THIS WEEKEND WE . . .

This weekend we went to a friend's birthday party at one of our favorite local Mexican restaurants.  I love seeing these once college roommates, now work colleagues, share a laugh while each having a Spenst girl on their lap.  Happy Birthday, Jason!



Also, I loved seeing Lily wear the sombrero.

This weekend we experimented with pigtails on Bella and french braids on Lily.  As I wrote on Instagram, "I died and went to pigtail heaven."  I really love having girls.



This weekend we tackled, at least started to tackle, a few projects around the house.  Hence the need for a Home Depot run.  And a run to Lowe's when Home Depot did not carry what we needed.  When Lily asked what Lowe's was, I explained that it was just like Home Depot, but with different colors everywhere.

This weekend we headed downtown for the Little Rock Marathon, with John running the Half.  I ran it last year, and this year he stepped up to the plate.  (Though to be fair, he could practically run it without training at all.  Oh wait, he did that three years ago.  Very annoying.)  He did train this year, and he ran his best half marathon time to date!  Way to go, John!

The Little Rock Marathon is known for its massive medals, and this year did not disappoint.  The medals for the full marathon were almost double this size.  Makes you feel like you won the world.



This weekend we revisited a stain on the floor in Bella's room that is two years old.  With no research whatsoever, I tried a tip mentioned off-handedly by a friend.  I sprinkled baking soda all over the spot and let it sit there overnight.

Then, I poured what ended up being an entire large bottle of vinegar onto the spot.  The resulting foam was quite captivating.



The girls got in on the fun helping me soak it up.



Did it work?  Verdict is still out.  It seemed to remove some of the extra grime.  The whole carpet needs to be shampooed or replaced, most likely.  However, I am trying to salvage it.  I think I see a carpet shampoo rental in my future, or maybe cork flooring that would match our playroom.  That stuff is really kid friendly.

This weekend we laughed a lot at how funny our girls are.  Bella is in a stage where she roars like a lion.  A Lot.  This either enrages Lily or entices her into roaring as well, depending on the mood and the moment.  It can also make you feel a bit crazy in the head when your children are roaring at their only volume (extremely loud), and you wonder if you actually live in a zoo.  And to think, we are hoping to add two more children to the mix.

We also saw a lot of this, this weekend.  Poor, sweet kitty who is bravely willing to go where the other cat will not: Lily's arms.



Hoping and praying to see more of God this week through the people he places around me and the work he has for me to do.  Happy Monday!

NEW MONTH, NEW NUMBER. SORT OF.

Well, it is slightly a new number.  We moved one spot on the overall wait list, and no spots on the special needs wait list.



February was a ssslllloooowww month with our agency.  It was sort of crickets on the unofficial group Facebook page, which was a little disheartening.  Our agency was being relicensed by Ethiopia, and several of the orphanages that refer to our agency were also relicensing.  And, major courts were closed.  Amazing the sorts of things you start to keep track of when you are waiting, like Ethiopian court closures.

We've officially been on the wait list for 5 months now, which in the grand scheme of most international adoptions is small potatoes.  Sadly, however, I already have that horrible doubt creeping in of "Will this ever happen?  Are we waiting with a point?  Will we be waiting forever?"

At the end of my pregnancy with Lily, I remember quite vividly telling John that I would be pregnant forever.  And meaning it sincerely.  Once we hit her due date, I thought - "That's it.  Buckle up, Carol, cause being pregnant forever is going to suck."  (Overdue, pregnant Carol was not the most rational or likable person ever.)  With adoption, there is no due date.  There are estimated wait times, but because of our specifications, most of those can even be thrown out the window.  It could be next month, or it could be next year, and literally only God knows.

Then, there is the frustrating reality of knowing there are so many children in the world that need families and wanting to be a family that fills that gap.  Of course, we want to add to our family and have more children.  That makes adoption a win/win for us, because we can add to our family and also help address our world's orphan issue.  It is exciting and heart-breaking to feel led in this direction.

And it is so stinking complicated.  So many children languishing in orphanages around the world will never even have a chance to be adopted.  They will never be "paperwork ready."  It is a harsh fate to never have parents, and so many children suffer it.  That is a hard burden to start to bear, even in the tiniest way.  Waiting has been eye-opening, and for that, I am grateful.  My eyes needed to be opened.

Also, while we are waiting, God has provided great work for me to do.  I am helping to coordinate the first Walk for the Waiting in Little Rock.  (It is ironic that I just realized that I am working on the Walk for the Waiting while I am also waiting.  I am sure this was not lost on God.  He is in the details, after all.)  Be on the look out for more info from me, and please take this opportunity to get involved in this issue locally.  I am certainly getting an education on what the needs are here, and it is a whole different eye-opening journey.  But, it is exciting to see the Church rising up.

Thanks for following along this journey with us.  We appreciate your prayers and look forward to seeing what God has in store for us.

HEAP OF SIN

Yesterday I wrote about trouble, and today I am writing about sin.  What a delightful place this blog is this week.  Some weeks these are the things weighing on my mind, and it is nice to have a place to write them all out.  Thanks for coming along.

In the winter time, next to my bed, resides a pile of socks.  It builds up and collects over a week's time.



You see, my feet are cold in the evenings, and I wear socks right up until I hop into bed, where I cannot stand wearing socks.  They must come off.  Socked feet in bed make me feel quite suffocated.  But, until the bedtime moment, the socks stay on.

Then, I get my bare feet into bed, and they are still so cold.  I put them on John's legs to warm them up, and because he is extremely gracious, he allows and even invites this.  He likes for me to have warm appendices.  He loves me.

Back to the sock pile.



I obviously can't put the socks into the dirty clothes in that moment, because it would require a trek across the cold, tiled bathroom to get to the laundry basket.  So, there they lay.  In a heap.

In the morning, I hop out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and make my bed right away.  Okay, only part of that statement is true.  Usually I am much more bleary-eyed, but I do always make my bed. I like having a tangible accomplishment immediately in the day, and it makes my room feel picked up.  To complete the making of the bed, I go over to John's side, and just like that, I have abandoned the sock pile.  Not be be thought of again until the next night, when I add socks to it once more.

John laughs at this most nights.  He is such a clean freak that something like a personal sock pile would drive him crazy.  In fact, my sock pile would drive him crazy if it were anywhere that he saw it regularly.  But it isn't.  We rarely go over to that side of the room during the day.  Last night he was saying, "Have you blogged about the sock pile?  You need to blog about the sock pile.  I am sure there is a metaphor buried not too deeply under the surface.  You could call it all kinds of things.  Like 'Heap of Sin.'"

Well, thanks, honey.  Comparing my ever-growing, never-addressed sock pile to a heap of sin in my life is extremely helpful.  However, there are so many similarities.  Funny how that works.

I've been reading Leviticus lately.  (I know you hear that all the time.)  Leviticus goes into great detail over sacrifices for sin, burnt offerings, and being clean or unclean.  Leviticus is all about the law.  And since I serve the same, never-changing God that is speaking in Leviticus, I have to ask myself - "Though I know the law has been abolished, what can I learn about God's heart and character through this book?"

Several things have stood out.  God cares about the little details.  He outlines various behaviors that are quite specific and entail things that it would be easy to think he doesn't care about.  But he does care about the details of our lives, and more importantly, he cares about how our hearts are in engaged in those details.  Also, God is serious about sin.  It is a big deal to him, and he requires atonement and repentance to make things right.

As I read through the directions for sin offerings, I kept seeing the statement "He shall lay his hand on the head of the bull and slay the bull before the Lord" (Leviticus 4:4b).  Then, there is a lot of blood splashing around the altar.  What a gory and gruesome image.  How would I think about my sin differently if to atone for it, I had to take an animal and lay my hands on its head while it was slaughtered?

Because Jesus paid the ultimate price of atonement for us, I get to repent in my heart and ask for forgiveness.  The perfect lamb was slain on my behalf over 2000 years ago.  It was gory and gruesome.  But, I often gloss over it.  I don't think about the bloodshed and the sin of all mankind resting on the shoulders of the perfect man who was God incarnate.  My sin.

And so I ask God to help me realize my own depravity a little more and my need for him a lot more.  I don't want to walk by the heap of sin in my heart like I do the pile of socks next to my bed.  I also don't want to wait to the last minute to repent - I want a clean slate with the Lord.

IN THIS WORLD, WE WILL HAVE TROUBLE

You know those times when life is a little gloomy?  When every phone call and email are the bearers of bad news?  When the "to-do" list is miles long and you are trying to figure out what even needs to be done?



Things aren't as bad as that, but there are certain areas of messiness right now.  And the reality is, there always are.  I had someone tell me recently that there are always two tracks in life that are running parallel to one another.  There is the good track and the bad track.  Things are always happening on both of them, but sometimes you spend more time riding one or the other.



Growing up, I thought it was possible to only ever hop onto the good train and ride it forever.  Mistakenly, I imagined going through life unscathed by hardship.  I crave fun and actively look for ways to create it, and I thought I may be able to wriggle through life the fun way, on the party train.  I am not sure how I overlooked or failed to consider that Jesus actually tells us "In this world, you will have trouble."  (John 16:33)

There is no "if" in that statement.

There is no "possibly."

There is no "some people."

Nope, Jesus makes it pretty clear that living in this world will come with Trouble.  (With a capital "T" that rhymes with "P" that stands for pool.  Raise your hand if you performed the Music Man in high school.  If only the trouble I was talking about was just a pool hall coming to town.)



One of the hard things about being right smack dab in the middle of trouble is that I don't know how situations will turn out.  As John put it last night, "We are not in a movie where this is the hard part, but we know that things will turn out well in the end.  There may be no happy ending."  Because in this world, we will have trouble.  People make poor choices that ruin things in their lives, possibly forever.  Watching this is heart-breaking.  Being stuck in the middle is even harder.



So, while all this trouble-business can still come as a surprise to me, there is good news for us all.  Jesus didn't stop with just talking about trouble.  He says, "But take heart!  I have overcome the world."  (John 16:33)  Makes me tear up just reading it all over again.  There is hope!  I may not know the ending here on earth, but I know how it all ends.  Jesus overcomes the world.  He overcomes the sin and the mess and the hardship.  He redeems it all.



Just like I need fresh flowers at the end of dreary February to remind me that winter will not last forever  and that spring really will come, I need to listen to Jesus telling me to "Take Heart!"  To find my peace in him instead of little worldly pleasures that leave me wanting.

Take heart, dear friends.  This world is not all there is.  Thank the good Lord.