Tick Tock Goes the Clock

Another year has come and gone;

As time just keeps on ticking by,

Why does the clock like to pass time so much?

The hands go by with no reply.

Another year shows on my face;

More wrinkles in the signs of time,

Sometimes I wish I could turn it back

Then the midnight toll ring's out it's chime...

So, here I sit forced to look back

At the year of two thousand thirteen;

So many things I've left undone

And still other challenges  unforeseen.

Some words I wish I could've left unsaid

Yet still others if only I had shared;

For all that really matters in this life

Is the love of God that cannot be compared.

There were ups and there were downs,

As everyone can agree, I'm sure;

But here we stand at the brinkf

Of a blank slate calling us with hope's allure.

The voice of two thousand fourteen calls out,

Inviting me and you  to come and see,

There's so much more life to be lived,

Adventure awaits, that's a guarantee!

We can only imagine or guess

What awaits us around another bend...

There  will certainly be both joy and sorrow,

But through it all we have a faithful friend!

Lord, teach us to number our days aright

For these moments will quickly slip away;

Seize the moment, take life by the tail,

And let's not forget to pray!

"Cause surely we will need our God to help,

To cover us with grace once more,

He will never leave us or forsake us;

So, let's unwrap all that is in store!

Suffering brings intimacy

Laura story writes in her book "What if your blessings come through raindrops?" "There is a depth of intimacy with God that can only be known through suffering.  There is reliance on him that can only be experienced when everything else around my soul seems to give away. If that's what it takes to make this stubborn child cling to that old rugged cross, you can have your prosperity.

I'd rather have Jesus." 

Why does God call us to suffering in order to be intimate with him? Is it because we can identify with His cross? Is it because it is there that we learn that this world is not our home and that we long for something more?  God calls us to carry our cross daily and follow him and for each of us that means something different. For some of us that means physical pain and illness, for others it means relational heart ache and still for others it means financial stress and a myriad of other difficulties in this life.  Jesus himself says that in this world we would have trouble but Frusta take heart for he has overcome the world. This is not all there is, God has so much waiting for us I think of another scripture that says that our sufferings are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all. I'm grateful for this hope, I hold on to this promise and I wait expectantly for all that God has prepared for those of us who believe and trust in his appearing...

Henry Nouwen in his book, "The Inner Voice of Love", talks about a journey from anguish to freedom and one of the things that he talks about is to live our wounds through. To experience those wounds instead of thinking them through but to live them through so that our wounds would come to a place of healing deep within our spirits.  Instead of asking ourselves questions like, Why was I wounded, when, how or by whom.  We believe that these answers will bring relief but they only may offer us a little distance from our pain.  We have to let go of our need to stay in control of our pain and trust in the healing power of our God through our hearts.  

The only way out is through the pain and to calling out and crying out to God in our deepest anguish and sorrow and seeking his face, for it is there that we don't have to understand but only trust that Christ is able to make all grace abound to us and we can say with certainty yea though you slay me yet will I trust you"!  "God is our refuge and our strength a very present help in our time of need and "if God is for us then who can be against us". Run into the arms of your father, your heavenly father who is perfect; he is all loving, compassionate and kind to each of us... For he is "the God of all comfort" and truly this is all we need to know...

A Plea for Life!

I spoke with the agency that we are going through for our second adoption.  Liz stated that there are very few birthmothers coming in to discuss the possibility of adoption.  We started our second adoption process in January of 2011, right after our son's adoption was finalized.  We knew it could take quite a while.  We are now two years and six months from the start of this journey and here we wait.  And wait.  And wonder and wish... we are not spring chickens at this point with me being 46-years-old and my husband nearing fifty.  It was definitely disheartening to hear that the possibilities are slim, but I also know a God, my God who is in the business of miracles everyday, many of which we take for granted.  Think of this miracle of life itself.  I think of the gift of conception, without the hand of God, there would be no life at all.  I have heard that humans can only get pregnant one or two days a month and yet "accidentally" many become pregnant all the time.  Then the development of a baby and all the systems of the body that come together so that a healthy infant is born.  Life is discarded all the over the world due to a baby getting in the way of plans, an inconvenience...the deception that we as a nation embrace is incomprehensible..."Children are a gift of the Lord" and yet we see them as getting in our way...

This morning I asked for others from our church to pray for those who find themselves in a difficult situation and are contemplating what they are going to do.  We prayed that the hearts of a birthmother would be changed to choose life for their unborn child.  Where are the protectors of those who cannot defend themselves?  Where are the  men and women who would be the voice of the voiceless?  The irony is so great in my mind that the very ones who cry for women's choice are the very ones who were born to mother's who may have gotten pregnant at an inconvenient time and yet chose life that they would now live to condone another's death.  How can people be tried for murder of an unborn baby and yet then be charged for murder after a botched abortion, the illogical inconsistencies abound and yet these same people would say that I am ignorant for thinking that a "mass of cells" or a "fetus" is actually a baby!  We are busy protecting the whales and the eagles and other creatures, while we let the fruit of our wombs be ripped from it's protective cocoon only to be thrown in a trash can or clog up a drain.  Hard to read?  Yes!  And yet, even harder to write, but the "Truth will set us free!"  Sex was created to bring forth life, by God's design as well as be the glue that brings a man and a woman together for life-- we can say it isn't so and put our heads in the sand, but the truth is still the truth.  To tell kids to engage in "safe" sex  (like having sex doesn't bring forth a soul tie, to liken it to a handshake) and then tell them not to get pregnant?  I guess the age of enlightenment is the epitome of illogical thinking; all to cover up what we already know deep in our hearts to be a lie, but the longer we tell ourselves these lies, the more firmly embedded they become and we actually start to believe them.

Interesting in how our pastor today referred to Matthew 6:25 where Jesus himself says that no one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other or love the one and hate the other..."  "Love not the world nor the things of the world" says John in the book of John.  We are recklessly selling our souls for the "lust of the world" and for the "pride of life".  He went on to say that we are in a "death denial culture", we want to forget that death is a part of life.  We do not want to be reminded of our physical demise.  Looking in the face of death puts our whole life into perspective.  What are we living for?  What is our purpose?  If all it is is to prove that we are successful by how prestigious a job we have or how much money we make or how big our house is or who our friends are, they will all pass away; whether you and I want to face it or not.  Let us deny our own future death and therefore we do not have to ask ourselves the questions about whether or not there is an eternity and if we do live eternally then where will we be.  Let's continue to deny the truth and align ourselves with the one that wants to kill, steal and destroy anything having to do with life and love and continue to live with only ourselves in mind, for our convenience...

Let us stand for what is true, let us stand for life.  Let us choose righteousness over convenience.  Selflessness over selfishness.  Abortion comforts no one.  The "problem" may appear to be alleviated, but the heartache lasts a lifetime.  Let us look at the truth, no matter how awful that we would then choose what is good, what is eternal rather than the temporary "fix".  For yourself and your unborn child, choose life.  Let us put those children in empty arms...so many waiting hearts, so many...let us choose life for those unborn souls-- your mother did--!

A Mother's Day musings...

This Mother's Day, my third, I was finding my  heart to be so full of gratitude.  I get to have the chance to be a Mom!  Life has so many ironies that it is hard to wrap my brain around.  Only God knows why things happen the way they do.  Why one mother was not ready to parent the child she bore and why another mother was unable to conceive and is now a mother out of another's loss and pain.  Our pastor prayed for us mothers-- sometimes I almost feel like an imposter, like I am not for real because I did not conceive and bear this child and yet, my heart tells me otherwise as I fed him, bathed him, changed him, and continually train him, read and snuggle with him.  I cannot imagine life without this little boy who has the biggest, widest, most genuine smiler around.  This little boy who makes me laugh and has the best giggle that I have ever heard.  This little boy that is so smart.  I pray for him all the time, that He would know His God and follow Him all the days of His life, who knows the places he will go, as Dr. Suess so aptly penned.

How can it be that a heart can be so full of gratitude and yet so full of grief all at once?  So full of gladness and sadness all at the same time-- Again, the ironies of life that abound.  It is through joy that we are sustained and through pain that our character is built.  God is good and He does all things well, I will trust in sorrow and blessing!  For my God is faithful at every hour and at every turn!  

Adoption Story, Our First Meeting

Well, I hope this does not get the feeling of one of those movies that goes on and on, like Rocky I, II, III, etcetera...but we are just getting to the good part and I am writing this as much for a document for our family to remember as for others to enjoy...

So, where was I, oh yeah, we were on our way to Billings.  That is an eight hour driver from where we live.   We stopped in Missoula to get a baby name book!  We had a girl's name picked out, for some reason we were convinced we were going to have a girl, you know how that goes...So I started calling out names that I liked and Kent would say yay or nay and all the yeses were written on a list.  We narrowed it down to a dozen or so that we were contemplating.  We looked up the meanings of the names and thought about the meanings as related to Bible characters and what they stood for.  We didn't make any decisions yet on what his name would be...

We got checked in at the hotel in Billings and decided to get a bite to eat at the Windmill Steak House.  We took out the list of names and then as I recall we wrote our favorite names again.  I honestly cannot remember if they matched right away or not, but we came to a consensus pretty quickly.  Josiah, which means "fire of God" was what we settled on after we read the story of King Josiah and really like how he stood for God in the midst of idolatry.  We picked Christian, which means as you would expect "follower of Christ".  We wanted him to remember his roots where ever life took him in the future.  After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and as you might think, we didn't get much sleep that night (at least I didn't).

I was a bundle of nerves in the morning.  We were supposed to meet at 3:00 p.m, but the social worker had not confirmed anything since we had left home.  I kept asking my husband to call and find out what was going on, I knew I couldn't do it.  I was near tears practically all day!  I couldn't believe that they would make us wait until 3:00 p.m.!  How could they do that?  Anyway, we made the best of it and had breakfast, went shopping a bit and had a salad for lunch.  We were called to meet at 2:00!  I was absolutely beside myself, I could hardly keep it together!  I was sweating and ready to burst into tears at any moment--

We headed to the office in Billings.  We went in the door and were greeted by Lorraine, one of the social workers.  We were brought into a small living room type place and waited for what seemed to me like a hundred years.  We could hear them showing our little boy off out in the hall and  I could hardly contain myself to sit still and wait until they came in.  Finally, they brought in this little 6 pound, 12 ounce boy wearing a baseball one piece outfit and put him in my arms.  It was love at first sight, there is just not other way of describing it!  The tears came instantly, I couldn't believe my eyes, I couldn't believe it was really happening!  He was beautiful!  He had reddish blonde hair.  We fed him and held him and sat in amazement of this precious gift of life that was being entrusted to us...and then we had some paperwork to sign and finish up.  Once we talked with the cradle care foster Mom who was also named Kim (she had adopted two children and they were with her and were now 7 and 9 or so years old) and found out what kind of formula he was on and all the details of caring for him, we walked out the door. Talk about a weird feeling!  Can we really take him home with us, we thought...and to top it all off we weren't even sure how to get him in the car seat-- we thought for sure they were going to take him back from us thinking we were unfit parents, but instead they just chuckled and smiled knowingly...

Once we were on the road, I was in back with him and we were just trying to get as far as we could to get as close to home as we could.  Our first stop was at Arby's to use the bathroom and change him.  Again, I thought for sure someone was going to ask us whose baby that was and call the police or something, it was such as strange feeling...No one stopped us except to say, "He looks just like you"!  We would smile to ourselves just as proud as we could be that our son, Josiah Christian was really gifted to us by God and now we too had entered into the world of parenthood where we too had the awesome responsibility to raise him up to fear and love God above all else...

Fully Alive!

I heard something the other day that really started to spark my thinking..., "Are you fully alive"?  Hmmm, it really made me ponder, "What does it mean to be fully alive"?  Not just alive, we can all walk around like the walking zombies...but am I FULLY alive?

What does that mean for you?  What does it feel like, taste like, sound like, look like, or smell like?  Maybe it means the same thing as living in the moment--fully living in the moment.  What Jesus called, "...life more abundantly" (John 10:10).

Living fully alive invariably means that we WILL feel pain...emotional, physical, spiritual, and relational pain.  So, often I think we would like to think that is not true, but all too often it is true.  We live in a broken world full of the brokenness in each one of us.  When you hear of people with mental illness or other emotional issues, they often describe themselves as "feeling numb", too much pain.  Being fully alive means we will feel pain, which is not pleasant, but a sign of life...

My Waiting Heart

Here I am again
Trying to be patient for a glimpse of you--
Only God knows what you look like
And when you will come to us--
So, my waiting heart stands ready
To receive you at a moment's notice.

Where are you in this world
At this very minute that I am thinking of you--
Are you even here in a physical sense
Or are you too waiting for your entrance
So, my waiting heart stands ready
To receive you at a  moment's notice.

Maybe you are in a darkened cocoon,
So warm and safe and sure--
Only God knows when you will be ready
To join us in our family--
So, my waiting heart stands ready
To receive you at a moment's notice.

You will have a little brother
Who talks about your coming soon all the time--
He can hardly contain himself to meet you--
To play and laugh and grow up with him--
So, our waiting heart stands ready
To receive you at a moment's notice.

A daddy is longing for you too,
To cuddle and read you a story--
He prays for you all the time
So we can finally be a family with you--
So, our waiting heart stands ready
To receive you at a  moment's notice!

Come quickly dear little one
Your mommy loves you already--
My heart is full and longing for you
To kiss you and hug you and smell your sweet scent--
Our waiting hearts stand ready
To receive you at God's perfect moment!