Adoption and Faith Archives - Page 9 of 44

January 21, 2015January 22, 2015

Our Weighted Blanket

Stephen and I were not as prepared as we thought we were for parenting our new children. Truthfully, we thought we had this parenting gig down. We didn’t know that our adopted treasures would need something different from us. But, as with many of us who adopted before all the trauma and adoption education was so wide-spread, we figured it out pretty quickly! Yikes!

Our first clue came in those early days after coming home from Russia with our new son and daughter. Huge HUGE transitions for us all! We were constantly asking the question, “Is this behavior adoption related? (We didn’t even know to ask if was trauma related!) Or is this normal for this child? Or maybe it’s just the stress of travel and jet lag, or frustration at not being understood, or…..?”

It reminded me of caring for our three newborns, actually. “Is she crying because she’s hungry? Tired? Needs a diaper change? Sick?…..” But, our children who came home to us through adoption were older, years beyond diapers and midnight bottle feedings.

Once the honeymoon stage was over, the rages began. It became clear that our son’s fits were actually not fits at all. There was an intensity, a deep place of anger and fear, that I soon realized was more like rage than any childhood fit I had ever seen.

I remember times when I would literally lay the weight of my body over my son’s raging little form– praying that he would know that he was safe, desiring that my embrace would keep him from hurting me or himself, hoping that maybe the strong physical presence of his loving mother would somehow communicate to him that no anger need ever overcome him, that peace would replace fear. The weight of my love was the beginning of the miraculous process of displacement that is adoption.

Whirling fear is displaced with love

Raging anger with an anchored peace

Dark hopelessness with a bright future

Over the years I have found that the trauma my son experienced before he came home requires this action of displacement quite often. Like a weighted blanket, I still cover him. Of course, I don’t cover him with my body any more for he has grown into a strong young man, but with my love, through prayer and words of hope.

It is so clear to me that as surely as my husband and I are creating a legacy of love and security and hope for our children, that there exists also an orphan legacy–things handed down to a child from a past marred by relinquishment, fear and lack. But in those long moments of struggle with my son, and all through the years when the legacy of fear would burst to the surface despite the weight of our love, I have known that when God’s peace rules, the orphan legacy is nullified. It must make way for life-giving peace.For though the mountains should depart and the hills be shaken or removed, yet My love and kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace and completeness be removed, says the Lord, Who has compassion on you. (Isaiah 54:10)And it has not stayed hidden from me for long that I am not so unlike my son. His trauma has traumatized me. His pain has become my pain.

And I am desperately in need of the weighted blanket of my Father’s love.

And I must choose, once again, to allow His legacy of love, peace and hope, displace my fears and heal my wounds.

___________________________________________

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.

January 14, 2015

Broken

There were lots of things, about China in general, that I wanted to post. And maybe I will sometime. I was going to now. But something happened. Lucy happened. She is everything now. Lucy is the world.

The days, and mostly the last few hours before we met her for the first time, I always felt like I should be preparing somehow. But there was not much I could do.

And nothing could have prepared me for that moment. I thought I had cleared it in my head that she was real. That she was a person, not a picture; something I could touch, and love on and hug. But I guess I hadn’t.

I was expecting to have more time to get ready (like time would help!) but we just walked into the room and there she was. It was shocking; life-changing.

I expected Lucy to be wonderful. I expected her to be beyond my imagination—but I didn’t expect her to shatter my world like this. I didn’t expect to come to pieces over her.

It’s been three years so I don’t remember everything, and I wonder if Michael shattered me like this. And I wonder how many times I can shatter before I just break. I hope it’s a lot. Or maybe I hope it’s not very many. Because maybe we’re supposed to break. Because there’s pain in this world, and brokenness. And I think it shatters God’s heart too. I’ve been praying lately that HE would give me his heart. Well, maybe he has.

We’ve had reality-checks, sure; but I’m in love. And that’s a dangerous thing. Because when you really love someone you are willing to sacrifice everything for them. I’ve worried before that after Lucy comes home I won’t be able to play by myself—swing by myself—what about reading? And writing? And in the car on the back from the Civil Affairs building, I realized: it didn’t matter. If I could be with Lucy, I would give up anything.

I’m in love. And it’s dangerous. But I don’t even care. I thought I knew what it meant to love her. I was wrong. I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be her sister. It’s not what I expected. But very few things are! And I like her the way she is. I’m glad I was wrong.

I was kind-of caught up in the fact that I WAS GOING TO CHINA at first, and I’m still excited about that, but Lucy is what’s most important.

I remember when I was on the plane, shortly after I’d spent hours trying to sleep next to my comfortably snoring parents, as I was sitting there in a total haze, only sort-of coherent; I thought, “what if this whole trip just goes over my head in a wave of jet-lag and I can’t even enjoy or really remember it?”

And then I realized: it did not matter. The trip isn’t important—it’s what we’re bringing home. ‘Cause Lucy is forever. Forever and ever and ever. That’s what family is all about: foreverness. Always being there for each other.

Lucy is a sister. She belongs; as much as I do. And someday I’ll probably forget sometimes that we had to do without her for eight years. Someday she’ll just there. The seven of us. And it will be the most natural thing in the world.

______________________________________

My name is Hanna Rothfuss. I am 14 and in eighth grade. I have lived in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska for my whole life. My interests are reading and writing, mainly about fantasy and orphan care–often adoption. I have four siblings, two of which are adopted. I’m a homeschooler and a child of God. I pray that all my writing is encouraging, empowering, and brings glory to Him.

You can read more of Hanna’s writing on her blog: Taking My Time.

January 12, 2015January 12, 2015

Let the Grief Begin

“When did we start believing that God wants to send us to safe places to do easy things? That faithfulness is holding the fort? That playing it safe is safe? That there is any greater privilege than sacrifice? That radical is anything but normal? Jesus didn’t die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous. Faithfulness is not holding the fort, it’s storming the gates of hell.”
–Mark Batterson

We have been home almost exactly two months. It’s kind of funny how I let myself think that since some issues haven’t surfaced yet—they are not going to. Not! I have seen grief this week, like never before. I was not expecting it, yet somehow I felt prepared for this moment and did not react negatively when the grief was displayed in a manner directed towards me. Emotions erupted over small issues that could have easily been mistaken for something other than grief. Thankfully the Lord has given me the discernment to see beneath the surface of these outbursts.

My response? I did not take an ounce of this personally. I let the emotions purge from a broken heart and sat, just sat (almost silent). I was determined that I would not shrink back in fear of what I was seeing. I sat for hours, watching as ugly outbursts erupted like a volcano. Words and feelings were often directed towards me, as if somehow I was responsible for the pain, yet I could see that I was just a safe place to let it all out.

This is one of those posts that well, might seem like too much information. Still, I share it because for those praying us through you can know exactly what we need and for those who are in the same place or who will be soon, it’s good to be prepared for the grief.

You see as beautiful as adoption is—it is also very ugly.

In order for us to have the privilege of adoption there had to be great loss for our children. This is the part of adoption that tends to be glossed over when we talk about going across the world to become a father (and mother) to the fatherless. It all seems so wonderful and good that surely it should be easy right? They will see just how much we have done for them and wake up every day and thank us from the bottom of their hearts. Only they cannot. They cannot thank us for security when they cannot begin to understand what security is. They cannot begin to trust when their trust has been repeatedly broken.

This is the part of the journey that I had prepared for and understood fully that I would never really be able to prepare for it. I recognize that this is just the beginning. There is more to come, I am certain of it. So, what then? I can fear this grief or trust that the tears, the anger, and the hurt are the path to healing.

Pain precedes comfort. It’s part of the process. It’s the step where the hurt is purged making way for the comfort.

So often when hurts come we don’t want comfort—what we really want is to be comfortable. There is a difference. Comfortable is the state of ease, but God does not promise us that. In fact, he offers us the opposite, “in this world you will have trouble.” When we are grieving, the process of healing comes through feeling the pain. It literally hurts. Comfort comes as we are strengthened through our pain, not necessarily out of it.

So, as I sat yesterday, waiting and watching the torment of emotions purging from my child, I was helpless to remove the pain, but I could be present hoping that in some way it would offer some small comfort in that not-so-comfortable place.

Though I cannot change the circumstances, remove the hurt or even begin to fully understand the pain—at least I can be present. Having a mom to be present in the midst of hurt is something new for these little ones. It is what I have to offer. So I bring it, praying my actions will point towards my comforter—Jesus.

Grief hurts. It hurts to watch and it definitely hurts to experience.

Though I cannot fix it, I am reminded that in the moment when I love my children despite their unlovable behavior, I am the tangible evidence of God’s unconditional love. What better way to teach them about the gospel? After all, unless I live out the gospel message in the day-to-day moments, it remains just a story in a book; but faith lived changes hearts.

I pray that God would strengthen me to be faithful in this journey.

_____________________________

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 ten 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.

January 7, 2015

One Side of a Heart

Some time last week, we celebrated Silas’s “Gotcha Day”. It’s the twenty-something of March and that’s all I can tell you for sure. Oh, and we didn’t really celebrate it at all, only due in part to the fact that I was lying limp and ragged near death’s door.

Gotcha Days are a bit elusive around here. For one thing, Ruby’s Gotcha Day is also her birth day, and it seems unfair for the boys to get two days to her one. For another thing, we were in the hospital ushering Ruby into the world during Calvin’s first Gotcha Day and then Silas’s Gotcha Day falls right around Calvin’s birthday. Mostly, we’re just too busy celebrating regular life with our regular family to specifically honor that one day that they came.

I can hear all of the adoptive Mamas of the world sucking in a collective gasp of air and indignation over my confessed sacrilege of one of Adoption’s holiest days. While they’re already fainting in the aisles, I’ll go ahead and admit that I do not know Ruby’s precise birth weight (even though I was there) and we do not regularly celebrate the Korean New Year. Or Kwanza.

I have struggled, over the years, to cut my groove in this adoption thing and the reason is really simple: I don’t see myself as an “adoptive mom”. I’m just a mom. I’m a big, bad, don’t-dare-mess-with-them-or-you’ll-answer-to-me Mom. They are all I’ve known.They made me a mommy. I’m theirs and they’re mine. I tell them eight thousand times a week how much I love being their Mommy and how thankful I am that we are a family. But that might be over-simplifying a few things.

Silas’s Gotcha Day was hands-down the most traumatic day of my entire life. If I were a method actress and I had to shoot a scene where something terribly emotional was happening, I would conjure up that day in March and shut the set down. I would find myself in a tiny room full of plastic toys that sang songs I couldn’t place. I go there, and it’s hard for me to recover. I see it all again. I can’t forget a thing. I hear it all. I feel once more the fingernail drag of bone-deep pain down the front of my soul. So much happened in that little room. So much that I was not prepared for.

With each adoption, I clung to differing shreds of willful ignorance.

With Calvin, the possibility for trauma and attachment issues hung loose and ghost-like on the horizon. When I got to “those” sections of the book, I closed the cover and went to sleep. I did not want anyone muddying up my rosy future before I’d even seen his face. It seemed too hard and mostly, it seemed like a big waste of time, because he was just a tiny baby.

With Ruby, I read some of the sections, but only because I knew I wouldn’t need them, her being our precious, well-adjusted daughter, born of the most beautiful open adoption.

With Silas, I highlighted a few paragraphs here and there, but we’d be fine because he was in a foster home. He was not institutionalized. He had not experienced trauma. He was strongly attached to his caregiver. Plus, in the grand scheme of life, he was still really quite young.

Of course, half of me knew there was always the chance. I knew that Silas’s age would make it trickier. I knew it would be a different kind of ball game.

But I did not know that our precious son would spend two entire years (and counting) running toward us and away from us at the exact same time.

I did not know that the moment we took him in our arms and ran, the trauma would be inflicted.

I did not know that we would seek help from three different specialists in the span of a single year.

I did not know that a child, so wiry and beautiful, would so fully deplete my every emotional and physical resource on a daily basis.

There are other things I didn’t know.

I didn’t know that my 7 year old son would cry because he misses his birth mom.

I didn’t know that my daughter would be on the receiving end of racism that is clothed in “they mean no harm”.

I see a world opening its heart to the millions of orphans who desperately need a family and I feel immense hope. These kids, no matter where they’re from or what their background is, they need a new last name, a forever one. They need family traditions and trips to Dairy Queen. They need warriors to fight for them and mommies and daddies to kiss and tickle them.

They also need the freedom to feel the hurts that no one else can understand. They need the space to never have to choose between the life that they didn’t get to live and this one right here. They need a free pass from computing that the two could never be mutually exclusive.

With Silas we have had a front-row seat to the heart-busting-up trauma of being taken from all that you know. These are children, and children are smart and intuitive. They understand more than they can verbalize, and what’s left unsaid leaks out in tears, rage, and banged-up self-worth. I’m thankful to have seen it with my own eyes two years ago, because I might never have believed it otherwise. I might have looked past the fight to hold on to a history. I might have remained naive enough to hope that the two older kids did not suffer the exact same losses.

So we hold their fragile hearts with the tenderest hands. We try to anticipate the emotions that shift the weight from one side to another without warning, but we often get it wrong. We feel the slip of trust through the cracks so we reach out and grab it by the ankles. It’s not always practiced or ideal, but we promise to never let them hit the floor.

And maybe that’s what adoptive parenting is like. Maybe it’s a bit like a field day water balloon toss.

Maybe it’s less about memorizing the right answers and more about looking them square in the face during every question, every doubt, every sadness. Maybe it’s leaning in to a kind of pain that we do not know and will never understand just so that they aren’t there leaning alone.

Maybe it’s less about finding the exact right therapist to tell us what to do to fix the problem and more about promising to never tuck the child with the broken heart in at night without a kiss and a hearty sniff to the head.

The books are valuable. They are there to help, and I don’t suggest my path of willful ignorance. But at the end of the day, the bright-spot surprise days and the grim ones where it seems like it will never get better, they are ours and we are theirs.

Maybe our days never will get better. Maybe two years really can turn into forever. But that child knows he is fully loved, all the way to the top, in times of sunshine and weeks of drear, and that is the point of adoption.

_________________________________________

Shannan Martin believes the turns in life that look like failure are often holy gifts, a lesson she chooses to embrace after the bones of her comfy farmgirl life were shattered and rebuilt from the toes up. Together, Shannan and her family sold their dream farmhouse, moved to a disadvantaged area in the city, and adopted a 19-year old felon. Nothing could have prepared her for the joy she would discover as her family began to live the simple, messy, complicated life they were created to live. In walking beside the forgotten and broken and seeing first-hand the ways she so cleanly identified with both, Shannan’s faith was plucked from the mud. She and her jail-chaplain husband now live on the wrong side of the tracks with their four children. She blogs often at Flower Patch Farmgirl.

January 5, 2015January 5, 2015

Am I Really Yours Forever?

Doubts and concerns flood his young heart and mind.

Two years come and gone and yet.

Am I really yours forever he asks?

Will you always love me?

Always and forever, dear one.

But my last family didn’t keep me.

They were your foster family, watching over you until it was time.

Time for what?

God’s appointed time for you to join your forever family, us!

But could the government change their mind and take me away?

No, buddy, you are ours, always and forever;

Just as you belong to God, always and forever.

No one can snatch you out of the Father’s hand.

_______________________

This Christmas Anthony has really been processing and trying to wrap his brain around the fact that he is with us forever. He has had me hold him like a baby and rock him and reassure him numerous times that he is ours forever. As we come up on the two year anniversary of his joining our family, we see his understanding of forever love growing. As he understands that our love is like the love of our Heavenly Father, unconditional and unchanging, you can see the joy on his face. He still asks these questions because there are clearly still some doubts lodged in mind as he tries to comprehend the love of a family. He was with his foster family in China from about the age of 2 until we adopted him at age 8. I can only imagine how it must have felt to ripped from the only family you have ever known and how confusing that must be. Why did they let him go? Why didn’t they keep him? Is it normal to be passed from one family to another?

Pray for his sweet heart and for the heart of our new little one, Eva. She joins our family in 2015. She turned 4 on January 4, and it was hard passing through that day knowing she is on the other side of the world without us.

_________________________________________

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 31, 2014

Adoption is Hard #top10ofalltime

Children from hard places who have experienced trauma
(and I would argue that losing your birth family is always traumatic)
are going to have attachment issues.

Their trust has been broken
by the very people who were
supposed to be the most trustworthy.

Your words mean nothing to them. They have no reason to trust what you say and they have every reason to doubt. They have been hurt, they have had to learn to protect themselves, they lack the ability to empathize, and they are scared to death, they are master manipulators and they want to be in control.

WARNING: Their behavior is going to reflect this.

And it is going to make you feel crazy.
And parenting them is hard CRAZY HARD.

Even if you fell in love with their referral pictures, chances are that once you enter this crazy hard world of loving a child with attachment issues, you are not going to FEEL like you love them. No, it does not FEEL the same as parenting a healthy attached child. Not the PC thing to say, but true. It’s hard to feel love for a child who tries to sabotage you at every turn.

But, you see, you DO love them:

You love them by doing the loving thing over and over and over.

You love them by parenting them in the way they need to be parented with high nurture and high structure (despite how you parented your other kids or how your church friends parent).

You love them by holding them when they are raging and telling them that you aren’t going anywhere.

You love them by praying for them and fighting the spiritual battle on their behalf.

You love them by not being easily offended.

You love them by not being easily manipulated.

You love them by not giving up, by not confirming their suspicions that you are just like all of the others who abandoned them and broke their trust.

You love them by laying down your life, picking up your cross, and dying to yourself

over

and over

and over.

Yes, you love them. . . and by the grace of God, someday, yes someday, you will wake up and realize that they believe you and they trust you and both of you FEEL, truly feel that phileo (friendship) love that you have both been longing for.

Dear “trauma mama” if you are in the trenches today, lovingly parenting through the crazy-hard, please do not lose heart! Do not give up or be easily discouraged. Fight the battle by dying. Just for today, lay down your life and choose love.

_________________________

Blessed beyond measure to be a child of God, wife of Disco Man, mother of ten awesome children (9 adopted from “hard places”), and friend of many. Messed up in most ways and so thankful for His saving grace in my life. Trying to be thankful for His refining fire as well. Desiring to live fully, every day, for His glory alone. You can follow their life at Grace and Glory.

December 31, 2014

Our First Failed Adoption #top10ofalltime

One day, my friend approached me with information regarding a possible adoption. She knew someone who was pregnant and expecting biracial twins. The birthmom wasn’t sure what she was going to do regarding parenting vs. adoption, but we gave her our profile to consider.

We didn’t think of it or talk about it very often, because we didn’t think it would really happen, since the Mom didn’t seem confident one way or the other. She had chosen us and yet kept putting off meeting us or with a lawyer. We weren’t sure what to think and tried to keep our emotional distance.

One day out of nowhere, JC and I discussed what we would name the babies. In a 2-minute conversation, we had our names- almost as if they hadn’t come from us. We never discussed names again, or referred to them by name in conversation or prayer. I never told a soul, nor wrote them down in my journal. I tried to put the names out of mind.

When the babies were born, we began to get conflicted messages. Without sharing too much information in cyber-space, we were on an emotional roller-coaster. At one point, I was in tears on the phone with my dear friend, Lisa. Lisa, who had for some reason always been confident that these were our babies, shared with me the source of her confidence.

Months previous, she had a vivid dream that revealed the names of our babies as well as the verse written on the nursery wall. I thought it was interesting and begged her to share the names, and she was strangely resistant. Eventually she gave in and told me the names.

They were the same names.

Sam and Grace.

And the verse on the nursery wall? The very reason we had picked the name Sam:

“For I have prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted my request.”
~1 Samuel 1:27

In 1 Samuel 1, Hannah, a barren woman, begs the Lord for a child and He eventually answers her prayer with a son whom she names Samuel.

Grace- because she is a perfect gift from the Lord- as is His grace.

How could this be? How could Lisa have known the same names we had chosen- without ever whispering it to a soul? It had to be the Lord. As I praised His name, and sought His voice, I felt Him urge me to let go- to release the wall I had up to guard my heart and to let Him guard my heart instead. In that moment, I knew these were my babies. I knew that I was their mama. I rejoiced. I cried. I wondered what would happen next.

The next day we got a phone call. She was definitely going to parent the babies.

WHAT???? How could this be? Did I hear the Lord wrong? NO! No way! But if not, how could He have led me down this path only go have my heart trampled?

The following is from an email to my parents:

I don’t understand. I did everything right and was obedient. If this wasn’t going to happen, then why did the Lord tell me to open my heart? Why did He keep sending confirmation after confirmation to have hope? Why did He give us NAMES? It seems cruel. Either this is not over according to Him, or I totally heard Him wrong all this time (but why involve Lisa with the dream??) or…what? I know He’s Truth and Good and Love. Yet it would seem my heart doesn’t matter to Him if this is truly over. Or do I hold onto hope against all odds??? At every turn I heard, “God can do what He says He can do.”

It’s not that this adoption didn’t work for us. It’s that I feel like He led us on during these last few weeks. I got attached b/c HE told me to open my heart and bonded me to these babies that I’ve never even held. Why would He do that????? It feels like He’s playing games with my heart.

Eventually, the Lord showed us that only by attaching us emotionally to these children would we be committed to praying for them throughout their lives. And so, we came to terms with the fact that we are their spiritual parents, their God-parents, if you will.

A glance into my journal from that time shows this:
I don’t know what will come or even if its over, but there must be a reason you told me to open my heart and let me get emotionally attached to these children. I will surrender to this bond and take on the role of Mom- if only in a spiritual sense. I will not waver in prayer for them. Perhaps I’ll pray harder than if they were in my care- as I have no control in their upbringing. So we’ll pray. But you’ll have to do the leg work, Father. We will trust them to your care.

It occurred to me later, that if I had only read the NEXT VERSE of 1 Samuel 1:27 and 28 and realized it applied to me as well, I might have been better prepared.

“Now I, in turn, give him to the Lord, as long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the Lord.’ She left him there.” ~1 Samuel 1:27-28

So we released them to the Lord and pray for them daily. We pray for these children and trust that He will grant our requests.

________________________________________

Lauren is in love with the Lord, the man of her dreams, and her new daughter. She and her husband married in June of 2006 and thereafter began their journey of infertility and adoption. Despite the many wounds, heartaches, and suffering, He has blessed their family abundantly. Come see for yourself on her personal blog.

December 31, 2014

Just Because It’s Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s Wrong #top10ofalltime

“But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God.” Phil 2:17

This fostering journey has taken it’s toll on me emotionally and physically but it has grown me spiritually. My natural tendency is to think that when it is hard or when I see myself or my kids being affected that we shouldn’t have done this. But, that’s simply not true. We know that we are right where we are supposed to be. We didn’t make a mistake.

Somehow, we have this notion in our heads that if we’re in God’s will, life will be easy and uncomplicated. Things will make sense but that is just not the case. If it were, where would faith come in? Why would we need to be dependent on Him?

I’ve been pondering the story of Jesus’s birth – The Story. Mary was pregnant with the Son of God. The King. The Savior Himself. And yet Mary and Joseph went from Inn to Inn looking for a place to rest. They had to question what in the world was going on. “God, you want this baby to be born healthy don’t you? We need a place to stop. Why are there no rooms? I thought this was Your plan but it doesn’t make sense to us. It hurts.”

In our own waiting seasons, don’t we find ourselves asking the same types of questions? Mary’s situation was not easy or uncomplicated. It was definitely not comfortable. She was affected in many ways and yet through her obedience, she received the greatest gift imaginable. She held Jesus in her very arms. She cared for the King of Kings. I cannot grasp this really.

In our situation, I have come to realize that I need more help. I have always been full of emotion but with the added stress that six kids brings (and oh they do!), my lows have been lower, and I need some help with steadying out my hormone levels. I’ve talked with my Dr. and we have a plan to try out some medication.

This is not really fun for me to share but I do so because I want you to know the realities. I know there are differing opinions on this whole issue but we believe that this is the right next step for me.

Even so, I struggled with this. One of my biggest fears going into fostering was that I would “wither up like an old dead flower” and let me tell you, Satan has been throwing that back in my face. “Look, Jami. You have failed, you can’t handle it. You are losing.” But I am not accepting his lies nor his evil whispers. I will choose to listen to the Voice of Truth. He tells me “You don’t need to handle it. I am in control. I have given doctors the ability to help you. This is My provision right now.

When I am weak, He is strong. His strength is made perfect in my weakness. He doesn’t call us to pull up our bootstraps and work harder for Him, He knows our weaknesses. He just wants us to look to Him and be led by Him. He calls us to obedience, no matter what the cost. Even if that means the decline of health. Even if that means pain. He died for us. Why should we not suffer for Him? In our situation, my “suffering” pales in comparison to what the three little ones in our care have experienced. They are worth it.

________________________________________

Jami Kaeb is wife to Clint and together they have six children (four of whom were adopted). After having her eyes opened to the overwhelming needs of those in the foster care system, she began a journey that ultimately led her to found The Forgotten Initiative (TFI). TFI equips and supports “Forgotten Advocates” to bridge the gap between Agencies and the Church, bringing joy and purpose to the foster care community. Learn more at www.theforgotteninitiative.org. Jami loves coffee. A lot. And connecting with others. When the two are mixed, she is especially happy! You can get to know her better through her blog at www.lifewithapersonalgod.org.

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!”
________________________________________

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.

Blog

Category: Adoption and Faith

Our Weighted Blanket

Broken

Let the Grief Begin

One Side of a Heart

Am I Really Yours Forever?

Adoption is Hard #top10ofalltime

Our First Failed Adoption #top10ofalltime

Just Because It’s Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s Wrong #top10ofalltime

I’m Not Signing for That!

When Love Has Its Way With Us