Christina‘s is one of them.

I met her because she helped foster Lily in our waiting period. Our daughters shared a home for a few months and share a God who breathes promises over them every day, despite what the odds might say. I have a deep admiration for Christina, as she is one choosing to see His word over her daughter as the final word. Today you can read her words and watch her story on video. Grab your tissues.

(For the month of May and a week into June, I will be pressing pause on my online writing and this space will become a series of testimonies of what He births in the midst of delay, perplexity and pain. Author friends from around the world, who love words on a page and Him even more, will share, here, how they have seen Him make the bitter, sweet.)

In 2010 I realized that I was just going through the motions.

I was a teacher at a public school. I also taught music part time and was in two different bands. My life was chaotic, stressful, and frustrating. I felt like I was living life with no goals, purpose, or motivation. I knew I wanted more. I wanted to live for something beyond my own dreams.

So I prayed that God would radically change my life. I prayed for Him to break my heart open. I prayed for clarity, direction, and purpose. All of these prayers were answered during my 8 month stay in Uganda. Not in ways I ever could have imagined. Not in “my timing.” But so full of goodness I couldn’t dream of saying no.

I remember this past year with gratitude and joy. Month by month, moment by moment. God swept me off my feet and left me breathless and trembling. I am humbled by our God who cares for each one of us and loves so deeply. He has given me so much more than I deserve. And so I reflect with a thankful heart.

After only a few short weeks of working with former street children, I felt burdened and overwhelmed by the need and poverty in the lives of the people all around me. The stories wrecked me. It was a harsh reality to accept that I couldn’t do anything about most of this suffering.  My heart was breaking specifically for the children who didn’t have people to care for them and love them.

I noticed a trend of God putting certain children on my heart and showing me my role in each of these kids’ lives.  Sometimes it was doing something as small as noticing a child and remembering to pray for them.  Sometimes it was just sitting there with them in the dirt and holding them while they cry. Sometimes it was going back to find them on the dark streets of Kampala, even if it meant getting mobbed by crowd of hungry street children, to make sure that little one with the sad eyes had something to eat for dinner.  Sometimes it was helping orphans deal with being HIV positive through art therapy and music.  Sometimes it was living with former street children and being a role model of positive life skills.

And sometimes it looks very different than I ever could have imagined …God asked me to stop everything and love one.

In early February, God lead me to a beautiful little girl who had been abandoned and was living on the streets of Kampala.  She was suffering from severe malnutrition, malaria and multiple physical and cognitive disabilities.   She spent her days begging for food and money.  Her eyes were haunting and sad, and she couldn’t speak.  She rocked back and forth, humming softly to shut out all the pain.

People said she was cursed.

I knew right away that there was something special about her and I desperately wanted to help her.  Within 2 weeks of meeting her, I knew God was calling me to be her mom. At first I didn’t think adoption was a practical option for me. I resisted God’s call because it didn’t fit in with the plans I had for my life. But love is a powerful thing.  I knew deep down that I couldn’t walk away from this little beauty. I was heartbroken and in love at the same time.

The next months were hard…no running water, minimal electricity and this tiny child from a really hard place who needed love more than she needed food.  But we learned together.  We became family.  I named her Mikisa Mae, which means welcome blessings.

As a single girl embarking on an adoption journey of a child with special needs, I accepted that having Mikisa probably would mean giving up on the idea of marriage. I didn’t think I could find someone who would want both of us. I chose to adopt Mikisa anyway, even though I had always dreamed of marrying someone before having children. I imagined that I would be a single mom for years, possibly forever, and that it would be hard.  But I also had a peace about it and knew that God would get me through it.

Doctors told me Mikisa would never walk or talk. The Ugandan medical professionals used the label “retarded” and told me I was crazy to be adopting her.  But our love for each other grew steadily and as her personality developed it became more and more clear why God had chosen her to be my daughter. Her adoption story is built on immense loss and pain, but also full of powerful redemption.

In May, I had to come back to the states for three weeks to complete my home study and other immigration-related paperwork. It broke my heart to leave Mikisa when she was just beginning to bond with me, but God used that time of separation to bring even more beauty and love into my life. While I was back in Charlotte, one of my good friends told me he wanted to pursue a relationship with me.  I was ecstatic! Through the tough summer of attachment issues, uncertainty and waiting, our long-distance relationship provided sustenance and encouragement and oh so much joy.

After three months of uncertainty, waiting, and then answered prayers with a favorable ruling, Mikisa and I arrived back in the United States last August. Then, just a week after our arrival, Troy asked me to marry him. And of course I said yes! We were married October 15th, 2011.

I never dreamed I would find someone who is so perfect for me. Troy is the most amazing husband and dad. I am so incredibly blessed to have a companion to walk through life with, to shoulder these burdens with me and to share the deep joy. To be known and cherished.

Since coming home, our journey has been a winding road.  We have seen numerous specialists and received more diagnoses than I initially anticipated.  We go to therapy three times a week and work hard every day on her goals.  We have been told that Mikisa has a regressive disorder, and doctors have shaken their heads and marveled at how well she is doing despite her bleak prognosis.  She has made steady and consistent progress.  She is able to walk with minimal assistance, she says over 200 words, and she understands much of what is going on around her.

We attribute all of these victories to our miracle-worker God.  He is so faithful.

He continues to move in powerful ways and He is allowing us to be part of an incredible story of His love. Our lives have been transformed because of it. So many new beginnings…answered prayers. God has shown me that by letting everything go and following Him, life becomes so much better. He has plans beyond our wildest expectations. Life is short and it should be full.

I’m amazed at how God makes beautiful things out of our messy, broken lives.  He makes it all work when we can’t.  He hears our cries and turns them into a beautiful melody.

About Christina Felten: i am a dreamer.  i dream of open skies and blazing fires.  i dream of colors and melodies and freedom.  i dream of peace and happiness and eternal summer days.  i dream of a world where every child has a home.  i am an advocate for orphans and especially pray for children with special needs who need families.  i love Jesus, adoption, music, art, and traveling.  i love my husband and my daughter, and am trying to be the best wife and mother possible.  some days are more successful than others.  more often than not, i feel like a failure, but i am trying to let go of my perfectionism and see beauty in the brokenness.

(For the month of May and a week into June, I will be pressing pause on my online writing and this space will become a series of testimonies of what He births in the midst of delay, perplexity and pain. Author friends from around the world, who love words on a page and Him even more, will share, here, how they have seen Him make the bitter, sweet.)
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Time stood still, a deep inward groan somehow managing to drown out the sounds of my kids at play in the backyard and pull me from the dinner preparations sprawled before me, half-readied.

The ache that leaves me immobile at times.

He came in the hunger, a deep groan,  though He had to remind me – because I forgot all over again – that this was His coming, that the longing is not a sign of His absence, but proof of His presence.

Hunger for more of Him, for a greater entrance and a breaking open into a deeper knowing of His heart arrived in waves and I found myself at my kitchen sink in a groan that bore the weight of its age – for this is no new inkling I’ve set my sights on. It’s a wanting heavy with history.

We’ve been here before. Yet each time is new in that the press of hunger always reaches beyond the present and the known and into the beyond and the not-yet-charted. I would have never guessed the exchange would happen so many countless times – my ache offered for more of Him, over and over and over. The endless trade. And though I do not always welcome its groan, I have grown to deeply love this blessed ache. When hunger lifts her head, a greater entrance into His heart is most assuredly ahead.

There at my kitchen sink, I found myself in an avid-asking that surged into unexplored willingness to receive whatever He might answer with. So long as He would answer with more of Himself. So long as He would come.

And that’s just the way He works when He wants to give us more of Himself – that precious gift. We do not naturally like hunger pangs, gnawing as they are. Yet they do for us a marvelous thing. They ready us for more of the most potent Man alive. They prepare us to say yes to the One that we love, even when His ways are so counter to our own. Desire for Him spreads wide the heart to receive Him as He is without resistance.

And for me, this time, I needed the preparations of hunger to ready me not just for a sweet new understanding of His heart but for a more bitter insight of Him. He gave me first the hunger. And though initially this struck with a sting, I remembered it was a gift and embraced it. Then He traded me. My hunger for more understanding of Him. An understanding I might have rejected had I not been so desperate for His coming. He spoke a poignant word, capable of offending even a sincere heart. Yet as His word came near me, hunger swiftly smoothed its path, and caused me to receive it deep, even in its poignancy.

The most potent Man alive (who is God Himself) waits to be wanted. Desire is the means He chose to push open the walled-up places and to ready us to embrace Him, no matter what aspect of His passionate heart He wants to give. Sometimes hunger prepares us for a more profound experience of His tenderness. Other times it’s a more disturbing part of His heart that He reveals. Bitter or sweet, longing comes first to ready the way. And after sending this forerunner, He comes in, like a settler staking His plot. He fills this new space with precision and strength, eager to possess every inch of our being, all for Himself and all for love.

This is the gift found in hunger and why we cannot push aside any aching for God, big or small. When hunger comes with a sting, we must remember it as the promise of MORE, and receive it as His gift not His rejection. Sharks infest the waters of the world of hunger. Offenses are easily born to the heart hanging raw and vulnerable in longing with seeming silence from the One for whom it longs. Yet when we embrace these pangs for Him as gifts of presence – not signs of absence – and recognize them as that which makes way for more of the One we love, He can do that which He so desires. He can fill us with Himself.

Blessed are the hungry. It’s the hungry – and only the hungry – that get Jesus.

DANA CANDLER, together with her husband Matt, has been a part of the leadership team at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City since 1999. As well as being a full-time mother to Matt and Dana’s four children, she is an instructor at the International House of Prayer University and has authored Deep unto Deep, Entirety, and Mourning for the Bridegroom (all available here). She also served as a contributing author of The Rewards of Fasting with Mike Bickle. 

(For the month of May and a week into June, I will be pressing pause on my online writing and this space will become a series of testimonies of what He births in the midst of delay, perplexity and pain. Author friends from around the world, who love words on a page (and Him even more), will share, here, how they have seen Him make the bitter, sweet.)

As the years without a husband and children continued to beat by, I ached. At 35, I raged.  Come 40, I just got sad. Tick, tock, tick, tock—the rhythm of timeescorted me further from a woman’s greatest calling. Wasn’t I created to be a husband’s helper? A child’s shelter? Who would I help and shelter alone in my apartment?

In church I noticed that the key efforts centered around moms with school-age children and married couples. Most sermons and Sunday school classes paid detailed attention to these partial demographics. I felt left out. And I felt confused.

In my span of girlfriends young and old, I began to wonder about a woman’s “helpfulness”. My mom friends, especially with young children, did not seem to be relishing their “greatest calling.” And my widow and older friends were no longer in the 24/7 helper role. What’s wrong with this picture? I asked.

Single without children left me standing ineligible to enter the essential zone. Wives and moms seem to respond in two ways: losing themselves in the day-today sacrifice of the duty. Or they simply hold on til they can get to the Starbucks drive thru or finally graduate their children from home. Widows and empty nesters were sidelined like me (no longer helping 24/7) and seemingly not mission critical.

(And I haven’t even touched on moms who work outside the home! Their posture toward the greatest calling must feel even more complex, their identity even more fractured if hearth helpfulness is the ultimate in God’s kingdom.)

How can the flimsy “helpmeet” encompass all a woman’s worth for all her life? We need a broader definition. But where can we go? As more women come to the table with men and look at language and story in the Scriptures, we are getting a fuller, more meaningful, more robust grasp of God’s Word.

And it couldn’t come at a better time. The sickly definitions have so narrowed a woman’s worth that unless you are between the boundary lines of “married with children in your home,” there really isn’t much for you to connect to. God help us. We’ve just disqualified grand numbers in His army. And no wonder women feel schizophrenic.

One truth that has made a home in my soul (big enough for the ache/rage/sadness) comes from scholarship on the biblical definition of “female.”

The work of Carolyn James has given me hope. Raised as a pastor’s daughter, she knew one calling: play piano and serve potluck for your pastor husband’s flock.  Since marriage was not on the horizon after college, Carolyn became one of the first women to graduate seminary. She wrestled with singleness and purpose. She married a wonderful man, then excelled in the workforce while Frank pursued his multiple PhDs (No potlucks? No piano?). Then they wrestled with infertility. Surely, she groaned, I must have a calling big enough for me that does not include children. Then, they adopted.

Still, she knew that God’s plan for women must serve them from cradle to grave, little girl to aged beauty—not just in the church’s seemingly confined boundary lines. Carolyn unpacked the Hebrew word ezer from Genesis 2:18’s “helper” and learned that the best definition had been drastically undersold.

Ezer showed up 21 times in the Old Testament as a description for God helping Israel as a warrior, not a sidelined helpmeet. A warrior for all the things that are important to Him: truth, beauty, goodness, the marginalized, the poor in spirit, the poor, the guilty.

Finally, I had a calling that was bigger than me and one that would require more of me than I could ever imagine. One that would be worthy of my entire life: fighting for the good, the true and the beautiful, on earth as it is in heaven.

Seven months ago, at 43, I got married. I became a wife, a step-mom and a grandma in one day. And I work full-time. I know the temptation to lose myself in the daily sacrifices or sprint in exile to Starbucks (in the very same hour!). Imagine my identity confusion at this unexpected stage in life.

Only under the banner of joining God as warrior for His glory can I both frame my battle and find rest. Only under God’s commitment to fight for me can I find an identity that neither crushes nor abandons me. Let the newborn baby girl and the woman wizened with wisdom find this calling big enough to require an ezer God to fulfill.

Judy Lewis has been with Campus Crusade for 22 years, as a writer, editor and communications specialist. She lives in Atlanta as a newlywed!

For the month of May and a week into June, I will be pressing pause on my online writing and this space will become a series of testimonies of what He births in the midst of delay, perplexity and pain. Author friends from around the world, who love words on a page (and Him even more), will share, here, how they have seen Him make the bitter, sweet.

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We actually live a lifetime of transitions.

The process goes something like this: “Things end, there is a time of fertile emptiness, and then things begin anew.” I love the pairing of these two: “fertile” & “empty” – a productive, fruitful season of being vacant and without purpose! We must learn how to navigate these transitional waters in our marriage journey. There is ample grace to do so; much more difficult when only one spouse is on board, but possible nonetheless. When both partners are pressing in with their eyes on the prize, the grace is exponential, the journey brimming with anticipation and the fruit will be plentiful.

We often describe this launching pad to change as a trial or a wilderness season. In our humanness, we just want it to end so we can feel good again and have tranquility in our marriage. Of course God sees the deeper purpose, working the marriage muscle to build strength.  A friend of mine once said, “God doesn’t pull me out of what He can perfect me through.” I have discovered over and over again that what God prizes is the interaction with my heart. One sign of maturity is when we prize intimacy — our encounters with God — higher than the end of the test.

Transitions are predictable, planned, and welcomed. They are also unpredictable, not planned, and traumatic; which is what I experienced in year twelve of our marriage. We had been on pastoral staff of a church for ten years and felt fruitful, comfortable, and content. (Does the word “pruning” come to mind?) Our three children, ages 8, 10, and 11, were integrated into the church family, had good friends, and we lived in a very nice, upscale parsonage. None of us desired to move. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to be initiated into a new adventure.

I wasn’t exactly fired mind you; the leadership just felt that after ten years on staff, God had something else for me. Not only was I and my family in transition, but we were about to take the reins of our own pastorate in a nearby city, that was also in transition! Their pastor was retiring; they had suffered through a disaster of a failed building program, and they were saddled with debt. My wife, who is my best friend, was a great support in this transition. We both agreed that I should get another perspective and so I went to see a Christian counselor, who just happened to be an art therapist.

So there I was, at thirty-nine years old, cutting out pictures from magazines to make collages! The whole idea was to get my emotions expressed into something tangible. After six weeks of seeing her she told me I was going through grief. The church that released me was the only church I’d ever attended since I was saved. The pastor was like a father figure to me, having been under his leadership for seventeen years.

One night after a board meeting at the new church they took us to see our proposed new living quarters. We went from upscale to no scale! It was pretty bad. The house had an oil burning furnace; we could see black soot on the furniture. The carpet was old and soiled and the odor was less than fragrant. We rented an apartment for a year while the church had the house remodeled. It was a major downgrade from our last house but it was livable; kind of cute actually, like a little cottage. My boys had a bedroom with a slanted roof, which had been an add-on to the back of the house. As they grew taller, we had to move their beds to the “short side” of the room. My daughter’s bedroom was the former shed that was next to the house. It was small, but enough for the essentials – bed, dresser, and guinea pig cage.

I know other guys in ministry whose wives would not have settled for such a scenario. But my beloved helped me to embrace the ending, endure the in-between time, and start afresh. Our new pastorate had its ebbs and flows like all churches do. Financially, the Lord rescued us from debt and after four years we paid off the church mortgage in addition to buying a new parsonage, for cash! Numbers wise however, we struggled with the ability to retain people. The story ended after ten years of pastoring the church. We closed it down and hence, we faced another bitter ending.

Anne and I grieved the loss as our identities underwent change. People didn’t call me “Pastor Mike” anymore; we were not leading worship every week, which we both loved to do. Waves of vacancy beat upon our shoreline and it felt many times like our purpose was gone. On the sweet side, we spent the next four years just being “normal” people; husband and wife at the dinner table, no ministry talk. The circumstances became a new frame for our marriage portrait; we rediscovered the painting, the treasure of our friendship. Further transition ensued with the death of my Dad, the last living parent between us. New beginnings must come, and with them – endings. So I’ve resolved to face the fertile emptiness when it comes. This I know – the waves will recede but the fruit remains.

For the month of May and a week into June, I will be pressing pause on my online writing and this space will become a series of testimonies of what He births in the midst of delay, perplexity and pain. Author friends from around the world, who love words on a page (and Him even more), will share, here, how they have seen Him make the bitter, sweet.

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When Penny was first born, when the doctors shocked us with the news that she appeared to have Down syndrome, the presence of a third copy of her 21^st chromosome, I was hit hard with doubts. I doubted my abilities as a mother. I doubted my capacity to love a child who was different than I expected. And I doubted God’s intentions in creating her.

I thought there was a little girl hiding behind the extra chromosome, and I thought somehow we could peel back the genetic abnormality and discover my “real” daughter. Eventually I came to realize that there had never been any child other than the infant in my arms, other than the toddler learning sign language, other than the kindergartner giving me kisses and dancing with her father and asking to cuddle with her mom as she starts her school day.  With time I could see that the “real” Penny was right in front of me, filled with sweetness and joy and an ability to love without a filter, and I started to be grateful for the gift of her life.

But then I wondered whether that gift to us came at her expense. She was the one who had to wear braces on her ankles. She was the one with the risk of childhood leukemia. She was the one to endure a heart procedure and tubes in her ears and glasses. She was the one who couldn’t run as fast as the other kids, for whom learning took longer and required her to work harder. She was the one who struggled to make friends in school, who pulled hair or scribbled on a friend’s paper, who sat in the “thinking chair” at various points throughout the day.

I can’t say that I’ve received specific answers from God about why Penny has Down syndrome or why she struggles in her particular ways. But I’ve started to see that her life is much like mine, filled with contradictions, filled with brokenness and filled with beauty.

Penny is a gift to us, in all the ways her life brings us joy and slows us down and gives us eyes to see a richer experience of the world. She’s a gift to her community as she models love and compassion and perseverance. But her life is also a gift in and of itself, a gift that she too experiences in the giggles of snuggling under the covers with her little brother William, in the delight of walking home from school hand in hand with her friend Lily, in the wonder of receiving praise for good choices.

Countless other parents of children with Down syndrome tell a similar story. Ours is not a narrative of, “I once was really sad about it and now we’re okay.” It’s not, “I once experienced this as darkness and now my life is simply gray.” It’s not, “We’ve gone from negative to neutral.” But rather, from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy, from fear to wonder, from doubt to faith, from bitter to sweet.

Amy Julia Becker is the author of A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny and writes daily at Thin Places. She lives with her husband and three children in Lawrenceville, NJ.

Today we get to hear from Randy Bohlender. Nate and I are blessed to share a prayer room and a community with this family, who have said “yes” to Him, despite the stretching that their “yes” has meant. Randy and his wife, Kelsey, went from 3 to 9 children in five and a half years. Four of those “additions” were two sets of twins, both adopted shotgun-style. I don’t want to tell you too much of their story, just enough to tease you into seeing for yourself God’s hand in this family. 

Here’s (a piece of) his story:

We are a part of a community that maintains a 24/7 prayer meeting. For thirteen years, night and day, singers, instrumentalists and intercessors have played, sung, and prayed the scripture. It’s hard to explain the value of cumulative prayer, but it makes for a sacred space.

Our family tries to spend a portion of Christmas Eve there every year. It’s a wonderful place on that holy evening. Unfortunately, I’ve been guilty of attending in body but not in spirit.

Most years between Christmas and New Year, I dip into a mild depression.

It’s not the dark night of the soul. It’s more like the frustrated spot of the middle-aged guy. The spot would take a few variations from year to year but it revolved around this thought: “Am I happy with what I’ve accomplished this year?” And invariably, year after year, I wasn’t. Traditionally, I approach the end of the year with a jumble of unrealized expectations and the knowledge that they were unrealized largely because I had fallen short of my own goals. I’d start staring off into space around Thanksgiving and by the time I hit late December I was overwhelmed with a hodgepodge of would’ve, should’ve, could’ve thoughts weighing on me. Whatever I’d done, it was never enough.

The needle of the soul-o-meter dipped left that evening as I faced the ending of another year that didn’t turn out like I’d hoped. The book that I’d heard so much about writing was not yet started. We were selling our house but the house we were buying was in unlivable condition, having been empty for years. I had transitioned from a significant role in a ministry to what felt like a hanger-on, the team member who would not go away but didn’t really have any authority or duties either.

I looked down at Anna, asleep in my arm, completely unaware of the wrenching of my soul. She was perfectly content.In a moment, I heard the Whisper. I’ve heard it before. It’s not an audible voice, though I’d love it to be. Though technically silent, it echoed within me.

I know you’re not happy with what you’ve done this year.I confessed. I was crushed.

The Whisper reiterated. I know you’re not happy with what you’ve done this year … but what do you think about what I’ve done?

There is one in particular that tells a certain story.

The night before our college graduation, we gathered, my girlfriends — who had shared bathrooms and books and boyfriend stories for 4 years –gathered with our parents to celebrate at a friends’ cabin home. The next day we would hide our identities behind matching caps and gowns and walk uniformly through what would be the last stage of life that I’ve known to be uniform.

This picture on my mantel is a panorama of all of us, just shy of a dozen, in our pre-graduation glow. And our cardigan sweaters. Yes, almost all of us, donning pastels — probably swapped just hours before.

We matched, in so many ways.

Too early to have life’s scars and His ways make us different, we shared much in common at twenty-two.

And the next day was my last day, since, to rub elbows, daily, with others almost just like me.

In those days, sameness meant oneness to me. I wasn’t seasoned enough to distinguish between Jesus’ prayer that we would be one from our flesh’s migration towards those that are same. So, when I left those that were same (and, also, in many ways one!) I mourned. And for years when I couldn’t find anything quite like it, I felt the loss.

Until He started weaving my story with others that were in few ways same, but with whom I could find a connectedness of heart in Him that made us one.

The three ladies in their late forties when I was mid-twenties, who taught me to pray. The couple raising six, when we were childless, who gave us a vision for a future. The friend, forging her way through singleness, when I was en route to four kids, who knew the pain of my waiting, intimately. These are just a few of those, across the pew and at the church down the street, who gave me pictures of Him even when our sweaters didn’t match.

I’m learning that a significant part of loving Him, is loving the testimony of Him bubbling up in His people. This kind of love is imparted, not inherent. To look past the differences in another and search out the kindred hunger for Him which they have within requires God-perspective.

Growth doesn’t happen in a silo.

My flesh has me wired to draw lines in the sand between me and another, to find out who is “like me” and who isn’t. But His eyes see into the heart of a man. And many hearts share the same hunger but in a different skin.

Those who have challenged me the most to know Him more in this post-college life I live are often the ones most different than me. I sometimes think He likes it this way. He offends our flesh to stretch our hearts.

So as I lean deeply into His chest, to know the heartbeat of the God-Man for me, I can’t help but ask for His heart-beat for my neighbor, and the friend on the other side of the tracks.

He has a story welling up in them too. Am I humble enough to hear it? To receive what He has for me in it?

In the next 5 weeks this little space I’ve created to tell His story, through my lens, will be expanding. Between now and June 7th, I’d like to share with you the stories of some whose paths I’ve crossed who are writers. I want them to tell their story of how they have seen Him turn bitter into sweet (the theme of this blog — Proverbs 27:7).

In these weeks where I will be relatively radio-silent while their stories speak of Him, I’ll still be clicking away at these keys, trading in my late-night hours posting here for a focus on finishing a book I’ve been writing. I have eyes on June 7th, to wrap up the last chapter and to begin writing here again.

In the meantime, I can’t wait for you to meet my friends … some from across the pew, and others from across the ocean or the church down the street. They share two things in common with me and, some, not much more: they love weaving stories through the written word and they love this God-Man and want more of Him.

His story is up-springing. Everywhere.

And you’re going to relish these stories. I’m excited to share what I love!

First photo compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography. Second photo 

compliments of  Mandie Joy.

The tears of years break surface when we least expect them.

We were all packed in, beginning our cross-country trip back home, the home they’d now known for months. Out of the blue the one most steady in our grip burst the silence of six sets of eyes absorbing the great-wide highway’s unfamiliarity with her cries.

“Why did she leave me?” she sobbed.

I absorbed the shock. This was a first for her. What triggered this?

“Why did my birth mommy leave me?” she bellowed, her tears turning to wails.

And while I was formulating my response the one behind her joined in, wet-cheeked already, himself. Sympathy or empathy, I wasn’t sure.

Still floundering, I was processing, while the third, beside her, chimed in “why did my birth mommy have to die? why didn’t I ever get to know her?”

By that time I was crying, too, just as I am now as I type. This moment has been suspended in my timeline. How could one car, one family, hold all this pain?

And, finally, the fourth found her voice, through whimpers. “Why is God letting my birth mommy die?”

Like steam painting the windows, their questions left me momentarily blindsided. I sat, holding the shards of stories that had only just begun to be rebuilt.

I had met my broken pieces in my twenties but their innocence was stolen before they lost their baby teeth.

Who was I to walk them over this glass?

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Hallmark-kind of love surrounds my world. Like second-hand smoke, I receive definitions of love, all throughout my week, that betray its Source. Love, like candy — lustrous and sweet, leaves me, still, depleted.

How much of this do I inhale, unknowingly?

The sugar rush doesn’t last long when scars run deep.

Adoption has given me permission to see Love in a different light. Better, it’s kindly coerced me to see Love in a different light. From me to her — but first, from Him to me.

And this love, His love, is not natural.

If you’re stuck in a place where your love isn’t working as it should or it can’t match the wounded one receiving it — if you can’t feel it and you can’t muster enough force to produce it — rather than believing that this adoption or this circumstance has gone sour, might I suggest He wants you to inherit another way? Another kingdom’s love.

Adoption is my golden opportunity. (What’s yours?)

I can’t love them into wholeness with candy love.

Have I subtly abandoned great expectations, for me and for her, because the hand-me-down love I’ve borrowed from the world around me doesn’t work?

Mary-go-round rides and tickles and teddy bears are shadows for my littles up against the kind of love that moves and changes them. And me. I come up dry if I expect that what I’ve learned from the world around me about love will be enough to heal a heart that’s been broken.

The answer isn’t, then, to forfeit my expectation that love can heal. 

It’s to find another source.

The only true Source.

A love birthed through blood and sweat and the mess of the world, but untainted, is this love. His love. His love that was a Person, is a God-Man.

“Fierce love” as my friend coined it.

It asks me for everything, but when I get close enough to it, to Him, I can’t shed extra weight fast enough. My everything feels like giving nothing compared to Love that melts me when it touches me. It makes the dull parts of me passionate. Alive. His love looks deep into my dark, not away from it. And His eyes, they heal me. My wounds don’t scare Him, they invite Him.

Fierce Love is not threatened.

His love is a love that wars and wrestles and consumes all in its path. It lifts, alights and gives flight. It doesn’t just free, it releases.

His love is her answer. And it is mine.

Adoption lays bare my lack. I can’t love her with this love unless I’m coming to know it myself. Daily. Hourly.

Enter adoration.

It takes His Word and makes it into my vernacular. My understanding of Him moves from the pulpit’s echo or a past story, retold as today’s testimony, to my food. My daily bread. Adoration is not natural and will, in no way, be easy to my flesh.

Just like, at times, loving her.

His love, too, takes practice.

Practice in writing His Words over my moldy understanding of Him and living His love over her wounds that need more than an ice cream run.

Adoration is pushing a pause button on the world around us and tuning our ears to the only sound that will give us real life.

It is training our hearts to know Love.

A wild love that, though work to receive and pour out at the onset, is infinitely better than any warm, fuzzy but fleeting love this world can offer me. Or her.

Every Monday my column to the right-side of my blog moves here, front and center, and I invite you to join me adoring Him from your kitchens, your cubicles, or on your morning commute. Because we had one of those weeks, my Monday turned into Wednesday. And now it’s Thursday. So here we are, wrapping up the week, with adoration.

I can’t think of anything better. Friends, this habit of adoration is re-writing my understanding of love. Might you consider giving it a try?

Here’s what it looks like written out:

“… that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith …” Ephesians 3:17**

How many times have I read this, studied it, yet You have new words for me today, tucked in Your Word.

I worship You, God of new, who is always making new out of old. There is nothing stale in Your presence. 

Every moment is ready to birth new understanding of You. You pervade a room. Tedium is from man, so far from You, God. 

And it’s with this ever-giving life You ask to dwell. In me. 

Because love dwells. It doesn’t flit and flutter. It rests, within.

Who am I to hold You, inside of me? Your offer speaks more of who You are than what I’m not. You share Your home with the soiled so that we might know what it means to live clean. You don’t just brush over, sweep from a distance, You dwell.

My heart, so thick and often burdened, was made to know the freedom of being a dwelling place for Another. This current rough spot is not my end point, it’s Your opportunity. You are making Your home in me. So that I might drink, daily — hourly, of the Love I only barely know.

I adore You, oh God who loves tirelessly.

I worship You, Daddy, who seeks a place to dwell not just visit.

You make my life Your home. You expand my heart to receive You. You stretch and prod and push so that, after the pain of the moment, I might have more room to receive more of You. You purpose and Your eyes are on a dwelling, not just an overnight stay. You are shaping me — yes, me! — into one who can hold You, display You. You are allowing me to be a window into a beauty I’ve not yet fully known. 

I receive You as I reveal You.

You occupy my splintered floorboards and cracked walls and You restore, by Your very life, within me. I love You, willing Father to settle into my mess so that it is no longer mess, but You.

My heart was made for more than turmoil and strife, it was made to thrive, by You, inhabiting me. And every day, new ground is offered its opportunity to be won as You claim what was and is always Yours … me.

+++++++++

Photos compliments of Mandie Joy. 

You may have noticed I no longer have an option for comments on my posts. For a little explanation to this shift, read Why No Comments? 

**I absolutely treasure your stories. I love the memorials coming my way. What’s being erected over your lives, I am celebrating: He is good. With a life of four-being-restored and two of us not too far ahead of them, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to respond to every email, message and comment. Though the demands under my roof may not allow much time to respond to these, please know I am honored by what you’ve sent me and the time you took to tell me your story. They are gifts to me.

***For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. To see all my “Morning Chai” devotionals, use this link:  http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/. And you can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side.

I knew it would.

I’d been here before.

The most beautiful part of waiting is receiving His response after your heart chose expectation instead of fear. I’ve been in both shoes, frequently, and choosing the former always makes the bitter taste sweet.

She was in the middle of her contribution to our dinnertime banter, tentatively trying her hand at directing what she had, once, only just observed. Her “how about, Daddy, we …” wasn’t our typical fare but we jumped on board with her suggestion. She scootched herself against the back of her chair and sat up, tall. She wore ownership.

And as the quickened chatter (which happens when life just produced a day with oh-so-much to recount) continued, time stood still for me. Her eyes found mine in that moment, fire-sparks underneath their dark shades. What once were hollow sockets which held yellow-stained symbols of a life lived bare and broken, were now magnetic.

And that moment produced the feeling for which I’d been waiting and praying and expecting. She is mine.

First and second photo compliments of Mandie Joy. Third photo compliments 

of Cherish Andrea Photography.

The moment we’d been awaiting for 10 days finally happened.

The nest we’d been fostering, unknowingly for some time, now housed a family. The incubation period was over, our robin’s eggs had hatched!

I watched the flesh stretched across these nascent babies wrinkle as their mouths released yawns their eyes couldn’t yet see. They were as small as my finger, some only hours old. They nestled, flesh against flesh, as if the shells that contained their frames never existed.

Their world was one I’d never stopped to consider.

My children marveled at a sight that was a first for their mommy, too, and the rest of our dinnertime chatter [Continue reading over here today -->]