A Mother's Letter

I wrote this letter to my little girl about six weeks ago, before our adoption was final. Now that it has all be finalized, I want to share it because I know I'm not the only woman who has lived through unthinkable life experiences. I am not the only mom who has survived trials she never dreamed she could survive. I'm not the only person to go through a process like this one that can evoke every maternal emotion in the book, both postive and negative. So, here is my letter to my little girl...

In a few weeks it will be final. On December 21, 2010, a judge will finally say that you are officially our daughter. We’ve prayed and waited (sometimes not at all patiently!) for 2 ½ years for this day. You’re only 3½ now, but someday we’ll tell you about the past 2½ years.


We’ll tell you how much every home visit, every intrusive interview, every background check, every home inspection, every piece of paperwork, every conference call and every 4,000 mile round trip was worth this day. It’s all worth the opportunity to look into your little eyes, to tuck you into bed at night, to know that you are safe and nourished, cared for and loved.

We’ll talk to you about your parents and their struggles. We’ll tell you how much they love you. How they wanted so much to raise you themselves. But when they realized that was impossible, they did what was best for you. We pray that you will know them one day. We pray that they will be healthy: spiritually, mentally and physically. That they will be able to tell you themselves how much they love you. We pray that they will be free from the addictions that are such evil and controlling taskmasters.

We’ll tell you about every agonizing trip we made out West. How I cried every time we left you. We’ll tell you about every court hearing and every frustrating delay. We’ll tell you about the wonderful foster family you had, and how you stole their hearts. I hope you get to meet them again someday. And I’ll tell you how I sobbed tears of relief and joy when we finally got to pick you up and bring you home for good on August 14, 2009.

Someday we’ll tell you more about your namesake… your Auntie. Oh, she would have loved you so much. She would have been so tickled to have a niece to bear her name. She loved your first daddy so much. He was her big brother, and despite his problems, she looked up to and admired him. And he loved her. That’s why he named you after her. He remembers her bright and bubbly personality. He envied her carefree spirit. Even though you are very much your own person, you bear, not only her name, but many of her features and characteristics. We’ll explain to you why we changed the spelling of your first name and your middle name so that you would never feel like your job was to replace her—that you don’t have to be any more like her than you already are. You are a separate person, created by God to fulfill your own purpose and no one else’s.

Someday I’ll tell you about the spiritual battle I’ve fought for the past 2 ½ years. About when God had every right to strike me dead for my accusations against Him, but He didn’t. I’ll share with you how I wailed at God when it felt like He didn’t care. I’ll tell you about the time I said that I was tired of God being in control because “He wasn’t doing a very good job.” I’ll tell you about the times I accused Him of being brutal and cruel—how I felt that He had allowed me to be kicked when I was down. I’ll describe how I felt when I believed He had given me more pain than my mother’s heart could bear. I’ll tell you how I felt when my “year of new beginnings” ended without any apparent new beginnings, but feeling more like the same old broken record being played over and over again.

And then I’ll tell you about the spiritual lessons I learned during that time. I’ll tell you how I learned to trust God—to really trust God. I’ll tell you about the months that the only prayer I could utter was, “I trust You, Lord, I trust You.” I often said that prayer with fists and teeth clenched, fighting with all my might against the doubts, the fears and the anger that I felt. I’ll tell you about God’s unfailing love, patience, grace and forgiveness. I’ll share with you how He cared for me during that time. How I felt Him weeping right along with me because He was so familiar with my pain. He knew exactly what I was feeling, and yet He was willing to allow it because He knew the end result would be me becoming just a little more like Him. That is God’s will for all of us—that we each become just a little more like Him. And as painful as it can be, He’s willing to go to any length, to allow however much brokenness as it takes to purify, shape and mold us into His image.

So while we’re thankful for the end of the waiting for your adoption to be final, we realize that this is just the beginning—finally, our new beginning! Even though we’ve been together for well over a year, we have many more years together, many more spiritual battles, many more smiles and joys, hurts and tears. We will go through it all, trusting steadily in God, hoping unswervingly, and loving extravagantly, until one day when God looks into each of our faces He’ll see nothing… but His own reflection.

Daddy and I love you and we are honored to have the privilege of having you in our lives.

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!

Trusting My Unswerving Hope

I have not written a blog in a very long time. The holidays are tough for us (and many people), and when you throw in something as huge and emotional as the adoption of a grandchild, it’s hard to capture enough coherent thoughts to make enough sense for a blog. But today, I’m going to give it a shot…


On December 21, our adoption was finally final. It was the day we for which had waited and worked for over two years. We had endured the probing questions of our social work for our home study. We had child-proofed our home. We had attended the required class. We had had our well tested. We had had a fire inspection and a safety inspection. We filled out what seemed like endless paperwork—twice—once for our state and once for our granddaughter’s state. We had had two FBI/BCI background checks. We had physicals to make sure we ere healthy enough to parent a young child. We had secured five references. I had made ten 2,000 mile trips out West, my husband had made five. We had been to court hearings, supervised visits with our little girl and finally graduated to unsupervised visits. We brought her home for two weeks, then took her back. Two weeks later we went to pick her up for good. The process was exhausting—and we didn’t even have any opposition. (I can’t imagine what people go through in bitter custody battles.)

I thought I would wake up on December 21, feeling exuberant, filled with nothing but pure, unadulterated joy. I did have joy—this was the day for which I had pleaded with God—but I also had so many other emotions raging in my soul. I was an emotional basket case, but I wasn’t ready to admit that yet.As I endeavored to go through my day, emotions securely stuffed, I began to realize I couldn’t do it. Some of those emotions began to leak out.

The first emotion I was able to admit was the grief… Grief that we have been denied the privilege of being our little girl’s grandparents--where we would go and visit every few months, be together as a family every Christmas, and maybe even have her come and stay with us for summer vacations… Grief that her parents still struggle with addiction and mental illness--that, despite their intelligence and creativity, they are not yet living as happy, healthy contributors to society… Grief that our little girl’s auntie, her namesake, is not here to enjoy her little niece.

Later, I realized another powerful emotion that was not as securely stuffed as I thought--fear. We’ve been down this parenting road before and we had thought we were doing a pretty good job, but now, 25 years into our parenting journey, we have one child entrapped in addiction and the other is deceased. Will we fail again? What could we be thinking… could our hearts survive the sting of failure and the pain of loss again? What could God be thinking… isn’t there someone younger and better equipped to do this job than us? What could the authorities be thinking… they put us through this rigorous process and they say we passed--do they really know what they’re doing?

This is where trust comes in… and hope. Trust that God truly is in control and that He knows what He’s doing. Hope in His promises that He knows the future he has for us and our little girl and her biological parents, that they are plans for good and not for evil, plans to give us a future and hope--unswerving hope!!

I made it through December 21. And once I did, I was ready to celebrate! And we did just that this past weekend. More about that later... when I am able to capture all the thoughts and emotions that are swirling. Until then, I will trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly and love extravagantly!

A Year With Oswald Chambers

Dear Oswald,

Our year together is almost complete. Who knew you could teach me so much? You've not been easy on me. Some of the highlights of our year together:

• You've confronted my selfishness, you've revealed it in places I never would have dreamed.
• You've not allowed me space to complain or spend even a moment in self-pity. In fact, you said there is no worse sin than self-pity.
• You've shown me that if my goal in prayer is to receive anything from God other than to know Him, my priorities are misplaced, that obedience does not guarantee success because success is not the goal--obedience is.
• You've taught me that I must be willing to be Broken Bread and Poured Out Wine, Hopelessly Insignificant (after spending a lifetime seeking significance!)
• You've surprised me with the idea that my imagination is a powerful weapon in spiritual warfare. 
• You've reinforced what I knew, but couldn't put into words--that God gives us Precious Messages during times of trial, that He comes to us in the clouds of tribulation.
• You've shown me that I cannot force inspirational moments or spiritual depth.
• The most important thing you've taught me in the past year is that knowing God has to be my very first goal. Not pleasing God, not receiving answers to my prayers, not even receiving healing, blessings or experiences--just knowing God.

Will I miss you? Yes, but not in a warm and fuzzy kind of way. You've confronted and challenged me in ways I have never been confronted or challenged before. You have helped me to see my self-absorption so much more clearly. I'm sure we'll get together again sometime. I still need much more confronting and challenging. This past year was just the beginning. But soon, I will leave you. I will put you on the shelf for at least a year. But the lessons you've instilled in me in 2010 will continue to permeate my spirit as I hear your words ringing in my head.

For the next month I'll continue learning from you, Oswald, before saying good-bye on December 31. It's been a good year and I've learned a lot, but I still have so much more to learn! In 2011, I'm looking forward to what another one of my heroes, C.S. Lewis, has to say.

Farewell, my friend.

Living in the Shallows

I have often confessed that I have been shallow and would have been content to remain that way but that God wouldn't let me stay there. I have seen my shallowness as sin and refusal to be all that God called me to be.


That's why I love yesterday's devotional in My Utmost for His Highest. Oswald Chambers tells me that "the shallow concerns of life are ordained by God." He says that, "To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps.” What a relief! He even goes so far as to say that I should “Beware of posing as a profound person.” How often I have done that because I viewed my shallowness as a character flaw. But Chambers tells me that, “it is not my devotion to God that makes me refuse to be shallow, but [my] wish to impress other people with the fact that [I am] not shallow, which is a sure sign that [I am] a spiritual prig.” Ouch! What crude sounding language from Oswald! What is a prig anyway? I looked it up. It’s not as crude as I thought, but makes good sense: “Somebody who is regarded as taking pride in behaving in a very correct and proper way, and in feeling morally superior to others.” Very humbling—God, forgive me. It’s not my shallowness that is sin, but my pretending not to be!

I’m relieved to know that my shallowness is not a sign of wickedness or that I have no depth—I know that I do. But, as Chambers says, “our safeguard is in the shallow things.” Sometimes we need to quit taking ourselves so seriously and just enjoy life. Sometimes we need to pull ourselves out of the grief, self-pity and condemnation that we often get bogged down in and just live in the shallows.Chambers tells me that if I refuse to allow anyone in my life who doesn’t meet my standard of depth, then the first person I’d have to kick out of my life as being the biggest fraud I’ve ever known is… myself!

So, starting today, I’ve decided to quit beating myself up for being shallow. I’ll also quit judging anyone else for living in the shallows. I know that I have depth and I will visit there often, but I can’t live there all the time, and I certainly can’t pretend to be there when I’m not! As Oswald Chambers says, “[even] the Ocean has a shore.” And so do I.

A Pious Fraud

I don't think anything bothers me more than syrupy, religious, emotional expressions coming from someone who just doesn't seem real--whether it's TV evangelists or a friend's facebook post.

But today, Oswald Chambers is making me take a good, hard look at my own fraudulent piety. (He always hits me where it hurts--maybe it's a "judge not, lest yet be judged" kind of thing.)

I talk a lot about my brokenness and how God has broken me through my losses and grief. But today's devotional talks about a different kind of breaking--one only I can do--a breaking of my independence of God. Chambers begins with Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ in me." He says that God can bring me to the point of breaking the "husk of my individual independence of God" but that He cannot do it. I must do it myself. Chambers says that until that breaking comes, all I am is a pious fraud!

Wow, I just have so many thoughts and ideas about who I am or should be. There are just so many things I want to do. I love to be busy doing, doing, doing. And, like Shauna Niequist, I want to "do everything better!" I do NOT want to be seen as "weak" or "pitiful" or "needy." Those words make my skin crawl. Like a two-year-old, I often hear myself saying, "I can do it myself!"  I don't want to need help!

But the truth is, just like that two-year-old, I do need help. I cannot live this life without help--not only from God, but also the people around me, bless their hearts. I'm guessing I can be a pain to live and work with. I sometimes get an idea in my head and God help anyone who gets in my way! I get so driven and moving so fast that I forget to think about other people and to consider their feelings and their need to be loved and valued.

So how do I break myself of this fierce independence? I know there have been times of brokenness when I knew life was more than I could handle alone. But during everyday times when I'm not suffering, but I'm just trying to accomplish something, I forget. Does the breaking happen once for all or does it need to happen again and again? I'm thinking it's the latter. Maybe after it happens many times, I'll finally "get it." I do want to "get it," because I can't stand the thought of being a pious fraud!

More on Motherhood

It's hard for me to say which chapter of Bittersweet by Shauna Neiquist is my favorite. But today there are two that stand out in my mind. What Might Have Been, where Shauna describes her feelings on what would have been her due date if she had not miscarried and On Crying in the Bathroom, where she talks about her feelings on the one-year anniversary of the day she learned she was pregnant with the baby she had miscarried.

In What Might Have Been, Shauna tells the story of Kristin who, as a young single woman, attends many of her friends' weddings. At each of those weddings, she "dances and laughs and hugs and smiles for pictures, and then, at one point or another, she slips away and lets a few tears fall for the maid of honor who will never stand at her wedding someday." You see, Kristin's sister, after years of planning to be each other's maid of honor, had taken her own life. Now, even though Kristin (who is engaged) rejoices with her friends at their weddings, grieves over "what might have been."

It's the way women who can't seem to get pregnant rejoice with their friends who do. And it's the way I rejoice with friends who's kids get married, graduate college or join the military. I'm so happy for them, I really am, and I want to celebrate with them, but it's hard. It's like what Shauna writes in On Crying In The Bathroom  about her friends who have unplanned pregnancies, "O really? Oh, boo hoo for you. How terrible that your body is so strong and healthy and working so well that it makes you babies when you don't even want them. I'm spending hours online reading long conspiracy theories about everything from antibiotics in milk to too much time in the hot tub, and in the meantime, your lush, perfect, fertile body just went ahead and started growing a baby without your even asking it to. Take your bursting belly of love and your fabulous pregnant cleavage away from me because I feel as withered and dried up and hollowed out as a dead tree stump, and all your glittering pregnantness makes me want to cry in the bathroom all over again."

Now Shauna's not really that cruel, she's just being brutally honest about how she feels. And we would never be so cruel to say those kinds of things to our friends because we do honestly want to celebrate with them when they have reason to celebrate, whether it's a pregnancy or a successful adult child. As Shauna says, "I'll celebrate with my friends. I'll hold babies and buy baby gifts, ask them what it's like for them and really listen to the answer. I'll do it because it's the right thing to do." And I'll add, because our hearts do rejoice with them--only our hearts have these huge gaping wounds in them that cause us tremendous pain, even as we rejoice. It's such a conflicted feeling because the two extremes don't want to occupy the same space.

So I'll try not to wince when my friends talk about their sons who are home from the military or their daughters who are having babies. I'll do my best to hide the pain as my nephew graduates from West Point just like I do every time one of my nieces or nephews graduates high school or gets married or succeeds in any way. I'll cover my hurt when my friends talk about the joys of being a grandparent, when I don't get that luxury.

Friends and family, please know that I am rejoicing with you--I do want to celebrate with you, but please don't take it personally if you notice a twinge of pain come across my face or if I can't bring myself to attend your daughter's wedding--and please don't feel you can't invite me or talk with me about your joys! I want to be involved in your kids' lives! I want to celebrate with you! Please just love me anyway, maybe give me an extra hug and let me go cry in the bathroom for a little while. I'll be all right, I might just need a little space.