The Beautiful (and tricky) Incarnation

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

The incarnation.  

I don’t know if there has ever been a Christmas where the fact that God left heaven where there was no conflict or lost tempers or grudges harbored or disobedient children or expectations unmet or too many people under one roof or burnt bacon or gifts that don’t fit or nights of no sleep and came to this world that is all of those things and more has been so precious to me.  Can you imagine?  Would you ever leave a place where the people you were with were always complimentary and in perfect union with you?  Where there were entire fleets of angels worshiping you? And to leave this to go live with people who would kill you?

No thank you.

This Christmas was hard.  Not just because the brokenness of the world is so apparent, but because the brokenness of my heart is.  The stress of visiting both sets of family over the weekend returned back to Richmond with Sloan and me. And we, well, we were less than our best selves today.  Tempers were lost.  Tears were shed.  Feet were stomped.

Happy birthday Jesus, sorry your party was so lame.

As we left my sister’s house this afternoon from Christmas dinner, Sloan and I reconciled to one another and laughing, I started crying.  Not because my feelings had been hurt or my expectations unmet, but because I was overwhelmed with what Christmas really is about.

Incarnation.  Willingly entering into vulnerability and conflict for the love of another.  For the sake of another.  Bearing with and for another.  It's beautiful and tricky at the same time.

It is only fitting that we get stressed out about visiting family and it sometimes gets ugly.  That’s incarnation.  That’s what Christmas is.  It’s about a young girl, 9 months pregnant, having to go to her in-laws and there not being enough room so they stick her and her husband in a barn to have her baby.  (Can you imagine that conversation?  It was a census.  It’s not like Joseph’s kin didn’t know they were coming.  And convention would’ve had them staying with family, not looking for a Motel 6 like we often think.  But they were stuck in a barn.) It was into this smelly family quagmire that Jesus came.  God put on flesh.  Flesh that can hurt and bleed.  He chose to enter into conflict so that we could be re­conciled to Him and to one another.  He dwelt among us so that we could see and partake in His glory, grace, and truth.

In the dark, Henry remarked, “Daddy, Mommy is crying.  Again.” 

I said, “Henry, I’m crying because sometimes Daddy and I fight and I get my feelings hurt and I say mean things, but Jesus still came for me.  As a baby born on Christmas, he entered this difficult world so that Daddy and I could say we are sorry and forgive one another and really, really mean it.  Even though we are still sad a bit and hurting.  But we know that Jesus loves us and forgave us and forgives us still.  That is why we celebrate Christmas.  Because God is with us.”

And in typical 5 year old fashion, my darling son said, “Yeah, yeah. Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday Jesus.  Is Santa going to come again tonight?  Because I REALLY want to get some more Skylander guys.”

Oh, come, our Dayspring from on high,
And cheer us by your drawing nigh,
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,
And be yourself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Long Lay the World in Sin and Error Pining

A couple of people have asked my thoughts on where to turn and what to do in light of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.  And there’s one part of me that wants to say “I don’t know” and another part that wants to say “Turn to Jesus.”  I pray the parents who lost their children reach out to the One who knows what it is like to lose a child in a violent murder.  Because I’m certain only He knows what to say.

We are in the season of Advent.  We are waiting for Him to appear so our soul’s can feel their worth.  It is for these very heartbreaks and tragedies that God took on human flesh and bore the brokenness of the world.  And many folks who know a lot more than me have written very profound reactions.  I’m quite certain your Facebook feed is littered with links of prayers written by pastors and yes, we should be like Mr. Rogers and “Look for the helpers.”  In fact, I propose we seek ways to be those helpers in our own communities.  But for those of you who want to read some things that may help you put words to your grief, anger, and confusion, may I suggest:

laurakassner.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/dealing-with-crisis-resources-for-parents-and-teachers/

www.nicoleunice.com/blog/kneel-and-pray-for-newtown/

www.examiner.com/article/morgan-freeman-on-adam-lanza

But I’ve also wrestled with the truth that yesterday’s tragedy was not an anomaly.  Half of my kids live in a country where kids being gunned down is the norm.  Where kindergartners are stolen from their families, handed automatic guns, and brainwashed to believe that if they even think of running or not fighting, they will be killed.  Thousands of children die every day from starvation and malnutrition related illness.  So there’s part of me that wants to scream out “Who is crying for these kids?”  We live in a fallen world.  If you are just now figuring this out, I welcome you to reality.  It's scary and frightening, but there is also hope, and love, and faith.

I spent yesterday in a fog of tears.  Trying to alternate reading news on my phone with wanting to be with my kids.  We didn’t watch any television news.  And we still haven’t.  It’s not that I don’t care.  I do.  It’s just that I’m not sure how much help diving headlong into the details will help our collective grieving selves.  I also don’t want to be a part of a public yelling match about what needs to happen next in our culture.  Yes, let’s discuss issues regarding mental health and gun control.  But let’s discuss it.  Not shout it in ALL CAPS or in photos of hand guns on our facebook walls.  Because to my dear friends who are NRA members, your grip on your 2^nd Amendment rights probably rings a little hollow to the parents who have no one to tuck in tonight.  And the example I have in Jesus is one of giving up rights for the sake of another.  And to my dear friends who are picketing for a ban on all guns, the law has never been nor will it ever be our salvation.  Knowing right from wrong is not our problem.  It is the follow through we all struggle with every day.

 

So where do we go from here?  I think we attempt a new normal.  Last night I sang and rocked Gracie long after she had fallen asleep on my chest.  When it came time to check on Henry before Sloan and I went to bed, I scooped him up and brought him in to snuggle with us.  This morning I let the kids eat cereal in baggies in their jammies in front of the TV.  But at some point, we have to enforce bedtimes and not eat chocolate ice cream for dinner.   

A friend of mine commented on Facebook that she was praying for the moms who snapped at their kids for doddling before school.  So I’m hoping my new normal includes more patience.  I’m hoping my new normal includes setting my phone down a lot more.  Letting texts sit because I’m in the middle of a tea party.   

I posted the following yesterday on facebook.  This is my heart.  This is my prayer.

While squeezing my 5 yr old a little too tight, he asked why I was crying.
Me: Because a bad man did a bad thing.
Henry: What did the bad guy do?
Me: He shot some people with a gun.
Henry: (shaken) Were they bad guys too?
Me: No. They were little kids. Like you.
Henry: (lips quivering) But why?
Me: I don't know. I guess he had a lot of sin and anger in his heart.
Henry: But didn't he know that Jesus loves him?

Father, we are hurting. It is for this very thing that you sent your son. You forewent your rights as God to grant me rights as a daughter. You, not the law, are our salvation. Be near the broken hearted. Be near those whose arms will be empty tonight. And for those of us who struggle with doubt and anger and fear, remind us that You love us. Remind us that Joy, indeed, has come to the world and that He came to make His blessings known far as the curse is found. Amen.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.  Come quickly.

Good things are coming...

So you were probably expecting this to be a post about how we only have two more nights in this house.  How Henry helped me pack up all his Thomas trains and tracks and said, "I guess this is really real because where my trains go, I'm going too.  Two more nights and then I get my new room!" 

But the post about the new house will have to wait. 

Why?

What could be more exciting than the new house?

This.  That's two signed and sealed referral acceptance letters.  That's right.  We've got kids! 

(And sorry if these descriptions are kinda cryptic.  I don't want to divulge too much identifying information on the interwebs that could possibly interfere with our adoption.) Our children are biological siblings from a town whose primary language is Swahili.  And because God likes to mock me with His sovereignty, the city where they are from was called Elizabethville under Dutch rule.  And we got the referral the day after we closed on the new house.  You know, when we actually had room for 4 kids.  One year to the day from when we learned that Grace had two younger birth siblings and we first thought that perhaps we'd be a family of 6 one day. 

Classic Jesus showing me what's up.  I get it.  I get it.  You've got this.  I'll just hold the tail while You skin this cat.

Our son, C, is a few months younger than Gracie.  Our daughter, A, turned 1 over the summer.  It is our fervent hope to have the kids home prior to her 2nd birthday.  From this point, the average time frame is typically 6-9 months.

We haven't yet decided 100% on what we plan to name our children.  With K and N, we planned to bump their African names to their middle names and give them family first names.  We had planned to call K an American nickname for his African name.  But our children's names given to them by their African birth mother are not your typical African names.  They are French and the family names we had picked out just don't seem to fit them.  We think we've settled on their names, but we aren't sure.  So we are going to hold those close to the vest for a little while.  So as for now, we are simply calling them their given names.  But Gracie calls her little sister something completely different.  She can say her sister's actual name, but prefers a nickname she has given her.

She is acting like a big sister already.  Bossy and planning to not share her toys. 

But we did get to send in packages for them to get at Christmas.  

For A. 

For C. 



Next month, we hope to send them shoes, but we don't know their actual shoe sizes, so I think we will try to get them some Crocs.  In order to insure that the packages make it through customs, it is best if we send them gently used items. Thankfully, I have friends who have kids roughly the same age as my youngest children. 


We are over the moon. 

A Tale of Two Paintings

Ummm...why is she sitting in fruit eating the bible? 

Notice that this little sweety in in a cart.  That would be my cart.  

For my youngest daughter's new room.  The room with the pale blue walls.

I Don’t Like to Talk About my flair…

So some of y’all have asked for an update regarding our adoption.  I’ve been hesitant to post something because a)there just isn’t much to tell, b) what there is to tell is sad, and c) I’ve cried and prayed and chatted with folks who’ve been in similar places so that now, I’m kinda done with it and am moving on.

But part of the whole purpose of this blog to tell my story so that I can’t forget all that God has and continues to do in our family’s life.  

So…

At the beginning of August, we learned about a sibling group, K & N.  K, the boy, is a few months younger than Henry and N is 15 months younger than Grace.  We found out about the pair of precious children on the eve of K’s 5^th birthday, so we bought cupcakes and sang for him with some friends.  I cried imagining that my boy was somewhere alone on his birthday.  We began dreaming of bunk beds for the boys and the plan to move to a larger house was born.

We soon learned that the kids were in fact waiting to be in an orphanage.  So we found ourselves in place we never imagined, praying our kids INTO an orphanage.  At the time, they were living with a gaggle of kids at the rural “hospital” where their young widowed birthmom left them when N got malaria.  So we prayed for their health and safety.  The village where they were was roughly a 4 days journey for our agency’s workers as there are no roads, phones, cell coverage, computers, etc.  News on their well-being was shotty.  But we continued to trust in the Lord.

We prayed for K’s transition into our family.  We never really worried too much about N, really.  She’s young.  She’s a girl.  But what had K seen?  What had he understood?  Who was he longing for?  Did he even want a new forever family?  Over and over we looked at his picture on our phones.  His smile beckoning us to bow down at the throne of grace over and over on his behalf. 

We learned that N had recovered from her illness and had been moved to a foster home.  A foster home!  But we also learned that the relatives from their deceased father were blocking K's adoption.  Did they want to raise him?  Was this just a power play?  Was this a ruse for something in return for a signature on a form?

We agreed with our agency that we were unwilling to even entertain any unethical requests.  Our facilitator made the journey once again to plead to keep the kids together, only to find that the family members who had initially said, “Yes, we will sign,” were no shows.  Our facilitator felt uneasy.  It was becoming more and more apparent that the sense of urgency we felt was a foreign concept in Africa.  And meanwhile, N waited in foster care.  Unable to be adopted by anyone because she was part of a sibling group that was potentially being split.  

We prayed.  We cried.  We begged for wisdom.  We spoke with our case worker.  Over and over again.  And we suddenly knew that the reason we had imprinted on that dear boy’s smile was not because he was our son, but because we were to be the ones to pray for him daily.  We chose to walk away. 

Walk away isn’t really the best way to describe it.  We will not be a party to preying upon the poor.  We will not “buy” a child when it’s very possible that his uncle wants to raise him.  I mean, if we die, our kids will go to their uncle.  That’s what family is supposed to do.  But we are also mindful of what can happen to a boy in Western Africa.  So we pray that K will never hold a rifle.  We pray he will never have to be anything other than a boy with a smile so brilliant it reached across the ocean and stole my heart.   

Please join us in this prayer.  And for all boys like him.

I will say that emotionally, this has been hard.  Harder than my miscarriages.  Harder than the lost referral of J.  Because it felt so hopeless.  It wasn’t that it wasn’t us who was adopting him, but no one.  I found myself faced with the following question:  Do I really believe God is the Father to the fatherless? 

Like most difficult things involving grief, the hardest part was telling the kids.  Gracie really didn’t get it.  She has prayed for K & N nightly, but she also prays for her stuffed animals.   But Henry, he cried.  I held him on the bed that had become known as K’s bed and we cried.  But it was in my simple and truthful answer to him that Jesus met me.

 

“Mommy, why can’t K be my brother?”

“Well, because he has a family member who wants him.”

“So he is not an orphan?”

I was stunned.  I had never really thought about it like that.  I was only thinking of how I would never get to hold him.

“No, son.  He is no longer an orphan.  God has heard our prayers.”

We also found out on the same day we told our case worker we would fight no more that J, the referral we lost from China, had been matched to his forever family.  So two little boys we had and will continue to pray for, were orphans no more. 

So with tears in our eyes, we rejoiced.

So now we wait.  We are grateful to be working with an agency that hires investigators and seeks to operate ethically in a country strife with corruption.  And let me say that I do not believe that the corruption in the DRC is unique.  Corruption is everywhere.  And extreme poverty feeds it.  But we will not.

We are currently waiting upon receiving another referral for another sibling group.  Today I went to get new paperwork for our dossier with our new address on it, so there will be no hold ups with immigration.  Once we receive and accept our referral, there will be another big check to write and approximately 6-9 months until we travel to get our kids. 

BUT…once we get that referral, we can start sending care packages.  We can send a gallon size Ziploc bag to each kid once a month.  My bags are out.  And Henry has picked out a train for his little brother.  And Grace a dolly for her sister.

Mes petits enfants, we are waiting for you.  Ever trusting Jesus to bring us to you.  K & N, you are not ours, but you are HIS.

A Real (political) Conversation

We took the kids with us to vote this morning.  Henry went with me into the voting booth.

Henry:  Why are you doing this?
Me:  I'm voting.  I do it because it is a privilege to live in a country that lets its people choose its leaders.  When I fill in this circle, it means that I want that person to be my leader.

I then went through each section (here in VA that was President, a Senator, a Congressman, and two Constitutional Amendments), reading him the names of each candidate and which political party each one represented.

Henry:  So you are picking the good guy, right?  Which ones are the bad guys?
Me: chuckling Well, you could ask different people that and they would give you different answers.  But let me tell you the truth:  it's complicated.  Each of these people has worked hard serving their country.  They've gone about it in different ways and have different ideas of what is best for everyone, but they are BOTH good guys.  Do they always make good choices?  No.  Sometimes they make bad choices.
Henry:  Bad choices mean sad consequences.  (This phrase gets said countless times in our house every day.)
Me:  Yes.  That is true.  And when an elected leader makes a bad choice, the sad consequence happens to a lot of people.  But every few years, we get to pick again. 
(pause)
Henry:  Can I go get my sticker now?
Me:  Yes.  You can go get your sticker now.  I'll even let you feed my ballot into the box.  (But that was a lie.  They didn't let him.  I had to do it.  But he carried it to the box for me.)

3…The Magic Number

This girl is three. 

We (barely) made it out of the terrible twos alive.  Her preschool teachers describe her as a party in a can.  I’d say that is about right.  Because most parties I attended in college were loud, left me sweaty, covered in unknown stains, and crying in the corner.  

I prefer the term "hot mess."

She is sassy and smart.  She is the ultimate Daddy's girl and loves nothing more than to be with, sit on, kiss, climb on, or dance with her Daddy.  When I make her mad, she says, "I'm telling Swoan!"

She is always on the move and can often be found standing on her head.  Her athletic abilities are staggering.  She can do pirouettes, hop across the room on one foot, run like the wind, do forward rolls, and leap from the couch to Sloan’s chair unscathed (which are about 4 feet apart).  And trust me, I have not tried to teach her any of these things.  And given her passion about all things pirate, she usually does all of the above while wielding a sword.  She is currently enrolled in a creative movement class and we are hoping to put her in gymnastics as well after the New Year.  Yes, I do think she is a bit young to have 2 classes a week.  But her temperament and energy level are such that I really do think she will do best when her schedule is booked and her boundaries are firm.  Henry and I will just happily read books and try to move as little as possible while she runs circles around us.

She has two imaginary friends with whom she does EVERYTHING.  Their names are Mrs. Fox and Mrs. Walker.  Incidentally, there is a teacher at her school named Mrs. Walker.  Mrs. Walker isn’t her teacher, but since Mrs. Walker is my friend in real life, she just might dote on Gracie a bit.  And Gracie loves her fans.  We once saw Mrs. Walker at a restaurant and she screamed louder than a tween at a Bieber concert.  At least once a day she asks me, “Remember when we saw Mrs. Walker?  I WUV MRS. WALKER!!!”  

She is a horrible eater.  She would prefer to just eat cheese, crackers, bacon, and Honey Banana Chobani yogurt.  She will pretty much do anything, including keeping on her sleep cap or pooping on the potty, for the promise of a chocolate chip.  And her heart is so big that it is unacceptable to her if only she gets a chocolate chip.  EVERYONE present must eat a chocolate chip with her.  So I take one for the team and eat the chocolate.    

She continues to love her Pinkie and loveys.  She is learning to sit for long periods of time while I do her hair.  Of course, this requires the help of Pixar and snacks, but yesterday I spent 5 hours braiding her hair in the hopes we don’t have to mess with it much during the next two weeks while we move. 

And now, I’ll leave you with her interview.  The answers in italics are my explanations of her own words.

Favorite color: Purple

Favorite Book: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Favorite Song: Jesus Loves Me

Favorite Food: Pizza and Candy!!!  (And of course she asked for candy after answering this) 

Food that is yucky:  beans (actually ALL vegetables are hated equally. She goes to bed without dinner a lot.  A lot.  But she weighs 34 lbs, so clearly, she isn’t starving.)

Favorite Restaurant: Angelo’s

Favorite Sport: Dance class!

Favorite TV Show: Little Einstein’s

Favorite Movie: Mary Poppins (We watch it at least once a week.  We are watching it now.)

Favorite Toy: Lego Soup (She likes to “cook” with legos at her kitchen.)

Favorite Game:  Hide and Seek (*ahem* not so much the seeking)

Favorite Thing at School: play toys with my friends and see Mrs. Walker on da pwayground

Favorite Place to Go: Costco

Favorite Thing to do with Mommy: Spin to music

Favorite Thing to do with Daddy: Cuddle

Favorite Things about Henry: I can’t remember. (I do.  I’d have to say that he has never once hit her or pushed her despite her constant fretting, pushing, sitting upon or toy stealing.  In fact, we’ve had to teach him to use his hands to pry her off of him sometimes.)

Favorite Thing About about Myself: I don’t know.  I gotta tink about it.  I SOOOOO funny. 

If I could go anywhere in the world it would be: Costco. 

When I grow up I want to be: I want to be Gracie Mommy.

3 words to describe myself:  energetic, silly, mischievous

My wish for the coming year:  to be a witch for Halloween.