11 Month Update

Don’t worry, grandparents. I will still post plenty of Madeline updates on the blog. And speaking of Miss M, she is eleven months old today! Eleven-twelfths of a year old… Wow. Everybody always talks about how fast kids grow. But until you have your own, you have no idea how fast time can really fly.

Here she is this weekend enjoying the warm weather and exploring our backyard.

Here’s what’s new with Madeline:

• She is finally crawling! And she is enjoying her freedom immensely. She has such fun racing down the hall or chasing after a toy, usually with a smile on her face. She is developing callouses on her sweet little knees. When she was first born I remember noticing how perfectly soft and smooth she was all over. Her knees were just as soft as her cheeks. No more perfectly soft little baby.
• She has gotten more clingy since learning to crawl. I have wondered if it is because she needs more reassurance from mom now that she has more independence. She wants to be held more than she used to. It is often difficult to cook dinner now because she grabs onto my pant leg and fusses until I pick her up. I’ve been carrying her around in our kiddie backpack a lot while I cook, vacuum, etc.
• She is pulling up to her knees all the time, and occasionally she makes it all the way to the standing position. No cruising yet.
• We’ve been having napping issues in the last week. She likes to play in her crib now, crawling around, pulling up, and sitting up. She has learned that she doesn’t have to go to sleep if she doesn’t want to. Until now it has always been really easy to put her down for a nap. When she is sleepy, I would just lay her down and walk away. It’s not so easy anymore. It has been taking her 30-45 minutes lately to fall asleep, and there are usually tears. Then when she wakes up, she sits up immediately and doesn’t go back to sleep. This is no fun for mom…
• We’ve been working on a few signs. She can now sign “more” and “water,” and she can show you where her nose is. We’ve been working on “milk” too, but I haven’t gotten her to do that one back yet.
• Her current favorite foods are strawberries, blueberries, mandarin oranges, cheese, and broccoli. She resists anything that I try to spoon feed her now. She likes to feed herself. She is rejecting some foods that she used to love – particularly bananas and applesauce. Weird.
• Looking in the mirror is endlessly amusing to her. She smiles and dances and laughs and waves. Sometimes I put my full length mirror on the floor and let her crawl on top of it. She thinks it's the most fun thing imaginable.
• She loves to ride around in the stroller. We’ve been going for walks outside everyday for the last week while the weather has been nice, and she is content for amazingly long periods of time to watch the scenery, taking it all in. She especially likes seeing dogs. When we are out in public someplace, she leans way forward in the stroller, almost standing up, because she is so excited to see the world and wave to everyone she sees. What a flirt.

And here she is, the crawling champ!

Awakening

There’s a reason I haven’t been blogging much lately. Thoughts and feelings surrounding our adoption have been all that I’ve had on my mind. Now that we’ve “gone public” with the adoption, I have a lot of catching up to do.

I just finished an excellent book by Josh and Amy Bottomly called From Ashes to Africa. Josh and Amy struggled with infertility and eventually their faith. But God led them to adopt from Ethiopia and it changed their lives in a remarkable and way.




I so resonate with the Bottomly family’s description of the awakening they experienced as they entered the adoption process. They began to read and watch movies, learning about Africa, about poverty, about AIDS. They were initially motivated by a responsibility to learn about the country that their child would be born in. But they more they learned, the more they were moved, and the more they hungered to learn more.

They realized that this place called Africa wasn't just a mythical place full of lions and zebras. Africa is real. And It is hurting. It is filled with more suffering than we can fathom. So much that we have a tendency to just shut down when we hear about it. The statistics are mind-numbing and incomprehensible. Today there are 143 million orphans in our world. The child that will soon live in my home will daily tell me and others the story of this tragedy. The story of the mothers, forced to abandon children that they love dearly because of unspeakable poverty. The story of fathers who died without seeing their children grow and blossom because of the horrors of AIDS. The story of parents whose lives could have been saved by drugs that we Americans like to hoard so that we can get richer, pretending that none of these stories of suffering and dying are happening. Meanwhile we spend our energy debating what movie we will see on Friday night and what restaurant we will spend $50 at to eat food that our bodies don’t even need.

Josh writes about how he felt when he first saw the movie Hotel Rwanda:

The movie tells the story of one man’s courage in the face of the Rwandan genocides, where members of the Hutu tribe killed over 800,000 from their rival tribe, the Tutsi tribe. After the movie ended, I felt disemboweled and sat in stunned silence with Amy for a long time. The Rwandan genocides had occurred when we were seniors in high school, and yet no one had ever brought it up. Neither Amy nor I could recall one prayer request for the Rwandan peoples, let alone a prayer vigil at our churches or schools. Instead, we attended Bible class each day, and after the daily devotion, we prayed for Aunt Maud’s sore toe, along with the smattering of “unspoken” prayer requests. All the while, nearly a million innocent men, women, and children were being butchered to death by Hutu machetes.

Just how ignorant I was began to hit me, and specifically, how insular my life had been up to this point. I also began to realize that for Amy and me, God was not only moving us toward each other and into each others hearts, but he was moving us outward into a bigger world, a world ravished by stupid poverty.

All the problems just seem so huge. So unbelievably and terribly overwhelming. What in the world am I supposed to do about 143 million orphans? About all the suffering because of poverty, famine, AIDS? I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do – nothing. I choose to not be overwhelmed and guilty. I am doing something. I choose to give life, love, and hope to one child, and it gives me just that – life, love, and hope. Life, love, and hope. That’s what I want my legacy to be.

A friend recently warned me – adoption is risky – what if our child wants to return to his own country someday? My reaction? Praise God! That is my heartfelt prayer! What joy it would give me if our son returns to Ethiopia someday to minister to his own people and help to be a part of the solution. Oh Lord, help us to raise him so that will be the desire of his heart. Thank you, Lord, for the awakening that is taking place in our hearts.

Announcement

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from becoming polluted by the world.”
- James 1:27

“Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name, welcomes me.”
- Matthew 18:5


For several months God has been growing us, teaching us, and leading us down a very unexpected path. Now Daniel, Madeline, and I have an announcement to make:

We are adopting a child from Ethiopia.

We have applied for a boy aged 12 months or younger using America World Adoption Agency, and we expect that in approximately eighteen months, we will be traveling to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to bring home our son.

Adopting a child (and especially a child from Ethiopia!) is not something that I ever imagined us doing. For many years I had thought that maybe someday we would be foster parents. But adoption was nowhere in my future plans. You see, I have learned that this is often how God works. We make plans for our life based on what sounds logical to us. We keep God in mind, of course, but we also give a lot of thought to what seems fulfilling to us. That’s when God steps in and says, “No, my child. Your life is not for your own fulfillment. It is a sacrifice to me. Follow me and I will show you how to have abundant life. I know that this wasn’t what you expected, and it doesn’t make sense to you right now. Trust me. Obey me, and you will never be sorry that you did.”

And so here we are. We believe with all our hearts that God is leading us to do this. We know that we will be faced with many difficulties as a multi-racial family; we know that we will encounter many stares and questions; we are unsure where the money will come from to cover the overwhelming cost of an international adoption. But we know for sure that the Lord will go before us in this. He will provide for us at every stage. He will grow us in ways that we can’t even imagine right now. I believe that and want that with all of my heart.

***

When Madeline was about two months old, I asked Daniel the question: “If the hospital called and said that they had mistakenly sent us home with the wrong child, would you want to trade Madeline in for the child that was actually ours biologically?” We both realized that, without a doubt, the answer would be no. It was then that adoption first entered our minds. I realized that I do not love Madeline because she has my genes. I love her because I spend day and night with her, investing my all in her and constantly praying for her. That is what makes me her mommy.

Suddenly it seemed that everywhere I turned I was learning more about adoption. I encountered articles about adoption. I met people who had adopted. The speaker of my weekly Bible study shared a touching story of a family who adopted. I began to think about adoption more and more.

I searched the Word for every scripture that I could find about adoption, and I encountered passage after passage in the Old Testament describing the special love and protection that God gives to the fatherless. He commanded his people to provide for them through benevolence and tithes, and he promises judgment if they ever mistreat them. He promises to be a Father to the fatherless, and he makes it clear that it is his will to set the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:5-6) He holds close those that are abandoned by their father and mother. (Psalm 27:10)

It has been my prayer for a long time now to have a heart more like HIS. To love who HE loves and to desire what HE desires. God has a special love for the orphan, and he desires that they be set in families. In what better way can we love those that he loves and be hurt by the injustice that hurts him than to adopt a precious child?

As soon as we said “yes” to God by deciding to adopt, we found that so many things in our lives began to make sense. We have long questioned why we have been given such abundance spiritually, materially, and familial-ly, when so many in the world don’t have the food, shelter, or medical care they need just to survive. We have felt restless, knowing that we were certainly made for more than quietly living out our average American lives of abundance, going to work, going to church, and raising our 2.5 kids. How are we making a difference? We have been reading a lot of eye-opening books lately. In one of them, Red Letters, Tom Davis writes about what he believes would happen in the world if the church began to actually live out the words of Christ (written in red in many Bibles). We want to obey Jesus with all our hearts when he says to go to all the world with the gospel and to feed the hungry and clothe the needy.

And so here we go. Please, please pray for us. We have no idea what we are getting ourselves into. Some days I wake up giddy with excitement, and some days I wake up terrified, wondering if we are making a huge mistake. I realize that in this blog entry I have neatly and tidily written an explanation of what we are doing and why. I don’t want to make it seem like it has been an easy, clear cut decision for us when that is not at all the case. Questions, doubts, and fears have threatened to overwhelm me many times. (I may find the courage to post a personal journal entry sharing the deep struggles of my heart in the future….) What I know is that this decision is going to affect every aspect of our lives. I want it to. I want this to be a time of awakening. A turning point. I want to look back someday and say – yeah, I think that’s when our lives really began, when we woke up and started really living the lives we were called to live, living out the words of Jesus.

Again I ask – pray for us. We need courage, we need wisdom, and we need funds. God will give freely to all who ask.

Vermont

I’m back from my blogging sabbatical. Daniel, Madeline, and I returned on Sunday from a restful yet exhausting, beautiful and exhilarating trip to Vermont. The snow was gorgeous. I often wonder why I was born in the south. I despise the hot, humid summers we have in Tennessee, and I feel giddy when we have the occasional cold snap that takes the temperature down to the single digits. I love sweaters, scarves, and our fireplace. Most of all, I love snow. And we saw lots of it while we were there. It had snowed several inches the day that we arrived, and there was a total of about 18 inches on the ground. The drifts were taller than we were. Awesome.

We spent the first few days resting (Madeline and Daniel had both been sick the week before) and doing a little sightseeing. We checked out the little town of Woodstock, VT, went to the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory, went to a cheese making place and a really cool bakery, and just enjoyed being away from home and TOGETHER.

On Wednesday, my parents joined us in Killington, VT. Then Daniel and I got to ski at Killington for three days. Oh. My. Goodness. It was beautiful. And the snow conditions were amazing. And it wasn’t crowded at all. And we didn’t ski the same trail twice in three days of skiing. Yes, it was some great skiing. It was a little on the cold side. But we bundled up and used over a dozen hand warmers, and all but our noses and thumbs stayed nice and warm.

Here are a few photos of our trip:


Madeline was very kind to us on her first plane trip. She never ceases to amaze me. She behaved beautifully despite a very long day of traveling with no naps.



Madeline and dad in the snow on our first day in Vermont.



At the Ben and Jerry’s Factory.



Madeline reading about the inauguration of President Obama. Check out those four precious little teeth.



Here we are on the mountain all bundled up.



Yeah, I told you it was cold. It was so amazing how the snow clung to the trees. I have never seen anything like it. Gorgeous.



Playing in the snow.



Baby’s first snow angel.



Our happy family. :)

Chilly Hike

Here are a couple pics from the hiking trip last week where we almost froze our baby to death. Bless her sweet heart, she hardly complained. I had her dressed in two layers, and I thought she would be just fine snuggled against one of us in the backpack. I underestimated how long the 4 1/2 mile hike would take, how shady it would be, and how much cooler it would get as the afternoon wore on. We all survived, and I was reminded how important it is to always bring an extra layer of clothing for baby.




Check out those little teeth.




Afterward, I was prompted to buy Madeline the warmest, thickest snowsuit that I could find for our trip to Vermont next week. I found an awesome one at a local consignment store with a fur-lined hood and everything. She will be nice and toasty in there no matter what the temperature outside. No more frozen baby.

Stuff

By Daniel -

I have a confession. I'm a stuff-aholic. I love stuff -- preferably stuff that comes with blinking lights, and shiny metal bits. I love shopping for stuff, reading reviews on stuff, and surfing blogs that will introduce me to new stuff I didn't even know I needed.

Here's the rub -- I'm pretty sure God isn't into stuff.

"Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ."

Based on that, I'm also pretty sure Jesus isn't into stuff. Though I like to think he would have had an iPod, I don't think he would have been more interested in gadgets than God. Nothing in this world was more valuable to him than his relationship with the Father. He understood that substituting stuff for God was unthinkable -- not because stuff is bad, just pathetic compared to the glory of God.

And yet, though God offers me this spiritual Filet Mignon, I'm content to chew on my Tijuana Mama pickled sausage, scouring the internet for meaning through stuff. Arggh. Why? I don't know. Habit? Fear? If I'm honest, I think it's because I think that stuff IS as good as a deep relationship with God. I'm satisfied with where I am, thanks. To lead a different life would require change and the change train isn't a ride I'm eager to hop on.

So far.

Recently I have found myself intensely restless. I've been, I don't know, dissatisfied with a life trajectory that I had convinced myself was supposed to be satisfying.

Slowly I am realizing that there is this life that God wants to give me that is so much bigger and better than what I've been living. But to take hold of that life I'm going to have to loosen the death grip I have on the world, its stuff, and the comfort of security.

That scares me and also thrills me.

I don't totally get it yet either. If you happen to stop by our house around bed time tonight you're likely to find me standing at the computer with a toothbrush stuck in my mouth searching for one last bit of gadget news before I go to bed. But I can tell you this: the gadgets, all the stuff I lean on to give meaning to my life, they ain't workin' like they used to. I'm no longer satisfied with sleepwalking through life.

"Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light."

Check It Out

We have forward motion! It’s still not exactly a crawl, but she’s getting there. Until now Madeline has only been able to move backward on her tummy using her arms to push her along. My laptop is what has enticed her to creep forward thus far. It is, without a doubt, her favorite thing to “get into” and worth any amount of effort it takes to get herself there. She loves to push buttons. I let her play with it for just a little while as a reward for all her hard work. Check out this video of her tummy scooting in action. I love the smile at the end that says: “Look what I did, Mom!”