You're no good, you're no good, you're no good, baby, you're no good.

One rainy afternoon a few years ago, I gave each of my kids a puzzle to complete. Noah had picked out a Spiderman puzzle and promptly set the box before him, ready to study it. Brow furrowed, he tackled the work starting on the corners and the edges like a good left-brain thinker. Isabel, my right brained child, started with the most random pieces, singing as she worked, and when I tried to show her the box so she could be guided by it she exclaimed indignantly: "No, mami! I want to be surprised!"

I should have known then what our journey through homeschooling would be like. Isabel draws on every paper and she devours books. I can't keep the bookshelves full enough for her. Noah sees everything as a problem to be solved and categorizes the world in terms of which parts of it can be built out of Legos. She is all creativity and he is all logic.

It is not surprising that math has been a struggle in our house from the beginning. One curriculum did not challenge Noah enough, while it brought Isabel to tears of frustration daily. Finally I had to choose two different curricula, which can be challenging, but it has restored the peace and love for learning in our home.

I still have to sit with Isabel and work through the math lessons. She and I spend a good bit of time each day hunkered down over the math book, playing with manipulatives, drawing the problem out, and such. With Noah all I do is give him his work and send him away to do it. He comes back if he has a question but for the most part he only comes to show me what he did and get his many check marks.  

Which is why I was so surprised a few weeks ago when they came home from church with a little "About me" quiz in which one of the questions was: "Are you good at math?" Isabel had answered "yes" and Noah had written "no" and I was utterly confused. That is until I thought about our math journey and had an "aha" moment.

I know Isabel struggles with math and I know how discouraged many girls become about their math and science skills by the time they hit middle school. So I have been telling her day after day how good she is at math because she does not let it defeat her. My mantra to her has been: "You are good at math because you work hard at it!"

I realized that while Isabel hears this day after day, I had not told Noah he was good at math because I assumed he knew this to be the case since it comes so naturally to him. But because I did not spend as much time working with him and telling him how proud I was of his efforts, he thought he was not any good at it.

So we re-defined what "good at" means in our home. You are good at something when it comes naturally to you, but you are also good at something when you don't let it beat you, when you work at it until you master it, when you don't give up. We decided you are not only "not good" at something when you don't even attempt it.

This morning I found an article that resonated with me and with the approach we've been taking. Here is the link for the article in its entirety: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/11/struggle-means-learning-difference-in-eastern-and-western-cultures/

The author talks about the difference in Western and Eastern cultures' understanding of struggle.  In our culture we think of struggle as a mark of lack of skill or intelligence. If you struggle with something then you are obviously not good at it. Eastern cultures view struggle as a "predictable part of the process of learning" (Spiegel). You're supposed to struggle. Everyone struggles some time. In fact, their academic lessons are designed slightly above the pupil's skill level. They believe it builds character and emotional fortitude.

And I'm beginning to agree.

I don't think there is anything wrong with telling your children they are smart, but when it comes to academics our family does not value being intelligent as highly as we value being persistent, hard working, teachable, and giving your best effort. A child who is willing to work hard and do their best, even if the work is difficult, will learn much more than a a child who is smart but refuses to do anything that does not come easily to them.

We are not filling our kids' heads with the song: "You are good at everything!," thus creating children who don't understand their limitations and have an unrealistic sense of their own selves. We are simply teaching them that just because something is hard they should not stop trying with the excuse: "I'm just not good at it." Of course our kids attempt, almost daily, to get out of something by whining: "This is haaaaarrrrrd!" I guess they expect me to say: "Oh, my darling, sweet baby, then you don't have to do it, my love" But they have learned it just does not work with this momma.

We understand that life and God will have a way to help the kids hone their interests, discover what they are particularly skilled to do, and put them in the path they should follow.  But while they are under our care, we will not put confines to their potential and dreams by pigeonholing them into only pursuing what is naturally easy for them to do. 

The #1 Fly Killer

I was in the den working when I heard the noise. It was coming from behind the door of my bedroom. At first it sounded like the faint whine of a puppy and it continued in a slow crescendo until it reached a full, roaring scream: “mooooooommmmmyyyyyy, ahhhhhhhhh!” I would love to say I ran full speed to see what it was but I know my children are prone to drama, so I calmly walked to the bedroom and opened the door. 

I found Noah plastered against the wall opposite the window, sobbing uncontrollably, snot and tears mingling near his chin. His eyes were fixed on the window in sheer terror. I followed them and could see nothing. And then I heard the buzz. It was loud and disturbing but it was coming from a common house fly, ugly and big but harmless. 

Unless you are six. 

“What’s the matter, Noah?” I asked him. “It’s chasing me!” he wailed back. I explained to him that it would not harm him and that house flies don’t bite (do they?) and to keep reading his book so I could finish my work. I shut the door and went back to the den. 

About two minutes later I heard the screaming again. This time, with much less patience and an edge to my voice, I went back and reminded him that the fly would not hurt him, that I was too busy to try to chase it out of the room, and that he was a big boy, much bigger than the bug, in fact. I firmly closed the door and left him in his little private hell. 

As I sat in front of the computer the Still Small Voice enveloped my thoughts: “He’s only six years old, you know? He is just scared. Can’t you be more gentle and understanding?” See, I am very practical. Too practical even. It was just a fly, for goodness sake! 

But at that moment the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to my lack of empathy and helped me to see the world through the eyes of my little boy. I realized I often expect my children to think, behave and understand the world like adults. That fly was a monster against which Noah felt powerless to fight and he had no hero to show him how to conquer his dragon. 

So I breathed a prayer of wisdom and patience and went back in. I held him until he stopped crying and then I told him about how a simple magazine can turn into a magic secret weapon against flies. I showed him how to use it and, while we did not kill the fly then, I left him fully armed. As I was leaving the room I mentioned in passing that if he killed the fly I would give him a medal of valor.  

I returned a few minutes later when the silence was too suspicious and found him perched on the bed, still as a statue, weapon ready. I asked him what he was doing. “I’m waiting for the fly to come back my way so I can kill it!” he said with excitement. He spent the rest of the day chasing! flies until one let itself be killed by this tiny dragon slayer. As promised, I gave him a medal. 

(The medal says: "#1 fly killer: Noah, the valiant")

Empathy is powerful. Noah needed his fears validated, not minimized. Once he knew he was heard and understood, he became courageous. Once someone came to his side and empowered him, he believed in himself. This morning he even tackled a cockroach with his daddy’s help!

Grown-ups need empathy too. We may not wail in public despair at the sight of our fears or openly beg for a friend to come rescue us. “You just don’t do that,” we tell ourselves, perpetuating a lie that keeps us estranged from each other, unable to let someone else step into our shoes.

But we are just as terrified and helpless before our dragons as a six-year old before a giant house fly. And sometimes we just need someone to come alongside to pray with and for us, and to encourage us to discover that we can become dragon slayers. No perfect words or wise advice. Just a shoulder and a friend.

And we may not completely understand someone else's fear or pain. We may think "it's just a fly, for goodness sake!" We may even expect them to get over it or to realize, logically, why they should not be afraid. To behave like we would in that case.

But when we stand beside them and face the window from their perspective we just may feel how big and ugly the fly looks to them.  That fly may just look like a dragon we recognize. And suddenly, our eyes are opened to their reactions and responses. 

And empathy happens. 

Paul understood the strength that comes in numbers. He reminds us that God’s intention for community is for us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. It’s a calling to never under-estimate the power of the words: “I understand. I am with you and you are not alone.”

The Little Boy That Saved The Day

Happy birthday, my baby!

Noah is six years old today and, as we celebrate his arrival into the world, I can’t help but reminisce about how his arrival into our home, at one-month old, marked a turning-point in our story that changed the course of our family and saved our marriage.

Six years ago I didn’t know if we would make it. It is strange to say this now when our life is just right, but six years ago the story seemed to be at an end. We had been married six years, and the last one of those had been a nightmare. We should have seen it coming but we didn’t: the stress of two demanding jobs, being parents and forgetting to be a marriage, lack of communication, and selfishness had crept into our marriage quietly and relentlessly until we looked at each other one day and wondered How are we ever going to find our way back to what we used to be?

As Matt was preparing to take a new church in a town a few hours away there was discussion of me staying behind. On my part I was doing all I could to make it happen, finding excuses not to go with him: the house needed selling, the move would mean I would start a new teaching job in the middle of a semester which I did not want to do, if I quit we would lose our health insurance and go down to one income for at least a year. We were broken, lost, and desperate people. The distance between us was widening and neither one could figure out how to reach over and bridge the gap.

But God, oh, this God who goes before me, who is more faithful to me than I could ever be to him, stubbornly refused to let go of us. He had put us together and his mercy would not stop pulling us, prodding us, opening doors to opportunities to regenerate, to find our way back to each other, to obey his law: that which God has joined together, let no one separate (Matthew 19:6b. Emphasis mine).

One night in early August we received a phone call from our adoption agency. A baby was born that needed a family. We were in no position to adopt an infant at the moment. We both understood that another child was not the answer to our broken marriage because new babies can add more stress than almost any other life-changing circumstance. Of course the timing was all wrong. But this baby was Isabel’s biological brother.

How could we say no?

So we sat and we talked. And we renewed commitments. And we worked on things for the first time in a long while. And we realized we had to heal our relationship for these children’s sake if nothing else. They were ours and we had chosen to be their parents and we had to make things right between us. So we did the only thing we knew could help and something we had not done together in a while: we prayed.

And we prayed. And we prayed. And we prayed.

We asked the Lord for a renewal of the love we once had. We asked for wisdom to find the path to restoration. We asked him and each other for forgiveness. We asked for strength to obey him, for courage to follow through, for faith that He could help us, and for a heart turned upwards and not inwards. And we cried out together for his presence in our marriage.

And when we got up from our knees it was decided: we would bring Noah home, we would leave the house to sell itself, we would deal with the job and loss of insurance and loss of income, and I would move with Matt to start afresh again. We would trust God to help us do what seemed impossible to save our family.

And He delivered. As He always does.

One by one God closed the doors to my excuses and provided an answer to each of my But, Lord… Because of Noah, I was given both health insurance and paid maternity leave from my last job while I waited to start on the new one. Because I was on maternity leave I was hired to start a new teaching job mid-year, in January, in our new town. The house sold, not quickly, but quickly enough. And even though we were the poorest we had been in a while we lacked nothing.

As a testimony to God’s incredible power and grace, we were experiencing most of the worst stressors that a marriage can withstand at the same time: a new town, a new job, a new baby and a toddler, going from a house to a two bedroom apartment, the financial burden of the adoption, and the loss of one income.

Yet we had never been so happy.

This time we were dealing with life’s difficulties from our knees together. God’s timing in bringing Noah to our lives changed the end of our story. And while I don’t advocate adding a child to your family to save your marriage, his arrival shook us awake from our selfishness and self-centeredness. God had a bigger plan for us and we had a responsibility not only to survive but to thrive as a couple not only for the sake of Isabel and Noah’s future, but for ours as well.

As I thank God today for this little baby who came in the nick of time to a hurting family and saved the day, I am reminded in a small way of another little One who came more than two thousand years ago to a hurting world to save all who would believe in him.

Thank you, Jesus, for Noah’s life and for the one You gave so I could be telling this story today.

Sometimes when you are five...

Sometimes when you are five your hands are just not big enough to spread across the ebony and ivory keys of a piano but your sister’s were when she was five, and so she was playing songs very quickly and you can barely put all five fingers on the keys at the same time. So you feel small and young and a little behind.

Sometimes when you are five you have a friend named Brownie who gets to do all the bad things you really want to do and your parents won’t let you, and he calls your sister names you don’t dare say like “crybaby” and he hides her toys, and you blame it on him but you get a consequence anyway even though it was the bear’s fault. So you feel adventurous and rebellious and proud to be friends with such a bad bear. 

Sometimes when you are five and you are very shy people ask you your name and you just don’t want to say it but your mom makes you so it comes out very thin, and you are asked to please say it louder but you still don’t want to and then you get scolded by your mom for being rude. So you feel frustrated because really, you are just shy.

Sometimes when you are five you like to put your Legos back in their box according to colors but that takes a while and your family is running late so you get told to hurry up and just put away those Legos already, and you have to throw them in the box willy-nilly. So you feel anxious because nobody understands just how important it is for you to put your Legos away by color.

Sometimes when you are five you want to play all by yourself for a few minutes but your sister is sociable so she wants to play with you all the time but she wants you to play her way because she is bossy, and you tell her to go away and then you get in trouble for not sharing. So you feel annoyed because all you want is some time alone and she is always there.

Sometimes when you are five and you have a bad dream your mom and dad come running to your bedroom in the middle of the night to hug you and sing to you and pray with you and maybe even take you to their bed to sleep. So you feel loved and cherished and safe.

Sometimes when you are five you get to go out with your daddy all by yourself and you go to the barbershop and then you go get ice cream together. So you feel manly and especial and you know you want to be just like him.

Sometimes when you are five you race everyone in your family down the grassy path and, one by one, they stop running because no one has as much energy as a five year old boy, not even your bossy six year old sister. So you feel fast and confident and like you just won all the medals in the world.

Sometimes when you are five and it’s your birthday your mom makes you a cake and you get to invite your best friends and you play with cars all afternoon and then you get to open presents. So you feel important and bigger.

And you decide that even though you are smaller, weaker, less accomplished, and less powerful than everyone else in the world, sometimes being five is not bad. Not bad at all.

Happy birthday, buddy!

**Friends, I have not fallen off the planet but lately it seems I have had more pressings things to take care of like celebrating summer birthdays as you can see.  I’ll be back. In the meantime, may God bless you and keep you**

Brownie...

We walked hand in hand into the Goodwill looking for nothing in particular, as we often did. Me, the lover of books, would peruse the paperbacks and find some treasures for a quarter. Matt would spend his time in the house wares finding salvageable oddities. But we always avoided the children’s section. Too painful. Too pointless.

Except that day. I don’t remember if we had already started the process of adoption or not but as we looked through the store we found ourselves walking down the last isle, next to the wall covered in broken toys and teddy bears. Up on the top shelf I saw it. It was a brown, fuzzy, child-size bear with a blue scarf around his neck. It caught my eye because it looked expensive and new. It was a Gund bear. The kind you find in fancy toy stores but at Goodwill discount. We took it down, inspected it, and carried it away.

And I named him Brownie.

On the way home I dared to dream a little of a time when Brownie may accompany a child into the land of dreams and protect him or her from the bad ones. It was the perfect bear for a little one: soft and friendly, seeing the world from the same eye-level, a relatable companion.

A couple of years went by. Isabel came and filled our lives with joy. Still Brownie was relegated to live on the guest bedroom bed. When Isabel went through a phase of dressing animals as people I held a silent hope for Brownie, who could wear her clothes easily. But Brownie was overlooked and left alone on his bed in favor of smaller Pooh.

 A few more years went by and we grew by one more when we brought Noah home. One evening as I prepared the kids for bed, Noah, not quite four-years old, asked to sleep with an animal as was his custom. This time he selected Brownie, who had moved from the guestroom into the large bin of stuffed creatures that now lived in the kids’ shared bedroom. Brownie, who was almost as tall as Noah, never left the bed again.

The fuzzy bear I dreamed so many years ago as a friend to the children I was yet to know  became more than a sleeping prop. Brownie is now the star of many adventures. He has traveled the world, he has lived in many countries, he has survived eating poison, he can breathe under water, he would put James Bond to shame and yet he has never left our house. He is also the baddest bear in the land. He steals money from Elmo, he lies and disobeys Noah and gets put in time-out a lot. He hits his friends and provides me with many teaching moments, as I explain to Noah why Brownie’s behavior is wrong and smile at Noah’s vicarious living through his unruly bear.

We chuckle to hear our children begin conversations with each other like this: “Remember when Brownie…” and we have to walk away so they don’t see us laugh when the other one replies: “I remember and he also…” filling one more detail of an adventure neither one of them witnessed.

I don’t know why Isabel did not take to Brownie. Maybe she had too many other choices. Or maybe their personalities simply did not “click.” My daughter is nurturing and prefers small creatures she could wrap in blankets and hold as babies in her arms. Brownie is a big bear, more of a pal than an offspring, so his charms did not work on her.

 It took a quirky little boy with mischievous eyes to see the possibilities this bear’s company had to offer. They are best buds. Brownie wears Noah’s clothes and, in exchange, Noah has made Brownie the star of his childhood adventures. It is endearing. And a little nerve-racking. The way this bear acts sometimes I worry he can be a bad influence on Noah…

I would have danced in the middle of that Goodwill with Brownie in my arms if I had known the life he would live and the small friends he would keep.  But the afternoon we met, I cautiously held him by the ear, trying hard not to get too attached and trying not to think about his loneliness and mine, were he never to have playmates.  

Sometimes you have to take a step of faith and buy a bear for an empty home, believing God keeps his promises. Sometimes those promises take you on a journey you did not expect because God’s crafted a different plan than you anticipated. And sometimes the earliest evidence of God’s plan in your life is brown and fuzzy, and wears a blue scarf around its stuffed neck.

"The Call"

Linking to Mama Kat's Weekly Writer's Workshop: "A phone call you won't forget."

When you are in the process of adoption all you want is “the call.” The mere mention of that event can make your stomach knot and your heart rate accelerate. It is what you pray for every night, what you hope for every time the phone rings, and what you cannot imagine ever happening.

We experienced “the call” one Wednesday in March. The “there is a baby for you, would you like to know more about her?” call. It was exhilarating and exciting and amazing. We were ready for it, we longed for it, we had been preparing for it, and when it came all of our dreams seemed to come true. 

A year and a half after “the call” we were settled as a family of three. We knew we wanted more children. Maybe one or two more at some point. We would start the process of adoption again when Isabel was about two, knowing it would take several months to complete it and bring home baby number two.

But God had other plans…

That spring, unexpectedly, Matt received a call from a church in a small town a few hours away that wanted to interview him. He felt it was time for him to make a change and he was praying about accepting. I was frustrated with the seemingly bad timing of the offer. If he accepted we would move in September which meant I either had to move a month before him to start at a new school in August or take a semester off and start in January, which meant living on one income for a while.    

The same day Matt accepted the position at the church, I took a job at one of the high schools in our new town to start in January. We still had not figured out exactly how we would work out the timing but we had made the decision prayerfully and trusted the Lord knew what he was doing.

The night we took the jobs I was out for the evening when Matt called and asked me to come home now. Our social worker had called. She never called. E-mail was her normal way of contacting us so we got back to her right away. She proceeded to tell us about a two-day old baby boy that had been placed in their care by the same woman who made an adoption plan for Isabel, her birthmother. The agency had a policy to call the family of the first biological sibling in such cases.

“Do you want the baby?” she asked. This was “the call ” to be sure. But this time we were neither expecting it nor prepared and at first I didn’t know how to feel. A completely antithetical experience than our first one. 

Did we want the baby?

We were about to embark on a new chapter of our lives where we would be experiencing several of the greatest stressors a marriage can go through: a new job, a new town, loss of one income, a house to sell, both a mortgage and rent, moving from a house to a two bedroom apartment, on the second floor, with two dogs and now a new baby and a toddler under the age of two.

This was a tremendous risk and by all rational thought a bad idea.

But how could we not?

This was Isabel’s biological brother. And while I am a firm supporter that family is not made by DNA, so many adoptees are never afforded the opportunity to meet, let alone grow up with someone who shares with them physical features and such a shared history. In a world where talking about babies inheriting grandmother’s nose or dad’s sense of humor is a main subject at family reunions, people who were adopted can feel isolated and out of place. How could we separate them? So we did.

We adopted the baby.

But in God’s amazing goodness, adopting this baby also meant maternity leave for me from my current job and with it, the opportunity to keep our health insurance and receive a little pay while we made the transition to our new city, finished the semester and started at a new school fresh in January.  

We picked up Noah on a Saturday and we moved the following Saturday to our new apartment, dogs in tow.  Right away Matt had to report to church and begin work. I was home with the kids and the dogs. I thought I would go insane. I thought I would be lonely and sad. But those first six months in our new life were the happiest months I remember in a long time. We were broke, we were alone, and we only had one another. We grew closer as a family and closer to the Lord.

The day Isabel ate a blue crayon, threw up blue chunks and followed me sobbing with filthy little blue hands, while I attempted to keep the dog from eating her mess I realized I was not reacting the way I thought I would have with all that stress. I was laughing. I could see the humor in the situation and I could not wait for Matt to get home to tell him about my day.

While I will never forget the first “call” because of what it meant for our family of two, it was the second one that sticks in my mind as the most wondrous and memorable one. It came not at the right time by logical standards but I serve an illogical God whose timing is perfect and whose plans and ways are higher than mine and I praise him for that each time I look at my precious boy.

Sally Maria brother

This is an uncharacteristically long one. Have a cup of coffee?

I have a foe. Her name is Sally Maria brother. She is my nemesis and we spend days wrestling and struggling. I call her names, she retaliates. I attack her with fury; she gets me back every time. I complain loudly to my husband about her behavior, she sits in quiet smugness and simply and passive-aggressively refuses to comply. She baffles me with attitudes and results I cannot understand. She gives me trouble that leaves me confused and not even the handy manual that came with her can help me out of the frustrating mess she sometimes makes.

Before you judge this pastor’s wife for having an enemy she loathes so passionately you must know who Sally Maria brother is. SM is my sawing machine. My very first one. And at this rate, my last one too. One of these days, SM will find herself hurled out of the window of my dining room to an untimely death in the oblivion of the curb on trash day.

When I became a stay-at-home mom I found the joy of certain hobbies I had always thought I had neither the time nor the ability to do. For the most part I have found the time, but not the ability. However, that has not deterred my stubborn, persistent nature from trying and trying and trying until some type of result has been achieved. So far, I have marginally successfully learned to cook, bake, and crochet.

Since I taught myself to read a crochet pattern I thought...If I can read a crochet pattern, how difficult can a sewing pattern be? I must have been thinking out loud because the next Christmas my mother-in-law presented me with Sally Maria brother. To the machine’s credit, it is a beauty. My mother-in-law shops the sales, so it is a very nice machine for a rookie. She came with all these gadgets and thingy bops I had never seen and had have no idea how to use.

 I could not wait to take SM out of a run. First I went to the web, my source of all education, and tried to find patterns to use. I tried a couple in vain and then decided to go to the big dog: Hancock Fabric. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights my first time there because three different attendants surrounded me quickly and starting all talking at once.

I managed to leave there with a pattern, buttons, thread, and a cheap cut of fabric to try my hand at an “easy” jumper that should have taken two hours, according to the pattern cover. Four exhausting days later, a million hours logged into Google looking up terms and how-tos, Isabel wore the jumper exactly twice before it fell apart in every seam I had painstakingly sewn.

Undeterred by my clear lack of sewing ability I went back to Hancock and bought a more expensive corduroy to try the “easy” jumper again. Thank goodness practice makes perfect because this time the jumper held. You can still tell it is homemade, but it is no longer disposable.

With the jumper success fresh on my mind, I figured I would tackle a bigger and better project. One with sleeves and buttonholes and let SM show me what she could do. I still had not realized that in sewing there is an intimate partnership between seamstress and sewing machine. It takes two to tango here and if one is a temperamental, difficult, and moody dancer the result is an angry Argentinean dance. When they both are, the result is…war!

 SM heard me talk about my new project and decided I had been too dense to get the message she was sending me with the poorly constructed jumpers. The silk gloves came off and SM put on her fighting gloves. This time I would hear her loud and clear: I don’t like you, rookie!

I have a theory that SM is angry that she ended up with me. I think she feels she was destined to belong to a great seamstress like my sister-in-law, Kristina, who would partner with her in making amazing little outfits and beautiful, fashionable getups. Instead, fancy SM is stuck with me. A rookie. Someone who lives by the little manual that came with her and cannot even change the color of the thread without looking up the directions. So she rebels every time I want to work with her. She is teaching me who is boss. I am humbled with every project. I need a sewing machine whisperer!

Which brings us to our latest epic battle of wills. For the last week I have been cutting, measuring, basting, and sewing a little fleece dinosaur jacket for Noah. This particular boxing match between SM and me had four rounds and several trips to Hancock.

Round one started with the sleeves. They were certainly tricky and SM was vicious. What the internet said she should do, SM refused to acknowledge. I had almost decided to make the jacket into a vest when I sought the advice of more experienced fighters and I prevailed finding a way to attach the sleeves in an almost seamless way. Round one went to me.

Then it came time to make the button holes, a new adventure for SM and me. By the end of the second round the jacket had a hole, true, but it was not where the button hole should go and it was not stitched on the sides like a buttonhole should be. It was just a hole. So I retaliated with an ingenious strategy to make the hole into a button hole. I won round two as well. After all I have a brain and SM doesn’t…I don’t think. The jury is still out on that one.

The third round came when it was time to sew the actual buttons. I had wisely bought six buttons when I only needed four. SM decided it would be fun to break them one by one. No matter where I placed them, how I placed them, what I adjusted, crack…the button would go. I ended up sewing the left over ones by hand and I had to go back to Hancock for a couple more. She won that round.

Round four came when I realized I had put the button holes on the wrong side of the jacket so now the cute little pocket was covered up when the jacket was buttoned. Off came the pocket but it was not possible to place it on the other side. I decided to make another pocket and place two at the bottom on each side. A pocket is simple. You cut the rectangle, you hem the edge and you stitch to the garment. SM fought like a banshee. One by one I would cut a pocket only to discard it because SM would chew it up and spit it back at me in shreds. She would tangle the thread. She would use up all the thread on the bobbin. She would eat the material deep into her bowels. I ended up cutting five different pockets, all thrown away.

Matt came, took every screw out, could not find anything wrong. Of course whenever he was around, flirty little thing would behave like a dream. As soon as he left, she would act out again. But after a long afternoon of fighting I won that round. I successfully sewed two pockets, a little crooked and uneven, but functional nonetheless.

After several exhausting days of wrestling with this obstinate piece of metal with an attitude I was ready to put her away in the attic and give up as soon as this project was done. You win, SM: I will never be a seamstress…

But then at lunch yesterday, when the jacket was finally finished and hanging on the shoulders of its rightful owner I was handed the final score card: I had lost a couple of battles, but I had won the war. I knew it when Noah bowed his little head in prayer before our meal and he thanked Jesus for the dinosaur jacket mami had made for him.

Oh, Sally Maria brother, for such a prayer I will gladly spend my days in battle with you.

A memorable date

Linking this to Mama Kat's Weekly Writers's Workshop...

June 21^st,. 

This is the day we became a family in the eyes of the law. We had been together for three months by then, but it was not until that hot June day that the state declared “The Johnsons” no longer a family of two.

The building was crowded. The faces around us were mostly long and sad. Divorce proceedings, custody battles, child-support disputes. We were dressed like the lawyers: suits, ties, high heels. But among the somber faces, the angry stares, and the desperate wringing of hands our countenance was dissonant for we could not keep a smile from our faces. 

A young couple with a small baby. A happy young couple, with a happy baby, with a smiling lawyer with easy laughter, and many hugs and kisses. Such as that we were that morning like a ray of sunshine through a cloud of rain.

We waited in the lobby, laughing, making plans, cooing the baby and passing her around. Then they called us in. Neither of us had ever been inside a courtroom. It felt so formal and so real we became serious and thoughtful. The judge looked at us with narrow eyes, studying us, as if trying to figure out what this case would be about, what new dissension and conflict would she be called to mediate. Then her eyes traveled over the dossier on her desk and she looked back at us with a broad grin on her face.

She motioned us forward, said a word or two to our lawyer and asked us to sit down. She read some preliminaries and told us how pleasant it was to do our case in the midst of a morning of strife and broken families. Next she called us to the stand…

Our lawyer had prepared us. He told us we would be witnesses in our own case. Standard procedure, he said. Technically we are suing the adoption agency for custody of Isabel, except in this case everyone wants you two to win the case. It’s just a formality, he said.

So I went up first. Like the movies, I sat on the witness stand, raised my hand, swore against perjury. I was asked my name, my age, and some biographical information. Then the judge asked:

Why do you want to be this child’s mother?

I was not prepared for that question. My throat closed and my eyes became blurry with gratitude. For what seemed like an eternity I could not speak.

How do you sum up the hope with which we filled out the paperwork for a child we had not yet met but already knew we would love? How do you explain the wistful waiting time of a paper pregnancy, preparing a wardrobe in neutral colors, imagining the hue of a pair of eyes never seen before, and the tones of a skin that was unfamiliar yet surely just as soft and sweet as that of any real or imagined baby?

How do you state in words the feelings “the call” ensued in our hearts? The joy that filled our ears as we heard the details of this angel we were being offered? The longing to jump in the car to go bring her home right then and there and having to wait two never-ending days to get to her? The heartbreak of knowing our joy would be another’s pain?

How do you answer a question that encompasses the first time our eyes met, the first time our arms held her, the first night she slept under our roof, the first moments she was our daughter?

How do you describe the strong bond, immeasurable love, incredible memories, wild protectiveness, fierce possessiveness and immense togetherness the last three months had brought to our world?

How do you put that in words? How do you define the depth of emotions that is parenthood?

Because she is ours…

That was good enough for the judge. That was good enough for the adoption agency. That was good enough for us. That was good enough for the Lord. All in agreement, papers were signed.

A little over a year later, one November morning, we did it again. The same courtroom, the same lawyer, different judge.  I would like to say it was easier this time. I thought it would be. I assumed it would be.

We are old pros. We have been there. This time no tears, just joy.

I was wrong. I knew the question was coming. I had rehearsed a more cohesive answer. One that was more complete and would do better justice to the vastness of my feelings. But I was wrong. All that came were tears of gratitude. All that came out was the same answer.

Because he is ours…

But yet again, and forever, that was reason enough.