Misunderstood

Geez Louise.  It's been so long since I've been on here I could hardly remember my password. 




















But alas, here I am needing to write.  Today marks one month that we've been open as an emergency foster home and have parenting 6 kids.  And well, I feel misunderstood.  I want to say certain things to people who ask, but then I think again and wonder what my words might sound like...so I don't.  I am wondering if this is a safe place to just get er done.  Get this all off my chest and not worry about what Joe Shmoe might think.  Thing is, the guy I am really living for already knows my thoughts before I utter a single word.  But I really want to honor Him with my life, and my mouth (and this silly blog).  So only read on if you can brace yourself for some honesty...

Truth is, this sucks.  It's harder than I ever imagined.  And yes, everyone warned me/us.  But truth is that I knew if I thought through it too long I wouldn't trust God that we were really supposed to do something like this.  Blake and I lay in bed at night wanting to scream "UNCLE!!!!!  We are done!  Can we please go back to our normal comfortable/overwhelmed with 4 small kids life?"  And as we wrestle with that idea I can't help but hear God say to me not to treasure my life here.  I feel like He keeps telling me that I have been way too comfortable for way too long.  I think of all of the kids in this world without parents or sleeping in a shelter/orphanage.  I think about our Tulsa county shelter that continues.to.be.over.capacity.  And then into my head pops that staggering statistic that 7:1 we've got this covered.  There are 160+million orphans worldwide, and conservatively 7 believers per every orphan.  Really?  That's disgusting!  We have made every excuse in the world not to obey His commands in the Bible to take care of the orphan...every excuse.  Not me, not now, we'll tithe, we'll support Compassion, but we just can't do that.  Surely He doesn't want me to be this uncomfortable?  Or wait.  Surely He doesn't want MILLIONS of His children as orphans or stuck in a system.  Maybe this is the cross He wanted us to take up?

So now you know my fear in talking about how hard this is.  I am currently begging people to join me in this journey, and at the same time literally desperate for Jesus to help me go on.  I have never needed Him so much.  I have never prayed this much in my life.  So then I think, well maybe this is right where I was meant to be all along, continuously seeking Him.  I feel like I was there after children 2 & 3...I mean, honestly I think any parent needs Jesus to be worth anything, but certainly when you outnumber yourself.  Then we add #4, then 5 & 6 and I can't quit singing "I need thee oh I need thee, every hour I need thee!"  Or Blake and I will take deep breathes and giggle out the words "I surrender all to Jesus, all to Him I freely give." 

Eeeek!  We got to see Mama Mandy and be encouraged by her and her precious girls.  So blessed to call them our family!









And some people look at me like, "Well just stop."  I don't feel like I have the choice.  I love Him, I gave Him my life.  He commanded we not turn our eyes and look the other direction from orphans.  And yet I did that comfortably for 33 years.  As I toy with the idea of jumping ship, scripture that I never knew I knew jumps into my head, snippets from all the books I read this past year beg me to keep pushing, and friends and family step up next to us and carry us to another day.  We've had said people just randomly give us meals, FREE babysitting, my parents arranged childcare at the church (I cried big fat tears), and our kids have said some of the sweetest things to remind us why we are here.  Please click on and read the text from Jen Hatmaker's book 7.  Another day that was incredibly rough, my friend text me this picture that she had just read.  And I just lost it.  I don't want to be Pollyanna either. 

Gloriously Ruined

So my reading has continued and has pushed me deeper into discomfort, disguist and frustration with the culture in which America lives. I have become gloriously ruined. This current book, "Dangerous Surrender" by Kay Warren has given great words to the state I have found in my heart. This alone has brought me comfort in hearing her describe her feelings as she came home from Africa back to her affluent Orange County, California... Kay says, "Everything looked different; everyone seemed strange. I looked at my possessions differently. Suddenly a full refrigerator was an insult. The crowded grocery store shelves were excessive. The displays of fashion at the mall were trivial. Television was disgusting and moronic. Politics made me sick. Church was superficial. I was a mess."

 Funniest Christmas picture EVER!  Look at Sadie!

 Just like a man to fall asleep during decorating the tree!  He could not believe he missed it!

Gloriously ruined is a term Warren and her friends have coined about how they have felt in their own discovery of the evil and unjust world around us..."I was ruined for life as I had known it before, but gloriously ruined!"

I can no longer see our way of life in Oklahoma the same, everything has a new slant on it...people are dying, starving to death, without water and without hope.  While I am broken for the fact that I have been aware and chose to look away, I also have more freedom in Him than I ever have...this is a closeness I have never experienced.  I am only halfway through this book and it's amazing and inspiring as well as gives me answer to what exactly did Jesus mean "take up your cross and follow me." 

Last week we finished Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World?  What a book!  3 pastors started this in 2006 with a bold decision to cut back all excess that didn't focus on Jesus during the season and celebrate His birth.  What a novel idea, huh?  A year after they started THOUSANDS of churches joined in.  Lives were changed both within the church, and those looking from the outside.  Get this: they saw something different in those churches at Christmas time.  Numerous lives have been saved because these churches brought their money saved and gave it to building wells where people did not have access to clean water.  If we could all boldly follow the example of the sheperds and wisemen, share the good news and give gifts to Jesus, not to the blessed, but to the least of these...that's when we are giving to Him.  I highly recommend this book anytime of year, but especially now!  They also have an awesome website. 

As an update on us, we have finished all our trainging hours and are waiting on our homestudy write up to be complete and get our CPR training and we'll be open.  We are still hoping it will be before Christmas! 

I Cannot

I cannot keep my house clean...but I still try.

I cannot be the best wife ever, but I believe I am the best for Blake.  And dang...how I love and adore that man.

I cannot possibly be the mother my kids need me to be 100% of the time, but I do believe in a God who reaches across that gap and uses me just.how.I.am.

I believe in Phil 4:13 in a deeper way than I ever have before.  When I gave my heart to Jesus, HE MAKES ME ABLE.  When I daily rely on Him, He uses me just as I am.  Because I have nothing more than any other human being to bring to the table without Him. 

And I believe He has used these books to awaken my heart, to strengthen my walk with Him...to open my eyes to so much that I have chosen not to see.  I have known for years that God was asking us to do something with foster care, but we couldn't figure out what.  And its been through these books, that we have been challenged to see that we won't necessarily feel "a calling" to one certain thing.  That we may not feel "peace" about what God has put before us.  But He still asks us to do it.  He commands us to, in fact.  We don't need to have all the details worked out before we say YES.  We don't need to be able before stepping up.  Phil 4:13 says He makes us able.  He just wants us to come to Him and lay down our lives, our plans, our dreams, and know that He is worth it all.

These books have made me question so many things, and taken me to places of freedom in Christ that I have yearned for.  I have never felt so free in Him.  I am so thankful for where I am today, and I am more thankful for my precious husband than I think I have ever been.

But I also feel so much conflict with the world around me.  I see loads of Halloween candy and my heart breaks knowing how that candy got to our shelves in the grocery store.  Please, I beg you, read about forced child labor and slave labor regarding cocoa beans and every major American chocolate company that purchases these cocoa beans is full aware.  Please do not buy chocolate this Halloween!!!

I feel conflict with how much money is spent frivolously while so much of the world is dying of starvation.  I can't get past 26,000 dying daily from lack of food.  But I have peace in knowing that Blake and I can make choices to live differently, I just wish it didn't come with so much uproar from the world around us.  We are the weird parents.  I just pray they don't hate us for it, but rather know Jesus deeper because of it.

Last weekend I sat in church with a new lovie on my lap from the shelter.  She didn't want to leave me for big church, so her 6 year old self got right on my lap to take it in.  And.I.wept.  I cried out to Jesus during worship knowing He fully understands her precious situation, and why she is hurting...while I do not, I am the one physically holding her, kissing her, and begging for comfort thru Him for her.  Both her and her little sister ached for their mama all weekend, and I cried with them telling them I am so sorry that she is not here.  Taking them back to the shelter was enough to break me...her little body clung to me like a spider monkey and she bawled asking me not to leave her.  Two workers had to peel her off of me. 

As you might imagine, we've applied to be an emergency foster home through Child Share Circle of Care here in Tulsa.  Emergency is different than traditional foster care in that it is short term placement so that younger (birth-5 years) do not go to the shelter before finding long term foster placements.  I can't explain the rest this step has brought to my soul.  As overwhelmed as we are with 4 children, we still feel like God is asking us to trust Him and do this. 

This was done for a local church (our friends church) in plea for the church to step up and take this problem head on...


They are His Children from New Beginnings Church on Vimeo.

I cannot sit back any longer and wait for another day.  We are only promised today.  There will never be better timing.  There will always be something else....but I cannot sit still any longer.

Simma Down

Did you ever see that SNL skit Simma Down Now? 

I feel like I need to settle down from all this wrestling going on in my heart.  It's intense in there.  And honestly, it's painful.  I don't want to hurt like this.  I feel actual physical ache in my heart for the facts that I have read about poverty, starvation, and the blind eye I have turned to this.  And then I remember that allowing a return of comfort would only be going back to where I was.  There is a reason God has stirred my heart.  I need to make changes.  To only feel guilty about this culture and go on with life is useless.  And to only speak about it, or the books, and change nothing is also sinful.  It is now blatantly obvious to me God has called us to something different. 

I am desperate for Jesus to work through me.  To use all of me.  And I am sad to say I have always held parts of me from Him.  Several of these books opened my eyes to that fact.  And in that truth, it brought me freedom that I have never felt to actually give Him every part of myself...just like He asked.  I have begun to really grab hold of the fact that this IS my responsibility.  The fact that 26,000 children die from starvation or preventable disease everyday makes my stomach turn.  It's horrific. 

"So when you and I hear staggering numbers and statistics about the poor and needy around us and around the world, we have a choice.  We can switch the channels on our mega-TVs and continue our comfortable, untroubled, ordinary, churchgoing lives as if the global poor don't exist.  We can let these numbers remain cold, distant, and almost imaginary.  Or we can open our eyes and our lives to the realities that surround us and begin considering the faces that are represented by these numbers....We can stand with the starving or with the overfed.  We can embrace Jesus while we give away our wealth, or we can walk away from Jesus while we hoard our wealth." David Platt, Radical

God just keeps speaking so clearly to me that I have become way too comfortable in my life.  That I can give Him all of me and I can completely trust my children, my marriage and my heart to Him. 

 Singing and dancing "If You're Happy and You Know It!"  She LOVES to sing!!

 Sister couldn't go to sleep one night and she got to snuggle with daddy and watch football.  Shhhh, don't tell her bigs!

 Happy 7th birthday OWEN!!!

 Story time before bed...they are so sweet to always smile for the camera!  This too shall pass!

 Happy 4th birthday Sadie!  She chose the Hello Kitty donut!

 That sweet chocolate skin doesn't hide any goodies we eat!  She loved the flower donut though ;)

So what does that change look like?  How does that unfold for each of us?  Certainly it will be different for all of us, so I won't stand up here like a dingbat and say we all need to do this or that. 

It's frustrating to see that we save, hoard and bicker about how much is enough to give when we know that people are dying every minute around the world. Jen Hatmaker's book 7 helped me to see how easily global hunger could be eliminated if we cared more about this than dog food, or perfume. Seriously!?!? We spend more on those than ending hunger.

I am excited to see all that is to come for us.  I am amazed that I feel acutely aware now about what true needs are and all that we live with that our culture says is a need.  It's embarrassing really.  God has called us to store up our treasures in heaven, not on earth...this is a battle, a war to not get caught up in the current.  Deep breath...  Is this the narrow road He meant?   I think so sister. 

Stir Crazy

I have been neglecting this little blog thing here.  But for good reason. 

God has moved something awful crazy in my heart.  My family thinks I need help. 

I am not a reader.  I rarely take the time to read anything, and sadly even reading the Bible had become blah.  (horribly sad to admit because of my deep love for Jesus). 

One of the more influential women in my life (Jen Hatmaker) wrote a couple of books.  And I had to read them because I love her and trust her. 

Well then that led to me finishing a book in 3 days which is UNHEARD of for me.  I usually get the the very end and then quit.  Wha?

So from June-now I have not been able to stop the constant reading.  She mentioned several books and other friends did too.  I am hungry again for words from Jesus, even if it takes these authors hitting me over the head with the reality that I have been ignoring some pretty big things. 

Here they are.  If you are needing a good read and are ready for something serious to happen in your heart, you cannot miss these. 

Radical- David Platt
Crazy Love-Francis Chan
Kisses from Katie-Katie Davis
Interrupted-Jen Hatmaker
7- Jen Hatmaker

I cannot think straight I am so conflicted with our life in America and the needs of those around us.  How did I become so comfortable with this?  How did I not see so many suffering and truly believe they are my responsibility?  How did I miss that in the Bible? 

I am ashamed.  I am disgusted.  I am achy.  I am stir crazy for wanting to DO SOMETHING.  And poor Blake has known all along that I am odd, but now I want to be really weird and actually do what Jesus asked us to do...lay down my life for Him. 

In the midst of all of this wrestling in my heart, we have gone full force into the foster care ministry with our new church.  We are floored by the needs in our community and state.  So two weekends ago we brought home 2 kids from the shelter for 3 nights over Labor Day weekend.  Our church got involved with DHS in a program called Home for the Holidays.  The idea is for faith families to become certified (approved?) to take children from the shelter for a holiday weekend.  We were honored to join 13 other families from our church in taking home 17 kiddos! 

It was such a great experience.  Don't get me wrong...it's wasn't convenient (we already have 4 lovies).  It wasn't comfortable.  It wasn't easy.  But hello believers...God never told us life would be any of those.  He kept whispering to me all weekend when I would get discouraged, "Life is not supposed to be comfortable sweets."  How have I let myself believe these lies for so long? 

As we drove the kids back to the shelter I was sick to my stomach.  Every child begged to not go back.  Not for lack of love, cleanliness and care there, but it's a shelter for heaven's sake!!!!  Kids belong in families.  And I didn't have any good reason why the kids couldn't stay (besides we needed more training to be certified).  I have room.  I have Jesus.  This weekend just felt like a band-aide for this gaping wound that was in my city.  The reality hit me that why do I not think that these children are just as much my children as the ones God has already blessed me with.  Didn't He say they are all His?  None of them are really "ours".




Please watch this amazing video.  Pray with me about what God has already asked us to do.  God doesn't call us...He already commanded us to do this.  When we give our hearts to Jesus, then we must do as He commands. 

Consider reading these books.  I beg it of my brothers and sisters. 

Help this mama out!

This is so exciting and I need lots of help with this post.

For any of you that have adopted or fostered transracially, please give your input too!

TargetShopper commented and needs help with what would be good to have for a one year old African American girl. They have been fostering and are pursuing adoption for this little one and her friends are giving her a shower!

Congrats TargetShopper on your newest addition. Here are some of the things I thought of:

• Tangle Teezer
  
• Comb Set (you can find these at WalMart)
  
• Styling brush


• Aquafor


• Barrettes, beads, bands.
  
• Extra Virgin Coconut Oil
  
• Hair Lotion (I like Just for Me because it's cheap at Walmart & Target)
  
  
• Leave In Conditioner & Styling Gel- what I have found is that there is nothing magical, it's just what works for you and your child. This might be fun for your friends to just start a collection for you to try. I would recommend smaller bottles so that you can try them out.


• Aveeno lotion (gobs and gobs of this)


• Kids satin sleep cap



• Satin crib sheets (I had someone make them on Etsy)
  
• Books with black children/families in them (The Colors of Us, God's Dream, Brown Like Me, I love My Hair, Please Baby Please, We're Different We're the Same, What I like About Me, I love you More than Rainbows, Beautiful)
  
  
• Ethnic Decor and Christmas decor (pictures, nativity, angels, santa, ornaments-find lots online) We use pictures of our kids and their birth family, but some may not have that.
  


• Childrens adoption books (Forever Fingerprints, Families are Different, How I Was Adopted, When God Found Us You)
  
• Life Box-not necessarily an AA thing, just a great adoption gift. Some type of box to keep all her private adoption stuff in: pics of birthparents, any letters/cards or keepsakes from birth parents, finalization stuff, etc. We got ours at Things Remembered
  
• Reading for Mama: Twenty Things by Sherrie Eldridge, I'm Chocolate You're Vanilla, Black Baby White Hands, The Connected Child
  
• Resources for Mama: Ethnic restaurants, transracial playgroups, transracial workshops in the area, support groups for families of adoption, multicultural events in town. Someone could put together a list of these things for you.
  
• Dolls- We can find black baby dolls in most Targets and some Walmarts, but also check out DollsLikeMe.com (they also have biracial baby dolls)

The ultimate gift of love was made by a friend. She bought us the black and white versions of the book I Love You So Much. Then she cut and pasted them to make us a book that matched our transracial family!

Hope this helps! This might be a great way to share ideas if anyone has things they've found that they want to share!

More adventures with Noonie and Papa Max

Notice how into this story I am? It's one of my favorites: When God Found Us You. I didn't prepare my mom for what a sweet tale it is of a parent awaiting a child in adoption. *tears*

Movie time! Notice Emery at the bottom of the pic. Our TVs DVD player is not working, so we have to use a computer. We're flexible!

Get this peeps...they took me to TARGET!!! Woot woot! For a girl that adores that store, and not having been in a month I was oober thrilled when they found a Target in Glenwood Springs! These pics of the kids dancing are outside of the shopping center we found. Blake and my dad took the boys so that my mom and I could browse. Be still my heart, it was goooood!

Notice the massive mountain behind them? They are beyond gorgeous!

Emery cracks us up with the funny noises she makes and the way she moves her tongue. I happened to get a shot of it. And we have been dying for Emme to say a real word. It finally happened yesterday, March 2nd and it was Dada. P.R.E.C.I.O.U.S She could tell we were all thrilled and yes, Blake was there!

Oh man, I never get tired of that smile!!

On Saturday my mom played with the girls so that I could go skiing with the guys. Look at this view from the top of the mountain!!!Even more exciting...my daddy took the boys skiing so Blake and I could have a day together! Did you get that? He wanted to ski with his boys so that we could have a date! It was precious because it's not easy to ski with these two. One is amazing and the other feels a bit defeated by his brother's skill. Then it becomes emotional. Poor guy. But my dad handled it so well and they all had fun!

This pic makes me laugh my head off. There was a time when I cared what I looked like when I was skiing. And now, it's totally about being warm. Can ya tell? Oh Lord help me, that is one hilarious pic. Poor Blake having to ski with me looking like that.

Even more awesome. I bit it so hard on one of our first runs. Good part is I didn't hurt a thing, I mean it hurt, but I didn't hurt any body parts. I reminded Blake that you don't fall like that when you are skiing with caution. I was so sure of myself, which made it funnier. I hope you're getting a good laugh out of it. It.was.good. I lost both poles and one ski, things were a flyin'! Blake said all he saw was one arm fly in the air and then a pole go the opposite direction. Pretty sure I went head over heels. HILARIOUS. Now it is at least. I left a pretty good butt mark in the snow.

Look at my lil skier! We met up for lunch and to warm up and then the boys went out again with my dad for another 4 runs. Funniest thing ever was said when I asked the boys at lunch how the day went. Cooper said, "It was great. I just pulled on Papa's yanker all day." It was all I could do to not bust out laughing. He meant he held onto Papa's pole and he pulled him.