Tragedy

My heart is breaking today for a fellow adoptive parent. Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife just lost their five-year-old daughter, Maria, to a horrible, unimaginable accident. A parent's worst nightmare. Their teenage son was pulling out of their driveway and accidentally ran over her.

Please remember their family in your prayers.

I hugged my children a little tighter today and prayed for them a little more feverishly. I've been chasing away the tiny pricks of fear that are threatening my heart all day.

Psalm 91:1, 2

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust."

Why I Love Being a Mother

Just a small sampling:

::Freckles




::Monkey Hugs

::"Mom, you make the best food ever!"

::Literally holding the future in my hands.




::Peanut butter kisses, the real kind

::Little cowboys





::Snuggles under the covers





::Tiny toes





::Missing-toothed grins

::Pony tail sprouts






::The best partner and dad ever





::Mother's Day cards and gifts




*From Caleb: "This is the 'Mother Ship.' And look: Here's an escape Pod. I call it Mother Hawk." If you can't read it, it says on the front, "Blast Off to Mom-ers." I'm not sure why he was calling me Mom-ers, but he was being affectionate and cute. I laughed out loud at his Mother Ship joke.




*And, this is from Caleb, too. It's a picture of our family, with Dad as the High King General, and me as the High Queen. I wonder if this is how he sees our family...or if this is what he wishes our family more closely resembled.





*From Gabriel (hidden in my underwear drawer for me to find on Mother's Day morning): It's a lovely double heart so it's "double special," Gabe said with a shy smile, almost blushing. He left it with a blue pencil tucked inside so that I could rub it across the secret message he wrote in white crayon. The secret message was, "XXXOOO." How ingenious is that? Gabe is one who gives me letters and cards throughout the year, not just on Mother's Day or birthdays.


Here is a sampling of some of his love letters to me. He's also more likely to draw pictures of just him and me, whereas Caleb almost always draws the entire family.




*Lily colored me a butterfly. It looks more like a Rorschach inkblot...but she saw a butterfly in it. What does that say about her inner psyche, I wonder? Actually, I think it was a "discard" from one of Gabe's many scissor projects, and she found a way to recycle it and bring beauty to it and thought of me. She said happy Mother's Day to me, for the first time ever, and it made my eyes fill and my heart swell.
*Seth ran around giggling and wished me, "Happy Friend's Day." I don't know what that is, but I chuckled and said, "No, it's Mother's Day!" He insisted, "NO! It's Friend's Day!" He saw no need to make me a card. But...later he did wrap his arms around me and tell me, unprompted, "You're my girl." I'll take that!
*Rob very thoughtfully backed up all my pictures and important documents onto cd's off the computer. I know it was a big job. I'd really, really wanted that done, but just hadn't done it myself. That's a great gift, as anyone who has lost precious, irreplaceable data on her computer's grumpy, frozen hard drive can tell you. You'd think I would have learned my lesson...but there were literally years of pictures and articles that were just floating around my hard drive. I feel like I'd been hiding thousands of dollar bills tucked in my mattress and pockets and drawers and files, too overwhelmed to know what to do with them, and Rob just gathered them up and put them safely in a savings account at an FDIC bank. Whew. Now they're safe. Anyone who knows me knows that my pictures are my treasures.

I had a lovely Mother's Day...and my family made it very special for me.

::Contented Sigh.::

I have the best job in the world!

Seth Sightings

Now, what do you imagine he's plotting next???

Girls' Day Out

Today Lily and I met my sister Jamie and her daughter Emmaly for a day of shopping (low budget!), lunching and just being together. Every year we celebrate each other's birthdays, which are only six days apart, by spending a whole day together. It's been a LONG time since we've been completely alone without any small ones crashing the party, but today we actually chose to bring our four-year-old daughters so they could spend some time together, too. They were SO cute together, holding hands, skipping, running, draping arms around each other, like long lost sisters.

Jamie and I both had coupons to a local portrait studio, so we even took the girls in for a photo shoot. Don't they look cute? I've been wanting a portrait of Lily wearing her beautiful silk dress we purchased for her in China, but just haven't gotten it done. We did that today, too. Coaxing a smile out of her was a little torturous, but I was pleased with the final results.

And, the sweetest surprise: while we were looking through our portraits, my best friend Jeny walked in! I was so happy to see her and her three beautiful kids! We were so surprised to see each other. I was supposed to go see her Monday, but I had to cancel, and I hadn't yet rescheduled. We hadn't seen each other for months, maybe it's been longer. We do keep in regular contact, but it's not the same as sitting across from her and hearing her laughter and squeezing her hand and seeing her eyes sparkle. I miss her so. Jeny, I'm about to pop an email over to you to reschedule that visit...

Springtime in Michigan

I know it's officially spring, because literally overnight my weeping cherry trees erupted into full blossom. What a lovely splash of pink they lend to my home! I thought I'd share a few pictures. Sadly this will be my last spring here with my weeping cherry trees. No wonder they're weeping.


My favorite tree



Lily examining the flowers.



"I picked this for you, Mommy!"



The loveliest flowers in the garden. (*Notice Caleb and Gabriel sweetly holding hands. I love their precious innocence and love for each other.)

Tarnished

So it's not as golden as I thought. Rob's new job is not going to work out. I feel bad that Rob had to put up with very poor business and management in his employer for even one day. He gave it a try, and he could tell right away that the flexibility his new employer promised was hers not his and that it was a bad employment match. His first clue was when he showed up and the owner did not bother to give him any direction or provide tools for the piddly jobs she wanted done. He learned over the course of the day that she is a strong personality who knows what she wants, but her employees must simply read her mind, correctly, or bear the ill consequences.

Minimum wage is not enough to put up with that, that's for certain. Not to mention the long drive and the high gas prices.

So, we keep looking.

New Colors

I gave my little blog a face lift today...do you like it? It took more time than I care to admit, all of which should have been devoted to the landslide of laundry directly behind me. Right now, the computer desk is renting space in the laundry room. You can imagine how easy it is to get distracted when I am supposed to be matching socks. "Oh, I'll just check my email while I wait for the drier to be done." An hour later, the clothes in the drier are dry and cool, and I'm still tapping away. Oops.

I promised you an update on my hair. Remember my last post? The color is...I'm not really sure. The box says "Carmel Glaze" but that sounds yummier than hair is supposed to look. I took a picture for you, but it doesn't look quite this red in real life. The evening sun is shining down on it. Here ya go anyway: I like it well enough. I'm not in love, however. My favorite part: no more grays!

We have some good family news to share with you. First of all, Rob has finished his classes, and after repeated emails to his two professors and the registrar's office personnel, the powers-that-be are allowing his grades to be posted by the earliest posting date: April 26th, and it appears that Rob will be able to pick up his transcripts on April 28th. The professors actually have until something like May 8th to turn graduate grades in, but Rob had to humble himself, explain to them our family's situation, and everyone he spoke with has been understanding and accommodating. Thank-you, Lord!

The second piece of good news is that after only ONE day of looking, Rob has landed a summer job! Yeah, it's pretty amazing. He actually starts TOMORROW! He's only going to be making minimum wage, but if you do the math, it's still a whole lot more than zero! He'll be doing grunt work at a boarding stable that offers an English riding and jumping camp. Unfortunately, he won't be working with the horses too much but doing yard work, clean-up, minor repairs, painting, and so on. He may have to muck some stalls and take care of some of the horses during their busy times, but they have other hired help who take care of the animals. It's a blessing, and the lady did a double-take at Rob's resume (which he actually left many of the academic parts out of!) and offered him the job on the spot. We both feel good about it, knowing that it's temporary. His new boss is also going to be flexible with the hours, guaranteeing him 40 hours a week, but allowing him to take time off if needed. Believe me when I say that any job landed in this part of Michigan is golden.

When Rob and I first got married we really, really wanted to start a therapeutic horseback-riding camp for under-privileged kids. We both find it bizarre that Rob is going to be working at a riding camp now at this time in our lives.

I'll leave you with a couple of fun pictures from this week. The second picture is my mom with all her granddaughters, and the bottom one is my dad with all his grandsons. They have two sons and two daughters, and now they have eight grandsons and eight granddaughters. They're very blessed!

My hair is bubbling...is that bad?

I hate coloring my hair. I hate the thought of all those harsh chemicals soaking mischievously into my scalp while a cloud of toxins fumes about my face...for 35 minutes. But...I really hate the ornery sprouts of gray hairs that are crowding out my youthful-looking brown ones. I guess having four children and turning 33 next week is to account for that.

So here I sit, with my slimy, chemical-infused hair piled up like a heap of toxic waste on top of my head.

I bet you're wondering what color I chose. Have I gone for a summer blond look? How about a strawberry red to match my youngest son? Could it be warm mahogany to match take me back to my old natural state? Or perhaps jet black to make my blue eyes stand out? And what about streaks?

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Spring

Such a glorious, warm, sunny, earthy, springy weekend we were given!

The older boys played outside for a while each day, but they kept coming back in for various reasons (wanting to watch a show, play with Legos, transform Transformers, get a drink, have a snack, rest on the couch, etc.) "Outside!" I ordered at least a dozen times.

The little ones happily went outside and were so content out there that I had to keep having "Seth and Lily checks" to make sure they weren't getting into trouble. I forced them inside, with much protesting, for lunch and potty breaks. "Inside!" I ordered at least a dozen times as darkness approached.

But today is also a springy day. The air is dreary, damp, chilly, gloomy. The kids want to play outside, but the 40 degree temperatures that were such a relief three weeks ago are bone-chilling and unpleasant today. Today is just as much a spring day as Saturday and Sunday were. If you want spring, you've gotta take both kinds of days. At least here in the northern region of the Midwest.

Isn't spring such a perfect reflection of life? Beautiful sunny spots that fill us with peace and hope...cold stormy spots that force us to lean on God's comforting strength. And you've gotta take them both. I can make it through this week's cold and gloom because I know that spectacular days of warmth are just around the corner.

And my day lilies are bravely sprouting despite teeter-tottering temperatures.

We do have a few updates for our Navy situation. Last week, Rob took the physical fitness test...and passed! Not only did he meet the requirements for his age bracket (35-44???), but he also met the requirements given to the youngsters (ages 25-34). Yes, he quite the athletic specimen! A year ago, he would have laughed out loud if someone told him that he would be running a mile and half in 13 minutes. He was feeling great, and then he found out he'll have to pass it two more times, once before he leaves for training, and another time at the end of his training. At least it is not looming before him as an unknown. He knows he can do it, and he must simply stay in shape and stay healthy.

We still don't know when he will be leaving, but at this point, I feel that we can safely say that it is a matter of WHEN and not IF.

Last week, the kids and I visited my sister, Jamie, and her kids. We were supposed to see them last Saturday at my grandparent's Easter get-together, but Seth was sick. I was the one in charge of bringing eggs, so I had recycled 117 plastic eggs and much of the kids' Easter candy. Sadly, I live too far away to have been able to take the eggs for the rest of the kids that day. But when I went to my sister's, we took the eggs with us and had our own little post-Easter egg hunt. (I really did NOT want to disassemble the eggs or pack them to use for next year.) Did you know that 117 is not a prime number? I thought that it was, but when we divided it by the number children present--NINE!--it came out to exactly 13 eggs per kid. My 13 year old nephew was quick to correct my mistaken assumption! I'll end with a little picture of Jamie's and my kids digging into their booty. It's a lot of kids for just two families. When all four siblings get together, we have 16 children, ages 13 and under! On Rob's side, we have 14...Rob and I have a total of 22 nieces and nephews! They are each so very precious to us.

Is your refrigerator running?

You'd better go catch it! hee hee

And can I borrow it?

'Cause mine's not running. I've just transferred the frozen foods that were beginning to thaw into the chest freezer, but now I don't know what to do with the milk and eggs and cheese.

Two weeks ago, the drier broke. Rob's dad pronounced it DOA. But when I stopped at the bank to get rolls of quarters for the Wash Shed Coin Laundry, my dear friend who works at the bank said that she had a drier in her garage that we could have. We put it in this week, and now the family has clean socks and underwear!

Two weeks ago, the dishwasher stopped working. It wouldn't fill with water. For no reason at all. And for no reason at all, it started working again that same day.

Last week, the hot water heater kept tripping the circuit breaker...on the Saturday before Easter, when we were expecting multitudes of company and needed to fill a HUGE tank for the baptisms. Great, I thought. After we baptize these kids, they're going to get pneumonia and send them off to heaven much sooner than we would like. Then as mysteriously as it stopped working, it started working again. We're holding our breath a little, waiting for it to go out again. We turn on the hot water knob, and it's a sweet surprise when the water begins to warm.

And today, the refrigerator. Not panicking. God has provided for the rest of our appliance degenerations. (Really, which one is next? I'm almost afraid to ask!) But God has sweetly provided each time. I'm seriously curious with what I'm going to do with the milk and eggs. I'm about to make the children some scrambled eggs now for a late dinner.

I'll let you know what happens next.

Catching up...Easter, Baptisms, Pathway

I LOVE Easter. Love it.

Some of what I love about it:

::Heartfelt reflections the weeks preceding Easter on the price Jesus paid, simply because he could not bear to be separated from the likes of me.

::The joy, joy, joy Jesus' resurrection brings, taking Christianity far from a set of beliefs and values to a relationship with a LIVING, powerful, loving God whose good and perfect plans for us are more wonderful than we can possibly imagine, not just in heaven but here on earth as well.

::Can you really keep from smiling when you sing, "I serve a risen Savior, He's in the world today; I know that He is living whatever men may say! I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer; and just the time I need Him, He's always near! He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way! He lives! He lives, salvation to impart! You ask me how I know He lives: He lives within my heart!" (I'm smiling now, just typing the lyrics!)

::A full church, knowing in my heart that God's Word never comes back empty.

::Family dinner. (If you have never tried Rob's mom's ham, you have never really had ham. There is nothing like it. It's amazing.)

::Finding lost eggs two days after the egg hunt.

::Sweet-faced children dressed up in clothes that reflect the hope of Easter and the promise of spring.

::Okay, I have to say it: chocolate candies wrapped in pastels! (A good mother would never let her children consume the amount of candy that found it's way into my house on Easter...I'll make the sacrifice and help them out!)

This Easter was extra special and poignant for our family. We held a baptism service at Pathway, and Caleb and Gabriel were both baptized! It was so thrilling to watch, and even more so for Rob to be the one baptizing his precious sons, as well as five other precious children.

We hosted lots and lots of family: all three sets of parents and three siblings and their families were here to celebrate the boys' baptisms and Easter with us. We had a wonderful time with everyone. They made it so special for us. (And the ladies were such a HUGE help to me as I ran about like a loony.)

Also, it was our last Sunday at Pathway. How difficult it was to know that Rob was preaching his last sermon as their pastor, that I was leading corporate worship, possibly for the last time ever, that we were worshiping together with these people whom we love the last time. We still are struggling to wrap our hearts and minds around the changes that God is bringing.

We're not sure where we're going this Sunday morning. It'll be a surprise...

We're not sure what we're going to do this summer. It'll be a surprise....

We're not sure how God is going to provide until Rob's new job with the Navy starts. It'll be a surprise...

We're not sure when Rob is going to leave...June (probably not)...July (I hope, I hope, I hope)...or September (likely). it'll be a surprise, too.

I'm learning that I need to like surprises...or live in constant worry. I don't like the alternative, and I truly trust the Giver of the surprises, the Great Surpriser Himself. What an exciting place to be!

Big Plans and Big Feet

For Lily's third birthday, my brother Josh and his wife Lana bought her a cute Barbie doll, all decked out for the beach in her fairly conservative bathing suit, wrap and big, beach feet. Honestly, her feet look HUGE compared to her unshapely stick legs. She can't even wear tiny Barbie sandals, but must resign herself to slipping undaintily into Ken's footwear. Poor dear. Despite her perfectly manicured toenails, she'll never make it as a foot model. I'm sure behind her pasted-on smile she's devastated and buries her big flippers in the sand the moment she hits the beach.

Okay, enough about Barbie's surprisingly big feet. I think it's great that little miss perfect has a body flaw...and this is coming from a gal who grew up HATING my big, Fred Flinstone feet. I loved going barefooted--I still do!--but as a teen I would keep my feet crammed into hot shoes in mixed company out of embarrassment. Now...I don't care who sees my big bare feet. (I'm a little less self-conscious now.)

Someday when Lily's older, I'll share with her about the ancient Chinese custom of foot binding. Shortly after bringing Lily home, I read a novel by Lisa See, Snow Flower and Secret Fan, that details the process of foot-binding. In ancient times, Chinese mothers forced their very young daughters to undergo the horrific reshaping of their feet lest they never find a good marriage match. Apparently, a good family--meaning wealthy or politically important--would never consider allowing their son to marry a woman unless she had bound feet. Foot-binding was actually outlawed in China in 1911, though it continued until 1949 when under communist rule China became "The People's Republic of China." Some one million women still have the deformed "lotus flower" feet. Here's a picture of an 86-year-old woman with her foot, deformed for the sake of beauty. Notice her other foot in a shoe that is probably no more than four or five inches long. (Photo courtesy of Yahoo news.)



So, hurray for big feet, I say! Spread your toes wide and wiggle them proudly!

A funny story about the Barbie doll...

Caleb found it in my hide-away place about six months ago, and he BEGGED me to let Lily open it. Oh, I forgot to tell you: even though Lily received the doll as a gift almost a year and a half ago, I just recently let her open it. I really wasn't ready for all the Barbie accessories and getting her undressed and redressed and, "Mom, I need help!" every time Barbie decided to change her outfit. I'm not exactly one of those anti-Barbie moms. (Maybe you are? Maybe I should be? Any dialog on this?) Even though I scoff at her unrealistic proportions, I don't think she ever had a negative effect on my self-image, and I don't think she will for Lily either. She's not real. I'm more concerned about magazine covers and teen pop stars making Lily feel like she's not __________ enough or that she's too _______________. You can fill in the blanks with all the self-image flaws that young girls concoct.

So Caleb found the Barbie doll. "When can Lily open this?" he asked a million and one times.

"I don't know," I responded a million times, and then "Stop asking me!" one time.

I never thought to ask him why it was so important to him, but when I finally allowed Lily to open her Barbie, Caleb let out a cheerful whoop and cried, "Finally John can get married!!!!!" (He never liked the name G.I. Joe, and so he named his big army action figure John.) He ran into his room, dug out poor, lovesick John, who was forced to wait a year and a half (how many years is that in Barbie-years?) to marry his true love. And Caleb doesn't like the name "Barbie" either and convinced Lily to rename her doll Selena. "It's such a beautiful name," he said.

So John and Selena got married that lovely winter day. Caleb and Lily played wedding all day long.

When Caleb was very small, he loved to play "family." He wanted three spoons so he could have a mommy, a daddy, and a little boy. He wanted to have three teddy bears, three blocks, three....everything. Even now, his sense of family and his own role in it stretches beyond that of most eight-year-olds. Just this week he told me that he can't wait to be a father someday, and he told me of a certain song he heard on the radio that he wants to share with his first baby. I don't know any other boys his age who look so far ahead into their own futures as husbands and parents, especially with such longing the way Caleb does. I know that God is preparing him to be an amazing family man. Somewhere out there, some little girl is going to be one very blessed wife and mother...even if she does have big feet.

A Stranger at the Door

Last week, on a Sunday afternoon, our neighbor called. This wonderful neighbor and his wife are a tremendous blessing to us, and one of our biggest sorrows about having to move is leaving them. Neighbors like these come but once in a lifetime. On that afternoon, a repairman was working on our neighbor's furnace. For some reason, God laid it on our friend's heart to share with him that the family next door--that's us--had a heat pump that had not worked for two years and we were using a wood stove to heat our home. And God then moved in this repairman's heart to say, "Well, since I'm already out here, maybe I could go over and take a look at it."

So we got a phone call from our neighbor asking us if it would be okay for his repairman to stop by and take a look. I was kind of confused, because 1.) If we could afford to have it fixed ($7000), we would have done that a long time ago, and 2.) We had already had it diagnosed, by the company that installed it, no less, and we were told that it was beyond repair. We wondered if our neighbor, who has been so very generous to us in the past, offered secretly to the repairman to pay for a service call to us. We agreed to have him swing by, hoping it wasn't a waste.

He was a young guy, about our age, and he was here for about an hour, looking at not only our geothermal system in the basement, but our forced air furnace in the scuttle. I was doing the calculations in my head, just in case our neighbor had made no payment arrangement with him. From top to bottom, he said that our system was not installed properly at all. In fact he said that we had a secondary electric heat source that was not even hooked up. He left, promising to come back in a few days.

Thursday night, the night of our ladies Bible study and the very same day we listed our house with Cressy & Everett, he showed up at our door unexpectedly. He apologized for simply popping up, but he was in the neighborhood and he wanted to keep his promise. (How uncommon, sadly.) I was busy with the children and feeding them dinner and getting ready for Bible study and trying to get them all packed up for AWANA club. During the Bible study prayer, we prayed for our furnace, regarding which, believe me, we have offered many prayers to the Lord, especially in that first winter without heat. But now we are facing a different dilemma: trying to quickly sell a house without a functioning heat system. Well, that very day, that stranger at the door spent three hours connecting our furnace to an electric heat source that was present but improperly installed, and which the very same company that installed it failed to fix for us so that we would at least have some heat.

He finished while I was out in the church, and when I came back home, I asked, "Was he able get heat?" Rob motioned for me to stand under a register. Warm air was pouring out of that register for the first time in two years!

I asked Rob, "Did he give us a bill?" (As the family budgeter, I was adding in my head: two visits, plus diagnostic fees, plus any parts he had to use, plus over four hours of labor...gulp.)

"No," Rob said. As he was leaving, Rob told him to send us the bill, but he said that when he heard about our situation, he felt bad about it. He was happy to have helped us, and he was glad to have learned a little bit more about geothermal heating systems. Plus he was able to use some parts from the non-functioning component to properly hook up the electric component, so he didn't use any new parts. Have a good day.

Can you believe how good God is???? Who has ever heard of a furnace repair person who is a total stranger feeling bad for a family who has a broken furnace? Everybody he sees needs some help with their furnace; that's why he has a job! For him to give us four hours of his personal time, time away from his wife and three kids on a Thursday evening, knowing that he wasn't going to be financially compensated for his time completely astounds me. God simply put us on his heart, and I don't think he knows why he felt the need to help us--but we know.

We learned from our neighbor that he was going to be working on his furnace again that following Sunday, so I made a batch of our favorite cookies and took them over, along with a note telling him how grateful we were for his generous gift. You know what? We are almost out of wood. We do not have enough to get through the rest of these cold Michigan winter days and very cool Michigan spring nights. We will be able to keep the kids warm...simply with the turn of a dial!

We feel so loved by God!

God is shining an oil lamp at our feet and illuminating just the next step for us. We don't need to see the entire path to take each lighted step with confidence, because we know Who it is that leads us. He can be trusted. (Thanks, Jeny, for your thoughts on this on your blog!)

"Gabriel is transforming...

"...into a seven-year-old!"

That's what the Transformers birthday party invitations Gabe and I made said, putting Gabe into a full-faced grin with each card he worked on. Together we designed them and printed them out, and he decorated them with Transformers stickers.

On Friday, I baked a scrumptious cake, chocolate-chocolate chip and blew up some balloons and ordered some pizza. Only three of his little buddies were able to show up, but he didn't care. He had a blast just the same, as did all the rest of our crew. I'm really not that great at organizing and hosting a blow-out kids party. And even though I'm going to post a couple of pictures of the party, please don't look too closely at the cake. I wish I had my dear friend Jeny's talent of crafting magical birthday cakes that really are too pretty to eat! I just slapped on some icing and arranged a Transformers toy on top, and that was all Gabe wanted...and about all I could really handle this week in the cake-decorating department. And party games? Well, the kids and I "transformed" long skinny balloons into swords and hats. And we "transformed" some styrofoam parts into flying airplanes and launched them about the house. (The planes came disassembled...3/$1!) And then after present time, we pulled out the boys' bucket of Transformers and they played and transformed machines into robots and back again while watching an episode of "Transformers, Roll Out!" as they waited for the parents to pick them up. I'd say it was a successful party, even with the pitiful...but delicious, if I must say so myself...birthday cake. (It went perfect with a cup of hot coffee the next morning!)

Some of you may not remember, but when Gabriel was born seven years ago, he made his entrance in the world three weeks early and as fast as a race car. His lungs were filled with fluid, and he spent the first week of his life in the NICU. That first day, the doctor told me that Gabe's recovery expectancy was about 50/50. I was so much in shock and I totally didn't believe him. Rob called our pastor, Pastor Jeff Hossler...we miss them!!!...and he immediately started the church's prayer chain. A few hours later a neonatal specialist burst into my recovery room and was so excited she was out of breath. "It's like he's a completely different baby! His lungs are clearing and he's out of the woods!" God had worked a miracle in my sweet little baby boy's life. Gabe still had to work a little more fluid out of his lungs, and then he had to learn to eat and breath at the same time. He was born on a Saturday, and he was not allowed to eat until the following Wednesday! We weren't able to hold him for the first four days of his life. Then he fought off a raging case of jaundice that nearly required a complete transfusion of his body's entire blood volume. But exactly one week after his birth, to the very hour actually, we were rolling out of the hospital to our home with a healthy, albeit goldenrod yellow, baby boy. What a gift from God is our little boy!

Gabe, hours old, fighting for his life.













Caleb LOVES his new baby brother, who is only 9 days old here.












I'm totally in love...again! (No, I'm not choking him; I'm burping him! His cheeks were just so chubby they sprawled out everywhere. Oh, how I loved to kiss those sweet jowls. Maybe I kissed him too much, which explains why I have to chase him down for kisses now!)




















Seven years later...





Happy Birthday, buddy!

A Cook-"In"

The kids begged me last weekend to let them have a cook-"in," so we rigged some wire hangers and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for s'mores over the fire in our woodburner. Rob and I weren't quite feeling up to hot dogs with our sensitive systems, but we had just as much fun as the kids watching them make and eat their rustic dinner.

Could I live off the grid? Sometimes I feel like we could, especially with the wood-burning stove providing our only heat source here during this most turbulent winter. Sometimes when I'm out tromping through the drifts to throw a bale of hay to the horse and then off to the woodshed to carry a couple of armloads of wood to fill the wood box in the living room, I think, what would be the big deal of having to go out just one more time to hand pump a couple buckets of water to heat on the wood stove for cooking and bathing...I think we could probably do it!

But...I do look forward to the day when all I have to do is turn a little dial, and I can trust that all the children will be warm for the evening. Once taken-for-granted, such conveniences seem almost luxurious now!

Maybe someday we'll throw out our modern conveniences--ooh, I'm not sure how happy I would be without internet!--and cooking over the woodburning stove in the winter will be the norm and not the exception! Probably not anytime soon...

Two Cuties

I just had to share this picture of my youngest two with you. Church was about to start, and I was trying to get all four kids and all the materials I needed for the science project we were doing in children's church out the door. I glanced at everyone and marked off my mental checklist: 8 feet, 8 shoes all on the correct feet--check. Hair combed--check. Faces cleaned from breakfast--check. Acceptable church clothes--check. And that's when I took a second glace at Seth and Lily, put down all the children's church supplies and got my camera. They were simply too delectable not to capture on film. Caleb and Gabe looked cute too, but they were already out the door before I returned with the camera.

40 Days of prayer, and God speaks...

...and this is where he is leading.

To the Navy.

Rob is working right now to become a full time chaplain in the US Navy. It's a lot to digest, I know, and the path that God used to get us to this point is not a straight one, but obscured and full of blinding curves and huge boulders and tree roots and mud puddles. But here we are.

And both of us feel a release from the current ministry at which we are serving, which is only by God's hand, because we both have said that we would like to stay here and serve for life if that is what God chose. It is, however, not what God is choosing.

We will be putting our house on the market in the next couple of weeks. Please pray that God would bring a buyer, and soon. That would be a miracle in this slow market.

Our families and our church have been wonderfully and most confirmingly supportive, and they are even excited for us.

Should everything go as planned, Rob will enter the Navy as an officer (because of his post-graduate work and pastoral experience) and he will leave for 13 weeks of officer indoctrination and chaplaincy training. We plan to be out of our house by then--June, and the kids and I will put our household in storage, and then live for a few weeks here and there with family in both IN and OH. Maybe even MO. It will be a long time for us to be without our husband and father, but it must be done, and we will make the best of it and I think the kids will actually enjoy the adventure of it all.

Next up on our agenda:

Rob must complete a 6-hour physical with a military doctor. (I can't even imagine what kind of poking and proding will be going on for 6 hours.) Then he must complete a physical fitness test where he has to run, do sit-ups and do push-ups, all within prescribed time limits. After that, the Navy will fly him to Wash. DC where he will receive his rank from congress. In May, he will take the oath of office, and in the middle of June, he will leave for Rhode Island for training. Oh, and he is missing about 5 post-grad hours, so he took a Feb class at Bethel, and he is taking one in March as well. Sometime in the midst of all that he will also meet before the board of the National Association of Evangelicals to receive his chaplaincy license. Oh, and sell a house and pack up a church and pack up a house and prepare to be gone for a long time. And still not know exacly where we will be commissioned. We should know before he leaves for training. We actually get to pick our top three locations, and they will TRY to match us up with one of those three. No guarantees, of course, it is the military.

I feel like we are preparing go to the mission field. We're both excited and up for the call. We feel a distinct sense of peace about this decision and opportunity, and that it could only have come from God, because we would not have chosen this on our own. But when every other door has closed...sometimes God leads that way. And now that we have been walking in that direction for several weeks, we are thankful that God is the one in charge and not us, because we feel that this is what God has been preparing us for all along.

Please continue to pray for us: finances and provision, our Pathway church family who is undecided about what they will do, the selling of our house, the packing up of our family, and that God will put us exactly where he wants us. God bless!!!

Gotcha Forever!

Two years! How they have zipped right on by.

Two years since the day I first looked into her deep, mysterious eyes.
Who is this child who is now my daughter? I remember gazing at each of
my newborn sons whom I had carried from their first heatbeat inside me
until I was searching their faces with my own eyes and thinking the same
thing. Who are you? How I long to know who this little person is and
what he loves and what he will someday become. But with Lily I wondered
in addition to that, How can I make up for all the time that we were not
together?

Two years since I first felt her warm hand in my own, and my heart
nearly burst with love for her. The same joy I felt when I gave birth to
and held my sons coursed through me when I placed my new 2-year-old
daughter on my lap and promised to keep her safe and close to my heart
for the rest of my life, and beyond.

And I store those first sweet memories of her deep in my heart. Today
I've pulled them out one by one and relived them and cherished them so.

In two short months, Lily will have been my daughter longer than she was
an orphan. I will celebrate with her then, too!

Someday, after Jesus comes back and takes us from the only life we've
know into our real home, the home we were created for, there will come a
time when we will have lived in Heaven longer than we have lived on
earth. That will be a day for celebration as well!

Lily has been counting down the days to "Got You Day" as she says, and
then she always adds, "And it's Chinese New Year!" Very cute. We gave
her some little gifts that we had purchased in China for this very day,
and I also made her a toddler version of her lifebook, that tells her
all about her life in China--or what little we know of it--and how she
came to be a part of our family. It's no secret to her, but to put it in
writing and to discuss with her all we know about her birth parents and
her visible special need and her abandonment was very difficult for me.
Laced thoughout the story is God's plan and provision in a less than
perfect world. She really loves the book, even though she really doesn't
want to spend too much time looking at the picures of herself before her
lip repair or even talking about her birth parents and then foster
parents. She wants to get right to the pictures and the story of us
going to China "all the way across the big, blue ocean" to get her.
That's my favorite part, too, but I worry about her tender little heart
that has gone though more sorrow and loss than most of us will ever
experience.

Still, she is a strong and resilient little girl, braver than I am. I
couldn't be more proud of her, and I love her more than she'll ever
understand until her own children are placed in her arms.

Here are some pictures celebrating Lily!



This was taken in China when Lily was about 17 months old, about 9 months before we were allowed to travel. However, we weren't given this picture of her until after we traveled. I didn't have ANY pictures of her amazing smile the whole time we waited and waited and waited. I can't tell you how much I would have loved to have this picture during the wait, just so that I could know that she was not terribly unhappy. Wasn't she so, so cute and fun?


My first time holding my new daughter. She's not sure what to think!


Our first Gotcha Day, 2007. She was wearing the same sweater she wore in the very first picture I saw of her. I was thrilled that the orphanage sent her to us in it. What a keepsake! I've seen many pictures of children from Dongguan orphanage in these exact sweaters; they must have LOTS of them!


Sweet, spicy Lily on Gotcha Day 2008. She is such a precious little girl, and I'm humbled that God chose us to parent this amazing child of His.


Lily looking at her new lifebook, with help from Caleb and Gabriel. See the cute little Chinese doll? We bought it in China at a little shop as a set, a boy and a girl, clothed in traditional Chinese silks. She loves them! She loves anything Chinese and gets so excited when she hears about The Great Wall or when she sees another Chinese child at the grocery store. Last week, we saw an Hispanic family, and there were two little girls not much older than Lily. She exclaimed loudly (she does nothing quietly, by the way), "Mom, they're from China like me!" I told her, "No, honey. They're not from China." She literally said, "Huh?" Like, "Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" I was trying not to laugh, and trying to push the cart down a different aisle, but I'm sure her voice carried. Then she asked, "Where?" I said, "They're from Dowagiac." She again said, "Huh?" We're still working on the whole thing about America being a melting pot. For her, anyone with dark hair and eyes must be from China. I'm thrilled, however, that she is so proud of her heritage. It is definitely what we want for her.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

or Lots of blessings and prosperity to you! Happy Chinese New Year!

Normally I like to cook and have a special CNY meal for the family, but nobody in this house has his or her appetite right now. We have all been so sick. I can't remember ever having been this far under the weather. I had a fever and cough for about a week and a half, and in the midst of it, I lost my voice. I still haven't found it yet. Then all the kids had fevers and coughs and felt miserable for about five days. I took everybody to the doctor, but alas, it's a virus, and we just have to work our way through the misery. Lily has an ear and sinus infection, so she is on an antibiotic for that, but it doesn't touch the main symptoms.

Blah. I can't tell you how many unheavenly hours of cartoons these kids have consumed in the past week. I only have the energy to do about a third of a project at a time before I want to collapse. And Rob finally succombed to it, but he was also the first to get better. He even preached on Sunday with a fever.

So, I think we'll all celebrate Chinese New Year, which in reality last about 14 days, next week. Maybe we'll make some paper lanterns today.

Oh, and Rob and I have only nine more days to go on our fast. Then we'll ease back into the eating world with rice and simple veggies. My brain tells me a bucket of fried chicken would be heavenly, but I know my stomach would go into shock and send everything right back out. I guess the chicken can wait!