You Don't Know How Long You Have

The kids that used to drive her crazy were mostly grown and now had driven her to her knees instead. And not just them, but this granddaughter she was helping to raise and the ladies in Appalachian Ohio who knew her but didn’t know her Jesus.

So, that early morning when I didn’t think anyone else was awake and found her in the living room on her knees in front of her chair, her Bible open and head bowed, I knew I was seeing the secret to how she loved and lived when she got up off her knees. The God of wonder she saw in the pages of that Book convinced her he was still in the business of jaw-dropping, life-changing work. In fact, she knew it from how her own life was changing.

Since I was born that pedal to the metal day in April, God, through better teaching at a new church, was softening my grandma’s heart with compassion and genuine Christ-like love. She was seeing the depths of her own sin and knew what people needed most wasn’t to clean up their lives on the outside to make God happy but to be washed

clean on the inside.

So, she made it her business to take his heart-cleaning message to all she knew. We’d load up in the car and drive those twists and turns to visit ladies in the hills who chewed tobacco and didn’t have any teeth. We’d walk and talk with neighbors nearby. If she knew you, she loved you, and wanted you to know of an even greater Love than hers.

My grandma was the first missionary I knew, although she never moved out of southeastern Ohio. She lived his mission right where she was all day, every day. She was the first person to tell me about Jesus. God helped her to turn all those sorrowful regrets she had from not raising her own kids in a Christian home, into faithfulness to teach me about him. When we lived with her, and then later when she had me on weekends and in the summers, she’d start in the morning talking about Jesus and off and on all day, until we ended our day praising him and thanking him still. 

She lived and breathed the Word of God and packed his truth in my heart from the time I could barely speak. I was the three-year-old memory verse champion at their church because of her.

I, like young Timothy, saw faith first in my grandmother. And soon, her faith became my faith too, when I asked her how I could be part of God’s family. Belonging to his family was the truth God used to show me I was not one of his children. In a very small way, I must’ve known I could survive without an earthly father, but couldn’t without my Heavenly one. And this gracious Father, who had such compassion on this fatherless little girl, accepted me as his very own daughter, when I asked him to save me from my sins. And my precious Grandma was kneeling there beside me as I prayed to him.

A few years later, when I called their house to see if she made it home safely in the snow storm from the Christian school where she taught, and my grandpa couldn’t answer me but asked to talk to my uncle instead, I knew something was horribly wrong.

The car had to be removed with the jaws of life from the creek where it sunk after spinning out of control on the ice and snow-covered roads. Her possessions were found down the creek after it thawed.

I remember someone handing me her Bible they found there. The pages, now dry, were crinkled and brittle from being wet. I held it in my hands and opened it to see her markings covering the pages. The ink was blotchy and her handwriting faded. I may have been the only one who knew that before it’s pages were wet with creek water, they were wet with the tears of a kneeling mother praying urgently for her grown children to come to faith, and the tears of a friend burdened for her friends and neighbors to trust Jesus, and the weeping of a grandmother asking God to protect and grow her nine-year-old granddaughter to become a godly lady.

But now I’m not the only one who knows, Grandmothers, not to underestimate your influence over your grandkids. What they see you value and the priorities that shape your day are teaching them. What you talk about and who you talk to are communicating something to them too. 

You may not love their home life or the way their parents do things, but for the sake of their souls and their future, love them enough to give them something more than toys, sweets, clothes, and trips. Give them something that 30 years later, when you’re dead and gone, still will be bearing fruit in their lives and in others lives because of your intentionality, selflessness, sacrifice, and grace-driven persistence. 

My grandma would want me to tell you, you don't know how long you have, so don’t waste your grand-mothering.

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For Reflection

My grandma was killed in that car accident in 1985, at the age of 49, when I was just 9-years-old. In those 9 short years I had with her, she shaped the rest of my life by investing in me spiritually. 

What children/teens has God placed in your circle of influence?

How are you using your time with them and what priorities are you communicating to them through your words and example?

Have you bought into the American mindset that since the work of parenting is over you can now indulge and entertain your grandchildren instead of passing along your faith and growing wisdom from the Lord?

If so, how, by God's grace, can you be more intentional in giving your grandchildren something that will outlive you?

Pedal to the Metal

Her mom’s black patent leather shoes clicked over and over on the tile as she tip-toed around the kitchen. The quieter she tried to be, the more magnified the clicking was, reverberating through the house like a clanging cymbal. 

My mom, a teenager about to become a parent, sat in the living room clenching her teeth, mostly because of her mom’s annoying tip-toeing on blast, but also because of the contractions starting closer together.

Her official due date had come and gone. So, April 22nd became the day both anxiously dreaded and eagerly anticipated by the family. An unplanned pregnancy invites that kind of mixed emotion, I suppose.

Her parents had kicked her out of their house when they found out she was pregnant. Their own act of rebellion to match hers. They tried to ignore the life growing in her. But God was using my life to stir more life in them. A life he wanted them to live in love, not one lived meeting sin with sin, but one responding to sin with grace.

It was a lesson they fought. One rainy day my pregnant mom was walking the streets in Byesville. She saw a truck she recognized and knew it was her dad’s. Maybe he was coming for her! As he stopped at a red light, she ran up and pounded on the passenger window yelling, “Dad! Dad!,” trying to get him to look at her before the light turned green. But he didn’t budge. His foot pressed against the gas, thinking if he pulled away fast enough he could run from what God had him to learn, leaving her standing in the street, wet and cold, because of her expanding waistline.

But God always wins. Those he pursues can’t get away from him no matter how hard they press the pedal to the metal. 

In time, Mom was back at her parents, sitting with her dad, as he invited her to give me their last name since Mom would not be marrying my biological father. Most parents struggle over a first name for their baby, but Mom had to struggle over a last name for me. By grace, I would became a Neuhart, taking my maternal side's last name.

Maybe it was the aggravation of the clicking patent leather on the tile that accelerated the contractions, or just nature taking its course. Whatever it was, my mom got a seat in her parent's vehicle that day, April 22nd, no pounding on the window required, as they sped, pedal to the metal, to the hospital for my birth. 

My life certainly did awaken more life and grace in my grandparents' heart. They lovingly provided a roof over our heads. But even more, Grandma gave me, her originally unwanted granddaughter, a front row seat to the wonder of a life transformed by the power of the gospel. 

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For Reflection

How is someone else’s sin affecting your life right now?

How are you responding to this unwanted and/or unplanned trial, circumstance, or relationship? 

What would it look like for you to respond to sin with grace instead of meeting it with more sin?

Waiting for the Main Course

In those comfortless days, although at the time my eyes couldn’t see it, my hands couldn’t touch it, and my mouth couldn’t taste it, God was answering my prayer for “a sign of [his] goodness.” (Psalm 86:17)

1. He was teaching my heart to hunger. Learning anything is a lengthy process and takes time. Although I knew what it felt like to hunger for the Word, God was maturing me by helping me learn what it felt like to hunger for the Word even when I didn’t experience immediate relief from my hunger. In his wisdom, he was helping me to learn perseverance in hunger, to keep scavenging, searching, and desperately longing to have my growing hunger satiated. 
2. He was teaching my heart to hunger for what would really satisfy. Even though I tried to placate my hunger in many ways, and although God felt so far removed from my struggle, I would eventually learn he was actually drawing me closer, showing me that none of my striving for self-justification, self-righteous boasting in my good works, tears of grief over my sin, or even my self-loathing because of regrets and shame, were adequate to atone for my sin and give my soul rest. I came to him with a long list of attempts at satisfying my hunger and, although at the time it made me angry, he was kindly crossing off each one as failing. Not working. Insufficient. 
3. He was teaching my heart only Jesus would satisfy. As my angry despair was growing with each feeble try I made and he crossed off the list, he was narrowing my focus, fixing my soul on the only thing that would truly satisfy my hunger. Jesus and Jesus alone! And oh how good he looked against all of my sorry attempts at satisfaction. Yes, I knew Jesus. I knew Jesus had forgiven my sins in the past. But I believed the Christianized, moralistic lie that my joy and fellowship with him, moving forward, was based on my performance. How well I was keeping up with the expectations he had for me. If I was good at obeying all the “Christian rules” those around me were heralding as a measurement of spiritual growth. But finally, after I had tried it all, he showed me that what I was looking for had been there all along. Him! His perfect life of law-keeping for me. His perfect death on my behalf, satisfying the terror of God’s wrath against my sin from which I had been foolishly and unsuccessfully hiding and running. His perfectly secure standing before God held for me, immovable, regardless of my ongoing struggle with sin, and unchanged whether I felt like I was secure or not. His perfectly tight, inescapable grip on me, not because I had great faith, but because he is faithful and strong and will never lose one whom the Father gives him. I was in his hand and no one could pluck me out of it! Friends, I saw Jesus! He was my sign of God’s goodness; my assurance of God’s love for and acceptance of me! He was the Living Word for which the Written Word made me hunger. He was the Water for which my soul was panting. He was the Bread I craved. And I tasted of him and saw God’s goodness! My angry heart softened in the satisfaction of knowing that from his perfect fullness, I had been filled!

This sounds like such a happy ending and like my “hangry-ness” was dealt with once and for all, problem solved. But, sadly, that just isn’t the case. I am still in the fight.  God has allowed me to see, often, he is cycling through this same pattern, working in my heart through a variety of circumstances. He is making me to hunger. He is showing me all the ways I’m trying to satisfy my hunger apart from him.  And he is bringing me to full satisfaction in Jesus alone - who he is and what he has done - to relieve my hunger. My understanding of him and thankfulness for him increases every time. Even the process reminds me he is good and patient and loves me enough to grow me, all while holding me securely in his faithful grip, no matter what. 

But, praise God, one day when Jesus returns, the hungering will be over. He will finally assuage the craving he started in us. For now, we’re enjoying the appetizer, but the main course is coming! And we will never be "hangry" again!

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For Reflection

Isn’t it a wonderful truth that one day we will never spiritually hunger or thirst again? Until that time, we have to keep submitting to the process of finding our satisfaction in Jesus alone. 

1. What has the process, outlined above, of hungering and finding true satisfaction looked like in your life?

2. Where are you in the process now?

3. What have you learned and are you learning about Jesus that satisfies your "hangry-ness"?

Hangry: Hungering for God's Word When It Makes You Angry

There it was. The peace from the angst I’d been feeling. The solution to the weight of guilt I’d been carrying. If God would only answer! 

Psalm 86:17, “Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, LORD have helped me and comforted me.”

It became my constant plea, “Please, Lord! Show me a sign of your goodness!” 

Each day, I was desperately looking for his answer, eyes wide open, waiting for that sign.

Since I started following Jesus in high school, and began the lifelong process of working through some of the challenges of my past and how God fit into all of it, my relationship with the Bible was changing. 

My first Bible and what almost every page of it looked like!

At first, I couldn’t get enough of it, underlining almost every word on every page, hungering for it even more than my physical food. I was having “Wow!” and “Aha!” moments with every encounter. But increasingly, I wasn’t always seeing the Bible as a source of comfort and a place to find hope. At times, it actually made me feel more condemned and further from God and that made me angry.

Slowly, the initial joy and amazement at my salvation had worn off and I was seemingly left alone to reconcile where I had been spiritually and where I was going. Sins, those I had and was committing and those committed against me, were always before me and I couldn’t rejoice in forgiveness because I didn’t feel forgiven. 

Weeks went by and then months. I was still reading my Bible and waiting for God to do something and show me that sign, but my joy was gone. At night I was dreading waking up in the morning, having to live another day burdened by guilt. 

My spiritual struggles were affecting me physically. I was gaining weight, I had no energy, I withdrew from others, and I was slipping into depression. I wondered if this really was what the Christian life was supposed to be like and if so I hated it. It was not what I expected it to be. Initially I had experienced such thankfulness that I was no longer living in a way that opposed God. But now it seemed God was opposing me by not answering my prayer and keeping his word.

Why wasn’t he? And how was I supposed to move forward?

Sadly, I didn’t receive any specific counsel on this. At least not good counsel. Most spiritual leaders in my life at that point were very man-centered, telling me to focus on all the wrongs I had done and making them right with God and others and finding confidence in my obedient actions. And while the fact of my responsibility to personally deal with my sin was right, it was incomplete and even harmful.

What I needed most no one gave me. But God was listening and he was working, ironically enough, through the Bible, the very book that had made me hungry and angry at the same time. 

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For Reflection

Can you relate to my struggle with the Bible? I am eager to share next week how God answered my prayer for a “sign of goodness” and finally brought me comfort.

1. How did you view the Bible before you came to Jesus? 

2. How has your relationship with the Bible changed since then?

3. Are you reading it now and finding joy or are your reading it and feeling anger, guilt, confusion or something else?

When You're Not OK

We moved around my first 8 years. Making ends meet, keeping cars pieced together, and finding places we’d be welcome. An apartment for a bit, with Grandma and Grandpa for awhile, with one of your friends during my Kindergarten year, then into a nicer public housing complex. 

Cashiering wasn’t your passion and neither was putting together vacuum cleaner parts in the factory. But you did what you had to do to keep me clothed and fed.

You’d read books with one of your co-workers so your brain wouldn’t atrophy from the monotony of the assembly line and have a make-shift book club over motors and threading.

You were desperate for us not to get stuck where we were, the statistics looming over us, trapping us, closing in on us, pulling us under. You fought them with a vocabulary word a day. You sacrificed so I could dance, sing, swim. Anything that might give me opportunity to break free.

An algebra tutor, science camp, Spanish camp, a trip to Washington DC to meet our Senator, delivering “Meals on Wheels” to see, no matter how bad off we were, we still had so much to be thankful for.

I got tears in my eyes watching Kevin Durant hug his mom after winning the NBA championship, knowing a little of what they felt toward each other. The almost tangible bond of survival connecting a struggling single parent and her child.

It was us against the looks of disapproval or pity. (I don’t know which I hated more.) It was us seeing the worst in each other but defending each other still. It was us against the bills. It was us against all the complicated, wound-tight and ready-to-explode relationships. It was us hoping we were safe at night. It was us against the questions people had about our family and why it way the way it was. I’d sometimes lie my way out of those or act like I didn’t understand the question. How can an 8-year-old tell someone your dad chose drugs over you, you don’t know him, and your last name isn’t even his, so no, he’s not one of the Neuharts from Caldwell. 

Always, there you were. Trying. Demanding. Working. Paying. Loving. Studying. Stumbling. Proving. Fighting. And fighting. And fighting.

And, in time, breaking. Breaking before God and me. Admitting you couldn’t do it anymore. Calling on Jesus to save you. All our efforts left us in a heartbroken mess. I understood and wasn’t angry. But you just kept saying you wanted me to be OK and you’d do whatever you could to make sure I would be. You have no idea how often I go back to that tenderness. To that humility. To that love. 

By God’s grace, I am OK. But the irony is, I’m not OK, too. And I’ve become fine with that. Because our God is more than OK. And he takes the brokenness that’s always with me, and the brokenness that catches me by surprise, and he says just what I need to hear through his Word. He loves me in just the way I need to be loved in Jesus. He binds up my wounds with redeeming care while whispering the promise that he will make all things right one day. I am astonished by his heart, and he knows how often I go back to that tenderness. To that humility. To that love. Leaning into his words, listening hard, thankful for faith to believe I will be OK.

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For Reflection

This post poured from my heart after family movie night on Friday watching “Queen of Katwe” and seeing Phiona’s love for her struggling single mom and her mom's sacrifice for her. 

How does your brokenness from your past catch you by surprise?

How do you see God meeting you there?

What are some precious promises from his Word you are listening hard to?

Artist Appreciation

For one of your birthday gifts this year, you wanted to go on CustomInk to design your own T-shirt. You knew just what you wanted the T-shirt to say: “I am made by an Artist.”

Your acknowledgement of that truth shot through my heart and struck me deeply. I absorbed the blow and considered why it hurt me so much.  Of course, I knew God made you. On your birthday last year I even wrote about what a comfort that fact was to me. But, it seems to be another thing to call him an artist because that implies he’s still making you. And this is where it gets tricky. I want you to be the way I want you to be, which in most ways lines up with how he wants you to be. But in other ways it doesn’t. Because I also have my selfish motivations in there – what I want you to do with your gifts and potential, when I think you should be over certain fears and struggles, and, sad but true, what I think will make my life easiest or me a “successful” parent.

This truth you want on your T-shirt rips that artist’s brush right out of my hands, and reminds me it’s not ultimately my work to do. And so, I see what he’s making you in a whole new, beautiful light, with new freedom to watch the Master Artist do his work on you and allow me an apprenticeship.

I see him paint you with layers of colors – color combinations so varied I didn’t even know they existed. The brightness of them can be blindingly brilliant at times and the dark, in contrast, overwhelming and perplexing. And then there’s a depth of texture he uses, showing nuances only the finest artist can depict. I can get lost in the texture – wishing it was all smooth and clear – but, oh, it’s in that texture that the artist shows his profound wisdom and the extent of his knowledge of you. So, I watch and learn from him. He knows what he’s making you. And, of course, there’s dimensions of you he depicts that show perspective beyond the here and now. They show an eternality of purpose I cannot begin to comprehend. So, once again, I surrender my brush to him.

I notice you aren’t the only artwork in his portfolio. He’s a prolific artist, this Creative Genius, and I know he’s simultaneously at work on me, often corresponding specifically to his work on you. We are part of the same collection, inseparable, linked by his sovereign design, his permanent exhibits. And the same detail your life displays, he conveys in mine too. Sometimes I resist it, but when I catch a glimpse of such handiwork, skill transcending the best romantic, impressionist, abstract, and cubist artists of all time, I stand in awe of his expertise.

And that’s right where he wants both of us to be. Standing in awe of him. Because this whole parenting thing, ultimately, is his means to the end of my knowing him better. And, really, this whole childhood thing for you, is his means to the end of your knowing him better. He’s using us in each other’s lives so we see him, understand him, love him, desire him, and know him above all else. We both must submit to the Artist and let him have his way. We can trust he knows what he’s doing with us. Because he promises, when he’s done, to put those he has saved on display for all eternity, “in order that he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. . .for we are God’s handiwork.” (Ephesians 2:7,10)

Draw Me Nearer

I was driving home from a piano lesson the summer we started dating and noticed that even on an overcast day the world around me seemed more beautiful than I had observed before. It occurred to me that it was the experience of our new love that opened my eyes to see things with a radiance I had previously missed.

Even then in our younger, immature love, I knew God was the ultimate reason for this newfound wonder I had for the scenery I beheld. I thought of the hymn lyrics:

"Heav’n above is softer blue, Earth around is sweeter green!

Something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen," 

and acknowledged it was because of Jesus' love for me that I could experience fully the life-changing, all-encompassing human joy of loving and being loved. I was already learning something of what it was like to be yours and have you as mine and all the pleasure exclusive love could bring.

Amazingly, fifteen years later, I continue to see the world around me differently because of you. Your love is constantly changing me. It helps keep me from cynicism and despair. It helps me have hope in times of fear and trial. It softens my heart and disarms me when I'm ready to fight and yet it calls me to take up arms and make war when I need to. It helps me face things I'd rather run from and overall continues to plummet me to depths of joy I didn't know were humanly possible. 

I know my experience of our covenant love is a tangible expression of God's loyal, faithful love for me because your love is in the image of his love. And tasting and seeing your goodness and kindness to me and enjoying the benefits of your love for me doesn't make me worship you, it makes my heart collapse in praise and adoration of him.

Because the older I get and the longer we're married, I see more of who I really am. And I know I don't deserve the honor you give me and the love you show me. I know I have not earned the thoughtful things you do for me and the selflessness with which you serve me. I've disappointingly found I'm not really as lovable as I originally thought. 

So my soul continues to be awakened to the fact that, because of you, I see more of what the Author of Grace is like, and because of you, I know his love better.

The truth is, this doesn't happen because you've reached a certain plateau of spirituality. It happens primarily because you have been conquered by a love that's greater than mine. You've been loved with a love greater than anything a woman can offer and it has humbled you and you have submitted to it and it has kept you near to him.

So the effort you put forth and your daily choice of loving me through fifteen years of marriage is evidence of your submission to him and the cords of his love that have tightly bound you to him. That's something the "ball and chain" of marriage can't accomplish. And you know I've tried it.

So as joyful as my experience of our love is, it makes me crave the Perfection of its source. It makes me know there is even more love and joy than we've had. And that truth is astounding! There are heights to it and depths of it we will one day know completely and it only makes sense we will get to experience it together there, overwhelmed, undone, and awe-filled!

On that day when I am presented before him holy and blameless, I'll then know fully a fraction of what I know now - I have been loved with a faithful love I could never earn and certainly don't deserve. 

May he continue to draw us nearer and prepare us better for that day. Happy 15th Anniversary, my joy and my love!

Still Counting the Days

You walked across the stage several times yesterday getting 6th grade academic awards ranking you, in various subjects, at the top of your class of over 100 kids. Your elementary years are over and you are headed to one of the public junior high schools near us, having been invited into their accelerated learning track for the fall. 

It seems like I just closed my laptop after writing this post, and then reopened it to write this one. But here we are 6-7 years later and although much has changed, one thing hasn’t changed. We’re still counting the days, in a sense, for the sole purpose of showing that we have a God on whom we can count.

Since Kindergarten, you have attended 3 different schools in 2 different states and been taught with 4 different educational approaches. You’ve experienced the highs and lows of Christian school, home school, Montessori school, and public school. God has used these many changes and challenges to shape you and, by his grace, you have responded.

I really mean that. Any successes you can claim, whether academically or produced in your character, are all of God's grace. Ten years ago I would’ve said that but secretly patted myself on the back for doing a pretty good job of making you who you are.

I see myself in you. And it’s in those times that I pray he will increase in you and I will decrease. Because I want you to resemble me only in the ways I resemble him.

You look like me (and your Ammy), there’s no doubt about that. And when I hear people tell you, as they have me, that your smile lights up a room, it makes me happy. But Stella, I want you to look most like Him. I want to see him in your attitude and actions when you’re frustrated, when you’re excited, when you're interacting with others, when you’re disappointed, when you’re ambitious. I want to see your life continue to take the shape of his because your heart is his.

So, after the program yesterday, when goodbyes were being said, and the awards were being stacked, and one of your teachers unexpectedly pulled me aside to tell me that he knew you were a Christian and could see you living your faith in a real way this year, I praised God. I praised God because I know the struggle you’ve had being a light in a sometimes dark place.  I praised him because I knew this was something your dad and I didn’t directly have control over. This was Jesus in you, shining through you, using your life to make him look great. 

Stella, we are so proud of your hard work and accomplishments and are rejoicing with you as you look forward to this next step educationally. And although there are many things you could boast about from your academic successes these past 7 years of elementary school,

“This is what the Lord says:
‘Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
or the strong boast of their strength
or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight.'”(Jeremiah 9:23, 24)

Pressing Heavenward

I didn't set my alarm this morning. Four decades and a year deserves that, right? But I hear the baby in the night and trip over my flip flops, and another child, to get to her and - gross -  was that sand I felt fall out of our sheets?!

Nights at the soccer field, evenings calling out two sets of spelling words like an auctioneer speaking for gain, throwing together dinner, and catching bad attitudes, unkind words, and spills almost before they hit the floor...or the heart. 

I don't do it all and I don't do it well. But, because of grace, I do some and I'm thankful I get to.

My friend, the epitome of health, is diagnosed with cancer and I can't help but wonder how much longer I have.

How much longer to make bottles, sign planners, sort laundry, give lingering hugs, plan class schedules, and shuffle papers? To pray, plead, laugh, correct, instruct, listen, ask forgiveness, and dance like Paula Abdul?

Forty-one years of my life already are gone. But I have this day. One tired, sometimes bleak, always imperfect day, gifted and waiting to be spent, invested, redeemed.

There's a lot of talk about not wasting your life. But I have to remind myself that starts with not wasting my day. This day. No matter how it unfolds, what it involves, and how I feel about it all.

So, this day, I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sister, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

(Photo: Photos by Robyn)

His Love is Enough: Our Adoption Day Prayer for You

She labored for you for almost 9 months and then through one long night. You were born at 6:45 that Wednesday morning. She sent me a text right away saying you had arrived and we could come as soon as possible.

We were awake, but not that kind of awake. So we ran in circles for the first fifteen minutes, trying to collect our minds, got your siblings off to school and then packed up our things to come see you.

TiTi Vivian reminded me to make notes of the day so I’d be able to relay them to you. So we took a video of ourselves driving to Florida’s Space Coast. It was an unusually cloudy morning with the sun peeking through occasionally. John Mark and Sarah McMillan were playing in the background, providing the perfect, reassuring soundtrack for our drive.

We settled on your name in the car.

Eloise Sunshine.

Your birth parents loved our other kids’ names, so we wanted to pick something for you they might like too, fitting in with the trendy-but-old-fashioned names of Stella, Ruby, and Schaeffer.

I was putting on my make-up in the car and spilled foundation on my pants. In spite of my best stain fighting attempts, we had to make a quick stop into Target to get me a new pair. Big life events tend to be punctuated with everyday things. I’m thankful the spectacular seems to coordinate with the simple to remind us of our smallness. I felt safer reassured of his greatness, comparatively.

We arrived at the hospital just after noon. Our adoption specialist and the pregnancy counselor met us in the waiting room. We went in together and saw your birthparents first.

She was beautiful, as always, and I told her so. Even after giving birth.

They were understandably exhausted. She shared the story of how you made your entrance.

I want you to know how much she loves you. A mother knows another mother’s tears and feels her heart. She hears the nuances of affection in her voice and follows the inflections straight to those nurturing impulses.

We shared that time together for you, because of you.

Your birth father walked over to your crib and rested his hands on the sides of it. I hadn’t even looked at you yet. I looked at him so I could tell you about him. His face melted into a tender smile but his eyes showed the grief of all that was taking place that day.

There we were. I don’t know when you’ll be able to understand this. But all four of us, they your birthparents, and we your adoptive parents, were together there for you.  Our worlds providentially colliding to share our love for you. To join arms together, each having different roles and responsibilities, but all working together for your good. Delivery and deliverance to be inseparably linked forever.

Then we saw you. I remember telling them how beautiful you were. And in one of the most selfless acts of love I’ve seen, they wanted us to hold you. They wanted, with their own eyes, to see us love you even though it was painful for them. Their broken hearts were laid open for you and we gently picked them up – and you – and held them close.

We have part of them with us all the time in you, and we want to cherish and protect that bond. We will do that, by God’s grace and with his help, for you and them.

Next, the hospital kindly provided us with our own room and there in the quiet, we studied you. Daddy was worried you were too cold and wanted to keep your knit toboggan warming your sprinkles of red hair. You didn’t open your eyes at all on Wednesday but your long eyelashes already grabbed our attention.

Instinctively, I kissed your head every time it came near my lips - exactly like I did our other three babies. And just like that, you were my girl.

You and I share a bit of history in common, so it’s fitting you should have my middle name.  My mom, your Ammy, says I was a ray of hope born into a rather hopeless situation. And you, our Sunshine, with your own chapters added, bring our story full circle.

As I called your Ammy from the hospital with you in my arms, we wept over how God was continuing to redeem our broken story with you. He makes all things beautiful in his time. Remember that, sweet Sunshine. You’ll hear me say it often.

We who have the hope of Jesus are the broken beautiful. Broken stories, beautiful purpose. Broken relationships, beautiful reconciliation. Broken world, beautiful eternity. Broken people, beautiful Savior.

You could not be more loved. But their love isn’t enough for you. Our love isn’t even enough for you. It won’t be enough to get you through questions about your family history. It won’t be enough to get you through struggles with your identity. It won’t be enough to keep our relationship as parent and child close. It won’t be enough to help you process your adoption into our family.

If there is one thing we gleaned from our adoption education, it’s that. Our love will help you, but it is not enough for you. We fought through that statement. We threw up objections and wanted it to be a lie. But after we faced it, it freed us to surrender you to a love that’s greater, deeper, higher, longer and wider than you can comprehend. A perfect love. And dear Eloise, his love is enough. It will cast out your fears. It will help you deal with insecurities. It will stabilize you, rooting you in and connecting you with a family bond that is thicker than blood because it flows from the Father of all. He gave up his son for you. In fact, he knows something about broken relationships, because he broke their relationship for you, forsaking him so you could be brought near to him and us to each other. The most marvelous thing isn’t how extravagantly loved you are by your birth parents and adoptive parents. The most marvelous thing is that you are extravagantly loved by him.

So my song for you, as I’ve picked a hymn-prayer for each of our other babies, is "O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus."

May you see his love in your past, present, and future. May you feel it all around you in brilliant displays, sovereignly highlighting all your days. May you experience it personally in the forgiveness of your sins. That is our prayer for you on your Adoption Day, February 9, 2017, and always, our dearly loved Eloise.

Longing for Home

When I pulled up to 15539 Keppen in Allen Park last December, I instinctively expected to see the faces of our older girls peering out the window at me, waving me in. I expected to see a Dora big wheel parked in the driveway or a tiny picnic table retired from its summer duties, collecting the first snow of the season.

Instead, I saw a “For Sale” sign in the yard. Instead, I saw an empty porch, an abandoned driveway, and tightly closed blinds. No signs of the life we once knew there.

But I quickly remembered what we were selling and what we weren’t. Our family memories weren’t for sale. I didn’t pack up those. And the mistakes made, lessons learned, forgiveness sought, and gospel seeds sown weren’t for sale either. So I let our house go in that moment, knowing God had used it for his purposes in our life and that season was over.

When we first moved into our love shack on Keppen, we hadn’t been married a year. We shared our frozen wedding cake on our 1-year anniversary, seated on our slip-covered couch in the living room. That house was our proving ground as newlyweds, as employees, as church members, as evangelists, and as new parents. So much of the work God has done in our life started within those four walls.

First Anniversary

We learned to work together on managing a house and its projects and responsibilities and eventually fell into a good rhythm of what became my duties and what became Matt’s. It was one of our first partnerships. We learned to wait for things we wanted that we couldn’t afford (or to give up wishing for them!). And, we saw God provide through hard work and the generous gifts of friends and family.

We cut our teeth on hospitality in that house. We had hyper teenage boys from the youth group spend the night. We hosted playdates with new moms, dinner clubs, recovering addicts that needed loved and counseled, discipleship sessions for new and hurting Christians during our kids naptime or after dinner, neighborhood dinners, evangelistic Bible studies, college and career Bible studies and lunches and birthday parties, and even provided them with a couch to crash from their crazy schedules, question-packed lunches with older godly women, and regular community group meetings where we hammered out applying the Bible to our lives.

One of our many beloved Community Groups

  

There we began learning to rejoice and sorrow with others and how to follow the Lord in joy and in sorrow ourselves. From the joy of setting up our first nursery and then big-girl room (ladybugs galore!) for Stella and bringing her and our other two Michigan-born-babies home to that house. There we learned the nuts and bolts of having 3 kids 4 and under and all the craziness that entails -including scrubbing poop off the walls, curtains, floor and crib when a certain child decided to decorate with his/her nap-time excrement.

The stories those walls could tell if they could talk!

Stella's nursery turned big-girl room

Tear drops might still stain the kitchen countertop from when I was mindlessly scrubbing it because I had to do something after finding out that I’d lost our baby after almost 20 weeks of pregnancy. And I can still see the dozens of cards from church members lining the top of our piano in the dining room, sharing in our grief, admonishing us with Scripture, and sharing their own stories of God’s faithfulness to them through unfulfilled expectations.

We loved that house. It had a warmth and coziness we haven’t been able to replicate here in our Florida home. The charm of the curved front sidewalk and the glow of the light from the living room wall sconces in the evening. If I close my eyes and listen hard enough I can still hear what the cries of a hungry baby sound like there at night, the pitter-patter of first steps on those hardwood floors, the frustrated turning of the old, loose door knob to go upstairs to our bedroom, and the echoes of excitement when Daddy came home for the day. God provided our love shack for us in an amazingly generous way, and he continued to provide for us the entire time we owned it. Not just for our material needs, but with all we needed for life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)

Ruby as a new walker

And as of yesterday, it is ours no more.

But, for the past nearly three years now, we’ve lived in a different proving ground, learning many new lessons and re-learning old ones. God isn’t done with us yet. We’ve discovered that our homes here are primarily training us for our heavenly home. Whether we have happy or hard home lives. Christian or antagonistic family members. Beautiful or fixer-upper surroundings. It’s all meant to help us on to him. It’s all meant to fit us for heaven. To make us more like him. To make us long for our eternal home, but also to encourage us with grace along the way.

And if God can help us find such love, hope, and happiness in a 900-square-foot house in cloudy and cold Michigan, I can only imagine how beautiful and peaceful and perfect our eternal home will be. Because it will be with him.

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:3-5)