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Banana Bread Therapy

At the end of an exhausting week, I feel like I only know three things:
1) I want to follow Jesus
2) I’ve over extended myself this week to a point of being too tired to do a whole lot of anything, including following Jesus…or anyone, anywhere.
3) Banana bread & worship music refreshes my heart and soul.

bananabreadtherapy~

Cooking and cleaning have always been my weird coping mechanisms. That’s right, I said cooking. Go ahead, laugh, I’ll wait.

…

Okay, now that those of you who know me well have gotten a good laugh in, and those of you who don’t know me are confused, allow me to explain:

Historically, I’m not a great cook.

While I come from a family full of wonderful Mexican-American women who are master chefs and bakers, I technically was raised three hours away from them by a woman whose idea of cooking involved taking something out of a store bought freezer bag and putting it into the oven. So naturally when I got out on my own, I didn’t have the first idea of what to do in a kitchen.

I’m talking the “I’ve burnt Malt-o-meal” level of not knowing how to cook…

Thankfully over the last few years I’ve figured out how to prepare not only edible food, but really delicious fancy meals that I never would’ve thought possible.

(Unfortunately I didn’t acquire this talent until the year after I taught a cooking class at DSS. Consider this my formal and utmost apology if you were one of the students who suffered through that hellish year with me… Y’all seriously deserve an award for not killing me; especially on the days when I gave you knives & that became a very real possibility.)

Anywho, even before I actually knew how to cook well, banana bread was a simple enough recipe that I could whip up a batch without giving anyone food poisoning or burning down my house (both solid benefits in my opinion).

The simplicity of the recipe also allowed for me to accomplish something while not using a whole lot of mental power– banana bread provided me time to process and pray.

I’ve made banana bread at weird times in my life:

There’s been grief banana bread when I processed the deaths of my grandfather and best friend, and again when I lost custody of my god-kids.

There’s been worried banana bread when I’ve sobbed and begged God not to take my mother away from me because of her failing health.

I’ve gone on banana bread baking binges during times of stress (Usually during undergrad and grad school finals when I probably should have been studying. C’est la vie.) and extreme anger (Some girls destroy their ex’s belongings, some bake bread. Sue me…)

In the weirdest way possible, banana bread is the way that I connect with God when I can’t really figure out what else to do.

And at the beginning of this week, in true “God knows” fashion, a ridiculous amount of bananas were donated to the school. On Monday, when the bananas were still ripe and delicious, I didn’t think much of it. But then again, at that point in my week, I was still rearing to go…

But slowly, as God has shown up dramatically in more areas of my life and the school this week, the enemy has slowly begun to beat the living daylights out of me.

The last three days of my week have been annoyingly marked by spiritual attack. Thoughts akin to You’re an idiot. Why on earth do you even work at the Street School? You’re not doing anything here. You should just leave. You’re worthless. You couldn’t even be a good mother-figure, that’s why God took away your kids. Why are you taking care of Hailey? You’re terrible at this. mixed with incessant and unexplainable car problems left me exhausted and crumpled into a heap by this morning.

“Coincidentally”, shortly after confiding in a friend this morning that I felt beat down, I glanced over and noticed those same bananas sitting on the snack shelf in my classroom. In just a few days time, they had gone from the perfect snack to slouchy, brown banana-bread-only material (an amusing metaphor for how I felt this morning). In that moment, I knew exactly how I would be spending my night.

And so, this afternoon I bagged up the squishy banana mess, grabbed the few cans of the disgusting unsweetened apple sauce that someone brought me from a food bank a few weeks ago, and I headed home.

With my hair thrown up into a bun and worship music blasting, I went to work– mashing, mixing, and stirring– praying and arguing with God out loud like an absolute nut, alone in my kitchen. Within the hour, my house was filled with the familiar smell of banana bread and my heart felt a million times lighter.

However, the struggle still isn’t over.

The grief of losing my god-kids still hasn’t subsided even after four years, and given what week it is, I don’t expect it to any time soon. The fear of my car imploding and not having money to replace it still lingers in the back of my mind. But the beautiful pictures of God drawing my students to Himself, bringing ex-students back to the school to heal old wounds, and breaking down walls within my own heart that I didn’t even realize existed has silenced the nagging voice of the enemy and reminded me that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
   His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might, He increases strength through banana bread.”

(Isaiah 40:28-29…mostly)

 

If you need banana bread therapy too, I highly recommend this recipe. It’s healthy, sugar free, and FREAKING AWESOME.

Also, if you intend to use the above recipe, I agree with Kathryn Bronn’s assertion that you can never have too much cinnamon. You can read about what God’s teaching her in the kitchen, by clicking here. She’s marvelous; you won’t regret it.

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Adoption changes everything

“You must be so strong.”

“Adoption is the most selfless thing you could have done, you know, given the circumstances.”

“I can’t even imagine how hard that had to have been, even though they weren’t your biological kids.”

People say these words when they hear our story– the story of how we gave up lost …whatever happened with my godkids four years.

I don’t tell the story often because if you look at my life today, you probably wouldn’t guess that things used to be entirely different.

I also don’t tell our story often because unlike the people who try to console me, I simply don’t have words.

As a writer it’s frustrating when you can’t come up with flowery words for something you want to describe in detail, or when you can’t even think of a metaphor for the situation when you want to be more discrete.

There is no way I could ever describe the way my stomach churns every time I wonder if I made the right decision, testifying that my babies were better off in a home full of strangers than with the people they grew up calling their family.

There is no way I could explain the splintered feeling I get deep in my being whenever someone tosses a “you’re so strong” my way in regards to the adoption, and all I want to do is scream, “NO, I’M NOT!! I’m a freaking mess over here. I just want my kids back.”

There are no words that even get close to expressing the feeling I experienced four years ago when I handed our case worker the brown paper bag containing Mary Ray’s 6th birthday presents– presents that she likely unwrapped in a family visitation room while she sat, confused and terrified, with her 2 year old little brother waiting to be placed in a foster home, just hours after the judge ruled that they would not be returning to the home they knew.

There is no synonym for brokenness or pain like that. 

I don’t have words that accurately describe the way that pain grips my heart when I think about someone else tucking my sweet Mary Ray into bed at night, let alone tonight, on the eve of her 10th birthday.

As I sit here and ruminate on the “selfless” aspect of adoption, all that crosses my mind is how selfish I really am– How desperately I want to know what my babies’ lives look like today, no matter the cost…

On days like today, the only words that come to mind, come in the form of questions:

Did they get goodnight kisses? Did their new mommy or daddy read them a bedtime story? Are they eating their vegetables? Does someone sing to them from the front seat of the car on the way home from school?

Do they know how desperately I long to read them stories from the Bible each night? Do they know their worth? Do they love Jesus? Do they know that Jesus loves them? Do they know that I love them?!

Do they even remember me?

Does Mary Ray remember the Build-A-Bear that was in that brown bag four years ago? Has she ever looked at its tag and read my phone number, wondering whose it was and why it was there?

I don’t know… And I may never know on this side of Heaven.

All that I do know, all that I cling to within this situation– this never ending battle with my selfish and broken momma heart– is Jesus.

Over the last four years of birthdays and Christmases, first and last days of school, and all the ordinary days in between, Jesus has been teaching me what adoption really is.

Yes, adoption involves pain because for there to be a need for adoption, there has to be a lack of something else– a lack of someone to be there to take care of you.

But adoption is so much more than the pain. Adoption is a display of Supreme Love because adoption was created by God Himself.

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Holy Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Romans 8:14-19)

God understands the pain of those learning how to come to terms with earthly adoption; He gave up His Son, that we might have perfect union with Himself. He understands what it is to turn His face from His Son, for His good and the good of all man kind.

As my students make fun of me for saying, “Jesus knows, child.”

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16)

And just like I struggle to find words to tell the story of the two little humans who shaped me the most, there aren’t words for the type of beauty or grace that is found at the throne of God. There simply aren’t…

So while my heart grieves and I kneel before the throne, begging for my babies to know that they are loved by me if by no one else on earth, He has brought me to a new place this year. A place where I can cry out just one simple prayer:

“Lord, this year on her birthday, let my sweet baby girl know that she has been adopted by the most beautiful and glorious Father in the universe. For every ounce of my love for my babies fails in comparison to the ocean that is Yours.”

sweet

Happy 10th birthday sweet girl. I la-la-la-love you, no matter how many miles there are between us.

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Throw me in the deep end

Like most people who work in ministry, I’m not super great at “self-care”. There are days when I chase high schoolers into and around our building for so long that I forget to eat lunch. There are days that I nap in my parked car with Hailey because I’m exhausted from work and don’t want to risk waking her from her afternoon nap by transferring her into her crib. There have been days where I have been going-going-going from 7 am to 10 pm and have forgotten to drink water– a stupid idea when you live in Denver, at altitude.

The outcome of this hair-brained, busy lifestyle? Absolute exhaustion.

Please don’t get me wrong or think that I’m complaining here because I’m not. I LOVE caring for people. Chasing my hot-mess high schoolers around, caring for baby Hay, making meals for my friends, and having mass gatherings in my home are some of my favorite things. God reveals so much of His beauty to me in those chaotic moments.

But when I don’t pause to take a breath, a drink, or have a snack, I eventually crumble.

By then, I’m usually too tired to eat or drink and I usually just lay on my bed and fall asleep, only to wake up even more hungry or thirsty. It’s a self perpetuating cycle and if I was stupid enough to allow it to continue on forever, it would literally kill me.

My spiritual life is no different.

In the chaos of being the hands and feet of Jesus– of begging high school students to do their homework and driving them to youth group, of putting tiny shoes back on a rambunctious 1-year-old for the umpteenth time that day, and making yummy snacks for Gospel community– it is easy for me to forget to spend time with the One that I am working so hard for.

And over time, even if that time is only a few days, if I don’t drink from the Living Water, I eventually become dehydrated.

Last night, I laid in bed after one-heck-of-a-day at work and simply stared at my Bible and the glass of water sitting next to each other on my floor.

Physically and spiritually dehydrated from my own time-management issues, I contemplated downing the whole glass of water and staying up to finish reading the last two chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. But instead, even though I knew that I needed the life that both of those items provided, I simply rolled over and shut my eyes.

As I laid there, the story of the lame man in John 5: 1-9 ran through my head:

“After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids– blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.”

Lord, I feel like I need someone to throw me into the Water. I’m literally too tired and dehydrated to even get up and walk, I prayed as I dozed off.

This morning I woke up still dehydrated in both senses. And just an hour into my work day, I had a few  of my students absolutely unleash on me, essentially telling me where I ‘could go’ and how I could ‘get there’, if you get my drift…

After those conversations came to an end, I sat in my empty classroom and stared at the Bible next to my computer, letting my thoughts get the best of me. I need someone to throw me into the Water.  I don’t really even feel like doing it myself right now. As I stared at my Bible and examined my own stubborn heart, tears of exhaustion and grief from how my week was already shaping up splashed against the inside of my glasses.

A few moments later, the history teacher burst through my classroom door, disrupting my zoned out state, with a Bible in hand.

“Here. This is what I’m talking about in chapel today,” he said as he flopped it open and nodded to the highlighted chunk in the middle of the page. “It looks like you could use it a little early.”

Matt1128

As I read the words in the yellow box, I laughed involuntarily and blurted out, “Shut up, Fuller!”

“No, seriously. That’s what I’m doing for chapel today! Crazy, huh? God knows…”

As he laughed and walked out of my classroom, I started getting choked up again. (#typical) My eyes read over the words I had convinced myself that I had committed to memory years ago, but clearly I still have some work to do…

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

All week long (Yes, it is only Tuesday, but OH MAN does it feel like it should be Friday) I have sat next to the pool filled with Living Water like the man in John 5– I was a dehydrated mess, refusing to drink until I was too weak to get myself up and lower myself into the pool to be refreshed by His goodness.

I’ve carried my Bible in my purse like I always do. I’ve taken it out and put it on my bed, on my floor, on my desk, and in my lap, but I haven’t opened it.

I don’t have any good reason or excuse except simply to say that I was dehydrated and that is entirely on me. I didn’t take the time to read or spend time with God the way that I knew I needed to. I didn’t run to Him in prayer when the proverbial “ish” hit the fan and I almost tackled a student yesterday trying to protect one of my co-workers. I was too proud and exhausted and knowingly unworthy to come to my Father and ask for help, and in doing so, I allowed my problems to grow bigger and more difficult for me to manage– I allowed myself to shrivel up and become dry.

But thankfully, God is a God who cares about my tiny prayers just as much as He cares about my “big” ones.

Through Fuller coming in and “throwing me into the pool” by handing me an open Bible, open to the exact thing that I needed to read at that exact moment, I found refreshment for my soul and an answer to the prayer that I had been praying since last night.

Was this life giving moment meant to be the thing that completely re-hydrated my soul? No, of course not.

But it was the catalyst to me spending my entire lunch hour doing the very thing that I love the most– spending time with Jesus.

Do I still suck at taking care of myself and currently have a dehydration headache from still not drinking enough water? Why, yes. Yes, I do. But I know that this is something that God is working on within me, both metaphorically and literally.

Are you weary? Burdened? Exhausted? Dehydrated?

Come and taste that the Lord is Good; see that He keeps His promises, His promises to love you well forever regardless of whether you are bright and shiny or dry, cracked, and cranky.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

(Matthew 11:28-30)

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Oh Lord, when I wander…

Bindmywanderingheart

The trouble with being a wanderer is that you weren’t created to sit still. You were created for climbing mountains, trying new foods, and hurtling through meadows on horseback.

When you’re a wanderer, you always know somewhere in the back of your mind that every moment of happiness where you are, with the ones you love, is fleeting because you were created to GO.

In one regard, this knowledge makes each of these moments more precious; in another, each of these moments becomes a heartbreak. A heartbreak that this–whatever “this” is– is but a mere season of life.

For the last year and a half as I prepared for my now non-move to Texas, I was reminded of this– the specialness of every Friday night campfire with friends, every roommate breakfast on the porch, and every family dinner.

Somehow these special moments are easier to recognize and appreciate when you are the one leading the change of seasons and going to the “New”.

But what about when you are the one sending the people you love into the New while you stay in the old?

How do you deal with the goodbyes and final in-person chats when you so desperately want to Go too, yet know in the pit of your stomach that now is a season of staying and sending…not a season of new cultures, new foods, or new mountains? How do you send your fellow wanderers well?

~

I’m an emotional human being; always have been, probably always will be.

I cry out of joy when I’m happy. I cry out of frustration when I’m stressed. I cry out of panic when I’m overwhelmed. I cry out of sorrow when I’m sad. (Being such a sap isn’t exactly my favorite quality of myself, but it’s how God designed me and I’m learning to embrace it as I age.)

Monday was one of those crying days. I fell asleep crying Sunday night and woke up crying again Monday morning.

Monday was the day that Amy– my roommate and fellow wanderer, one of my best friends, my sister-in-Christ who has become like a real sister to me over the last two years– moved away in preparation for her journey to live life overseas.

This is the woman who God originally used to dupe me into somehow leaving my heart in countries that I have never visited; the one who I so lovingly say “ruined my life” by dragging me to Perspectives where God broke my heart for the Nations.

And now, after what seems like a long wait (but what has really only been about a year) God is moving her overseas to do His work for the next eight months.

I’m overjoyed for her, really I am. Yet I am so incredibly heartbroken for myself and my community as we essentially mourn the temporary loss of a sister, a roommate, a gospel community leader, and a dear friend.

I admit, the wanderer in me is jealous. Jealous of her leaving. Jealous that she is the one moving into the New. Jealous that this season of her life is becoming what the two of us have prayed about for so long.

I am overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by our empty white bedroom. Overwhelmed by the barrage of emotions that we so intentionally put off until the moment it was time for her to pack her truck and move away. (Literally, the last moment. We suck at goodbyes.) I am overwhelmed by my selfishness in that I want to keep her forever and not share her with the Nations, even though I say that “I would give up everything” if they only could come to know Christ. Hmmph.

I am sad. Sad that I don’t have my sister-girl to giggle with at night before we go to sleep. Sad that I perfectly quoted a line from Bad NFL lip reading last night and no one seemed to get the hilarity of the situation. I am simply sad that this season of life is over.

As we laid in bed Sunday night before she left, I jokingly told her that when she woke up in the morning, that I would be the one who would be gone, and that she would have to deal with me leaving her. It was my faint wanderer attempt at being the one in control here. The one leaving and going into the New, not the one being left here in the old.

I long for the New. And just like my desire to control this silly situation by being the one to leave, I know that this longing and the way I continuously idolize Going and place it over God is the sickening, sinful junk in my heart coming out yet again.

I long to long for God, and God alone. But oh man, is it hard when I am one who is prone to wander, both physically and within my own heart.

So while the Yarrow Homestead and our group of friends learns how mourn and adjust to this new season of life, while I redecorate our my room, while I find other people to quote stupid Youtube videos back and forth with, I am left with these questions:

Do I trust that God has given me this urge to Go for a reason?

Do I trust God with the life of my wonderful sister-girl, even when we can’t talk about the highlights and struggles of our days each evening?

Do I trust that there is purpose in this season of staying? In the weird conflicted pain of sending my loved ones away when all I want to do is Go myself?

Do I believe that God is Good, even when I don’t get what I want, when I want it?

~

“Jesus, sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood

Ode to grace, how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be
And let Thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above”

(Come Thou Fount)

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Jesus, smooth jazz, & tiny humans

I had a music professor in college who always said, “Life is like smooth jazz– it always doubles back when you least expect it.”

This school year, I feel like I’m getting a hearty dose of this lovely life lesson.

Three years ago when I moved to the West Campus of the Denver Street School, I couldn’t have been less excited about where God had placed me.

All summer that year I had prayed and prayed, begging God to open a paid job for me at the school… and when He finally did, it was in the last place I wanted to work– the school nursery.

Seeing as I was finishing up my English degree and starting my teaching licensure classes, I wanted a position where I would work with high school students. I had spent the last two years student teaching English at the East Campus and part of me wanted the familiarity of teaching a similar age group.

But part of me– the deeply wounded and prideful part of me– didn’t want to deal with preschoolers and babies because holding and loving babies who weren’t mine was just too painful.

At the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, I was still broken-hearted from losing custody of my two beautiful god-children less than a year before.

I (the girl who had spent the last six years doting on the beautiful children God had placed in my life) spent the majority of my time trying to get away from children. I didn’t hold my friends’ newborns. I didn’t attend baby showers or birthdays. I just didn’t want to be near babies or kids.

So when God opened a door for a nursery job, I nearly slammed the door right back in His face… but I knew I couldn’t. The only few logical brain cells I had left, pushed me to accept the job and walk into my tiny classroom everyday.

But I was bitter. Oh, was I bitter…

I didn’t want to hold, or rock, or nurture someone elses’ babies.

I wanted mine. My babies. My tiny dysfunctional family.

So everyday that first quarter, as I rocked the babies to sleep in the nursery, I argued with God.

This isn’t fair.

How on earth could you do this to me?

How could you take my babies and give me this stupid job?

Why couldn’t you make this easier on me?

Do you just enjoy watching me squirm, God?!

What. The. Actual. Heck.

To put the icing on my bitter-pitty-party cake, it seemed that Romans 8:28 continuously came up in every Christian setting I entered. Sunday morning sermons. Staff devotions. Bible studies. Coffee dates with friends. Coffee mugs. They all read,

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.“

Every time I heard this truth, I would mentally retort, “There’s no way you could ever make this ‘good’, God. Nothing will ever heal this. Nothing could fix this much brokenness/anger/sadness/[insert the emotion of the day here].”

Yet He met my challenge.

Maybe not right away… but He did it…

Fast forward a year and a half:

By this point, I was no longer the nursery worker at the West Campus. Instead, a year and a half later, I was the cooking teacher. [Have I ever mentioned that God seriously has a sense of humor? If you’ve seen me cook (or catch things on fire while trying to cook) you understand what I’m getting at here…]

On the last day of third quarter, I was packing my bag of teacher tricks and preparing to leave for a much needed spring break when a very distraught student slammed out of the science room across the hall, ran past me, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door of the school.

Being the notoriously nosy teacher that I am, I left my bag in the hallway and followed her out the front door of the school. By the time I found her, she was sitting in the middle of a parking space in the front parking lot, sobbing.

For a while, I simply sat next to her, staring ahead at the road, neither of us saying a word. After maybe five minutes of her working to catch her breath, disjointed phrases started pouring out of her mouth.

“I failed science. I’m a failure. I’m never going to graduate. I need to graduate but I’m never going to. How did this happen? How could I let this happen?”

I tried to console her, explaining that failing classes happens sometimes… until I saw her shaking her head through fresh tears and I realized that we weren’t just talking about a science credit anymore.

“I’m five months pregnant, Miss… I’m scared. I need to graduate, but now it might not happen. And I don’t know what to do. Do I put the baby up for adoption? Do I keep her? How do I raise a baby if I can’t even pass science?”

Her words washed over me like a tidal wave.

That feeling.

I knew that feeling all too well. The questioning, the fear, the gut-wrenching pain that accompanies thoughts of putting a child up for adoption…

“I don’t know darlin’. But I promise we’ll figure it out, together. I have some stories I can tell you sometime, but for today let’s get you home to rest. We can figure out graduation and school another day…”

In the weeks and months that followed, we went out to lunch several times. We talked about adoption and my experiences with that whole process. We talked about what it would look like for her to keep the baby. We talked a lot, and we cried a lot too.

Ultimately, even though she knew that it was going to be hard, she decided to keep the baby.

And if we were to hit fast forward another year and a half, you would see that beautiful baby girl toddling around my living room right now as I switch between writing this post and making up lesson plans for my preschool class…Yupp, you guessed it– at the West Campus of the Denver Street School.

In so many ways, life has brought me back to where I was three, four, even five years ago.

Once again, I am teaching preschool– something that I laugh about to myself regularly. Once again, I am caring for a beautiful baby girl who isn’t mine, but whom I couldn’t possibly love more.

God, in his graciousness has used this beautiful baby girl and her momma to heal so many deep wounds in my soul that were created when I had to say goodbye to the two loves of my life nearly four years ago.

It has been a long loop, but because of the healing that He has provided through these two, I walk into my classroom everyday, pick up my goofy, tiny students, and I smile.

My heart is no longer consumed by bitterness because God has shown me how He can take even the most desolate times in my life and use them for His Kingdom– His good, as Romans 8:28 continues to remind me today.

I never thought that losing my godkids could be something that God would use for His good, but He has. Because of the pain of that experience, I was able to speak light into Megan’s darkness and fear in that parking lot. Because of that one conversation, Megan and I have formed an amazing relationship that has endured late night phone calls and cranky-pre-coffee morning bickering. We’ve sat in the NICU together, cried on futons while eating popsicles together, had late night homework sessions on the phone, and I am incredibly honored to say that I was able to be one of the women who spoke at her graduation three months ago.

God is continuously using Megan and little Hailey to show me His goodness and His plans for redemption.

Just like He didn’t leave me in my brokenness, He isn’t leaving my girls “out to dry” either. Not only did Megan graduate high school, but God has provided the opportunity for her to go to college and pursue her dreams of becoming an English professor, and I couldn’t be more proud of the way that she is learning to trust in Him and chase her dreams.

And me? No, I might not have my little ones with me right now, but I have the privilege of nannying Megan’s joy-filled daughter and watching her grow up one day at a time, right here in my living room…

Yes, there are days when we are all so exhausted we could cry, but there are also days when this goofy child makes us laugh so hard that our stomachs hurt. It might not be a perfect situation by the world’s standards, but today it feels perfect to me because I know that this is exactly where the three of us are supposed to be– trying to figure out life, together.

Brothers and sisters, if you are going through something so painful and dark that you don’t believe it will ever be fruitful or good, take heart, for He truly does work things out for the good of those who love Him.

Our God is a God who loves smooth jazz, and I firmly believe that it is He who loops life around us, time and time again until He has allowed our wounds to be healed and our hearts to be His.

HaileyJane

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For when we do not know what to pray for as we ought, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.“

(Romans 8:26-28)