Driving down the road in my ginormous brown van feeling stressed and stretched and strained and DONE, I heard the whisper of the Lord posing a simple question. Whenever the Lord asks me a question, I know I’m in for some freedom. His questions always seem to lead me out of a problem and into an answer.
“What would you rather be doing?”
Art by Life Verse, click on image to see store
So simple. And immediately my complaints of dealing with sibling arguments, of correcting rude behavior, of dropping off and picking up seven children all within seven years of each other in age, figuring out AGAIN what we would have for dinner–you know the story–were transformed from overwhelming to strangely satisfying. The plain truth of it was that I would not rather be doing anything else in this world.
I love a lot about my life; I love a lot about being a mother. I think the thing I like best of all is that I get to create the first forum for the Gospel to be experienced by the seven people that God has given me to mother. Think of the missionaries over time who have had the absolute thrill, the challenge, the honor of taking the Gospel of God’s Goodness to a people for the first time.
How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“have you ever prayed for something and not gotten what you prayed for?”
have you ever thanked Jesus for NOT giving you what you asked for?
we were asked why we pray. the general consensus was “to get stuff”. but after hearing the lesson – we see it’s because we know our Father will only give us what we need. we’re praying for “YOUR” kingdom come – not “MY” kingdom come. listening to this – i mean REALLY listening to this – hit me hard.
i have vividly haunting memories of being at work in the last bathroom stall praying to God that i was not having a miscarriage. i prayed to God that i would do anything He wanted me to do if He would just let me keep this baby. that was 8 years ago, but i can remember it like it was just an hour prior. at the time i could not understand why i could not have what i asked for. i was not praying for a new car, or a house, or a new cell phone – but i was still praying for something that i wanted. i was praying for my will to be done. not what God wanted and knew i needed. it hit me hard because i knew, sitting there listening to this sermon that if God had given me what i wanted then, i probably would not be Dax’s mommy now. that stirred up a wave in me that’s pretty hard to digest.
i thank Jesus that i was not given what i thought i needed in 2004, or in 2008, and thank God that He gave me Dax because he’s more than i could have ever dreamed of.
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Adrianne Taylor White
I am a dedicated follower of Christ, wife of 10 years, mother to our 6 month old son Daxton and our two doggies.
It’s that time of year again…my favorite time of year.
The purest and brightest greens add their voices to the outside world, sweet little flower buds say they’re ready to be seen, and the air…the cold brisk air begins to fade as spring gently pushes its way in. I love this time of year. I’m ready for this time of year. Something in it breathes new life. And each year, just like the last, I’m so in need of it.
As I find myself stepping into May and the newness of the world around me, two people fall back into my mind who always do so poignantly each year as April draws to a close…my mom and my daughter. Two people, two lives, that ground me to this world.
This world…both in its brokenness and beauty. This world…both with its pain and joy.
This world…where both death and life reside.
For me, each spring, each May, marks significant moments.
May 15, 1943 – my mom’s birthday
May 17, 2003 – the day my mom met Jesus
May 8, 2008 – the day I gave life to our first child
My mom….She was not the woman who gave me physical life, but she was the woman who taught me how to live life. A woman of strength, wise, intuitive, humorous, thoughtful, courageous, etiquette queen. I received intentional lessons about the kitchen to my clothes, to people and churches and makeup and nails, how to entertain guests to strategic ways to obtain used couches on “trash day.” But mostly, she taught me what it meant to be “a lady.” That’s what she was good at. That’s what she offered me. And now, as I wear the skin of an adult, I see parts of these things in me, reflecting her. I love that. I want that. I’m grateful for that.
Yet, in the midst of the good and lessons and character development, our relationship didn’t come without pain.
She was strong, and I needed tender love.
She was precise, and I needed space to make mistakes.
She was fearless, and I needed someone to run to when I was scared.
She was strong, and I needed to learn how to ask for help.
She was consistent with correction, and I needed connection.
Brokenness and beauty.
My daughter…she’s a girl who grabs onto life with both cautiousness and boldness. She’s a helper and initiator, filled with ideas and intent. She’s simple and straightforward, yet diligently charms your heart with her words and smile and eyes. Her spirit is tender, and her mind is sharp. Her love for me melts me. The love I have for her moves me. Nurturing this life has changed me…is changing me. The parts of me that have been called out in this season are mysteriously beautiful, yet the ways I feel drained I’m confident you could see with your very eyes. You give, you serve, you pour yourself out. You find yourself weary and vulnerable, unsure and expectant. This parenting season I’m in, right now, is hard…really hard. At least the way that I’ve chosen to step into it.
Brokenness and beauty.
This season, this month, this week…it evokes my heart in a myriad of ways. I sit in the tension of both the good and the hard. And that’s OK. I believe there’s something really honoring in doing that. It honors the past, it honors the present. It allows for the future…to unfold authentically. There’s this way that our humanness can deny the hard parts. Exhausting. There’s also this way that our humanness can linger in the hard parts. Despairing. Either may make a person feel numb, justified, prideful, battered. But, that’s no way to live.
(art courtesy of The Canvas Heart, click image to see more)
Precious Heavenly Father…..
There’s a mom out there right now who is carrying life inside of her that will someday be my little child. I don’t know who she is, but I lift her up to you. I ask you to watch over her, care for her, and show her your love.
Maybe she’s young and experiencing shame over her pregnancy and battling with the knowledge that she has no choice but to give up this child that is growing inside of her. Her heart aches with confusion, pain and sorrow as she carries this burden everyday. Lord, be her Comforter. Comfort her heart, be her strength, guide her in your paths.
Maybe she’s sick and fighting for her own life, let alone the life of this young one inside of her. Maybe she has no access to medical care and she lies alone in a poor, mud house with no one to care for her or heal her hurts and show her love. Lord, be her Great Physician. Care for her physical body, ease her pain, bring her help. Let her know she is loved.
Maybe she is poor, so poor she can’t even feed the little mouths that are already in her house. She rummages for scraps everyday and comes home to crying, hungry bellies but she has nothing to give them and so she sings away their pangs of hunger as she rocks them to sleep and lays them down on a dirt floor, to rest their heads without a pillow and their bellies without food for yet another night. Lord, be her Provider. Honor her sacrifice, bring her help, wrap her momma-heart in your arms, and comfort her aching heart.
Maybe she doesn’t know you, Lord, and she’s living a life of sin and fear. Please make yourself known to her. Draw her near to you. Show her your salvation. Show her there is a God who is in control and who cares about her life. Show her that you are knitting together that tiny baby in her womb and that you know all of the intimate details of her life. I pray she would find redemption, healing and love in your arms.
Lord, I don’t know any of the specifics of her life. But I know that over this next year she is going to go through pain, pain I will never understand. Pain of giving up a child she gave birth to or pain of dying, helplessly, knowing she will never care for this life that she has produced. My heart can’t even begin to understand how her heart aches and how it will hurt and what she will experience. But I know that you understand. You’re there. You’re sovereign even over this.
Thank you for her life. Thank you for her decision to choose life. Thank you that through the pain and the suffering you will make something beautiful because your Word says you make all things beautiful. Thank you that you can make broken things whole. Thank you that even though things don’t always make sense to us and they hurt so deeply, you are in control, and you know what is best.
Please watch over her and protect that precious life inside of her. I pray that somehow, some way, she will know how grateful I am to her and for the child our hearts will share.
In Your Son’s Precious Name,
Amen
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Callie Walker
Graciously redeemed by her Lord and Savior and Jesus lover first and foremost, Callie has been married to her husband, Luke, for 8 years and is a stay-at-home mom. They have 1 toddler son, a true miracle. They are currently in the process of adopting a kiddo from Ethiopia. God has turned their lives upside down over the last several years and completely changed the direction they thought they were headed in. They are loving every second of the “gloriously wrecked” lives they are now living and are excited about where God is leading them to live passionately and radically for Him. Come visit Callie as she writes about their journey, faith, real life, and adoption.
When things get crazy around here (which happens alot lately!), I am praying and asking that God would help me to stop for a few minutes and just live in this miracle. Between laundry and doctor’s appointments and cleaning up messes of all sorts and smells…well, sometimes it is just too easy to let my focus stay there. To buy into the idea that I have to keep doing…cleaning, fixing, working…and I cannot stop and just be here and sit in wonder at this little miracle unfolding right here in my house.
Because it is a miracle. All this. This child who is coming alive and blossoming so beautifully right here in my messy home. Scott and I wondered about all this as we sat all weary on the couch the other night: How does this happen? How does a child who has been alive for two and a half years and really has no idea that two people on the other side of the world have been preparing their hearts and homes to become her parents…how does she become so very ours in such a short time? We are her parents! Just think of that. In her little mind, two months ago, she had no framework even for that. What is a parent anyway? For really she had only known nannies and orphanage life.
How does she come to embrace us, to know us as parents in such a short time, in just the way our other children do? How can that not be a miracle?
And then there’s the other miracle. The one that Scott and I know in our hearts but may just not be able to explain. Just that we get to be a part of all this.
Adoption has etched in our hearts such a deeper, more living understanding of what it means that God has adopted us…rescued us…redeemed us.
She has been redeemed and rescued. Outside of simply not having a family, Mei’s future without intervention was not looking good. Because of her medical condition and simply because she was an orphan – this is simply the reality.
Please do not hear me saying that we are heroes or rescuers or redeemers. Because with all my heart I know that I am the one being rescued. We know deep in our hearts that all of this was about God’s love for Mei and His amazing plan to care for this child. And Scott and I? We are just so grateful that He would let us be a part as His plan unfolds each day.
And, in being a part of all this, we are being rescued. No, our need for rescue was not as obvious as Mei’s…but we knew. And we have prayed for this very thing. Because here, with our lives and our blessings being so abundant, we know how easy it is for us to fall into lives that are mediocre, self-sufficient, complacent, unaware, and, frankly, selfish. We know the pull the American Dream has on us when, with all our hearts, what we really want is to know and serve God with radical abandon every day of our lives.
Today I am more desperate for God’s presence than ever before. I am more aware of the suffering that goes on all around me in the world, and by His grace, I am more willing to be used by Him for His kingdom’s purposes. Everyday, every hour, I see glimpses of Jesus’ work all around me and in me. Everyday, I am less and less satisfied with anything but knowing Him more and being a part of His purposes both here in my city and around the world.
So, yes, God, in His grace had a plan to rescue Mei. But this plan is my rescue too.
(courtesy of Red Letter Ink, click image for more)
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Haley Long
I am a recipient of amazing grace. I’ve been married 11 years to my husband, Scott. We had 2 children, Isaac and Zoe. Then one day God met us both in the same moment and broke our hearts and filled them with love for orphan children. In 2008, we brought our son Beniam, now 3, home from Ethiopia. And, we recently added to our family again, welcoming home Mei from China. I am a Florida girl who loves sunshine, water, and sand. I enjoy almost anything you can do outdoors, especially in the mountains. When forced to stay inside, I love to read and write.
(art courtesy of amylee weeks, click on image to see more)
Dear Birth Mom,
As I wake this morning and spend a few minutes alone, I know we are thinking about each other today. The day our son turns five years old. I don’t know your name, and you don’t know mine. We have never seen a photo of each other, never exchanged a word, do not even know how to find each other. And, before anyone else wakes up and the celebrating begins, I sit here in my living room crying in wonder for what I have received and grieving for what you have lost.
The orphanage did not have any information about you to share with us. But, I tell our son what I
It has taken me a while to sit down and write this post, but I believe the hesitation is linked to a very important lesson God wanted to teach me today.
I have been wrestling with my feelings and wrestling with God. There are so many unknowns to this story and I have struggled to trust God with the answers. I
Rebekah (our birth mother, if you’re just tuning in) and I (also Rebekah) are both back to work and have full schedules right now. Gone are the days of talking weekly, blogging regularly, and sharing pictures and videos back and forth, often. We do the best we can, but it seems that weeks go by before we have a block of time to call and catch up.
I headed to bed early last night, in hopes to gear up for this coming week of work, but I was missing Rebekah and decided to call her instead. The time difference makes it difficult and although I set out to only talk an hour, we chatted well past two.
Friends come in a variety. Some are needy, some are high-maintenance, some walk in and out over time, some are there everyday/through every mundane detail, and some are glued to your heart, unfettered by time or distance. Rebekah is the latter. It doesn’t matter how much time passes, we always pick up right where we left off, sharing about work and kids and life.
It will never get old.
She is my son’s mother. I’ve said it before; there is something so unique that happens when two mothers love one son. We’re able to laugh and cry and enjoy Ty together as he experiences all his firsts. It’s as natural as life. It’s not weird or awkward or strained. I don’t have to hold back my true feelings in fear of hers and there’s a mutual respect in what we’ve done for each other. I know everyone doesn’t get this. I know it looks too good to be true. I’ve had haters write subsequent posts about me and our relationship and they question the authenticity. It doesn’t bother me. I know what we have – what we are experiencing – and it’s only made possible through God’s grace.
Last night, we laughed over Ty’s tendency to throw premature temper tantrums and agreed on the importance of reading to him. We gushed over his cuteness and were thankful for the closeness he shares with his daddy. We talked about his early rising pattern, which Rebekah admitted was a trend in her other kids. To that I jokingly exclaimed, “So, you’re responsible for this!?”
Like all moms, we think he’s the smartest, cutest, most advanced baby of his time and think he has the perfect blend of biology and family.
The three of us are flying out to reunite with Rebekah and her family, this April. I was so excited last night, I had a hard time falling asleep. The Bible talks about talents and the importance of using and sharing them versus burying them away to be hidden forever. That’s sort of how we (Ben and I) view Tyrus. Apart from Christ, he is the greatest treasure we’ve been given. We don’t want to keep him close to home in fear of what may happen. We want to share him and expose him to the world. We want him to be bonded with his first family and are joy-filled that he has the opportunity to know them. We can’t wait for our trip and to show everyone how much he’s grown!
Because there are so many instances in which God seems absent or his presence hard to find, it’s important to make a raucous when we can undeniably see his hand of goodness. When I look at the revolution that has taken place in my heart, the connections that God made to bring us our son, the relationship we have with Rebekah and her kids and extended family, and the ever present smiles on that crazy-haired little boy of mine, I say – GOD, YOU ARE GOOD.
And I say it rather loud.
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Rebekah
Next to my faith walk, I am a wife and mother first. My husband and I have been married ten years and have two incredibly, tender sons, Tyrus and LJ.
Our boys are essentially twins, yet neither boy was born from my belly. We adopted sweet Ty (domestically) in 2009 and have a wide-open relationship with his birth family. LJ was also born in the summer of 2009, but came to our family, this year, as a ward of the state (via foster care). Our hearts and abilities have been stretched to capacity, but God is moving, filling, and redefining family for all of us.
