December 2014 - Page 2 of 2 - The Sparrow Fund

December 19, 2014

I’m Not Signing for That!

It has happened to me quite a few times over the years. The first time was
in high school, and then it happened again in college. I get these
packages delivered to me out of the blue. They have my name on them, and
my address. Even when I lived in Texas, then North Carolina, and here in
Georgia, I hear a ring at the door and when I go to answer, this delivery
guy is standing there with a package addressed to Beth Templeton. He says
something like, “I have a package you need to sign for.”

And as an adoptive mama I have heard my door bell ring quite often with
these deliveries, as I suspect you may have as well.

In the early years, I just did what you have probably done many times as
well– I signed for the package. It had my name on it, for heavens sake!
Of course it is mine, right? And when these packages first started coming
to my door it simply never occurred to me to do anything else but sign my
name and take that package as my own.

I Did Not Order This!
Then I would, of course, open up this package addressed to me, but inside
was something I definitely did not want. These aren’t the gifts we ordered
to put under our tree this year!
Inside my package, the one with my name on it, the one I signed for and
accepted into my home, was something I had become quite familiar with–
Anxiety. Like I said, for years when the delivery guy arrived, most of the
time completely randomly it seemed to me, I just figured this package of
anxiety was mine.
I was anxious. I dealt with anxiety. Anxiety is a part of who I am…..
It seemed that signing for it made a sort of sense I suppose. Because I
had bought into the lie that if it is delivered to my door and if it has
my name on it– for no doubt, there were always things to be anxious
about!– then I would have to accept it and deal with it as a part of my
life.

Standing at the Door
And ever since then, if you could hear the things I say to myself, you
would hear, “I’m not signing for that,” repeated many times over the
years. Because what I have learned is that the enemy will take any
opportunity to offer a package that has a certain perverse attraction for
us. For you it may not be anxiety, but some other lie rooted in an
experience or way of thinking from your past. Perhaps rejection, or out of
control anger, or fear, or depression, or hopelessness….
But, my friends, there is great freedom and power in realizing that we get
to choose whether or not we receive these packages. You and I have
authority in Jesus to stand at the door of our homes and authorize entry
to those things that are True and Good from the Father’s hand. And we have
authority likewise to de-authorize those packages that contain lies and
deceptions from the enemy.

I Am Not Signing For That!

Certainly, as adoptive and foster parents, there is much we could be
anxious about for our children–the trauma of relinquishment, along with
neglect and even abuse for some of our treasured ones. And if you are like
me, you will find that the delivery guy will still try to trick you into
signing for that old package you used to receive at will. My guy seems to
like to drop by and try his old tricks at different times just to see if I
might sign this time. He’s pretty persistent. Sometimes he won’t show up
for years, and then sure enough, the door bell rings and I find myself
getting ready to sign for that package with my name on it. Adoptive
parenting has certainly provided some prime delivery opportunities for
sure! But no, I know better than that these days. That package is not
coming into this house, this heart!

So, I want to encourage us all today to take a second look at those home
deliveries. Is this package really yours? Does the return address say,
from: Father God, Heaven

If not, I invite you to say as I do, in a loud voice, with the authority
that is ours in Christ, “I AM NOT SIGNING FOR THAT!”
________________________________________

Beth has been married to her husband Stephen for 27 years. They have seven children, ages 18-24. Several years after giving birth to three girls God called their family to the adventure and blessing of adoption. In 2000, they brought home a brother and sister, ages 5 and 10, from Russia. Then they returned to the same orphanage 18 months later and brought home two more brothers, ages 7 and 10. Beth’s heart has been deeply and forever changed as she has watched the love of Father God poured out on her whole family through adoption. She leads Hope at Home, a ministry dedicated to help adoptive and foster parents encounter the Father’s heart for their families, partnering with God to transform orphans into sons and daughters. For more parenting insight and encouragement in the Lord, go to Hope at Home.

December 17, 2014May 16, 2022

When Love Has Its Way With Us

She elbowed and writhed and pulled at my fingers which were wrapped tenderly around her arm. She shimmied with adrenaline-charged strength I’d not seen before in her, determined not to know the intimacy of my hold or to hear healing words. Her body fought what it needed most.

In between her resisting my embrace and collapsing underneath it, I brushed fingers across her forehead and wiped away tears from overfull ducts. I held her head to my neck, flesh against flesh, my touch an attempt at smelling salts. I wanted to awaken her to that which was more real than her experience of years past: love.

Shame has a way of settling itself into our bones and making us believe it’s a security blanket.

And she didn’t want to release it.

Just days before, she’d told us that she thought we were sending her back after a year. Though we’ve dreamed with her about the years ahead — when she’d try different birthday cakes, and be able to ride in the front seat — and she’s even found a regular pretend role as a bride dancing with her daddy in the wedding her siblings concocted, the enemy’s words slither through her back-drop.

And, if I step back and view these moments as vignettes, separate from His story, they appear to be exactly what I’d feared about adopting an older child. (Some of you reading, considering older child adoption may feel your heart race as you read my words). But the enemy of lies fed me a lie, even in that fear.

I feared the discomfort which adopting these older children might bring to my recently-achieved placid existence. Yet, at the same time, I prayed prayers to know Him more. It’s almost laughable now that I didn’t make the correlation: in order for me to grow in my understanding of Him, discomfort is required to produce the shedding of old skin.

Molting is often painful.

We run from the very thing through which God has ordained to align us to Him. We put baby-gates on our lives and padlocks on our hearts in hopes that we can avoid anything which hurts. We sit in the emotional kiddie-pool wearing a life-jacket.

We inhale self-protection, a path to a nice christian life that never knows the love of a fiery God who enraptures His people.

But pain grows us. Discomfort shifts our stalemate. It irritates that which was never meant to sit stable, stagnant. And it stretches us into newness. If we let Him, the pain He allows reveals new angles of His love. It changes us.

He’s reaching, wrapping, enfolding lives which subtly thrash and twist in their seeking to avoid the very discomfort that is the making of us. He’s brushing His flesh against our flesh to awaken remembrance. The scent of that same sweat which fell from the cross resuscitates. The life-nearness to Him is where we thrive.

We were made to be held.

And the Father who knows better than we do may, first, have to break, before He can reset.

Holy alignment.

***

She broke the winds of the midwestern plains which tore across our yard with her squeals. Her bike racked-up mileage as she spun the circumference of our driveway, over and over and over again. The wind was now at her back and she’d progressed from a premature adult, fending for herself, to the little girl without a care in the world. Submission was safety. Authority — another’s — gave her permission to rest.

Another of mine retells the years of her life outside our home with the same theme: no food, no water, no sleep.

There’s no rest for one who lives fatherless.

What I feared most in bringing these ones into our home — this disruption to what felt “safe”– was the very thing He had ordained to bring forth a further “yes” with our lives to His leadership.

Hardship advances us if we let it. This moment you’re bucking up under, could it be the very irritant He’s allowing to answer your prayer for more?

I’m that little girl, just like her. We’ve both been molting. My defenses aren’t strong enough to resist His loving grip. My ponytail is whipping in the wind as I ride, fearless. And we laugh, me and Nate, at the hunger for Him I can’t quite quench underneath this little life which seems to say there’s no room for anything more than laundry and dishes and kissing ouchies. Eight months post-adoption, four kids in two years, a laundry-pile unending and dust bunnies that keep multiplying … and I am resting in Him. He that good that I can find Him, even here and now in this chaos.

When we stop trudging against His tide and say yes to what He is doing in the pain of stretching, we coalesce to a Leadership meant to make us soar, over and above all these circumstances.

Now to move from conversation to reality …

Do you have a circumstance which just won’t relent? Take a break from praying the singular prayer for it to end (or rest from rebuking the enemy, if you’ve taken this route), and sit on His lap. Ask Him what side of His nature He’s seeking to reveal to you. Open His Word and receive a new perspective on that same old itch and ache.

Moving forward: when you have the urge to cry uncle, to complain, to live in that place of discontent you’ve grown to know well, take captive each of those moments and adore. Our over-arching perspectives are won in the minute-by-minute eye-shifts.

Make a practice of replacing your heart of frustration with words of adoration and start with this moment. Adoration takes our prayers from one-dimensional, one-sided requests, and makes them fuel for engaging with God as multi-dimensional over the circumstances of our lives.

Have you hit a stalemate in your heart’s communion? I’ve grown to believe almost all “lack of connection to Him” rests in a wall we’ve built for ourselves, knowing or not. He doesn’t barricade (His cross tore that down), but the lies we believe and the wounds that forged them – even from years past– they do.

Take some time. Sit with your molekine journal and ask Him to reveal the wound, the heart-pain, which stands between you and Him. Let Him make you a little girl again, needing a daddy to kiss her ouchie. When He surfaces that wound, the old memory or the lie onto which you’ve somehow latched, ask Him where He was when it happened and for a piece of His Word about it and for His whisper to put in place of that hurt.

Write it all down, this exchange: the wound, the image of where He was in that still-frame of your past-now-made-live, and His new Word over that old place. You may need to be reminded.

(This may take some time. Old wounds — or, if you are new at this, at least the first ones we begin to identify — die hard.)

But these wounds are holy opportunity. Some of my greatest moments of communing with God have come from taking an old, old hurt which turned into a rancid lie, placing it at His feet, and walking forward with His new Word over that part of my story.

And once we’ve gotten comfortable tilling the soil of those old wounds, when a new hurt comes — a terse word from a friend or a demotion when you expected promotion — it’s easy to take that hurt right up to Him.

He is always regenerating.

__________________________________

Sara is a wife to Nate and a mother of five whose arms stretched wide across the ocean to Africa. After almost a decade of Christian life she was introduced to pain and perplexity and, ultimately, intimacy with Jesus. Her book, Every Bitter Thing is Sweet released October 7, 2014 via Zondervan, is an invitation — back to hope, back to healing, back to a place that God is holding for you—a place where the unseen is more real than what the eye can perceive. A place where even the most bitter things become sweet. She writes regularly at EveryBitterThingIsSweet.com.

December 15, 2014December 13, 2014

Things no one told me about adopting a child with special needs

Before Afua joined our family, I read many books, I researched the best doctors and hospitals and I spoke (or facebook messaged, texted, skyped…) with moms who had adopted children with similar special needs. But no matter how much I prepared, some things still took me by surprise. Maybe they never came up in conversations or maybe this is the stuff we don’t usually talk about. Adoption is a beautiful way to grow a family (we had adopted before and knew this). Adopting a child with known special needs is a beautiful journey with its unique challenges that stem from loss, trauma and often unmet medical needs.

Learning the child’s diagnosis

I remember sitting at our Neurologist’s office and he patiently reviewed Afua’s MRI results with me. He described the areas of her brain that were affected by the lack of oxygen, that it likely happened during a certain part of the pregnancy and that in the end, the diagnosis given to her in Ghana, cerebral palsy, was correct. Hearing those words took my breath away, made me speechless as if I had no clue and this was a newborn baby with a devastating, unexpected diagnosis. I knew it was coming. This wasn’t a surprise. But in that instant I grieved the diagnosis as if I had not known. Adoptive moms are not superheroes, we grieve our children’s diagnoses as all mothers do. We may know what’s coming when a doctor confirms the test result. But it’s just as real and sad.

Then came a diagnosis I did not expect. The audiologist came to me as Afua was still in surgery.

“Profound hearing loss”
“it is unlikely she hears speech at all”
“deaf”

Tears were streaming down my face as I listened to her explain waves and decibels and hearing levels. It was like a foreign language and all I wanted was to hug my girl. But she was still in surgery so I sat in disbelief.

We are not extra tough as we process new diagnoses that sometimes come unexpectedly. When we say “yes” to adopting a child with special needs, it is not because we are expecting an easy road or we somehow are up for anything. We say yes to a child and we join their journey of medical diagnoses, different abilities and navigating a world that isn’t always as accepting as we want it to be. Because we firmly believe that every child regardless of their differences is deserving of a loving home and a family. And in the midst of our “yes”, we realize how much we needed them too.

When others notice your child is different

I remember the first time we went to a high school football game. Afua was in a stroller and I took her to the concession stand. Two little girls stood in front of us and one kept looking back. Then came the dreaded words: “What’s wrong with HER?” Don’t worry, I handled the situation with adult maturity, kindness and compassion (with a little bit of education thrown in for good measure). But it bothered me. It made me sad that there were children who were not around children with special needs. Children who didn’t know a nice way to ask why a child was in a stroller when they should be walking.

The truth is, as I have parented Afua, the less I think of her disabilities. I see my daughter. I know her smiles and her expressions. We have a language and I know how her body moves. None of it is strange or unusual to me. But other people (strangers usually) will remind me that she is not typically abled. They do it by their looks, their stares and their comments.

Friends may or may not stick around

This journey is hard to understand, right? I’ve had people ask me why we would choose to parent a child with special needs. When you adopt, you get to pick, they say. Some have hinted that we are trying to prove ourselves to be special, faith filled or we just may not have thought this through. They know our time alone as a couple is non existent. They see the way our life is stretched thin. Some choose to continue our friendships (even thought we aren’t always the most consistent company). Others have stopped asking, and that’s ok too.

What I have found is that the friendships that have remained have become so special and authentic. There is no pretending that this is all easy and smooth. They also see the absolute beauty that exists, the way Afua is changing all of us and how she is an equal member among the siblings. Those who take the time to know Afua get why she is in our family. She belongs with us and we belong with her.

You will doubt your abilities and it’s ok

I am not an organized person by nature and it is a vital skill when parenting a medically complex kiddo. I also work part-time which makes things challenging. Afua is one of 5 children and they also have appointments and needs to be met. Honestly, there are days that I wonder how to juggle it all. In the process of figuring it out, I have learned to let go control (so hard!!!) I’ve reached out for help (so humbling!!!) and I have had to find organizational tools that work for me.I am still struggling with this area of parenting but modern technology is helping me keep most of my appointments :)I know I can’t do this by myself and I don’t have to. I have a great husband, wonderful family and friends and also a caregiver that fills in as needed. Our life is richer because we aren’t doing it all alone.

You will find allies in the most unlikely places

Parenting a child with special needs means you spend a lot of time in local children’s hospitals, therapy clinics, surgery waiting rooms and doctor’s offices. There you will meet
other families who are exhausted yet so proud of their children just as you are. We give each other “the nod” and in silence we know that there are others who are walking this path too. And whether we chose this journey or we discovered a diagnosis along the way, there is a mutual acknowledgment of the hard.
You will meet therapists who are innovative, energetic and supportive. They tell you to take a break and get a cup of coffee while they help your child achieve a new skill or make them more comfortable. You meet doctors who devote their lives to children and their families and you are not just a number. They explain things in a way that makes sense and guide you through tough decisions as if they were making them for their own children. Allies are everywhere and it makes things a bit better.

I share these thoughts in hopes that I am not alone. That others may feel the same grief, the same joy and the same purpose in parenting a child with special needs. That maybe your friendships were tested also and the invitations are fewer. That maybe your child wasn’t adopted but you recognize these feelings as universal. And maybe this opens a conversation about special needs, adoption or even prompts someone to reach out to a family raising a child with special needs.

______________________________

Jenni is a mother of 5, married for 19 years to her high school sweetheart Eric. Her children range in age from preschool to high school by birth and adoption. Jenni works part-time in a charter school system providing therapy services for children with special needs. Jenni is a advocate for orphaned children with special needs and is passionate about family preservation. When she is not driving her minivan to various activities and appointments, she can be found blogging at Joyful Journey.

December 12, 2014December 12, 2014

This Day

How do you do it?

This is what everyone asks.

How do you hold Little One close knowing that his days in your arms are

so fleeting, so uncertain?

How do you scramble to make it work at a moment’s notice?

How do you shuttle him to doctor’s appointments, nursing him back to health so that he can leave again?

Friends, this is how I do it.

I go out each day and gather enough for that day (Exodus 16:4).

I make plans for this day.

I figure out childcare, transportation, food for this day.

I hold and rock and snuggle and sing on this day.

And by the provision of a gracious Father, I do it again tomorrow.

My eyes have only two focuses.

Eternity. My promised land where I believe that all will be set right.

All will be well.

And this day.

I cannot think about the in-between.

It wrecks me. Just the thought of going there makes it a little hard to breathe.

And so, again, I hand the in-between back to the One who isn’t wrecked by it.

And I mix up formula in this day.

I make salt dough ornaments in this day.

I pray and love and hold and bless in this day.

Sometimes it feels like a little, and sometimes it feels like a lot, but it always works out to be just as much as I need (Exodus 16:18).

In this day, I gather enough.

And by the provision of a gracious Father, I will do it again tomorrow.

_________________________________________

Shannon is mom to an amazing seven year old. She is a Christian, a licensed foster parent, a kindergarten teacher and a huge advocate of connecting church people and little people in need of forever families. She blogs at A Little Bit of Everything.

December 10, 2014May 16, 2022

When Life Leaves You Flinching

When we first brought her home a few of our normal-to-us family ways made her skittish. Her body stiffened when I hugged her. She sat at the end of the couch when we all piled on for a cuddle. And she retreated behind her eyes at the mention of a “special treat.” A suggested trip to the pool surely meant:it would rain. A surprise right-turn into the ice cream shop and she was already anticipating when the sweetness would be melted and her mouth was empty again.

She braced herself against all that was good, almost as if her insides said, don’t trust this moment. It will turn on you. Every good thing was too good to be true when the sum of her life was just pieced-together circumstance. Seeming happenstance — and often of pain.

“There wasn’t anything I didn’t like!” she replied as I asked her, just days after we met, about her years when dozens of children were the closest thing she had to a family and she lived afraid of the night that had no door to close on the room where she and her peers slept. “Everything was good.”

This little girl was forced to redefine “good” around bleak circumstances, just to survive. It was safe for her to call what was bad, good, and to poke holes in what was truly good. Her orphan-heart made the world small so that her small world could finally be contained, controlled.

Just a few months after she’d been ours, Nate came up behind her and lifted his arms to enfold her and that wee thing — at the site of those arms, slightly raised — she flinched.

His daddy-embrace made her flinch.

That space, safest to any little pixie growing up in a family, wasn’t safe to her. Too good to be true, said that flinch. You can’t trust good or its giver. Because tomorrow it all may die.

~~~

We’ve spent twelve years of our married life sleeping through the night. Now I find myself awake at three a.m. with a corner of the room illuminated by our very first bedroom night light, watching the rise and fall of this bundled babe’s chest … and tempted with my own flinch.

I got on a plane with ten bags packed for ten months-plus and nothing else but a prayer to get my girls from Africa. I fought fear while flying over the ocean’s gap between my daughters and me. I disrupted the birth order, twice, and turned an informed-eye on the statistics. I fought fear over what “they” say is a good and right way to grow a family. I fought fear over what may never be when something like a hundred months passed of that silly little test saying “negative.” Yet, here I am checking that four-week old chest to make sure it’s still rising and falling at three a.m.

I’m not all that different from her, bracing myself against the next big hit, wondering when life’s circumstances might turn on me. I’m not all that different from that orphan who subtly believes that a small, controlled life is where it’s at. I could bring myself to tears just envisioning all the “what if’s” that could be waiting around the corner of my life.

I’m still flinching.

While the fight against fear is good and right, this time around He’s more overtly nudging me from defense to offense: find My love. Because this God-Man that shatters our flesh-formed understandings of love gives us a love of His own that can’t share a room with fear.

They can’t mix.

The logical end of all my thinking is revealed for what it truly is when I fear — when I flinch. This bracing myself that’s become habit — even when the exquisite, holy-other hand of the Father interrupts my flesh-spun world — tells the truth about what I believe. Fear comes when I believe that the best of this life rests in an event or a life-position. Fear comes when the end of all things, to me, is something I could physically touch. Fear comes when the intangibles are small and what’s right in front of me is the best I believe I can get.

Fear grows, wild, where loves does not.

Love — the love of this God-Man — friends, it’s chasing me.

And it’s so much more than what even my short twenty years of pursuing Him has yet revealed it to be.

It’s good. It’s always good. Even the worst outcome has His tender hands cupped around it. If I let Him, I can feel the coarseness of the God-made-man fingerprints against my uncertainty. His love has smiling eyes and a “c’mon little girl, you and I will climb that peak together” expression. It’s fiercely loyal; He doesn’t turn when I do. He has a name for me that no one else knows. When my knees buckle and I weep at what looks to be the world falling down around me, He whispers to me: I am near.

If I peer through this crazy-miraculous blessing of an infant that my broken-body formed and cracked open to birth and see the kind eyes of Father on the other side, who has positioned my whole life as a pursuit of knowing and living out of His love, I won’t fear. I can’t be both near enough to smell His skin and living in fear of the next time life will knock me down.

When I move from knowing about His perfect love to feeling hot-tears on my face as I recount that early morning brush I had with the God-Man who said my name in the dark, I stop flinching when life works right, and I don’t re-learn to flinch when life’s circumstances are “bad.”

Have you felt His skin against yours?

Maybe today is the day to stop fighting back the fear, to close the door to your closet and ask Him to smell the scent of His skin.

(Can you just imagine a Church across the earth who didn’t flinch, but instead — in even the very-worst circumstances — expected His goodness, because they had a behind-closed-doors experiences with Him as good? We might just make an imprint on that world around us that lives ever-flinching.)

Looking for a practical application? Consider the habit of adoration. There’s a group of us over here, daily declaring against our stale-old opinions of Him who He really is, according to His Word. And for more on adoration:

Adoration Explained

Why I Adore

Showing Up

First, third, fourth, sixth and seventh photos compliments of Mandie Joy. Second and fifth photos compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography.

__________________________

December 8, 2014December 8, 2014

Adoption is my Jericho

As I sat in church this morning listening to a lesson on Joshua chapters 5 and 6, God grabbed my heart.

We are in the middle of our third adoption. A calling from God, yes. A child chosen for us by Him, absolutely! But even in the midst of this clearly directed path by God, I needed a heart check. Sometimes He needs to step in and remind us that it is ALL about Him. Even when we are doing something He has asked us to do, our flesh can step in and take our focus off of Him.

Travel with me back to Canaan. After 40 years of wandering in the desert God’s people are ready to enter their promised land, but there were obstacles in the way…… big obstacles, physical as well as spiritual. Big walls and armies as well as seeds of doubt and fear.

Joshua was a man of God. He was appointed by God to be the leader of His people. Yet, even as he stepped out in faith to lead his people into battle, God stepped in to check Joshua’s faith and trust in Him and His plan over their plan. Are Joshua and the Israelites truly ready to step out in complete faith, no matter what, even if it seemed a little crazy?

“Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?” He said, “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?” The captain of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. (Joshua 5:13-15, NASB)

When God calls us to step out in faith, it is not always easy and sometimes it doesn’t even make sense, but that is what makes God God and us not! Let’s consider God’s plan for the Israelites to defeat Jericho.

“Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.’’ (Joshua 6:2-5, NIV)

How CRAZY AMAZING was God’s victory plan over Jericho! He asked them to do something from a human military perspective that made absolutely no sense, so that there would be absolutely no question that victory was the Lord’s!

Adoption is my promised land, but initially, there were obstacles in the way. Big obstacles embedded deep in my heart.

I had plans……normal earthly plans. Plans for red headed, freckled children, but God had other plans.

CRAZY AMAZING PLANS! Once I accepted God’s plan I went full steam ahead doing all I could to make it happen, and sometimes getting frustrated when things didn’t happen according to my schedule. How easy it is to forget that this isn’t my plan. It’s God’s PLAN! A plan to bring glory to His name, not mine.

Adoption is also my Jericho. His timing is perfect, and many times throughout our adoption journey, He has done CRAZY AMAZING things that could only be attributed to Him. Sometimes He whispers and sometimes He shouts, “Remember, I am the Lord, Suzanne. You are standing on holy ground.”

So let us shout at the top of our lungs like the Israelites at the Battle of Jericho as we move forward with our adoptions, knowing that our Creator and Savior is leading the charge for us and our children who are more precious to Him than we could ever fathom.

_________________________________________

After struggling with infertility for 5 years, God led Suzanne and her husband Adam to His Plan A for their lives—adoption! Their daughter, Grace Lihua, came into their lives in 2011 from the Fujian Province, China. Their son, Anthony Jianyou, joined their family in January of 2013 from Shanghai, and another little girl will be joining their family in 2015 from the Hunan Province. After a career in politics, Suzanne is thankful for God’s provision in their lives that now allows her to work part time as a Pilates instructor while home schooling their children and working as a part of the WAGI leadership team. You can follow their adoption journey and life on their blog, Surpassing Greatness.

December 4, 2014

What Was It Like?

“What was it like growing up with foster siblings in your home?”

This is the question that I am most frequently asked, whether it is by peers who have heard media-influenced foster care stories, or by families who are seeking to become foster parents while still raising biological children. When people ask me this question, it always catches me off guard, mainly because it is incredibly hard to describe such a major part of a childhood that seemed perfectly normal to me. It is equally hard to think of what my life would have looked like had I not grown up with foster siblings. For me, babies and toddlers came and went on a regular basis. It was hard at times and it was fun at times, but regardless, it was normal to me. We received our first foster placement two weeks before my 8th birthday, and adopted my last two siblings a month after my 18th birthday. Needless to say, foster care has impacted me in profound ways. Foster care made me a big sister to four forever siblings and was my catalyst for becoming a social worker.

As I have sought to answer this question – what it was like-my mind always wanders back to that early October night when I was 7-years-old, watching a caseworker hand our first foster placement over to my parents. I remember looking into the big, brown eyes of a severely abused infant and seeking to understand for the first time the reality of the hurt that is in our world.

Those first few moments with that baby are locked into my memory as tightly and securely as a 7-year-old can remember. As I innocently questioned “why” a parent would hurt his child, I was opened up to a whole new world that involved evil my mind had never known.

Through the next several years, as babies and toddlers passed through our home, there were many censored discussions on drugs, sex, alcohol, and neglect. I appreciate that my parents protected my innocence, while still valuing that I loved my foster siblings with a sincere love and desired to know each one of their stories. As I watched my foster siblings flourish in our home and saw the hurt they endured, there was a deeper level of compassion and understanding that slowly began to resonate inside of me.

I played with the kids and accepted each one as my sibling. I took pride in showing off each baby to my friends. I made silly faces while feeding the infants mushy rice cereal. I learned the art of washing a baby bottle, changing a diaper, and bathing a baby. I browsed the baby aisle with my mom, begging her to buy “just one more cute outfit”. I accompanied my mom in transporting to parent visits and then I sat in my room and sobbed after saying goodbye to foster siblings I had come to love dearly.

So maybe my childhood was different from yours. In fact, it probably was. My family grew and then shrunk again on a regular basis and the family calendar was filled with court dates, parent visits, and caseworker meetings.

However, the uniqueness of my family dynamics did not destroy my innocence or ruin me as a person, as is the common myth. Yes, I saw and understood injustice from a young age and I absolutely struggled to process some of what I saw and experienced. There were hard months, and times when my parents had to protect my sisters and me instead of bring another child into the home. They were wise in their pursuit. I struggled with the grief and grappled with the reality of sin, but viewing evil within the safety of my own home allowed me to develop empathy and compassion that I believe I would not have today, had my parents chosen to keep the doors of our home closed.

My parent’s willingness to open our home changed my life, and gave me skills and passions and a more sensitive heart. For that I am deeply thankful.

_______________________________

Kylee is a college student who is passionately pursuing a degree in Social Work while simultaneously learning what it means to be a big sister to kids from “hard places”. Her parents jumped into the crazy world of foster care just days before her 8th birthday for numerous infants and toddlers over a ten year time span; four of those children became permanent family members through adoption. Kylee loves sharing about foster care and adoption and is passionate about advocating on behalf of vulnerable children on her blog Learning to Abandon.

December 1, 2014December 1, 2014

Beautiful and Hard

It has been some time since I last blogged. I have been busy being mommy and not had much time to write about it. But God is working in me through this new chapter of my life and I felt it was time to share it. So here goes…

I anticipated adoption would be hard, but I was unprepared for what has been revealed as my toughest challenge.

My transformation.

Let me be real. Adoption has brought a new level of responsibility that at times overwhelms me.

My response to this calling is often not a reflection of His work in me. As much as I’d like to say its going great and I’m doing fine, if I am honest its much harder than I had imagined, but not in the way you might expect. Lily and Liam are doing so well that I am in awe of how smooth they have assimilated into our family. The splendor is in the effortless love that is developing between these two precious hearts and mine. Each day our connection grows a little more and a little more and a little more. It is moving to watch them enjoy so many firsts, to hear their giggles and to witness their smiles. It is hard to discover their wounded hearts more each day and know I cannot fix it; but seeing them grow to new depths and new heights despite their difficult beginnings makes all the hard work of transformation worth the pain. They are beautiful and happy children and I am falling in love with them more and more each day. Oh they are not perfect, and we have had some bumps in the road, but overall their transition has been incredible to witness. So what’s the problem then?

Me.

I humbled by my weak human flesh.

It is uncomfortable to say. But if I am being real, it is my sin that has been unearthed in this life altering excavation. You see as I try harder and harder each day to endure the pressures of all these changes it feels overwhelming and I go to that place—that place where I think I can control the outcome. When life is out of control, I seek to put it back under control—or so I think I can. Only I can’t. But instead of leaning into the Father’s arms and seeking Him more, I turn away and try to fix it on my own.

Only I’m powerless. Instead I battle whispers of failure in my head. Yes, me who has faith to move mountains for this unlikely adoption, but who cannot live daily with strength to make it through the afternoon. I am a warrior fighting for the hearts of my children. I long for them to seek and love God more than anything. I want them to make right choices, be respectful, kind hearted and obedient. When I do not see immediate results to all my parental efforts—well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty!

Then God reminds me…

“Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord.” Zachariah 4:6

In my helplessness I finally recognize that I am striving to do this alone—in my own strength. And then I recall the epic story. David, barely more than a boy, fearlessly conquered Goliath. How did he do it? Faith. He used what he knew best—a sling and a stone. David’s combat history with wild beasts had prepared him for the confrontation with Goliath. As a shepherd he had experienced encounters with fierce animals that threatened his sheep. If one of his flock was carried off by a lion or a bear, David went after it, striking the beast dead. This time would be no different—David would use his experience to face his enemy while giving credit to God for the victory. So it is no surprise to note that when David saw Goliath moving towards him, instead of shrinking back, he ran forward to attack. With one precise shot, a single stone centered on Goliaths head and the 9-foot giant toppled over—dead. Victory was in the hands of God’s people because of the faith of one young man who understood that this unmatched battle was not his to win. He needed only to move forward and do his part and trust God to make up the difference.

I must admit that there are times when the work of adoption feels like my Goliath. It is a giant that looms over me threatening to take me captive. Yet I am reminded that I need only use my talents and strengths to do my part and God himself will make up the difference. It is ultimately not my battle to win. I may not be a parenting expert, but I am a decorated warrior fighting for the hearts of my children. I am not perfect, but I serve the Almighty who is able to use my small efforts to bring about His plans for these children.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future” – Jeremiah 29:11

Satan wants to use fear of what I lack to cause me to shrink back. He places doubt in my mind—just enough to let fear threaten to become my adversary. But God has planned victory for those who move forward despite the threats that appear to overpower. Nothing can stand against the Almighty. David did not move towards his enemy because he was powerful, rather his faith stood in the power of the Lord who had already delivered him! I love that David faced Goliath with such radical boldness.

As I embrace each day working through the transition of my new life, I recall that God has prepared me for this day. This is not my battle to win. I need only move forward in faith moving towards my enemy (fear)—firmly trusting in God to see us through. As I grow through this season of change, I feel the work of Him pressing me back down into a lump as he labors to refashion me. I sense his gentle hands drawing me into a new shape. I am still the same lump of clay being transformed for a new purpose through this season of change. It is uncomfortable being made into a different vessel and I wish I could say I was not fighting against it—but it hurts—and I resist letting go of my false sense of control. But I have not been called to this adoption because of my perfect self, rather because of Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all that I can ask or imagine.

He is revealing my heart day-by-day, bit-by-bit. He is the potter—I am the clay.

Life as I knew it is no more. Despite my weak flesh, God is in control here, not me. This transformation of them and me, all of us…

It’s beautiful—and hard.

“But those that wait upon the Lord, they will mount up with wings as Eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31

“Do not fear for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10

_____________________________

Tiffany is a wife to Kirk and mother of eight including six biological and two newly adopted from China. With a looming financial crisis at the outset of their recent adoption, God took their family on a journey of faith. Having been home just over eight weeks, they are currently working through the transition phase of their new adoption. Tiffany writes an honest account of challenges of adoption and the redemptive work of her savior Jesus Christ at Extravagant Love. Though her faith and limits have been tested, she points that adoption is paving the way for her to grow and experience God’s presence as never before.

Blog

Month: December 2014