Practicing Joy...

Currently I'm reading a book by John Ortberg called The Life You've Always Wanted. It's about spiritual disciplines for regular folks. I'm currently about halfway through and I LOVE it.  


I wish you could see my book at Chapter 4, "A Dee Dah Day: The Practice of Celebration." It is underlined, starred, circled and there are lots of notes in the margin. Apparently this chapter spoke to me. 


It also gave me a glimpse into one of the (many) reasons I believe God put Malachi into our lives - to bring us immense and immeasurable joy.


In fact, Malachi has a way of bringing joy into the life of anyone he meets for even just a minute. It's his gift.


We go to the grocery store, a restaurant, or (yesterday) the doctor's office and he is waving, blowing kisses and telling everyone "Hey!" or "Bye! Bye!" But he does it with an endearing little lilt in his voice that captures hearts. He leaves people with the impression that he is so excited and truly happy that he got to see them. And he is. Plus, he laughs the whole while, and is full of smiles and giggles. People are instantly in love with him. Occasionally he encounters a sour puss, but never mind those guys. He blows them kisses and waves anyway. They've been blessed whether they like it or not. 


They've seen the heart of God in a child. 


Some of these instant friends have offered to take him home. 


So far, I have politely declined the offer. 


 It is not uncommon at all to hear the comment, "He's a happy little guy isn't he?" 


Yes. Our guy is the happiest guy I know. 


And people need more happiness in their lives. 


In his book, Mr. Ortberg tells the story of his daughter doing the dance of delight or the "Dee Dah Day Dance" after a bath while he was trying to hurry her to get dried. He was becoming frustrated with her until he realized, "I was just so used to hurrying, of moving from one task to another, that right here was life, here was joy, here was an invitation to the dance right in front of me - and I was missing it." 


Ortberg points out that "Joy is at the heart of God, himself... Joy is God's basic character. Joy is his eternal destiny." and that "Ironically, often the thing that keeps me from experiencing joy is my preoccupation with self."


Ouch.


He also points out that, "the problem with people, according to Jesus, is not that we are too happy for God's taste, but that we are not happy enough." 


He is not speaking in the sense of a "name it and claim it" theology that makes God out to be Santa. On the contrary, he makes the point that "one test of authentic joy is its compatibility with pain. Our joy in this world is always "in spite of" something. Joy is... a 'defiant nevertheless' set at a full sopt against bitterness and resentment." 


 He is speaking in sense that we miss all the thousands of opportunities we have in a lifetime to be joyful because we are preoccupied with ourselves. 


Preach! Man does that describe me. 


He reminds us that, "every tick of the clock is a gift from God. Every day is a Dee Dah Day."


My Malachi teaches me this. This is how he lives. 


Right now, my sweet boy is in the backyard waving and blowing kisses at the garbage collector and the garbage truck because the truck blessed him by  stopping and making a wondrously fabulous racket with a bucket lifter and air brakes. 


It was a "Dee Dah Day" moment. 


When I look back on my life, the day we brought home our little guy was a Dee Dah Day moment, though I didn't realize it at the moment, as I was preoccupied with self. 


Hopefully, we have many more days to celebrate together, and I hope that I can see more of them for the real, true joy God means them to be. 


What are you waiting for? Go out and celebrate. Today is a "Dee Dah Day".




Heather

Celebrating the blessing of a special needs child....

Many know that with our first adoption, we didn't seek out a special needs child. 


We were given that blessing without our prior knowledge. Honestly, without our consent. 


Some have wondered why we didn't disrupt our adoption of Malachi once we realized what was in store. 


That question always makes me cringe though I really do understand why folks ask it. 


Trust me. I don't cringe because I'm some sort of super saint. Frankly, there are lots of days that it's tough not to look back on our "former" life and think about how easy it would have been. 


There are days that I wonder why I just could not get to a place of contentment with one biological son. 


I'm sure I have relatives that wonder as well, though thankfully, none has ever asked. 


I cringe because one of the foremost thoughts in our minds during the adoption process was how adoption is a picture of the gospel. We were helpless and without hope until our loving Father sent His only Son to provide a way for us to be adopted into His family for all eternity. 


That loving Heavenly Father doesn't throw us back when we come to Him with issues. His love for us and our place in the family are forever secure through His Son, Jesus. 


 If adoption is a picture of the gospel, how could we give back our child once we realized this was going to be harder than we thought. Life is not about us, anyway. 


There are challenges every single day. I grow weary. I second guess myself and God's plan for us. Sometimes I wonder if God dialed the wrong number. 


But, in our lives,  there is also more joy, more celebration, more laughter, more music, more of the important and real things that life and faith are made of as a result of the blessing of our special needs child. 


And I wouldn't trade one minute of it. There are many things I would do over and try to learn faster on the journey, but I wouldn't skip the trip. 


Our God is perfect. He makes no mistakes. His ways are not our ways.  He asks us to do hard things for His glory,  while giving the strength, the grace, and the wisdom to do them. And in the living it out, we get to see His glory. What a tremendous privilege! 


The really awesome thing is we are not alone in this journey. There are many other families learning the same things, loving their very special children, and celebrating the blessing of a special needs child. 


Check them out right here. 


Heather

Southern Baptists and The Orphan Crisis

Part of my daily routine consists of checking my emails first thing in the morning. This morning, I awoke to my email version of the NC Baptist paper, Biblical Recorder. As an adoptive mommy, the second headline immediately grabbed my attention, "Adoption to be discussed in New Orleans." You can read the article here.

I'm nearly positive the article's comment section won't allow me the number of words I need to sum up my mixed bag of emotions on its contents. But comment I must. 

I found the article to be....frustrating. 

I want to be thankful that the Southern Baptist Convention has decided to acknowledge there is an orphan crisis that our churches should be working to alleviate. Surely a call to awareness has to start somewhere, though I'm not certain we aren't involved due to lack of awareness.  I should be grateful that we are beginning to notice there's a problem and that the Church, specifically Southern Baptist churches in this case, should be heeding the call to get involved. I really, really want to be excited about all of this.

Really I do. It's just there are a couple reasons I'm not.

We (the Southern Baptist Convention) passed a resolution in 2009 stating (in my paraphrase), "Hey Southern Baptists! There's an orphan crisis! We should encourage churches to evangelize and care for the orphan! It's biblical." That's supposed to be great, right? The orphan crisis got its own resolution. Yes. It's very own resolution. Our conventions churches were officially encouraged to care about the poor and helpless among us. 

And now, three years later, the orphan crisis gets it own little one hour breakfast from 7am to 8am with a panel of big names on June 20th at the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans.  "The purpose of the event .... will be to gauge the interest of Southern Baptists in the topic while also creating awareness of orphans and neglected children." That's also supposed to be great. Right?  

But that whole "gauge the interest of Southern Baptists" thing. That really sticks in my crawl.

Our Heavenly Father must be so proud of us.

A whole hour, early in the morning, to gauge our interest...

Bless our hearts.

I'm fired up all over again just thinking about it.

It has taken a whole three years for our distinguished convention to devote an entire 60 minutes to discuss whether or not we might be interested in doing what the Bible tells us to do from the first page to the last. Love God with all our hearts, with all our mind, and all our soul and let our love for Him pour through our hearts and hands to love the most helpless, the most hurting, and the most vulnerable among us.

Are we interested Church?

I really hope the Southern Baptist Convention gets this right. I really hope we decide to care, particularly given the words of James 1:27, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Please Heavenly Father...

Let us be a denomination of Christ followers, the sort with pure and faultless religion, the kind with a real and living faith that isn't afraid to get dirty and do the hard things in service to our King, rather than a religious country club of pew warmers and spectators looking for a good show on Sunday morning.

Please, Jesus. In Your precious name and for the sake of these precious orphaned children...

Let us care.


Heather

The Big Catch Up Post

Wow! Who knew over 3 months would pass before I'd blog again.


 Life has been seriously busy. For one, Christmas happened. Then, we bought a house, remodeled it and moved in it. 


'Nuf said. 


Recently, we took Malachi out of preschool and began private speech, occupational, and physical therapy. 


Brad started up his masters classes again after a short break over Christmas and our move. 


To say life has been overwhelming lately would be an understatement. But we're making it. 


In happy news, we got all of our paperwork submitted to our adoption agency to be sent to Korea. Korea had not processed any adoptions this year until the last couple weeks, but hopefully things are moving again. We were fingerprinted last Wednesday to fulfill the US Immigration requirements for bringing adopted children into the country. And, in the most exciting adoption news of the week, we received a video of our sweet Zach. He is truly precious and we can't wait to get him home. 


I wish I could post it here, but due to privacy concerns, adoption agencies require parents to sign agreements stating we won't post pictures or videos of our children online. 


So that's what's been up for us. Hopefully, the blogging hiatus was short-lived. 

Heather 

Musings from midair....

Undoubtedly, atmospheric cruising in a window seat on a cloudless day in December allows one the chance to gain a little perspective.

As always happens when I fly, peering downward at the tiny dots of houses and trees; noting the rise and fall of the land below and the snakelike winding of rivers and creeks; seeing the perfectly delineated boundaries of fields and golf courses; I am reminded of the scripture, "Who is man that You are mindful of him?"

I am struck by my minuteness in the world as I stare out of my porthole on the world from 29,000 feet.

But our God sees the whole earth in its entirety, north to south, east to west. It's all within His view from the rising of the sun to it's setting. The thought that He would know my name, much less concern Himself with the tiniest details of my life is utterly preposterous. But mystery of mysteries and miracle of miracles, it is true.

Paradoxically, as I think back over the events of the last two and a half years and, in fact my very reason for being in an airplane on this occasion, it is impossible given my minuteness that the events of my life would have transpired as they have if it weren't for the very hand of God.

How do two tiny specks of a particular man and woman in rural North Carolina become the parents of an even tinier speck of humanity born a world away in Eastern Africa?

Papers? Documents? Governments? Solely? Impossible.

From my heavenly perspective this day, I reflect on the mighty work God did to bring Malachi into our lives. I am humbled by the mighty work God is doing to bring us Zach.

But His work in our hearts and lives didn't stop at those things.

This day, I am flying, not to the far side of the world to meet a son handpicked by God, but to the big city to meet a friend handpicked by Him. A farm girl from Illinois and this bumpkin from NC - two hearts knit together on the other side of the world so many months ago.

Thank you sweet Jesus that You hear our hearts, see our faces, and know our names. Thank you for the sweet gift of friendship.

A new home...

Obviously, I took a blogging break for a while. The busy-ness of life has been overwhelming recently. Life isn't any less busy, but I seem to be managing it a little better lately. 


New on the home front....We are buying a house. 


I don't know if it's just us, but even deciding whether or not to buy a house was a difficult decision. Such is the life of those in ministry. 


First, the reverend hubby's calling doesn't always lend itself to being in one place for a long time.  We hope we're here in our little town at our current rockin' church FOREVER, but who knows what God has planned? 


Secondly, we're trying to bring Zach home. This is an expensive endeavor. Was now really the time to be buying a home?


We had decided to stay in our rental home that we like, in a neighborhood we really like. 


Then a house comes on the market that more than meets our needs for a phenomenal price that will save us money every month. We made a ridiculous offer. They accepted it. We had the home inspection that showed a few minor issues that have to be addressed. They offered money to fix it.  


All along in this process, our prayer has been, "Lord, we are not wise people. We are dumb sheep. Will you please slam the door in our face, if this is NOT what You want for us?" 


But, the door seems to stay wide open. In fact, last week, our landlord agreed to let us out of our lease even though we are under contract here until April. This, even though he recently lost his job. 


We have been left shaking our head at the way God seems to be in the details.  I don't know why God blesses us this way. I personally believe it's because Brad is the person who most closely resembles Christ of anyone that has walked the earth since the Ascension. 


Some days I think I married Jesus. And it can be frustrating to have such a perfect spouse. 


Really. It can. 


Particularly when the other one of us probably more closely resembles the archenemy. 


(BTW...Brad would disagree with nearly everything I've said about he and I here, but that's just because he's so dang humble. I know the truth.)


So why this place? Well, it has a lot of room outside. And it's all on one level. 


Some of M's needs include some mobility issues. Being in a house with a steep staircase, even though it's gated off, is scary at times. A visiting child or someone else mistakenly leaves the gate open and M runs up the stairs. (It's the coming down part that is scariest.) I often carry him up or down the stairs. This is tricky because the stairs are quite steep and I have fallen a couple times (though, thank heavens, not while I was carrying him). But I think about it every time I'm carrying him on the steps. Our new guy will have many of the same delays and issues that M has. This new place offers peace of mind just in the fact that there are no stairs and navigation will be much easier. 


Plus, everybody's underwear will be on the same floor, which makes a mama happy on laundry day. 


This new house is 40+ years old (built in the 60's baby!) and about 600 square feet bigger than our current home, though we didn't go looking for a bigger house. 


How many more kids do you think we can fit in that one before we outgrow it? I'm hoping a bigger place is indication of a bigger family! 


So, that's it. We're moving. Again. But at least we're staying in the same town at the same church or I would not feel like celebrating. 


I heard Adrian Rogers on TV last night say when God called them to leave their church in Florida and move to the church in Tennessee that he wound up pastoring for over 30 years, that he and his wife cried like babies as they drove away.   


I get it.  But I sure hope I never have to really get it. 


In the meantime, we are so thankful for God's work in our lives here and the way He lets us catch little glimpses of His hand. 


We are blessed so much more than we deserve. 




Heather

Ponderings from long haul...

Some may have seen my Facebook post about being one big step closer to South Korea. 


The Lord has been faithful and we have crossed the homestudy bridge. 


This is pretty significant, particularly in South Korean adoptions since South Korea requires no dossier. 


Hopefully we'll hear later this week about the next steps that are specific to South Korea. Of course, like every mother everywhere, I want to know our "due date." For families adopting internationally that is the approximate date that we can expect to travel. I want to know how much longer I have to wait. 


I know that in my posts here and on FB I have come across as excited about bringing Zach home. 


I am. No doubt. I'm excited to add to our family with this very special little guy. 


I'm also nervous and not just a little scared.


Why? 


...Because our lives are very full as it is. Too full lots of days if you ask me. And I struggle with balance. I want to be everywhere and do everything with everyone and I can't. 


...Because sometimes I am overwhelmed by sweet M's needs and there are days now that I do not want to have to call another doctor or arrange another test, or sit down with another specialist. It's too draining and painful.  I have said more than once to the Reverend Husband, "What in the world are we going to do with two little guys like M?"


...Because I'm worried Zach might not be a good sleeper either and how in the world will I parent without sleep? I NEED sleep. I am an ugly person in every way when I haven't had it. 


...Because I'm worried what else we'll find out about Zach once he gets home. M's adoption was such a surprise on so many levels. So many things came to light after the fact. It makes me wonder what we'll discover this go 'round.


...Because I'm afraid of the dark place that I was in just a few months after M came home. I know that dark place was because I had unreasonable expectations of M, and of myself. This go 'round I'm going to hope for the best and expect the worse. But I am afraid that part of "the worst" will include another bout with the demon of depression. Unfortunately he knows all to well where I live. But I want him to go to hell and stay there. 


So given all these fears, why do we proceed? Are these good reasons to stop? 


No. I don't think so. I have done a lot of soul searching because there are a lot of really logical reasons why this might not be a good idea. 


But whether or not something makes sense to you and the others around you isn't always a good measure of whether God is asking you to do it. God speaks to His children. He has called us to this, and ultimately it's a matter of obedience. In times past, when God has spoken to our hearts and led us in a particular direction, it has rarely been "logical." But each and every time, when we have stepped out in faith to pursue what we believe He has called us to do, He has shown up in a BIG, God-sized way that has made it more than clear that we were doing exactly as He planned. 


God has confirmed to us that this is the direction for us. 


He has shown Himself in the details already. I know He'll continue to show up even on the days that I don't want to.  


He'll change me, remake me, refine me again. It won't be comfortable. It won't be easy. Life will change. Life will look different. Life will be harder in some ways. 


I will be forced to learn to die to myself again and again and be more like Christ. 


But is that really such a bad lesson to have to learn and re-learn? 


Someone once defined courage like this. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to move forward in spite of it. 


It's the way God calls us to live. 


"Be strong and courageous....The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." Deuteronomy 31:7 - 8


Heather