mother’s day

As is the case every year now, Mother’s Day is bittersweet. I feel the intense joy of having my children safe and forever in our home along with the acute pain of knowing there is another mama out there who won’t be spending this day with them. Who clings to pictures because it’s all she has. She doesn’t know what their little voices sound like. She doesn’t know what their pudgy hands feel like in hers. She won’t get to hear “I loves you, Mama” from our two children today.

And yet, the day they were born, they came into this world with a preference already built in – not for me, but for her - her voice, her smell, her touch. They bear her likeness, not mine. They inherited bits of her personality. She is their mother every bit as much as I in spite of the circumstances we all find ourselves in today.

So today, while my children honor me, I want to spend some time and honor her. Through tears, with prayers, I declare this woman who gave my children life BLESSED. I name her BELOVED. I call her FORGIVEN. I pray with all my heart that one day she believes those very things about herself. Above all else, I pray that some day in the future, my children can celebrate Mother’s Day with both of us. What a unique privilege for me to be a part of this story – my story, her story, our children’s story – God’s story. Redemption is coming. I believe it with all my soul.

t-ball and letting go

Something about my youngest son makes me not want to let go. Part of it is that I missed so much time with him. 2 years, 2 months, and 26 days to be exact. 2 years, 2 months, and 26 days that I wasn’t with him, that I couldn’t build all the love and security and teaching into his life that he needs to go out into this great big world. So this, his 6th year of life, has come far too soon for my liking.

I cried the day I signed him for kindergarten, and it wasn’t just because it happened with a semi-fraudulent piece of paper. That experience kind of prepped me to be honest about the fact that I wasn’t ready to leave him alone with his baseball team to ride in the opening day parade to the ballpark. He was scared to do it alone, and he was so little. And if my husband hadn’t been there, I know I wouldn’t have been able to let him do it at all.

When we met up with him after the parade, he was still running scared. He wouldn’t eat his breakfast. He sat on my lap for as long as I could stand because that too-familiar smell of fear was all over him again. After his big brother’s game, we walked over to the t-ball field together. He dragged a bit on the way. You could see the conflict of the extreme passion he feels towards the sport against the fear he felt over doing something new on his own. His pre-game jitters disappeared pretty quickly in the thrill of the game. I never thought I’d be the mom who cried at t-ball games, but there I was, wiping away tears through the first inning.

Watching my son grow up is one of the hardest things I’ve done. I’m not ready for him to move on from me yet. I want every bit of those two years to pour into his little life all the love and affection and teaching and laughing that he missed out on. There are so many things that he should know by now that he doesn’t. I worry sending him out into the world – that he’s not really prepared, that he will be hurt, that he will do the hurting, that he isn’t attached enough to me to come back home when he needs.

I’ve got to hold all those feelings back. I’ve got to send him with a smile, a kiss, a prayer, and no indication of the fear I’m feeling. He has to believe that we are a safe, secure home base that he can come back to when he’s lost or scared or hurt or angry. He needs us still, and we need him. Growing up is hard to do. (for both of us apparently)

just the facts, ma’am

To kick off National Foster Care Month, I’m going the facts and statistics route. Just a few, because I know that sometimes statistics seem sterile and cold. It numbs us to the reality of what’s happening. That doesn’t make them unimportant. Sometimes I think we just need to see the numbers.

HHS uses a reporting tool called the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), and while there are lots of differing numbers surrounding foster care and adoption, these are the numbers that the US government has collected and is using. You can click the link above to see more reports and information.

Kids in foster care in the United States: approximately 400,000
Average age: 7.7 years old
Average time kids spend in foster care: 14 months
Kids waiting to be adopted from foster care (meaning that the ‘case’ is over and parental rights have been terminated – this kids are legally orphans, wards of the state): just over 100,000
Average amount of time those kids have been waiting: 2 years

2 years spent as a legal orphan. Regardless of the fact that the kids in foster care typically do still have living parents, once parental rights are terminated, they will not remain in contact with their parents at all. Those 100,000 children are children without families and without permanent homes.

Lest you think that these are just statistics, and it seems impersonal to you to use them, I have to remind you that these statistics are from 2011. MY kids were in foster care in 2011. 2 of those 100,000 kids waiting for permanency were mine. It is a big number, but it’s not impersonal. That number represents real children full of hurt and pain and needing someone to just stand in the gap for them.

The question facing all of us this May when we spend time focusing on foster care: who is on the side of those 400,000 kids? Is there anyone? I love working with the system, but it is broken. I love my children’s biological families, but they are broken. Who is going to step in and take the time to just love one of these kids? To provide them with a safe house to come home to each day? To help them to be able to have a childhood that isn’t driven by fear and basic survival instincts? To teach them they are valuable?

Maybe it’s you.

what I’m into–first edition (april 2013)

Linking up for the first time with What I’m Into at Hopeful Leigh. I love reading these posts from the link-up each month; I get so many new ideas and recommendations from them. I also really love the idea of a more compact record of the things that I’ve read, watched, and heard rather than spreading a few out here and there all over the blog.

 

what I’ve read:
Bread and Wine – Shauna Niequest has been my favorite book so far this year. I wrote about it here, and I’ve been making the recipes she included non-stop since it arrived.

Tana French writes some amazing mysteries. I finished the second and third books this month, and while the third was my least favorite, it was still fantastic. I’m on the hold list at the library for the fourth one. I’ve come a bit late to the party when it comes to her books, but I highly recommend all of them.

Daring Greatly – Brené Brown was a transformational book for me. It’s amazingly insightful, and I’ve found myself talking more about this book with other people than any other book I’ve read in a very long time.

Other books I read this month: Love Does – Bob Goff, Frontera – Rick Bayless, Why Jesus Crossed the Road – Bruce Mains, The Paris Wife – Paula McLain

Books I’m reading right now: Prototype – Jonathan Martin, What It Is Is Beautiful – Sarah Park Dunning, What Happens When Women Say Yes to God – Lysa TerKeurst (for our mama’s bible study), Graceful – Emily Freeman (for my high school girls’ bible study), The God Who Sees You – Tammy Maltby and Anne Christian Buchanan, some various poetry books

 

what I’m watching:
Call The Midwife – everyone should be watching this show
Mr. Selfridge (Masterpiece Classics) – Let’s just take a moment to think about Jeremy Piven right now. Thank you.
Mad Men – 1st episode was not my favorite. I’m not quite sure if they think the people watching aren’t very bright or what. DON IS SCARED OF DEATH. We get it. (It’s picking up steam.)
The Voice – we watch very little TV as a family, but this is a favorite for everyone. Plus: Adam Levine, Usher, and Shakira. Blake is nice-looking and all, but some people are created with an extra dose of beauty, amiright?
The West Wing – The whole series is on Netflix, so I get some episodes in here and there. I haven’t watched the show since it aired, so it’s nice because I’ve forgotten a lot of it. I love Aaron Sorkin, and while there’s no way I think West Wing is his best work, there’s still something comforting to me about watching his shows.

 

what I’m listening to:
Kacey Musgraves – Same Trailer, Different Park, Justin Timberlake – the 20/20 experience, All Sons & Daughters (still. I just can’t stop), Hillsong United – Zion (best album they’ve had in years), Josh Ritter – Josh was in Columbus not too long ago, but the ticket prices and a previous engagement kept me away, sadly. I would love to see him live someday.

Renovatus Church podcast – Jonathan Martin is a never-miss for me right now. If you’ve never heard him preach, then I highly recommend you start with the series he did a couple months ago called Seen. I’ve listened to the first one of that series – The Women at the Well – three times now. It’s that good.

 

other things I’m into this month:
intense and hilarious late-night discussions with my husband about marriage and following Jesus and shame and redemption
Trader Joe’s cookie butter
my sons in their baseball uniforms
my youngest daughter’s know-it-all comments
my Maggie’s passionate feelings about every. single. thing.
my kids all playing outside

 

What are you into this month? Leave a comment or better yet, write your own post and link up with Leigh!

the pain and the glory

As tends to be the case in my life, I had three major foster care events three days in a row. I’m not sure why it tends to cluster, and I can’t decide if I like it or not. It often ends up feeling stressful and emotional. Maybe it’s better to get it all out of the way at once, or maybe I’d feel better about life in general if I would just split it up a bit. I don’t really have a choice in all of this, so it’s all just an exercise in futility to think about it anyway.

In addition to an all-day training, I was also invited to attend a volunteer luncheon at Juvenile Court for our county’s CASA workers and speak a bit about our experience with CASA. Unbeknownst to me, one of the items they were planning to go over at this meeting was a memorandum of understanding between our county’s FCS and CASA program. This memo was drafted recently as a direct result of the teamwork that was the hallmark of our children’s case. A legacy for an entire system, out of my children’s trauma. Beauty from ashes.

Honestly, though, the whole day left me struggling. I learned new things about our kids, about their case. Nothing was a shock or surprise, but I’m astounded by how emotional it still makes me feel. To hear what kinds of things were said behind the scenes, the decisions that are discussed and made while we were wondering and worrying and praying – those things are still intensely difficult for me to hear. It’s painful beyond words for me to think about how close our children were to being moved to a different home. Even still. Maybe it’s because I know how it’s all turned out. The glory of my children’s lives being healed. The beauty of their sister’s healing and her family and the promise of a deeper relationship to come…to imagine our families – both of them – without our children is just unthinkable to me at this point.

I know it’s over. Most days, I accept the miracle of our families with great joy. It wasn’t an accident things happened this way, but this particular week I’ve been working very hard to get past the memories of the pain, fear, and absolute helplessness I felt during that process. We advocated for our kids, we voiced our opinions, we parented the best we knew how, but we had absolutely no control over the outcome. Other people, most of them virtual strangers to both us and the children, made this decision, and it still terrifies me that they might have made a different one.

I love that we work with a county full of people who are good at their jobs, who care for kids, and who know that sometimes mistakes are made by everyone involved. I am grateful to be a part of a county that, for the most part, truly works to do the best thing for kids. We’ve been granted some incredible grace with different disciplines and workers in our area. We have some awesome opportunities in the works, and we are proud to be a part of this whole, big, messed-up, beautiful system. That’s the part I want to focus on, to talk about, and to find joy in. This is where we’re supposed to be, in spite of its imperfections, and this is what we’re supposed to be doing, even when we make mistakes in the process. It’s a privilege and an honor.

bread and wine (a giveaway)

With the lingering smell of still-fresh paint, in the middle of a favorite restaurant, we sat for hours, this old friend and I. In some ways, the things we have in common are far fewer than they used to be, but something about growing up together binds in ways that don’t dissolve easily. It’s all life and marriage and kids with careful steps around the spiritual, food and wine and tears together.

I’ve spent a lot of time praying for friendship. The older you get, the harder it is to make friends. I’ve spent so many hours feeling lonely. One or two friends didn’t feel like enough to carry me through. I wondered if I would ever have the kind of friendships where you literally share your lives together. Morning coffee, afternoon iced teas, coming over at the drop of a hat – not because you’re asked, simply because you’re needed. That’s the kind of thing I wanted. Honesty over the dinner table, tears over Earl Grey.

“I've long wanted to be better at accepting help, better at admitting weakness, better at trusting that people love me not for what I can do but just because they do. It would have been lovely to learn those things on my own terms, when I wanted to, the way I wanted to. But we never grow until the pain level gets high enough. Being so sick for so long was a crash course, not one I would have chosen, not one I handled well, certainly.

It was a painful education, but one I needed, one that forced me to embrace the the risky but deeply beautiful belief that love isn’t something you prove or earn, but something you receive or allow, like a balm, like a benediction, even when you’re at your very worst.”
-Shauna Niequist

Every other week, I sit in a living room with several other mamas. While our babies play, we talk Jesus and parenting and living radical lives in the middle of the everyday. If I need prayer, I go there first. When one of us is down, the others circle round and fill in the gaps. We finish our morning around the table, coffee cake on paper plates, our babies eating together on the kitchen floor. I leave energized and refreshed every single time.

I have new friends, friends who share my adoptive mama’s heart, friends who know intimately this road our family is walking. I wouldn’t have made it through these past few years if not for those precious women, holding me up with an email, with a phone call, across the miles. There are things I can share with these ladies that no one else in the world truly comprehends. I’ve sat across the table from understanding hearts at delis and conferences, sometimes with food, always with coffee, never without a good dose of truth-telling and encouragement.

There are those things I can only share with my old friends too. The ones who remember my birthday no matter how old we get. The ones whose birthdays I remember even when I can’t always recall my own children’s dates of birth. There is no substitute for knowing and loving someone for years on end. We might not get to share meals very often anymore, but every time we speak I’m taken back to the cafeterias and kitchens where we spent our childhoods together.

And then there’s family. Dinner together most Sundays for those of who are close. Special nights planned together for the rest of us who live further away. I love to call my sisters ‘friends’, but the unexpected surprise was how much I also depend on my sisters-in-law. If I need something, they are the first calls I make. I am more honest with them than with anyone else in my life. I love that they know me and love me, and even more than that, they know and love my kids, flaws and all. Long after the food’s been cleared, we’re lingering over coffees and waters, laughing and philosophizing and putting off children’s naptimes for just a bit more time together.

I’ve recently realized that somehow in the midst of all my crying and complaining and loneliness of the past few years, I’ve found my footing. Sometimes my dreams and my plans of how I want things to be, even my ideas of who I want to be…so many of those things were stripped away. In what remains, I find that I am already becoming who I really wanted to be. Unexpectedly, the things I’ve really longed for in life, I mostly already have. It might not look like a next door neighbor sharing my morning coffee right now, but I have everything I need. Hearts woven together over bread and wine. Love over us like a benediction. Dinner might be over, but we’re all still sitting at the table together. Friends.

 

 

*This week, I’m giving away a copy of Shauna Niequist’s new book, Bread and Wine: a Love Letter to Life Around the Table. I truly love Shauna’s books and her writing on her blog. This isn’t a sponsored post or anything – I just accidentally pre-ordered the book twice. I was going to send it back, but after reading it, I desperately wanted to give it away to one of you. It’s Shauna’s best work by far. Beautiful writing, beautiful truth. To enter, just leave a comment below. If you like, share something from your own experience with friendship and life around the table. For an extra entry, follow this blog via email or RSS. (Leave an additional comment for that.) Giveaway ends Friday, April 26, at 10 pm.

another random friday five

Here’s where I collect the things that aren’t enough for a full post individually. Truthfully, most of them aren’t even important. Just the things on my mind this week.

1) I feel like I’ve gained some significant weight this week because: Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter. You’re supposed to just eat it by the spoonful, right?

 

2) I’ve read this post three times over the past month. Just a beautiful picture of what it’s like to be a parent (at all), but especially a parent of a kid with special needs: on being a locksmith. - Nish Weiseth

 

3) When we were staying with our friends in Annapolis, we visited this lovely little shop there. It’s an old-world European cheese shop with French chocolates and charcuterie and fresh-baked bread and artisan honeys…and it was beautiful. It connected to the wine cellars next door – GENIUS. For our dinner that night we had a fromage d’affinois that was just spectacular. Still thinking about it…

 

4) I heard about this new book: The Child Catchers - Kathryn Joyce. I am in support of helpful critiques of the adoption industry, and I had read a bit from people who had read advance copies. Most said the book was challenging, that some of it made them angry, but the adoption world is definitely in continual need of oversight and reform. Then I read a Mother Jones piece, Orphan Fever: The Evangelical Movement's Adoption Obsession by Kathryn Joyce, which is quite inflammatory. To take the experiences of a fringe movement of Christianity (seriously. who has ever heard of these people or the so-called magazine they publish?) without attributing it as FRINGE is grossly unfair to the evangelical world as a whole. To blame all Christians for abuses that particular agencies or countries or families take is irresponsible. I was very disappointed in the piece.

Finally, I heard this interview: How Evangelical Christian are Preaching the New Gospel of Adoption - NPR Fresh Air. This was way more balanced and not as inflammatory by half. Although, I still feel like this woman and her interviewers are attempting to attribute the causes of abusive, oppressive, and deceitful practices by adoption agencies and governments to Christianity and the evangelical adoption movement. Correlation is not causation, and Christians are not the only people who adopt. Not to mention that to criticize them for wanting to pass their beliefs on to their children is ridiculous. Every parent passes their beliefs on to their children in some way or another. That is the nature of parenting.

All of this to say, I’m still eager to read the book, and I think this is a conversation worth having, not only in the culture at large, but also within the Christian adoption movement. Also, I’m pretty thankful we didn’t choose to adopt internationally. I have enough concerns with adoption without worrying whether or not I adopted my children with full disclosure.

 

5) I hate it that I love this song, because I have so many issues with Rihanna. But. I love this song: Stay ft. Mikky Ekko – Rihanna. (She’s in the bathtub for the bulk of the song, so be aware that it might be NSFW.)

 

What are things that you’re loving or thinking about this week? Share some randomness below.