Here Comes The Son

I’m writing this post with a playlist in the background I haven’t heard in over 6 years. Newborn baby squeaks, sighs, hiccups, and sneezes.

This little darling, Eloise Sunshine, joined our family a week ago today, when her birth parents signed their termination of parental rights and Bethany Christian Services placed her into our temporary custody. We are in the midst of a 90-day legal risk period before the adoption is finalized legally in court.

I’ve been through labor three times and although I didn’t physically labor this time, the emotional labor of walking alongside her birthparents the day of her birth and the 48-hours that followed, was similarly exhausting.

We were amazed at the capacity of the human heart, stably bookended by God’s faithful grace, to experience the full spectrum of human emotion. We grieved for the birth parents. We have a relationship with them and hated to see our friends hurting. We hugged them, cried for them, told them of our love for them, and walked them out of the hospital at discharge reminding them that though their hands might be empty, their hearts could be full of assurance of our love for them and for the baby they gave birth to.

And in some ways we are glad for them. Glad for them to have a fresh chance to focus on the priorities in their life they’ve said need attention. I think of them when I’m up in the night with Eloise, sleep deprived myself, energy quickly depleting during the day, knowing I’m pouring out my life and time not just for her, but for them too, praying they will have the energy, time, wisdom, and discipline to do what they need to do.  

In our adoption experience, you can trace with your hand a string of love that connects our hearts to theirs. We acknowledge not everything is perfect. We acknowledge our relationship with them is rather complicated as far as human relationships go. But God has equipped Christians to face situations like this; to incarnate sacrificially, like Jesus himself.  

Paul Miller in his book, A Loving Life, quotes B.B. Warfield on the self-giving of Christ:

“Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from, but into the midst of men [and women]. Wherever [they] suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever [they] strive, there will we be to help. Wherever [they] fail, there will we be to uplift. Wherever they succeed, there will we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man and woman’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means many-sidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives – binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours.”

And that, my friends, as you know, isn’t just adoption, but the Christian life in general. It is joyfully hard. It is a chance to die to self a thousand times every hour of every day. It is pressing the limits of superficial love knowing the love you need can only be supernaturally derived. It’s glorying in each weakness you see manifested emotionally, spiritually, and physically, so that the power of Christ might rest on you. It’s pleading with your heavenly Father, who gives generously, for the wisdom and grace you lack, and so desperately need. It’s asking God to keep creating faith in you, when your heart is overcome with doubt and fear.

And we could not do it without you. Thank you, to our friends and family who started this journey almost 4 years ago with us, and to those friends who have joined us during the journey. We’ve needed you each step and will continue to. While we are incarnating for Eloise and her birthparents and for you, you have incarnated for us. It is a beautiful circle of grace. Grace heaped upon grace.

There is only one hero in the Christian life and it’s Jesus whose incarnation for us we will celebrate next month. Because he left the glories of heaven and took on flesh to live, die, and rise again, we cling to his flawless incarnation on our behalf. He is the only one who has succeeded at living thousands upon thousands of lives perfectly. Will you exalt in Jesus with us?

Thank you to Robyn Moore for capturing this special family memory so beautifully.

Let Jen Hatmaker Drive You Back to the Bible: A Reformation Call to Christian Women

This morning before I sent my kids off to school, I guess you could say we were having church up in here. Matt may be the one who gets paid to preach, but that’s never stopped this mama from proclaiming the truth passionately to my kids. And today, even though I was teaching all of them, I was speaking especially to my girls.

I saw and read Jen Hatmaker’s recent interview discussing her politics. I also saw the many different reactions to it. I admittedly had my own. The timing of her statement was interesting to me, falling just a few days before the celebration of the historical event known as the Protestant Reformation.

Anyone who has read my blog since the beginning knows how God used the teachings of the Reformation in my young adulthood, and specifically, a book by Martin Luther that I stumbled upon surprisingly (providentially!) in my small hometown public library. 

God used Martin Luther’s influence on my life to free me from man-centered theology and to drive me to the Bible. 

Did you get that? He used a flawed man (Luther had some issues!) to open my eyes to see that my conscience should be captive to the Word of God alone.

Before school in the mornings, we often read Christian biographies together over breakfast. Today we were finishing one on the life of the reformer, John Calvin. A man told Calvin, “Your books are brilliant! I know I can trust whatever you say to be true.” Calvin was appalled and told the man that was the saddest statement he had ever heard. He instructed the man that God’s Word was the only standard either of them could ever trust completely. 

And that was my message to my girls today. And to myself. And now to you.

1) Whatever your response to Jen Hatmaker’s statements, they should point out the fact that we must hear the Bible’s statements first and loudest. I fear our temptation is to jump on the bandwagon of another “celebrity” Christian woman with whose statements we agree instead of heeding the call that the voice we need to hear most is God’s voice through his Word.

2) Remember people are just people. There are some important things we can learn from Jen, both good and bad. And do you know that’s true about everyone? Your favorite Christian speaker, your Titus 2 mentor, your most-loved Christian blogger or author? Go back to the Bible and let it define what those helpfully good things are and what those things are that should be avoided. The Bible is our ultimate authority - not people.

3)  God has given you a brain and a heart. Go back to the Bible and have both shaped and trained by his truth. And ladies, this isn’t a man’s work! This is my work. And this is your work. Let us be women with big brains and big hearts. Don’t let others do our thinking (or feeling) for us!

4) We don’t need to fear liberal politics, homosexuals, or anyone with whom we disagree. The Bible teaches us to engage the world (and the people in it!) with all its/their paradoxes, instructing us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16) Is this incident highlighting your own lack of wisdom? Is it highlighting your heart that fears those who are different from you? Are you scared of losing a comfortable, persecution-free life?  I think you see the theme. Go back to the Bible for discernment and razor-sharp wisdom. Go back to the Bible to have cultivated in you the harmless spirit that characterizes a woman who doesn’t fear those who can destroy the body, but him who can destroy both the body and the soul. (Matthew 10:28)

Ladies, today, let’s have a new Reformation Day! Let us be women who read and know our Bibles, submit to its teaching, are shaped by its truth, and who live our lives carefully and lovingly in step with it. Let us be women who are bold reformers, nailing the truth into our heads and into our hearts. Let us go back to the Bible alone, together. That’s what God wants, because he knows that’s really what this world needs.

She Loved You First

We celebrated you all weekend with some of your favorite things. Life is too precious of a gift to pass up these birthday milestones, rehearsing God’s past grace in your life and looking ahead, keenly aware of how much more of it we still need from him.

I am overwhelmed with love for you and delight in tangible ways to show it. But even as we baked and prepared and partied, I did so with the realization I share your day with another woman who is overwhelmed with love for you, too. I know, in many ways, October 23^rd is her day of reflection and want to honor your mom this year in a special way.

Mom, you carried Matthew two weeks short of 40, arriving at the hospital early that fall morning, praying for a boy. It’s your story to tell and I love to see your eyes shimmer with happy tears as you remember the sacredness of the events on that day. How you and Dad cradled him in the quiet moments after his birth, surrendering him to the Lord from his first breath forward. I know you did that many times throughout his growing up years, and even continue to do it still. Matthew was your boy first, and perhaps after a little over six years of parenting a boy of my own, I understand a fraction of a mother’s love for her son.

Holding my Schaeffer close, I hold these days of his boyhood close as well. He’s a talker with more questions than I have answers and more mischievousness than I have imagination. I know you can relate. The Nerf basketball hoop is in our kitchen too, where we get instant replays of Steph Curry’s (instead of Michael Jordan’s) amazing feats on the floor. The impulsive explosions of joy or frustration (depending on the score) ring in my ears and bring simultaneous joy or frustration to my heart (depending on what I’m trying to do in my basketball-court-kitchen). You are good to remind me to fish that foam ball out of the sink (or soup!) as many times as I get to because, too soon, my boy will be gone. But I’ll still have my kitchen.

I feel the tension more acutely with Schaeffer that I am raising him for someone else. That he’s mine only for a while. The apron strings are there, but I know they will have to be cut to help make my boy a man. I wonder whose arms he’ll go to after mine and I am tempted to fear because I know how a man can rise or fall by the love of a woman.

You’re my example, though. Thank you for cutting those apron strings so your Matthew could become mine. God used you to help make him to be a godly man - independent in the right ways, but dependent and tender in the right ways, too. That’s the fruit of a mother’s tough but nurturing love. And thank you for your prayers for me even before you knew me, the woman who would one day love your boy and take his heart in her hands. By God’s grace, I seek to love him well and continue the work you started, using my love to make him better.

So, Mom, thank you for letting your boy become my man. Our Matthew.

Remember Your Roots

I was walking out of church that last Sunday in Ohio, dangerously full of 18-year-old-swagger with all the bravado of “The Boss” himself, sick of "living in a dump like this” and ready to find the something that was happening somewhere.

I heard a car pull through the parking lot and an elderly man in the church yelled to me,  “Erica, remember your roots!"

I smiled and waved, asking my Mom what that was supposed to mean. She, relieved someone else was trying to pull me back to earth, said, "It's a way of saying even though you're leaving, never forget where you've come from." 

I resented his advice. Maybe even despised it. In many ways I wanted to get away precisely so I could forget where I'd come from. Leave it behind and start over. So much was a mess in my heart and I didn't even know where to begin sorting it all out. So I figured it was easier just to start from scratch than deal with the junk.

But I’d soon learn that you can't run from your own heart. As hard as I tried and as fast as I ran, the hardships of life in those Appalachian hills of southeastern Ohio kept their grip on me, pulling me back. The roots were deep and even though I desperately wanted to, I couldn’t forget them.

So in many ways, I tried to cut off the people from there, even my mom and the husband she married a few days after I left. But that only compounded the sin in my heart. Come to find out, you can’t remedy sin with more sinfulness.

I’d sneak in the closet under the stairwell of our college dorm where the cleaning products were stored and cry out to God. So many bitter angry tears flew from my bitter angry heart onto that unassuming floor. No cleaning product in that whole closet was powerful enough to remove those tear stains and clean up my mess.

But slowly I began to feel him pruning and untangling the vines and branches that were choking me from the inside out. I began to see the tender hand of the Vinedresser helping me bear fruit in keeping with repentance. I began to follow his hand, always careful and wise, but sometimes allowing me to feel the harsh and bloody prick of the thorns, tracing back to the people and places and faces I only wanted to leave behind. 

“I planted the seeds,” he’d say, “that took root in the soil of your heart. Don’t let the trials of life choke them out. Instead, hear the Word and understand it so you can bear more fruit.” And by his grace, I did.

A few months ago as we traveled those same Appalachian hills I had associated with much pain and sorrow from my past, I thanked God for the joy going home now brought me. I couldn’t miss the metaphor as we reached the highs and lows of the mountain terrain that my life course had been similar. Those treacherous hills were responsible, in part, for the death of my dear grandma, but they were also the birthplace of my spiritual life. “Except one grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it will never bear fruit.”(John 12:24) I had experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in that place. No matter where I’ve gone since, God has graciously allowed me to remember my roots.

And I can remember them now, not with anger, or guilt, or shame or bitterness, but with thankfulness. Because there was One who grew up like a root out of drier ground than the coal mining ground of southeastern Ohio. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And he bore my griefs and carried my sorrows, not just up the rolling hills in Cambridge, Ohio, but up a hill of death to Calvary where he was crushed for the iniquities I’ve committed and for the iniquities committed against me. And his wounds have brought me healing.

So, if there’s a way I would now tweak that wise, older man’s advice to my 18-year-old self, I’d say, “Erica, remember your roots by remembering his.”

Cracking the Books

Today as you're cracking the books for another school year, it also means we're closing the chapter on the summer of 2016. Another one's crammed full of memories and shoved in the books for safe keeping.

Every first day of school I feel like a bandaid has been ripped off a tender part of my heart and I'm left reeling in the pain of it all. It takes it awhile to heal, although I don't think it ever fully does, before that tender part is uncovered again by another difficult feat of motherhood, keeping me raw and vulnerable.

There were smiles and tight hugs and brave words choked through tears as we sent you off this morning. For some moms I guess it gets easier. I'm not one of them.

But, I tell you to look up and remember that we're all seeing the same sky and bright sun formed by the God who is there with you in the classroom, lunch room, and on that playground. And with me here as I'm grimacing in pain.

I tell you to listen up to the word of God that has been poured in your heart day after day in this home of ours.

And I tell you to speak up, telling the truth to yourself about who God says you are, talking to those who need a word of love and encouragement, and declaring who Jesus is to a system opposed to his way.

I'll do the same, and we'll catch up about it all at 3 PM today. Then we'll do it over again tomorrow, with his help, writing each page of this book of the 2016-2017 school year. He's a good author and I love his stories. And in the end, even though it's another rough beginning, I think this will be a pretty good one too.

Posted with Blogsy

Caught Between

I'm putting on my make up in the bathroom and you come in wanting to talk. You look frustrated and tell me how hard it is to be caught between being a teenager and a little kid.

Today you turn 11, and you say there are so many changes and the process is emotionally exhausting and it feels like you'll never get there. We've been through it before and I have my go-to encouragements, but this time God strikes my heart with a new compassion because I realize I'm there too. My circumstances are different but I'm still caught in between.

When I see myself in the mirror of the Word, I feel the tension between the already and the not yet, and I think I'll never be what I should be and I can relate to all the awkward in the process of change. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, growing into what God is making me, not feeling at home in my own skin (or feeling too at home there) when my spirit is (or should be, depending on the day) pulling toward heaven.

So I look at your big brown eyes so full of the complexities of where you are in life and I tell you I know. I know how hard it is, sweet girl. I know the growing pains and the long path to change that feels like one step forward and two steps back. I know the frustration of day by day wondering who you really are and what you're really becoming.

And once again, I find myself almost out of words, out of pretty bows to tie up all those concerns and sadnesses and overwhelming feelings. There are fewer quick fixes the older you get. No more just kissing boo-boos as you skip off happily. But really, that's a sign you're right where you need to be, feeling the tension, feeling God forming Jesus in you, feeling God pulling you toward him, and seeing God change you into the woman he wants you to be.

So I tell you that we will struggle together to get where God is taking us.

We have a saying as the teenage years approach, looming before us like a necessary but unwanted rain storm. It's not becoming a teenager that could make us grow apart. We remind each other: the only thing that can make us grow apart is sin. Only sin can create a wedge between us.

So as you're stuck in the middle, between your teenage years and your childhood, make a habit now of fighting sin. Don't let others tell you how you should look, act, and talk. Don't let others tell you what you need and how you should feel. Don't listen when your peers say we don't understand, are old-fashioned, and unloving.

Instead, I'll take one side of that shield of faith, described in Ephesians 6, and you take the other and together we'll help guard our hearts against the devil and all his schemes we are so prone to follow. We'll oppose those fiery darts of well-timed temptations that he's hurling at us. And I'll keep teaching you to use that sword, which is the Word of God, to combat the lies your generation and mine are screaming in our faces.

One day, Stell, we will be what we should be. And because of the difficult journey there, it will make our arrival all the sweeter. But until then, if we have to live between where we've been and where we're going, I'm really glad that we're caught here together.

Posted with Blogsy

God's Ruby

I kiss your cheek at the stroke of midnight and from a heart bursting with love and concern spontaneously pray God's care over you in this next year of life. You're another year older today and I hope we are another year wiser. There's so much inside of this bundle of Ruby and 8 years isn't near enough time to unpack it all.

You are complex and I listen to your heart open as words and tears pour out. The fears that grip you, sometimes paralyzing you. The empathy that affects you to the point of physical illness. The sensitivity to injustice that makes you put pencil to paper and write a confrontation to your class about racism and bullying. The discipline that makes you to run laps and do push-ups and practice soccer in the front yard. The continued outbursts of anger when you're told no or contradicted. The desire to control situations and manipulate them to get what you want. The compassion that motivates you to give when the rest of us turn our heads and move on. How you can seem aloof and disconnected and then unearth a profound thought, keen observation, or timely encouragement.

You say that you used to be "iffy" about the existence of God. But now you see him everywhere. All around you, in answers to prayer and how our life plays out. But you say trusting him makes you nervous. Kind of like riding a roller coaster, you say. Like you know it's going to be great and that in the end it will be fine, but it's just how you'll get there that makes you nervous.

You pray about specific things over and over and report that God doesn't take the struggles away. But when I tell you instead of asking him to take them away, to ask him to help you trust him through them and change you through them, you nod in an unexpected and eager submission that I don't often see. And I wonder what's going on in that heart of yours?

God knows though, so I continue to take those snapshots of your heart, only small glimpses I get, to him. He has you figured out and all sorted out because he made you. He knows everything about you. All those paradoxes that confuse me and all those extremes that scare me, aren't perplexing to him in the least. He's steady and sure in what he's doing in your life while I can be overwhelmed, and just plain tired.

I often think of Psalm 139 in terms of personal application, but it brings me such comfort as your mom when I apply it to you too.

You have searched Ruby, Lord, and you know her. You know when she sits and when she rises; you perceive her thoughts from afar. You discern her going out and her lying down; you are familiar with all her ways. Before a word is on her tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem her in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon her. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can she go from your Spirit? Where can she flee from your presence? If she goes up to the heavens, you are there; if she makes her bed in the depths, you are there. If she rises on the wings of the dawn, if she settles on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide her, your right hand will hold her fast. If she says, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created her inmost being; you knit her together in my womb. I praise you because she is fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Her frame was not hidden from you when she was made in the secret place, when she was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw her unformed body; all the days ordained for her were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts about her, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when she awakes, she is still with you. Search her, God, and know her heart; test her and know her anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in her, and lead her in the way everlasting.

I cannot attain to God's knowledge of you, Ruby. So I trust your Maker with you, the precious girl he fearfully and wonderfully knit together in my womb and in my heart. I ask him to use me and Daddy to keep leading you in his way, working out all those days he ordained for you even before we got to hold you and hug you and love you. We get to be used by him in your life, starting with new mercies this morning on this new year of your life. You are his first, so Happy 8th Birthday to God's Ruby. . .and thankfully, ours too.

Posted with Blogsy

I Married This Man

I listened to you preach on Sunday, watching you form your words and pull that passion right out of your heart. I knew the Word had kept you up late and got you up early and it needed to come out. And I was praying for you, assuring you even though I couldn't help you carry the burden of your care for the church, that I could carry you.

And as I listened and saw your wet eyes at the thought of the cords of love that have tightly bound you to him, I took that Word from your heart to mine and couldn't help but thank God for it and for who he is making you.

They say the longer you're married, the more people you marry. And I think it's true because I married many different versions of Matthew Owen these 14 years. I married the young energetic one with boyish enthusiasm and loads of ambition. The one who drove me and my mom around Greenville with reckless abandon, hair blowing in the wind in our rented convertible. I married the seminary student pulling all-nighters drinking coke and coffee by the cups full, never turning down an opportunity to socialize or give his opinion. I married the one hesitant to become a father and then watched his heart fold in tenderness cradling our newborns, resolute in disciplining our toddlers, and compassionate in nurturing our tweens. I married the dad who rises and bends with all the back-breaking and heart-wrenching duties of fatherhood. I married the entry-level call center employee who worked his way up to Audi Business Analyst, being offered a job from a competing marketing company with the salary and perks to boot. I married the one who thanked God for the opportunity but turned it down because pastoral ministry was calling him louder. I married the man who had to tie that call to the altar and give it to the Lord, not knowing if he'd ever see it again. I married the one who knelt before our MI church congregation, since the Lord did give him that desire of his heart, and watched them ordain him to be a minister of the gospel. I married the man who needed me by his bedside off and on for two years while he fought a strange, troubling and sometimes debilitating physical illness. I married the one who rose up out of that bed of affliction, and has never stopped humbly acknowledging his dependence on God for his next step and breath. I married the man who realized his ambition alone couldn't make things happen and his opinions didn't really matter that much. And I married the man who took a chance on the girl from a broken home who had no religious pedigree in which to boast, and commit to give me his name and trust me with his heart.

I still have to pinch myself and thank God that I married this man. What do I have that I haven't received?

On our 14th anniversary, I thank God for the Matthew Owen you are today. I don't know what man I'll have married in five more years or ten, but I pray that God will use each trial, each joy, each success, and each failure to make you more and more like Jesus. I see him restoring his image in you and I like the way it looks. Even better than Leonardo DiCaprio.

Posted with Blogsy

Because of Aaliyah and Shiloh

My last post over five months ago, was written through tears of disappointment because God had used us in a birthmom's life in a way we wouldn't have chosen - being there for her through the struggle of her uncertainty, ready to welcome her baby into our family as our own, but then being called to rejoice with her as on her way to the hospital she called saying she was choosing to parent her child. After we hung up the phone from that call, without wasting much time, we went through the house putting away the pack and play, the car seat waiting to be grabbed on the way out the door to the hospital, and the pink onesies and sleepers ready to dress Aaliyah, our anticipated baby girl.

It wasn't primarily for me we cleared away reminders of the bundle who wasn't coming home, but because we knew who would be coming home in just a few hours. The three children God had called us to parent. And we didn't want to make the sight of unfulfilled hopes harder for them to bear.

I laid with Stella in her bed later that afternoon as she sobbed heartbroken, hugging her and wiping her cheeks, blotchy from tears. I couldn't help but wonder how navigating the peaks and valleys of emotions associated with adoption might effect her heart and view of God. But that was out of my control. As a family we talked through it, prayed about it, and grabbed onto the same truth that had us securely strapped in all along.

So, we were not greatly shaken when our second adoption fell through a few months later. We opened our hearts to learn and be and receive whatever God wanted, and prayed for baby Shiloh and his future without us.

Then God surprised us again today, as he loves to do in adoption. But not with a baby to hold. Instead with a third place ribbon around her neck from Stella's speech contest. She competed against over 200 students and placed for her speech articulating why adoption is important. In it she said how adoption has helped her understand birth parents who are in situations so different from hers. She concluded that together we are loud in supporting adoption and helping children have loving homes.

Once again, God has reminded me that he has not wasted these last three years as we've been waiting for an adoption match to finalize. Through it, he is working in our hearts - and our kids' hearts - every step of the way. So even though we never got to kiss Aaliyah or snuggle Shiloh close, God has used them to draw us and our Stella, Ruby, and Schaeffer, nearer to his heart. This medal will continue to be a visible reminder to us that our empty arms are not an indication that God is slow in keeping his promises. Instead, he is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9) So we ask again, keep working in us and through us for your purposes, Lord!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Because of Aaliyah and Shiloh

My last post over five months ago, was written through tears of disappointment because God had used us in a birthmom's life in a way we wouldn't have chosen - being there for her through the struggle of her uncertainty, ready to welcome her baby into our family as our own, but then being called to rejoice with her as on her way to the hospital she called saying she was choosing to parent her child. After we hung up the phone from that call, without wasting much time, we went through the house putting away the pack and play, the car seat waiting to be grabbed on the way out the door to the hospital, and the pink onesies and sleepers ready to dress Aaliyah, our anticipated baby girl.

It wasn't primarily for me we cleared away reminders of the bundle who wasn't coming home, but because we knew who would be coming home in just a few hours. The trio of blessings God had called us to parent. And we didn't want to make the sight of unfulfilled hopes harder for them to bear.

I laid with Stella in her bed later that afternoon as she sobbed heartbroken, hugging her and wiping her cheeks, blotchy from tears. I couldn't help but wonder how navigating the peaks and valleys of emotions associated with adoption might effect her heart and view of God. But that was out of my control. As a family we talked through it, prayed about it, and grabbed onto the same truth that had us securely strapped in all along.

So we were not greatly shaken when our second adoption fell through a few months later. We opened our hearts to learn and be and receive whatever God wanted, and prayed for baby Shiloh and his future without us.

Then God surprised us again today, as he loves to do in adoption. But not with a baby to hold. Instead with a third place ribbon around her neck from Stella's speech contest. She competed against over 200 students and placed for her speech articulating why adoption is important. In it she said how adoption has helped her understand birth parents who are in situations so different from hers. She concluded that together we are loud in supporting adoption and helping children have loving homes.

Once again, God has reminded me that he has not wasted these last three years as we've been waiting for an adoption match to finalize. Through it, he is working in our hearts - and our kids' hearts - every step of the way. So even though we never got to kiss Aaliyah or snuggle Shiloh close, God has used them to draw us and our Stella, Ruby, and Schaeffer, nearer to his heart. This medal will continue to be a visible reminder to us that our empty arms are not an indication that God is slow in keeping his promises. Instead, he is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9) So we ask again, keep working in us and through us for your purposes, Lord!

 

We Don't Get To Decide

The situation takes me back 9 years ago. I'm standing at the counter mopping up crumbs while I mop up tears too. Wiping up a kitchen mess while I wipe my red, swollen eyes at the same time. The familiar lessons of sovereign bullets and choosing to give thanks in the taking, quickly come to mind. They are a strange comfort to my grieving heart, messengers of sorrow, but simultaneously singing a sweet refrain.

For two months now, we've anticipated the December placement of a baby girl in our home. We met with her expectant mom and talked, crying and laughing, for over an hour. She set up a hospital plan, inviting us to visit her during labor and take over parenting responsibilities immediately following delivery. And then yesterday, she changed her mind, and decided not to follow through with the adoption plan.

While we rejoice for this life and the unification of a family unit, we can't help but grieve over the loss of this baby being added to our family. Adoption always involves grief, and in this case, in spite of our tears, we are thankful that we are grieving so this birth mom doesn't have to. When starting down the path of adoption, it's easy to talk a big game about taking risks, being a father to the fatherless, and painting this glorious picture of the gospel. But actually, we don't get to decide how it all ends. Because really, God is the one who is ultimately Father to the Fatherless, and maybe what he really wants us to do is be faithful to show his love to those in need in smaller ways, like getting an expectant mom through the roughest six weeks of her life because she knows someone cares and is willing to love her child as their own. Maybe he wants us to bring her flowers and write her a reassuring card telling her she matters. Maybe he wants us to faithfully pray for her and her child because no one else is. And maybe he wants us to be willing to open our hearts and enter into her hard story and make it our own, helping her bear all the heartbreak and drama it involves. And in the end, maybe our arms are empty, but hers are full. And that's OK, because we don't get to decide how he uses us.

As friends (who have had more than their share of grief in the adoption process) told us, "We don't adopt perfectly. But God does." And our expectation has to be in him - the real Father to the Fatherless and Helper of the poor and needy. Maybe our adoption story doesn't end like we expect, at the front of a courtroom all smiles with the same last name. But maybe God chooses to use our willing hearts to love others in a smaller way, even to our personal hurt, as just a part of the process and writing of a few short pages in the longer story of their lives.

And we've decided that what he decides is good enough.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Marked By Motherhood

I walked you to the door of the Kindergarten building and let go of your chubby hand. That hand I've held for five years telling myself on so many occasions, "Don't forget what this feels like, Erica." You took your place in line and started taking in your new surroundings, thinking thoughts sprinkled with cluelessness and over-confidence, I'm sure. :) Stella, with the sweet swagger of an upper elementary classman, assured me she knew the way to her portable. So it was just me and Ruby headed to her building. And the girl who has never had a smooth start to school wrapped both arms around my neck and kissed my face and went in with a skip in her step. I was so grateful. Because on that day I was the one struggling.

The 1st day of school we had an ER visit because of a tripping accident on the way out the door. So, this is the 2nd day!

I could've gone out a different way, but I just had to walk back by your building again to see if you were still in the hall and if I might get one last look at you. Sure enough you were. And all of the sudden our roles were reversed and instead of your saying, "Look at me, Mommy! Watch me do this!" I was the one fighting for your attention, wanting so badly for you to look one last time so I could blow you a kiss and give you a thumbs up. In spite of the other distractions, your eyes made your way to mine and I got to wave to you again. My boy. The last of the trio of blessings who've been with me for 10 years now.

For 10 years I've had a baby on my hip, a toddler under my feet, or a preschooler at my table. For a decade I have been surprised by the monsters I've seen surface from my own heart, chased monsters all around the house, and prayed away monsters in the dark. For a decade I have worn spit-up covered clothes, transition clothes until I "lose my baby weight," or the same clothes three days in a row. For these past 10 years I have had Mommy brain, Mommy hair, Mommy jeans, and finally realized becoming a mommy is something you never recover from. I've been marked by it forever.

So when I got back to the quiet van, I was ashamed at how many times I had wished for the quiet that all of the sudden I had and despised. I opened the door to our house and instead of being frustrated that I had to answer the same question for the millionth time ("What are we were going to do today?!"), I was frustrated that no one was asking. And just like that, I realized the door was closing on the little years with our three. Just. Like. That.

There are numerous things I can pour myself into in this new school-aged season of life, and I will. There are things I cherish about their ages now and ways it stretches me and drains me and keeps me on my knees, and I want to be faithful here and now. And by God's grace, I will. But this week, I'm letting myself feel the weight of the goodbye to this season of life with my babies. I'm rehearsing lessons learned, facing oh so many regrets with the forgiveness of Jesus and the good news of the gospel keeping me from despair, and remembering the sounds of laughter, pitter patter of newly walking feet, squeals of excitement, the bright wonder of little eyes, unending interrogations about everything, tender cuddles, loud belly laughs, silly tickles, filling, refilling and spilling sippy cups, and wiping bottoms, noses and mouths. So bear with me if I remind you how fast it goes. And bear with my puffy eyes and stuffy nose and sentimental reminiscing. I've been marked by motherhood, and I couldn't be more thankful.

 

Posted with Blogsy