Living with a medical condition has taught me many lessons. Not all of these have been positive, but a majority have given me insight that I would not have gained otherwise. So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to acknowledge these "gifts of imperfection" :
Thank you for teaching me that I am not in control. I still forget sometimes, but I get a reality check with every doctor visit and daily medication I take. You have made it easier to trust my Heavenly Father and learn to place everything in His hands.
Thank you for teaching me compassion and love. I have a long way to go, but I am slowly learning to acknowledge and embrace my weaknesses. You have caused my heart to soften and become more and more like Christ toward those who are hurting.
Thank you for teaching me to focus on what really matters. Letting go of my vanity has not been easy, but when I do, I am free to enjoy the beauty of the world and the people around me in a whole new light. You have allowed me to see the eternal over the temporary.
Thank you for teaching me true strength. While I am not in control of the situation, I do have a choice in how I respond to my situation. You are producing in me a strong character that will be able to persevere through difficulty with integrity and grace.
Thank you for leading me down this path. Who knows where I would be if you had not come into my life? You have guided me and given me many blessings along the way.
I know I have not always been thankful for you, and there may be future days when I forget the lessons you have taught me. But, the truth is, imperfection, you have given me so much. So for that, I thank you.
Monday, November 21, 2016
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Tunnel Vision
I was in the middle of throwing myself the most awesome pity party. One that would put my toddler to shame. It went something like this..."I'm exhausted!" "I don't feel like anyone appreciates what I do." "Why is life so hard?" I hate to admit that most of the thoughts focused on the work that is required to care for our precious daughter. All the therapy, doctor visits, and medicine were getting to me on that particular day. The mom guilt made an appearance in there somewhere as well, as I wondered if my sweet, energetic toddler was getting enough attention during all this focused time on his sister. Thankfully, God didn't let me linger there very long. He grabbed my attention with something that snapped me out of my self-focused thinking very quickly. During my silent sulking, which just so happened to be in the waiting area of a doctor's office, in walked a mom with her precious son. He was about Chloe's age. He was hooked up to oxygen, and was clearly dealing with some severe medical struggles. The weary mother and I made small talk while we waited for the doctor. I didn't have the courage to ask for more details about her son. I wish I had. It may have lead to a deeper conversation and sharing some encouragement with this mamma who was fighting a battle that I am becoming familiar with. Instead, I sat back and observed while she maneuvered all the tubes to hold and change her little one. I watched while she had to ask someone at the hospital for a new oxygen tank because the one she had was getting low and could run out before they got home. I eavesdropped while she shared with a nurse about teaching her family to care for her son, so she could have a little free time just to run errands. All the while, God was whispering in my ear, "What do you think of your "difficulties" now? Are they really that bad?" I became ashamed at my earlier thoughts. It was just the reality check I needed from God. The challenges I face became minor compared to this strong mother. My focus shifted.
I am not advocating the comparison game to deal with difficulty. We will always be able to find someone on either side of the spectrum from us. But when we are tempted to feel sorry for ourselves, I think we need a reality check. Often, when we focus on those negative things going on in our life, they become magnified until they are all we see. We get tunnel vision towards those problems. Pretty soon we're in Pity Party City, population-one. Instead, we need to realize that there is so much more going on in our lives and in the world than just those struggles we're dealing with at that moment. If we look hard enough, we can find something to rejoice over. For me, that meant in the midst of dealing with feeding difficulties, getting excited that Chloe is gaining physical strength and interacting more with us. If I had remained focused on all the hard things, I would miss out on the joy of what is going right. My attitude would have become more and more sour and I'm afraid it would have become more and more difficult to identify the positive. Let's take it one step further and say that when our focus expands, it needs to expand to others. Rather than view others as comparison points, we need to view them as opportunities to reach out of ourselves and give. Who knows what might come of it? If I had been courageous enough to reach out and really talk to that mom, what could have happened?
God also reminded me that the hardships we face have a purpose. They're not in vain. 2 Corinthians 4:17 reminds us that "...our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!" We are matured by the difficulties we face and they are temporary. I've noticed during my travels that the richest and deepest personalities often belong to the people who have dealt with extreme suffering and allowed it to brew them like an aromatic cup of coffee. So that has become my prayer; that I will use whatever difficulty God allows in my life to mature me and make me more and more like Christ. I want my spirit to remain flexible and teachable so that no lesson is wasted. No more tunnel vision!
I am not advocating the comparison game to deal with difficulty. We will always be able to find someone on either side of the spectrum from us. But when we are tempted to feel sorry for ourselves, I think we need a reality check. Often, when we focus on those negative things going on in our life, they become magnified until they are all we see. We get tunnel vision towards those problems. Pretty soon we're in Pity Party City, population-one. Instead, we need to realize that there is so much more going on in our lives and in the world than just those struggles we're dealing with at that moment. If we look hard enough, we can find something to rejoice over. For me, that meant in the midst of dealing with feeding difficulties, getting excited that Chloe is gaining physical strength and interacting more with us. If I had remained focused on all the hard things, I would miss out on the joy of what is going right. My attitude would have become more and more sour and I'm afraid it would have become more and more difficult to identify the positive. Let's take it one step further and say that when our focus expands, it needs to expand to others. Rather than view others as comparison points, we need to view them as opportunities to reach out of ourselves and give. Who knows what might come of it? If I had been courageous enough to reach out and really talk to that mom, what could have happened?
God also reminded me that the hardships we face have a purpose. They're not in vain. 2 Corinthians 4:17 reminds us that "...our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!" We are matured by the difficulties we face and they are temporary. I've noticed during my travels that the richest and deepest personalities often belong to the people who have dealt with extreme suffering and allowed it to brew them like an aromatic cup of coffee. So that has become my prayer; that I will use whatever difficulty God allows in my life to mature me and make me more and more like Christ. I want my spirit to remain flexible and teachable so that no lesson is wasted. No more tunnel vision!
Monday, September 26, 2016
A Vision in Pigtails
Some stories are so personal that they are meant to be treasured in the heart of the individual alone like a special secret meant only for the ears of the listener. Others are meant to be shouted from the rooftops. Their message is for all ears; to bless, encourage, and challenge. The more I ponder Chloe's adoption story, the more I feel it needs to be shared. I don't know how God intends to use it, but I just know He is prompting me to sit down and write it. Perhaps by her story, others will begin to see infertility and adoption in a different light. Perhaps the struggle and heartache of infertility can be transformed. The heart that was so ready to welcome new life into the world can learn to welcome a child in desperate need of that heart full of love. Maybe adoption can become more than a "plan B" and something that only happens out of necessity. I know those may be big dreams, but if even one person is encouraged and challenged, I will consider sharing her story a success.
Long before David and I started our second adoption, God put an image in my mind of our child. For some reason, although I couldn't explain why, I knew she was our child. She was the sweetest toddler I had ever seen. She had pitch black pigtails and a smile that could melt the coldest heart. After we adopted our first son, I put the vision in the back of my mind and didn't give it much more thought. Until...we had just been approved for our second adoption. We told ourselves that we had better start the process because we may have a long wait before being placed with another infant. Surely we couldn't get lucky a second time and be placed right away. Maybe we should try to lottery, because within a week of being approved, I received a text message from our case worker. My heart leapt as she told me to check my e-mail. The e-mail was the bio of a young infant in need of a forever family. A girl. A Chinese girl! Could this be the vision God had given me? Before I could get carried away in my joy, I read some information that made my heart drop. There was something special about this baby. She came with a diagnosis. One that we had never heard of; Prader Willi. It was a bittersweet moment. The possibility of being matched with a precious baby was tempered with the unknown. We had very little time to educate ourselves on the diagnosis, due to the birth mother's situation. So, we did what anyone would do when they need information fast, we google'd it. I think God, in His providence, knew what we needed in order to the make the decision He wanted us to make. One of the first things I saw was that, as a genetic disorder, Prader-Willi was said to have common traits to the genetic disorder I was diagnosed with! (We later came to find out that, apart from a few common symptoms, the two diagnoses are actually very different) This revelation gave me an immediate link to this darling baby that I hadn't even laid eyes on yet. After some fervent prayer and discussion, we sent our reply to the caseworker. Yes, we would absolutely be open to adopting this little Chinese girl.
Our decision was actually pretty easy to make. In the beginning discussions about adoption, David and I had agreed that we would be open to any child that God brought into our lives. We didn't feel the freedom to pick and choose which child we would welcome into our hearts. We trusted that God would guide the process. But don't put us up on some high spiritual pedestal just yet. It was when we agreed to adopt our precious daughter that the struggle began. You see, although we said we were open to whatever God brought us, David and I had both already created an image in our mind of what we thought that would look like. And to be completely honest, a child with special needs wasn't in that image. My image looked something like those beautiful multicultural families you see on Pinterest. Each member with perfect skin and white, gleaming smiles. But isn't that like God; to shatter our preconceived ideas and images with something even better, if we'll let Him? As it became more of a reality that we would be adopting this special baby, and as we learned more about her diagnosis and what that would involve, should we become her parents, we had to seek God desperately and have pointed discussions with each other about the drastic change our lives would be taking. We grieved and said good bye to those images we had created. We embraced the fear of the unknown. An amazing thing happened when we went "all in" and accepted that this was what God was calling us to do. He opened the flood gates of Heaven and we felt an amazing peace and comfort even though our world was about the be turned upside down.
There is no doubt in my mind that God was orchestrating this whole story long before Chloe was even conceived. The fact that she was carried to term was, I believe, a miracle. Her birth mother had genetic testing done while she was pregnant and the results came back normal. Nothing was detected. But God knew. And He was preparing a plan to place Chloe in just the right place at just the right time. Because Chloe was the third child in her family, they came to the United States. She was born near a hospital in California that specializes in Prader-Willi and so, when she presented with some complications after birth, she was able to be diagnosed within a week of being born. Then, when her birth family decided that the most loving thing to do would be to find her a family that could care for her in America, she was given the information of our adoption agency by a friend after we had just been approved and placed on the waiting list. She was given our families bio because of our connection with and love for the Chinese people. David has three sisters from China and we spent the first six months of our married life living and traveling in China. We had given up on the dream of adopting from China but all of sudden, God was fulfilling this dream in a way we had never imagined! By the end of our second conversation with Chloe's biological mother, she was asking how soon we could get to California. Hearing the desperation in the voice of Chloe's birth mother quickened our desire to carry out the adoption. I still can't wrap my brain around having to place my newborn daughter for adoption in a foreign country. I have no idea the measure of anxiety, fear, and helplessness that she was feeling. Thankfully, God provided once again to ease her anxiety and weave peace and even joy into the story. David's sister graciously accepted our plea to travel with me to California. She was such a blessing on both fronts. She minimized the language barrier significantly for Chloe's birth mom and provided a level of communication with this dear woman that I never could have achieved on my own. We decided to stay with Chloe's birth mother, her sister, and the nanny they had hired to help care for Chloe during most of our stay in California. Little did we know how significant this would be in forging the relationship between us before we had to part ways. By the time the paperwork had been completed, we had spent a week and a half together and it was obvious that Chloe's birth mother had made peace with her decision of entrusting her daughter to us. She even told us through the help of a translator that she felt that she had given birth to this precious life just for us. This is came from the lips of a woman who has not claimed faith in God. But she felt in her soul that there was something special going on. Not just for baby Chloe, but for everyone involved. This story was touching and changing lives. Even though Chloe's birth mother did not claim to know God, when she asked us why we would want to adopt and love her daughter with special needs, we were given the open door to share the love of Christ and how it had compelled us to open our hearts to adoption. While she did not miraculously accept Christ on the spot, we continue to pray that through our continued interaction with her, we can prove that we meant what we said and that she will see the love of Christ through us and one day come to understand and accept it for herself.
When we agreed to adoption, we understood that it was a ministry. We have come to learn even more fully what this means as we have adopted. Adoption involves more than just the adoptive parents and the child they adopt. It includes birth families, extended families (of both birth and adoptive families), adoption agencies, church families, and the list goes on and on. Having this mindset has helped us in our journey. It encourages us to think beyond ourselves and embrace the bigger picture of how God is working in and through us. It becomes less about what we want and more about what God wants. It becomes less about our needs and more about meeting the needs of those God places in our lives. The funny thing is, adopting this mindset also ultimately leads to deep fulfillment in our own hearts. I am not saying that there isn't adjustment, struggle, and hard times. But knowing that these struggles are part of God's grand scheme gives me a solid rock to stand on and the motivation to keep going when I feel like giving up. God has been gracious to give us glimpses of how he is working redemption into both of our adoption stories. David and I have both been in awe at times when we consider that God has included us in this work and allowed us the privilege to take part with Him.
God was definitely in the details of Chloe's story. The adoption paperwork is often a nuisance and something to be endured throughout the process. When we were waiting to be cleared to bring Chloe home (the week of Thanksgiving nonetheless!) we were told that it would be a miracle if the paperwork were completed by the first week of December. God must have chuckled when the caseworker used that word and took it as a challenge because the paperwork was done by the first week of December. We were able to bring our baby home sooner than expected to the excitement of friends and family. Even the small things seemed to be on God's radar. My mom was able to fly out and stay with me the remaining few days in California as David and my sister in law had to return home. As we prepared for the flight home we were able to secure seats together and the flight was so empty that we even had an extra seat to lay Chloe on when she needed to stretch! After we returned home, God continued to show up. Our caseworker put us in touch with some valuable resources that helped us learn more about Chloe's diagnosis. Including an agency in our area that just "happened" to be one of the leading clinics for treating Prader-Willi. We began to feel empowered and equipped to provide the necessary care for our precious gift. The financial piece to adoption may seem like a huge barrier to adoption, but let me assure you that if God calls you to adopt, He WILL provide. In every area. Spiritual, Emotional, and Financial! Because Chloe's adoption happened so quickly, we had not really begun to get our finances in order. However, God met that need through many various avenues and Chloe's adoption was fully funded very soon after bringing her home.
There are many things about Chloe's story that I haven't shared. But hopefully with the little details I did share, you are able to see the beauty of how God worked and provided. When you're willing to trust God and follow Him, miracles happen. faith is built. and it's never boring!
Long before David and I started our second adoption, God put an image in my mind of our child. For some reason, although I couldn't explain why, I knew she was our child. She was the sweetest toddler I had ever seen. She had pitch black pigtails and a smile that could melt the coldest heart. After we adopted our first son, I put the vision in the back of my mind and didn't give it much more thought. Until...we had just been approved for our second adoption. We told ourselves that we had better start the process because we may have a long wait before being placed with another infant. Surely we couldn't get lucky a second time and be placed right away. Maybe we should try to lottery, because within a week of being approved, I received a text message from our case worker. My heart leapt as she told me to check my e-mail. The e-mail was the bio of a young infant in need of a forever family. A girl. A Chinese girl! Could this be the vision God had given me? Before I could get carried away in my joy, I read some information that made my heart drop. There was something special about this baby. She came with a diagnosis. One that we had never heard of; Prader Willi. It was a bittersweet moment. The possibility of being matched with a precious baby was tempered with the unknown. We had very little time to educate ourselves on the diagnosis, due to the birth mother's situation. So, we did what anyone would do when they need information fast, we google'd it. I think God, in His providence, knew what we needed in order to the make the decision He wanted us to make. One of the first things I saw was that, as a genetic disorder, Prader-Willi was said to have common traits to the genetic disorder I was diagnosed with! (We later came to find out that, apart from a few common symptoms, the two diagnoses are actually very different) This revelation gave me an immediate link to this darling baby that I hadn't even laid eyes on yet. After some fervent prayer and discussion, we sent our reply to the caseworker. Yes, we would absolutely be open to adopting this little Chinese girl.
Our decision was actually pretty easy to make. In the beginning discussions about adoption, David and I had agreed that we would be open to any child that God brought into our lives. We didn't feel the freedom to pick and choose which child we would welcome into our hearts. We trusted that God would guide the process. But don't put us up on some high spiritual pedestal just yet. It was when we agreed to adopt our precious daughter that the struggle began. You see, although we said we were open to whatever God brought us, David and I had both already created an image in our mind of what we thought that would look like. And to be completely honest, a child with special needs wasn't in that image. My image looked something like those beautiful multicultural families you see on Pinterest. Each member with perfect skin and white, gleaming smiles. But isn't that like God; to shatter our preconceived ideas and images with something even better, if we'll let Him? As it became more of a reality that we would be adopting this special baby, and as we learned more about her diagnosis and what that would involve, should we become her parents, we had to seek God desperately and have pointed discussions with each other about the drastic change our lives would be taking. We grieved and said good bye to those images we had created. We embraced the fear of the unknown. An amazing thing happened when we went "all in" and accepted that this was what God was calling us to do. He opened the flood gates of Heaven and we felt an amazing peace and comfort even though our world was about the be turned upside down.
There is no doubt in my mind that God was orchestrating this whole story long before Chloe was even conceived. The fact that she was carried to term was, I believe, a miracle. Her birth mother had genetic testing done while she was pregnant and the results came back normal. Nothing was detected. But God knew. And He was preparing a plan to place Chloe in just the right place at just the right time. Because Chloe was the third child in her family, they came to the United States. She was born near a hospital in California that specializes in Prader-Willi and so, when she presented with some complications after birth, she was able to be diagnosed within a week of being born. Then, when her birth family decided that the most loving thing to do would be to find her a family that could care for her in America, she was given the information of our adoption agency by a friend after we had just been approved and placed on the waiting list. She was given our families bio because of our connection with and love for the Chinese people. David has three sisters from China and we spent the first six months of our married life living and traveling in China. We had given up on the dream of adopting from China but all of sudden, God was fulfilling this dream in a way we had never imagined! By the end of our second conversation with Chloe's biological mother, she was asking how soon we could get to California. Hearing the desperation in the voice of Chloe's birth mother quickened our desire to carry out the adoption. I still can't wrap my brain around having to place my newborn daughter for adoption in a foreign country. I have no idea the measure of anxiety, fear, and helplessness that she was feeling. Thankfully, God provided once again to ease her anxiety and weave peace and even joy into the story. David's sister graciously accepted our plea to travel with me to California. She was such a blessing on both fronts. She minimized the language barrier significantly for Chloe's birth mom and provided a level of communication with this dear woman that I never could have achieved on my own. We decided to stay with Chloe's birth mother, her sister, and the nanny they had hired to help care for Chloe during most of our stay in California. Little did we know how significant this would be in forging the relationship between us before we had to part ways. By the time the paperwork had been completed, we had spent a week and a half together and it was obvious that Chloe's birth mother had made peace with her decision of entrusting her daughter to us. She even told us through the help of a translator that she felt that she had given birth to this precious life just for us. This is came from the lips of a woman who has not claimed faith in God. But she felt in her soul that there was something special going on. Not just for baby Chloe, but for everyone involved. This story was touching and changing lives. Even though Chloe's birth mother did not claim to know God, when she asked us why we would want to adopt and love her daughter with special needs, we were given the open door to share the love of Christ and how it had compelled us to open our hearts to adoption. While she did not miraculously accept Christ on the spot, we continue to pray that through our continued interaction with her, we can prove that we meant what we said and that she will see the love of Christ through us and one day come to understand and accept it for herself.
When we agreed to adoption, we understood that it was a ministry. We have come to learn even more fully what this means as we have adopted. Adoption involves more than just the adoptive parents and the child they adopt. It includes birth families, extended families (of both birth and adoptive families), adoption agencies, church families, and the list goes on and on. Having this mindset has helped us in our journey. It encourages us to think beyond ourselves and embrace the bigger picture of how God is working in and through us. It becomes less about what we want and more about what God wants. It becomes less about our needs and more about meeting the needs of those God places in our lives. The funny thing is, adopting this mindset also ultimately leads to deep fulfillment in our own hearts. I am not saying that there isn't adjustment, struggle, and hard times. But knowing that these struggles are part of God's grand scheme gives me a solid rock to stand on and the motivation to keep going when I feel like giving up. God has been gracious to give us glimpses of how he is working redemption into both of our adoption stories. David and I have both been in awe at times when we consider that God has included us in this work and allowed us the privilege to take part with Him.
God was definitely in the details of Chloe's story. The adoption paperwork is often a nuisance and something to be endured throughout the process. When we were waiting to be cleared to bring Chloe home (the week of Thanksgiving nonetheless!) we were told that it would be a miracle if the paperwork were completed by the first week of December. God must have chuckled when the caseworker used that word and took it as a challenge because the paperwork was done by the first week of December. We were able to bring our baby home sooner than expected to the excitement of friends and family. Even the small things seemed to be on God's radar. My mom was able to fly out and stay with me the remaining few days in California as David and my sister in law had to return home. As we prepared for the flight home we were able to secure seats together and the flight was so empty that we even had an extra seat to lay Chloe on when she needed to stretch! After we returned home, God continued to show up. Our caseworker put us in touch with some valuable resources that helped us learn more about Chloe's diagnosis. Including an agency in our area that just "happened" to be one of the leading clinics for treating Prader-Willi. We began to feel empowered and equipped to provide the necessary care for our precious gift. The financial piece to adoption may seem like a huge barrier to adoption, but let me assure you that if God calls you to adopt, He WILL provide. In every area. Spiritual, Emotional, and Financial! Because Chloe's adoption happened so quickly, we had not really begun to get our finances in order. However, God met that need through many various avenues and Chloe's adoption was fully funded very soon after bringing her home.
There are many things about Chloe's story that I haven't shared. But hopefully with the little details I did share, you are able to see the beauty of how God worked and provided. When you're willing to trust God and follow Him, miracles happen. faith is built. and it's never boring!
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