Walking Out Faith

My heart has been struggling with the desire to do something more for those in need. More...But what does that mean exactly? What does that look like for me and my family? I love that quote from someone that says, "Just do something". But what something are we as a family best suited for? I was so encouraged by these two guys who quit their jobs and created a company based on a need, socks for the homeless. They found that the one item that is almost always in need in shelters and among the homeless are socks. Socks. So they quit their jobs and started making socks, really good quality socks. And they donate thousands of socks to shelters! Just two guys and some socks. And then a friend of mine started collecting gently used coats and winter gear to deliver to shelters. So here's my thought. What if I started collecting gloves runners use and just throw on the side of the course during their race?? I mean if their going to go in the trash, why not recycle them and giv...

So I had these grand plans for homeschooling today. Plans for hands learning about the brain and skeletal system. Grand plans, I tell you!! A life size human body with anatomically correct proportions and sections where the kids could write about the important features of each system/body part. I don't know which one of us was more excited. But the kids started whining and coloring on each others poster board and ....well, that idea went out the window. So back to our regularly scheduled homeschool day. ok, we actually started it! As an aside, I LOVE SCIENCE. and I love learning all over again. My husband and I joke that we could both go to school forever and never have a real job again. Lifelong students, sounds fabulous, I know. But it's a pipe dream. And really, all you ever need to know you learned in kindergarten. Right? Be kind, take turns, treat others with respect, pay attention, etc. The rest comes with time, it's a process. You learn as you live and you "go...

Sometimes my mind is so flooded with thoughts I'm not exactly sure where to begin. Sometimes, I feel so bogged down by responsibilities that I'm almost paralyzed into indecision and inaction.  So, I will take a momentary lapse from life and try to clear my thoughts through writing them down. Lucky you! We are in our 6th week of homeschooling and I feel like, yes we've made progress and are on a roll,..... somedays, and somedays it's simply a struggle to keep my bigs from constantly fighting with each other. Then you throw in my unrealistic image of the "Mrs. Brady" ideal of what a mom and wife should look like and do, the pressure to exercise because the benefits really do help manage life,  and I feel like I'm chasing my metaphorical tail.  Belly aches, incessant complaining, scrapes and bruises from bike rides and the constant barrage of "he said, she said" or "he did it, she did it" has almost broke me to the end of myself. Whi...

October Hiccups So here we are in October. Our baby #4 is in China and we are waiting. It feels strangely similar to the waiting game of being pregnant ; where the anticipation of something great and the unknown of all things new are mixed together in a bag of life.  So to date, we have submitted all of our paperwork (except pictures and course work) to our agency and are waiting for them to process it and then send it all off to the Chinese Consulate to be processed...Our agency is giving us a timeframe of 6 to 8 weeks and then the time the Consulate takes to process is roughly the same...unfortunately, that puts this Mama's due date somewhere in February. What a great birthday present that would be for me, to bring home our baby somewhere near my birthday! Of course, we'd love to bring him home sooner but God holds time in his hands. So we will patiently wait.  School has started and we are currently in our 5th, 5th week of homeschooling our big kids this year. This...

Bible Study Fellowship is like drinking in God's word from a fire hose. Seriously. Sometimes I don't realize the weightiness of what I've heard until, in this case, years later. Yesterday I started reviewing my notes from when I attended BSF back in 2014! Man, what a wealth of godly knowledge. I'm so thankful I took notes! And it's funny how the God of the universe can know me so intimately. He knew what my heart needed today back in 2014. This adoption process can be summed up in one word: Obedience. Now, please don't misunderstand me. This is not to imply that we are perfect or even obeying perfectly throughout our day to day lives, because all you have to do is ask my children and they will be all too happy to tell you how often mom losses it. Boy do i lose. But I can say that in terms of the adoption process, we have tried our best to simply obey in whatever capacity He has called. AND IT HAS BEEN SO COOL TO WATCH HIM WORK! Both Jonathan and I long to...

Today while filling out paperwork and an application related to our adoption process, we were asked this question, which seems to be fitting for a 'blog page post '. It's something I want everyone who asks us about our adoption story to know. How has God led you to adopt?  The answer seems simple, yet in many ways so profound. Through His Word, the Bible, he tells his children, to take care of widows and orphans. That pretty much sums up our God prompting. Basically, He tells us to do it. Take care of them, somehow and in someway. That's it. Now that 'take care' could look very different depending on which believer you ask. God is the one who calls us to obey, and He is the one who gives us the ability to do just that, in whichever capacity He equips. So for some, the 'take care' takes the form of adoption, for others it could be through volunteer work in churches, orphanages, after school programs, schools, etc. and for others it could be through ...

This week we received our homestudy approval! My heart smiles when I think we are that much closer to adding our little guy to our family. As I reflect over our process up  to this point, it's been very minimal in terms of time , in comparison to other family stories we've heard and I feel conflicted. Joyful for our particular process, but also i feel heartache for the families who have already waited so long and invested so much... joyful in hope and patient in affliction. It's interesting how affliction can take on so many forms. There's mixture of anger and frustration. The number of kiddos without families is so massive why does the process have to be so time consuming and tedious? Why do so many kids have to suffer loss and lack of connectedness at the hand of a system that is flawed. It's hard for me to stop looking at the waiting children postings, wanting to bring many of them back with us. Again I feel a sting of pain over the brokenness; broken families...