a path which few can tell

She says, “I ya you, mama,” and I’m not sure if she means it, or if she even knows what it means yet, but she hears it from us and feels safe to repeat it back, finally. It has taken two years.

And him…he waves. He smiles. I give him thumbs-up, and he gives thumbs-up back, instead of any equivalent to the middle finger, which is what we’re used to. He also has recently started saying “I love you” – and it was heart-meltingly sweet at first, but then we realized that aggressive or defiant behavior follows it every time. Now, it just puts us on alert.

a path which few can tell: praying for families on the front lines

So there is progress, but we are hard to please because we want it to be faster than two steps forward, 1.9 steps back. We are past the stage of not recognizing our home anymore, but not yet to the point of getting to go out of the house for dates yet. I have vague memories about our life before adoption, including certain things that made it possible for us to leave the house without children. Maybe you’ve heard of them – I think they’re called “babysitters?” – but I don’t think they exist anymore.

Yes, it’s still hard around here. But most days, we see light at the end of the tunnel and we’re pretty confident that it’s not an oncoming freight train. We’re starting to make headway, and the emotional trauma involved in fighting our childrens’ past no longer slays me like it used to. This was not always the case.

So Perseus started on his journey…and away through the moors and fens, day and night toward the bleak north-west, turning neither to the right hand nor the left, till he came to the Unshapen Land, and the place which has no name.

And seven days he walked through it, on a path which few can tell; for those who go there again in dreams are glad enough when they awake; till he came to the edge of the everlasting night, where the air was full of feathers, and the soil was hard with ice; and there at last he found the three Gray Sisters, by the shore of the freezing sea, nodding upon a white log of drift-wood, beneath the cold white winter moon; and they chanted a low song together, “Why the old times were better than the new.”

There was no living thing around them, not a fly, not a moss upon the rocks.

– Charles Kingsley, The Heroes

The journey often feels like the place which has no name.

IMG_7592

A dear friend of mine said this:

I told my husband just yesterday, “Adoption is the loneliest thing you will ever do,” and I wondered out loud why would God call people to adopt if it only leaves them feeling alone and isolated….an island in a world that pays little attention…and he said, “It is not God’s will that we are alone…it is a heart condition of our society.”

And I agree with both of them. I don’t think it’s an intentional heart condition, but an undiagnosed heart condition, made possible by the combination of decades of misinformation via the media, and a shallow culture that is discomfited by those who get their hands dirty because it threatens to mess up the manicures of the elite.

Deep breath. All this, with a broken coffee pot. I guess we should be grateful that this wasn’t a caffeinated post.

IMG_7593

 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

– 2 Corinthians 1:3-

But friends, post-adoption depression…it’s real, and serious. It’s a different beast than post-partum or any other depression, and it comes with a myriad of its own mutilated griefs, but they’re all spawn of the same ugly monster. Life doesn’t go on hold for families who bring hurting children into their homes, and in many cases, they deal with drama and attack from several directions outside the home as well. If you know an adoptive/foster family, or a special needs family, or a family who falls into both categories (and many do) – for the love of all that is holy, pray for them.

If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

– 2 Corinthians 1:6-7

IMG_7623

Jesus, we pray for your peace and patience and wisdom in homes that need you utterly right now. Adoptive families, special needs families, foster families, blended families, grieving families – come over each of them with Your Spirit, and flood their homes with peace and joy, unity and healing, that makes the enemy flee.

You have great days ahead for us. Your plans are good. You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make all things new.

The Unshapen Land…it’s not a place we linger or stay, but it has lessons to teach for those who trod the bleak path there. They come out wiser and well-armed to slay the monster, and finish the task before them.

________
This story is now told in Risk the Ocean: An Adoptive Mom’s Memoir of Sinking and Sanctification.

a union full of grace

It’s our 17th anniversary. We have the day off, but nothing planned – I think we’re hoping for an extra midweek Sabbath, of sorts. I love this man and our life together; our success has been hard-fought and full of grace, and little credit goes to either of us because we messed up right and left in our first several years of marriage, and spent the next several trying to detangle it all.

a union full of grace: truth about rejoicing and mourning

We are so grateful, and yet we know that there are others close to us that are hurting and raw in this area. How do you celebrate anything without rubbing salt in the wounds of others who are in pain?

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.

– Romans 12:3-6a

We praise the achievements of advanced students while we recognize the struggle of those who fight hard just to remember the process of long division. We cheer for families who experience great triumph while we honor those who are still in the trial of their lives. We rejoice at healings, while holding the hands of those who are still in the hospital bed.

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

– Romans 12:10-12

As I finished writing last night’s post, we learned that cancer took a family member with the finality that left my beautiful cousin without her husband. We celebrate our anniversary this year with sobriety in the awareness that life is far too short sometimes.

Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

– Romans 12:13-15

IMG_5841

Lord, I’m praying tonight for those who are hurting – that You would comfort them and protect them from the lies of the enemy; that those who are going through loss would know that You are not done with them yet, that their story is not finished, and that Your plans for them are wondrous and good in spite of anything the enemy has thrown at them. I’m praying for hope, for encouragement, for truth, for healing…for purity in marriages and health in families everywhere.

IMG_6352

Life is messy and full of hurt sometimes. We think beauty resides in the ideal – the poster-child family, the picturesque life – and it does, but that beauty is surface deep and often fleeting. We look, we admire, and we walk away. We move on, as through a shop full of beautiful curios.

We look twice, though, at the beauty forged in life’s gritty crucible, that grace that makes us stop in our tracks: the child who learns to read in spite of multiple diagnoses, the couple who makes it through infidelity and scandal to ministering to other marriages, the grieving spouse who climbs out of devastating loss to find joy again. We admire the tenacity and steadfastness of those who turned shame on its head and walked out warriors. We pause, we think, we stop and stare, as in a museum of heroes and heirlooms – none flawless, all scarred from age and wear, having earned their stripes in the trenches. Full of grace, they display the awful truth that rejoicing and mourning go together, creating the alloy called victory.

without ceasing button

This is day 14 of Without Ceasing: 31 Days of Relentless Prayer. Find the other posts here. To get new posts right in your inbox, subscribe here.

without ceasing: 31 days of relentless prayer

without ceasing: relentless prayer (31 days series from Copperlight Wood)

*Most of this series is now found in Oh My Soul: Encountering God in Honest, Unconventional (and Sometimes Messy) Prayer and is available for purchase at Amazon and anywhere books are sold.

day 2: every second

day 3: gentle dynamite

day 4: lighting a fire

day 5: prepared for us

day 6: stirred, not shaken

day 7: this peace is for you

day 8: storming the castle

day 9: battleground

day 10: leap, and trust

day 11: give me a sign

day 12: wait

day 13: aloud

day 14: a union full of grace

day 15: before Jericho

day 16: turn it over

day 17: tell me where to go

day 18: a path which few can tell

day 19: steadfast

day 20: all things for good

day 21: on our watch

day 22: for a generation to come

day 23: about time

day 24: behold, we live

day 25: patience with joy

day 26: finishing well

day 27: filling the house

day 28: grace note

day 29: epic: when God redeems your story

day 30: called: who we are at the end of our story

day 31: redirect: He speaks in the surrender