Sacrifice, Redemption, Amazing Grace

I've been thinking about redemption. It's hard not to with a physical, living, breathing, walking example of it living under my roof. In writing about Bogdan's adoption on my other blog, I am overwhelmed by the sense of deja vue. His story is similar to....something. But what?

The nagging feeling follows me as I go about my life. Why does his story seem so familiar? Why does it invoke such a depth of emotion in me? It's more than just being his mom, although there is a lot of emotion associated with that alone. 

In grappling with the idea of finding that which was lost, it finally hits me square between the eyes. 

His story is my story, too.

His was one of abandonment, rejection, neglect.
Mine was one of darkness, separation, death.

The ending of his story was rewritten. Mine was, too.

He was chosen. We searched for him and once we found him, moved heaven and earth to get to him, at great cost to ourselves and our family. 

I was chosen. Like the lone sheep separated from the flock, I was searched for and found. God moved heaven and earth and sacrificed His Son to get to me. 

And here's the thing: Being a three-year-old with a cognitive disability, Bogdan shows no gratitude for his new life. We wouldn't expect him to. In fact, I'm sure being ripped away from everything he knows and tossed into this family hardly feels like a gift, at this point. But we love him. Oh, how we love him! He is not, nor will he ever be, a perfect son...and we don't care. With all his self-stimming, hitting, throwing food, etc, we accept him as he is. He is ours and always will be.

Being a human with a sin nature, I show little gratitude for this life I have been given. In fact, I often complain about my circumstances and rail against the One who rescued me from death. I am not, nor will I ever be the perfect daughter, but I am accepted anyway. He loves me. Oh, how He loves me! I am His and always will be. 

I have an adoption certificate with an official seal from Serbia certifying that Bogdan will always be mine. Likewise, Scripture tells me that I am sealed in the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30) and that my name is written in the book of life because of my adoption by my Father God (Ephesians 1:5). 

Like Bogdan, I don't have to perform or have the right attitude or strive to be loved. I am just loved. 

My life is not pretty. I am not all the things I think I should be as a follower of Christ. I am prone to laziness, driven by distraction, scattered, and chronically impatient. I'm a mess.

But God thinks I am a beautiful mess. And He loves me. He knows me, all of me, and He loves me. 

When I am still and really ponder that idea, it takes my breath away. 

Sacrifice, redemption, amazing grace - the story of my life through the eyes of the One who knows me best...and loves me most.

The Moment - an update

For those of you that read my last post, Hanging by a Thread, here's an update of sorts on my relationship with Bogdan. I think we've turned a corner and I'm grateful for your prayers! 

The Moment

(I know...it's ridiculous and confusing to have two blogs.)

Hanging by a Thread

I brought this on myself. I know that now. I even anticipated much of it. I was informed, educated, and prepared. I counted the cost and made the leap...

...and landed without a parachute. 

I'm exhausted. No, not just exhausted...weary. I can see my self aging a little more every time I glance in the mirror. The fine lines are turning into deep crevices at an alarming rate. Not enough skin cream in the world to slow the decline. 

Mentally, I'm fuzzy all the blasted time. At work, I was helping a patient get out of bed and I put her shoes on the wrong feet. (Thankfully, she had a sense of humor.) I forget to show up for appointments, to return messages, what I was just talking about mid-sentence. 

My emotions are bubbling just below the surface. One sappy Hallmark commercial and I'm toast, brought to my knees with tears overflowing. One defiant child and I'm a raging monster, scaring the people I love the dearest. 

Adoption is hard. I'm not going to sugar-coat it. It's messy and exhausting. I was wrong when I said it's not weird. It is. It's very weird to take on a child with a lifestyle and a history foreign to your own. To parent a child whose smile either means, "You're funny and I like you" or, "You have exactly 2.3 seconds before I'm going to knock your glasses clean off your face," depending on... who knows what?


In the words of the late Derek Loux:

My friends, adoption is redemption. It's costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him. And when He redeems us, we can't even really appreciate or comprehend it...

So, once again, it's not really about me. It's not about how I feel or what I'm experiencing. 

It's about a little boy who was thought to have been abandoned, but in fact, had a great big God who was always with him and loved him so much He tugged on our hearts, six thousand miles away. 

And, mostly, it's about that God who loves us so much He gently pulled us from our comfortable, complacent life into the great adventure and is allowing us the privilege of sharing in His suffering, one sleepless night at a time. 

He ministers to my heart even now and gives me just enough for today. At this moment, He has blessed me with a quiet house with sleeping children (including the new kid!) in which to write these thoughts and allow my perspective to be changed. He's teaching me to love, really love, without return. He's skimming off the dross that keeps bubbling to the surface in all this heat. He's lending me His strength and tenderly ministering to me His grace. 

He is good. And He is greatly to be praised!

And I find myself refreshed.

Choosing Rest and Life

May has been a hard month. I went into more detail about the last week on my other blog, here. I have found myself repeatedly questioning the stupidity of choosing this month to deny myself the pleasure of indulging in eating out. 

I'm struggling with stress and I'm finding that the things that used to help alleviate it, albeit for a short time, are no longer working. A cup of good coffee, some time on facebook, a quick game of Scramble, or a favorite show are no longer filling the void. 

I was thinking it about it yesterday and realized, those things were never meant to bring me peace. I am supposed to rely on the grace of God. 

I say I do that and in crisis situations, I actually do, but in the day to day - the stress of real life - not so much. 

One of the reasons we have received the children that we have, including Bogdan, was because we realized that coming to the end of ourselves is a good thing. However, now that I have arrived at the point where I truly cannot handle this life on my own, I find myself frustrated that my former pacifiers don't work. 

I don't want to invest the time in cultivating a relationship with the One who brings me peace. It might take too long. Better to fritter away what little extra time I have on things that are quick and fleeting and don't actually help.

And so I wallow in a constant state of frustration and stress and irritability and it is no way to live.

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV) 

Choose life so that you may live. I can almost see God raising His hand saying, "Pick me! Pick me! Put away the cupcake, drive past the drive thru, put down the remote, silence your phone, turn off the laptop.

Pick up my Word, fall on your knees, lift up your hands. Call on Me!

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28

He will give me rest.

Rest sounds amazing. Rest sounds like the opposite of stress and frustration. Rest sounds like living.

I choose life.

Update on my Gluttony (Could I think of a less interesting title?)

Since my confession last week, I've started reading the book, 7:An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker. It is fascinating. The first chapter caused an interesting dialogue with my husband about our personal contribution to excess in this culture. My confession here weighed in a lot. We knew we could never maintain a restriction as severe as the author did in the book for an entire month, but we wanted to do something. 

We decided we would not eat out the entire month of May. 

To most people, that is probably not a big deal. To me, huge. When I started working full-time, I reveled in the freedom of stopping for Starbucks for my morning coffee, then lunching with my co-workers wherever we felt like going at least a few times a week. That morphed into driving through to get a big cookie or a brownie or a big slice of pizza at the end of a stressful day. 

At first, it was the freedom that I relished. As a stay-at-home-mom, I seldom (never) went anywhere without a child, aka witness, aka beggar. Driving thru was a hassle with all the "Can I haves" and "I wants" and then bragging to the siblings about their treat the moment we walked in the door and dealing with the resulting "How come I didn'ts."

I love coffee (seriously, love) and getting my favorite brew to enjoy in the quiet of my car was a dream come true. Having adult conversations with adults over food that someone else prepared and brought me while I sat with adults...priceless.

As with all things new, the excitement began to fade but by then I felt I needed those things. It was part of the "free me" I had become. 

So, to eliminate the possibility of any of that caused me to immediately feel suffocated. Which obviously proved that I needed this.

Here it is, day 5. I found $15 cash in my purse the first day and promptly decided that anything I bought with it didn't count since it was basically free money. Talk about the letter of the law and not the spirit. So I lasted until day 4 and bought a Happy Meal on my way home from work yesterday since I had been too busy to eat lunch. Plus, I knew my people weren't home to catch me in the act. (Integrity is just oozing out of me. Sigh.)

But it's a start. 

Last week was one of the most stressful we've had in awhile. I was so tempted to stop and use my secret cash stash for something chocolate. Instead, I prayed all the way home from work. I felt better by the time I arrived. I'm taking baby steps to rely on Him instead of artificial fillers. I'm spending more time in the Word, at least a little each day, and I'm making a point to stop and look my children in the eye when they speak to me if I'm on the computer. 

I've been a glutton for a long time. I have a long way to go. But His grace is sufficient for me and His strength is made perfect in my weakness. Denying self, even a little bit, is causing me to rely on that grace.

And that's a very good thing.

Confession Time

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. John 5:16b (NIV)

I have a confession to make. There is a sin that has bested me for years. I have tried to overcome it by sheer will power and grit, but it always overtakes me and I am left ashamed. 

I am a glutton.

I don't think I'm alone. While we always think of gluttony as eating too much food, I don't think that's all there is to it. Gluttony does manifest itself in food consumption with me sometimes, but it's just as easily some other vice taken to excess. 

This is not about a sudden need to lose weight or get in shape or fit into my favorite jeans. At 5' 6" and 150 lbs, I could certainly stand to lose some weight, but I am also pretty average by American standards. 

This is about my propensity to stuff my hurt, my boredom, or my disenchantment about life with food or facebook or computer games or television. 

There is a void in me that Jesus longs to fill.

But that takes too long, so instead I grab the nearest whatever that will release some endorphins and palliate the ache. Because that reprieve is only temporary, I want more, until I begin stuffing to the point of gorging and wind up with dulled senses or a stomach ache.

This is a problem on many levels, obviously. 

We tend to minimize the sin of gluttony. After all, most churches are filled with gluttons and it seems like a mild sin...one that only hurts oneself. At the end of most church potlucks, it is common to hear some groaning and comments like, "Man, I overdid it." What would fellowship look like if it didn't include some gluttony?

God takes it seriously, however.

and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. Proverbs 23:2 (NIV)

Ouch! Do you remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? God destroyed those cities because of their wickedness, sparing only Lot and his family. What was their awful sin? Maybe not what you might think.

Sodom's sins were pride, laziness, and gluttony, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door. Ezekial 16:49 (NLT)

Gluttony interferes with my ability and my willingness to minister to the poor and needy around me. If I am spending money on snacks from the drive-thru because I've had a hard day, there is little left to sponsor an orphan. If I am wasting time on computer games or facebook because I'm trying to fill a void, there is little left of me to give to the family with whom God has entrusted me...the needy outside my (bedroom) door.

This is one of those "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" kind of sins. The kind we are deceived into thinking we should be able to handle on our own - more of a character flaw than actual sin.

But it is a sin. 

And needs to be dealt with as such. So, here I am, confessing to you. There is power in public confession and I want to be set free from this. I want to be free to meet the needs around me. I want to let Jesus fill the void instead of stuffing it with a cupcake. 

Will you pray for me?

Ordinary, but Holy (Part 2)

(You can read part 1 of this post here.)

We drove around downtown for a bit before finally parking the 15-passenger kid mobile in front of a park. Shawn and I were nervous. It's one thing to charge out into the wild blue yonder on your own; it's a whole 'nother ballgame to lead eight children into it.

We headed for the nearest picnic table and passed out the Dixie cups and crackers. As I was filling them with juice, Shawn talked to the kids about communion and sacrifice. (Lest you think it was a solemn, sacred thing, Eon threw his cracker-he hates any cracker that isn't round-and Bo was gobbling his like Cookie Monster...crumbs flying. The middle kids missed the point and guzzled their juice and needed refills before we prayed, and I got on some tangent about the bread at the actual Last Supper resembling more chalupa shells from Taco Bell than Saltines from Aldi.) But, eventually, we blessed the bread and took it and blessed the cup and took it, too.

Just a family in a park, breaking bread together.

Ordinary, but holy.

There were some men nearby that looked to be homeless. Rather than overwhelm anyone with the sheer number of us, I opted to take our youngest with me while the others went off to play. I admit, I didn't do a very good job. Even though chatting people up is part of my job as a therapist, I was nervous. I sat on his bench without permission and instantly knew that was wrong...and rude. I asked for permission and he grunted. I took that as a yes and told him Happy Easter. I asked (see, I'm learning) if he'd like an Easter basket in a bag and showed it to him. He grunted again and reached for it. I stammered something stupid about candy and headed for the next guy, eager to escape my faux pas and crazy nerves.

More confident this time, I looked that man in the eye and told him Happy Easter and asked if I could sit. He agreed. I offered him a bag and he thanked me for it as he eyed the contents. I joked with him about everyone needing a Cadbury egg on Easter and he presented me with the hugest smile with the straightest yellow teeth I've ever seen. I relaxed. We chatted a bit about candy and about the beautiful weather. 

Two strangers sitting in the park making small talk.

Ordinary, but holy.

While we were chatting, my nine-year-old was pushing Bo in his stroller, around and around the fountain, very fast, delighting in his shrieks of joy. She laughed with this child who once was a stranger, abandoned, but now is her brother of only six weeks. She set him free from the confines of the stroller and stayed with him as he explored. 

A sister playing with her brother.

Ordinary, but holy.

On the other side of the fountain, Shawn spotted a man who might want a bag and asked seven-year-old Ben to go with him. I watched from a distance as Shawn, with humble posture, spoke to the man and they handed him a bag. 

Just a dad teaching his oldest son about life and love.

Ordinary, but holy.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with delivering our bags, posing and smiling,

playing and climbing,

and just being together. We made mistakes. We learned a lot. We stepped out of our comfort zone. (It is my firm belief that if we step out of it often enough, our comfort zone will expand.) And we had fun. All agreed that it was a great day...one of the best Easters remembered.

A family enjoying each other and the day.

Ordinary, but holy.

What made it holy? It certainly wasn't because the Lakes' family was there. We were the ordinary. Our efforts to love the unloved, to make a sacrifice, to teach our children a better way did not create holiness. 

Jesus was there. It was holy because we were there in His name, so He was there, too. 

For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. Matthew 18:20

He showed up. It was holy only because Jesus was there.  I recognized him in the smiles of the homeless, in the laughter of my children, in the joy of a beautiful day. I don't know that anyone was impacted by our presence there that day, but we were impacted by His.

It is my prayer that we can recognize the holy in the ordinary not just on Easter, but today, tomorrow, and the next day. May we experience the holy so often that it becomes our normal, our ordinary, as well.

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 2 Peter 1:3

Life and godliness....the ordinary and the holy. Because of Jesus, we have everything we need for all of it. May we live it well.