Love (Baby Don't Hurt Me) Part 1

"Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold..."
(Matthew 24:12a) 

"Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold." (Matt. 24:12a) This is a verse many of us have probably heard before...and like many verses in scripture, it deals with the state of the heart of man. What does it mean to have a "cold heart" exactly? What is love? Why is there such a problem with matters of the heart? 

I felt God speaking to me this week about love. So much, in fact, that I know I will fall short of trying to convey it all, but will attempt it nonetheless in this, a first of a series of blog posts on the topic. The Lord reminded me that of the three most essential gifts we have been given (faith, hope, and love) that the GREATEST gift of all is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13). It sounds super cheesy, I know, to think of love as not just a gift but the greatest gift. But why? Why does it seem cliche? 

Well, I have to think that true, real, unadulterated love isn't seen that often in our modern, enlightened society. Forget all the "chick flicks," the 50 Shades of Crap, er I mean, Gray, forget the Harlequin novels, the puppy love sappy metaphors and memes (seriously, if you post those on social media...just...spare us all, really), forget it all. Toss it out the window, because none of those things is love. Not really. A dim reflection? Probably. So what is love anyway?  

This came to your mind too? Yeah, I got sidetracked as well. 

I truly believe that human beings can't even define what love really is. Fortunately, God did it for us. According to Him, love is the following: patient, kind, not proud, not envious, not selfish, doesn't get angry easily, doesn't keep a record of someone's screw-ups, never is happy when something bad happens to someone we don't like, always is happy about the truth being told, always protects, never neglectful, always has an expectation for something good to happen, and never gives up even when the going gets tough. (1 Cor. 13:4-7, heavily paraphrased by me).

Wow...so basically reading that, I learned that I really suck at this whole "love" thing. I may do 2 or 3 of those things in the list of what God defines as "love" decently, and that's on a good day. And I do the exact opposite of most of these. Good thing that the number one attribute of love is patience...because I am quite sure God must have lots of patience with me!  

I know what you might be thinking..."Oh but Brooke...we aren't all so bad!" Sure, we see and even participate in fleeting moments of love---a newborn baby sleeping in his mother's arms, a father embracing his daughter, an elderly man fishing with his grandson, a stranger helping someone else in need, a wedding ceremony where we witness couples reciting their vows, tears being shed for injustice. The truth of the matter is, all of us fail miserably at conveying love on a regular basis. And the darker our world becomes, we see true love less and less it seems. Why else is the news full of stories about violence, death, hate, rape, inequality, yada yada yada?

Worst of all, for those of you reading who happen to be Christ-ians (aka "Christ followers")? Me and you? Yeah, we are the official worst at showing love than anyone else in the world. Don't believe me? Then why is it common knowledge that we are the WORST tip-givers to food service workers, the LEAST ethical business owners, complain the MOST about the needy and those on welfare systems, and spew EXORBITANT amounts of hate with our actions and words than any other group? Why are we the cynics? Why are we the laziest? Why are we the cruelest? I hate to be the one to break it to you...but we are very poor reflections of what we claim to represent. 

And that should bother us. And by bother us, I don't mean in a "oh I ate some bad salsa last night and now I have indigestion" kind of way either. I mean, this should be keeping us up at night. This should be spoken about from our pulpits. This should be the topic of conversation on our lunch breaks. This should wreak absolute havoc on our collective sensitive little Christian consciences. Bless our tender little hearts!  This should cause each and every one of us to flood the alters with our tears and rub our knees raw in prayer.

Guys...we're doing it all wrong. The ONE most important thing...and we're screwing it up royally. We had one job to do (insert meme) and we're failing. We've got to get this right. We've got to start now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now. We've got to ask God to break our hearts for what breaks His. 

If you my friend are reading this, and you're not a Christian, I thank you for your patience with me in getting to my long and drawn out point. Chances are, you have met someone who said they were a Christian and they hurt you. They betrayed you, they lied about you, they rejected you. Maybe they used you, cursed you, cheated you, abused you, threw you away like you were nothing, walked away from you when you needed them most, made you angry, maybe even made you hate them and their so-called-God. 

Can I, on their behalf, sincerely and truly apologize? I'm sorry they (I) let you down, mistreated you, did all of the above and more that I didn't even name. It was wrong. I was wrong. There is no justification. Nothing I could ever say would make it right. I'm not here to convince you of anything other than the fact that we are supposed to be different. And for not being different...for not being all the definition of what love is and what Jesus said we should be known for? That is our greatest crime. That is our chiefest sin. 

And for all of those things I ask your forgiveness. I promise you can call me out when I'm wrong and I will welcome it. I promise to do all I can to be a better representation of the God who loves you desperately. I promise when I say I am praying for you that I really and truly take time to do it on the spot. I promise to be transparent with my struggles and my vices. I promise to be as much like Him as I know how, because that's the Jesus you deserve to see. 

And if you're a Christian reading this and you're angry...good. If you're convicted...good. If you're complacent...consider my drawn-out ramblings with an unbiased mind and heart and together let's change. Not for ourselves, but for others. The world is sick and dying and hurting and we can't just sit by and do nothing about it. 

First Steps!

This is a special post for us. God called us to this crazy, amazing privilege in April of 2008. Over the years, He's prepared us and reminded us of this call. And now He's blessed us to be able to step into this amazing gift. Yesterday, Feb. 20, 2016, we began the process to adopt.

The first of many steps...

This post is for you, my amazing daughter. I don't know every line of your face yet. I don't know the sound of your voice, or the curve of your smile. I don't know your past or even the circumstances of your birth. In my mind, I imagine the heartbreak your birth mother must have had to give you up. But I am so thankful for her. Because she gave you life. She could've chosen another way, an easier way. But she loved you so much, that she sacrificed of herself to give you the greatest gift of all...life.

While there is so much that I don't know, here are a few things that I do: I know that God designed you and lovingly formed you in your biological mother's womb. I know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. I know that your very existence was planned before the creation of this world itself. I know that you have a great purpose and call on your life. And I know that by some painful, beautiful, merciful circumstance, that we were given the honor of being your parents.

Please know that we are not perfect parents, and we make mistakes. But we really do try our best to make sure that our kids know we love them and do everything we can to take care of them. (By the way, you have 3 brothers and 2 sisters...so it gets kind of loud and crazy around here sometimes, but you get used to it.) We are a big family, so we have a lot of love to give.  

I want you to know that God has already begun to weave you into our hearts. Whatever pain is in your past, whatever doubts and fears you may have either now or in the future looking back on this, please know that there is "no darkness so deep that His love is not deeper still." I want you to know that we will hold you through every storm. We will protect you and love you. Through the good days and the bad, you will never be alone. God has such great plans for your life. You have so much destiny and purpose. Even though we cannot hold you yet in our arms, He is holding you for us until we can get to where you are.

Until then, we are so excited to bring you home. You are so greatly loved. You are a child of promise. We will meet you soon and cannot wait to see what God has in store for your life.

                                                                                                                                    ~Mama & Baba

The Importance of Prayer

"I'll pray for you..." How many times have we said these words, or words like them? Prayer is often looked at as such a simple thing. A quick and thoughtful uttering from our lips to God's ears. When we don't know what else to say, we say we'll pray. But how long do we spend in prayer? In our hurried, everyday lives, what priority do we make prayer? The average Christian prays 60 seconds a day. If that's not a testimony of what an afterthought prayer has become in this modern generation...I don't know what is!

At the end of 2016, God convicted me about my own prayer time. As a work at home mom to 5 kids and a woman married to a husband with a high-demand job and involved in ministry...my days can feel so rushed. Sometimes I feel like it's all I can do to catch my breath. God called me to slow down this year. To take time to spend in His presence. Specifically, "get your house in order."

When I began to seek God about what he meant about getting things in order...the Holy Spirit impressed on me that a foundation of that would be prayer. Prayer and communication with God. Building time from the ground up in our lives spent in His presence. Let me tell you...prayer is powerful. It is transformative. It isn't for the weak. It isn't for the hurried. It is for me and for you.

Today I took God at His word. I stopped in my busy day and called my oldest child into the study and we began to pray. I set the tone with worship music playing in the background. And we began to just speak and proclaim whatever the Spirit put on our hearts. God showed up. He met us where we were. My youngest, who has been fighting sleep lately just sat back in my arms with very little fuss. He fell asleep in my arms as we just cried out to God. My 10 year old son came into the room. I spoke words of confirmation over his life about the calling God placed on him from before the time he was born. My son is very sensitive to the Holy Spirit. He began to weep under the anointing and prophesy. My daughter also broke down and had a word from God about having a spirit of fear, and trusting Him more.

I prayed for the things God laid on my heart. One thing specifically being a new house. We have a lot of kids ya'll. We need a big house. An even bigger house than we already have. I prayed and asked God to give us a bigger house. We've been working on our house we are living in now to get all the repairs that need made done and improvements. We have an awesome house. But we know we need to sell it in the next year or so.

Well, wouldn't you know it but not 10 minutes after we had spent time in prayer, Phil comes and tells me that the man who had come to deliver a utility building to our property today told him that he wanted a house like ours and wouldn't mind buying it from us in 6 months to a year. WHAT. Come on now...tell me God doesn't answer prayer and give confirmation?????? All glory to God!

Whatever he wants with this life, I want God to have it. God showed Himself true to me and He just continues to bless and increase my faith. I challenge you to spend time with God this week. Don't spend 60 seconds. Spend 30 minutes or 3 hours! God is moving and He's just waiting to bless obedience.

Family Pics, at Last!!!

We have been notoriously horrible at updating our family photos. So it feels like a huge milestone for us to finally have updated pics of our kids on the wall. And there's one that Daddy ordered at the bottom for our newest blessing that we just don't have home yet. All the feels!!

More of you, less of me.

This has always been one of my favorite verses. You know, one of those that you read and it just jumps out at you from the page. That's John 3:30 for me. I didn't know that God would give me more understanding of it the longer I walked with Him.

You see, in 2012, I was going through an awful time in my life. Everything felt like it was just falling apart. I was holding on by a thread to my faith. And then, God allowed me to suffer a miscarriage. I was devastated. Angry. Confused. Why had God taken even this from me? I wondered. It felt like my life became a re-enactment of the book of Job because my family and I were walking through a time of so much heartbreak and despair. I couldn't see why God would let this happen. I had served Him almost all my life. I had never doubted Him before. But now doubt was all I knew.

I begged God to let me just get through it. I wanted to turn against Him and just walk away. I even tried to do that, but God sent someone to me at that exact moment to minister to me to let me know He still heard. And I just needed to hang in there a LITTLE longer. So that's what I did.

Fast forward to 2014. God gave me our youngest child. My child of promise. You see, even while I had miscarried, God told me he had rainbows for me. He even gave my sister a dream of a child that would come to us during a season of overflow.

Our child of promise...sweet J. 

God, in His goodness, was faithful. Not only did He deliver us out of a terrible situation, He did much more. He gave us not only enough to get by, which was my prayer, but He gave us extra. You ever hear that old saying, "the devil has to pay you double for your trouble?" Folks, I am here to tell you. IT IS TRUE! God started crazy blessing us. We started dreaming again.

Have you ever been so low that you don't even want to have hope in anything anymore? That was us. I was scared to dream. Scared to plan for the future. God showed me I have to trust Him, even in the hard stuff. Even when things don't work our how I want them to. And suddenly, the fear was gone. I wasn't afraid anymore. Heck, I had already been through hell and back. And God brought me through that, so...what was there to fear now?

Since 2014, it hasn't all been easy. We had another miscarriage in 2015. And while I don't want to diminish that loss, it wasn't as hard as the first one. Why? Because I had really learned to not just say, but believe, "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

I remembered then, that God promised me rainbows. Plural. More than one. So He already had prepared my heart in a way for what was to come.

Since God gave my heart the ability to dream again...I started thinking ahead after the second loss. To the child God promised me. I already had seen that God would fulfill the promise. He did that when he brought us our son. What I didn't know, was that God had dreams for me too. And His and mine were not the same at that time.

Dear little E! One of my most favorite pictures ever. 

This is what I thought that promise would be. ^^ Another beautiful, healthy, biological child. One that would know his or her family from birth and whose life would only add to the family as a whole. My plans were to bring another of these precious ones into the world. 

But this was not God's plan. 

As I washed dishes that morning, I already was thinking of the birthday month for this would-be child. Wouldn't another summer baby or a fall baby be wonderful? That would fit in just great with our schedules and the kids with their school calendars. (Feel free to laugh at me here. It's ok.) 

"What about adoption?" The Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. And then a strange thing happened. My picture started changing. What was that verse again? Oh, yeah. "He must become more. I must become less." 

God had a plan, right from the start to bring my heart to that moment, at that time. The pain of the past just helped to amplify His voice. My steps were already ordered by Him to walk this road. A child, halfway around the world. A child God has already chosen to be mine. A child with a physical need that might very well make her an outcast in her own country. (My belief is that she has a missing or malformed limb.) She already has a name in my heart, and a face that I just haven't seen yet. God chose this beautiful one for my family and I. For us. We have the honor of being her mother, father, sisters, and brothers.

What a God we serve. A love that seems at times so crazy and reckless, but so full and so free. And His promise is that if we just "seek first His kingdom and His righteousness" that everything else will be added to us. Everything we need to accomplish His purpose. "He must become more. I must become less." 

New Year!

I always hate saying goodbye to Christmas. It's so much fun ringing out the old year and spending time with the family and watching the kids have so many exciting moments! And I actually get everyone to take a pic looking so dapper in the new clothes/kicks. hahaha

But the new year rolls on in and I am praying that 2016 will be a great one for us. Lots of small but needed house repairs are underway. The boys got new bunk beds which turned out awesome! I'm also praying that this is the year we are fully under way with our process and maybe, just maybe, EVEN MATCHED!! Fingers and toes crossed.

Today has been a bit of a challenge. Coming out of a weekend and going into the work/school/kids activities routine is a killer sometimes. Thank goodness for coffee.

If you've been following along and wonder what is new with our process:

We have raised enough funds to cover our application fees, parenting/educational courses (yes, even as seasoned parents of 5 kids, we still need special training to assist us in understanding how to help a child bond and connect with us who has experienced abandonment and trauma), and document authentication required by the state. If all pledges come through, we also have enough for our orientation fees as well. Woot woot!

Still more to raise and a long way to go, but it is a start. The biggest monster for us to tackle right now is the home study. So much time and footwork required with that that it almost seems scary. Taking it one day at a time.

We are organizing a used shoe drive, which we think is AWESOME . We are collecting pairs of used shoes of any style or age, so long as they are in wearable condition. Funds2Orgs has partnered with us to buy these shoes and pay us per pound for them. They, in turn, send them to third world countries which helps others who can't afford shoes and otherwise wouldn't have them. AND keeps them out of our landfills. Win-win-win.

Will keep everyone posted on drop-off points and dates/times as we receive them from those who have partnered with us. If you're interested, shoot me a message here or on FB and I'll send you flyers or whatever you need to get involved.

Thanks everybody for your prayers. Please pray specifically for patience for me, and for wisdom in each step of the way. These are waters we have not navigated before, and while that is exciting, it is also sometimes scary. So thankful God called us on this journey.

Waiting

Right now, I'm waiting. Waiting to begin our adoption process. Before I inadvertently offend anyone, let me tag onto the end of that comment a few disclaimers.

I haven't been sitting back on my blessed assurance (that phrase never gets old for me) but I have truly been diligently working on fundraisers, craft festivals, and events to help bring awareness and the needed money to bring home our daughter. Lots of time and effort have been put into each event we have taken part in. And God has blessed us. People have been incredibly supportive and giving. I am very thankful for where we are and that progress has been made! Please don't think I am complaining or not grateful. I'm just sharing something that God spoke to my heart recently and making myself publicly accountable in the hopes that this will encourage others, and to remind myself.

During my prayer time recently, God told me to wait. You see, I had been striving really hard to raise these funds myself. In MY own power, and in MY time. And that's where the problem lies. This isn't about me. It's about Him. And it's about our daughter whose face I have only seen as a picture in my head. A child that God specifically called our family to adopt. A child who lives in a country far away from my own.

It's time to wait on God to do something miraculous. That being said, this goes against everything in me. "That's not how it works, God." That's what I want to say. Because in my human, worldly-wise mind, that isn't what society would say to do or tell me what to expect. Adoption costs money, folks. Without getting into the ethics or the reasons why this is so, let's just take it for the fact that it is. And yes, we realize that certain types of adoption (namely fostering or foster adoption) are far less costly. While fostering and foster adoption are incredible, this isn't what God called us to do. China is where a piece of our hearts are, and where our daughter, whose name we do not even yet know, lives. God called our family to do something that many would say is a pipe-dream, an improbability, an impossibility. How will we do it?

I like to think of myself as a realist. Not an optimist. Not a pessimist. A realist. I see things for what they are and follow problems through to their logical conclusions. This gives me the ability to think of a problem from start to finish and how I can solve it. I'm a planner. I'm all about the research, brainstorming, and implementation of a well thought-out plan. Heck, just typing that sentence made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. (Why are you laughing? I'm not kidding, I promise you.) I'm not easily swayed by pessimistic thought and I also don't sit back and expect everything to work out exactly as I wish or hope. I like to think being a realist makes me a pretty well-rounded individual that can get things done.

But then God comes in and messes up everything. Dangit God. Why'd you have to go and do that? Mess up MY plan? Oh wait...this isn't my plan. This was your plan all along. Ouch. That one hurt.

So many scriptures about waiting are in the Bible. But we are human and we don't like to wait. We want to see it now, do it now, touch it now, feel it now.  As much as I like to think I know the big picture, or can see the plan from start to finish...I really can't. All I can see is what God allows me to, and from a very fixed point in time. I can't see all the possible ends to each decision I make. But he can. All I can do is do the best with the time that's been given to me. (Yeah, I totally just dropped some paraphrased Gandalf quotage on ya'll.)

Gandalf, blowing minds and dropping truth bombs since 1937

The road that you and I walk is infinite, of which we only see a part. Exciting? Yes. Scary? Undoubtedly. I've decided to take this time and direction from God to get my house in order. To wait and pray because this is the time I feel God is going to move on our behalf, if we are obedient. Reminder to self, right here and now: Wait. Pray. Wait some more. Pray a lot more. Let God handle it.

Family and friends, please join us in praying for God's timing through it all.