Category: being a mom

The Click of the Track

It’s like sitting at the top of the roller-coaster hill: the excitement, the unknown, the holding your breath before the rush… just waiting for the back of the train to push you over and the wildly wonderful ride to really begin.

Tomorrow when our county worker comes we will be notifying her that we’re ready to take a placement. Then we’ll be waiting (maybe for only a few days, only God knows) to see who God invites into our home through a foster placement phone-call. It could be before Christmas, or maybe afterward. But regardless, our hearts are and have been opened to sharing our lives because of the Greatest Gift of All coming down to visit us… in the depths of our very beings. Who knows what baggage they will carry, what hurt or what loss. But Jesus has and will continue to compel us to love deeper and walk this road with the American orphan.

We love you, precious child (or children) from a depth we did not create, but Christ created in us.  And we have so prayed over your coming.

Please… feel welcome, even if only for a short stay on your journey… come in and rest. You are safe here. You are so loved.

– God, please help us lean on You throughout this journey of loving the American orphan. And if it would be Your will, please bring a child home to stay, should they need a family. Lord, please give us the strength to bless and release and exercise forgiveness, should we get the opportunity to come alongside a broken family as they learn how to parent, love and protect. And please, Lord, I pray for our girls… God that You would open all of our hearts to Jesus along this path. Thank You for Your Hope and the opportunity to come alongside the American orphan, learning what it is to daily love a child (or children)…. from right where they are. Please help us to feel Your direction when the phone-call or phone-calls come in. May we say yes when You desire it and not only when we feel it’s the safest or most comfortable move. Please, Lord, I pray… speak and help us to obey with joy. I love You. In Jesus’ Name.

0

Fa Zhou’s Blossum

I enjoyed watching Mulan with the girls last week.

This is by far one of my favorite scenes of a parent’s relationship with their child.

I think I like the scene so much because it’s so easy to see my Matthew saying something like this to one of our little girls.

=)

0

It Caught Me

There was something in her stale eyes, dirt-clod mouth and blank expression that caught me.

One of those messages on facebook hit me this morning as I scrolled through my friends’ thanksgiving gratitude posts. You know, those “hit share if you feel some emotion” posts with someone’s story and a picture. Seeing so many of those things posted on my wall, I usually just breeze past them – maybe I’m just a victim of over-sharing. But I couldn’t scroll past this one. It hit me as such a stark contrast.

An eerie expression of a buried baby, with only her face uncovered. My stomach churned. [And thus is why I am choosing not to attach the story to this post.] A discomfort made me read the attached story below the picture. I was almost drawn to that painful terror, praying for the evidence of some hope in the storyline.

The story unfolded about an Egyptian father (self-proclaimed Muslim) who buried his two daughters (8 years old and an infant) alive beside his recently murdered wife whom he caught reading the Bible. The children reported, when discovered 15 days later, that “A man wearing shiny white clothes, with bleeding wounds in his hands, came every day to feed us.” Even explaining that the man woke up the children’s mother to nurse the baby. The eight year old identified the shining white man as Jesus on national television, broadcast to a predominantly Muslim nation.

While this story could be a testimony of Christ’s miracle, the repetitive image of a discarded life was etched into my mind. The horror of it all. Those stale eyes, dirt-clod mouth and that blank expression…

Maybe it’s because I see how easily she erupts in a radiant smile. Maybe it’s because I delight in her two month old coos. And the light in her eyes. Those wiggling arms and legs as she spots Matt and I coming near. Her delight. Her utter joy. And the beauty in her eyes…

And then to see this little one’s face… the distrust and broken pain in her listless figure.

I don’t need to watch horror movies, there is living horror all around us. People can do such terrible things to each other. Sin can sure corrupt in unimaginable ways. And while the depth of the pain, hurt and despair can feel endless, my heart yearns for the rescuing arms of Christ. I don’t ask to be rescued from witnessing the monstrosity in this world… no, but the depths of my soul groans and yearns for a rescuing Savior who marches into that brothel and grabs up His bride.

The inner needs for God’s justice for those who have been cast aside as unwanted and expendable…

“Oh that You would rend the heavens and come down (today), that the mountains would tremble before You! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make Your name known to Your enemies and cause the nations to quake before You!” – Isaiah 64:1

 

*** I was informed by my dear aunt that this story in itself was reportedly untrue. While this certainly makes my heart feel better regarding the poor lives of two innocent children, the reality that things like this happen in the world of child abuse and sinful acts parents do to “the least of these” is very much true in this world. And while this picture may not have been attached to a true story, the picture of a child’s face being found buried in the ground is sadly more common than we may want to admit. Again, I am relieved that this story was not true, but cannot rest in the naivety that these kinds of stories do not exist. It’s just that these kinds of monstrosities tend to not be widely publicized, just as mass genocide is not easily found in history textbooks.

0

By Firelight

The other night we decided to have our Family Devotion by firelight. We had recently had our chimney inspected (thanks Gene) and been cleared to have fires in our house. In any other context, having as fire in one’s house would be frowned upon, but we assured our concerned Rachael that it’s okay to have a “bonfire” in our home. (Funny how she wasn’t so trusting of our judgement at first since all of her experiences with fires have been outside).
So post-bath, we enjoyed a nice cup of hot chocolate each and settled in around the fireplace for with our family Bible.


It was fun to celebrate our first fire of the season with the awe of our small and antsy-pants kids. =)

– Here’s to many more fireside experiences this season.

0

Not So WordLESS Wednesday…

This Wednesday I wanted to share a picture, but this one requires a few more words. So it’s a “Not so Wordless Wednesday” over in these parts, but next week I’ll return to the more wordLESS side.

This is copied from an email. I had debated whether or not to share this, but I decided to share this because I think God will reap the glory.

“Matt was cleaning out the bathroom today when he emerged with it on the way to the trash. “Suppose we can throw out your old pregnancy test?” He chuckled. I had forgotten I had held onto it from when we first learned we would be welcoming our third child to the household. “I guess that one came to fruition, huh?” I laughed back as he tossed it in the trash and returned to his cleaning. I remember choosing not to throw it away so quickly. Something about having miscarried Alivia before made me want to cling to the hope of getting to see the next baby’s ultrasound. It almost solidified more in my mind that even if we lost this baby, she was real. Alivia felt like such a haze of misfortune and I just wanted to hold onto something real. I could not protect the baby, no more than I could protect Alivia.

I remember coming home with the first set of sonogram pictures. Our little peanut-baby. And wondering if we’d ever get to a second set of pictures this time. I trusted God. He gives and takes away and makes the best of every situation – even the hurts. I put the pregnancy test back in the bathroom cabinet. It still showed positive.

The second set of pictures came at 12 weeks and it was like a breath of fresh air. But there also lay the reality and the sting of past loss. I chose to hold onto the pregnancy test. It still showed positive.

I could have thrown it away when I first felt Hannah move. She was clearly proof in herself that thus far God had chosen for us to keep the child. But I left it put just for a little while longer. It still showed positive.

And when we came home from the hospital holding our precious Hannah in our arms, the test got pushed to the back of the cabinet some sleepy morning in search of the toothpaste. It got lost somewhere in the new challenge of raising three little ones, on a handful of hours of sleep. It still showed positive.

—

I fished the test out of the trash. [Don’t freak out, it was on the top. (hehe)] I just wanted to take a picture. So I grabbed the sonogram pictures from the fridge door and brought them over to the swing. I laid them on her sleeping little body, beside the “gangrene test”, Matthew and I had joked about. I took a picture.

Sure you can count me weird.

But I just wanted to remember how it felt…

to be standing in front of an answered prayer. ”

– Thanks be to God.

0

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑