Journey to Uganda

Well, we FINALLY received THE email!  We have a court date!  On April 23rd we will be in court with Henry-the-8th!  We could not be more thankful, excited, overwhelmed, frightened, joyful, and freaked out all at the same time!  The journey that God has taken us on the past year has been a long one.  Mostly because I spent a few months as Moses did, making excuses to the Lord as to why this should NOT happen.  He certainly has a funny way of getting through to us though.

Now the race is on.  We have much to do, and less than a month to do it all.  There's scheduling and rescheduling to do.  We have many loose ends to tie up, but have no doubt that the Lord will provide, as He has all along.  He never ceases to amaze me!  I still cannot figure out why He has chosen us for our son, but there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that He HAS chosen us for each other.  I am eager to turn the page on this chapter and move forward with our complete FOREVER family!

Henry-the-8th

Five years ago, we opened our home to a sibling group of four little ones and ever since, you can imagine the comments and jokes we receive for having so many children.  One of them we get a lot is that we need to have an 8th because then we'd have a "Henry XIII" or the "Eight is Enough" reference..."NEVER!" was often what went screaming through my head as people would joke with us about that 8th child.  Well, I guess the joke's on us! 

Henry-the-8th!

Last February, a friend in my Bible study was sharing about a little boy that she & her husband were going to try & adopt from Uganda.  The next week, she shared that there was a chance that he was too old for them.  By Ugandan law, you have to be 21 years older than the child you adopt & they are in their mid twenties & he may be as old as 12.  All that week, I found myself thinking continually about this little boy and almost hoping that he would turn out to be too old for them.  This made NO SENSE to me!  What in the WORLD was I thinking?!  

Sure enough, my friend shared in the coming week or two that they were not going to be able to adopt him, but she was struggling as to why the Lord would bring this boy into their lives & hearts only to then "take him away" so-to-speak.  That night, I couldn't sleep.  I prayed for him.  I thought about what it would be like to be able to be this little boy's mother.  I thought about what it would mean to our oldest son to have a brother his age.  I couldn't stop thinking....

FINALLY, after wrestling with these thoughts for a month, I opened up to David about what I had been thinking.   I figured he'd tell me I was insane and then we'd be able to get on with our lives.  Instead, David said, "You know, it's strange, but I've been feeling like we have had another son out there somewhere."  WHAAAT??!!!  His reply shocked me.  This was NOT the man I married saying these words!  

Since that conversation, we prayed about him for a while to the point where the best answer we had was, "Well, I know it's NOT a 'no!'"  After another month or so, I got a call in my office at church from my friend who first shared about this boy with me.  She was in tears and said, "I don't know why, but I feel like the Lord wanted me to call and ask you & David to pray about adopting him!"   The tears started flowing.  I knew why the Lord had her call me.  Because we needed that little confirmation in our hearts that what we were thinking was truly of HIM and not just something we had come up with in our own human reasoning.

From then on, we decided to move ahead until we felt the Lord tell us to stop.  So far...He has only confirmed, "GO!"  SO, here we are...in the process of adopting "Henry-the-8th" somewhat out of the blue!  I can tell you that while I realize that by all human standards, this makes no sense, the Lord has made His will very clear to us and we are moving ahead with excitement and great anticipation.  Our children could not be any more excited!  

Here he is talking to me on the phone the day he found out we were going to adopt him.

We told our oldest son, Alexander, first.  He was our first miracle baby and remembers well what life was like before foster care and adoption.  I'll never forget the times he would pray that the Lord would fill our home with children who needed a family.  He has truly sacrificed much for each of the kids who have gone through our home.  The damage to his possessions are like a scrapbook full of memories of which child did what to which toy.  In spite of the sacrifice, when we told him, he was so excited that he would have a brother who would be his age.  He set to work immediately cleaning and preparing his room for this new brother.  Every picture he hung on the wall so that his brother would be able to enjoy it from his bed too.  He even made sure to leave some empty places to make room for his new brother's things.  I could not be more proud of my son and the incredible heart he has for others.

His response puts me in the mind of how the Son has felt all these thousands of years eagerly working to prepare our place in Heaven.  Getting our mansions ready, setting a place at the table for us, preparing all the most amazing splendor He can come up with...All for us!  Just knowing how eager we all are for the arrival of "Henry-the-8th" makes me wonder how much more eager the Father and all of heaven are for our arrival.  "What a day, glorious day that will be!"

By the way...I can't tell this story without telling you that my friend who initially told us about our boy actually got to be the one to meet him, take him gifts & a picture book from us, and tell him that he has a family waiting for him in America.  Jade Metz has a blog too & she blogged her perspective of this story back in November.  What an incredible moment that was for her!  

I love this picture of Jade almost as much as I do of him!
What a privilege for her to be the one who got to tell  him about his new family!

Here he is "meeting" us through Jade & pictures

Healing

“Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”  Jesus said this to the woman who was healed after she touched His robe.  She was suffering, not only from the physical pain, discomfort, & weakness that 12 years of bleeding would bring, but the emotional suffering brought on by years of rejection, stares, sleeplessness, and loneliness.  She had ENDURED suffering.  She didn’t want to inconvenience anyone, but she had tried everything—every doctor in the area, every medicine available at the time—DESPERATELY seeking relief.  Then He came.  She had heard of His miracles.  She may have been skeptical at first, but so many had claimed freedom from their own suffering that she had to try.  She just had to get close enough to touch Him.  He wouldn’t even have to know.  He wouldn’t even have to stop.  Surely He would be too busy to talk to her or to even care about her circumstances.  She was merely a woman, after all; and He was clearly a great teacher.  All of a sudden, there He was!  Without even thinking, she forced her arm through the crowd until her fingers felt the “swish” of fabric passing through them.  In an instant, the pain which had gripped her, even kept her from standing completely upright, was gone!  Could it be?  Was she healed?  She straightened for the first time in years just in time to see His face.  His eyes locked onto hers.  Was He speaking to HER?  Surely not!  “Who touched me?” she heard.  With her face flushing of all the color which had only seconds ago finally come to her, she weakly said, “It was me.”  Fearing what may happen next, she realized He was still looking at her—No, not AT her, but INTO her—as though He KNEW her.  Quickly, she rattled off her story and apologized for bothering Him.  He smiled.  No one had smiled at her in such a long time…and never had anyone smiled to her with such kindness—such love.  How did He know her?  She couldn’t place His face, but somehow, He was familiar and there was recognition in His eyes, so He MUST have known her.  “Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering,” she heard Him say.  With a tear of joy running down her cheek, she whispered “thank you,” and watched Him walk on down the dusty road on His way.  She would never forget that moment and would forever praise God for sending this “Jesus” through her town. 

We don’t even know this woman’s name, but Jesus KNEW her.  He KNEW she would be on His way to heal Jarius’ daughter.  He KNEW she would finally drum up the faith to come to Him.  He could have sent an apostle to heal her later on when He sent them out 2 by 2, but HE wanted to be the one.  He could have even let her quietly slip away as she had hoped to do, but He wanted to see through His own human eyes, the joy in hers, the instant she realized that she was truly healed.  He loved her—just as He loves you. Just as He did for her, He wants to be the one to free you from your suffering.  Whether it’s physical, emotional, or spiritual, He wants nothing more than to be the one to bring you peace and free you from your suffering.  Bring it to Him.  Lay it at His feet.  Allow the peace of God to surround you and renew your spirit.  I have BEEN this woman.  While I have not suffered in the physical sense as she did, I did suffer silently & alone for many years until I finally reached out and touched His garment.  At that moment, He brought me peace & released me from my suffering.  Thank you, Father, for healing ME.  Thank you for your peace in the MIDST of the storm and for cradling me through difficult times.  Thank you for your healing.

Motherhood Redefined

Recently, I have been reminded that being a "mother" is so much more than simply birthing a child.  In my own life, I have lost two little ones due to miscarriage, birthed 3 little ones, and adopted 4 little ones.  The four that we adopted technically have another "mother" running around somewhere.  What does that make me?  Am I in competition with that mother?  Sometimes I feel that way.  Am I somehow "better" than her?  Am I "more" their mother than she was?  I don't honestly know.

I believe in my heart that the Lord brought these children to us.  Was that His plan all along or am I "plan B" for them?  It's weird thinking that you're "plan B."  I'd like to think that I was "plan A" but then if that were true, wouldn't I have given birth to them?  I don't know.  Wouldn't it have been God's plan for them to have stayed with their "original" parents and have grown up in a healthy home with them?  I struggle a little in how I should feel sometimes.  Of course I love them and will always provide for them, but will they ever FULLY feel like "my" children?  I certainly love them as MUCH as the ones I gave birth to, as far as the amount that I love them, but I don't feel the same stuff BACK from each of them.  I wonder if that ever comes.  I really do feel like two of them love me right back just like the 3 I gave birth to, but the other two, I'm just not sure.

At the same time as I've been sorting through the long term "what ifs" of my own family, my nephew's family is suddenly struck with strange "motherhood" issues of its own.  My nephew & his wife have two little boys and one has had some fairly serious medical issues, which ended up requiring surgery.  In the midst of all this, just a few days prior to the surgery, Lisa was struck with a seizure which completely erased all her memory of the last eleven years of her life.  This includes meeting my nephew and giving birth to the boys.  How is this mother, who is now, just seventeen in her own mind, supposed to be mommy to her 9 & 6 year old boys?

The time came for Macon's surgery and I was happy to see that Lisa came.  What struck my heart even more than her presence at the hospital, was her obvious resolution to be what Macon needed her to be throughout the surgery and recovery process.  There she was, completely lost and inexplicably overwhelmed, but she held him.  She whispered into his ear and rocked him.  She watched his unrecognizable face and found signals about what he needed.  She spoke love to him and was near to him as every "real" mother would be.  She didn't even know him.  She could just as easily have walked away with not so much as a tinge of guilt.  But this seventeen year old mind in a twenty eight year old body somehow knew deep down in her heart somewhere that a mother doesn't abandon her child.  So regardless of the fact that she had no memory or emotional attachment at this time, Lisa did what a "mother" would do.  She loved.  She comforted.  She mothered.  Selflessly.

That's exactly what our kids' original mother could not do.  She had memory of their births.  She knew them by face and name.  She remembered everything about "her" children, but she could not love them selflessly.  Then again, sometimes loving selflessly means that a mother gives up her child because she knows she is ill-equipped to handle motherhood.  Does that mother who painfully puts her baby up for adoption cease to become a mother?  Is she a bad mother for doing so?  Suddenly, motherhood looks different to me.

So this is what my mind could come up with:  Motherhood=providing God's best for your child, regardless of your feelings or what seems best for yourself.

I am so proud of Lisa.  My niece is my hero.  I know she is still struggling and this is just the beginning of this "new" motherhood journey that she's actually been on for nine years, but I've never seen such heroism and resolve in another woman's eyes than I did in hers that day she held that "stranger" in her arms in the hospital. Her child.  Her baby she didn't even know.  It was God's best for Macon to have his mommy hold him through that, regardless of how his mommy felt at the time.  She DID IT!  I know that there will be days where she will glow with her "new" title as Mommy and other days she will want to run away and hide from it.  I know that there will be days that she feels like a great mom and days that she feels like a terrible mom.

I know this because every mom feels that way sometimes.  Memories or not.  Every mom feels like running sometimes.  Every mom feels like a failure sometimes.  Every mom feels helpless at times.  Every mom feels alone sometimes.  Every mom feels suffocated sometimes.  Every mom cries.  Every mom feels pain.  Real moms stick it out.  Real moms push through to the end. Because there are those other times...Every mom feels like a champion every now and then.  Every mom feels like a hero at least once in her child's life.

Lisa, you ARE a hero.  You're the REAL THING, baby!  You're God's "plan A" for Gavin & Macon.  Don't give up.  You've only just begun this wonderfully painful and joyous journey of motherhood...redefined.

Baptism

This Sunday I had the wonderful privilege to baptize (alongside my father-in-law) our son, Alexander and our daughter, Emma, our second born, but third in age order.  To date, this was definitely one of the most precious opportunities I have had.  Emma (age 10) has been asking to be baptized for about a year or so, but I just wasn't sure if she really understood the purpose of it and tried to get her to wait.  As I thought about her heart and the way I see her living out her faith not only at church, but at home and even at school, I began to feel that she really is as surrendered to the Lord as she can be at her age.  She seems to have a sensitivity to the Spirit and a selflessness that is fairly uncommon today.  I asked her why she wanted to be baptized and she said, "I just want everyone to know how much I love Jesus."  I believed that was truly her heart and as we talked about it, our son, Alexander said he'd "always" wanted to be baptized but that he was afraid to do the "talking part."  I asked him if he would feel more comfortable writing down his testimony and just reading it and he really thought that would make it easier.  

Alexander is our oldest (age 12) and first born.  He has been very instrumental in praying for our family and the kids that we would adopt.  Ever since he was a very small child, he has been very aware of spiritual matters and has asked MANY questions--MANY, MANY questions!   I have been so touched over the years by his openness to the calling that God had placed on our lives for children.  It seemed that every time we had foster children, he lost something very sentimental to him because of their destructiveness, but every time they would leave, he asked when we were going to get more kids.  He has been a wonderful example to all of our children and the best big brother that I could ever imagine.  Of course, neither of these two are perfect, but it has been an honor to be their mother and watch them grow in the Lord over the years.  I am confident that both of them will actively serve the Lord in some way as adults.

The baptism was a beautiful expression of Alexander & Emma's love for the Lord and it was also a beautiful expression of the tremendous heritage that all of our children have.  My parents, David's parents, and both sets of great-grandparents came to witness the baptism and stand up in faith with us, their parents.  What a wonderful blessing that was!  Besides this, my father-in-law (also a pastor) not only performed the baptism with me, but was asked by our pastor to assist in distributing communion.  In one service, he was able to baptize two of his grandkids alongside his daughter-in-law, and serve communion to both of his sets of parents, my parents, and one of his son's entire family.  What a precious evening!  I am so thankful for the heritage of faithfulness our children have.  It is truly priceless!

Recalculating

Thirteen years ago, my husband & I began traveling down this road some like to call “family planning.”  The term at this point in my life is actually quite laughable, really.  In my experience, family has less to do with “planning” and more to do with “adjusting” than anything else.  For us, our “family planning” route has been more like a GPS that’s gone off course.  “RECALCULATING!” the voice in the box says.  Time and time again, I hear, “RECALCULATING!” in my head.  As a side note, I like to hear it in a feminine British voice.  But that’s just my preference.  Before you begin thinking that I believe that our family is “off track” from where we should be or “off course” as I stated before, I should clarify that the GPS we’ve been using has only a limited earthly knowledge of the big picture of life that God has had all along.  The “RECALCULATING” that we’ve had to do over the years has been a reevaluation of what our meager human minds have put together regarding our assumptions about what “family” means and what it should look like.

Once David & I decided it was “time” to start trying to “start a family” there were certain expectations I had.  I expected that since we were “ready” and since we were doing everything “right” that God would “bless” us with our family.  That, however, is NOT the way things went for us.  Right away, it became evident that conception was not as easy as it looked to be in all the books and on TV!  Several months turned into a year and nothing seemed to happen.  We had our ideas about timelines and when we were hoping for what and…nothing.  “RECALCULATING!”

Finally, it became evident that something different was going on with me so I began wondering if MAYBE I was finally pregnant.  Just as soon as I discovered this, however, I had what I thought was a very unusual period and realized that it wasn’t.  A few months later, however, similar things began happening so I took a pregnancy test and found out that YES!  I was pregnant this time!  Within days of taking the test, however, I had a very painful miscarriage.  In hindsight, it became evident that what happened a few months earlier was another miscarriage.  This set me into a tailspin of emotions and trying desperately to figure out why “family” wasn’t happening for us.  David & I were so obviously meant to be parents, why weren’t we?  “RECALCULATING!”

Finally, after MUCH grieving, questioning, and healing, it became evident that I was pregnant again.  This time, for some reason, I felt like it was different.  Even so, it didn’t feel “real” to me until we had safely passed the point where we lost the other two.  Once we had that little guy in our hands, we just KNEW He was from the Lord and that God would use all the pain we had experienced for His good as well as the good of our new, perfect little Alexander David.  Our family was finally “on track.”  Or so I thought…

When Alexander was approaching a year old, we had the “family planning” talk again.  We decided that, as teachers, it would be important for us to get our Masters degrees and if we were going to do that, we should get it before we had any more children, as it would only become more difficult.  At that point, I was still nursing and was on a birth control pill which was safe for nursing mothers.  We signed up for an 18 month intensive graduate program so that we could get in, get it done, get out, and get on with life.  Day ONE of class, I woke up in the middle of the night with a panic that I was pregnant.  I didn’t tell David because I didn’t want to freak him out.  We went to class that morning and at a break, I shared my fear.  I took a test and it was positive.  Oy!  NOW what?  We have just started this 18 month program where 9 months into it, we would have a newborn!  “RECALCULATING!”

Skip ahead a few years…Alexander David & Emma Hope are 2 & 3, respectively.   They’re beautiful.  Life is good.  Our youth pastor and his wife at the time are going through foster care training and telling us all about how they’re wanting to become foster parents.  David & I admired their courage, but really don’t spend any time discussing it ourselves.  Several weeks later, however, I find that I can’t get fostering out of my mind.  David seems so content and joyful with our little “family” so I don’t want to upset the apple cart, so-to-speak, and end up saying nothing.  Finally, one night I’m up all night.  (The Lord does this every now and then to get me to finally see things His way.)  After much “debate” with the Lord, I say, “Ok, Lord!  But if you want me to tell David about this, you’re going to have to give me a SIGN!  A REAL SIGN!”

The next morning, I went to church for our MOMS Bible study.  I walked in the door, rounded the corner, and right there in front of my face was a SIGN.  A REAL SIGN on a bulletin board that said, “Make a difference in a child’s life.  Become a foster parent.”  I stopped DEAD in my tracks, dropped my things, looked up towards God and said right out loud, “VERY FUNNY!”  The sign had pull tabs with phone numbers for an agency, so I pulled one off, crammed it into my pocket and went on to Bible study.  I said nothing to anyone about my sign until I got home.  I pulled David aside in the hallway and said that I’d been thinking about something and the Lord wouldn’t let me sleep until I told him.  His mouth dropped and said, “I’ve been talking to Pastor John about this very thing with him!”  WHAT?!  I was SHOCKED!  The Lord had gotten us to exactly the same conclusion at the same time.  Now, what does this mean for our “family?”  RECALCULATING!

A couple of years into fostering (and 1 more surprise baby later! “RECALCULATING!”), we came to the realization that we were not going to simply “foster” children for a great length of time.  The Lord began showing us that He had kids that were to become part of our family permanently.  We would become their “forever family” as the foster care agency referred to it.  The thought of adopting  someone from a difficult background really wasn’t all that frightening because the thought of letting them go back to where they’re coming from was even worse.   After discussing with some friends who had been through foster care advised, we decided that our only limitation we would place on a pre-adoptive placement would be that the child or sibling group would have to be younger than our oldest child, who was five at the time.  The weekend we were saying a very heart wrenching good bye to our longest foster placement of 9 months, we got a call that there was a sibling group which fit our limitation and would most likely be adoptable.  We figured there were two.  There were FOUR!  Our baby was less than a year old and our oldest wasn’t yet 7.  There were FOUR who were six & under?!  No way!  It was true!  We had a huge house, huge hearts, and HUGE faith that this was exactly what God wanted us to do.  So, with fear & trembling, we moved forward to figure out how in the world we make 3 & 4 into ONE family!  RECALCULATING!!