likely visit their birthplace with them. Even now, Nate and I have been praying that God would heal any wounds this whole process has inflicted on them and one day, when it surfaces, we’ll pray with them through this hurt and pain. We will honor their birth and heritage. But not to a greater degree than their adoption.

While birthing a child is holy, the act of adoption was written into our DNA. I’ve heard a thousand times that I was “adopted by God,” through Jesus Christ. Me, a Gentile, was offered the blessing and promise of an Israelite through my relationship with Jesus. I was grafted into the family of God.

I could recite those words in my sleep. They are truth.

But as I feel her little racing heartbeat against my chest for the sixth big cuddle of the day, or as I stare into his eyes as he runs his fingers over my eyebrows and names each of the features on my face with such wonder, the whole thing is so real. They have shed their old life. Yes, it is a part of them. And if there was no sin in the world it would still be their final inheritance. But it’s just a trace. They are new.

I know now why we gave them new names.

And if the God of the universe could create in my womb a child who is the genetic combination of me and Nate, could He not do this very thing–create a child with a make-up that so clearly fits our family–in another’s womb?

I don’t believe that what happened to Eden and Caleb’s parents and how their lives unfolded was “God’s best” for them or even His desire for their destiny. I am caught breathless, however, at the notion that He could produce a glorious victory over the enemy through this adoption. This alongside such seeming defeat and death.

At times I feel like I am anomaly. I believe in modern-day miracles and healing and the power of prayer, yet I live in a body that hasn’t (yet) been healed of infertility. These two little brown people are my banner. When I feel the heavy reproach of a womb that has not yet been opened or hear people speak of the “curse” of infertility, I now have a tangible reminder of what was–for a long time–only a concept, which God had burned on my heart in the secret.

He wins. Every time.

The outcome isn’t quite how my simple mind would have wanted to craft it. But in the still, small quiet hours in a little coffee shop with a view of the Blue Ridge mountains, His Spirit hovers over me with this truth:

Death you have no sting.

Happy Birthday Eden!

Birthdays aren’t celebrated much in Ethiopia. Our childrens’ first experience with a birthday was mine a few weeks ago. Thanks to these little eager beavers (trying their hand at any bit of language they can remember) I heard “Happy Birthday, Mommy” for multiple weeks.

So … this morning, when I woke Eden up to tell her it was her birthday, you can imagine the confusion. She kept saying “Happy Birthday, Mommy.” No, Eden, it’s YOUR birthday. Throughout the morning as we reminded Eden that it was her birthday, Caleb would retort “Caleb and Daddy are boys. Mommy and Eden are girls.” Hmmm … not quite sure what “birthday” was triggering for him.

Because Caleb’s birthday is just around the corner–and their language hasn’t come along enough for us to really explain why one would be getting gifts and the other not–we’ve decided, this year, to set aside tomorrow as our family’s day to celebrate both of their birthdays. It’s dawning on me, though, that this may cause even more confusion. Today was “Happy Birthday Eden” and tomorrow brings gifts and lots of their “favorites” for both … and then in a few weeks it will be “Happy Birthday Caleb.”

Maybe Caleb is on the right track–sticking with simple concepts … “Mommy and Eden are girls and Daddy and Caleb are boys.”

In the meantime, I can’t help but honor this little spitfire who has totally lit up our lives and the God that somehow brought this one, so clearly fit to be a Hagerty, from halfway around the world into our home.

Happy Birthday, Eden. We’re so glad God made you.

Everyday Life

I should be planning what I’m going to cook this week (can you believe it, the first week I’ve had to cook since we brought these children home … thanks to some wonderful friends!!) but instead I diverge.

Just want to give a few snapshots into daily life post-adoption. In general life here with them feels very natural. She’s a cuddler with an adult-sized sense of humor, and he is a total lover with an inordinate amount of saliva (the combination of these two traits makes for lots of laundry). They both have grown an inch and a half since we’ve gotten them home (!)–and that doesn’t include hair height .

He’s a few ounces shy of 30 lbs — up from 22 lbs in March when he arrived at the orphanage. We celebrated when she crossed over to 23 lbs — up from 17 lbs when she arrived at the orphanage. Sometimes we wonder if we’re doing damage by weighing them every other day and marking the wall for their height every 3.

The children are losing their Amharic(main Ethiopian dialect)/Sidamigna(their regional dialect) rapidly. This is a bit sad–yet we’re welcoming it, as it means they’re using English more and more. We used to love hearing them chatter back and forth in one of their languages on the monitor in the mornings after they woke up, but have found their more recent dialogue (now all English) is somewhat repetitive as a result of their limited vocabulary.

I’m pretty convinced the brother-sister relationship continues to grow in depth even though most all of their heart-to-hearts go something like this:

“Caleb, excuse me.” - Eden

“Yes, Eden.” - Caleb

“Brown bear, brown bear what do you see?” – Eden

“Thank you.” - Caleb

“You’re welcome.” -Eden

“What’s this?” – Caleb

“Brown bear, brown bear what do you see?” -Eden

They certainly aren’t shy in attempting their English, and Eden (especially) takes every opportunity to “engage” in conversation. We’re never quite sure what she’s intending to say. I’m not sure if she was prewired to be an easy-laugher or has just become that way because mommy and daddy’s response to her soliloquies is so often laughter, and she hates to miss a party.

The other day her prayer went something like this: “Dear Jesus. Thank you so much Jesus. I love you so much Jesus. Daddy workin’. Eat lunch. Caleb don’t do that. Amen.”

Caleb followed suit tonight with this prayer: “Jesus, I love you so much. Jesus thank you so much. Eat lunch. What is this? Nana and Glandpa. Amen.”

We’re grooming them to be speech writers.

They still are very content playing with the most basic things and we’re happy to keep it this way–as it seems their little imaginations are working on overdrive. She took a “bath” in a canvas storage bin (yep, she’s small) just after using it to “make” injera and he has spent hours building the legos as tall as he is (or taller — if mom gets out the stool) and then, of course, knocking them down. His only hindrance in this enterprise is when Eden uses his legos as a feeding trough for her farm animal puppets or for “buna”(coffee) in her Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

They still point at the paintings on their wall and say Ee-ti-opia and dance by shrugging their shoulders in the traditional Ethiopian way. This, of course, is intermingled with princess costumes and memorized recitations of “Snuggle Puppy” and “God of Wonders.”

We’ve got quite the cross cultural experience going on here … and we love it.

Taking the Bronze

Every September 2nd I have felt like it was just yesterday that Nate and I got married.

This year, on the eve of our bronze anniversary, I just can’t believe it has only been eight years. I look back at the people we were that day and think only God could have known that we would be such a great fit now (and that it would take several years for us to hit a stride ).

While I’m hoping he hasn’t gotten me a bronze pendant and am not quite sure what else comes in bronze that I could get excited about, I will say that I LOVE that this is our bronze anniversary. We made it on the medal stand, but not without room for improvement. We have much to celebrate, but have only just begun the real training.

Tonight as I was putting lotion on the children (a must for little brown people — I have been told) I said to Eden as she was squealing, dancing, laughing (the child loves “lotion-time”), “Mommy loves Eden.” She looked back at me and said “Daddy loves Mommy.”

Fitting.

I had no idea it would take us eight years to start this family — this insta-family. Yet I can’t imagine us any other way.