Grateful

Ephesians 5:21-33

I'm so grateful for my husband, my head, my protector. I'm so grateful for my marriage. I'm thankful for a husband who loves me like Christ loves the church. He knows me like no one else in the world. We've been through things together that no couple should have to go through. We have survived things that many would not have survived--only by the grace of God.

I'm so thankful for the covering of my husband. He provides for us. He thinks of my daughter and me when he makes decisions. By providing for us, he provides for himself. We are a family unit--created by God. Imperfect but anointed. Fallible but filled with grace.

The Disappointment of Christmas

Christmas is hard for so many people. It has been really hard for me for many years. But only because my expectations have been misplaced. I have bought into the lie of what Christmas is really about.

Christmas was not easy for Mary either. In a short period of time, she went from being a pure, innocent young bride to being spat upon, leered at and judged by almost everyone around her. All as a result of the will of God.

Sometimes I'm jealous of other moms who's kids come home for Christmas. It's such a joyful time of reunion. But not all of us get to experience that. That's one reason Christmas is such a difficult season for many. But, as my devotional today says, Christmas is not about me. It's not even about family. I don't live in a Hallmark movie!

Mary didn't get to experience warm fuzzies on Christmas either. I think we have added that expectation and, for most of us, Christmas falls short of it. Christmas is not about the warm fuzzies of home, family and gifts.

Christmas is about the invasion of light into the darkness of planet earth! It's about an interruption of our normal lives. It's about giving up our shallow, selfish hopes and dreams in exchange for God's bigger, deeper plan.

Am I willing, as Mary was, to give up my reputation, my dreams, my plans for God's bigger plan? Even if it means facing judgement, rejection and grief? Am I? Are you?

If we could see what God is doing, if we really understood and valued what Jesus did by coming to earth, if we could see the movement in the spirit realm... if our expectation for Christmas was properly placed, we would toss our shallow, selfish dreams aside so fast. Christmas would never again disappoint us!

Love Me Enough

Relationships are messy—they can be painful. We get our feelings hurt, we hurt others—usually unintentionally and often obliviously. A snide remark from an insecure psyche, an uncaring act from selfishness—I do it every day to the people I love. Someone may unintentionally and unknowingly hurt me, and if I’m not careful, I will barricade myself in my own little fortress—making sure I never get hurt like that again! 


Maybe the only way to keep from being hurt is to never love anyone again. But is it really worth that? Not loving carries a pain all its own. So really, I’m just swapping one pain for another.


We have to be intentional in our relationships. We must be forgiving. This life is too hard to get through it alone! 


If you are a friend or relative of mine, let me warn you in advance, I will probably make careless, selfish comments that will hurt you. Please love me enough to talk to me about it. Please confront me about it. Don’t wall yourself off from me. Help me to see my sins of selfishness and insecurity. Help me become a better person. Don’t just be mad at me and quit speaking to me. Love me enough to point out my failures. We are all imperfect people living in an imperfect world. We’re all doing our best, but everything we say and do comes from a brokenness that we can’t fix on our own. 


 So please love me, confront me and forgive me—don’t hide from me and allow me to continue in my selfish oblivion!

The Dedication

Once our adoption was final, I was ready to celebrate! I had worked through so much of the grief as the date of the court hearing approached. I had cried (sobbed) many bitter tears of regret, anxiety and fear. So much of this situation just wasn't fair--to my little girl or to my husband and me. There was so much pain involved, that even though I was thrilled with the finalization of the adoption, I couldn't keep from acknowledging the grief. But I was done crying (for the time being, anyway.)

So, on the evening of our celebration, we had an adoption/dedication service during our church's Saturday evening worship service. Our pastor and many others in our church family, as well as our own families had walked with us through this whole process and nothing seemed more appropriate than to celebrate with all of them under one roof. I didn't count, but I'm sure I sent out over 100 invitations. We had friends and family from three different states. New friends we've only known a short time, old friends who've known us since our older children were little, and even friends from high school! Not to mention our family, including 11 of our 14 nieces and nephews and our great-nephew. My mom's cousins who we rarely get to see came as well. As our pastor asked everyone who was connected to us to stand, three fourths of the congregation rose to their feet. Amazing... God has so blessed us with support, and we are so grateful.

Our pastor had heard me when I shared with him that I could not celebrate without acknowledging the hard parts of this situation, and he addressed them. He has witnessed our heartbreak for our son and our little girl's biological mother. Even though they were not present, we could not leave them out of this service. Here are the words our pastor spoke over our little girl, her biological parents and my husband and me.


We come together today to celebrate a very important and precious transition in the life of this family. This little girl has been adopted by her grandparents as their daughter. Today we celebrate the life of this little girl. She is a unique weaving together of nature and nurture into one marvelous little human being with incredible potential and purpose.


May all of us remember that, regardless of the circumstances of our birth or who our parents are, God had a plan in creating each of us. It doesn’t matter whether our parents were good, bad or indifferent. God knew that those two individuals possessed exactly the right genetic makeup to create the custom “us” He had in mind. They had the DNA God wanted to make us. Not one of us is here by mistake.


Adoption is a time of celebration and rejoicing. But it is also a time to shed tears. Just as an oyster is wired by its creator to wrap its innermost being around any unexpected pain to produce a beautiful pearl, everyone involved in this adoption process has wrapped his or her innermost being—time, energy, blood, sweat and tears—around this little girl. Tears oftentimes are the only language we can speak and they have been a part of this process.


As the poet, Washington Irving said, “There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love.”


In this adoption, there is a time to celebrate and a time to mourn. To this little girl’s birth parents, we say that there is tremendous courage in the decision to make sure that their daughter’s future needs are being met. They have done their very best under difficult situations. So we bow our heads in a word of prayer for them right now…


Dear God, we pray for the birth father and mother of this little girl. We ask Your comforting hand to be upon them as they have released their daughter to her grandparents. We know that this was a terribly difficult situation and decision. May You guide their lives and bring them to a place where they see with utter clarity Your grace and love. And may they one day accept You and follow You with all their hearts, souls, minds and strength. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.


Now, [speaking very gently to our daughter and taking her little hand in his] remember to look at your fingerprints often and remember that they are the marks of ownership on you, like a shepherd’s unique marks on his sheep. Your fingerprints will never leave you and they remind you of who and whose you are.


I anoint you today as the precious little girl you are, loved by God, loved by your birth parents and loved by your new family—not only adopted by them, but adopted by us and God as well. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.


Now, [speaking to my husband and me] you, as this little girl’s grandparents, have agreed to take on the responsibility to raise her as your very own daughter. I am sure that the unexpected twists and turns that finally brought you together as a family have not been easy. We affirm you and are proud of you for wanting to provide for her and take care of her. So I ask you now, in the presence of God and your family and friends…


1. Will you do all in your power to raise this little girl in a Christian home. If so, say, “We will.”


2. Will you do all in your power to teach her the treasures of the Bible, the power of prayer and the personal worship of Jesus Christ as her Savior? If so, say, “We will.”


3. And will you involve her in the family and faith of God so that by the teaching and example of the church, she will come to profess her own faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If so, say, “We will.”


[We obviously responded affirmatively to each question!]


You are the new parents to this little girl. Go forth with confidence, knowing that you are the ones responsible for her physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Love her with God’s love and form a brand new home. Work through your grief, continue to bring healing to your family and grow new hope and new grace in your little girl.


Let us pray, O God, we lift up these parents and their new daughter to You. May Your love and grace fill their family. May You help them to be parents who are examples of Your love. May this little girl find a new family and a new place to be loved and nurtured into faith in You. And may she come to know, like all of us, who her Father truly is. In the name of the One who created us, loved us, and raised us into His kingdom, Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.


Friends, a new family has been formed this day from all the circumstances and situations of the past, and all the hopes and dreams of tomorrow. And so we step forward with courage into a brand new day and a brand new family. For we know that we are all adopted as children into the family of God. May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit bless and preserve and keep us all now and forevermore. Amen.

And so, we now move forward as a family--acknowledged by the state (two states, in fact!) and the church. May I remember the vows I took that evening and never forget the sacred trust that God has placed in me. May her beautiful brown eyes always remind me that God did not have to give me this beautiful little gift, but He chose to do so, and I must never take that for granted.

Forever Family

“Forever Family.” That’s a phrase I’ve seen frequently as I’ve been reading and gaining as much understanding about adoption as I can. Our adoption was finalized 30 days ago and we have, indeed, become a forever family--in more ways than I originally imagined.


In adopting our little “Punky,” we have pledged to be here for her through thick and thin, “as long as we both shall live.” At our adoption hearing, the judge asked my husband to leave the room while he asked me some questions. Then I had to leave the room while he asked my husband the same questions. I don’t remember the exact words he used, but the “jist” of it was, “Do you know what you’re getting into? Have you counted the cost? The long-range cost?”

If you would read any of my blog posts from a couple of years ago, you’d know I could answer a resounding YES! to that question. I’ve wrestled with God over this issue. I’ve even wrestled with myself over it. My emotions have swung from one extreme to the other. I’ve begged God for this adoption to be final, quickly and easily (picture God smiling and shaking His head over that one!) I’ve also begged Him to provide someone else—someone younger, more grounded and better equipped to raise this little girl. I’ve thought and journaled about all that I will lose if I commit the rest of my life to raising her (I will be an old woman by the time she’s an adult.) I’ve wept over the fear of being hurt again. Our parental hearts have been broken, devastated. What if we get hurt again?

After all that wrestling, journaling, weeping and praying, God impressed upon me that I have so much more to gain than I could ever lose, and that we are His choice as the ones to parent this precious little life. It’s been a joyful, yet sobering realization. The weight of this honor is heavy, but one that we can and must bear.

But our Forever Family means even more than that. Not only have we adopted our little one, she has adopted us. If you talk to her about Grandma and Grandpa, you had better not be referring to my husband and me! Despite my referring to myself as “Mamaw,” she began calling me “Mommy” very shortly after she came to live with us. And even though we referred to my husband as “Papaw,” within a few months, she began calling him “Daddy.” At first, it was uncomfortable, but now it feels so natural, it’s hard to imagine being Mamaw and Papaw again.

Not only have we and our little girl adopted each other, the same thing has happened with our extended family and friends. As I stated earlier, you had better not refer to us as Grandma & Grandpa, because our punkin’s grandma and grandpa (my husband’s parents) are her favorite people in the world! She also has lots of little cousins, aunts and uncles who have become incredibly attached to her. She fits so naturally into our family—she’s the youngest cousin, but only by 10 days!

Then there’s our church. We had a celebration last weekend and (even though it’s against the rules to run in God’s house,) it was an amazing joy to see her and her cousins and friends racing up and down the halls of our church. It was hard to maintain our composure as we saw three fourths of the congregation stand up to show their connection to and support of us. What a confidence boost for us to know that we are not alone in this endeavor. Our pastor did a beautiful job of acknowledging the difficult aspects of this adoption as well as the incredibly joyous ones, but more about that later.

I have more I want to share about our celebration weekend and I’m sure it will appear in this blog, but for now, there is laundry to be done, thank you notes to be written and a little munchkin to chase—naptime is over!

Aahhh, Christmas!

Christmas can be so hard. We have a love/hate relationship with it. We have all had these high expectations of what it should be. Everyone says Christmas is about family and being together. We look forward to our time together, and go through all the preparations, expecting miraculous healing in our relationships like we see on the Hallmark channel. then suddenly it's over and we don't see any miracles! Most of our families are so broken, and we just don’t get those warm fuzzies that we think everyone else is getting.

I’ve decided that Christmas is not about friends and family. I know that sounds like heresy, but Christmas is about Jesus, and only about Jesus! Families let us down. Friends can only go so far with us. The miracle of Christmas is in what Jesus did and nothing else. He left heaven—can you imagine willingly leaving heaven for this messed up world?! That alone is huge. But he didn’t leave royalty in heaven to become royalty on earth. He came as a poverty-stricken, homeless, helpless infant! After creating the universe, He became a poor baby, wrapped in rags, completely dependent on others. He was born, not in a clean hospital or even a warm comfy house, but a dirty old barn! Have you ever spent time in a barn? I have and I love it, but it's not a place for the birth of a King! It's dirty, dusty, and smelly. There are mice and rats and other critters lurking in the shadows. This is the birthplace of the originator of the universe?! The more I think about that, the more it blows me away!

Jesus loved us so much that he chose to be one of us. To live among us with no special privileges or royal treatment. He came so that he could experience life as we do. He came to save us, not just for eternity, but for now too. He came to fulfill us.

We have got to quit putting our spouses, our children or our friends in God's rightful place. They can't do for us what God is yearning to do and it's unfair to them for us to expect them to! So give your family and friends a break. Quit expecting them to make your life worth living. They can't do it--they're too busy trying to get you to make their life worth living! Love them, give to them, and let God fulfill you. He's the only one who can!