Thanks

I had been writing in my mind all day. I love days off with my children driving around town or hanging out at the house listening to music for that reason. If you love to write or create art, you probably know what I mean. Anything can trigger a phrase or monologue in my mind and I have to stop whatever I am doing and find a pen and somewhere to compose. Although now, thanks to technology and a fully charged Blackberry, I can use my thumbs to type in an idea into my notepad when I am in a crunch. 

Until now, I have avoided the 30 days of Facebook thankfulness, mostly out of rebellion. I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook (I will leave that for another time).  As I reflect on the last 23 days and re-read my blogs, I am thankful for adoption. If you are a faithful reader, you probably could have predicted I would say that. Maybe this is where I am at for the month because it is National Adoption Month. We began the month as a family celebrating orphans and adoption by praying and fasting corporately with others around the Earth who have a heart for those orphaned from HIV/AIDS, earthquakes, tsunamis, and parents who just knew they were not ready to be parents.

Yesterday my children and I saw thankfulness, hatred, impatience, love, duty, courtesy, and incompetence all acted out in preparation for today (Thanksgiving Day). One woman even went so far as to wildly gesture and give me a talking to from her car window as she drove the wrong way down a one-way lane in the parking lot at Hy-Vee. These acts cause me in each moment to reflect on thankfulness and the season upon us. I am thankful that I have been taken through the pain of endometriosis, without which I would not have been brought to foster care and adoption at the right time in my life. So on Thanksgiving I am thankful for the reminder of those who have no family. I am thankful for my adoption into God’s family, and for my opportunity to see adoption worked out in my family. I am thankful for the reminder of the students who have been in my life who have not had a family and have lived life in a group home or foster-care situation. I am thankful for the tears I shed for them. I am thankful for the hope that lives in my heart every day that the One who has saved me has the power to save them. He will give them the desires of their heart, too. And maybe it goes without saying, I am thankful for my family (those by blood and by love) who has made me the person I am today and continues to support me pursuing the desires of my heart. As a teenager would I have thought twice or even once about adoption? A life devoted to missions with orphans? Or working with children who have severe special needs? Nope.  I am a change in the making. Thank you! What are you thankful for? How has it transformed you?

Linger

Do you ever have one of those perfect days even though nothing is perfect? Maybe it has to do with my new music obsession, She & Him, I don't know. But the perfect day started with me spilling my chocolatey breakfast drink all over the carpet while pretending I was Donna Reed (minus the heels, although I do don an apron while cooking) and folding towels before getting my kids and self off to work on time.


 I drove circles around my neighborhood this morning just so I could breathe. And as I buckled my son in his car seat, he peered down at me while I struggled to reach around in our stinkin' big SUV and blindly feel for the other end. As my eyes meet his gaze, he says in a tone of voice only he uses, "Mommy, I yuve you." There is purity in his voice, the inflection and the revelation. I pray never leaves. So after my second asthma attack, we ran back to the house to get my inhaler where Daddy offered to run him to daycare, so I could literally catch my breath that I had lost while running circles in our neighborhood.


And as students melt down and curse in imperfect speech at work, or when you hear of a parent doing something you would never dream of, you "Linger Still." When this song came on my new CD that I checked out from my local library this week from She & Him, how could I resist sharing it? The tune makes me get up and shuffle my feet with imperfect rhythm. And the phrase "linger still" stuck with me and made me recollect the moments I miss each day. The moments today I chose to linger and the ones I chose not to linger in.


What makes you happy? Today I lingered in my son's blue eyes and his "I yuv yous", my daughter's developmental pediatrician appointment and how blessed we are to have a doctor who takes time to listen to EVERY concern from this mother (no matter how silly), finding fun ways to practice spelling with my step-daughter, and even listening to my middle-schooler practice his viola. The pièce de résistance was having them all in bed on time, me in my new Old Navy pink fleece snowman PJ pants, Coca-Cola in hand and typing on my laptop, sharing with you, my beloved readers! Thanks for reading!

http://www.myspace.com/sheandhim/music/songs/lingering-still-65461464

Adoption Love

Slowly I have been decorating a house I have lived in for almost seven years now with my husband. Three of which our two beautiful children have filled with laughter, tears, fun, hurts, love and the beauty of who God is. This week I was attempting to add another set of pictures to the hallway on our main floor of our cape cod. I spent nearly 15 minutes searching for a hammer I never found, to give in to using the edge of vice grips to unsuccessfully hammer in two needles to the wall to hang the picture frame from. This frame in particular was a gift from my parents. Half of a matching set, it quotes the Bible.  In particular it only partially quotes the love phrase from 1 Corinthians 13. It focuses on verse 7: bears ALL, believes ALL, hopes ALL, and never ends.

Why is it that when it comes to caring for the orphans do we called after Christ’s own heart, not bear ALL things? Believe ALL things? Hope ALL things? I Corinthians affirms, “Love suffers long and is kind, love does not envy, love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (vv4-8)

For a week I have contemplated the “all” of this verse and the “all” of my Jesus. What is His ALL—the whole of divine love? When God uses this Agape love and His “all” in the New Testament, what did he mean for us to bear all? Endure all? Hope all? When God uses “all” it speaks of, “all encompassing in scope—to the fullest measure”. Not one is left out. What has “all” meant to me? In the beginning of caring for our two, in my secret quiet prayer time, God blessed my heart to wholly pray for “all” their needs including those who had neglected and hurt them for their whole lives.

If my Bible is the breathed, inspired word of God, why then, can you not see that these children and their parents are gifts from God that you can and should love? As we stepped out 3 years ago in a leap of faith, the phone call came in as we were getting our hair cut. Chris was in between jobs. He didn’t have a steady income. I was on Christmas break from school. The family services worker was ending the list. We had determined we really only wanted to wet our toes in the small waves with one foster child. This was a sibling group and at the upper age range we wanted to take. And in the back of your mind, you know if it doesn’t work out in an emergency placement, you can hope to pass them to a more permanent situation sometime in the first 30 days…

 “Love bears all things. Love endures all things. Love suffers long and is kind…” Allyson would not fall asleep until 2 or 3 am and had to be held and rocked and gingerly placed in her bed. Aaron could not leave her sight. Every night as I rocked her for hours I prayed for her parents. “Love dos not parade itself, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own…. I did not pray for their parents’ demise, but that they would be released from demonic influence of drugs, abuse, poor parenting, greed, etc. “Love thinks no evil, love does not rejoice in iniquity…” As much as I wanted my own children and family, these children were such a gift and miracle that they could be alive after the neglect they endured. How could I bear taking that away from their birth mother? I knew the creation that my own womb would not produce. I could not be the one to take the chance from this mother and father. We had to do everything in our power to come along side them, no matter how it seemed to go against common sense and what the world said was “right” to help them be parents to these miracles.

God would do his part where our love and prayers stopped.

He knew from the beginning that Allyson and Aaron would always belong to us. In a way, their parents are a part of our family, too. The foster-care system failed them both when they were children needing a forever family. It failed to protect them. Chris and I now stand in the gap daily for them, even though we no longer have direct contact with them, we are glad they are a part of our story.

Through this experience of foster care and adoption, he showed Chris and I that our calling is to help the orphans in a capacity that many are not called to. Even if you are still feeling like, I could never give a child back; I hope that you are seeing how you could love both the child and the parent, no matter what the parent has done. That God has called us to LOVE—and that through His love and our prayers anything is possible! In as much as these orphans need our love, so do the hurting parents. How can God use you to help the children in our neighborhoods who have no one to love them? Those who cannot call someone Mom and Dad?