Happy Easter!

If you don't want to see a bunch of photos of my adorable children, then you should probably skip this post.  

 Our little bunny who got her face painted at our neighborhood's egg hunt.

Bucketheads!

Surveying the loot!

I have chocolate!

2nd Annual Cousin Egg Hunt at my sister's house!  (aka how we get the kids out of the house while the meal is being prepared!)

 

 I just love this picture.  Taken by my very talented niece, Rachel.

This year's Easter was sponsored by seersucker. 

A scholar's parrot

This past Sunday, Sloan and I spoke in a Sunday School class about the Orphan Care ministry at our church.  And like most times I speak about how God has worked in my life, it ends up different than I expect.  Invariably, I expect to really bless people.  I expect to go in and cause tears and have people stand up and shout, “Blessed are you amongst women!  Hallelujah!”

Ahem.

This has yet to happen.  Instead, what usually happens is I cry, Sloan says a few things and then people end up blessing me. 

This Sunday was no different. 

Sloan and I spoke at the beginning of the class and then stayed for the lesson.  

They were first discussing what is our primary question we all have for God.  And we all pretty much agreed that is was simple—we want help.  We want to be fixed.  We want all of our suffering to stop. 

Then we went to Scripture and read from Mark 9:14-17.  This would be the section of your Bible probably titled “Jesus Heals a Boy with an Unclean Spirit”.   

To paraphrase…Jesus and some of his disciples have just been on a mountain and done the whole transfiguration thing.  Then they rejoin the disciples and there is a crowd.  The disciples have been trying to heal a boy to no avail.  So there is some arguing about their legitimacy and power.  And then there’s the Dad of the boy, probably wishing everyone would stop pushing in and just let him get his boy some help.  Jesus swoops in and says “How long am I to bear with you?  Bring him to me” and finds that the boy is mute and has what we would probably diagnose as epilepsy.  He’s always had it and it has caused him other injuries.  And then the Dad says, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us!”  And I love this part…Jesus says “IF?  All things are possible for the one who believes.”  And then we have what is easily my most favorite prayer in the Bible “Lord!  I believe!  Help my unbelief!” So Jesus speaks to the unclean Spirit and heals the boy.  But to be sure, at first everyone thinks that the boy is dead.  The healing looks like death.  Seriously, Scripture says the boy looks like a corpse.  But then Jesus takes the boy’s hand and helps him up.

I think in the past I thought the whole “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” prayer just sort of hung out on its own in Scripture.  I never saw that it was the beleaguered prayer of a Special Needs Dad.  This broke me.

It also broke me that what Jesus considers healing may look like death to me.  Frankly, I don’t really like that.  But there ya go.  That’s Easter.  There can be no Jesus taking my hand and helping me rise if at first things don’t die.  There’s no getting to Easter morning if we don’t walk through the agony of the cross.

And there is the dang rub.  I just want a basket of peeps, peeps.  Not the agony. 

And then, because the Sunday School teacher really wanted to hone in on my own self-worship and unbelief and the fact that what I really want God to be is a Grandpa who gives me everything I want—he gave us the following poem to discuss in small groups:

All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

I talk of love—a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek—

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

-C.S. Lewis

Father God, I believe!  Help my unbelief.  Break me free from my prison of self.  I confess I desire the world to revolve around me: Such a short orbit.  Enter in.  Call out my unclean spirit.  And just when I’m certain that I am dead, take my hand again and tell me to rise. 

Team Awesome

Henry joined his first team.  A soccer team.  We picked a league (i9) that stressed fun, learning, and sportsmanship as well as had the practices and games back to back on Saturday.  I kinda feel like having multiple practices a week for a 4 year is ridiculous.  He is mighty #8.

We knew that some girls from his school played with i9 and Henry wanted to be on their team so I made those requests when we signed up.  Little did I know that Henry would be the lone boy on the his little team.  When I heard they would get to pick the team name, I was worried my darling son would soon be a Pink Lady or a Pretty Princess.  I joked with one of the other moms, "If you're going to be the Butterflies, can you at least be the Fighting Butterflies?"

But not to worry, Henry and his teammates picked a fitting name for their amoeba that would be chasing the ball on the field: Team Awesome.  I asked Henry, "Awesome what?  Awesome players?  Awesome game?"  He said, "Ummmm....just Team Awesome.  Awesome everything."

Sounds pretty much right.

Henry's sweet temperament does not have him as the most aggressive player on the field.  If anybody fell down, he was the first to go and help them up.  If he happened to be near us, he would give us a thumbs up.  If the coach blew the whistle, he gave us a thumbs up.  At one point in the game, he came and gave me a hug.  It's not that I want him to ignore the kids who get hurt, but come on, perhaps maybe just shout over your shoulder, "Hope you're okay" and maybe at least moderately pay attention.  I mentioned this to a father the next day at our church's Egg Hunt as my son was reserving a pink egg for his friend Libby.  He confessed he was the same way as a kid.  Seeing as this dad is now a judge, I'm okay.  Henry can learn to be more competitive as he gets older.  Or not.  People tend to respond well to being given a thumbs up.

Of course, when we asked him what was the value of the week, he said, "I don't know.  I wasn't listening very well."

The value of the week was listening.  Clearly we didn't win the medal.  But if ever the week's value is wandering around the field aimlessly staring into the distance, he will be a shoe-in.

(If you can't tell which one is Henry, he is in the far distance.  You know, the one running in the opposite direction of everybody else.)

Movement(s)

There have been some movement(s) in the Phillips’ house in the past week.

Primarily, we had some progression in our home study.  We had our home visit last week.  This week we have three more interviews.  Tomorrow, I get to “dig deep” into the traumas of my formative years.  Sloan “digs deep” Friday morning, and then we get to discuss our marriage in depth Friday noon.

So that should be fun.  

Pray for me.  I understand the whys as to why our case worker wants to discuss it, but I’m so over it that I'm afraid I’ll be blasé about it.  Or that I’ll spend two hours bubble snot crying.  I sent our case worker several blog posts (like this one and this one) that I’ve written about the issue in hopes to head her off at the pass, so to speak. 

Secondly, we’ve had some progression in the potty training of Gracie.  We decided to sort of half-heart it for now until Spring Break so that I’m not constantly washing the car seat.  We want to just put her in panties and not look back.  But Gracie did not get this memo.

It was the afternoon before our home visit.  I has spent the day furiously straightening, dusting, mopping, and vacuuming—regretting not getting our cleaning lady to come on her off week.   

I was walking in the living room when…squish.  I had stepped in a heaping pile of warm poo.  In my house.  You know, in my pet free house.  Then there was a brown blur running the lap that is our kitchen, living and dining rooms chanting, “Stinky poopy!  I naked and I stinky poopy!  POOPY!”

I was dumbfounded.  I didn’t really know what to do.  I was not prepared to deal with human excrement on my living room hardwoods and then pittered pattered poopy footprints across my sisal rug.  Also, let it also be known that my FitFlops are heretofore labeled my “$h!tFlops”.  Had they not been black patent leather and the only flops I can wear with my plantar fasciitis, they would’ve heretofore been called trash.

The next day, about 5 minutes after our case worker left our house, Gracie pooped on the kitchen floor. 

Awesome. 

Dear Jesus, Thank you for the movement in our adoption of Charlie.  As to the movements with Gracie, that’s not really the kinda movement we need right now. Or ever, really. Amen.

Team Peeta

I wrote a longer post this morning while I was getting my car inspected, but for now, I simply want to declare unequivocally that I am on Team Peeta.  And to be clear, I'm not even sure how anyone else could be on Team Gale. 

If you don't know what I'm talking about, just carry on and maybe pick up a copy of The Hunger Games trilogy.  You'll finish it in less than a week because you will shirk all other responsibilities to finish it. 

To be sure, both Gale and Peeta love Katniss.  But Gale's love is self-serving, while Peeta's love is selfless.  Gale is a hard man.  Peeta is light and lovely and, for the love of Peeta, the boy bakes cheesy bread!  I couldn't stand Gale.  And I hated Katniss when she was with him.  His love for her hardened her, made her selfish.  While Peeta's love softened her.  But in a way that allowed her still to be strong and vibrant.  And if you find a man whose love allows you vulnerability and vitality, well, he's a rare keeper.  And again, let's not forget the cheesy bread!!

Oh, there's also the fact that I've had a pretty big crush on Josh Hutcherson since 2005's Little Manhattan.  It could be because of this...

Sloan Phillips in his youth...

And a young Josh Hutcherson...

And so now the cast to the Lifetime Network movie of my life is complete.

I'm Not a Circus Performer, People

Lately I’ve felt like a tight rope walker.  

Teetering as I struggle to maintain a work-life balance. I understand that everyone struggles with this.  I watch Sloan struggle to make sure he works to support his family rather than have his family support his work.  I listen to friends who work outside the home struggle to make sure their children know they are important, maintain sanity, and run a household, all the while making sure they keep their bosses happy.  So you’d think someone who is a stay at home mom would have no trouble here.  But the struggle is, well, my work IS my life.  I can’t choose between my family and my work because they are interrelated.   I can’t just kick back and relax because there are loads of laundry to be folded, shopping lists to complete, forms to be copied in triplicate for the dossier, bills to be paid, frames to be painted, friends who need meals made for them, and with the nice weather we’ve been having, parks to visit, and sprinklers to run through, which of course, only increases the amount of laundry that will inevitably be folded.  Whoever started that whole sitting on the couch and eating bon-bons rumor needs to be shot. 

I repeat—there are no bon-bons.

Add to this that we are entering the seventh level of toddler hell, aka potty training, and I want to cry.

Add to THAT that we are stuck in Home Study Limbo and I am crying.  I can’t really talk about how mad and sad and frustrated we are with our current adoption situation without sinning.  

Moreover, I am falling off the tight rope as I attempt to have a good balance of serving others and being insular in my family’s life.  I want us to be others’ focused, but in doing so, I’ve dropped the ball entirely on serving my kids.  

And my mind is jumbled.  I think my constant multi-tasking between cooking and cleaning and email and home study and preschool and having to get all new siding on my house and consignment sales and trunk shows and Plum Panda business and my daughter’s obsession with stripping naked and washing her hands in the toilet has completely left me incapable of just doing one thing to completion. I'm so focused on all the balls I have up in the air that I'm completely running into the folks living with me.  And let's not talk about how I've completely failed at giving up soda for lent. 

#lentfail

So I’ve been attempting to reboot my brain because it just-won’t-stop-thinking or processing information in manic fashion.  The other night I was tossing and turning because I was fearful that in training Ugandan soldiers to stop Kony (a necessary thing) we were just arming a Ugandan government that is equally guilty of crimes against humanity and it just seemed an awful lot like arming the Taliban to defeat the Russians.  Seriously.  This is the kind of crazy I am dealing with.   

So I’m stepping off the rope.  I'm letting the balls fall.*

  

Everyone tells you that when you bring your adopted child home you need to circle the wagons and just be a family.  To drop out of all your activities and just focus on loving one another for about a year.  Oh, how I long for that year!  

  

So I’m circling early.  Because in the end, the WHAT I’m doing in my service is of little importance if I’m confused about the WHO.  When I am patient with my daughter as she hides under my pillow and BREAKS ALL OF MY MAKEUP all over my bedspread while I pack to go out of town, I am serving Jesus.  When I take the time to fix bacon and eggs for a little boy who loves them so much rather than just serving up a bowl of Cheerios so I can work on more Plum Panda stuff, I am cooking for Jesus.  When I put down my Ipad and my paintbrushes and snuggle up with Sloan on the couch to watch New Girl, I am sharing the love of Jesus.  

When I cease the striving, I can trust.  And receive much grace.  And I’m reminded, it is not the type of service but the One being served who matters.  And I am not the Savior of the world or my family.  Hallelujah! 

So if you hear crickets around here for awhile, it’s because I refuse to tightrope or juggle anymore. 

*That's what she said.

Trying to find comfort in a rod and a staff...

It has been a hard week.  

Gracie is going through some things and it seems people keep wanting to give me advice on how to “handle” her.  But you see, a) you handle problems, not people, and b) last time I checked, none of the people giving me advice have ever parented an adopted child of another race who was born addicted to cocaine, heroin, and meth.  And so we pray that this is just the terrible twos and not our daughter’s abstinence syndrome finally rearing its ugly head.  Sometimes I forget that I am already a special needs Mom.

But God understood that for me to better love my daughter I needed some perspective.  In His tender mercy, instead of wallowing in frustration with my erratic toddler, I have been catapulted into grief.  Swallowed whole by the loss of a dear loved one in my extended family.  And the loss of a dear friend’s son who was also friend to my sister’s family..  All in the same day.

And I know that I do not grieve without hope.  That the glory of Easter morning has robbed death of its lasting power.  This is fact.  And yet, I am living in the midst of the “not yet.”  I am reminded that this world is not my home.  I am just a weary, weary sojourner. 


I am ever grateful for Lent.  For a time when I am already cognizant that it is for these very things that Jesus came.  But oh, how I long for Easter!  How I long for the day when I can see His face clearly, when his fingers will wipe my eyes, and there will be no more death or dying or cancer or widows or orphans or kids born with diseases or syndromes or mourning. 

For now, I pray and sing that the ancient words of Bernard of Clairvaux will be wholly mine:

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
O sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine!
Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine.

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

Men mock and taunt and jeer Thee, Thou noble countenance,
Though mighty worlds shall fear Thee and flee before Thy glance.
How art thou pale with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish that once was bright as morn!

Now from Thy cheeks has vanished their color once so fair;
From Thy red lips is banished the splendor that was there.
Grim death, with cruel rigor, hath robbed Thee of Thy life;
Thus Thou hast lost Thy vigor, Thy strength in this sad strife.

My burden in Thy Passion, Lord, Thou hast borne for me,
For it was my transgression which brought this woe on Thee.
I cast me down before Thee, wrath were my rightful lot;
Have mercy, I implore Thee; Redeemer, spurn me not!

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

My Shepherd, now receive me; my Guardian, own me Thine.
Great blessings Thou didst give me, O source of gifts divine.
Thy lips have often fed me with words of truth and love;
Thy Spirit oft hath led me to heavenly joys above.

Here I will stand beside Thee, from Thee I will not part;
O Savior, do not chide me! When breaks Thy loving heart,
When soul and body languish in death’s cold, cruel grasp,
Then, in Thy deepest anguish, Thee in mine arms I’ll clasp.

The joy can never be spoken, above all joys beside,
When in Thy body broken I thus with safety hide.
O Lord of Life, desiring Thy glory now to see,
Beside Thy cross expiring, I’d breathe my soul to Thee.

My Savior, be Thou near me when death is at my door;
Then let Thy presence cheer me, forsake me nevermore!
When soul and body languish, oh, leave me not alone,
But take away mine anguish by virtue of Thine own!

Be Thou my consolation, my shield when I must die;
Remind me of Thy passion when my last hour draws nigh.
Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, upon Thy cross shall dwell,
My heart by faith enfolds Thee. Who dieth thus dies well.