Category Archives: Alaska

blue sky, black clouds (+ book giveaway)

Posted on by April 28, 2015

About a week and a half ago I had a routine appointment with our midwife. No worries, no big concerns, no problems. Some back pain, some heartburn, just normal pregnancy woes. I drove home and the sky over me was blue, but a wall of black clouds loomed toward our house.

blue sky, black clouds: storms we drive into (plus book giveaway)

Cresting the top of the hill on the highway, I saw hail filtered through sunlight falling on the intersection below. Stopped at the bottom of the hill a minute later, the sun was still on me but tiny balls of snow were falling everywhere. The light turned green and cars started to move again, and every fifth vehicle coming toward me was covered in fresh snow – a clear warning of the weather we were driving into.

There was sunlight, and then darkness – sudden and startling. Hail, rain, and snow, right next to miles of sunlight. It was temperamental Alaska in all her glory.

It was like adoption, like life: Sometimes we have warning, and other times we have no clue what we’re driving into. Four days later I had emergency surgery at 27 weeks pregnant.

And I’m fine. And our baby, praise God, is fine. But the recovery has been wild, and I’m not talking about the incisions or anything like that – I’m talking about two of our kiddos who have a hard time handling uproar that isn’t caused by their own behavior, and we’ve had a roller coaster of a week. Chiaroscuro, light and dark, sunshine and hail.

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The next day he gave us the virtual middle finger, right and left, at every opportunity. That love thing is terrifying, don’t you know – let’s not have too much of that.

Reagan’s had a rough week, too. One thing after another, there’s been disobedience and sneaky misbehavior. Outright defiance over silly things, like putting away clothes.

Iree came downstairs this afternoon, and said, “Mom, Reagan’s up there saying, ‘Mommy hit me’ and ‘Mommy flick me.’ And she’s hitting and flicking herself…and her laundry is still all over the floor.”

And, oh, it made me angry. The part of me that was raised, Stop your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about wanted to lash out at her for this.

But it would play right into the enemy’s hands, because it’s what she remembers, still, years later. Love is scary, so let’s create anger because anger is safe and familiar. Let’s push away Mommy before she can leave us. She then refused dinner and threw up all over her bed. But we’ve had months of progress since the last time she did that during her last big regression. We know there is more sunlight ahead.

“I’m just going to love him.”

“That’s the hard way,” she said.

“With God’s help, I want to be something like grace to him. I don’t know how the shrink stuff works and I don’t want to pretend to know or try a bunch of fashionable strategies. So, if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, maybe he and I will both learn something in spite of ourselves.”

“You know he’s frightened of attachment, of any real closeness. It’s what he wants most from you, but he’ll keep trying to push you away.”

“I’m not going away.”

– Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good

There are adoptive, special needs, and foster families out there who are not fine, who feel alone, who are treading water. They need hope, support, and a holy stubbornness to love when loving is hardest. They need to know that loving may look different from what they imagined, but that it still works. They need to know that people are in their lane, driving with them into the same weather – some miles ahead, some miles behind – and we carry flares, extra blankets, and jumper cables. They need to know they are not alone.

How can we encourage adoptive families? Maybe with a forecast, of sorts, from those who’ve weathered the storm.

adoption book bundle giveaway

Mary Ostyn is a mama of ten children (four biological and six adopted) who has walked through the gamut of adoption – domestic and foreign, easy and hard, new baby and older child, siblings and special needs. She writes with compassion and honesty. A few months ago she sent me her new book Forever Mom, and I wish it had been available when we were in the adoption process. In my (only slightly-biased) opinion, the combined information in Forever Mom and Upside Down prepares adoptive families far more than most of the required reading for homestudies and trainings that are compiled by really smart people with letters after their names but no real adoptive or special needs parenting experience.

I’ve been honored to partner with Mary in bundling our books together and giving them away to our readers. She hosted her giveaway a few weeks ago, and I meant to host mine last week…but then decided to not commit to anything while doped up on narcotics. So here we are, a week late, but much more lucid.

Forever Mom & Upside Down bundle giveaway

To enter this giveaway, you can do any or all of the following:

– Share this post on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Pinterest, and come back here to comment and let me know. No need to comment separately every time; I will tally carefully. :)

– Tell me about your connection to adoption, foster care, or special needs in the comments below.

I’ll randomly draw a winner on Tuesday, April 28th. Offer limited to US residents who have a healthy appreciation of chocolate, coffee, or ice cream only.

And, if you’d like to know more about that emergency we had last week, subscribe to my free newsletter. The gory details (not really) and what He told me during pain worse than natural childbirth will be in there and headed to your inbox by the end of the month. Also, we have another surgery scheduled at the end of this week, though we’ve been informed that the hospital does not give out punchcards. We would love to have you pray for us through the weather ahead…thanks so much. xoxo

UPDATE AND WINNER! Kelsey Jast – congrats! Contact me with your address and I’ll get these in the mail this week. :) Thanks!

grace is the shelter

Posted on by February 3, 2025

The wind, this wind. It shakes the house and bows the trees. Ground is blown bare and small snowdrifts press against the edge of the house. The windows creak and the vent above the stove rattles, and the wind whistles between trees and across our chimney tops.

grace is the shelter: where we go when the wind blows

We try to be ready for power outages. We keep the laptops charged and the teapot full, and I’ve learned to use the threat of an outage to motivate the kids to clean up better before bedtime because no one wants to trip over toys or skid across books lying on the floor in the dark. In other states, these winds are recognized as hurricane force and mentioned on national news; here, schools are open and it’s business as usual — you just hang on to your car door as you open it to make sure it’s not ripped off the vehicle entirely. And you might want to drive a little slower on the highway, too, so you can get a good look at the semi truck that was blown on its side with its wheels in the air.

The wind keeps on for days and nights, and it’s 75 miles an hour outside with flying debris and a wind chill of about minus fifteen. But inside, everything is still. Six kids, all asleep. Half as many cats, also asleep. The computer hums, the teapot ticks as it’s heating, and between gusts there’s a perfect calm.

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In the morning we check for fallen trees and there aren’t any, though branches are everywhere like so much littered confetti. A couple of plastic grocery bags have flown in and attached themselves like windsocks to our trees, and across the street it looks like our neighbor has gained a shiny new trash can from probably three houses over.

We’re getting together with friends in the evening, and if they weren’t close friends — you know, the kind who are allowed to look for stuff in your fridge even though you didn’t even clean it before they came over — I might squirm a little and apologize for the mess outside. Not that the weather is my fault, but it just looks so ugly out there. Even though I have no control over it, and their yard has seen the same wind and is probably in the same shape, it’s not the first impression I’d want to make to anyone who’s never been here before.

But I don’t need to apologize, and they wouldn’t expect it. We have seen each other’s messes before. Marriage, special needs, dirty laundry, parenting kids unborn through adolescent. These are friends who are family, and we can let go of insecurities about the messes we can’t control outside, and just focus on the messes we can control inside — vacuuming, cleaning toilets, washing the dishes. Well, the dishes, I dunno…that might be asking too much.

There’s a turkey in the oven and stuffing on the counter, a green bean casserole in progress and pie crust to be made. It’s Thanksgiving at the end of winter; it’s February and we’re still thankful.

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Whipped cream is melting into late morning coffee and sweet potatoes are peeled and ready to boil. We send one kid to throw out compost and send another kid to timeout for throwing a temper tantrum. I make a note to ask my friend about different therapists and pick her brain about various issues we’re both facing. Because sometimes we can’t control the messes inside the house, either.

I’ve ruined gravy the last four times I’ve made it — too thin, boiled too long, not enough cornstarch in the world to redeem it — and our friends arrive right at that crucial juncture of constant stirring and watching for the first bubbles. I pass the task to a child with explicit instructions to only let it boil for one minute and then turn off the heat, and then run to greet friends at the door. I get halfway there and realize that child is right behind me — I stop, turn both of us around, and remind him of his task. For the love of gravy, watch this, stir it, and don’t let it boil for more than a minute. I’ll be right back andyouneedtostayhere. Double-back again to run to the door, hug, welcome, make a pile of jackets in the corner, laugh, go back to the kitchen.

And that kid has pawned off the gravy (sans instructions) to Vince, who is stirring away at what has obviously been boiling hard for a little less than three minutes and is destined to remain the consistency of half-and-half. So help me.

The house is full and a dozen kids will crowd around our table, but before we even got that far our friends asked me about the book I saved for them — that little book that is supposed to be about adoption and boundaries but is actually mostly about grace and shelter; the little book that was birthed here and grew through its childhood and adolescence and is now a big kid, not quite grown up yet but still launching off into the world of bookstores and reviews and grown-up real-bookishness.

And these friends whom we’ve shared messes with, who have been in the trenches far longer than we have, who showed us grace when we didn’t even know we needed it — these friends, we saved the first copy for them. And if I had been thinking correctly during the formatting stage (but wasn’t, because, oh, the morning sickness), there would have been a dedication page in this first edition, and it would have said what I scribbled to them on the inside cover:

To Cody and Sara: You have long been our heroes.

And I would have added: And to Larry and Sharon, who were wise and crazy enough to introduce such humble troublemakers to us.

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And now it is days later. The wind has subsided and the leftovers are pretty much gone. We have a new box of books that are shipping out all over the country in the next week. The ground outside is still a mess, and there are still messes inside, too, and I’m not just talking about the dishes…but it makes all the difference to know we are not alone. These kids, those issues, that grief, the big decision. The house shakes and the ground is blown bare, and we can still throw the door wide open. In all those storms, you are not alone. We shelter each other with grace.

out of the blue

Posted on by March 13, 2026

out of the blue: finding joy when the season is a struggle

In case you missed the news in the video on Facebook or in the newsletter, we have an announcement. Coming soon, summer of 2015, a new baby at Copperlight Wood. And if you ask us, “Hey, haven’t you guys figured out what causes that yet?” we will probably give you any one of the following answers:

1. Yes…haven’t you?

2. Yes, and we like it.

3. Yes — lots of…well, paperwork (high five to fellow adoptive families!).

We’re excited, but the days so far have been a lot like this one:

Fold the next shirt, try not to throw up. Match a pair of socks, try not to throw up. Stay away from the kitchen (or the catbox, or the boys’ bedroom) and try not to throw up.

These days, I subsist mostly on crackers and peanut butter and ask the big kids to make lunch for everyone else while I fight queasiness on the other side of the house. They do a pretty good job. Only two food groups? Close enough.

And yes, we’re thrilled about this new life, and yes, these days will pass and joy will come, but to be honest…everything turns dull shades of grey and blue while morning sickness tries to drain the color out of life for the weeks that it lasts. I walk around in a haze of nausea, not enthusiastic about Thanksgiving, not helpful with cooking, not inspired about Christmas decorating, and not even excited about our first scheduled date out of the house in two and a half years.

It’s just, bleh. Blue. And it’s not me, it’s the morning sickness talking.

And maybe it’s not morning sickness for you, but the bleh happens to many of us out of the blue – or at a certain time of the month – and we are just not who we normally are. The color is gone, our caffeinated superpowers have abandoned us, and we could not summon appropriate enthusiasm if someone were to lay a platter of chocolate and roses in front of us and declare that we’ll never pay a mortgage again. Life for a little while has lost it’s zing. And I know I’m not alone in this…I suspect it also happens to thousands of devoted Downton Abbey fans at the end of every season. Mm-hmm. You know who you are.

It’s easy to turn the funk into an excuse to pull back, isolate, and recoil. And there is room for that, sure — no one wants an audience hovering around when we’re absolutely miserable — but He gives room for growth and productivity within the struggle. It’s a grace-saturated opportunity: no added pressure, no increased burden, just the light yoke of learning boldness in affliction.

We can pursue the Kingdom quietly in spite of pain. The struggle is a season, not our identity.

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

– Colossians 4:12

Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you.

– Philemon 1:23

I’ve never paid much attention to this name before, but in the last several weeks of reading the New Testament the name Epaphras kept showing up, and I finally noticed. His name means “lovely.” The few scriptures we have that mention him revolve around this theme of both faithfulness and struggle.

The two go together. Anyone can be faithful when things are easy. But being steadfast in the struggle is what reveals faithfulness. And that is lovely.

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We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

– Colossians 1:3-8

Through lunch, I’m sitting on the couch, sorting the kids laundry for them to put away later. The girls’ clothes go in a pile to my right, the boys’ clothes go on the other couch. I toss some over in a half-hearted fling – a shirt makes it, but the sock hits the floor. Close enough.

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

– Colossians 1:9-10

Reagan has been coming up to me lately for lots of hugs – no real reason, just out of the blue, she’ll reach out and ask, “Hug, Mama?” like a wee toddler would. And one afternoon last week when I was nauseous and not wanting anyone near me, I hugged her anyway — which may make me sound like a terrible parent, but if you’ve ever been this close to throwing up at the same moment that a child with a history of aromatic breath wants to come near and squeeze your body, you’ll understand. But I let her, and she hugged me long, and for the first time ever, after being home with us for two and a half years, she said something else — all on her own, no prompting, out of the blue.

It was, “Ah yah you.” I love you, in Reagan’s toddler speak. I melted, but it put me on guard a little – there’s still this inner struggle of wanting to trust and enjoy it, but knowing from experience that often there’s a backlash coming after sweet behavior, the swing from hot back to cold, from clingy to repellent.

But there was no backlash, and she did it again today. And there was joy. Her struggle is not her identity, either.

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

– Colossians 1:11-14

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We ran errands, and bought maternity clothes, club soda, and a Christmas tree. We listened to Louis Armstrong sing about a Dixieland Santa Claus while driving home in the snow with the tree strapped to the top of the Stagecoach, and the haze was there, but color and loveliness were, too. And it wasn’t quite enthusiasm, but it was close enough.