Sometimes God cancels your good plans to accomplish His best plan. I had that thought while decorating our Christmas tree this weekend. From a box of tissue wrapped ornaments, I pulled a delicate wooden ornament painted red and green and yellow. “Melkam Gena” it said, which is Amharic for Merry Christmas. I held the ornament for…
adoption
Remember
The other night, I curled up with a book in what my kids call “Mom’s Corner” of the couch. We bought our gray sectional last year because of that corner. Well, technically we bought it because our fifteen-year-old sofa was just about to fall apart. But, I sat in the corner of the floor display…
Very Good Gifts
We pushed back and forth on the patio swing. He fights the lilt because it gives him a little bit of motion sickness, but after all these years together he knows that I will always force the swing to move if I’m sitting on it. Otherwise, it’s just a chair. Our boys run around the backyard…
How to Have Joy When the Holidays are Hard
It was December, 2015. I’d never approached the holidays on such shaky ground. We pulled out the decorations and sipped hot cider while Christmas songs spilled from our favorite holiday Pandora station. If you’d seen us through the windows of our home, it was likely the warm, sugary image of holiday perfection. But tears streaked…
A Thousand Times, Yes
I was sitting at a table in a Starbucks seven hours away from home. We’d come under the pretense of wanting coffee, but the real reason was we needed to feel normal for an hour. After ordering, we crowded tightly around the table. Our seven-year-old was watchful as I gently pulled the week-old baby from…
The Goodness of God in a Closed Womb
Her words were a sledge hammer to my future. “It is unlikely that you will ever conceive.” The doctor patted me on the shoulder awkwardly. Just like that, the future I had assumed and imagined ended in an explosion of grief. Raining down on me for the next decade were shards of dreams, double-edged fissures…
An Invitation to Hurt is an Invitation to Trust: guest post at The Content Mom
There was no way we could hide it from him. We’d brought a baby home with every intention of adopting him, but the entire process was being derailed. Our seven-year-old was with us from the moment the plan began to unravel, and I knew I couldn’t hide it. He was watching and asking valid questions….
{I’m trying to look up}
“For every look at self, take ten looks to Christ.” ~Robert Murray M’Cheyne “So I gaze on You in the sanctuary to see Your strength and Your glory.” Psalm 63:2 “When I tried to understand all this, it seemed hopeless until I entered God’s sanctuary.” Psalm 73:16-17a Yesterday I sat at my desk and wrote…
To the Brink: a Tribute to Parents
The first eight months of our youngest son’s life epitomized uncertainty to me. I rocked a baby against my chest every night, a solid fragile weight pressed next to my heart, not knowing if I would ever be able to call him “son.” It was the riskiest version of love I’d ever known. As every adoptive parent…