Where are the boys?

John and I were able to get out of town with out the children last week as he had a retreat he was running in Fredericksburg.......one of my favorite towns. It is also where my aunt and uncle live, so we went to their house and out to dinner one night with them. When we were at their house, she was showing me some pics on their refrigerator. I looked at the other side and saw pictures of my the girls (aka: my bio children), but no pictures of my boys. I was perplexed for a minute and then it hit me....they are the "not bio" children. I will give her the benefit of the doubt on Toben as she probably has not received a picture of him from me, but Noah...I am sure in the past six years, she has received a picture of him! It made me sad..was just a shot of reality that not everyone sees our family as we do. We don't see color or how they came to us, they are just our kids. Period. I got angry for a minute, then prayed that God would use my family to teach these a little more about His love for ALL people!

.......Or maybe I am just being too sensitive and seeing something that is really not there at all, but I just couldn't help but notice two of my children missing from the picture place!

She's growing up!

I have been dreading this day for months now. I knew it needed to come, but I just didn't want to admit it....Callie and I went shopping for her first bra today! You might think she would be embarassed that I am blogging about this and I might not should....that might be true of some girls, but this is the girl who took a picture holding up her new undergarment and texted it to her daddy! She is so excited! She wants to grow up so fast...makes me sad. I keep telling her to cherish being a child...never again will she get to be one! But just like all of us, she is too busy trying to get to the next stage of life to enjoy and cherish the one she is in!

Today a bra, tomorrow a car then a cap and gown and then a diamong ring. All too soon my Cindrella will be gone! God help me to be the mother I need to be to this precious little girl to make her into the woman You need her to be!

Meme Tagged

I have no idea what a meme is, but when I find out, I will let you know. In the mean time if anyone knows what it is, please feel free to post a comment and inform me!

Regardless of what a meme is, I think I can do this.....

Courtney tagged me. I told her I was going to have to wait unti tomorrow to do this because it is late, but as I was about to shut down my computer, I thought of one. So here goes.....

This meme originated over an idea that was prompted by the book written by Larry Smith & Rachel Fershleiser, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure. It’s a compilation based on the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. His words were, “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.”

1. Write your own six word memoir.

2. Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like.

3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blog sphere. Find Courtney's Memoir Here

4. Tag 5 more blogs with links.

5. Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

My life in six words......those of you who know how long winded I am know how hard this is for me, but here it goes....

Seeking God Because He knows best!

I tag:

Crystal

Emily

Jody

Rachel

Kami

Me, the Freak!

I remember a time when I thought the song "Jesus Freak" was just hard rock. But now, it seems to be my theme song. I have written before about how I feel like an alien in this place we call home. Yet even more today than when I wrote that, I feel like a freak because of my beliefs.

We have been at a family reunion this weekend. It was interesting to say the least. One cousin I had not seen since our wedding almost 11 years ago. She walked up and I instantly saw a beautiful young woman. Now I know that doesn't sound like s strange statement, but she was not what I would normally think of as beautiful. She had long earrings that looked somewhat like chains and hung down to her shoulders. She was in sort of "earthy" clothing and had a tattoo on the top of her foot...along with one on her arm. But as I visited with this cousin, I realized why I found her beautiful, she loves the Lord with her whole heart! She has a countenance about her that makes her beautiful! That tattoo on the top of her foot is the same scripture I named my blog after. So that got me to thinking why someone that the old me would have seen as a little freaky is now so beautiful. And I didn't have to go far to figure it out.

You see, I feel much like her in many ways. I have found myself listening more and more to the "edgy" music. I don't know that it is because I "enjoy" it more, but it seems that not only is the music edgy, but the lyrics reflect lives that are lived on the edge. The lyrics aren't just about a wonderful God that makes our lives warm and cozy (while He can do that, and I love the songs that speak of His wonderful attributes), but they are about a life that is gut wrenching, that takes you to your breaking point just because you follow God in a way that people, even Christians, just don't understand.

So how did "Miss Prim and Proper in the Church Every Time the Doors are Open" become a punk rocker? Well, I think this is how.....

My faith that calls me to adopt children who don't look like me is my green hair.

My obedience to a God that asks me to go to Africa and meet a daughter I didn't get to bring home, but in the end still know I followed God in pursuing is my Mohawk.

My expectation of myself to live a life above reproach (even if that means offending even family members who choose a different life style) is the ring in my nose.

My four children whom I can't afford but have because God told us to bring home number four is the tattoo on my right arm.

My resolve to move to a small West Texas town because I know God has kingdom work for us is the ring making great big holes in my ear lobes.

My hearing God say to buy a house that has set empty for eight years and looks condemned in a tiny town that has NO real estate value is my black lip stick.

My obedience to put my dream home on the market after living in it for less than a year because God says it is time to move is the bar piercing my tongue.

My walk of faith to open an adoption ministry when I know nothing about how to do that is my combat boots.

My love that requires me to confront a friend walking in open rebellion to God is my chain around my hip.

You see, I may still look like Miss "Prim and Proper in the Church Every Time the Doors are Open" on the outside, but I am finding that as people get to know me, they look at me with the same horror because of my convictions as they would someone walking down the street with the physical attributes I described. I am just as much a freak to my family and my friends, who profess to be Christians, as someone who dresses in such a way. But the difference between the old me and the new me is that I am no longer apologizing for being the punk rocker! There is a dying world out there! There are too many hurting people who need Who I have to play the churchy games! Radical times mean radical measures! God is calling me more and more to the lost world! I hear the cries of lost people grow louder and louder. I can't ignore them! I must be more like Jesus every day so that these people crying out in agony because they are lost can see Him in me! I must look more like Him tomorrow than I did today and that means looking less like the world...even the world that goes to church! I want to be used radically by God to reach the lost and dying world! I have a feeling that there will be less and less of Miss Prim and Proper! God is calling me more and more to a place where I have to make a choice: His way or the world's way? Will I follow Him no matter the cost, will I follow Him into more isolation, will I follow Him when no ones "gets" it, or will I walk away? I have to choose to follow Him! There are people counting on me to be Jesus to them! God help me if I choose to be prim and proper over getting into the messy lives of people in need of a Savior! My view of beauty is changing! God is piercing my heart for a lost world......and maybe my nose along with it!

Maybe this is why.....

After my last post, God has shown me many things about possibly "why" adoption is so hard.

One of them is that He uses adoption to refine adoptive parents like nothing else can....it sure did me....all three times of my own and with each adoption I facilitate. I can see it in the adoptive families that I work with. Did I mention it is sometimes VERY difficult to be the person in the middle of the work that God is using to refine people? :) I am sure you pastors and pastor's wives out there can relate to that!

But as Noah was baptized last Sunday, I got a glimpse of something wonderful. I have to confess a little favoritism here over my biological children. I rejoiced when Callie accepted Christ and was baptized also...in fact we had a "Re-Birthday Party" to celebrate. We will have the same for Noah when life slows down enough to do it! But I have always wondered how I would react on the day that Noah made his statement public. Not just the reaction of a mother, but the reaction of a mother who didn't give birth to this child but knows that the whole purpose of him being in my family is to raise him up as a warrior in God's army? How would the deepest, innermost part of me react? Just like I thought I would! I rejoiced from my imost being; I wept like a baby! Then I gave my son a "high-five"!

Seriously, as John and I took communion with Noah for the first time, John leaned over and whispered to me "this is what it is all about". And I responded with, "this is why I push us so hard!". We both laughed! Later we talked about how humbling it was to watch Noah go under the water and then sit with him and take his first communion...both of us could not help but think of where he would be had God not picked him up out of the circumstances he was in and placed him in the middle of a family who wasn't even looking for a baby! Even now as I think about that, tears flow down my cheeks. What if I had not followed through when everyone around me thought I was nuts? What if I had let fear of the uknown or more importantly of the known things of his circumstance stop me from walking by faith? But because we persevered through fear and doubt, I have the awesome priveledge of leading this young boy to His Savior. I will fail him, I will not tell him the right things at times or be the example I should be, but even in my failures, God has allowed Noah to come to Him at the age of six. This is what it is all about! It is about raising up a young boy who would have been taken from drug house to drug house, but instead is sitting with his family reflecting on the sacrifice of a Man over 2000 years ago that allows him to have an intimate relationship with God and the promise of eternal life! It is about knowing that I have a young man in my house that will one day do great things for the kingdom because he will know nothing else to do because it is what he has lived his whole life.

Would the enemy let that happen with out a fight? I think not! He knows the impact these kids that are being adopted into Christian homes will have on this earth....this WHOLE earth! I have no doubt that many of the children coming home to families in our ministry will either return to impact their homeland or at the very least use the resources they have to impact the country of their birth. Recently even an official in this country expressed the same fear as his tribe is not the tribe of these children. To that I say, Praise God! Bring the children home so that they can be trained as warriors and fulfill all that God has called and gifted them to be!

So whether you are adopting domestically or internationally...whether you are just starting, are in the middle or just had one fall through. I can't answer all the why's. I don't understand all the struggles, but as I sat there that Sunday night and watched my husband baptize my oldest son, I wanted to get on the roof tops and scream, "All you people thinking about adoption, IT IS WORTH IT! This is living proof!" Adoption is worth every heart ache, every delay, every dollar spent, every sacrifice made, every sleepless night, every mile you have to travel, every tear you cry! It is worth it! Hang on! As a mother of two adopted children in my home, one in Sierra Leone West Africa, and one in the arms of Jesus, I can stand before you and honestly say, it is worth it! Hang on my dear friends, hang on! For a life is now sealed for ETERNITY and the enemy can do NOTHING about it! I can't help but think the miracle of adoption had at least a little bit to do with that! Praise God!

Why?

Why is adoption soooo hard? Why is something so close to God's heart so difficult. I knew when we adopted Noah we were blessed, but I didn't know the full extent of it until I really got involved with adoptions. His was a dream. Weren't looking for a baby, had one fall in our laps, didn't even have a home study, brought him home, was finalized in 4 months! We only even knew he existed three weeks before he was in my arms in my home. But that was the last easy adoption story I had! But it is not just us. I have a dear friend who was our first family with AH. They waited THREE years....only to end up adopting a five year old little boy right here in our home town. But the wait was heart wrenching! And this was after they lost a little boy who lived with them three weeks before his parents came back to get him, and lost a baby intenationally because the birth mom wouldn't go to the Embassy appointment at the end of the process without being paid a bribe!

My friend Jody just got home yesterday with her twins, but the trip took her and her husband to the end of themselves and that was after they thought they were at the end of themselves for the wait.

You have thousands of families trying to rasie the money needed because they have the hear but not the dollars.

I have another friend who lost her girls in Haiti after traveling to meet them and waiting for months on end only to be told her family was already too big.

Another friend went to Ethiopia to pick up her twins on deaths door after losing one to death in Liberia, one to a family returning for him, and one in the foster system.

One of our AH families lost a baby in Guatemala to death.

We have a family who have had visas for a long time now and just need a clearance letter, but still their children sit waiting. All of our families are waiting on their court decrees. Their hearts ache for these children. Yet they have to wait. If only all of them understood how much I want those children in their arms! I looked at pictures last night of my trip to Liberia, and I had to put them away because it just made my heart hurt too much to know that there are children there wanting love and wonderful families here waiting to give it, but I can't do anything to get them together but pray and beg God to move the mountains!

My dear friend had a disruption after the agency lied about the magnitude of issues in the child they placed in their home. Just showed up on their door step and took the children, literally. Then they lost two to parents deciding to parent. Lost three to parents returning and taking them from an orphanage before getting to bring home the three they have now.

Another friend has been on this adoption journey for nearly four years and still waits for her children in Haiti. She has lost one to being lied to by the agency that she was working with domestically. She has lost more than I can count to women saying they were going to place their children but then changed their minds.

I have yet another friend on her way home from a trip to pick up babies that they were suppposed to take home at birth, but bmom changed her mind. Then 11 months later, she calls and says she can't parent and wants them to have them. Yet after a week in another state in the bmom's city, bmom has quit talking to them and the lawyer, so they are headed back home, empty arms and broken hearts!

These are just the stories of families who have crossed my path...families who are answering God's call to adopt. Many of them truly answering a call...they can have bio children, they just desire to follow God and have His heart for orphans and children! Yet it is soooo hard!

Every one says when you get to heaven you will forget about all the questions you wanted to ask. But if there is on that I could ask, it would be, why God, did you make adoption so hard?

.....Maybe it is because He is giving us a glimpse of how hard He fought for our adoption as His sons and daughters! To show us the value He places on us, that He would allow His son to suffer the ultimate suffering so that we could be in His family. Just maybe......

This will keep you awake all night!

A couple of days ago, out of the blue, we got another e-mail from Sierra Leone with pictures of our beautiful Eden! The man who I met when I was in SL (whom I will refer to as "S") graciously checks on her for me. I had asked about her schooling as we have always known the least we could so is make sure she gets an education.

Well, we got new pictures, but the e-mail said some things that have haunted me. As much as I try to tell myself there is nothing I can do and it is not my issue anymore, I didn't sleep at all last night. "S" said that when he took Eden the picture of our familiy I had sent her that she "bost to her grand mother and father that she has a family in America so she will be there soon even her father was suprise to hear that". But that is not all! For thos who walked that journey with us, you remember that Eden bonded immediatly! When she would see me, she would break free of whoever had her and run to me! She wanted me over anyone from SL! The other two children being adopted never really bonded that way. But Eden was fully bonded....having to be ripped off my neck for me to board the helicopter to leave, a scene that will never leave my mind or my ears! But she was only 4, so I tell myself that she doesn't remember that. She was too young to understand, and doesn't remember any of it. WRONG! "S" said "[she]can remember almost everything that went [on] during the [time] when [we all] were in 'M' she explain[ed] [it] and even when she saw your picture she could remember you and ask me about the others [my current children] i could not explain to her. she also recall when you went to see the grave of her twin partner [Addy] she could explain to me [what happened]" I cried like a baby! She was standing there watching me as was her whole family! It was like losing Addy all over again!

Now I feel like I am losing Eden all over again. My dear friend is headed home from SL this evening with her two precious children! I am so excited for her, yet it rips open old wounds on my heart. Why God, why couldn't Eden have come home then?

I really dismissed all this and told myslef that it was a closed door and even if it opens again, doesn't mean that we need to walk through it. I mean, we have four children already! If we were to have more, I want to get pregnant, or if we are to adopt, I want to adopt a baby domestically! Do you hear all those "I's"? I do! :) Well last night as I lay in bed begging God to take it all away and let me sleep, Noah's sweet prayer to accept Jesus into his life came into my head. Then a voice that said, is Eden's eternal life worth whatever it would take to bring her home? Is an earthly education really what you know she needs? If she remains where she is, will she know God? Will she know Jesus died for her? And isn't that THE most improtant part of adoption among Chrsitian families? When I get to heaven, am I going to see her there, or will she be on the other side looking at me with those beautiful black eyes asking me why I didn't come back and tell her the Truth? Oh my goodness! Do you ever wish you could just turn your brain off?? What do I say all the time about people who just want to "throw money" at the problem? I say they are not laying down their lives for the children. So is God calling me to once again lay down my life for Eden? And now that would mean laying down the lives of 5 other people in one way or the other. I was talking to Callie about Eden, and she asked if we were going to go get her. I told her I didn't know. I asked her what if we do this all again and she still doesn't come home? This was her answer, "Then it would all be worth it wouldn't it?" It's never fun to be put in your place by an 8 year old!


So there it is. The reason I couldn't sleep last night. I haven't even shared all this with John yet. He has no desire to jump on that roller coaster again. Frankly, neither do I! But I wonder if God hasn't already bought our ticket to the ride and is just waiting for us to get on board! Pray for us! We need it!

The Greatest Day in a mother's life....

....is when one of her children make Jesus Lord of their life! I had the awesome privelege this evening of listening to Noah ask Jesus to be his savior. He prayed the sweetest pray asking God to make him love Him and not the devil. He asked God to take him to His house and not the devils. Then he said, "I love you and I will never let you go!" Wow! I was speachless, but the angels are rejoicing and when I told Noah that, he got up and started dancing saying, "I'm having an angel party, I'm having an angel party!" What an awesome day!

John was with Callie when she asked Jesus into her life. But I knew about it right after, and it was a sweet time. However, I can't help but linger a little with Noah to wonder what would life had been had God not allowed us the pleasure of being Noah's family. Callie said it perfectly tonight, "Noah, you are adopted twice! Once by us and once by God!" As I think of a single 26 year old girl who loved a little boy enough to let him go, I thank God that as she let him go, we got to hold him tight! I don't know that Noah would have even known God at the age of six had he not left her arms to come to ours. As I view adoption, I have to think that this day was the reason all along that Noah got to be one of us! God needed him in His kingdom so we have the awesome priveledge of calling him son as we teach him how to be the son of our Heavenly Father!