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)

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.