Growing Family

Look For It

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin...

Zechariah 4:10

Our culture is structured around articulating the desired end result, and then maximizing each moment in that direction for optimum success. Goals, Objectives, Strategies, Milestones, Markers, Achievements, all recognized ways in which we move forward to arrive at an ever changing destination of accomplishment and happiness. 

Today I was watering my new trees. I held the hose in one hand, and was scrolling through facebook with the other. As I let the hose soak my new apple, something tiny caught my eye.

The tree I planted one week ago, the tree that was dormant and bare, is extending the tiniest, fuzzy, silver gray leaves.

I pocketed my phone and went on a hunt around my mostly dormant garden, full of just-planted sleeping specimens.

 

The growth on a fig is like a fat knife piercing the stem.

 

Blueberries have already produced flower-like clusters of new leaves.

 

Tiny jagged raspberry leaves sit aloft the leaf litter.

Orange blossoms, delicate and fragrant, invite a closer look.

 

 

Lemon buds, swelling.

 

 

Not all the growth springs up easily, from undisturbed roots. This Salvia was unceremoniously ripped up by the roots, and given to me in a bag, by a neighbor. I cut it back, hoping it would live.

 

The dry and abused stem I planted is pushing out new leaves.

 

My Pomegranate

The pomegranate I planted with such loving care in the fall, was split down the main branch, when some tree guys dropped a limb on it. We taped the split, and I have been whispering success to the tree, and today, at the very tip of the main branch, this.

"Nothing is happening!" I've groaned to our friends about our foster care journey. "They are still acting up in the same way we've been working on for months!" I complain to my husband about various behaviors in our children. "Why is this not over yet?" I wail about a particularly harrowing journey with the IRS. 

Be still and know that I am God.

Psalm 46:10

I am being faithful with my little, and I know that God is being faithful with me. It sure is encouraging to see new life, emerging unexpectedly. God is faithful.

 

 

My New Life

We're back from Tennessee, school is in session, and our house is turning into something like a home. My little laptop smirks at me each time I walk by. As I browse Facebook and Pinterest and read blogs, my own blog tab wiggles its eyebrows at me tauntingly. I click it away.

This is the season my little ship has been pointed towards all these years. All three munchkins are in the same school for the same hours, leaving my days as my own. We are in our own house (again) that will be ours for several years (that's the plan, Stan), so I can paint the walls and plant the trees, and do all those things I love to do.

Yet getting here has felt more like a crash landing than an easy slide. I feel more like a cartoon character sitting in a pile of dust, shaking those stars around my head, than a polished woman who has accomplished her goals.

Life is full of challenges. We have our own family challenges that take our time and require intentional focus. The Captain is in a season at work where he is working long hours to meet a project deadline. He is also sick, and has been for some time, but he keeps right on working. Things still feel out of place and unfamiliar. We haven't yet found that comforting rythm in this house and this season. We haven't logged enough comfort hours here.

The world seems to be exploding in violence and terror, and I don't know what to do. Malaysia Airlines MH17, Israel and Gaza, Michael Brown and Ferguson, James Foley, ISIS and Iraq... How do we live in this world?

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.

Romans 12:21

Last night we did what we do best. I pushed the kids outside, and sat on the steps to watch them play.

I soaked up my children's laughter, and their hilarious antics. I enjoyed the amusement of passers-by observing their abandon. I set life aside to live those moments. 

Let's not let fear win. Not in our own hearts and minds. Not in our relationships. Not in our communities. Not in our policies and laws. Not in our worldviews.

May your choices reflect your HOPES, not your fears.

Nelson Mandela

Let's hold on to the good!

 

Rise

Today wasn't a "Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day", but it wasn't a prize winner either. Half an hour past when bedtime should have been, I dragged myself out to walk the dog, with a crying child in the doorway calling down the street after me. My feelings were neither warm nor fuzzy.

As I walked, I mulled the day over. Where did I go wrong? Why did so many moments go awry? I wanted to be gentle, but I was stern. I wanted to give space, but I pinched moments. I wanted to stay calm, but my nerves frayed. I failed to be the woman I wanted to be.

I spoke these things out loud, letting my confessions fall amongst my footsteps. Then, the Still Small Voice spoke to me.

"When you feel that you are sinking, you grab hold of heavy things. It's better to hold onto something that floats."

 

 

Soul Scrub

Little turns me off from foster care more than foster care training itself. Hours upon hours of the horrific traumas children have experienced before entering care, chased with a shot of "here's what to do when the sh*t hits the fan."

I came home today feeling nauseous, and tired, afraid and defeated. The needs are so immense, I know from experience. The outcomes can be so challenging. I've seen that too.

The people on the journey can restore your faith in humanity...or not.

My husband is a gracious man, who didn't object when, upon returning home, I slipped into the garden, sitting, waiting for direction.

I picked up a flat or two of annuals, that have been waiting to be put in the ground, along with a packet of seeds and my basket of tools.

He only interruped to ask "is there something you want me to make for dinner?" God bless that wise man. 

I stayed out until the gloaming, tucking snap dragons in with a tender press around the roots, and stopping to admire my gorgous daughter who was finding the enchantment in planting surprise nasturtium seeds for me to find come sprouting.

The garden is where I scrub my soul clean. The garden is where I hear the God whisper "it will all end well" and I whisper "it is well with my soul" into the chilling air.

I am thankful that God has put a garden in my heart, and a place for me to grow. When all the plants are settled for the night, and the sky has settled from guava and purple to a dusky grey, my husband pulls the burgers off the grill. It's time to go in, and I am ready. My soul has released its burden and I am freed.

Christmas, Full of Splendor

I know many people attend church at Christmas and Easter, reaching for the heavens at these special times of year. I, for one, never want to attend church at Christmas, as the surrounding of friends and family feels entirely sacred, and the very embodiment of what Jesus came for.

This year was extraordinarily special as we returned to my Grandparent's home Up North - the home that embodies family and festivity in all my childhood memories. My parents were there, as was my sister, and it was wonderful to be in that cosiest of places, sharing decades of traditions with my children.

Can I share a bit of it with you?

This is the house my father grew up in. It's not the house where my grandparents live now, but it embodies the beauty and history of the area where we spend Christmas. Isn't it lovely?

These are my grandparents. They have been married 64 years. She has alzheimers, and no longer knows who any of us are, but my grandfather can still make her laugh and she still steals a kiss when he's not expecting it. He still calls her his lover, and witnessing their love was amazing.

My grandmother latched onto Sprout, and the connection between them was lovely. The children made her cards, which she read, over and over again "To Grandma, I love you, Sprout." "You're the greatest Grandma ever, from your grandchild, Small Sun." She fixated on them like treasures, and looked from card to Sprout and back again, for nearly half an hour.

Typically wary of strangers, my Grandmother immediately reached for Sprout, and wanted to hold her hand to walk down the hallway, and patted the couch for her to sit close when they sat down. I walked behind, snapping pictures and wiping tears.

This is my grandfather. He is 87 and magnificent. He always tears up when telling stories of people doing good deeds, or people in hardship. Maintaining tenderness and empathy across a lifespan strikes me as amazing.

 

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 This is the annual Christmas Brunch that my Grandfather treats us to at the country club where he has walls of golf trophies on display. It is the most decadent and extravagant meal my children get to experience, complete with valet parking, coat check, fancy bathrooms, and multiple forks.

Small Sun was blessed to speak to his birthfamily on the phone on Christmas day, and he made a snow angel on his first mom's request. I Facebooked her the picture. I love how our openness is developing.

Isn't his nose so reindeer adorable?

 

Isn't my sister stunnnig? I love, love, love her, and getting to be near her is like the chocolatiest piece of chocolate cake, with ganache, AND chocolate ice cream. Perfect.

Small Sun and my dad working on their treehouse plans, amongest the wreckage of Christmas dinner. My dad is Small Sun's biggest champion, and having my dad's support as I struggle through parenting means so very, very much to me.

Later on, Dad, Sprout, and Finch were roasting chestnuts...on and open fire...I know. They were delicious.

 

How does your family spend Christmas afternoon? We walked in the woods, found an icy patch in the creek, and worked to carry logs to throw over the bridge in effort to break up the ice. You know, just your average Christmas entertainment. It was so much fun.

A couple memories stand out with dizzying sweetness.

Finch, crawling home from the woods at dusk on Chritmas Day, pretending to be a Stegasaurus. He stopped and asked me to take his mittens off so he could poke three fingers to make Stegasaurus prints in the snow.

As night fell, we walked hand in hand, past the twinkle lights, towards home. My heart was full to bursting, and I felt the weight of being "home" with my family, to be the most treasured gift. The Captain and I stole a lingering kiss, and all was right in my world. I hope your Christmas was lovely too!

Being the Perfect Parent

Let me just go ahead and put it out there - I am a perfectionist. I can make my handwriting nearly perfect. I have been known to clean grout with a toothbrush. I was the annoying kid in college who scored 116% on tests by doing all the extra essay questions. Hate me now, go ahead, but I am a people pleasing person and if someone in authority says jump, I have been known to go buy a trampoline so that I can jump higher than they ever thought I would.

Can you see where this is going in relation to my parenting? Not good places, not good places.

You see, I have unrealistic expectations all around. I want my kids to be award winning, perfectly mannered little geniuses AND I want to never make any mistakes myself, and eventually be presented with some big tacky gold star award for BEST MOTHER EVER. If it was encrusted with diamonds, that would be okay. 

I mean, if none of us are standing next to a measuring stick I am pretty normal. I want my kids to be kind, happy and healthy, and I want myself to be the same. I want them to love learning and have a good work ethic.

Suddenly, however, we are in a school context where there are tests ALL THE TIME and conduct reports every five minutes and school seems like one big measuring stick that my kids are lined up against. Note after note comes home about this performance goal and that standard, and your kid has this many points accrued in the reading competition (and it's not enough) and have you thought about math tutoring, and everyone check for head lice, and do your kids drink enough water, and are you quizzing your multiplication facts every day, and how about the online booster tutoring you could avail yourself of, are you practicing enough for band to earn your merit sticker, and, and, and... I wonder if the teachers stop and count up the time it would take to do the homework PLUS all the extras they are always plugging? It's really impossible, man.

So anyway, one of my kids is struggling at school. It's just all too much, and behavior is breaking down under the load. It's been embarrassing to be the parent called into the office to discuss your child's offences. I've really struggled with stress, anxiety, and even depression over how my child is doing.

I am having so much trouble separating myself from my child's choices. I am having trouble separating my child's poor choices from my child as a whole person. It's been a rocky patch.

I am ashamed and embarrassed, which doesn't aid my parenting skills. 

So I've been reading the creation story in Genesis and it got me to thinking. God is the PERFECT Father. He is flawless, without weakness, misguided intentions, lack of resource or insight, and he does not run low on compassion. He is complete, and entirely perfect as a parent.

Then there's Eden - a perfectly safe environment with EVERY need provided for. Adam and Eve were absolutely safe and cared for. God was a perfect Father, and they were in a perfect home, if you will. Everything was golden. 

Even though they were set up for success as much as any two people could have been, Adam and Eve made an independent choice that got them into a lot of trouble. 

I'm starting to think that the brilliance in the story is that God had a way to continue forward in life and relationship woven into the fabric of time, regardless of mankind doing the right thing. 

Knowing that God was perfect, and His kids were set up to succeed, and they STILL screwed up helps me feel so much relief. I don't have to be perfect. My children don't have to be perfect. When they mess up there is a way forward, and we'll get there together. It won't always be easy, and it certainly won't be free of consequences for getting off track, but we don't have to do it alone. 

What comfort and hope there is in that truth!

 

What We're Doing

Okay, so it seems about time to write a post about foster care/adoption, and what we're doing next. I have to be direct and say that for us, bringing a child into our family is essentially an act of faith, and my discussion of it here won't avoid that.

I read heaps of blogs, book after book, and endlessly seek to understand the issues, the trends, the needs, the whole picture when it comes to adoption and foster care. In the end, the choices we make are intensely personal, and rise from a place of faith. 

All those years in Australia, we tried to make adoption happen. When we started fostering we were told some families end up adopting children they foster, even though the program isn't set up to facilitate that. Each time we felt the nudge (or the the push) from the Lord, we took a step. Our journey is filled with incredible God stories, and we are so thankful.

Coming to the US, we knew that bringing a permanent child into our family was a really big piece of this next season, but we had no clarity on when or how or from where. Years ago, newly comprehending the complexity and challenging power dynamics in domestic voluntary infant adoptions, I thought that adopting through foster care, or a child with special needs seemed to be two avenues I would feel ethically clear about.

In our search for a church home here in Houston, we spent several weeks going to nice places, but not feeling home. Then, one day we drove farther afield and found ourselves in a service that just felt so right. In that first service, in the worship time, I saw a visual picture in my mind, of a little girl. I received an impression of her age, her ethnicity, and that she would be found here in Houston, in the foster care system. This was the first specific indication I had of a way to get to our next child. I tucked it away in my mind for further thought later.

In the car on the way home, The Captain and I each asked each other, tentatively, "so, what did you think?" The whole family felt immediately at home, and we decided then and there, that this would be our new church. Beyond that, it turns out that during the service, The Captain had also received an impression from God that our next child would be coming through foster care.

While I feel weird talking about this so openly on the internet, it is what it is. This is how we hear things, and this is how we often make the transition from waiting for direction to taking a step forward.

We're neck deep in paperwork with a local child welfare agency that contracts with the state for foster care, foster to adopt, and adoptive placements. Their training regimen involves twelve classes that both of us have to attend, without children, nearly an hour away. We've looked at the schedule backward and frontward, but are having trouble seeing any quick or easy way to get through it.

As a foster parent with a current licence in Australia, and as an experienced adoptive parent, it is tempting to get annoyed with having to sacrifice this much time, energy, (and money for the babysitters), to go through trainings that we will most likely already be very familiar with, but I keep thinking, "on the other end of this I will be trusted with a life - my child - the classes are really no big deal to get to that."

At the same time, we don't have the time or the babysitters to make this training schedule happen, so once again it is one of those situations where we've taken a step forward, and now we do a bit of waiting to see what God does or says next. One thing I know for sure, is that the next step will be clear, because on this, to us, He always is. Timing has always been perfect (if not sensible to me), it has always been the right child at the right time, and the right resource has always been provided when needed. If this thing moves fast or moves slow, it will be right, because God will be working the details. 

Orphan Care

Kristen at Rage Against the Minivan has written a really fantastic piece outlining how the Christian evangelical orphan care movement needs to be very thoughtful in how it goes about attempting to help orphans, and how some of the current models contribute to abandonment and lifelong institutional care.

If you are interested at all in international adoption, faith-inspired orphan care, or children's rights, please take the time to read and share it. It is really informative and compelling, and worth your time!

http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2013/09/how-christian-orphan-care-movement-may.html

Joy Makeover

A real benefit of making these massive moves to new places where no one knows you, yet, is that each one can act as a kind of reset button, an opportunity to remake yourself in ways you want to change. Instead of coming across as flaky, or unstable, you just pop out the other end of the plane different. 

You can start wearing lipstick when you never did, or go vegan, or gain or lose weight, or whatever, and neither the people you're leaving or the people you're meeting really know that there has been a change.

I've decided that I want to learn to can and preserve. I want to be one of those dear ladies selling handmade jams at markets. I intend to become that jam lady here in Houston.

On a deeper note, I want to become a joyful person.

Today I was reading on Hidden Cupcakes. Do you read Tracey? She's so fabulous. An elegant and creative mother of five boys (through transracial adoption and birth). I pulled this line from her blog and it is ringing in my heart.

"It wasn't how we had pictured it, but we celebrated."

I grew up dealing with so much fear. It wasn't really until I met and married The Captain that it began to melt away. The knots relaxed in my stomach, and for the first time I slept on my back, peaceful in vulnerability.

Over the years new fears have crept in, and the old ones resurface. More than anyone I know, The Captain lives fear free, confident and assured. I want to live that way.

Some people see the glass as half empty or half full. My personality tends to analyze the contents of the glass into oblivion. Things may be good now but just wait until XYZ and they'll be so much better.  There is always something beyond my grasp, something that could go wrong, something that I'm worried about. I don't want to keep living that way.

We are in the middle of what is a legitimately scary and massive situation. I have every right to curl up in fear. But I'm new here, and this seems to be as good a time as any to change. I want to live out of a place of joy.

I don't really know how to do that, to be honest. I know how to focus on the little things and find joy in them, but I want it to go deeper, broader, and grow more solid. I want joy to be the platform on which I stand, and the foundation under everything. 

I want to live life celebrating, all along the way, in the midst of trials, and not only when we have overcome them.

I want a joy makeover, and who knows, I might try lipstick too.

 

Sprout's Revelation

Sprout, my heart-born six year old daughter, came to stand next to my reading chair as I sought to enter my oblivious bubble while the post-dinner mayhem roared around me. 

"Why do people sin?" she asked. "I mean, like Adam and Eve? If I was them I would have just said 'no' to the snake."

I looked into her eyes and said "we all think we would say no, but the truth is that Satan looks for a place in our heart where we are thin, and vulnerable, and he tries to poke us there, and trick us. He tricked Eve by poking at a place where she was thin, and he got her to wonder if God was really good, and if God really cared about her."

Without pausing to think she said "so when I feel like I am not good at anything, and I'm a bad person, that is Satan poking me and trying to trick me?"

How can I describe the joy in that moment where my child saw her struggle for what it is? For months we have been working with Sprout as she cries at night, inconsolable that she can't write as neatly as another girl in her class, or run as fast as she imagines she used to, or leap as far as a girl in ballet...and all these perceived failures snowball into "I'm not good at anything. I'm a bad person."

I beamed at her and said "Sprout, this is a big moment, because you just figured it out for yourself!"

She reached down and motioned over her heart and said "there, now that I know, I just fixed the thin place and I don't have to worry about that anymore!"

Five minutes later she was doing her impression of The Muppets and we were in stitches as she repeated "Maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh..." before taking a bow.

It is so amazing to see God working in my children's lives. I can't even describe.

That's what Easter is all about.