Adopting Outside the Birth Order
“Sometimes what we call ‘wisdom’ is actually fear,” she said, casually, but carefully in response to the story I’d just told her.
Searing truth.
We’d been parents for under two years. We’d just begun to hit a stride with Eden and Caleb when we felt the nudge to say ‘yes’ to yet another paper pregnancy. We suspected it would be two, but felt for sure it would be children who were the same age or younger as our two now. “The paint is still too fresh on the walls,” Nate said when I told him about the older girl lingering around the orphan babies with new stories emerging, often overlooked. She haunted my waking hours. “Later, we’ll adopt an older girl,” was his response.
I agreed. The thing I wanted most was actually the thing I feared most.
Isn’t that how it always is? Fear forms a hedge around our greatest calling.
But then, through a circuitous series of events –one that, in retrospect, was … continue reading ‘Adopting Outside the Birth Order’…
Latest Morning Chai Devotion
The Hope of Glory
There is only one today.
And as I stand just inside the foyer of 2012 with my fingers wrapped around His ageless hands, hoping I can somehow scoot near enough to know Him as Counselor, He whispers one phrase.
From a group of women gathering to discuss, to my own personal study, and off the lips of the man giving the message up-front came the same phrase. His Words are alive. Spoken then, reverberating now, they are the best thing around.
Christ in you. (Colossions 1:27)
Not Christ-in-me when my circumstantial strains let up, not Christ-in-me when my seven year-old prayer is answered, not Christ-in-me when I’ve had my very best day putting forth my very-best me. Christ in me, now.
This ..read more
Joy in the midst of waiting. Beauty from ashes. Seeing Jesus in all of it. That's what we've been exploring for a few years ... and along the way, we've added to our family -- former orphans, now a son and daughter.
After a year of having them home, we've found ourselves embarking on yet another adoption. Well, two.
We love your comments, thoughts, queries.
-Sara (& Nate)
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Adopting Outside the Birth Order
“Sometimes what we call ‘wisdom’ is actually fear,” she said, casually, but carefully in response to the story I’d just told her.
Searing truth.
We’d been parents for under two years. We’d just begun to hit a stride with Eden and Caleb when we felt the nudge to say ‘yes’ to yet another paper pregnancy. We suspected it would be two, but felt for sure it would be children who were the same age or younger as our two now. “The paint is still too fresh on the walls,” Nate said when I told him about the older girl lingering around the orphan babies with new stories emerging, often overlooked. She haunted my waking hours. “Later, we’ll ..read more
The Hope of Glory
There is only one today.
And as I stand just inside the foyer of 2012 with my fingers wrapped around His ageless hands, hoping I can somehow scoot near enough to know Him as Counselor, He whispers one phrase.
From a group of women gathering to discuss, to my own personal study, and off the lips of the man giving the message up-front came the same phrase. His Words are alive. Spoken then, reverberating now, they are the best thing around.
Christ in you. (Colossions 1:27)
Not Christ-in-me when my circumstantial strains let up, not Christ-in-me when my seven year-old prayer is answered, not Christ-in-me when I’ve had my very best day putting forth my very-best me. Christ in me, now.
This ..read more
When God Hides You
We swapped talents. I rolled up my sleeves, moved furniture, created files and made labels. She pulled out her stopwatch, recorded splits and weekly re-calibrated my plan to match my goal. I organized and she coached. She needed simplicity and I wanted to win a race.
That summer training pushed my physical limits to capacity. Each day I was more tired than the last. Muscles I didn’t know I had found themselves tested, and torn. In the afternoon hours, I ached and creaked only to get up the next day and do it all over again. And again. My body learned the rhythm of reach and rest.
My now-season of motherhood parallels that summer time. Four kids in two ..read more
The Great Lie of Motherhood
Motherhood has a subtle lie attached to it.
These years are not about me, they are about them. Sounds good, right?
I scurry to fill tummies and enrich minds and foster hunger for Jesus. I teach fingers to tie shoes, lips to say “will you forgive me?”, and minds to memorize scripture. All good things, necessary things, but with a faint emptiness if fueled by this lie, cloaked as truth.
It’s this lie which leaves me feeling anorexic after even their best days, and it’s this lie which leaves me frantic to turn up the treadmill after their worst. Like a hamster wheel there is no way out of this notion, which is maybe only ten degrees off-center in appearance — ..read more
Because There is Always a Story
2011 was filled with my favorites (because — shhh — when I decide I like something it’s pretty hard for me not to give it favorite status). I have a hard time not sharing what I love and most times my enthusiasm is so buoyant it’s indiscriminate. Like when I tell the gas station attendant about my new food-dehydrator or send my new favorite book to the girl who, weeks before, told me about a stigmatism in her eye which prevents her from reading.
Such is my life.
But finally, I have a place to bleed excitement for the things I love and the stories behind them.
(Because there is always a story.)
Here are just a few of my very-favorite favorites from 2011:
Favorite ..read more
2012: My Year to Know Him as Counselor
I sat in her office, rigid. She asked questions and I gave hollow answers. I tried to steal glances around her office when she looked down to scribble notes. I scanned her bookshelf for familiar titles or authors I trusted. When I spotted her credentials listed on the wall I wondered, again, why the perspective of an outsider, no matter how credentialed, could be of any more benefit than those in my inner circle. Counselors were for the messy and, up until now, I hadn’t categorized myself as messy. Nothing about this felt comfortable or easy.
But I was desperate. And as was true for most of my life in those years, when you are desperate ..read more
Simple Adoration
When life bulges — pushes, prods and stretches — simple adoration is my safe place. He has made for me a quiet alcove, in the loud years of raising littles, to remind me of all that is good.
(Each Monday, the column of adoration to the right-side of my blog moves front-and-center, here, and I invite others who are doing the same — stretching their heart to lift God’s Word up and back to Him, despite every obstacle the day presents – to add their link below in the comments section. You can link people back here from your post by grabbing the code on the right side of my blog. If you don’t have a blog but are, yourself, a lover ..read more
Even This Moment
I was half distracted with the next item on my list and half preoccupied by the events of the morning. I didn’t even notice the tutorial happening a few paces away. The woman stocking the produce held out two different pears to demonstrate the difference between ripe and not-yet-ripe to my children huddled around our cart.
“May I give them a taste?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said and they let out little squeals. They weren’t burdened like I was.
There are days when I get allured by a lie which cloaks itself different enough from the last that I get hooked. Today was one of them. Their heart issues were surfacing and I was sinking.When my focus shifts ..read more
A Year In Review
He did it.
I asked for a closer look and He released a yes over both the big and the small of my life.
With two days away from a natural page-break, I am preparing for another ask for this, another year.
And this one is only gaining momentum as I look back on what the past 360-something days have held.
2011 was my Year to Learn the Lines on His Face. I wanted familiarity with this God-Man. I wanted to grow in the knowledge and understanding of His ways, to move from the curb to the front porch or maybe even the foyer. I wanted to scooch close.
And, wouldn’t you know, that was exactly what this year was ..read more
Beauty is a Birthday Party
Line by line I prayed through these verses, and over my children: heal their broken hearts, open prison doors that bind them, comfort them when they mourn, replace their ashes with beauty (Isaiah 61). One, in particular, was in more obvious need of bandaging.
As my mind lingered on her and all her years of ashes which seemed to be surfacing just around her first-ever birthday, His Word jumped off the page and into my spirit.
Beauty is a birthday party was His phrase.
And I knew my plans had been foiled.
This mama, schedule, full and to-do list, never-ending, was going to be de-railing yet another well thought-through strategy. This was not the year for birthday parties. We’d ..read more
An Unexpected Reminder
I pushed through the hanging clothes in my closet, in search of a gift I had stowed away, when I spotted it. A semi-deflated pink, polka-dot balloon, still fighting for its life. Must be from a September birthday celebration, I thought, and quickly dismissed it. My lovers-of-all-that-is-pink both had their birthdays in September. This lone survivor was still hanging strong two or three months later.
I moved past it but didn’t forget it. It was highlighted to me in the way that only the Father can do, in a time when my eyes have formed a steady path between my task list and the clock.
(This December He’s been showing Himself everywhere, I think in response to ..read more
Your Rest’s Aroma
The candle on my counter-top has become my reminder.
I scoot aside breakfast bowls, school supplies and mail waiting for stamps to light this little flame that says aroma will rise in this place. Aroma can rise in this place.
Rest is available now. In this moment. In this Man.
And that which may have been set to derail me — his bloody nose and its clean-up that has set our schedule off, the unintended wounding of words spoken casually, my growing to-do list — becomes our meeting spot.
Adoration heals my core.
Share ..read moreHer First Birthday
There is something majestic about a first birthday. Life. This little blob of flesh has begun to develop personality. She moves, she laughs, she discovers. Her eyes wear wonder at even the simplest things and you get to live it all over again watching her.
And then there is the celebration. She has no idea, but you are recording every minute. She’s oblivious and you are radiating from the inside: she’s yours to celebrate.
Today, we have a first birthday in our home. This time the one celebrated is eight. Her once-jaded eyes have recovered that wonder, at even the simplest things. And we get to live it all over again watching her. Found as a ..read more
I Love My Dad
“Mommy, do you think Papa has a birthday cake in heaven? Is Jesus is singing him Happy Birthday?” they asked as I walked in on the tail end of their breakfast conversation.
It was Caleb’s birthday, cakes and singing were on the brain.
Their little minds didn’t remember (and I hadn’t yet reminded them), however, that this particular day was also the anniversary of my father’s homecoming.
Bittersweet October.
But in the tender way the Father reminds, their question spoke of what really happened that day he left earth.
This Friday would have been my father’s birthday. And Lily has not only inherited his resilience, but she also shares his birthday.
Bittersweet December.
Like an open journal on the front seat of my ..read more
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