06 December 2014

To Hans & Candiline

today my little brother is getting married.

he is marrying a woman that, for the past five years, i have called my sister-in-law.

he loves her.

i love her.

a little over three years ago it was my wedding day and two things happened that night.

first…i chose to not throw my bouquet but to “pass my torch.”

…as i gave up my flegle name…i handed it off to the woman that i knew would, one day, bare it with honor and pride.

second….my brother stood up with me…as my “man of honor.”

i made him give a toast.

oops.



he said that my husband was kind and always willing to help (true) and that it was good….

because his sister (me) was “really high-maintenance.”

(gee, thanks man-of-honor!!)

over the past three years i have learned that he was not wrong…that i am high maintenance…but that we all are.

marriage is high maintenance.

falling in love is easy…staying in love takes work …maintaining love takes work.

it takes intention….dedication and perseverance.

so today…as my favorite little brother and my brand new little sister join their souls and their lives as one…

i pray that you will not travel a road that is without challenges…not a road that is smooth and clean and that is low maintenance.

i pray that your journey will be one that challenges you and that will stretch your love to greater depths.

a journey that will force you to grow individually…and that will ultimately force you to continually choose each other.

i pray that you will never stop yearning to please…seeking to know…or learning to be one.

i pray that you will never again see each other as you do today but that you see each other with new eyes…every morning….

as long as you both shall live.

i love you, hans and candiline!

happy happily ever after!

xoxo





01 December 2014

Not a Choice

november was adoption awareness month…so technically this is one day late.

but adoption doesn’t just happen one month out of the year…. adoption shouldn’t just be talked about one month out of the year.

adoption represents so much more than paperwork and legal terminology…so much more than the hague convention…so much more than the journey of a child and the longing of the parents.

adoption represents selfless love…healing…. restoration…reconciliation and the hope that we can come home.

ironically, this past month i have had to defend my position as a mother…more than any other time.

i have had to defend my husband and i becoming parents via adoption, given our employment status as missionaries and our lack of significant income….

i have had to fight for the validity of my children’s relationship with their big brother in comparison with his biological siblings…

jason and i have had to leave our children in a third world country…because despite being the only parent our toddlers have ever known…our home country will not grant them entry.

what saddens me…and honestly angers me the most…is the knowledge that if jason and i would have chosen to get pregnant…and in essence put my life and the life of a child at risk, rather than answering the call to save the precious lives of our two children….none of this would be an issue.

no one would question medical bills…which would be radically more than the cost of our adoption.

no one would question my role as a mother….simply because of dna…not because of any actions or decisions that a mother should make for her children.

no courts would question the relationship of our three children.

no one could stop us from being able to travel with our children or prevent them from meeting their family members…that happen to live in a different country.

there seems to be a misunderstanding about adoption.

on the surface and in a very practical sense, i am no different than a mother that conceived and gave birth…

i found out at the age of twenty-four that pregnancy would not be in my future…that very same day i conceived.

no, not physically…but in a very real sense, i carried my children for seven years.

just like every other mother who has adopted a child, i carried the hope of my children and i loved them….until the day that i looked into their big, beautiful brown eyes and knew beyond anything…that they were my babies.

they were the ones that i had been loving all those years.

no, i didn’t feel them growing and moving inside of me…i didn’t have ultrasounds or morning sickness…

and my boobs didn’t get any bigger…not even a little bit.

but i carried my children….i grew and stretched…and it was painful and beautiful all at the same time.

…and i bare the scars of that journey…scars that no amount of bio-oil will ever be able to erase.

i think there may be an assumption that adoption is a choice…and if you operate under the belief that all of life is a choice, then yes…adoption is a choice.

but to tell an adoptive parent that they had a choice, is like telling a woman who just gave birth that she has a choice to take her child home…or to not.

i did not give my children the gift of life….but they are as much a part of me as the blood the courses through my veins and the cells that make up that blood.

but family isn’t about blood…is it?

family is simply about love.

and the beautiful thing is that, at two years old, our children know that…they don’t question it.

they have not yet put together that mommy and daddy are a different color…that they are different colors than each other.

they simply know that they are loved.

they know that they are loved just as much by the people that they see everyday, by the people that they talk to on the computer and by the people that we see who, one day, they will know as their biological families.

they know that no matter what…we are their parents and that no matter where we go, we will always come back.

“real” mom and dad are not concepts that they have.

we are real and our love is real and that’s the they only criteria they care about.

oak knows that olive is his little sister and that even though she swipes his nuk…he has to take care of her.

olive knows that oak is her big brother and that mommy doesn’t need help putting him in time-out…but that when he falls down, he can never get too many kisses.

they both know that even though they have to talk to gaga through a computer, she loves them more than life.

they know that grandma and grandpa and mopmop and poppop would move heaven and earth for them.

they know that nini’s house is their house and that they are always safe and loved with her.

they know that their house is marie joy and betsy’s house and that there is always enough love to go around.

i wish we could preserve this toddler worldview for them.

i wish they could live in this world forever…where they are blind to the questions and misconceptions that i know they will face.

but I can’t.

what i can do is be their mom.

i can be there to tell them about their “tummy mommies” and their papies.

i can continue to surround them with people that love them.

i can be there when they have questions about loss and i can grieve with them for the losses that they have experienced.

i can rejoice with them over their joys.

i can refuse to be colorblind…but choose to provide a home that celebrates color and the beauty of difference and diversity.

i can tell them that adoption is not something that this world created but that is ordained by our creator….that we are all invited into adoption and into a bigger family.

i can tell them that before they were adopted by their daddy and me…they were adopted by their heavenly father…that their inheritance is not one that is of this world but is one that is from him.

i can tell them that they are not the lucky ones…that i am.

that i did not give them the gift of life…

but that life gave me the gift of being their mommy.

and i can cherish that gift rather than defend it.

that is my choice.


11 November 2014

More Than a Dream

it’s veteran’s day.

i very rarely get patriotic or political but today…

i am.

it occurred to me that the men and women that serve in our armed forces represent something so much more than america.

they represent hope.

they represent a dream that many of us have started to give up on.

the american dream is alive and well and it lives in the men and the women that fight for our freedom to dream it.

our troops do not serve the government that i have (admittedly) given up on…

they serve us…they serve the american people.

they do not fight for a commander-in chief that is seemingly not supporting them….

they fight for us…their brothers and sisters.

they do not stand for the honor of the us government….

they stand for our honor…as a people

they serve…fight and stand so that our children…and our children’s children might one day truly be able to live in a land where all men are equal, where they get to love whomever they chose, where they get to worship without fear and where freedom is more than just a word….

and a dream.

so today, i honor all the men and the women who have fought for my freedoms…who still fight and who are yet to fight.

in memory of:

robert monson
richard flegle
sidney johnson
art colaizy


in honor of:

christopher swope
anna petry
jake wilcox
dave johnson
matt misner
erik simonson
josh winkleman
dave skalicky



thank you for our freedom to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.


“greater love has no one than this; to lay down his life for his friends.” john 15:13








29 September 2014

Dafka

poverty porn….

it’s a term that’s been thrown around a lot lately.

there are a lot of things that enrage me…that make my stomach turn and that get me on a soapbox…

the exploitation of children or the people that i live and work with, is at the top of that list.

however, when these two words are used together…there is no soapbox that can contain my rage…that can express the distain i have for the term or can encompass the perpetual harm caused by this line of thinking.

not only does this term make poverty a “dirty” word…it makes the individual in the photograph a “dirty” individual.

beyond that…it desensitizes us to the very real issue of….exploitation.

i very much dislike all of those things….to say the least.

so…

…i am left with a choice.

i could rage and rage…and then rage some more.

i could try to find a way to shock the world into thinking and understanding with a different mind….and into seeing with a new heart.

i could do that…

you all know that 90 % of my spirit wants to do that!

but i could also make a different choice…

i could choose love.

i could get on my soapbox and ask us all to engage in the very thing that this world lacks enough of….

love.

i could choose to collapse judgment. i could choose to dialogue. i could choose to embrace diversity rather than burn it to the ground.

i could choose to be better than i am.

i could choose jesus.


oh, jesus…give me the strength to always choose love…to always choose you.



a couple weeks ago, reimagine haiti released a photograph of a beautiful little girl with the words, “reimagine poverty.” we stated that we were going to spend the month of september redefining poverty and attempting to change the way the world sees those living it.




there was no financial plea, only an invitation to get involved and learn ways to make a difference.

this barefoot little girl stood with stunning grace and immeasurable intensity in the middle of a dirt road that, speaks not only to her physical journey but, represents the road that god has laid out before her….

one of purpose and intent.

the dress she is wearing comes nowhere near american standards…her hair is disheveled and she is not smiling.

she is beautiful.

she also has a name….

dafka is 3 years old…she lives in baie d’orange with her mama and five siblings.

dafka’s daddy works on a bus that travels between port au prince and jacmel…with this money he is able to send her school age sibling’s to school.

this dress is the only dress she owns, but it is her own and she wears it with elegance and pride…

dafka has one pair of shoes and she saves them for church. she doesn’t know that she should be sad to play barefoot…unless we tell her.

so we don’t.

when she plays, her laughter fills the mountainside with pure, uninhibited joy.

dafka, like every child, has a name, has a story and has a future.

more importantly, every child has infinite value and purpose in the eyes of our creator.

to “reimagine” poverty, is to see dafka through his eyes and to search our hearts….

when was the last time we filled the mountainside with pure, uninhibited joy?

two weeks after this photo was released, our media/communications guru and the woman that has poured her heart into these images, wrote a blog to expound upon our vision and released the next image:

i literally cried when i read it…this was the heart of reimagine haiti.

i will write about maria another day…for now, i will simply say that i am honored to work with a woman so fearless…a woman who is willing to speak truth…no matter how uncomfortable it makes us.

today…this:

poverty…since when did “poverty” become a dirty word?

since when did the idea of poverty become offensive?

and since when did we decide that people living in poverty are “less than,” or to “be pitied?”

if we walk far enough back on that red-dirt road…. we will find ourselves standing in a little stable, in another little village, with another little girl….

this little girl…who likely also had on a dirty dress and no shoes…happened to give birth to a king.

his name was jesus.

she laid him in the best bed she could find…one that only moments before had been the feeding trough for the nearby goats and donkeys.

this king grew up the son of a carpenter…playing on dirt roads (most likely barefoot).

i am willing to bet that he was rarely, if ever, clean.

when jesus looks at dafka, what does he see??

does he see a pornographic image?

an exploited child that needs to be pitied?

does he see the word, “poverty,” and label her as “unclean” because of it?

no…

i would venture to say that he sees his sister…his playmate…his child…

himself.

we have been conditioned to aspire to something more than material poverty….to work hard and climb to the top.

but this is not what we were created for.

we were created to emulate our savior….

and he commanded us to aspire to “less.”

in our quest to climb to the top…we have hit the bottom.

in our quest to not see color, to not see gender , to not see class….

we have created a world that is spiritually poor.

creation is full of beauty, including the diversity of color, class, size, shape, gender, etc….

why do we waste our time attempting to make ourselves blind to it….when he who created it has commanded us to celebrate it??

here’s my challenge to us all…

to open our eyes, our ears and our hearts.

to stop closing our eyes to that which makes us uncomfortable but to start embracing it.

to stop trying to paint our world over in one shade of gray…but to open our eyes to the vibrant color of creation.

to stop trying to abolish material poverty and start trying to abolish spiritual poverty.

to stop using terms that are shocking but start living in away that is shocking….

at the end of the day, we all have a choice.

will we stand?

will we celebrate?

will we see dafka for who she is and not what she has?

will we reimagine poverty….and reimagine this world?

will we change the course of history?

will we start a revolution?