One More Home

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Psalm 147:3 Before I begin sharing with you my thoughts, I need to preface this post by saying it is in no way intended to be a harsh scolding or to make anyone feel bad. Please, please don't take it that way. Instead, I'm hoping that this will give you a chance to stand in my shoes, to read my thoughts, to see things from my perspective. That being said, most of the time when people hear that we are adopting 5 children, that we are actually connected to 5 lives that will become part of our family, that we know their names and ages and have seen a picture of them, the one question we're asked is, "Do you know what happened to their parents?" Now thankfully, at this point in our adoption story, our kids aren't home with us yet and they haven't had to overhear this question. But for the most part, my answer will be that we really haven't been given much information at this point. And

To update, we hit the 2-month mark on Sunday. Two months. Since that life-changing Facebook post. Since the email that started us spinning in this dizzying journey to bring home 5 kids from a place I have yet to travel to, so we could plant 4 girls and 1 boy in a land they've never set foot on.  I was telling a friend tonight that for all the many times I've shared our story in these two months, for all the many people that have exclaimed that those 5 faces on my phone are precious, for all of the amazement at 5 kids and the joyful well wishes for our family, for every one of those, I hope I've done a decent job at faking it. May my plastered on, upbeat, excited face convince the other person that we're trucking right along on this adventure and we've got it all together, because the inside of me....well it's a bit of mess. In 2 months, we've redone physicals, obtained new certified copies of documentation, been fingerprinted by the FBI for the 3rd

During the two tours that Mike was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, we lived through seven hurricanes and several more would be hurricanes that ended up being tropical storms by the time they made it to shore.  I've moved my outdoor stuff inside, I've stocked up on non-perishable foods, and I've even gone to the extreme of filling up my bathtub with water. When I was pregnant with our eldest child, we went through two relative strong hurricanes. We had received a lot of rain that summer leaving the ground soggy, and so I watched as trees swayed in the wind until they finally fell onto the roof next door. And, I can remember the sound of walnuts being launched at our siding from the downed tree. Not to mention how scary it was to sit through one that passed over us in the dead of night and all you could do was stare into the blackness outside and listen to the wind howl while branches and trees cracked and fell, with no earthly idea what the outside world woul

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin...But if God clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious...your heavenly Father knows that you need them all."   taken from Matthew 6:28-32 I've been busy this afternoon, taking a break from my to-do list and taking time to write out some thank you's. The picture above is my list in what I've now coined as my "adoption notebook." It's where I write notes such as the major holidays observed in Costa Rica and little things that come to mind when I think of our 5 ticos. But it's also where I'm making a list of names that have given to our family in support of our adoption. It helps keep me focused on the ways that God's working that has nothing really to do with me, but relies fully on Him to provide. Some gifts are financial i

Several years ago, Mike's father was diagnosed with lung cancer. After some discussion, we decided to move him in with us. In order to do this, we shifted all three kids into one bedroom and moved his bed and medical equipment into our daughter's room. Mike, working third shift at the time, would forgo sleep to drive his father to another town in order to receive regular radiation treatments. He lived with us until he passed away. Mike and his father didn't have the closest of relationships growing up. My father-in-law spent many years being absent from my husband's life, and even as Mike became an adult, his father's actions often caused separation between him and his children. And yet, when cancer came into play and his father was living alone, we knew the right thing to do was to take him in. It wasn't easy, but God asks us to honor our parents and we felt that this was what we were called to do.  Fast forward to today. When we shared the news that we

I feel like I need to update you as to where we've been before I disclose where we are now. After all, it's been almost one entire year since I last updated this blog and that's telling in itself. I'd like to say that as many times as God placed the story of Abraham and Sarah in my path, I had learned patient waiting. That I was serenely going about my days with my hopes high and my mind concentrating on what God needed to show me in this moment before He led me to the next. But, I wasn't. I wouldn't say I was necessarily grumpy about our lack of progress, I think I was more ambivalent. I was neither one extreme or the other. I had honestly stopped fervently praying for God's guidance in our adoption because I had come to think that He had a timeline that I wasn't privy to, and I wasn't going to change His mind on those plans with the words I'd been whispering for the past 3 years. When? When will it be our time? Dust Off Your Armor At th