Fruitful Vacancy

Mike and Anne Rizzo have blessed us so much here in Kansas City. After listening to their son pour his heart out as a singer and musician through the webstream on my computer for so many years, little did we know that when we moved here almost 2 years ago that his father and mother would become dear friends. Their life is a picture to us of true fruitfulness — they live in private what they speak and teach in public; they love Him. They have a soon-to-be published book, called Longing For Eden: Embracing God’s Vision in Your Marriage, and Mike has graciously agreed to offer an excerpt of his book here, for my readers. Enjoy!

For the month ..read more

Why No Comments?

As my husband says, I’m not the “bloggiest” of bloggers.

With hearts-needing-tending under our roof, with 15+ years of combined fatherlessness to work through … as well as the many years of my own living like I had no Father, I’ve consciously made this blog to be a quieter place.

But your thoughts are warmly welcome over email!

I may not personally respond to each email, however, know that your stories are a treasure to me. I absolutely value how He is writing on each of your lives and love that He lets me play one itty-bitty part in His grand opus in you.

This is my small way of making my little ones, my bigger one, and the biggest ..read more

Showing Up

I live in this weird tension of soaking up spills, matching socks and slicing onions (again), all while remaining acutely aware of a hunger inside of me for adventure which I can’t cap. Some days, I’m still in slippers and sweatpants at four o’clock — yet I feel like I spent the day back at the Amalfi coast when the waves crashed just a few feet below our window, carved out of the rocks.

I was made for more than the mundane.

At every stage of life, I’ve been haunted by a desire for something more, something bigger, something that would fulfill empty places within me. It’s made me feel unsettled, this discomfort festering under the surface. ..read more

One Minute Prayers for Her

I have a guest post today on Mothers of Daughters that reads:

When I tucked her in tonight, she whispered, “Mommy, can I cook with you every night for a long, long time?” This child, whose language of love is quality time, went to bed all filled-up simply from rubbing elbows with me in my kitchen a few hours earlier. I slid my arm underneath her back and pressed my face against hers, every touch of skin feeling like it was winning back lost time, and prayed in my head the simple prayer that is becoming like a tether between us: Jesus, grow our bond. Grow our attachment to one another.

So much of my life with ..read more

When Scars Run Deep

We arrived and what seemed like one hundred children swarmed our motorcycles — boda bodas, as they call them here. I held her tight the whole way there, not knowing what an eight (perhaps ten, or eleven?) year-old response might be to revisiting the life she once wore. I wanted her body to retain remainder marks of a mother’s arms as she  re-entered the fields of the fatherless, even if for a few moments.

She was one of them just months before but looked confused as she scanned the sea of curious eyes shouting her name. Had six or eight years really been erased as easily as words on a whiteboard?

She found her friend, one of ..read more

No Hands

Sometimes even the one who finds words to be their heart’s outlet needs to live the story and not write about it.

The swirl in our lives and around this adoption has been rich with color and depth we didn’t anticipate. I am living (daily) death and restoration through a story unfolding on African soil.

I’ve found solace with my face to the floor and begun to know prayers that are groans, not words. Most days I have no words.

So while posts may be sparse, as we’re not released to tell the story (and, if we were, I’m not sure I would have words to do it justice), my need to adore has only increased. When I’m ..read more

Mother’s Day

A day that’s previously found me hiding behind my apron, putting on a feast to celebrate another or under my covers hoping that my eyelids will form a barrier between me and all that feels dark about what’s light for so many.

I walked into church this morning, Eden’s sweaty palm mashed against mine as if it’s always been there, and I was new — without having forgotten the old. “Happy Mother’s Day,” the kind usher mouthed through the music with a knowing glance, though I didn’t know him. It was as if he knew this day was not a badge of honor for me but a memorial of a battle God had won.

Endurance is grace. ..read more

Adoration

My emotional rise and fall is determined within the almost-undetectable.

The still, small movements of my mind and heart — too fine to be caught by any filter I might employ — are where my greatest battles are fought.

And there are two areas of my life where I’ve worn the floor thin. I have memories created around both the internal and external cries of my life for breakthrough for these two things. Pages and pages of prayers, endless requests for reprieve.

If you’ve known this waiting room, you know that it must come — it has to come — with seasons. A distance runner learns endurance by the variety of their workouts. I remember times where my ..read more

Guest Post on “We Are Grafted In”

Today I have a guest post featured both on We Are Grafted In and The Journey of Adoption*.

It starts: …
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So much of what’s communicated about the world of adoption can feel so fatalistic.

Both the outside observer and the mom who is in the thick of it can share the same bleak perspective. One perceives trouble and the other lives it, daily. Anecdotes about the neighbor’s son who, post-adoption, traumatized his siblings, share equal weight with a mother’s desperate prayer requests for her child, whose countenance has iced-over since they brought her home.

Rewind 10 years and any sort of bump in the pathway to the “normal” life intimidated me.

My secret goal was to maintain ..read more

Mothers of Daughters

I’ve been asked to be a monthly contributor on Mothers of Daughters, a beautiful blog just coming out of its nascency. I’m honored!

My introductory post starts like this:

I expected my twenties to include diaper changes and breastfeeding. Like anyone whose pump had been primed for parenting, I assumed that “trying” to have children meant conceiving children.

A few long years later, I was ushered into motherhood through the back door.

A dream that we had to adopt, birthed when we were young and had eyes full of great expectations for our life, happened in a way we didn’t quite anticipate.

But like any move of God, it was better than we ever imagined. Read More Here ..read more