For When You Think You Cannot Forgive

I was heartbroken. I felt angry, hurt, and betrayed like never before. 

How could they say such things about me? How could they lie that way? I was blindsided and I didn't know how to process what I had just learned. I had no idea how I would continue to face them day after day and, worse yet, how I would continue to serve them and do life with them.

In desperation, I found a quiet spot and fell to my knees, begging God to take the pain away, to see justice done, to avenge my innocence. Instead, unmistakably as I had come to recognize, the Spirit of God whispered gently to my soul, "I want you to forgive them." "How?" I despaired for I didn't have the strength or the will. "I'll teach you," He replied.

And the journey started.

First, I had to understand the importance of forgiveness.

The Bible tells us that forgiveness is not an option in the life of a follower of Christ. It is a mandate that God takes very seriously. So seriously that He has said He would not forgive us until we forgive our neighbor...with all our heart.  No doubt forgiveness is difficult and it is costly, but it is necessary. It frees the heart and strengthens our relationship with the God who gave us the ultimate gift: His forgiveness.

Once I understood why I should forgive them I started to pray for the strength to make the decision to forgive.

Forgiveness is a choice and the decision to forgive often comes much before the feeling of forgiveness. It may take a while, but while we carry un-forgiveness our spiritual growth will be stunted. Un-forgiveness is that powerful a poison to a spirit.

One of the toughest moments was coming to accept that the people who hurt me may never apologize or admit their wrong. Forgiveness does not depend on the offender. We stand alone before our God and when we pray "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." There is no caveat that states "as long as they have apologized."

So I decided to forgive. And I moved on. Or so I thought.

But not long after, I found myself seemingly backsliding. I was still angry and hurt and I felt the work of forgiving was not going forward or well. In fact, there were days when I didn't want to forgive anymore. I wanted to still be mad. 

And I was ashamed for feeling that way. After all, God was walking me through this path to forgiving.

It was then I realized I had to pray that to be able to give myself grace as well.

I had to remember that just because I decided to forgive it did not mean that the hurt, disappointment, and desire for justice would just disappear from my heart. Deciding to forgive alone did not change my circumstance: the wounds were still fresh, the pain was real, the anger burned, and the desire for justice and revenge lingered.

But I had taken the first step. 

I had chosen to walk in the path of love rather than remain in the path of brokenness. And when I recognized that my feelings had not just magically gone away, I began to pray for wisdom to deal with the residual feelings.

Feelings are fed by thoughts. Dwelling on the offenses nourishes our anguish. I decided to stop feeding the hurt by capturing my thoughts and memories and laying them at the foot of the cross daily, minute by minute if necessary.

As I began to think forgiving thoughts and chase any others that fought my will to move forward, slowly, very slowly, everything else began to fall into place. One day I realized that, while I could not yet wish my enemies well, I no longer wished them ill.

Then one morning, the anger had changed to dull pain that no longer burned inside me but rather made me feel sad and sorrowful. In a little while, the pain began to ease. The wounds began to heal.

But what of justice?

They were wrong for what they did to me, after all. I brought this to the Lord and He began to teach me to pray for the faith to believe that He will deal justly, fairly, and mercifully with my enemies and with me.

He showed me that, while I was not quite ready to pray for the well-being of those who hurt me so deeply, He loved them and Jesus died for them as well. He asked me to let him be judge and executor. Neither revenge nor bitterness would help me move on, anyway. I had to trust that he saw my pain and that He alone could heal my heart.

Disciples of Christ are taught we are to forgive those who hurt us and pray for those who persecute us, all in the same sentence. But it is not always possible to do one right after the other.  There can be a great big gap between forgiving someone and being able to pray for them and it usually takes divine intervention to do so.

As God began to heal my heart, however, I found myself more able to feel compassion for those who caused my pain and praying for their well being.

Since I had to interact with the offenders daily, I also felt the need to pray for wisdom to understand what forgiveness meant in this situation. Does it mean seeking out the offender for reconciliation or simply no longer avoiding them? Does it mean trying to restore the relationship or simply moving on? Each situation is different and the Lord should guide our path in this as well.

Once I was able to see the situation from a more cool-headed perspective, I found that God was leading me to pray for discernment to see if I had a part to play in the situation that now required forgiveness.

This is not always the case, but many times there are two sides to an argument. In my case, I found that part of the fault in the breakdown of the relationship was mine. To the best of my ability, I apologized to those I offended, repented before God, and worked on forgiving myself as He forgave me.

The journey did not end there, however. I had to pray for God to help me with this process as often as I needed during that season of my life.

There were days when a phone call, a note, a careless comment seemed to revive the wound that had scabbed over, and it bled anew, but there was new skin that had built around it already and it no longer bled as long or as violently as when it was first inflicted.

Healing was happening.

It wasn't easy and it took a long time, and still today, any time I am hurt by someone I have to remember and revisit the steps I must take to get from the side of justice to the side of mercy.

Since that situation, I've had plenty of opportunities to practice forgiveness in many other circumstances and with many other people. And I've given others opportunities to work on forgiving me as well!

They say that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Walking towards forgiving can feel like a long journey of many steps. No matter the hurt or situation you are going through, go ahead and take the first one today.

You will find peace at the end of the road.

And freedom.   

Because mothering ain't no small thang...

After the umpteenth time I encountered something on the subject, I finally surrendered.

I get it.

I. get. it. now.

This life, this small, insignificant life is not so inconsequential in Your eyes. I have been bombarded and attacked from every side over the last few days. Every story, every conversation, every blog, every devotional that passed my eyes spoke of the same truth:

I see you. I see what you do. I see who you are. And I am pleased.

I won’t lie. I have been struggling with feeling irrelevant. What is it that I do? I mother, I teach, I work, I write, I worship. But how does that change the world? Isn’t there something heroic I should be doing? Something exotic? Something radical? Something more?

So over the last year, five times I have made myself available to uncomfortable situations. The take-a-deep-breath-and-say “here-I-am-send-me” kind. And five times the doors have slammed in my face. Really, Lord? I was willing to do whatever.

But I’m dense.

Until last week.

**Today I'm writing over at my friend Christy's One Fun Mom. Won't you read the rest over here and leave me a note so I know you stopped by?**

The Lonely

*Linking with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday. You have five minutes to write. Period.*

We hear people tell us how big a heart we have for having adopted. How unselfish we are and how lucky our children are to have us. 

Sometimes I try to set them straight. Sometimes I just shake my head. 

But always, I remember this…

Because we have learned to seek God’s wisdom no matter how obvious the choice may seem, when the call came that a baby girl needed a momma and a daddy, as much as our hearts thumped wildly inside of our chests, we asked for a day to pray. To ask for 24 hours was tortuous when all we wanted was to run out to get her. 

But we did. 

And we prayed. 

And as I laid face-down in the room that would eventually become the nursery, I cried out for wisdom and courage to become what I had been dreaming of becoming for several years: a mom. 

I opened my Bible to my favorite book and my eyes fell quickly on these verses:

“Father to the fatherless, defender of widows- this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy” (Psalm 68:5-6, NLT).

I felt the answer wash over me.

Yes, there was a fatherless baby girl. Yes, God was lovingly caring for her life through the adoption agency. And yes, this would be our baby. But you see, the reason we are not saints with big hearts, unselfish people who just wanted to help someone is because the ones who needed most desperately to be placed in a family, the lonely ones the verses speak of…that was us, not her. 

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.

Paper Altars

I journal to remember.  

In my bookshelves there are volumes of my life. I write in the sad times and I write in the happy times and sometimes, in the in-betweens. I write prayers, poems, psalms. I write sobs, laughter, and screams. I write whys, whens, wheres, and hows. 

I write when I can't pray and I write when I can't keep it inside anymore. There are days of never ending ink of praise and thanksgiving and there are blank pages with only the date on top and I know those were days of deep pain and disappointment.

I write for the days when God seems to be silent and hidden. For the days when I wonder if anyone is listening to these ramblings of my soul. I write to remember that He has always been faithful and He will be faithful again. I write love letters and dear John letters and why-have-you-forsaken-me letters and I-will-always-love-you letters to the same One reader to whom I have been writing for almost 20 years.

I go back and write the date of the answers to the prayers I have bled into the paper. There are many, many "yes! yes! yes, child, yes!" and many, many "child, this time you need to wait" and many, many "no, child, not this" 

And I rejoice. Anyway. Even then. 

Because I know there will be a date next to each prayer. Some dates are separated by years and years and some by mere hours and some are still date-less.  But a date will come because He listens, and He sees, and He loves.

So I journal to remember. 

Each volume is an altar. A place of remembrance. Of sacrifice and offering. Of prayer and praise. Like Noah and Abraham and Joshua before me I build altars of thanksgiving made with words instead of stones, paper Ebenezers to the God who goes before me.

Because my mind is forgetful and my heart is weak. Because He has said taste and see that the Lord is good, and when the darkness descends and uncertainty threatens, and when He seems far away and the path is crooked, and when I am hopeless and I feel alone, I pull out a tome of our story, His and mine, and read, and read, and read. 

I read until the memories of His never-failing, never-wavering, never-leaving love come alive again and build towers of refuge around me, and I can continue this journey secure not in the feeling but in the fact that throughout the best and worst times of my life Jesus has held me by the hand. 

Five Minute Friday: Comfort

When you are five or seven, a broken heart, a monster haunting a dream, a stubbed toe can all be comforted wrapped in the arms of the one who loves you the most. Comfort is the warm lap of the woman who would give her life for you and whose tears mingle with yours because she can't bear to see you hurting.

But where do thirty-five-year-olds go when they are too big for momma's lap, or momma lives too far away, or they are simply too grown-up to crawl into a parents' arms for comfort? Are hearts not broken after childhood? Do monsters not haunt our dreams any longer? Do we not hurt physically and emotionally anymore?

When you are thirty-five, a broken heart, a hurting body, haunted dreams, and shattered hopes can be comforted in the arms of the One who loves you the most. Comfort is found in the Word of the One who gave his life for you and whose tears mingle with yours because He can't bear to see you hurting.

He is your Father, your Abba, your Lord. And like a child you can come and find the comfort you seek in the arms of your Savior.

"But I have stilled and quieted myself, just as a small child is quite with its mother. Yes, like a small child is my soul within me." Psalm 131:2 (NLT).

**Linking with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday**

Pride and Prejudice (well, maybe more like Pride and Humility)

They say the first step towards recovery is to admit you have a problem. 

I admit it. 

I have a problem. 

I have a problem with pride that has reared its ugly head for a few months now. So last night I laid it all out to the women of my Bible study. We are studying the Book of James and James, man, James does not strive to treat you gently. He will lift you off your feet, shake you like a rag doll, and set you down roughly. And this week, he did me in again.

I have not written for a while and it took some wrestling to figure this out. I don't write consistently. True. I tend to write when something gets a hold of me and I have to put words to it. But lately there have been stories floating around me that I just can't seem to pin down. I'll start one and never finish it. My virtual waste basket is full of wadded pieces of paper with discarded ideas. But it took an ancient writer to confront me and point out the truth to me: you don't write because you don't write like her, her or her.

James has harsh words for jealousy but I sat smug in my chair. That is a illness from which I don't suffer. I don't envy these bloggers. I'm not jealous of them. I celebrate them. I encourage them with comments. I share their sites with my friends. 

But then he got to humility and my smugness turned to conviction.

I have read post after post about not comparing yourself to other writers, about writing the story God gave you, about how even if one life is touched by your words it is worth doing it. I know. I know. I agree. I've uttered those words. And yet... I'm struggling to accept that God can use anything less than this right here. 

And so, my friends, this is pride. 

"If I cannot write like that, I will not write at all," says my heart stubbornly, in essence denying that God is smart enough to know what gift and to what measure and for what purpose is ours to have.

I know God has called me to write. I know He has given me tools. I know when I write I am changed and I know that some of you also walk away a little different. So why is that not good enough for me? James would not mince words in telling me that it is because I lack humility to accept my place in the Kingdom of God. 

Joan Chittister said that "humility is the admission of God's gifts to me and the acknowledgement that I have been given them for others." Pride is forgetting where those gifts came from but it is also discarding His good gifts and His holy calling in our lives because they are not as important/developed/talent-full/necessary/interesting as other people's.

It was an epiphany. 

I have to stop hiding behind my excuses that I only write when I "feel" it, or that maybe God is not really calling me to write, or that I just don't have the time. The truth is I suffer from pride when it comes to my writing. And the road to recovery will be long because those amazing writers are still out there writing away. Temptation to compare and to desist will keep coming. But I took the first step and it was tough: I admitted it. And not just to myself. To a room full of women who know me.

The cure for what ails me is a dose of humility. And there is nothing more humbling that to speak it out loud: I am prideful.

So here is to step two: hit "publish" and pray for the Lord to continue to teach me who He's called me to be.

Bare

Today I'm joining with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday. You have five minutes to write. This week's topic: Bare. 

If I bare my soul to you, would you still love me? If you knew all my shortcomings, my mistakes, my past sins, would you still call me friend? Could you bare your heart to me and trust that I would not betray you or discard you? Could we be that transparent with each other?

There would be healing if we were. 

I would hold you and tell you that you are not alone. You would take my hand and tell me to forgive myself for I have already been forgiven. 

We would cry together and remember that a burden shared is lighter on the shoulders.

But we walk past each other with the mask of a smile. We say “fine” and “great” and “wonderful” when we mean “broken” and “hurt” and “ashamed.” 

And I don’t know why.

Sister, let me into your world. Let me be your safe place and be mine as well. Let me pray for you and feel your prayers over me. I covet your arm around my shoulders holding me up when I want to crumble. I yearn to hear Christ speaking through you with words of peace and comfort and renewal.

And I long to speak such love and healing into your life as well. 

For the heart in chains...

It's so easy for a heart to be put in chains. 

It only takes an unkind word, an unjust situation, an unfair accusation for a heart to go in bondage under the pain. 

And it weighs. 

It is heavier than a boulder inside your chest. The iron shackles surround it and threaten to drown it in grief. 

The offender wraps the first few chains around it and we add the rest link by link.

When we refuse to forgive, when we feed the thoughts of revenge, when we verbally assault the wrongdoer in our minds, arguing for days with their memory, always winning: sometimes with reason, sometimes with ugly words, sometimes with righteous anger, but always winning. 

Relishing the idea of a confrontation where we come out victorious, but forgetting that when a relationship is broken, nobody really walks away the winner. The real confrontation is rarely as we imagined. There is no penitence on the offender's part, no ready apology, no bowed brow or downcast eyes. There is defensiveness, and frustration, and truth flung back at us that we may not want to hear. It is often messy, always hurtful, and many times disappointing.

So how will this heart lose the chains of having been wounded that are pulling it deeper and deeper into darkness? 

Only when we forgive the undeserving, the one who does not even think he requires mercy, the one who will never utter the words we long to hear. Only then. Only when we give the pain back to the One who suffered like no other and more unjustly than any other, for him to take and to exchange us for peace and mercy. Only then. Only when we let go of the desire to confront, the right to speak our piece, the need for an apology. Only then.

"Come to me, you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest," He said. 

There is no heavier burden than un-forgiveness. There is no more wearisome life than the life of the offended. 

"For my yoke is easy and my burden is light," He said. 

There is no harder yoke than the yoke of self-righteousness. There is no stronger bondage than the bondage of anger. And there is no emptier existence than the existence of those who don't know how to unburden themselves of these shackles.

"I have come that they may have life to the fullest," He said. 

When a heart is drowning in the pain resulting from living with others just as flawed and sinful as itself, grab onto Him who is Life himself and let Him pull you out of the mud of tears and the mire of shattered friendships, and set your feet right back onto the rock of his grace and forgiveness that will then flow out of you and onto others and... 

Set you free. 

When fear is all you have...

A few nights ago I fell asleep with a sob in my throat, tasting the salty tears that would not stop coming. I had just screamed “I don’t trust you with my children!” and collapsed onto the pillow in despair. No, I was not talking to my husband. I was talking to God Almighty himself. I half expected to be struck by lightning right then and there for my blasphemy but instead I found myself lulled by a gentle sleep, almost as if an invisible hand was stroking my hair and whispering “there, there, go to sleep now” ever so soothingly.

I have been struggling with some theological truths that don’t seem to match the reality of this world. On one hand I know from scripture that God is good, that He loves us, and that He works in all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. You know these concepts, too, I’m sure. On the other hand I see the news, the kidnappings of children, the abuse, the evil that befalls innocent ones all over the world. How to reconcile the two? Isn’t this the age old question that keeps so many people from trusting fully in a God they know to be all-powerful, but who often seems to simply not interfere in the most atrocious situations? If God is good, then...

The truth is that this has been an ongoing battle for me since my best friend Sara was murdered by a stranger a decade ago. On and off since then God and I have fought this fight. On and off He has had to teach and re-teach these lessons to my stubborn, wounded heart. Over and over I have had to rely on his promise that there is enough grace in Him to continue, patiently and lovingly, to remind me as many times as needed of what I need to get through these crises of faith.

This time the crisis came as a result of a trip we are going to take, just Matt and I. I do most of my stinking-thinking at night and I had begun to think about what would happen to my children if Matt and I were not on this earth to take care of them. Images of all kinds of tragedies and painful trials came to my mind and built and built until I lost all means of rational thought. If God allows all the horrendous things I see happening every day around the world, who is to say He would not allow my children to suffer? Worse yet, who is to say He would not allow them to walk away from him destroying in the process all hope I have of ever spending eternity with them? If I was not here to protect them from harm, who would? Clearly not a God who allowed my sweet friend to be murdered in the sanctity of her own home. Hence the outburst of my lack of trust and the sobbing that ensued.

I wish I could tell you that when these dark moments of doubt come, God answers all my questions in neat, packaged replies that I can take to my friends and solve their own issues with trust and good vs. evil. He does not. What He does do each. and. every. time. is remind me of a few promises and truths I allow the routine of my life and the state of our world to bury so deep I almost forget them.

God loves my children more than I do. In my most wonderful day as a parent I cannot begin to scratch the surface of the love their Creator has for them. He loves them so much He sent his son. He loves them so much He knows each and every hair of their head. And if I, who don’t have that kind of love, work tirelessly for their good, how much more is the One who is love itself working every day for them, for their good, for their sake.

God placed my children into our family. In other words, He trusted me, flawed, sinful, and a little on the crazy side me with them. I didn’t even have a part in their creation yet He trusted me with them. Yet I have difficulty trusting the Perfect Parent back? This one humbled me.

God placed my children into a loving extended family so that Matt and I are not their end-all, be-all. No one can replace your parents, true. But if something were to happen to the both of us, my children have loving grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. who will take care of them and raise them in the faith we are trying to instill in them. In that way God has already provided protection for them.

I am not God. Bad things happen to children even when their parents are around, carefully watching. People walk away from God in their own accord, even when their parents are around to pray for them and model godliness for them. In other words, my presence in their life is not what will save them. Only God can do that. And I’m not him.

God is always working to redeem them, to draw them to him, and to point his will to them. I may not understand this. I may not see his handiwork in their lives all the time but He is working in their lives constantly. Always. I asked in despair: “What about all the children who have or are suffering? What about them?” and He gently reminded me that I don’t know what He is doing in their lives. I don’t know it all and I don’t know how God works around the world every day.

I know I am only aware of a fraction of the evil that happens daily in the world. A tiny fraction. While God, omnipresent, omniscient God is aware of ALL the hurt and violence that happens every minute of every day. “How?” I asked him, “How do you stand to see it all?!” and I was confronted with the understanding that, while God does see all the evil in the world, He is also witness to all the goodness, all the love, all the compassion, mercy and grace of which we are capable as a people. There is hope in this world as long as there are people who love God and love their neighbors as themselves.

 It is my worst enemy this fear. It brings with it worry, doubt, and mistrust. I know I will forget and I know I will cry out in despair again and again when fear grips me. That is my nature. And He will still be there, again and again, to answer me when I call in frustration and hopelessness. That is His nature. I don't know why bad things happen in this world. We could talk about free will, about sin, about choices people make, but those are empty words to hurting people. I may never know in this life the answer to that question no matter how eagerly I ask. I won't pretend to. I also don't know what the future will bring for my children. But I know who holds their future and I believe they are in pretty good hands. 

Growing Pains

On and off for the last year Isabel has been complaining of pain on her legs. It wakes her up at night. It is worse after she has had an active day. It is overall uncomfortable for her. Worried mom, I took her to the pediatrician who smiled reassuringly, patted my arm and explained that Isabel is suffering from growing pains. I told her I thought that was an old-wives tale but she assured me they are very real, especially in children of elementary school age.

And these growing pains are a good thing, she said. They mean her bones are stretching, doing their job to make her taller and stronger. Doing what bones were created to do. But, to the suffering little girl, this is only partially good news. Because the bad news is that there is not much to do but let them pass. She can take some pain killers to ease the pain temporarily, but these growing pains are part of the life of a child who is following the natural progression of growth, just the way God intended it. The pain she is going through means a more mature Isabel by next summer, both physically and emotionally.

Lately, I’ve been having growing pains as well. The spiritual kind. The kind that comes after a fruitful season of praying and seeking the Holy Spirit’s movement in my life. Be careful what you ask for, they say. For when I open myself to growth, Jesus begins to prune. And the pruning process is painful. Growth hurts. With each stretch of my spiritual bones and muscles I am uncomfortable. And at first, I protest, try to get away, raise my voice in indignation. Yet these pains are good news. The pains mean I am going through the natural progression of growth, just the way God intended it. The pain I’m going through means a more mature Gaby by next season, both spiritually and emotionally.

Isabel’s growing pains are deep inside her leg, beyond the muscles, right into the bone. My growing pains come from the outside. From dealing with difficult people and keeping a humble attitude. From silencing my pride when it has been injured because someone has stepped on my toes. From apologizing when I am not to blame, for the sake of a relationship. From allowing Him to teach me that my rights, my wants, my comfort are not as important as the greater good of his Body and his Kingdom. From admitting when I am wrong and changing my way or my perspective. None of this comes easy to me. Yet his grace is sufficient to show me just how to get it done. But it hurts. And stings. And keeps me up at night.

Unlike Isabel I have a choice to go through this process or not. I can tell God to forget it, that I really did not mean that I wanted to grow closer to him, that I was fine and comfortable just the way I was, thank you very much. And He would let me be. But just like a child who fails to grow, I would become stunted, underdeveloped, useless for the purposes that He intended for a more mature, strong, healthy me. So all I can do is let this season of growth run its intended course. But I wait actively, abiding in him as I learn from this pruning. Bringing my frustrations to him and letting him comfort me like I do Isabel in the middle of the night when she wakes up hurting.

Growing pains are not enjoyable. Yet like refining fire that purifies and cleanses, this scraping of my rough edges, of my resistance to be molded to his image, is what I need to do just what the Lord requires of me: to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my Lord. 

**Joining with Jen and the sisters of Soli Deo Gloria ***

Look!

Joining today with Lisa-Jo for her 5 Minutes Friday. Topic: Look. You have five minutes to write...GO!

Look again.

Look hard.

Please look.

Don't turn away.

Don't pretend you don't notice.

Don't be "color blind."

Don't be blind to the beauty God created in our family.

We are four shades of different. We are pale like cheese,warm like coffee, rich creamy brown like chocolate, deep and reddish like cinnamon. But look.

Don't say "color blind."

It may sound correct to you but it undermines who we are. We are many colors and we want you to know. We want you to see it. Because we are proud. Our family is a tapestry of God. A microcosm of what He's done in the world.

Don't think "color blind."

To think color blind misses what we celebrate every day. Our color is much more than skin deep. It is part of who we are, our culture, our history, our background. We come from Germany, from Ecuador, from Spain, from the African plains, from the first inhabitants of this land. Our color reminds us where we've been and where we want to go. It reminds us everyday that God's grace transcends many barriers. It reminds us everyday of his healing love that is extended to all. He created us in his image.

All of us.

 He chose for each of us a color.

 And we praise Him for that!

Because we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Don't act "color blind."

See the colors, embrace the colors, celebrate the colors.

Be color conscious, be color loving, be color grateful...

Be color-full. 

Not destiny or magical thinking...but still God.

A while back there was an article in the New York Times' blog that quickly became a hot potato in the adoption world. It’s called “Adoption, Destiny and Magical Thinking”. In it the author discusses the phenomenon that many adoptive parents feel their child was “destined” to be theirs. Adoptive Families Magazine posed this question on Facebook as a result: do you feel your child was brought to you by fate, destined to be yours? 

The answers given left me deflated and broke my heart.

The majority of people that answered the question felt their child was “meant” to be theirs. Most of those people also stated that it was God who brought their child to them and many went as far as to imply that the only reason that child was created was because God wanted them to be parents. I was appalled at the lack of compassion and kindness these answers showed.

Several people understandably cried out over the idea that a loving god would ordain and even create the painful situations that often lead to birthparents placing their children for adoption: poverty, loss, rape, brokenness. This comes across as a manipulative god who uses people as baby-making machines, then tears their family painfully apart (adoption is painful, people) to make those other people happy parents. It does not make sense, they said. 

And I agree.

Yet, I believe strongly that God had a big hand on our adoption of Isabel and Noah. If you’ve read this blog before, you know that very well. Except, the God I serve and love does not work the way those “destiny,” “meant to be,” “all about my happiness” people say He does and I believe when Christians use clichés like those in response to people’s pain and tragedy, we are dragging His name through the mud and hurting our witness. But that’s a post for another day.

I feel compelled however, even in my little space that does not speak very loudly, to make amends, to apologize to those who have been hurt by those comments made by adoptive parents and to explain how the God I know played a role in our adoption, just as He plays a role in every other decision I make. 

I believe in a God that gives people free will. This means people have the ability to make choices and live with the consequences, good and bad, of those choices. Everyone is making choices every day; we are not puppets in the hands of a manipulative god.

In adoption everyone makes choices as well. On one hand you have a woman who, by her own choices or the choices made by others in some awful cases, finds herself pregnant. She has three choices then. She can abort, she can parent, or she can place her child for adoption. When my children’s birthmother found herself pregnant, she made the choice to place them with an agency for adoption. She chose a closed adoption. She made use of her free will and chose what to do about her situation.

On the other side of this adoption you have two people deciding how to become parents. When we found out we could not conceive naturally we were faced with choices of how to expand our family. We could use reproductive technologies, we could use a surrogate, we could adopt, etc.

Here is where God comes in, at least in our story.

Because we are believers in God, we try to live according to the Bible’s teachings. We believe in making our decisions prayerfully and seeking the Bible as our guide. So when we are faced with choices, we go to God. Not so that He will force us to do this or that, not so He will manipulate us like puppets, but so that He will give us wisdom and insight in how to proceed.

We decided to pursue the most natural and least invasive process of reproductive help that was available, and twice it was unsuccessful. Then, prayerfully, we decided to go no further with reproductive assistance. The Bible teaches us that we are in this world to take care of one another and to be family to those who have no family, so the decision to adopt had been a part of our marriage’s DNA even before we knew it would be our only option. To stop spending money on medical assistance and instead use that money to adopt was not a hard decision for us, because we felt God directing.  

Because we are believers, we chose to go with an agency that has the same Christian values. I cannot speak for the way my kids’ birthmother made her choices because, unfortunately, we don’t know her. But for whatever reason she called this particular agency for both of her placements. Both of the kids had already been placed by the time we received the call to ask if we would adopt them. Both times we sought God’s wisdom in deciding, both times we accepted and we have never looked back. 

We don’t believe God orchestrated S. getting pregnant so WE could be parents. To think so is arrogant and unloving towards a woman whose decision was painful and difficult. But we believe God took all of our choices, hers to place, ours to adopt, and directed us to find these particular children to become part of our family. We believe He led us to that particular agency because S. went to that particular agency and He knew our two kids would need us. When we adopted Isabel, we were the only couple that agency had that would take children of color. Noah, being biologically related, was placed with us automatically and now they are together.

In that sense, our adoption was miraculous. Not in the magical sense. Not in the manipulative sense. Only in the sense of a loving God who can take the painful situations we experience by our choices or the choices others make, and finds ways to create beauty (families, loving open-adoption relationships with birth parents, true orphans who find a home) through people who seek him and allow themselves to be led and used for his loving purposes.

I realize this probably makes no sense to someone who is not a believer. And I get that. To expect you to share, agree or even understand my way of life is not fair to you and it only creates more division and separation between us. I also know that there are Christians out there who do believe God pre-determines all of our choices. Clearly, that is not my theology and it is not a theological debate I seek here. 

But if you ask me if God played a part in the adoption of my children, carefully, tactfully, but definitely I will tell you YES! I just hope you give me the chance to explain before you assume I am a “destiny and magical thinking” kind of mom. 

I am simply not...

I love Wednesday nights…

Dinner at church with the people from the congregation my husband pastors, the Body of Christ to which I belong, my community, sharing the best meals you’ve ever had while we laugh and catch up is the highlight of my week.

After dinner I lead a women’s Bible study. Time with these sisters fills my heart.  They hone me week after week; they are my iron that sharpens this iron. Hearing their stories, celebrating their successes and grieving over their trials with them is my privilege. Sharing the Word with them, discussing it, pulling it apart and devouring it together is a delight to my soul.

Afterwards I get to play the piano for our worship team and sing with them. The practices are mini-worship services that prepare me to worship in community on Sunday.

And yet…I hate Wednesday nights... 

Lovely Jen Ferguson invited me to post at her place as part of her Break the Tape series. Would you come over and finish reading this over here? You just may find a new community to join...

Letting go...

Helmets on they climb their scooters and take off. Wind beating their cheeks, giggles of excitement erupting from their throats, they race.

"Don't get too far ahead of me!" I shout as I walk behind them. All I can see is their backs but I know they are smiling as one foot makes contact with the pavement, propelling them forward faster than I can catch them and faster than my mother's heart can bear. And I feel the separation almost physically. 

I want to reach out and grab her by the arm pulling her back to me, to the protection of my embrace, away from the road, away from any danger. But she is already too far ahead. He can't even hear me any more when I shout his name. 

And I love watching them. Their growing muscles extending, finding the balance to master the small scooter, the thrill of speed all over their screams and laughter. 

They are headed for the street and my heart skips a beat. But I have given them instructions as to how fast they need to go and exactly where they need to stop and I have to trust that they will. I have to trust that the work I've put before this moment, the practice rounds, the conversations about danger will do their job. 

I have to trust them.

They are old enough to do this. I know that in my head but my heart cries out "not yet! it's too soon!" Time flies and does not stop for me. I'm not ready. But they are. 

And this will be the dance of our lives. The constant struggle towards independence as I let them go a little at the time, asking the Lord for wisdom to know how far, how fast, and when. Feeling the pain of separation breaking my heart but keeping a smile of my face as I cheer them on. Because this is what they were meant to do: to grow and leave, to spread their wings and fly. 

And I am left to trust.

To trust that the years we had with them were rich enough in wisdom and knowledge to make their own decisions when I'm no longer there to shout their names or remind them of my instructions. I have to let go and have faith that the God who brought them to my life in the first place will continue to walk with them as they are forging theirs. 

And to pray.

To pray that they will never cease to seek, as they make their own choices, the wisdom of the same God whose help I sought in raising them. Because they know, now in their own adult hearts, that He is the only one who can be trusted to tell them exactly how fast to go and exactly where to stop.