I am a pastor’s wife. My husband is a youth and worship pastor, oh and the oversight for just about anything media-related. He has a lot on his plate. Although our pastor made it crystal clear from the time of our interview that there were no requirements for me; that I could be as involved or not involved as I wanted to be, I knew that I wanted to help Blake with the youth ministry from day 1. And I have loved it. I love my youth girls and I like the youth boys fine too.

But after three years……I reached burn out today. Nothing huge happened. I am not mad at anyone. I was just DONE. I laid in the bathtub tonight and hollered to Blake in the other room: “I’m done with youth ministry. I will volunteer in the baby nursery twice a month.” And Blake hollers back, “You’re not quitting youth ministry.”

And I sank down in the bath water to near drowning point with a “humph.”

I stomped to bed a few minutes later……grumbling out loud about entitlement mentalities, and the futility of our incessant messages about living a life for something besides yourself…..
plop myself in bed and go the the daily devotional for utmost.org because if there’s one thing I know….its that I could use a little “Come to Jesus meeting” about now….

And lo and behold as if God had been watching my hissy fit it starts out with this paragraph…

I am going to repeat information in this blog. If you are a regular reader please forgive me. We finished our adoption paperwork process and our dossier (paperwork) arrived in Ethiopia on Feb. 25, 2011. We were requesting a child 0-24 months. In November 2011, when we realized that there were many more families waiting for babies than there were babies that were ready to be adopted, we opened our age range up to 6 years old. In the months before we opened our age range up to 6 years, there were several 5-6 year old referred. When we changed our age range we were #1 for a child 4-6 years old which meant that we would get the first 4-6 year old that became available. From November until now (7 months) there have been no children this age referred. At the same time there have been families ahead of us that widened their age range as well, which actually means we have moved down the list instead of up. Then about six weeks ago, we found out that Ethiopia had changed some of their guidelines and because Blake and I both have histories of cancer that we might not be able to adopt from there at all. I can’t explain in a small amount of words what that felt like except to say that it felt PERSONAL. The devil was fighting dirty now. Within a couple of weeks our agency told us that we should act as if this new policy would not affect us because they felt quite positive that it would  not. We were relieved, and at the same time felt like this “scare” was a sign that we were nearing the finish line. It was like it was a last ditch effort on the part of Satan. However, the finish line still appeared to be a long way off.

Then three weeks ago, I got on our agency’s waiting child list and looked over the pictures. There was a little boy that had been on there for 2-3 months and we thought he was cute from day 1. He was right around the age of Camden. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the possibility of us adopting him hit me. I let it go, and got off the computer. I picked up a book I had been reading, opened it up and on the first page I read these verses from James 2.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷ In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

I felt God say to me, “You started this process to meet a need. He has a need for a family. You are a family waiting for a child. Why wait for a little child with a line of others families willing to adopt little children while he waits for a family?”

I called Blake at work and asked him to take a minute to open up “S’s” picture and pray. He called me a half an hour later and said. “Let’s pursue him. As soon as I opened up his picture I got emotional. I believe God wants us to go after this.”

So for the past three weeks we have been planning to bring this little boy home. We have sensed God confirm Himself over and over to us. We talk about him constantly. His picture is on our fridge and on the wall paper of our phones. We pulled out some of Camden’s clothes that were too small and put them in an empty drawer. We have been reading books and taking an online class on adopting an older child.

From day one, our social worker was hesitant and told us she would not make a decision until she came for her visit which was scheduled for Fri. the 8th of June. She wasn’t happy with the idea of “artificially twinning” Camden. But we didn’t take her too seriously. I mean come on, everybody everywhere in the adoption community is always encouraging families to open their hearts to older children or special needs. Who would ever say no to a family that DID open their hearts. Friday the 8th came and we had an intense and exhausting meeting with our social worker. She gave us all her concerns and all the worst case scenarios. We had a response for everything. We stayed stubbornly certain. At the end of the meeting Blake told her, “We appreciate your experience. We appreciate your concerns and your desire to prepare us, but higher than anything here is the assurance that we KNOW that God is calling us to be this little boy’s family.” Right before I dropped her off she told us that she would approve us to adopt him. We knew that until we actually saw that approval email go through we weren’t completely in the clear, but once again – we knew that we knew this was our little boy.

We were excited. We told the kids and our parents. We went shopping for him on Saturday and bought him several things to send him in his first care package. We started praying for a court date before court closure and imagining our first meeting with him and what it would be like to bring him home.

Then yesterday we emailed back and forth with our social worker all throughout the day, and at 6pm she sent an email with a final answer. She decided she would NOT approve us to adopt him. She wants us to adopt a child younger than Hope.

We feel sick. We feel angry. I’ve been awake since 6am wrestling with God. For now this is what I feel Him reminding me. That His mercies are new every morning. I trust that God spoke to us. I trust that if our social worker had let us bring home “S” we would have known that we knew that we knew that he was exactly who God had for us. I believe that we CAN hear God and that we did! But like I’ve (controversially) stated in the past I think that many things happen in this world that are NOT God’s will. Children becoming orphans ia NOT God’s will. Cancer is NOT God’s will. Miscarriage is NOT God’s will. We live in a world that God given fallen man to govern and a world that Satan has been named “prince”. But what I believe just as strongly is that God is still very much involved. Sometime He steps in and does miracles, and sometimes He takes the mess and re-writes the story. And that is what I am clinging onto as tightly as my angry, broken heart can hang on to. That God is up there re-writing a new Plan A for our family and for precious “S” with the big brown eyes and beautiful smile. I believe that when we FINALLY  bring home a child we will know that we know that we know that THIS was the child God had for us,
but for the record….not for even a second will I ever believe that “S” was the wrong child for us. He will always be a little bit mine.

Please pray for “S” that the next Plan A works out for him. His Plan A has been messed up by this fallen world more times than a child should ever have to endure. Pray your heart out for 2 minutes for me that God will choose to exercise His sovereignty and do a miracle in His life. I’m still crying out for God to show me why He didn’t step out this time, but my heart is at peace that He WILL step out eventually. Because my God is victorious. And He has the last say.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.“ Lamentations 3:22-23

I have several things I SHOULD be doing, but I am having one those moments where I HAVE to blog to get out my thoughts.

For the past few months I have had some issues with my hormones being out of whack so two months ago my doctor put me on the pill. I will be on it for 6-12 months and then I will get off because I don’t feel like it will be good for my body to be on it for a long time. And let me just say this pill has been doing its job! It has been an answered prayer. I have been on the pill twice before; my first year of marriage and then for 3 months after Camden was born to regulate my hormones.

When I started back on the pill 2 months ago, I was going to continue using my diaphragm (tmi – I know. not posting this one of fb), but after a couple of weeks we realized what an opportunity this was. Spontaneity is a beautiful thing. I had forgotten what I was missing.

Yesterday I went into the pharmacy to pick up a new pack and had decided I would make sure from the pharmacist that it wasn’t a problem that I hadn’t yet started my period when I was two days shy of finishing the pack. Well the poor pharmacist was a guy (maybe 24 years old) fresh out of school who was far from comfortable about talking to me about my period. His face turned red, he kept crossing and uncrossing his arms, and he mostly stuttered a bunch of nothing. It was painfully hilarious, and I knew I had a facebook status jewel of a story. A couple of hours after posting I had a message in my inbox from a lady asking me if I knew that I was potentially aborting my babies by taking the pill, and another fb friend posted a link asking women to please read the convicting article she linked about the abortive potential of the pill. I decided last night that I would do some (more) research and have some focused prayer just for responsibility’s sake and to ensure that it was God giving me peace about the pill and that i wasn’t simply leaning on my own desire for spontaneity.

What I found (and knew already) is that the pill’s first job is to stop ovulation. The pill is very good at this and is proven to rarely fail at this first job when used correctly. However, the pill also makes your body not a good environment for sperm (ughh – will I ever be old enough for that word not to be gross). So IF ovulation happens sperm (sperms? – who cares) are going to have an extremely difficult time reaching the egg. And IF both of these don’t work the third thing the pill does is make the lining of the uterus change in such a way that if conception does happen, implantation will be very difficult.

The chance that goal one AND two will fail is very small, and the fact is, sometimes all three don’t work and women get pregnant. I prayed last night and asked the Lord to give me an unsettled feeling in my heart if I was going to be in that slim percentage of people that goal 1 and 2 would fail me but goal 3 would work. I didn’t feel anything but continued peace that we were okay taking the pill. I also believe that if the Lord wants us to get pregnant, we will get pregnant on the pill. God is just that big.

As a side note, I believe that every person born is loved and desired by God and that God has a plan for each and every life.  I don’t believe, however, that every person that gets pregnant gets pregnant because it was God’s will. I believe that sex causes people to get pregnant. Our God is an incredible God that can take any life conceived whether by trying to get pregnant, an accidental pregnancy or a sin situation like pregnancy outside of marriage or rape, and cause that little life to be ordained and chosen and loved and called by God. He is a God whom we can not even begin to comprehend. Holy is His name.

I think the risk of birth control is like the risk of many other choices we make. Every time I put my children in a vehicle and drive them somewhere I am risking their life. Children die every day in car accidents, yet I drive my children around every day. It is a risk I take in order to live a life that is required in our day and age. There are risks I take because of the lifestyle of this time in history and there are risks I take because God has put certain callings on our life. My children spend a lot of time around teenagers. Although, I try to keep up with them fairly well during youth services and events, often times I am talking with a group of youth or serving snacks or teaching, and my eyes are not on them. But we believe that this is what we are called to do, and we believe that this ministry is a family ministry. One day we want to live in a third world nation as missionaries. There will be risks to my kids. But you know what – my kids are God’s first. We must obey, and pray that God protects our children.

God has not called me to birth many children. But by golly I’m pretty sure I could if I wanted to. I got pregnant with my son and daughter both within 2 months of trying. I could have myself a dozen curly haired children if I didn’t use some type of birth control. And if I I did decide to birth many children, they would all be a blessing and would all have a calling on their lives. But for us, at this time in our life, God has been clear. He has called us to adopt. If we were to get pregnant we could not adopt right now.

Orphans are the lives God has burdened us with; specifically orphans from third world countries. The sactity of life doesn’t stop with an unborn baby. The sactity of life also cries out for justice for these babies:

Do I believe that God calls some people and even convicts some people against using birth control; namely “the pill”? Absolutely, without a doubt! The reasons could be all sorts of things:
1. He knows that they would ovulate and sperm would make it to the egg and that a baby could die because it couldn’t implant.
2. He has called them to have several children.
3. He knows the pill could wreck havoc on their bodies.
4. He is asking them to trust Him in that area of their life.

However, for me He hasn’t convicted me – and I have told Him to please do so if I need convicting. Although there are women that have several biological children and several adopted children, and although I respect them so much, I know that is not my calling. There are other things I feel called to do such as help my husband in youth ministry and one day be on the mission field. I have to be able to do those things well AND do mommyhood well. For me personally, that means I can’t have several children. In this day and age with orphans all over the world living in poverty, and hundreds of thousands of children in the US foster care system, I want THESE to be the treasures I am basing the decisions of my life around.

If YOU feel it is sin for you to take the pill – good for you for listening to the Holy Spirit! If you feel called to not use any birth control – good for you – it is crazy incredible to agree with God’s calling on your life to do something that goes against the grain of society. Rock on!  If you feel called to birth many little children that look just like you – good for you! I LOVE seeing big families. Our whole families loves 19 kids and counting. If that doesn’t prove it, I don’t know what will! If God has called you to adopt instead of have biological children, or if He has called you to not have any children, or if He has called you to be single all of your life GOOD FOR YOU!!! It is going to take us all doing the best we can with what God has placed in our hearts and hands to win the lost for Jesus. I will admire you even if you’re different, in fact I will admire you BECAUSE you’re different. And can I make a little confession? Its a heck of a lot easier to admire you if you admire me back. Why oh why must I be so full of human-ness.

Yes! We need to stand up for our convictions! But lets not forget what a personal God our God is! Only He knows the repercussions of the personal choices we make each day, and I believe for all of us that want more than anything just to serve God – He will be faithful to speak to us truth and wisdom to make those choices.

Peace!!

I had the privilege of being a guest writer on www.destinyinbloom.com yesterday.
I shared about my experience of being a childhood cancer survivor.
I apologize that I don’t know how to make it click-able so you will have to copy and paste…

http://destinyinbloom.com/he-is-gentle/

Oh this adoption process is so frustrating….  The wait times just continue to extend, and if I let my mind dwell on it for too long it is obvious to me that I am getting bitter. I could write an extensive blog about the ridiculousness of it all, but honestly I think it would just feed my bitterness….so I won’t.

Yesterday was one of the many days lately that I pleaded with God to confirm in my heart that we were doing the right thing; that we were in the right place. I even went so far as to email our agency and ask how much of our money we would get back if we withdrew. I could give you the answer, but that bitterness again…… lets just say they know how to cover themselves….  back bitterness, go away bitterness…. At the peak of my anxiety today I heard God whisper to me, “Don’t be afraid to listen to me. You CAN hear me. Listen to me.”

 I got in my bed last night and opened up the laptop and began playing worship music. I opened up a Bible website and then I listened. I asked God to put a chapter on my heart. Ezekial 38 was what I felt Him say so I typed it in and when it popped up the chapter was titled: The Lord’s Great Victory Over the Nations.
That gave me chill bumps. I read through it and by the end I decided it must just be the title that God wanted me to read. The chapter had a couple of good lines, but I totally had to take it out of context to make it applicable. I began to pray after that, but felt like God wanted me to read it again. So I went back to the chapter, but clicked to change the version. In verse 5 one of the nations in the list was “ETHIOPIA”. I clicked back to the version before and saw that they had called Ethiopia “Cush”. I googled the chapter to find out some history and read that it is a prophetic chapter talking about the end times. When I read that God spoke,

“Do you want to know what is on my mind, Christina?”
“My mind is on the nations.”
“My mind has ALWAYS been on the nations”

And as I let that settle in my spirit I sat in wonder as I thought about how in Ezekial (IN EZEKIAL!) God was talking about Ethiopia.
And that right there gave me 100% confidence that we ARE on the right journey.
It also gave me 100% confidence that God has given us the honor of being apart of His big picture.
If my mind and heart are on the nations – then my mind and heart are in line with God’s mind and heart.
And THAT takes away my bitterness and replaces it with humility and GREAT anticipation.

Haggai 2:7 “I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty.“

I was admittedly frustrated. And justifiably so… or so I thought. I mean for Heaven’s sake, God put it in our hearts to adopt. And we obeyed! God supernaturally provided every penny of the staggering amount we needed for the process.

The only thing missing is the little person. And we really, really, really, REALLY want to meet him or her….or them.

And I pray. And I pray. And I pray. And I believe. And I believe. And I believe. And I put my faith in the scriptures. – His words that He sets the lonely in families. And defends the cause of the orphans. And that He loves the least of these. And that if I believe I will receive anything I ask for in prayer.

And yet nothing.

There are many that believe that our adoption will happen in God’s desired timing. Somehow in their minds God is cool with my child being an orphan for a little while longer which honestly ticks me off. What if your child was suffering, lonely, scared and you couldn’t get to them, and I said, “It’s okay. Just trust God. This is His timing.”

Now do I believe that God will work all things to the good of those that love Him?! Of course! But the reason He has to “work” things is because He is going to have a bunch of junk and scraps that will need some healing, and rearranging, and redeeming. Amazingly He can make things look like Plan A by the end, but that doesn’t mean it WAS His plan A. Plan A would actually have been that our little Ethiopian  be raised by his own Daddy and Mommy that know and love Jesus and could provide for him.

I wrestled all day long. Emotions and confusion and unrest rising.

Until I got a text that said, “God DOES intervene because of our prayers……but not always. It is NOT a guarantee.”
And for some reason that text lead me straight to a moment of truth. My moment of truth.

I got honest with God and myself right in my kitchen with plates of leftovers coming in and out of the microwave and my children and husband talking in volumes way louder than necessary.

“I’m mad at you God.”
 I said it. I came clean.

 I heard nothing, but He came upon me heavy and Holy.

So I add because when He comes near I can’t help it …..”But I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”my heart whispers.

And I was broken. I was humbled before Him. And THEN He spoke.

“You have moved from praying in faith to trying to manipulate Me.”

So there it is for me:

My faith is pleasing to God. My attitude is not.

Faith absolutely moves God to intervene in our sin infested world when at times He would not intervene if we did NOT pray. I got myself some scriptures that give me peace with that.

But sometimes He does not intervene.

It doesn’t mean that it His will that my little one is an orphan for another day.
It just means that I live in a fallen world and sin and the effects of sin are painful and heart breaking.

So I continue to pray
-that my child’s paperwork is speedily processed.
-that the officials in Ethiopia will have a sense of urgency to investigate and process all of the waiting orphans’ paperwork.
-that Satan’s plans and agendas will be thwarted.
-that my child will have a special nanny in the orphanage that adores him so that he knows every single night as he lies in his bed in the dark that he is lovable and valuable.

And as I pray every day, sometimes with a broken heart, I know that I have to check my motives on a regular basis.
Because as soon as I start letting pride inch itself in, I will once again find myself in the same place that I was this morning….
A faith crisis.

Thank you Jesus for your words of life. For your grace. For your love.

And in your powerful name I pray with every ounce of faith that I have -
Bring my little one home. And by the way….I love You. I ADORE You.

“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 created for my glory,whom I formed and made.”  - Isaiah 43:5-7

I am full of faith about something today. God is always, always working. Through every situation, through every heartache, through every failure and success. God is always doing so much more than what it looks like on the surface. Last Sunday I had this sure sense that a lot of stuff that I had been struggling with was all being used by God to teach me one truth. I went on a walk with one purpose – to get to the root of the truth.

As my steps stayed in rhythm to the worship music on my ipod, I sensed the presence of God coming closer and closer. I felt that rush of God-spoken breath invade my soul. His breath of truth was this:
“Christina,  you think you are entitled. You think you have earned things that, in fact you have no rights to. You have earned nothing. You deserve nothing.”

A picture flashed in my mind of me trying frantically to climb platform after platform that I believed so strongly that I deserved to stand on. And then I heard the Lord say, “The saddest thing is those platforms you are trying so frantically to climb were built by you. Built by you for you.”

These platforms I had built for myself as a daughter. as a wife. as a pastor’s wife. as a friend as a “good” Christian. Rights I felt I had earned. Positions I believed were mine and mine alone. Respect I thought I deserved.

God showed me that not only was He asking me to stop frantically trying to stay on top of all these platforms, but He was also asking me to admit that those platforms themselves were built solely by my foolishness and pride.

My thought process as I stood before each platform was, “But God I deserve to be on that platform. I worked hard for it. How dare anyone not recognize the validity of my platform and the right I have to stand here. And if they don’t well I don’t need them.”

It is kind of a whole new twist to the whole people pleasing personality that so many of us believe that we have.

I have tried the cure for people-pleasing. Telling myself over and over: “That person doesn’t like me or thinks bad about me, but I don’t care because I don’t please people. I only please God.” I don’t know about you – but that hasn’t cured me yet.

I think it is because that cure doesn’t really get to the root of the problem. If fact I think it just adds to the problem. We people pleasers don’t really care about people. We care about ourselves. We want anyone and everyone to recognize our worth and when they don’t, it feels like our eyeballs are being gouged out.

As God made me stand before all of my platforms and told me one by one that I did not deserve them, I fought for awhile. I struggled. I was like Buggs Bunny as he slides down a wall he is trying to climb, and his claws make that awful noise, and he leaves scratch marks along the wall as he slowly descends. That was me. Not trying to claw up anymore, but not free-falling down either.

By the end of my long walk I felt I had reached the grassy bottom of all of my platforms. There on the grass I knew full well that I did not deserve anything. I knew with all of my heart that favor comes from the Lord and Him alone. I do not deserve the favor and praise of man. I am a bond servant of Jesus Christ. He owns me. He chooses whether or not I will receive favor. If I do receive favor, it is an undeserved gift that He has given me and is NOT to be used as wood, hammer, and nails to build a platform for myself. And if he chooses NOT to give me favor and recognition from man, I can be okay with that because I am planning on staying on the grass anyway. At the end of my walk God told me this, “The ONLY platform I want you standing on is the platform of servant-hood. And that right there throws the whole people pleaser cure to the curb. Even if someone doesn’t like me. Even if someone is cruel to me. Even if someone talks badly about me. I must learn to love them from the platform of a servant. I honestly do not know what that looks like yet. I have a very long way to go learning what life is like when I am not so busy building and climbing platforms.

Tonight I felt myself clawing up a platform again. I despised myself for it. I wish I could burn those dang things for good. But those platforms took years and years to build, and I have a feeling they will take awhile to destroy. I stood at church this morning with hands raised and a heart of surrender, asking the Lord to teach me how to love people, and how to be content on the grass. I believe that He will change me, but I believe I will have to ask Him every single day to take away my wood, hammer, and nails; to daily yank my fingernails off the platform and set me back on the grass,  to daily fill me with love and grace for His church and the lost, to daily recognize I’m a surrendered servant, but most importantly and the best of all to daily embrace the truth with everything I’ve got that I am a beloved Child of the Most High God. He loves me. And He wants me on the grass.

 Yesterday we got a great big anonymous donation towards our adoption. As I subtracted the amount in my little spiral where I have kept meticulous notes on our adoption finances I was shocked to see that we have less than $1,000 to raise to reach our goal. Today I spent 2 hours categorizing and re-checking to make sure I had not missed anything and sure enough my end amounts matched! I thought I would post this financial journey, as personal as it might seem, in a blog because I want to have it documented for myself, but also because I believe it is just too incredible not to put out there as a testimony!

Adoption expenses:

$6269 – This is how much we spent during the “paperchasing” part of the process. (The first agency fee, the homestudy, background checks, adoption training, fingerprinting and immigration clearances, as well as inspections and documents we had to order)

$7200 – This is how much we had to pay our agency when we submitted our paperwork which is called our “Dossier.” (This includes our second agency fee, half of our international fee, money to translate and mail our paperwork to Ethiopia, as well as a deposit to pay for the homestudy updates we will have to do AFTER we bring home our child.

$5360 – This is what we will have to pay when we accept the referral saying that we DO want to adopt the child that our agency matches us with. (This includes the rest of our agency fee, the rest of the international fee, and a couple of other complicated fees

$1000 – This is an estimated amount we are saving to pay for #1 – our homestudy update – because it has been over a year since our homestudy was done AND because we need to be approved for a wider age range than  we were originally approved for. We have to fly our social worker to our area so that she can update it. (I love her but PUHLEASE!;) and #2 – the long list of shots Blake and I will have to get to go to Ethiopia. – YUK!

$6,000 – This is an estimated amount we are saving to pay for the first trip we will be making to Ethiopia to meet our child and go to court to become his/her legal parents. (After court we will have to come home without him/her and wait for the US embassy to approve us to bring him/her into the US)

$6,000 – This is an estimated amount we are saving to pay for the second trip to Ethiopia to go pick up our child. This trip will be shorter and cheaper except for the fact we will need an extra plane ticket because the newest Davis will be coming home!!!

This totals: $31,829.

In the past 18 months we have raised $30,920!!!!!!!  Absolutely Mind Blowing!!

And this is where it came from:

$4,000 – A grant from Show Hope
$6,000 – A matching grant from Lifesong for Orphans ($3,000 from Lifesong matched in total by 1 person)
$9450 – Our own money ( NEVER would I have imagined we could come up with this much!)
$1160 – My Photography  (Wanted this separate to “thank” those who’ve allowed me to photograph their families!)
$430 – Selling t-shirts, coffee, and headbands
$1710 – 4 Garage Sales (we had 1 more that paid the majority of the overhead from the tshirts we sold)
$4800 – 3 Donations of $1,000 or more
$2820- 12 Donations between $100-$600
$550 – 16 Donations under $100

So for now we are just $900 short of reaching our goal!

IF we get referred 2 children (siblings) we will need to come up with approximately $5500 more. I’m not worried though! We have prayed from the time we opened up ourselves to siblings 5 months ago that God would ONLY give them to us if He was going to provide the extra money (not just the $5500 – but the expense of a lifetime of 4 children!!!)

Our faith has multiplied and our guts to say yes to God has exploded! The financial journey was the most daunting part in the beginning. And there have been times it has been HARD especially when we have felt judged. At this point, though, the hard part, by far, is waiting for our child. And I have a feeling that a few weeks into bringing our child home, the waiting part will look easy! That’s the pilgrimage of Christianity. He prepares us slowly and surely for the harder things ahead. But I KNOW that I know that I know that with the harder comes the greater reward. The most amazing thing that I am learning however is what the true reward is. It is not a big donation check. It is not someone “getting” the heart of adoption. It is not even our referral or making an orphan a son or daughter. The reward is Jesus Christ and the honor and privilege of surrender.

 Do you ever have so many thoughts on your mind, so much heavy on your heart, so many conflicting emotions that you feel inept to even be around people? That has been me yesterday and today. I had company yesterday and this morning so it was a bad time to feel unsocial.

Biggest Thing on my Mind: Yesterday our agency sent out an email that the wait times to be matched with a child have been extended to 18-24 months from dossier submission. We submitted our dossier almost 13 months ago. When we started this process we were looking at a 4-6 month wait. So the wait has quadrupled since then. I have felt very sad since reading that email. I wish that I could explain how it feels to wait this long. I know that it is impossible to understand unless you have been here. Reading and hearing other adopting Mama’s thoughts and feelings that echo mine exactly is so comforting. I am not making things up in my overly emotional brain. There REALLY is a love and connection that grows in your heart for your child/ren and when you get an email telling you it is going to be months more before you even see their face….well it is heart wrenching. I am so very grateful for the people in my life that have made a conscience effort to try to understand the place we are at right now. The sincere sympathetic comments and messages when I posted on facebook about the extended wait time was like taking a pain reliever. It truly lessened my pain. When I think about the fact that our child or children are spending night after night, day after day as orphans because of red tape and paperwork the helpless feeling that wells up inside of me makes me want to build a boat and sail myself across the ocean and fix things. But I can’t. Blake can’t. And apparently our adoption agency can’t either. So guess what that leaves us with…….GOD.

“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

On a lighter note….Last weekend we spent some time with my in-laws. We had a great time, and were able to leave our kids with them while we came back home so that Blake could lead worship for church and then we could take our youth to San Antonio for four days. It was a such a good trip. I love hanging out with our teenagers. I am so very grateful for the opportunity to be apart of their lives. It still surprises me how much I love them and enjoy my time with them. I know that once we bring home our new child or children I will have to pull back especially at first so that is definitely something to focus on during this wait. I want to savor the now moments.

(the pictures with the kids were taken on our way to my in-laws and the ones of Blake and I are from our youth trip)

There are a few things I don’t talk about like hardly ever. Personal convictions and callings that are my own. I feel strongly about them…..most of the time, but I also know that walking around blabbing about them isn’t going to win me any friends. There is a fine line between living my life to please people and living my life to “win” people. I don’t want to be a people-pleaser but I do want to “win” people to Jesus. I want to see people develop a relationship with God that looks like intimacy with Jesus, surrender to Jesus, and serving unto Jesus. It is a journey of which I am still in the beginning leg. But it is truly, truly an incredible journey, and I want to live in a way that makes every person with whom I come into contact, want to take their personal journey of intimacy, surrender, and serving.

I am pretty much the good Baptist girl that I was raised to be. (Except I pray in tongues and jump up and down at youth camp. I am a rule follower and am hounded by shame when I misbehave.
Allowing you a peek into our odd but “I love it” marriage, there have been times Blake has begged me to say a cuss word. “Say just one, Christina. You can whisper it and I won’t tell anybody.” And there *might* have even been a time that Blake illegally downloaded a movie and I wondered if I could even stay married to such a man.

 It has been a soul searching, on-going process with Jesus as I sift through legalism and conviction; asking God to look at my mile long list of “don’ts” and to tell me what He thinks. At this point in my journey, I know that I am called to live a more conservative lifestyle than many other Christians. I don’t know why, but I trust that God does. The changing factor in me has been two-fold: releasing others from my own convictions and secondly not letting the “don’ts” be the focus of my life.

I’m going to take one of my “convictions” that I rarely talk about and talk about it.  Alcohol.
My personal convictions have stayed the same: I don’t drink it. But I definitely have different thoughts on it than I did 10  years ago. As a reminder, I grew up Baptist and as a fairly important side note I was home schooled. My parents walked their talk as did the other families that we were close to, so I seriously believed that all but a tiny percentage of Christians abstained from drinking, dancing, getting tattoos or more than one hole in their ear, gambling, and wearing bikinis. I was honestly in my mid twenties before I realized how wrong I was about my fellow Christians. I realized that I was pretty much a nun that had married sex.

I recently read a book by Jen Hatmaker (jenhatmaker.com).  I seriously loved it and have actually made changes in my life because of this book..hence… “It changed my life” for real. Jen tells in the book that she drinks wine and her husband gambles. Two things Blake and I don’t do. But guess what she is someone I respect and even look up to. She and her husband love people. They love poor people. They love orphans. They love dirty people. They love sinners. And when I say love, I mean the action kind of love. The action kind of love that convicts me. The action kind of love that drove me to make changes in my life. The action kind of love that does not come from not drinking, not gambling, or even not having a tattoo.
Did I take up drinking and gambling after I read her book? No. No I didn’t. That wasn’t her point anyway. Jen’s point in sharing those things (I believe) is to show that sometimes we get so caught up in our list of rules that we think that is what life is all about. (See: Pharisees in the gospels)

I think about all of the times I have been eating in a restaurant with Christians that don’t drink, but they treated the waitress like their annoying slave. I think about all of the times that Christians that don’t dance sit around in their living rooms gossiping about the pastor. I think about all of the times that I have chosen not to participate in some border-line worldly activity, yet I have done or said something completely hateful to or about another person. Shame on me. Shame on us. How clear did Jesus have to be when He told us what He thought was the most important thing? Love God and Love People.
 
Now on the flip side, I  think that Christians can take their freedoms they have found and use them in a way that is also not loving. I love coke. Fountain coke. In a Styrofoam cup. Happy, happy me when I have my coke. If I know I am going to have a coke sometime during the day, I will deprive myself of all liquids for hours because I know how amazing it will taste to have a big drink of coke when I am really, really thirsty. I know. I know. I KNOW! It is bad for me. I have been cutting back. BUT in light of my love affair with coke, I have never once decided on whether or not I was going to go to some type of gathering based on whether or not they would have coke in Styrofoam cups. When it gets that bad, please, someone stage an intervention. Get me some professional help. When our freedoms are receiving more of our  “love” than people, then we have taken them too far.

I know we can apply this same question of the heart to other areas. For instance, I dislike being with big groups of women. I went to a women’s conference a couple of years ago and gave an audible sigh of relief when a man walked into the room and up to the stage. Its just too much perfume, jewelry, giggling and snifflng into kleenexes for me. It is hypocritical of me because I do those things: I wear perfume and jelwery, I giggle daily and I cry monthly. But something about being in a crowd of just women is not fun for me, and I usually try to avoid those situations like the plague. Two months ago I was called out on it. It hurt my feelings. It made me mad. I didn’t think she had a right to do it. But I made a decision to get rid of the offense and look for the truth. It comes down to the same thing: LOVE. Yes, I do have the freedom to not like womens’ events, but more importantly I have been commanded to love. And love comes first. Does that mean I will be planning women’s events in my house on Friday nights and searching the internet for the next local women’s conference. Not a chance. But it does mean that this semester every Tuesday night I will be going to a mother/daughter life group because #1 I love my daughter and she needs the fellowship with other little girls. #2 I love our children’s pastor’s wife and want her to know I support her and #3 I want and need the opportunity to fellowship with other mama’s of girls my daughter’s age.

This is what I have been learning in my journey lately: Love….and Humility. The past couple of summers when I’m on the beach with just my family or girl friends I have sheepishly rolled up my tankini to the middle of my ribs and let my virgin tummy get some fresh air and sunshine and every. single. time I have felt sure that I heard God give a little chuckle. He loves me. I know it. And He is on my case about loving other people. He is hunting me down and making sure I know that He cares very little about what I don’t do and very much about what I DO do. I am still such a mess, but I feel His hands painfully, mercifully, beautifully molding me on the inside. And mostly….I like it. Even when it hurts.