I pray a blessing on that mother today, and I pray for my child and every other child who is spending today without a mother and a father. I also pray for the mothers who have lost their children because of their poor choices, and are now in prison or have had their parental rights suspended or terminated. Lord, move in all of these lives. Please bring families together and bring orphans into loving families. Please protect and bless the children around the world who are motherless. Thank you for my mother.

I’ve learned a lot from my mom. Sometimes it’s hard to think of what I’ve learned from her, but I know that I only feel that way because it is so hard to determine what I didn’t learn from her. She has taught me so many of the things that I do every day. Her support and love throughout my life has been so important and strengthening to me.

Thank you Mom for teaching me a love of music, and a love of nature, and a love for beauty wherever it is found. Thank you for teaching me to cook. Thank you for teaching me how to laugh at myself. Thank you for showing me how to stand up in front of others and speak or sing, whether I was great or not so great. Thank you for teaching me to love the people around me, my family and friends, with God’s graceful love.  Thank you for letting me try so many things that I didn’t know how to do, and a lot of the time didn’t even finish. Thank you for teaching me to honor and value others and myself. Thank you for reading to me. Thank you for singing me to sleep millions of times.

I’m so blessed to have grown up in a loving family, with such a wonderful mom. I hope that you will teach me how to be a mom like you are, to be able to give so selflessly into my children and my marriage, bringing life to all that I touch. Like you do.

Happy Mother’s Day.

I spent tonight playing with kids who were 3-7 years old. They were normal kids who had probably experienced worse things in their little lives than I had in my whole life. We just hung out, ran around, played some games, and read some stories. I was surprised at how quickly they clung to me and climbed all over me. Everyone wanted love and attention. And it was so natural for me to spend time with each of these kids, individually and as a group. The sadness of the situation didn’t really hit me until I left.

Here’s my takeaway: I always pray for God to make me salt and light in the world, but in general I am in Christian surroundings. Basically I’m salt in a salt-shaker, or a flashlight in the sunlight. Salt is used to bring flavor and life to bland food, and lights are of the most use in the dark. I work with kids who are from good situations and safe homes every day. But I can also volunteer at the shelter and bring love and peace and life into the lives of kids who need that love a lot more desperately than the others.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Matthew 5:13-16 (NIV)

This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. This is my command: Love each other.

(John 15:12-17 NLT)

My community group is reading Radical by David Platt right now. Our last chapter talked about giving and blind spots in our spiritual lives.

This scripture hits home every time I read it. Jesus commands us to love each other the same way that He loves us: with our whole lives even if it kills us, in other words. Doing whatever it takes to share His love with the people of the world.

This is intense. We were talking just yesterday about what it would take for us to sell everything and give it to the poor as Jesus asked the rich young man to do in Matthew.

Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

(Matthew 19:21, 22 NLT)

I pray that in my own life I am able to say no to possessions in order to say yes to Jesus. I know it’s possible to give more. We wondered how much should we give? How much should we save in wisdom without saving to the point of being greedy or hoarding?

The answer is probably give more than is comfortable. Love each other in the same way I have loved you. Love people around you extravagantly.

Lord Jesus, your love and sacrifice for me is so immense. I am intimidated by your command that I should love the people around me with that much love. Please open my eyes today to see who I can show your love to, and how to do it. Give me courage to be bold in loving others.

And that’s the way it was with us before Christ came. We were like children; we were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world. But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.”

Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.

Galatians 4:3-7 (NLT)

One of the most amazing and most unfathomable acts of love that God has ever done for us is to adopt us as His children. We are so far below Him, and so far removed from His glory and power, yet He has opened up His family to us. We can come into a close and loving relationship with God.

Our Journey to Adoption

Our church teaches a lot about adoption and orphan care, and as Josh and I have been exposed to the facts and the more personal stories of orphans and adoption, we started to consider a different way of building our family. We always intended to have children after being married for a few years. The more we found out about adoption though, the more we felt that adoption was a wonderful way to build our family.

From the statistical information gathered by UNICEF, there are 14-17 million orphans in the world. With so many children without a family, and with the population of the world becoming unsustainable, adoption became the very best option for Josh and I. We have been reading and listening to a lot of information about adoption. We know there will be struggles along the way, but I think there would be struggles with raising children regardless of how they began their lives in the world.

The Process

When you begin the adoption process, you quickly realize that you have to make some very important decisions before you even start your paperwork. One of the first things we had to do was pick a country to adopt from. We read and made some charts to help us narrow down the list. We felt that US children receive better care in foster homes and emergency shelters than a lot of orphans around the world, and we felt led to international adoption. We discovered that there are some countries that have requirements that we were unable to meet, be it age or weight or length of marriage. We also knew that we wanted a young child, under 3 years old. Those helped to narrow down our choices. After that we tried to pick a country that had a history of stability in their international adoption program with the USA. In the process of research, I read about the number and the conditions of orphans in Russia and felt very strongly about adopting from Russia.

We decided to move forward with international adoption from Russia. We chose a local agency to work with and began the process. We completed a basic application, then an in depth application. We wrote out our life stories. We asked friends to write reference letters for us. We had to choose a guardian for our child in case of our deaths. We had to submit financial statements, physicals, and copies of all of our vital papers.

Currently we are still in our Home Study process. We had a series of interviews with our social worker, and several research activities that we needed to do: find out about Russia, find Russian cultural contacts in our city, research medical conditions that our child has a strong possibility of having (from Russia, that means FASD, attachment issues, and malnutrition). I visited a local store that is run by a Russian woman, and has imports from Europe, including Russia. I also attended the International Women’s Day Party that this store hosted, focusing on Russian culture (although there was entertainment from all over Europe).

What’s Next

After our Home Study is finalized, we will have more paperwork to fill out, for the US and for our Russian dossier. Once our dossier (the huge packet of information about our entire lives that we sent to Russia) arrives in Russia, we will have a 3-6 month waiting period before we receive a referral of a child. We have been told that it is very probably going to be a boy because we are open to either sex. At that point we will travel to Russia and meet our potential child. Then we will schedule a court date, which we will travel to Russia again for and after the court approves, we will travel a third time to Russia to pick up our child and bring him home.

We are excited and nervous, but it is going to be such a wonderful experience. I am already sometimes overwhelmed by all the potential issues we might face, but I know that God will take care of us and our child. He will give us the grace and strength that we need and will protect and provide for us throughout this process and our lives.

Here are some more scriptures about orphans and adoption. There are more: the theme of adoption is throughout the Bible.

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:26 (NLT)

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.

Ephesians 1:5-7 (NLT)

Sing to God, sing in praise of his name,
extol him who rides on the clouds;
rejoice before him—his name is the Lord.

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.

God sets the lonely in families,
he leads out the prisoners with singing;
but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

Psalm 68:4-6 (NIV)

Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

Isaiah 1:17 (NIV)

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 being polluted by the world.

James 1:27 (NIV)

 But if you refuse to serve the Lord , then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord .”
(Joshua 24:15 NLT)

Choose who you will serve because you will serve someone or something. You can serve God. You can serve the gods of other people. You can even serve the gods of the other people who live down the street.

I feel like it’s easy to sometimes serve the gods of modern America: wealth, power, pleasure, ease and laziness. I’ve seen how the rest of the world lives and no one compares to the extravagance of regular people like us. And our nation is sitting on top of other countries’ hard work for low wages and in terrible conditions.

What does serving God in America really mean? What should I be doing differently in order to be a servant of God? Going without something? Showing His love in more tangible ways to those in need? If the balance is so far off center, can each tiny act of kindness still make a difference? It has to. All we have is one choice, one action, one breath at a time.

Photo by Artondra Hall

Taking the child in his arms, [Jesus] said to them, “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not only me but also my Father who sent me.”
Mark 9:36-37

There is a solution that could take care of this issue. The solution was proposed at the 8046 Foster Care Conference: 1-1-1. If one child was taken care of by one family out of each one church in Oklahoma, there would be enough homes for every child in the DHS system to have a safe place to go.

“I looked for someone who might rebuild the wall of righteousness that guards the land. I searched for someone to stand in the gap in the wall so I wouldn’t have to destroy the land, but I found no one.”
Ezekiel 22:30

Right now those kids need families and churches to stand in the gap and fulfill our true responsibilities: to care for the orphans, just as God cared for us and adopted us when we needed His help the most. Thank God that He was so merciful to us to send Jesus. Now we have the opportunity to spread His love to these children that need love, more than anything else.

If you would like more information about getting involved in foster care of children, there are a few places you can go for more information. \

You could contact my church with questions, and there are also links to the necessary paperwork you would need if you wanted to start along the road to foster care:
http://www.tcabc.com/
foster@tcabc.com

You can visit the Oklahoma Department of Human Services Foster Care page:

http://www.okdhs.org/programsandservices/foster/

This is also a good site about foster care in Oklahoma, Bridge Family Resource Center:

http://www.okbridgefamilies.com/

So far in this new year I have been cleaning my house, putting away my Christmas decorations, playing with my new Christmas gadgets and starting back at work. I missed my little kiddos. There was a smaller class today, and they were so well behaved. I may not enjoy them quite so much once they’re all full of their vim and vigor again. Of course, they’re also getting older. By the end of the year they’ll be so big and tall… and four.

For Christmas this year Josh and I went down to sunny Florida to visit his family. We had a good time and the weather was beautiful! It felt like Hawaii, except that when we jumped into the swimming pool we nearly froze. I guess the water drops down towards the overnight temperature when it isn’t heated. Josh’s dad bet us dinner that we couldn’t stay in for 15 minutes before we jumped in – but we did.

We always go to Nana’s house for fondue on Christmas Eve. Nana makes us stockings, and she also makes a treasure hunt for our big gift. I love it. My dad used to make us treasure hunts for our birthday parties. I love riddles and puzzles, and I don’t think anyone can be too old for a good treasure hunt. Nana added a new twist this year: at the end of the trail of clues we had to assemble a jigsaw puzzle. On the puzzle was a jumble of letters. Once we unscrambled all of the letters, it would tell us the location of the final gift.

We got to spend time with all of the grandparents, which is always so nice. We also spent time with some of Josh’s high-school friends. We had lunch at Downtown Disney, walked around a little bit and saw amazing Lego structures. I don’t know if anyone else in our group was as amazed about them as I was, but I loved them! They were incredible! Of course, I do play with Legos occasionally, and get paid for it…

One of Josh’s friends made a video of their Mancation to Costa Rica last year, and we watched that. It was a lot of fun, as always, to see them all. Especially since several of his friends have been living in various countries around the world, and one couple is about to leave again for another adventure in South America for an undetermined amount of time.

After Christmas, Josh’s parents opened his presents to them which were board games, so we spent quite a few hours playing Scrabble and Electronic Monopoly (which is more fun because you get to swipe your credit-card – except it is still horrid to go bankrupt, repeatedly, because of your husband).

We also had a great game of mini-putt one night in which… dum-dum-dee-dum… I won! I haven’t won a game of miniature golf in years and I have never won against Josh. It was fun.

But now I’m home again, vacation time is over. Warm weather is but a memory. Happy January 2012! My resolution? Write more often on my blog. Will you read it?

When I was a young teenager, I set a rule in my own life to live by. I would not kiss a boy until I was engaged to him and I would not have sex until I was married. This rule was influenced by many factors, The Bible, my parents, my church, and youth organizations. The real point was that I knew what limit I had set and it helped to set my decisions. As a teenager I had several opportunities to break my self-made rule, but I did not.

In college, I dated several different guys. They were each respectful of my boundaries and I am grateful and honor them for that. When I dated my husband, he respected my boundaries as well. After we had been dating for about five months, he was going to be gone for a week or two on a trip out of the country. We said goodbye and both were very broken up about our parting. He managed, with much effort, to cancel his trip and showed up at my family’s doorstep to see if he could spend that time with me instead. At that moment I knew that he loved me. He valued me more than his own plans and dreams. We were not engaged, but I knew that we would be. I kissed him.

We continued to date, and were eventually engaged. We were both virgins until after our wedding vows were made; promising to be faithful to each other until death. Together we made our vows. Together we sealed them. Together we keep them.

I tell this story not to brag on myself: quite the opposite. I was torn by my desires many times over the years from the point that I made my choice until now. At times I longed to go beyond my rule. I cared for my boyfriends, why shouldn’t I kiss them? I didn’t keep my rule because I was self-disciplined or good. I am sure that the only way I kept that promise was because I had asked God what I should do, and I continued to ask Him for his help and grace throughout the years. I believed that God’s way was the best choice I could make.

My generation has not all followed what God said about sex and marriage. But I can promise that those who have slept with multiple partners, lived together before marriage, had affairs during marriage, experienced break-ups, divorces, and separations: you have endured pain. That road is a road that God did not want you to have to travel, and will help you to stay off of in the future. He will forgive you and bring you through the heartache, the loneliness, and the loss. Only Jesus can carry it all for you. Only Jesus can give you the power and grace to walk with moral confidence and courage. I believe in living a moral and proper life, but I also believe that it is impossible apart from God being involved and at work in your life. Choosing to believe God is the first and most important decision that anyone: child, teen, or adult can make. I hope that making that choice will help you to make other wise choices, including living a life of morality, for your own sake and the sake of those you love.

They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.  That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.

Romans 1:25-32 (NLT)

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

Romans 3:21-26 (NLT)

Thor – It was okay, nothing special

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – It was a Pirates movie, and I liked it. I didn’t think it had the same tempo or twists as the original trilogy though.

X-Men: First Class – Good. Loved getting more of the start of the story.

Green Lantern – Mediocre.

Cars 2 – Funny, but not as great as the first one. Although, it was a spy movie spoof, which is always a fun genre.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon – My favorite of the Transformers movies. The action was great, and for once the dialogue didn’t make me cringe.

The Conspirator – Interesting and historical.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – I swore I’d be happy if the movie did right by Snape, which it did. I am still disappointed that the fighting scenes were not the best of the series. I was hoping for fancy magic, like Voldemort vs. Dumbledore in the Order of the Phoenix.

Winnie the Pooh – Wonderful! Hand drawn Disney with all my favorite Pooh-bear friends.

Captain America: The First Avenger – Best super-hero flick of the summer.

Sarah’s Key – This was very moving and will stick with you. Definitely a good movie to see.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes – Great! It would be a good movie even if you haven’t seen the other movies, which a great prequel should be. Makes me want to go watch them all again.

The Help – Another great movie. Both deadly serious and funny. A good balance for a poignant subject.

Favorite Movies of the Summer:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Sarah’s Key
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
The Help

The final leg of our trip was upon us. On the 8th we drove from Rotorua to Auckland, stopping for another Lord of the Rings site: Hobbiton. We were in for a fantastic treat. After LOTR was filmed, the Hobbiton set was removed and all that remained were the grassy hills of the sheep farm on which it had been built. Fortunately for us, the entire set plus some had been rebuilt for The Hobbit, and the production company was still allowing tours to continue. It was beautiful and detailed and so cool. This was one of the highlights of my entire RTW trip! It started to rain on us again, but I was still able to take a lot of pictures in between cloud-bursts. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to post any of the wonderful Hobbiton photos I took of the set until after The Hobbit comes out.

When we had seen the set and watched a sheep shearing, we continued up the road to Auckland.

On our last day of exploration, Josh and I visited the Auckland Zoo. It was a very nice zoo with all of the favorite animals: 5 lions, 3 tigers, 2 cheetahs, an elephant (they are planning on getting some more so she’s not lonely), giraffes, rhinos, hippopotamuses. There were some extremely loud monkeys that I got a great video of. They make loud hooting sounds when someone is in their territory – and all the people visiting the zoo were obviously too close for their comfort.

We were able to watch the lions come out and find new smells in their pen. Also, the tigers getting fed their dinner and the orangutans being fed their dinner as well. It started raining on the orangutans and they all pulled out tarps to keep the rain off of their heads, much like all the visitors of the zoo watching them.

We had a fabulous trip, taking our time and having a much more leisurely pace for our itinerary than our previous RTW trip in 2009. It was time to go home though, and we got on our airplane and headed back to the USA the following day.