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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.