Jacob, our bakerThe array of yumminess that Jacob baked. He went through my recipe box and chose what types of cookies he wanted to bake for the cookie sale.Our signageSetting up. Getting it all just right.
Waiting for anyone with the slightest sweet tooth to arrive.It’s a good thing they brought along reading material.
So our boys became little entrepreneurs this week. We’ve come to learn that our ten year old, Jacob, loves to bake. When he’s bored, he bakes or goes looking through the cabinets or refrigerator for things he can put together to make for us or guests to enjoy. This is always unprompted which is the beautiful part. You can tell he just enjoys doing it but even more so, he enjoys watching the recipients enjoy his treats (and I’m sure the accolades of such supreme putting-together-of-ingredients). So this summer, somehow my recipe box ended up in his personal cubby space so that he could pick out recipes on a whim. It speaks volumes that I didn’t even realize it was missing until he told me he had it in there. :/ Last week he made an anise drop cookie with a glaze on top. We all went kinda crazy for them. They were awesome. Even I had never tried making that one before (and probably never will considering he’s got it down pat). That night, as Caleb, 9, munched on one he mentioned that Jacob should sell his cookies to neighbors and friends. Well, you can tell right away by the look on his face that Jacob was flattered (and eager to make some dough – no pun intended!) and one thing led to another and they had a cookie sale planned out with all the money going towards the adoption. This was Wednesday. He wanted to do it Thursday. I cried inside. No, I didn’t, but almost. I did manage to convince them that they needed a few days to plan and prepare and BAKE for goodness sake, so we settled on Saturday. A 90 degree day. And we set up in the sun. And he made lots of cookies….with chocolate chips in them. And people walked away with plastic bags that were coated brown inside had they dared stayed to chat. But it was all good. Jacob loved it and I think was stunned the first couple of times people came and actually put their order in and then actually PAID him for the cookies. It was fun to watch. From 11-2 they sold cookies. The best part was that we had friends come over and they helped in the selling. One of Jacob’s friends and his sister (two more entrepreneurs) made one of those big signs that you see people on city corners spinning over their back and head and under their arms, doing all sorts of fancy trickery, and he started doing it at the bottom of our hill! Then as 2:00 approached they took some of the cookies that were left over and started walking down and around the block knocking on neighbors’ doors. They actually made a few sales that way, too. And we got to tuck into every bag a little blurb about the adoption and a link to our blog.
At the end of the day, an adoption fund envelope on behalf of the boys was created and the money that they made yesterday went into that. We're thinking that this may not be the last bake sale. Hopefully it’s the first of other ideas they come up with for raising money to go into their fund. We’re so proud of them for doing something selfless for sisters they have yet to meet and for using the gifts and talents that God has given them to help support bringing them home.
Every little step. Guide us, Lord. Every little step.
I recently had a talk with a friend about all the concerns and questions I’ve been mulling over in my mind about different decisions our family is in the process of making right now. And as I’m sure so many moms feel, I’m realizing more and more every decision, right down to the tiniest ones, I make as a mom is not just a decision for me but for our entire family. Even those girls who are a part of our family and yet to know it. The choices Brad and I make now will effect the family that they enter into whenever that may be. In regards to these decisions, there are so many questions I ask myself. Will I have the strength to go the distance? Will I have the patience to deal with all the issues and problems that come up? Will our family grow closer to each other through this adoption or will tension follow us? Will our family grow closer to God through this adoption? Will Brad and I have the wisdom to know how to guide our family into adoption? Will we enjoy the calling that the Lord has placed upon our family or will we get ensnared more in the costs to our family both in time and emotions? Now, these questions were not causing doubt as to whether or not we wanted to pursue our adoption, these questions were/are just real, honest, humbling questions. We’re not perfect and we’re not the epitome of patient parents. Our kids actually pray out loud that we would have more patience with them! And that’s not to say that we’re never patient. But sometimes as I enter into different situations with my boys I picture a little girl behind me, having had no experience with a loving mommy and daddy in her life before, witnessing my reaction and words to things the boys do and I wonder if she would shrink back. I am not perfect. Brad is not perfect. Our kids are not perfect. But do we love those girls already with our whole heart? Absolutely, yes. Are we ready to love them lavishly once they enter our home and family? Absolutely, yes.
So when I shared all these questions with my friend, she asked me, where is God in all these questions? What are all these questions telling you about how you view God? How you view yourself? Am I looking at all these questions as a process that God wants to take me and my family through before the girls get here or am I using them as a source of stress? Does God want to bring to light and change certain ways we view Him or even doubt Him? There’s a major shift happening in our family. A shift in changing our ways of thinking about God and our levels of trust in Him. I know, I personally can get extremely caught up in the details of how things are going to happen. What is it going to look like day to day? Even minute to minute sometimes. I know, way too intense.
So when I started thinking about my friend’s questions back to me, I started realizing that yes, indeed, even after having been a Christian for 12 years now, I can say there’s a lot that God has to work on in terms of my perception of Him and me and my family. All of those questions I mentioned earlier that I have about the adoption and other decisions we’re making right now, while I do believe they’re normal and probably to some extent need to be asked so that we can prepare ourselves in as many ways possible, can also be a downfall when I allow myself to dwell on them, to stay there stuck in the unknowns. Because the reality is that probably 90% of adoption, before you’re actually matched with any children is based on the unknowns! And I know myself. I. can. get. stuck. So stuck. Stuck for days. That’s why I love talking to Brad about these things sometimes because he does not stay stuck. He may have the same questions but he moves past them, knowing he doesn’t have the answers but not allowing that to defeat him. But being home with my boys everyday, it’s easy for me to constantly see the things we need to work on and forget the things that make us a pretty awesome, yet quirky bunch. (smirk) Like the quiet ways my older boys fill in the gaps for each other when their home together. The pride I secretly see in the face and mannerisms when a particular four year old goes to them for help when he sees mommy’s busy. How my one year old finds comfort and a welcoming lap in his older brothers when he’s tired or cranky. Tasks done without me asking. (Not all the time, but I do like to dwell on the times when they are!) All these and more are the things that God wants me to look at from time to time. We do gel together. If I get so caught up in what we’re not doing right and where we’re lacking I think it’s only natural that those are times that will be marked with fear, apprehension, and mistrust of who God is and how capable He’s made us. I forget that we live and thrive on His power and His provision. That He put Brad and I together perfectly to walk through this life of loving each other, raising children, adopting, and every other desire He’s put on our hearts. He never intended for us to shrink back in fear, no matter how prone we are to do so! He’s created us to hear His calling and act on it…..without looking back. Without staying stuck in the But-I’m-REALLY-comfortable-with-the-way-things-are-now-though kind of thinking. Not that I would ever think that! (smirk #2) I don’t ever want to be comfortable, I guess? So, yep, I guess I am learning a lot more about my God and how He’s wired me and Brad. Thank you Jesus that You don’t leave us where You found us!
And so, with all that being said, I wanted to take a minute and let you all know about the fundraising page we recently added. If there’s one thing God has shown me through this, and reading about other families’ adoptions, it’s that adoption is indeed a calling whether or not you have tens of thousands of dollars in the bank and whether or not it’s easy for your family to save that much money during the process. God doesn’t look at our bank accounts and deem who will be allowed to welcome an orphan into their home according to how much money they have or how easy it is to save. It’s time for that trust to grow as we leap, right? I can choose to stay stuck in questioning how this will all come together or I can watch God knock my socks off. No more being stuck in the muck of apprehension and fear. He’s welcoming everyone in. I welcome you further into our adoption and to bringing our girls home.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
There is so much I can tell you about how we came to the decision to adopt. It was a long time coming by the time the decision was made, but by the time we did actually say yes, the moment became something I’ll never forget. But, let’s go back a bit.
God put the stirrings for adoption in my heart way before we were ready to actually dive into adoption. The first time was when my second son, Caleb, was born and at that time we didn’t even know anybody who had adopted or who wanted to adopt. I remember tucking away a silent promise to God that even though we were in no way ready at the time, one day we would be, and that I wouldn’t forget these stirrings. So I guess our adoption journey started with a promise.
Three years followed and so did some miscarried pregnancies. It was the desire of our hearts to birth another baby but something was going wrong. And when your body rejects the desires of your heart for another baby, regardless of how many you already have, it shatters you for a time. My arms felt empty and my heart sore from unfulfilled expectations. And so, I thought, “Well, surely this is God calling our family into adoption. He’s calling me to pull out that silent promise and get ready.” But, alas, He saw fit to fill my womb with baby boy number 3, PeterJames, who landed in my arms in June 2010. And, man, that little boy lit up my world, all of our worlds. He was such an answer to prayer in so many ways.
And yet, it seemed funny to me that each time we had a baby, that desire for adoption would surface almost immediately. And it was amazing that the urge to adopt could be as strong as the urge to be pregnant. Only this time the urge didn’t go away and it just kept growing and growing and growing right along with my son. And just to make sure that I would know this was indeed possible and the time to do it, the Lord began to place all around us, specifically in our church, families who were planning on adopting, and who had adopted. Everywhere. Seriously. Everywhere. And they became our friends. And we loved them. And we loved their kids. And I saw how good and natural and full of life adoption was. And I was in. All in. And that silent promise that I had tucked away so long ago became a big resounding, YES!
But I have a husband! And he needed to say YES! :) Although we’d been talking about adoption and loved the idea and wanted it for our family, it was hard to get past the question of “How in the world would it happen financially?” So we prayed. I actually had no idea either how that part would happen. All I knew in my heart was that another one of our children was out there! And I knew my husband’s heart. We had had enough conversations about adopting that I knew he wanted to do it and his heart was good and ready, but there seemed to be this brick wall with a huge $$ sign standing in the way of his “Yes”. And, just like God does, He worked.
Brad happens to have coffee pretty frequently with a friend who at the time had six adopted children (now they have eight!). And Brad felt really comfortable talking to him about the money issue and how it was holding him back. And God knew, this is exactly what Brad needed. A sounding board. Someone to tell him and show him, that yes, it’s hard, but God will provide everything we need. We may not have any idea how but He will. We prayed together for a clear and unified answer and he continued to have conversations with his friend who gently and lovingly, I believe helped ease those fears and made adoption seem doable, even for our family. And just, for what it’s worth, before I get to the next part, in case anyone reading this is considering adoption, but keeps hitting the same wall with those $$ signs blasted across it, I’ll never forget something I heard while listening to the radio the November before we made the decision and it was almost like he was speaking directly to me. These aren’t the speaker’s exact words but in essence he asked, if someone somehow got a hold of your biological children and was holding them ransom for an extraordinary amount of money, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to fulfill that ransom and get your children home to you? It’s the same thing with adoption. Once you’ve made the choice for adoption in your heart, your child is out there waiting for you, dependent on you to figure out how to bring them home.
So it was Mother’s Day. Brad and I were sitting outside in the yard while the boys played and once again we were talking about adopting. And although I can’t remember our exact words, I do remember by the end of the conversation Brad saying, “So why aren’t we doing this?” And trying to make sure I really heard what I think I heard to be a Yes, I said “What do you mean?” And confirming my suspicions he said, “Let’s do it. Let’s start.” Okay, so can I tell you about the fireworks that went off in my heart?! Intense. Intense! I thought I would float off my chair. I wanted to dance, I wanted to sing, I wanted to hop a plane somewhere and get our child! Our child! Somewhere out there was our child! Waiting. Not even knowing it, but waitingfor us. And I could see her and hear her and seriously it was like everything changed in the blink of an eye. We no longer had three children. We had four. And for a while after that day, whenever I looked out on the grass I could see her running and playing with her brothers. When I was in the car, I would glance in the rear view mirror and almost expect to see her sitting there next to her brother. She was already a part of our family and I didn’t even know if she was born yet! Happy Mother’s Day to me! :)
And God had even more plans for our family. In January of the following year, we found out we were expecting our fourth son who was born in September, 2013. Tobias Benjamin. Talk about being thrown for a loop. And talk about a blessing. The boy lights up a room with his eyes and smiles. And although we weren’t expecting his birth since we were knee deep in adoption paperwork, God knew he was coming and now I can see He had the most wonderful timing in mind.
Our glorious little surprise. Tobias Benjamin.
And, I often consider how lacking our family would be without Tobias. And now this little girl to come will be blessed by (most likely) a little brother as well as her bigger brothers. And now we wait for it all to unfold. Still holding our breaths over the how’s and when’s but trusting none the less. Can you pray that our trust would hold strong during those times when we begin to question still how it will all go down? Because, well, we’re human. And we (okay me, more than Brad) can sometimes look around and wonder how in the world we’ll be able to handle another little heart with a bunch of new little needs. As much as we’re excited to meet her, I’m embracing the time of waiting and changing, for all our hearts, in the meantime.
A family photo from last summer. Why are family photos always the hardest to get? Hopefully we’ll get a more updated one soon! :)
Proverbs 19:21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
Proverbs 16:9 The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
We sat on the deck in the warmth of the May sunshine. I held our second son, Caleb, just weeks old, gently against me as we watched our first born, Jacob, playing in the backyard. A thought had been on my mind a lot lately and so I turned to him and said, “Wouldn’t you love to adopt?” It had been an especially hard recovery from this birth and my husband turned to me, gave a gentle laugh and replied back, “Ang, I think we should get through this little guy being so tiny before we start thinking about more children.” And he was right. It was way too early to be thinking about adding more children to our little brood when we still hadn’t gotten the hang of even having the two little ones gifted to us biologically. But oh my, somehow, someway, something had been stirred in me. Our conversation that day, although it continued, was short lived but in essence Brad said if that’s what God wanted us to do, he’d be all in. I tucked that (promise?) away in my heart.
Fast forward about 18 months and there I was driving the car with a 3 year old and 18 month old, often thinking about that day and wondering what I had ever been thinking because having these two little ones was MORE than enough. I was listening to our local christian radio station, the Sound of Life and it must have been November, National Adoption Awareness month, because almost everything it seemed had to do with adoption and now someone was on talking about their family’s adoption story. I wasn’t listening for more than a minute when I felt that old familiar tug at my heart strings for the fatherless – and it jolted me out of my driving daze. I looked at the radio, turned the station, and said out loud, “Nope. I’m done with that.” So here’s the part when God was up in heaven enjoying a hardy laugh at my expense. He knew the work that had to be done to reignite that flame in me and He intended to do it. But me? I like to be the sort of girl who’s hard to get. (ahem) I’m sure there have been many, many (manymanymanymanymany) times when something that would’ve taken anyone else a simple eye-opening revelation (and shazam! a changed heart), takes me a good 2-3 years to get…….at least.
The story obviously doesn’t end there. We’ve been on the waiting family registry in Bulgaria to adopt 1-2 beautiful little creations (who will be wearing pink!) for a little over a year now. Between that day in the car to now, two more little boys have been born into our ever growing testosterone-filled family. I have been enjoying my reign as sole princess in a house full of princes. I always get the role of queen in our living room stories, certain things cannot happen at the dinner table because, in the words of my husband, “there is a lady here”, I always get the compliments and stares of 4 little boys (and one big one) when I walk in a room looking “pretty” – which means dressed up in more than a pair of jeans – because to be honest, in this house, it’s just…..different. Being a girl, I mean. :) So they are just as excited as we are giddy to have some other pink floating around this house. Yes, I will lose my title as the one and only princess but I’m totally willing to surrender my crown and place it on the head of our daughter……one day……soon.
Join us? As we journey this adventure? I’ll be posting updates and links in our preparations for bringing our princess(es) home. My heart bursts at the idea because I can’t wait to see how God moves mountains to make that happen because at times that’s what I feel like we’re staring at. But the Truth of the verse that just two weeks ago I was teaching to a classroom of kindergartners and first graders at our church, echoes loudly in my ears and heart: “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21
