Lord, please plant me an orchard. And thank you for overnight mail.

Patience is a fruit of the Spirit that I have tasted little of......it is one of those fruits that this adoption journey is watering and fertilizing in abundance.  It is safe to assume by the end of this process I, like many other mothers going through this process, will have an orchard full of it. My personality is such that the Lord typically chooses MAJOR, lengthy things to teach me lessons and generate fruit. He typically immerses me in something.  Sprinkling just doesn't have an affect on my stubborn self. Right now, I am immersed in the adoption of two older children from the beautiful country of Ethiopia. It is all-consuming. When I come up for breath...it is usually to turn to Scripture. It is the only way I can breathe through this.

One of the most common threads I see with folks who are adoptive parents is the fact that they are involved in some form of"waiting". It absolutely amazes me the patience they must practice to wait on a referral of a baby girl from anywhere.  I have heard stories of families waiting for over 3 years...just for the referral. This doesn't count the process they took part in ahead of time with their home study, nor does it take in to consideration the months they will wait for the adoption to be complete after they receive the referral. This isnt just waiting...it is waiting with an enormous amount of uncertainty. It is all-consuming waiting.

In our situation, we have been blessed with a relatively quick process primarily because we chose waiting children. They were waiting on parents to come forward for them instead of the other way around .  Although our process is not over and they are not home with us yet, there have been numerous instances where waiting has been a contibutor to my sanctification. Any time I am involved in a situation that is out of my control but that I care deeply about, patience must be practiced...and let's face it....adoption is full of those scenarios. I have no control over my agency. I have no control over the goverment. I have no way of expediting anything(except perhaps paying for overnight mail when I mail anything to the aformentioned groups-and I can't begin to tell you how much satisfaction this one little thing brings me. It is almost like a "fix" that a drug addict gets when they return to their drug of choice. I get a "mini-control fix" anytime I feel like I can speed anything up). I want my children home now. I want them home yesterday. Insert patience.

Another area that I have witnessed adoptive parents waiting occurs after they bring their children home.  So many of these kids have lived lives in institutions. They were never held or rocked as babies. They ultimately stopped crying when they were hungry because nobody came to feed them. They endured unimaginable hurt and loss. When these children get placed in loving families, they do not know how to attach. They remain distant. So many orphans do not know what it means to be loved and to love back. These adoptive families are waiting.  They are waiting for a sign of  a breakthrough. A sign that a connection has been made. They long for the day that child will willingly approach them to give them a hug. They long for the day that child will just make eye contact.  They are waiting. They return over and over again to James 1:2-8 which tells them;

 

"Consider it pure joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." 



I feel such a burden for these families who are waiting. I feel such a burden for the orphans who are waiting. And when I am overwhelmed and come up for air I turn to the Lord. His purpose in these waiting lives is such an important thing to pray about. There is a reason we are waiting. There is a reason they are waiting. The Lord is working in these moments. We are gaining endurance....some are gaining more endurance than a champion marathon runner. I must constantly remember to turn to Him and praise Him in these times. Instead of water breaks in these marathons...we need to stop and praise Him. We don't need to pour water over our backs. We need to pour into His Word.

  I was tagged in a relevant facebook post a couple of months ago and I shared it with some other adoptive families that I know. It said:

"While you are waiting on the Lord to open another door, praise Him in the hallway."

 

(picture courtesy of Easter Creek Farms laundry room-where lots of laundry is waiting to be done)

There are soooo many doors to go through in this adoption process. In our lives there have been doors closed so that we would walk towards open ones. There have been open doors that seemed to be at the end of a two-mile long hallway...and there have even been a couple of doors we have had to kick down-but regardess of where we are in the process, we need to praise Him. He is teaching us in these moments and we need to press in to Him, turn to His Word, and pray in these moments that we feel we will burst if we need to wait any longer. And these moments that seem unbearable will turn in to moments that we will ultimately cherish because they have brought us closer to Him.

Psalm 25:5 ESV
"Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. "

 

The Lord Loves Adoption

I have made a point not to blog about specifics of our adoption up to this point. My point in blogging was to shed light on lessons the Lord teaches me. However, adoption has obviously been one thing that has occupied the front of my mind over the past year. I wake up thinking and then praying about it and I go to sleep thinking and praying about it. The Lord has used this process to teach me more and direct me back to His Word in many, may ways.

Recently there has been talk of reform to international adoptions in Ethiopia. There has been a lot of concern over the situation in the adoption community as a result. We have taken this information..what little we have....and asked the Lord what we are supposed to do with it. This is information that puts a lot of uncertainty in to an already uncertain process. We don't understand the politics in that country.We are learning. We don't understand what initiated the talk of reform.  We are learning. Not having a full understanding of the subject has driven us to do research. ...to learn more about the beautiful country where our two children were born and still live.  Not having certainty in the situation has driven us to pray.  And what have we learned?  We have simply been reminded that these children are His. First and foremost these children are His. He has the whole world in the palm of His hand.  I think He has got this. I think whatever plan He has laid out will ultimately bring more glory to Him. And isn't that why we began this process in the first place? It is amazing the peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding, that has accompanied us in this recent series of events in Ethiopia. This is truly a peace from The Lord because my anxiety-ridden, human flesh typically in the past would not have reacted this way.

One really cool thing that has happened as a result of research and networking online with other adoptive families through this, is that we have met several folks with different agencies that are in a similar place than us in their process.  Some have adopted before under the old one-trip process...some have even adopted before under the two-trip. Some are newbies like us.  Some are pre-PAIR, some are PAIR like us.  I have learned that is is comforting to share stories and timelines with others so I have decided to put our timeline here so folks can refer to it.

Jan 2013 Began our Homestudy with LA Baptist Children's Home
Held Noonday Fundraiser....really cool company if you are not familiar with it
April 15, 2013 Found our two kids on Rainbow Kids
May 3, 2013 Applied with WACAP
July 2, 2013 Homestudy done

July-Sept continued to work on getting dossier completed, traveled 4 hours to Jackson, MS for USCIS fingerprints. Held three fundraiser yard sales, one Scentsy Party fundraiser with the help of the person I want to be when I grow up-Kasey Ellis, Just Love Coffee fundraiser

Sept 23, 2013 officially accepted referral of our two kids and began PAIR process
Sept 23, 2013 an article honoring the Lord was published in the Bossier Press Tribune about our adoption
This same week we found out about an anonymous $10,000.00 donation to our adoption from someone at our church, and also a $7000.00 sibling grant from our agency. Our fees except for airfare are taken care of. Praise the Lord.
Nov 18, 2013 Received the first video of our children and it was of them receiving our family albums
Nov 27, 2013 Received email that Embassy had made request for Birth Parent interview
Dec 12, 2013 Birth Parent interview held in Addis
Dec 16, 2013 Email stating I-604 investigation complete
Dec 23, 2013 PAIR letters received in mail <<<greatest Christmas present ever

January 1, 2014 Our dossier with PAIR letter submitted to court in Addis
Jan 7, 2014 got word from agency that Birth Parent court date scheduled Jan 27, 2014 and they were going to appeal it to be moved up. Suggested we begin to make preparations to travel as early as mid Feb 2014 for our first trip.

The Lord's hand has been in on this process from the beginning. Why would it not be?  The Lord loves adoption.

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."

Galatians 4:4-5

 

We have received the spirit of adoption. Praise the Lord. What we do with it can honor the Lord more than just about any other act on this planet in my opinion. We can adopt.

We make every attempt to honor Him and sing His praises whenever we can. From sharing little blessings like free-ultra convenient parking in downtown Jackson, MS in a city strange to us when we went to get fingerprinted, to HUGE blessings like good test results after surgery to remove my thyroid in September.

And we wait. More importantly we pray.  We pray that we are able to continue to glorify the Lord in every step of this process.

..picture from NY Times of the Tigray region of Ethiopia where are children are from.

He makes beautiful things.

 

Pretty Little Liars, Redemption, and Reminders

Do you remember those squeemish feelings before the first day of school?  Wondering if your friends were in your classes...wondering who you would sit with at lunch...who you would sit with on the bus?

We did not have social media in 1985 to post a picture of our schedule the night before class so that all our friends could chime in if they had a class with us. Nope. We went in unprepared. Hopeful...but unprepared. The best we could do was to call our best friend the night before to see what she was wearing to school the next day.  We would at that point choose to wear something that was either approved by her or potentially even matching her so we could brave the clique machine in the halls together.

I am reminded of these feelings this morning as my kids head out to start a new semester. New classes, new teachers, new schedule.  Today is the first day of my daughter's last semester of high school and I am once again thanking The Lord for giving me this precious child.

You see...this child of mine is a constant reminder...in just about every situation that life hands her, of how The Lord is a redeeming God, a forgiving God, and a loving God. And as usual, the way the Lord works is always so stinkin' creative, and so obviously Him. I mean who else could orchestrate this?

When I was her age, to put it mildly...I was a bad kid. Yes...I got good grades, played Varsity soccer, got accepted to a good school...but I was a bad kid. I was a bully-a back-stabbing mean girl in the first degree. I turned friend against friend over boy issues. In middle school I pushed girls down the school bus steps and made their knees and palms bleed. In fact I got kicked off several buses and my mom had to drive me half of my 8th grade year. I got paid to walk up a hit a girl at her locker. Speaking of lockers ...my science teacher routinely put me out in the hallway to multiply locker numbers as punishment for my behavior in class. In high school I didn't get in as many fights...but I had honed my mean-girl craft well by that time and was queen of the clique. I got sent home one day for wearing a shirt with a girl's name on it with a circle around it and a line drawn through it. I had also convinced two friends to do the same.  I was part of a group who thought it was a good idea to set off fire crackers the last day of our senior year on campus. Fireworks were illegal in NC. My parents were told I may need a court injunction to graduate. It didnt take long to convince the school they did not want me there another year and somehow, I was the only one who got out of that trouble with no punishment-even though I helped organize it. My girlfriends spent two days dusting the library books in order to graduate. I skipped school regularly. I won't even go in to what I did on weekends.  You get the picture.

Fast forward 20 years. The Lord chose to save me. He let me live long enough to save me. The gracious, loving, and merciful God saved me. And how does this precious daughter of mine fit in to the equation? You see-she is the total opposite, total antithesis of what I was at her age. Not only that, she suffers at the hands of some girls who are quite like I was back then but choose different weapons to inflict their hurtful ways. Cliqu-ee girls. Girls that won't push her down school bus steps...but girls who strive to make themselves look better than everyone else to authority figures-posturing so to speak. Ones that sub-tweet and post sarcastic pictures on Instagram.  Upper middle class teenage girls are a distinct tribe....many times a mean tribe...a hurtful tribe.....a very self-absorbed tribe. Pretty Little Liars is an understatement kinda tribe.

And how does this remind me of how the Lord is a redeeming Lord? I see the grief and the sorrow that these girls bring others. I see it so often in my own daughter. It makes me sick. Occasionally it makes me want to go back to my presalvation days and use some of my goalie punting techniques in a not-so-nice way. But then I see her forgive these folks. Hurt and bruised- but she just moves on with life. Her same sweet self as if nothing ever happened. Time. And. Time. Again.

This broader picture that I see over and over again reminds me of these things....
It reminds me that I was once one of them-a mean girl to the umpteenth degree...meaner than even this generation. If I had social media, I would have used it to my advantage in the Devil's game of chess as well.  I was one of the ones who caused people to hurt..lots of people..and He redeemed me anyway. There is hope for even the meanest sub-tweeting, girl.

It shows me that He loves me. He loves me so much that not only did He die for me...as lagniappe...as extra above and beyond, He gave me this precious daughter who is a life picture of how He forgives and how He loves us. Whereas Hannah is the easiest thing since sliced bread to love, lots of people aren't. But that does not mean that they are not loved by Him. She gets it. I still need reminding. And the Lord was kind enough to give me this beautiful reminder.

Perhaps some of her first lessons in forgiveness were as a result of her little devil pony's shenanigans. She broke bones and cried tears,but always got back on and loved this little guy.   (circa 2005)

 

Could not be more proud of this sweet soul.

(2013)

Romans 8:28

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

So in my grief whenever I see my baby girl get hurt, I get reminded of the goodness and the mercy of My Father in Heaven. Even in these icky moments I see the good of the Lord. I can look back and see the good of the Lord in some of the worst situations I was ever in back in the day. He caused all those things to work together for me to see this purpose and that He may be glorified in it all. Not only is He teaching her not to put her hope in things of this world, He is teaching me what is important at the same time. Pretty stinkin'creative if I may say so myself.

Brides, Buildings, and Motel 6's

Recently, while eating lunch with some friends, the topic of "the church looking different from the world" came up. Later that week, I received a message asking me to describe what I think looking different than the world actually looks like in practice.

When asked to summarize it, it was kind of hard.  First of all....I scanned my brain for folks that I think do look different than the world.  Honestly...I could count the ones that stand out to me on one hand.

African Reformed Baptist, Conrad Mbewe on Western Christianity:
"Western Christians have filled their lives with too many things (toys?) that have robbed them of eternal perspectives. Electronic gadgets, holidays, sports, recreation, and so on have almost become idols. Even church must be about having fun. The church has little time in the lives of its members to prepare them for eternity. There is a greater consciousness of eternity here in Africa. Perhaps it is because we have fewer toys to dull our spiritual senses and death is all around us."

Oh, what I look forward to learning from our trips to Ethiopia and I am sure the Lord will use our Ethiopian children to teach us many things from the eternal perspective.

My response to my friend was to turn the question around. "What does the world look like"? To be honest...the reason I  answered like that is because I needed to give the question some deeper thought..I needed to head to Scripture to see how I should articulate an answer that would be pleasing to the Lord. This is a subject that I struggle with a lot.  It has perhaps driven me deeper in to the Word than any other since becoming a Christian.

You see-when I picture the Church...I know enough to not picture just the building with people gathered inside that call themselves Christian.  Honestly...if that was the criteria for weighing how the Church should look different than the world...there would be nothing to work with. So-what is the Church?  The church is Christ's bride. 

Ephesians 5:27

Husbands love you wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.

Acts 4:32-35

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,and abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of houses or land would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need."

 

Considering this is how the early church looked....we can't even begin to compare the American church with the one found in Acts. 

 Ultimately, we need to determine what the Church is supposed to look like...because when as Americans we think church, we think "group of people who call themselves Christians who gather in a building on Sundays and do good works in the community(sometimes)". We think of a group of ladies that gather once a week with coffee and a book from Lifeway. We think of that big building on the corner that has programs for every age. This is the dead end I kept hitting when studying this question. I could not see the Church described in the Bible when I looked at the broader American concept of church. I could not see what I pictured as church looking any different than the world. In a culture where we have denominational publishing houses coining terms like "entrepreneurial church" we have a problem. In a culture where more money is spent on salaries and buildings than missions we have a problem. In a culture where companies exist to do market research and supply focus groups on how to expand or plant a church we have a problem. In a culture where we need to have super heros show up and tshirt guns going off during the service to encourage kids to come we have a problem. I don't see many folks who's lives have radically been changed for Christ. I don't see many if any folks risking life and limb to make disciples for Him. Where is the Church??

A Christian friend had this to say on the subject:

 " In the real Church people are having Church daily in their hearts and in the company of others of like mind.  In this Church environment I see people being truly saved, growing in their faith, having victory over sin, and rejoicing above the circumstances of this culture-daily."

 

Hallelujah! A picture of the Church...alive and active. Of course I didn't doubt it existed...the Lord tells us that He would build His church and not even the gates of Hell would prevail against it. I just longed to see the Church that the Bible tells us about and was having a hard time wrapping my brain around how it looks in today's culture.

 

So from here on out...I will not use the term church flippantly. When I say the word Church...it will be in the proper context. The body of TRUE believers...the Bride of Christ. Not the visible church, not the building we gather in, not the Sunday school class we attend, and not any particular ministry or program of these aformentioned groups. The Church is simply put, the body of TRUE believers.

 

This begs the question....how are you seeing/doing/living Church in your life?  Christ gave us the other members of the Body to do life together...to help us make disciples for Him...to display His love to the world. If our concept of church is skewed, how can we take this concept to the unbeliever? If our definition of church includes the unbelievers, the unconverted that visit our weekly gatherings regularly, it is an incorrect definition. How does the unbeliever that never enters these weekly gatherings see that we are doing life any differently than a moraly acceptable Junior League member who goes to a building once or twice a week for a gathering and then volunteers in the community?

 

"A true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle. No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that it cannot be easy until it is doing something for Jesus Christ."

George Whitfield

 

The one thing that should immediately set us apart as the Church is our desire to share the Gospel with the unbelieving world. Our command as believers is to make disciples.This is what the Church does first and foremost. If we are not leaving that gathering on Sunday morning with that number one objective in mind....we have dropped the ball. The clearest most concise way we should look different than the world in our desire to share our hope with the world in the form of the Gospel.

 

How we live in community with other believers should also be readily evident to the unbelievers. We should stand out as "different" even "radical".  Are we "of one heart and one soul" like it tells us in Acts 4:32?  Do we gossip about other believers...do we sacrificially give to help other believers...do we live in excess...do we stress over obamacare and politics and IRAs?  Or-do we do life with other believers in a way that makes us "different". 

 

 My particular "tribe', our "living room church group" as we call ourselves,  has decided to take this calling seriously this year. We are going to attempt with the help of the Holy Spirit to be "of one heart and one soul". As we together navigate how the Church is called to live, we are going to do our best to honor the Lord and look different than the world. We gather every Sunday, share a meal, often an intimate communion, a lesson. We. Share. Life.  My prayer for my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ is this...if you have not already- find your tribe... and be the Church that the unbelievers can reconcile with the one they may read about in that Gideon Bible at the Motel 6. Give them a picture of the true Church.

 



 

Lord, when I leave this gate every day, help me to bring the Church to the world, not encourage the World in the church.