Tag: Prayer

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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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This is a crossroad

Two Fridays ago I left work, my heart brimming with emotion.

Our first week back to school was an amazing success. On the first day of classes, I was bum-rushed by a stampede of teenagers excitedly giving me hugs and gushing about their summers– the good, the bad, and well… the mundane, as most kids’ summers usually feel.

Returning students chatted with each other and welcomed new students with open arms, showing them the “ropes” and explaining that we are a family first and a school second. Walls were broken down, new relationships were started, and progress was made, academically as well as personally.

I say it a lot, but I will say it again: I am stunned that I get to work in this school that so clearly has God’s finger prints all over it.

I am honored to work with such uplifting coworkers who are such wonderful depictions of Christ’s love to our students and each other.

I am humbled that students trust me enough as their teacher and “big sister” to talk to me about their deepest, darkest fears and secrets.

I simply don’t understand how on earth I have the privilege of working with these kids whom I love so much. And yet the longer I work here, the more I realize that my love is so finite in comparison to how much God loves them, whether they are currently following Him or not…

Any who, after work on Friday, as a tiny act of celebration, I went to Chubby’s (Yes, the original Chubby’s on the northside for all of my students reading this…) and took some incredibly unhealthy Mexican food to go.

I drove around in circles for a while until finally deciding to park my car on top of a hill in Sunnyside and eat there, looking out at the city.

As I sat and munched on my dinner, staring at the Colorado sunset bouncing off the buildings of downtown Denver, the stories of my students, new and old, ran through my head.

Stories of drug abuse and alcoholism. Generations of gang warfare, death, and retaliation. Domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and verbal abuse. Stories of students who have been institutionalized for health reasons, as well as legal reasons. Stories of self harm and harm to the people around them. Stories like the ones we read about everyday in the newspaper, accompanied by statistics and photos.

Before long, I found myself broken, pathetically weeping over my green chili cheese fries, praying that my students wouldn’t become just another statistic or story in the Denver Post.

So many of the kids I love so much are desperately in need of the Gospel.

Some of my students have heard the Gospel since coming to DSS and have been swept off their feet by God. Others continue to run away from Him and back into the destructive patterns and habits that are so familiar to them… only to be run over by life time and time again.

It is a heartbreaking and vicious cycle to watch, but I know that even in the midst of the consequences of their own actions and the actions of those around them, that God is there, working for His Good as well as theirs.

After all, these students are still with us and seem to always make their way back to the Street School when they leave.

These students– the broken and hurting ones, as well as the mending and joyful ones– are all at a crossroad within the walls of our school everyday. Every decision– to go to biology or to cut class, to have self control or to flip out on their peers– is a crossroad for them.

And as I sobbed over my dinner and thought about this, I looked up and saw the most fitting sight I’ve seen in a while.

crossroads

To the side of the telephone pole I had parked by, there were two directional signs pointing either way. For roughly the first fifteen minutes that I stared at this scene from my car, I failed to notice them. But once I saw them, a bigger picture began to emerge.

The sign pointing to the left immediately drew my eye to the graffiti covered building across the street from me. With its windows smashed out and covered in plywood, it seemed to represent where my students come from. The desolation, the pain and brokenness. Not only do my students come from neighborhoods that physically look like this building, but this building also mirrors the relationships in their lives and often, their perceptions of themselves.

The directional arrow on the right points into what seems to be the unknown– mostly because my little iPhone camera couldn’t capture the entire view. (Yes, I know about panoramic photos. No, I wasn’t thinking about such things while I was emotionally eating chili cheese fries and praying; Silly me.)

However, had I been able to capture the view to my right, you would’ve seen the stunning pinks, blues, and purples in the sky over the mountains and the magnified beauty of the same scene reflecting off the buildings of Denver– a sunset that could literally take your breath away.

For me, this is so much more than just a photo on my phone; it’s representative of how my students view life.

They can’t see the beauty that lies ahead– the beauty that comes from being swept off their feet by the love of God. Often, they can’t see their bright futures or the color that they are capable of painting into the world with their personalities and gifts.

All they can see is their past and the crossroad directly in front of them.

Please pray for my coworkers and I as we stand in the gap with them– as we try to show them the love of Christ and give them tiny glimpses of what their lives could be like with Him.

Pray that we would have wisdom to be able to speak color and life into them, even when we are exhausted and would rather just take the easy way out.

Pray that my students would be receptive to the Light and begin making positive choices and right turns when they come to the hundreds of crossroads they face each day.

Pray that we all would be able to see the breath-taking sunsets and skylines our own lives– that we wouldn’t lose sight of the goodness of God while we walk into the darkness everyday.

“This is what the Lord says, ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”

(Jeremiah 6:16)

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Waiting at the end of myself

Sunday night was one of those evenings that make my heart smile.

After an action-packed weekend of climbing a 14-er, having a bonfire with friends from out of town, playing several games of volleyball, attending church with my roomies, and eating more ice cream than I should probably admit to, one of my roommates walked into the room I was laying in and flopped down on the bed next to me.

As the sticky summer breeze blew threw the open patio door, we both sighed and then laughed at our tandem exhaustion.

“I had such a good plan for my life, Jules,” I said as I stared at the ceiling.

“Me too. It’s funny to think that we both wanted to be doctors. Ooooooh how different life would be right now,” Julie said, laughing to herself.

“Yupp,” I sighed. “I was going to become a cardiac surgeon and here I am– a broke missionary “ex-teacher”– just about the furthest thing ya can be from a surgeon. I had everything all planned out and now I’m laying on here contemplating changing the entire trajectory of my life yet again with one seemingly simple decision: Do I finish this master’s program at GIAL? Or do I do the seemingly illogical thing and stay here in Denver, where I have given everything up and have no concrete plans for, well, anything?”

Oh yeah, you read that right. Those words came out of my mouth and then part of me immediately wanted to shove them back in.

After nearly a year of preparing to move to Texas and several months of praying through my waffling heart, I’m suddenly pretty sure that I’m not moving to Dallas in December.

I had a lot riding on Texas. (Well, that’s a sentence I NEVER thought I would type…)

Texas was my only real plan at this point.

Throughout all of the chaos and transition of my last few months, moving to Texas was the only stable thing that seemed to make sense.

“I’m not going to enter into a lease here in Denver because I’m leaving in less than a year.”

“I’m not going to sign a teaching contract for next school year because I’m leaving after Christmas.”

“Thinking about getting involved with this activity or that ministry simply doesn’t make sense because I’m moving…”

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Texas was “it” for me and admitting that I was wrong… that I rushed into something (big surprise there)… that I have been trying to fit my stubborn square peg into God’s perfectly rounded plan… Well, that honestly is a blow to my pride and my adventure-obsessed heart.

Yet I know that it wasn’t all for nothing. I know that over the last few months as I have “prepared to move”, God has stripped me down in the most glorious way possible.

He has exposed some pretty gnarly idols and lies that were eating away at my blinded heart throughout all of this– idols of adventure, fear, comfort, and affection; lies about who I am and who I was before I fell in love with Christ…

And now? After being stripped completely of all of my plans and the paths that I was trying to stubbornly (Did I mention that I’m stubborn?!) create in my own wilderness, it feels like He is simply calling me to be silent and wait for His direction– something that I clearly suck at.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again– I’m guilty of being an over-committer, a go-er, a woman is seemingly incapable of sitting still for more than five minutes, even though God continuously has told me to simply sit my butt down and stay a while.

I am hungry for adventure and new destinations, when in fact, I should be hungry for Him and only Him.

Somehow, the fact that God is not a destination or a box to be checked on my bucket-list continuously slips my little mind.

Yet every time I stupidly forget who God is and what He has called me to, He reminds me that He is relational. And as He reminds me of this, He also reminds me that my relationship with Him consists not only of praying and meditating on His Word, but also of waiting and listening.

So, what better place to be silent and wait on Him than in Alaska?

(But seriously– I’m sitting on the terminal floor at DIA, waiting for my plane that leaves for a tiny village in Alaska in less than an hour… It’s funny; it’s like God knew that I was going to be a scatter-brained, mental-case right about now and would be needing a week away from my distracting life here in Denver, in a secluded village in the mountains where I can focus on little but Him.)

kbronn_mttanalianPhoto credit: Kathryn Bronn (Click here for more photos of where I’m headed and for an awesome blog post from one of my favorite ladies.)

In the midst of my breathtaking, but busy life here in Denver, it is easy for me to forget that silence and stillness are necessary and beautiful parts of my relationship with God. I cannot admit enough that it is incredibly difficult for me to quiet myself completely and simply lay in His presence and wait for Him to move, but as I said before, I know that is what He is calling me to.

He is calling me to Himself.

Maybe He will still lead me to Dallas eventually. Maybe He will continue to tell me to park my tush right here in the community that He has brought me into.

Either way, I am (slowly) learning that I want Jesus more than adventure or forward motion— a lesson that seems like it should’ve been more straightforward and less confusing to begin with… but nope. I’m hard headed and obviously easily confused when I’m not constantly listening for God’s voice in the midst of my own chaos.

But as I’ve read through the Psalms this summer, I have realized that David continuously wrote about this confusion within his heart and mind, and for that, I am incredibly thankful. (After all, if David, “The Man After God’s Own Heart” didn’t have anything concretely figured out either, I’m probably not doing too bad in life.)

All throughout the Psalms, David teaches an incredibly important lesson– When you don’t know what is going on, go humbly and honestly before the Lord; pray and then wait.

Sometimes God answers prayers and moves quickly. Sometimes He doesn’t. And I’m learning that slow answers are equally as beautiful.

As a wise blogger once wrote, (okay, wrote four days ago…)

“David knew a thing or two about waiting. Even after Samuel appointed him king of Israel, David didn’t immediately go slay Goliath. Saul was not promptly impeached and David sworn in. David had to wait. Before he could rise to his calling to become king in the future, he had to fulfill his responsibilities—as a shepherd—in the present. And so do we.” (Read this awesome post about waiting on God on Relevant here.)

So here I am. Simply a mildly confused, very tall woman with a blog, a heart for the Nations, and no clear long-term plan for my life. Will I stay in Denver forever? Will God end up taking me somewhere better than my little brain could have ever dreamed up? Will I ever return from Alaska where the sun stays up for 24 hours straight in the summer? Will learning to be patient and wait on God kill me? (Okay, probably not… Honestly, if anything Him forcing me to be patient is making me fall even more deeply in love with Him everyday.) As for the first few questions though, it looks like we’ll have to wait and see…
What is God asking for you to wait on Him for today?
“Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord!”
(Psalm 31:24)

 

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Oh, Isaac…

All Glory Comes From Daring to Begin

This weekend I had the incredible blessing of attending my church’s women’s retreat in Estes Park. For the last two days, I have “lived” in a beautiful cabin in the mountains with some of the most Godly women I know.

Yesterday, after a full day of hiking, relaxing, cooking, worshiping, and talking, we ended our day in a group prayer session in the living room. And as I sat praying on the floor, surrounded by my spiritual sisters, it hit me.

I LOVE my life.

Had you asked me if I was really, truly happy this time last year, the answer likely would have been no. I was licking wounds left by a rough break up, I lacked a support system, and had built my faith on an incredibly shaky foundation. I didn’t have a community of believers around me (Heck, I didn’t really have a community around me at all) and I had just moved back to the city after a year of living in my personal hell on earth– AKA “the suburbs”.

But now, a year later, most everything is different.

God has restored my life in so many miraculous ways that I still can’t comprehend. I have a small, but beautiful studio in the exact neighborhood that I wanted to live. I am working in my “dream job” at the Denver Street School. I have a great group of friends that only God could have brought around me. I have been able to reconcile things with my ex, and while I wouldn’t consider us “friends”, I no longer shake and burst into tears when I run into him around town. I have a church body that has supported me as I walked back into the darkness of my past, celebrated with me when prayers have been answered, and gently corrected me when I began to make dumb decisions. My walk with God is stronger than it has ever been and He has begun to open new doors for me, revealing new parts of His plan for my life.

One of those doors came in the form of a letter this last week: A letter announcing my acceptance into the Linguistics and Cultural Studies Masters Program at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics in Dallas, Texas.

While I’m excited to see what God has in store for my future, it hit me last night that I don’t want to leave Denver. I don’t want to leave my family (biological or otherwise), my community, my friends, my students… my church.

I want to stay here.

I know that I’m being selfish, but honestly, it seems a bit unfair. The fact that I lived through hell for three years, and now that God has fixed everything that I screwed up, now that I’m happy… that I’m being called away? That doesn’t seem right to me.

The thought of leaving literally brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it.

But as I sat in worship this morning, crying pathetically, I felt God impress the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac into my heart.

Abraham and Sarah waited and prayed for over half a century for God to bless them with a child. And when He finally did, God said,

Take you son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Genesis 22:2)

In comparison to my three years and my (mostly) self-induced trials, Abraham and Sarah’s plight seems unimaginable.

Having to wait between seventy and eighty years for a child, only to have God say, I want you to step out in faith and sacrifice your child whom you love… I don’t think that I could it.

I don’t know that I would have the strength or faith to say, “Yes, God. I trust what You are doing and because you first blessed me with this child, I will lay him down as a sacrifice, if that is what you want.” But somehow Abraham did trust God, and God honored that by calling out to Abraham at the last minute to say,

‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.’ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in the thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place ‘The Lord will provide’.” (Genesis 22:12-14)

In my head I know that my life is not my own. I know that I was put on this earth to live for God and glorify Him, but that doesn’t make those moments when God asks you to sacrifice what you love any less difficult or scary.

To be completely honest, I haven’t hit the place yet where I am actually excited to “lay down my Isaac” for the Glory of God… Yet I know that I am being asked to lay down my life here in Denver so that I can help spread His Word all around the world to the hurting and hopeless. Don’t get me wrong– I’m excited to be a part of His great plan, I’m just not thrilled that I have to give up the life that I love to go; At least I’m not thrilled yet… God’s clearly not done with me (thank goodness) and it will be interesting to see how He works all of this out in the long run.

Has God been calling you to lay down an “Isaac” in your life lately?

Whoever loves his life, must lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.” (John 12:25-26)

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I think…

I think too much.

Sometimes I think that my overthinking comes from living alone and having nearly twelve beautiful hours of silence to process my chaotic life between the times when I get home from work and the time that I walk out the door the next day.

Sometimes I think back to my childhood and realize that I’ve always been a deep thinker. While my social butterflies of sisters would be off gallivanting about the neighborhood, I would usually be doing something nerdy like looking at rocks in the backyard and thinking out loud about what minerals or fossils they might contain. (Let me tell you, talking to yourself out loud about rocks is not a great way to win friends at the age of 7…or 8…or 9.)

Then sometimes, I think about the way that I process arguments and conversations after they happen. I can’t help but think: What could have gone better? What would have happened if that one little thing had gone differently?

And at the end of all of my thinking about thinking, I realize that I am once again, indeed thinking.

My thinking is a problem, really. (Although, I would personally rather be an over-thinker than an under-thinker if I had to choose. But moving on before I make any more snarky remarks…)

My problem doesn’t necessarily come from the fact that I sometimes think out loud, leading me to talk to myself (or my dog), but from the fact that when I start rehashing my life, I’m usually not talking to God. In fact, I usually am taking my eyes completely off of God. I’m essentially saying,

God, I don’t like how that ended. If You could please put Your Sovereign Knowledge and the good that You’re trying to work here on hold for a minute so that we can tend to my selfish needs, that would be great.”

I will literally dissect and analyze a troubling conversation to death before I offer it up to God, and usually by that time, I have internalized the conversation on a deep level. I understand that sometimes internalizing conversations is beneficial to us as humans and as Christians, especially if the conversations were encouraging or full of wisdom that we need to hear.

However, mulling conversations over and over can easily become detrimental to our walks with God if we aren’t careful with what we are over thinking.

My most recent example of this?

My mother and I don’t have a great relationship, and unfortunately we haven’t for a rather long time. For the majority of the last three years, we haven’t spoken to each other, but just last month she got back in contact with me. For the first few days, I felt like I had a normal relationship with my mom. We caught up on what my siblings were up to, her recent divorce, the happenings of her sunflower farm and ranch, and the like, but unfortunately that quickly fell away and the patterns of verbal abuse that I had grown up with began to return.

Some days when she would call and drill into me, I would turn the other cheek, pretend that her stabbing words didn’t bother me, and give her an excuse as to why I had to hang up. Other days I would blow up at her, serving her insults right back. But no matter how the conversations ended, I always mentally replayed and analyzed them, yet very rarely did I pray for guidance or wisdom.

Last weekend, after absorbing several weeks of verbal assaults I finally blocked her number and tried to go back about my life.

But by then, the conversations and lies were already written on my heart.

Had I simply run to God after every conversation and confrontation and let Him heal my brokenness, I know that I wouldn’t have been so deeply wounded by my mother’s words or the words that came out of my own mouth. But instead, I had replayed them and let them take root in my heart. Slowly her words became my words:

“You’re never going to go anywhere.”

“You’re worthless.”

“You were a mistake.”

“You’re just like your father.”

And because I had started believing these lies, I couldn’t hear the truths that God was speaking into my life at that same time:

“You’ve been accepted into this graduate program because I’m taking you somewhere.”

“You are worth my Son’s life.”

“I created you for a reason.”

“You were created in My image to become more like your Father.”

I don’t think that over thinking is a disease that you can magically be cured of, and I’m honestly still not sure that I would want to be cured of it if this was a possibility. However, I do know that I need to remember where my healing and love comes from, and that is not from my own heart or mind, but from my God.

I am not doing anything productive by metaphorically beating my head against a wall, but God, the author of the Universe (and my own weird brain) would be able to do something with my situation, if only I would offer it up to Him instead.

What is God trying to tell you right now? Can you hear Him? Or are you thinking over your plans and actions instead of offering them up to Him?

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

~Philippians 4:6-7