Category Archives: purpose

the right fit

Posted on by March 12, 2026

the right fit: how He molds a family of sore thumbs into His image (Copperlight Wood)

It is January and we are in a new year. Christmas came and went at our house, leaving behind new sleds and snowgear, and everything fits perfectly. In the yard, four inches of fresh snow is just waiting to be violently trampled by our six kids.

There is frantic donning of snowgear and the garage door slams repeatedly as they race outside, each hauling a plastic disk that promises to send them down the hill at warp speed.

IMG_4000

Except for one kid. Our youngest child is sobbing and wailing in depths of despair that would make Anne Shirley proud.

“This mitten won’t fit on this hand! And this mitten is on this hand” – she thrusts it at me as evidence – “but the OTHER mitten won’t fit on my OTHER hand because ITS thumb is on THIS side!!”

We can hear the bigger kids outside, laughing, yelling, breaking a path down the sledding hill. But she is left behind, left out…and her shiny red sled surely pouts in sympathy from the lonely garage where it waits for her.

She flings both her arms out to show me. “LOOK!” Her four-year-old vocabulary is limited, but what she really means is Hey! This infidel mitten dares to defy me! Behold!

I’m beholding. The thumbs do look…funny. The mitten she’s wearing also looks funny.

Because she has it on the wrong hand. Upside down.

I take that mitten off and hold both of them in front of her so she can see what’s wrong.

“This is how you had them,” I tell her. “Now, watch this.”

I slowly flip the mitten over and switch them to the correct hands…and they fit. No sticky-outy thumbs or anything, and all is right with the world.

She’s four, and learning. But she’s not alone.

We all try to put things on in the wrong places, and then fly into despair when it doesn’t fit right.

Moms, especially, learn that the discipline, training, and schooling that worked for their first kid usually won’t be a perfect fit for the next child. Due to God’s flair for comedy, every succeeding offspring is usually the opposite of their older brother or sister. It’s a mathematical phenomenon.

 

Kids are designed with the irritating trait of resisting to mold perfectly to the likeness of others. They won’t be made into their older siblings, and they won’t be made into us – their parents. We may share many traits and features with them, but they were created to mold perfectly to the image of the One who made them…and He doesn’t fit into any box we can come up with.

We have differing personalities and short tempers. We have special needs and often incompetent, pat answers. We are kept on our toes and on our knees.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

-James 1:2-4

Some days we are all thumbs, and they’re sticking out in the wrong directions all over the place: This kid won’t respond to this consequence and this teaching style doesn’t work for this kid and this other kid sticks himself out like a sore thumb that is pushing my buttons…and he’s doing it on purpose.

IMG_4027

We are stretched and grown beyond our parenting wisdom, and we cry for more.

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

– James 1:5

So, we pray because we lack wisdom for the particular crisis at hand…but also, we pray because we have the wisdom in the first place to know that He must intervene in our lives.

Because honestly, what we’re really saying is, Hey! These infidel children dare to defy me! Behold!

We thrust the situation and these children and all of the sore thumbs at Him, and He gently shows us how to put things upright again. He shows us how He made us all to fit together.

Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

– Ephesians 4:15-16

As we pray with wisdom, for wisdom, for our kids and all of our differences, He does more than just show us how He is making our kids into His image. He makes us more into His image, too.

He says, This is how you had them. Now…watch this.

And He shows us how we are made to fit together perfectly. 

a love that grows

Posted on by November 22, 2013

 

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

Dear Reagan,

You turned eight years old today. You had little idea what it meant, and you didn’t know what you wanted for cake or presents. You knew you got extra hugs and smiles today.

You came to us full of fear and hurts and hunger and unknowns. I would lean in, you would lean away. You were wary, untrusting, hesitant.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You were afraid of stairs, of playdoh, of not being fed. You panicked at the smell of food that was not right in front of you. You were afraid of us, especially of me.

You walked with a lurch and flapped your arms when you were excited. You still flap a little, but so much less. You would eat orange peels, apple cores, and watermelon rinds. Crumbs on the floor and food on someone else’s plate was fair game if you got to it before we did. You ate a few crayons. You only tried eating an eraser once. 

You can wait for food now. You know that there’s a process to making it that you had never seen before. You know it will come to you as soon as it’s ready.

You play now. You love to play with buttons and cars, and you look at books quietly on the couch every day. You like…cookbooks.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

Now you can run. You dress yourself, you make your bed, you fold clothes, and you even refuse food to push us away sometimes…but at least that means that you obviously aren’t afraid of us starving you anymore.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You used to be hot and cold, swinging from one extreme to the other in your affection and rejection of us. You would cling aggressively one day, and shove us away the next. Now you are…well, definitely not lukewarm. You’ve leveled out to warm and cool. It’s progress, and we’ll take it.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You are learning to speak. You are learning to give and maintain eye contact to those who love you. You are learning letters, colors, shapes, and you can count to eight. You know how much four is. You know that you were seven yesterday, and that you are now eight. Whatever that means.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

But you don’t know that we prayed for you when you were a toddler. I’m so sorry it took us so long to find you. You don’t know that we saw you, found you, and chose you when you were five. That we waited and prayed and cried for you until we got to meet you when you were six, and that we brought you home months later when you were pushing seven. 

You don’t know very much about the years before that. We don’t, either.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

We have a few pictures of you as a toddler, but they are undated. We can only guess how old you were in them. We have paperwork that mentions inaccurate diagnoses that are both more and less severe than the truth of what you are healing through.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You almost never flinch anymore when I reach toward you. In the middle of the night, when you’re asleep and I tuck you in one more time before I go to bed, your arm doesn’t fly up in fear anymore to cover your face and head. I’m so sorry you ever had to do that, and that you ever felt like you had to do that here.

You are healing. You are growing and learning and we are seeing more and more of the real you, and you shine.

You are brave. You are strong. You are gentle and curious and tender and joyful.

You are growing in wisdom and stature, just as the One who redeemed you did when He was young.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You have a mighty future. We are so honored to be in it.

With a love that grows and prays for your mountains to move,

Mama

 

a trust that stirs the waters

Posted on by October 25, 2018

a trust that stirs the waters: how to find the peace you might be looking for (Copperlight Wood)

We finally have winter. The trees are hung heavy with snow, and tonight is for tea and thought and rest. It feels…bookish, but there is so much to do. My brain gets dizzy thinking of it, added to the dishes that always need washing and children that always need bathing and laundry that always needs…well, laundering…and…and…I’m out of coherent words.

This calls for ice cream.

My bowl of vanilla is heaped with extra cinnamon, and I’m under a blanket, under a cat, and under a few deadlines – both self-imposed and otherwise – and eating ice cream for dinner is the most productive way to procrastinate that I can think of without leaving the couch again. Snort.

I’ve been reading this book. Just a tiny thing, my copy is just over 100 pages, but it goes in small chunks that fill you immediately. Like lembas bread, for us literary types.

a trust that stirs the waters: how to find the peace you might be looking for (Copperlight Wood)

While sharing bites of ice cream with the cat, I read this:

God…has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take up with a little sensible devotion which passes in a moment. Blind as we are, we hinder God and stop the current of His graces.  

I have to read it a couple of times to take it all in. Sophie swipes at the spoon hanging in midair while I mull it over, wondering if I’ve hindered His current lately by settling for less than He wanted to give. So much is at stake in His flowing through us.

But when He finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, He pours into it His graces and favors plentifully; there they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance.

A soul penetrated with lively faith is a trust in Him that stirs the waters. The peace in our spirit is directly proportional to the wild activity of our faith.

We have plenty of wild activity around here – what we need is to channel it to the right current so it will actually produce something other than unrest.

…not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back. But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. If the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the Lord, who reposes in it, and He will quickly calm the sea.

– Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

He’s been trying to tell me something: The more audacious your faith is, Love, the more settled your spirit will be. 

There goes that comfort zone again. Bye-bye, ciao, adios…

a trust that stirs the waters: how to find the peace you might be looking for (Copperlight Wood)

As our faith becomes more radical, our spirit grows more resolved, rested, peaceful. We believe Him wildly and are moved with speed by the current of His grace, while our spirit is becalmed, even in the midst of storm. Our spirit only finds rest when our faith is on the move.

We need not, when abed, to lie awake to talk with God; He can visit us while we sleep, and cause us then to hear His voice. Our heart oft-times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by works, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake.

– John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

He showed me this months ago, elsewhere. He’s reminding me again that this new season isn’t about me, either. It’s not about what I can do. It’s about what He does.

Not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back…But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. Deadlines are met. Children are bathed, books are read. And things actually get done.

Maybe…even the dishes.

____

* This is an excerpt from Oh My Soul: Encountering God in Honest, Unconventional (and Sometimes Messy) Prayer. You can find it on Amazon and everywhere books are sold.