I have to have a cause. Like all the time. If there is not something burning in my heart, I know that I better get on my knees because I am not where I need to be with God!  I do not know if it is supposed to be that way for everyone, but it is for me. And it is the way I want to live the rest of my life.

Since September my passion has been orphans: mixed in with a little third world nations, the poor, and world missions. It has driven me. It has been my focus day and night. Our particular child that we will adopt has been part of the passion, but that part in all honesty has seemed almost unreal. It has been impossible to truly wrap my brain and heart around the fact that somewhere in Ethiopia I have (lets just say) a baby boy. We will teach him to speak in English. We will teach him to trust that he has a forever Daddy and Mommy. I will teach him to read just like I did Camden and Hope. I will watch him make friends, have his first crush, graduate high school, get married, and become a man. And that son of mine…. he is already born.

I have been praying that God would make that real to me. That He would grow a love in my heart for this baby just like the love grew for the babies I carried inside of me. This morning a family sat in front of me in church with a new baby wrapped in a blanket. As I watched his big brown eyes, my heart squeezed as it really hit me, maybe for the first time, that my little boy (also with big brown eyes) was existing at that very moment also. I have no idea if he is hungry. I have no idea if anyone holds him when he is scared. I have no idea if he is clean or healthy or if anyone has ever tried to make him smile. I felt that fierce protectiveness rise up in me that only another mother would understand

This morning, I became a mommy again.

At the end of worship, our pastor asked all of us to bow our heads and he asked this question, “Are there any of you out there right now that are carrying a burden for your child?”

And I cried, and I pleaded with the Father of the fatherless to hold my brown eyed boy and carry him in His mighty hand.

As our pastor began his sermon, he asked us all to turn to Isaiah 43. My eyes began to scan the chapter and I read this:

 ”Do not be afraid for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, “give them up!” and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back’. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth- everyone who is called by my name whom I have created for my glory, whom I formed and made”

My mommy heart is trusting in the God of Justice, The God of Mercy and The God of Love.

Worthy, Worthy, Worthy is His Name!

I have things that are still in my heart that I want to experience. I dare to sit and dream about them sometimes. I have been doing a lot of that lately. It leaves me with an ache, a longing. One thing about my dreams is that although they are full of being apart of something big that is all about God they also are sprinkled quite heavily with just plain old “wants.” Like a house with plenty of room and lots of windows with a beautiful view of nature. (mountains would be nice)  I wonder sometimes if my dreams are God’s or mine? I was praying today asking God that very question. And I heard Him say, “You shall have no other gods before me.” And I started sifting through my dreams one by one. I asked myself what was most important to me. What do I really want? I know what the answer needs to be: I want nothing more than I want God. And what exactly does it mean to want God? I thought about what it means to want my husband. That one is easy. Intimacy. Absolute un-distracted time focused only on each other. I L-O-V-E that. I suppose that wanting God would be the same thing: Intimacy. Desiring un-distracted time focusing only on each other. Just me and God. And that I can have now.

Tonight I feel like Jacob in the Bible…when he clung to God and said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” I am fiercely desperate for Him. All day I have been intent on Him, searching for Him, thirsty for Him. I asked Him a question today,

“Can our imperfections keep us from fulfilling our calling?”

 How easily does God reach a point that He gives a final sigh and says, “Never mind. You don’t have what it takes after all”?

God blessed the Jacob of the Bible and changed his name to Israel; “because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”

Jacob left that place with a limp and an incredible face to face memory of God.

Life is messy and God is near. He is all consuming and intimately involved in my life when I seek Him.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13

Every time I seek Him with all of my heart, I discover a new part of Him. I wait with an almost fearful anticipation for which part of Him, He will reveal to me next.

 Things are looking better in Ethiopia. Thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus! There has been a lot of staffing changes in the department that handles adoption in Ethiopia: The Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA).  Our agency is hopeful that not only will this overturn the decision to process 90% fewer adoptions a day, but could very well result in everything running even smoother than before. I have been doing a lot of research on ethics in adoption since all of this talk started and it has left me with two distinct emotions:

1. Gratitude: I am so thankful for our adoption agency. I had no idea that so many agencies cut corners and act in deceit in order to save money or cause things to move more speedily. There is so much to wrap my brain around as far as the ethics of adoption go, that I still can’t comprehend it all, much less explain it. I do know that I trust our agency completely. They receive children that are already living in orphanages, and they do their own investigation of each child to ensure that the parent or guardian was not coerced in any way to give up their child/children. Convincing a parent in any way to give up their child to international adoption is considered unethical, immoral, and child trafficking. International adoption should only be an option if a family cannot be provided in the birth country.  Again I could try to elaborate, but it is still too complex for me. To sum it up:  I LOVE American World Adoption Agency and HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend them. We will not have to wonder if our child has a parent or guardian  that feels that they were cruelly taken advantage of or coerced to give up their child.

2. Frustration: We know that God has called us to adopt from Ethiopia. We believe with all of our hearts that there is a specific baby boy or girl in Ethiopia that He wants to grow up in our family. We have rested in this confident assurance even when our flesh wondered what on earth we had gotten ourselves into. My frustration is completely separate from this confidence. So if you are reading this, do not think that I am doubting whether or not we are on the right path because our confidence is sure.
When we began to feel that God was giving us a desire for another child, we knew that we had options. Unless things have changed in seven years, getting pregnant is not a problem for us. I also had both of my babies with a lay midwife which is fairly inexpensive and I exclusively breastfeed the first 12 months so no formula expenses. In other words getting pregnant and having our own baby would be easy and inexpensive. (probably We could adopt through the foster care system. Easy: no, Fairly inexpensive: yes. We could adopt private domestic. Easy: no, Fairly inexpensive: no. We could adopt internationally. Easy: Resounding no. Fairly inexpensive: Heck no!

   
 
As we considered our options however, we just couldn’t get over that  there were millions of children of all ages growing up in orphanages, not foster families, not with good medical care, education, and counseling opportunities, but in orphanages. Now from the beginning we have known and felt that the best option for these children is to be raised in their own families if possible, or to be raised by a loving family in their birth country, but we also believe that being raised in a loving family outside their country is better than being raised without a family at all. We felt that we were doing something good. We are definitely not doing this because it is fun and easy. We are doing this to make a difference! However, as I read and research and dive deeper into the adoption community and the ideas and opinions of “experts” I am shocked at the many people that believe that what we are doing is selfish and wrong. “Adoption is a temporary bandaid for a huge social problem in Ethiopia,” say the experts. “How terrible to take these children from their birth country,” I have read more than a couple of times. Some things I read I can completely understand, and I have to go back to the confidence I have that God has a child in Ethiopia that He wants us to raise, and that we have to obey and trust Him with the turnout.

On the other hand, there are other things that I read that are just blatantly from the enemy of souls. The last thing he wants is for children to be raised by lovers of Jesus Christ. He will twist and manipulate. He will use the unethical to overshadow and pollute the ethical. He will say in people’s ears, “These children are just a minor problem. Lets not focus on them. Lets look at the bigger picture.” But I KNOW my God knows every sparrow that falls to the ground so how much more must He care for each and every child, each and every day of their life. He told us, “One of those children I want You to love.” And no matter what I hear from any expert I HAVE to go back over and over to His words spoken to our spirits. We might only be part of a band-aid for Ethiopia, but for that one child we are Daddy and Mommy.

“He lifts up a banner for the distant nations, He whistles for those at the ends of the earth. here they come swiftly and speedily! Not one of them grows tired or stumbles” Isaiah 5:26-27a

Our paperwork arrived in Ethiopia on March 3rd. Two days later (TWO DAYS!) we received word that the department that approves adoptions in Ethiopia is decreasing the number of cases they approve each day by 90%. If this is, indeed, what happens and if it is a lasting change, our wait will change from approximately 9 months to at least 3 years. A part of me is in denial. It feels surreal; like a dream I will wake up from and find that everything is normal again. It forced us to ask, “Did we hear wrong?” I held on to my pretty pink Bible and prayed for wisdom, direction, comfort. I prayed for Him to come near. I began in Lamentations. I read through it a few days ago because I felt lead there by the Holy Spirit. Even after reading it, I wasn’t sure why. As I read it again, it made perfect sense why this book has been on my mind.

Verses such as:

 “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him. The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly” Lam. 3:24-26
                                         and
“You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear. You, Lord, took up my case;
you redeemed my life.” Lam. 3:57-58

Then I began flipping through, reading underlined verses throughout my Bible and came to Hebrews where I had underlined several in a row and written beside them these words:

“9/14/10 The day we sent our application to adopt into our agency.”

These were the verses I felt God tell me would be my anthem through this process. How appropriate they are now!

“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.  For in just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back. But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.” Heb 4:35-39

I do not know what our future holds, but Blake and I both feel confident that we have a baby that will come from Ethiopia. There are two words we heard a few nights ago as we prayed for God to speak:

Persevere and Faithful

One word speaks of what God expects of us, and one word speaks of what we can expect of God.

Please pray for us. Please pray for the Ethiopian government. And please pray for the millions and millions of Ethiopian orphans waiting for families.

 
Its such a wild feeling when God opens your eyes to something to which you have been so blind! I am asking myself today how I could have missed this?!  It started last night when out of nowhere the Holy Spirit asked me a question. (The Holy Spirit talks y’all!) “Would anyone have ever been able to convince you to adopt a year ago?” “No”, I answered immediately. If someone had initiated the conversation, I would have said how awesome adoption is, and how I have a heart for the nations, and how I think that it might be something God calls us to in the future; but that would have been the end of it for me. I went from one day thinking adoption was just dandy to the next day knowing without a shadow of a doubt that we were supposed to adopt and we were supposed to start NOW!

 God moved. That’s all.

 Then He asked me, “So what good is this crusade you are on to open people’s eyes to plight of the orphan?” All the facebook statuses, and videos that make you cry, and what not. (Ok, the Holy Spirit didn’t say “what not” but our youth say it a lot and it makes me want to giggle every time.) I got what He was saying. He was releasing me from my self appointed call to arms. He was telling me to just live and to just love.

 Second part of my story seems totally random and did not fit with the paragraph above in my mind last night, but today I realized they were pieces to the same puzzle. To start, I must admit that I have an annoying habit of letting things get to me. Lately I have been letting perfect moms get under my skin. That durn facebook (again) was the source. Sometimes its the moms who post about the 8 miles they ran before breakfast. Sometimes its the moms who post that their children have never eaten one single chicken nugget. Sometimes its the moms who post pictures of themselves looking totally sexy, puckering up their lips and looking like they should be in a VS magazine. All astonishing feats, all completely outside my ability, and all with the power to get under my skin and cause insecurity that spreads like wildfire.  (yes, my kids never eating a chicken nugget is outside my ability – deal with it!
 
The Lord encouraged me last night as I read a blog on destinyinbloom.com about being the woman God has called ME to be. The author wrote that Prov. 31 would look different if it was written about ME. And different is OKAY!!

Part Three: I was having lunch today with a friend. I was telling her about the blog I read and how I had been letting “perfect moms” get under my skin. That lead to us talking about how easy it is to turn our passions into a judgment on others. For instance, both my friend and I have had an occasion when we “passionately” went into our views on abortion only to find out, or have reason to believe, later on that the woman listening to us had, had an abortion herself. We talked about how in that moment for both of us, we realized how judgmental and void of love our “passion” seemed in the light of the anguish these women carry as a result of their experience.

We allow our hearts to be molded by the Lord and we surrender to the forming He wants to do in us, but then we start down a dangerous road. We start considering our hearts more like God than those around us. We see those around us whose passion is taking care of their physical bodies, or educating their children, or being proactive politically and its so easy to let our own insecurity cause us to be angry at them for thinking they are better than us. But OUR passions….okay let me just be honest here…my passion seemed so right, so important that I moved from walking out HIS calling in my life, to campaigning what I had claimed as MY calling. I believe the Lord showed me today that feeling possessive of His calling…making it my own, making it about me, sucked the beauty out it. That intimacy that I felt when we first said yes to God has all but vanished as I have made something between my husband and I, and God into something very public.

Will I still post videos on facebook? Maybe. Will we still fundraise? Probably. Will I continue to share with others where we are on this journey? Yes! But my heart is in a completely different place. It is about us and God again. He is calling me to Himself these days. Calling me to draw near to Him. At the beginning of the year as I was praying for what He wanted for me for 2011, I heard Him say, “I want to tell you secrets and I want you to tell me some back. And I want them to stay between us.” I think this is what He is telling me most of all through this and through the other things He has been showing me lately. He wants me to value more than anything….Him. My God. The Lover of my Soul. Everything is truly all about Him.

I remember getting a stomach ache on the Sunday nights we had business meetings at church. Sitting as a girl beside my parents and as a teenager in the youth section, I remember feeling embarrassed, uncomfortable, and at times disgusted. After graduating from high school I changed denominations and began to do a lot of studying on my own of what I had been taught and had seen growing up in church. One of the things I studied was women in ministry because I felt confident that God had called me to the ministry. And I didn’t think this call was just to be a minister’s wife!  I didn’t want to be a pastor, but I wanted to know what God thought about women in all roles of ministry. As I read verses such as:

1. I do not permit a woman to teach men or to have authority over them; she must be silent. 1 Timothy 2:12

                                                    and

2. Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.  If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. 1 Corinthians 14:34&35

I began to ask myself what I thought the heart of the Lord was saying in these verses.

 A couple of years ago, Blake lead worship as a guest worship leader for two weeks at a church in Ft. Worth.  On one of those weeks, the pastor got up and told the church that he had sensed the Lord telling him to ask a woman in the church to share with the congregation some things she had walked through and learned over the past couple of years. He said, “Mrs. “I don’t remember her name” will stand and speak to you under the covering of me, her pastor, and under the covering and approval of her husband.” Her message and testimony were amazing and I will never forget it. I compare that experience with the experiences of church business meeting growing up…where our pastor would get up and share his vision with the church only to have person after person stand up in the congregation and challenge him with their own “off the top of their heads” arguments, and often said with little respect. I recall numerous times a man would stand up and give his opinion only to be challenged or disagreed with by another man’s wife…right there in front of everyone. Even as a young girl my spirit was grieved, and I was ashamed to consider that God was watching it all take place.

A few months ago Blake and I were with three other couples having dinner and just spending some time talking. The conversation veered towards something that I have a very strong opinion about, and as we began to settle in on that topic I could feel my heart rate start to speed up and sense that I was beginning to struggle to maintain my “inside voice.” We were not arguing in the least, but we did have some different viewpoints. Three times (at least) I was quick to add my passionate viewpoint to the conversation, when all of a sudden my brain flashbacked to those Sunday night business meetings. It was if Jesus stood before me and held out His hand and said, “Give it here, Christina. Yes, that, – those strong opinions you have there. That desire you have to speak for me that has taken over your brain and mouth. No! Uh uh! – don’t hold on to it – give it here.”
So, reluctantly I handed it over and closed my mouth. A couple of times after that I really wanted to open it again.  “GASP?! Didn’t you hear that, God?” You REALLY need me to say something now… don’t you?!! But nope, He must not have needed me. He told me to keep it shut. To honor the position of leadership that was present in that room.

I remember our music pastor’s wife in the before mentioned church telling about a talk she had with the Lord when she found out she was going to become a pastor’s wife. She said she asked God for a verse..a motto that would be her’s from God as she stepped into her new roll. This is the verse the Lord gave her:

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you” 1 Thessalonians 4:11

I loved that then, and I love it now. I wish I could say I had perfected these things: leading a quiet life, minding my own business, and working with my hands. Just like everything else, however,  its a journey I am having to walk out; praying daily that God continues to hold on to my passionate opinions, and not let me have them back until He’s ready to speak through me.

 
 Yesterday we were all out in the backyard and Hope ran in the house and came back with the leash we had bought for Bella. Very seriously, she looked up to Blake and said, “I think I should learn Bella how to walk with this.”

                                 A water break.

                                     Ready to go again Bella?

                       
                           Well there’s always next time! 

We got our I171-H in the mail today which means we are done with the paperchasing part of this process. Our dossier (compilation of 5 months worth of paperwork) is complete. Tomorrow we are going to mail our paperwork to our agency. Once they have checked it over and approved everything they will send it to Ethiopia. On the day they send it to Ethiopia which more than likely will be next Friday or the next, we will be put on the waiting list. This is called being DTE (dossier to Ethiopia). We are expecting a 5-8 month wait until we get a phone calling letting us know that they are sending us an email with a picture and file of a little boy or girl that they picked out to be our’s! Cannot imagine that day, but five months ago I couldn’t imagine this day!

We are still $1400 short of the money we need to send in our dossier, but we called Lifesong for Orphans today (the ones holding $6,000 from our grant and the money that was given to match it) and they will be writing a check to our agency tomorrow for the remaining $1400. So far this process has cost us $13,500 and we have never once had to wait on money. God has come through EVERY time. My faith has grown by leaps and bounds! Our next amount that we need is $5,360 when we accept the referral that our agency sends us. We still have $4600 of our Lifesong Money so that leaves $760 to raise as we wait. This amount seems like nothing compared to what we have been praying for over the past five months. But soon after our referral we will be making two trips to Ethiopia so the sooner we can get started saving and raising for that, the better! What does God have planned next?! Can’t wait to find out!

 
 I had the tv on a few nights ago. There was a man in the hospital and two of the doctors treating him were his daughters. They were step sisters. Two of many children this man had fathered in a number of marriages. At the hospital with him, was his current girlfriend who was younger than his two doctor daughters. The younger of the two had just about had it with her father. She was rude to him and ruder still to his girlfriend. She was constantly complaining to her older sister. In a scene towards the end, the older sister asks the younger sister, “Can’ you just be happy for him?” The younger sister gasps, “How could you even ask that after all he’s done to us…..ect, ect, ect.” And then the older sister says, “You know what? I love you, but you need to grow up.”

And yes, God spoke to me through the tv again… and He told me to take that sentence to heart. “Christina, you need to grow up.” I have a streak of immaturity that I need to outgrow, some selfishness and pride I  need to be purged of. And here is the childishness: I get mad at people when they don’t do what I think they should do or when they don’t treat me how I want to be treated. I am an analyzer, a thinker, a (secretive) debater. I can give a million reasons people should act and think and respond the way I think they should act, think, and respond. And God called me out on it. He brought to mind three situations that had occurred that I had presumably decided gave justifiable means for me to be just straight up mad about.  He told me that this world did not revolve around me and my feelings. That my human Christina reasoning was not the measuring stick for whether or not people were acting correctly or incorrectly. He knocked me down a few notches. And can I tell you how I felt? Sure I felt ashamed and a little ridiculous, but more than anything I felt relief. Slapped with the reminder that I am not God. I am not the center of the universe, I am not the judge of peoples hearts or actions. This left me feeling like a huge load had been lifted off my shoulders. I could breathe deeper. I felt freedom. Freedom to just live. To let God be God. To take people with a grain of salt and bucketload of grace. How people treat me, how people respond, what people are thinking of me, or my husband, or my children, is between them and God. And my life, my heart, my thoughts and feelings are between me and God. I wish I could share this in a way that would leave you feeling the way I did. I wish that I could ensure it would make a real difference in the spiritual part of you – but I know that kind of enlightening can only come straight from God to you. But I pray to Him that He will do that very thing for each person that reads this story. That He would set you free from the resentment, frustration, and anger that can leave you feeling utterly defeated.

I also wish that the enlightenment I had received would have been a forever changing moment for myself, but unfortunately it was not. Just this morning a situation rubbed me the wrong way, and I was mad for a minute or two. Later at home, my husband (who had been across the room) told me that he could see frustration all over my face from where he was standing and I wasn’t even looking at him! And as if that’s not bad enough!… I am mad at him for telling me!!

 I guess like most things in this journey of Christianity it is going to be something I have to walk out. It always seems to start in my heart and through time works its way out into my actions.  But thank you, thank you God that I do not have to perform for Your love and acceptance. Thank you that Your feelings for me never change and that You are with me in this every step of the way even when I feel like I take more backwards that I do forward.

“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12&13