Status Report Mr. Spock. . .

This blog has been silent a lot lately. 

So I thought it was time to break silence with a bit of a status report. 

But let's back up a bit to see where we are. Exactly 17 months ago, Eric and I decided to go forward and begin proceedings on a sibling adoption from Lesotho. We are still currently waiting for there to be a matching meeting where our dossier will be matched with a waiting sibling set. We have no idea when this meeting could be. It could be next week, could be next year. 

About 10 months ago, Eric was asked to consider applying for a new job. He did--got the job and started it at the end of April. 

Since these two things have happened (or not happened), our lives have been turned completely upside down. There really is no other way to describe these past few months. We've combined the major, life-changing actions of job change with the emotional up-and-down process of an adoption. We have been totally changed, yet I have a difficult time explaining exactly how. 

About the time that we were considering the new job, I heard a song that changed my perspective. This job came with a significant cut in pay. As we were struggling with what that would look like, I heard this song (Choose song #7--Enough) by Shaun Groves. 

The text is from Proverbs 30:7-9 and reads like this:

Two things I ask of you, Lord;
    do not refuse me before I die:
⁸ Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
    give me neither poverty nor riches,
    but give me only my daily bread. 
⁹ Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
    and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ 
Or I may become poor and steal,
    and so dishonor the name of my God.

And in that moment, that was my prayer, that whatever happened we would have enough. Primarily, at that time, my concern was money. Just enough money to pay our bills and pay adoption expenses. (Side note: my dad once told me that such prayers were foolish--now I understand what he meant, not to not pray them, but that they often have results that we could never imagine.)

But instead in these months of transition, waiting, uncertainty, and change, God has given us only enough of everything. 

• Enough failure to make us dependent on Him and each other;
• Enough (barely) sleep and coffee to make us function;
• Enough hope (but not much) that someday this adoption will actually happen;
• Enough friends and family supporting us to know that God has hands and feet to carry us when we need it; 
• Enough money to meet our requirements (but my definition of enough seems to be more differ slightly from God's).

And we've been fortunate to have our eyes opened that in some powerful, life-changing ways, he's given more than enough:

      -More grace and forgiveness than I have ever deserved

      -More blessings in the form of the love & joy of my family than I had ever realized

So what's our status? To be honest, we're hanging in there. Some days are smooth and easy, some days we want to throw in every towel we have, hunker down inside our home and close our ears and eyes to the world, some days we want to quit--because waiting is hard and emotional and there are no easy answers, no clear paths and life was easier then. 

How are we going to make it? Simple, we wait--wait for God and his provision and timing and grace. We wake up each morning and thank God for the day that we are given and use it to his glory, whether in the workplace or in our home. We pray for ourselves, our family, and our kids waiting to come home. We keep our eyes open to the magnificent ways God blesses us in every single season, day, hour and minute (even when we don't always understand). 

And we will remember, no matter how we feel, that God is a good God

All the time. 

Of Dinosaurs and Creation

As I knew that would happen with the prospect of homeschooling, I knew that there would be topics that I would need to discuss and teach my kids that would require a firm stance, a way of believing and also a way of teaching that could rile some people but also prepare my kids for real questions that they might encounter. I just didn't think that it would happen this soon.

Here are my two examples:

First, dinosaurs. Frankly, J loves 'em. Can't get enough of looking at books and pictures of the things. Is even starting to be brave enough to visit some museums that have skeletons (although they are still pretty big and scary.) In my opinion this is one time that I am glad that he can't read, because I am not ready to explain all this stuff.

But here's how I stand on all of that. First, I believe that there really were dinosaurs. I have seen their bone in rock and fully believe that God created them. I fully believe that God created this world with his Hand. It is a beautiful creation and I am thankful for that. But what I don't know is the history of that creation. We have been given a story that explains it to us in Genesis, but I am not convinced that it is a literal telling of God's creative acts for a few reasons. First, the earth is old. Rocks and mountains and valleys and oceans--they are old. How old? I can't answer that. Second, It is mentioned in the New Testament that God's understanding of time is vastly different than our very limited human one.

(You know the old joke, a man asks God what a million dollars is worth. God replies, "a penny." Man then asks, how long is a million years? God answers, "a minute." Man asks, thoughtfully, "can I have a penny?" God answers with a smile, "in a minute.")

But I have a very hard time swallowing the years that are given for approximate lifetimes of said dinosaurs. 350 million years is just a conceptually tough thing for me. And there are lots of things that we don't know--so it just seems like wallowing in the unknown. But I am not sure how quite to explain all of that that is God honoring, not stupid-ifying, and comprehendable to the kids. Thankfully, I haven't had the questions yet.

The second example of something I have encountered that I wasn't prepared for is:

Popular "Greenism" I don't know if this is what it should be called, but you all know exactly what I am talking about. My kids have heard some pretty harmless stuff (that I have supervised and know about) that comes from an environmentalist perspective. I thought it was all okay until one of them said to me. "Mommy, we can't chop down any trees or else we will all die." This raised serious alarms for me.

In all things I want our attitudes, actions and reactions to be God honoring. But I don't think this is it. I have long been thinking about what a Godly approach to our environment should be and the other night my dad helped me hit it on the head. The environmentalist thought thinks, "We are harming the world. We need to save it." While yes, humanity has done great damage to God's gifts to us, I can't find anything scripturally that calls us to save the world. Instead we are called to be carers, responsible stewards, this theme is repeated in a few places that I can thing of. While some actions may be the same, the thought process behind the actions has shifted signifigantly.

An aside: if we begin to think of the world and our corporate Christian responsibility to be stewardly of all God's resources to us, it is a shame that it is scientists leading us towards these thoughts and not the churches.

So, I have been started to think seriously about how to begin to shift the kid's thoughts on God's creation, so they aren't caught up in the consumerism (and built in panic and fear) of it, but instead in the stewardship and responsibility of living fully as God's redeemed people who honor Him and reflect His love on the whole world. I haven't yet come up with any great ideas, but I will be sure to let you know when I do.

Look What I did!

I'm a little proud of me, hopefully not in a vain, prideful conceited way, just proud of my accomplishment. What did I do? I made my daughter her Easter dress. As in I sewed, clothing, on a machine! I think I am so cool. (For full disclosure, OG was supposed to have a matching dress, but honestly, I'm not that good! I couldn't get both done in time.)

So here are the progressive pics. I ordered a kit from a cute little etsy shop that gave me everything I needed, including the fabrice already cut out and marked, so all I had to do is follow the instructions and voila, a dress. I haven't worked with my sewing machine in eaons. J & K wiped quite a layer of dust off of it. So in about 5 hours total time, I made a dress with cap sleeves and a cute ruffle!

And finally, my super-cute, slightly relcutant model. Beautiful, don't you think?

Oh, I was supposed to keep that?

Today has been a lesson in the humility of being, well, a human--who sometimes doesn't get things to right. Case in point: those little green immunization cards that the hospital and doctor record all the immunizations a child receives, well, you are actually supposed to keep them, and keep them up-to-date and then be able to present them whenever another doctor needs them. I don't remember anyone ever telling me that--it was never mentioned in my pre-natal classes or at the first doctor appointment or even at the hospital. So today when the doctor's office called to remind us of an appointment and to bring those records with us, I was stumped as to how to do that and honestly felt that somehow this made me a failure as a parent. Especially since I searched the whole house for the dumb thing that I knew I had been kicking around for a few years (he is five after all.) Luckily, I have a gracious doctor's office who forgave me and said that this was a minor thing, but we laughed together at the reminder for humilty. I guess today was my own learning moment.

Things that Warm my Heart

So ever since we decided to do this home school thing, I am noticing that our family does a lot of learning all time. Its like second nature--I don't even realize that we are doing it. Take yesterday, for example. I went to the library to pick up some books--and ended up getting some books on knights and princesses from the Middle Ages. One of them is a book of Medieval art and what it shows about the life and times of being a knight. And why did I get them? Well, Friday is J's birthday party and it is themed on knights, so I thought that we should know some stuff about them. Now we know what the weapons looked like (yeah, like I needed to give any incentive to like violence) and what the different decorations on knight's shields said about them. During church, I went a bit further in my thinking and found a couple passages that talked about God as a shield and putting on the whole armor of God--perfectly related for a boy who loves this stuff. I can't wait to share that with him tonight. We plan to somehow translate that to our party this weekend.

But over the past week, something happened that just warmed my heart and almost made me cry. It also gave me every bit of ammunition that I needed to justify my decision to home school. Friday I was diligently making my grocery list when J said he wanted to help write the list. I thought I would write one word and then he would copy it--not so. I told him that I needed milk--before I could spell it for him, he sounded out the first letter and then wrote it down. He was able to accurately do this with just about all the consonants. I gave him the vowels. I was so proud: to know that the way that we live encourages him try new things, things that are hard; to know that i can guide him to learning new things; just to know that we can do it. K also played along, drawing pictures of the things that I needed for her own grocery list. It is amazing and humbling and wonderful and fantastic to see this growth in them. I am excited for a thousand more moments like this as they each learn something that excites them--whether it be in art or music or math or science or nature or reading or history.