Our Romans 8:28 Day

June 5, 2012 By 6 Comments

I laid on a gurney, in just a thin hospital gown and big huge socks that were to ward off blood clots, the scariest part of surgery it seemed, waiting to be taken back. Waiting for the surgery that we hoped and prayed would restore my fertility. The memories of that day, now three years old, are fuzzy. The rounded corners soft. But I remember my husband standing beside me, and I remember the nurse’s kind eyes. How she held my hand when she told me that something came back in my blood work. The way the words sounded when she formed them—“You’re pregnant.”

I got up off that gurney and walked out of that hospital with life beating in the very place they were planning to invade.

That afternoon, when I should have been recovering in a downtown hospital bed, we waded in the lake while our dogs splashed about and I said to my husband, again and again the words I thought I’d never get to say, “I’m pregnant.”

It was over as quickly as it began, but those days taste sweet to me now. Oh what a gift to have it, for even just a moment.

Those June days in 2009 are marked on a map in my memory.

That weekend, after the end began, we walked to a local festival, and on the way there, I saw one perfect blooming pink peony. I snapped a picture of it, and I knew even then, as I lost our one and only pregnancy that He was at work. That He had to be.

164: A Peony

In that flower, in its pink unfolding life, I was reminded that my God is a good God. He’s a mighty God. He’s promised that He works all things for good for those who are called according to His purposes.

And He did.

This weekend we’ll attend that festival again, only this time I’ll carry an 18-month-old toddler on my back. We’ll wave at the parade goers and we’ll share cheese curds and our sweet boy will pet baby animals.

Trusting God to build our family; having to rely completely on Him, because I am physically unable to do it any other way, has been hard. My womb is very literally shut; sealed up by scar tissue. But better my womb than my heart.

A few weeks ago, one perfect deep red peony bloomed in our front yard.

Keep trusting Me, He whispers. I am still working.

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And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose, Romans 8:28. (NIV)

 
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Find the Light

December 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday morning, as the three of us cuddled in bed, the sun rose in the east. It cast patches of light into our room, including one tiny little square on the wall above our heads. Harry got up on his knees and touched it with his finger. Pointing at it over and over. We played a game: I’d put my hand up, so that the light was on me and off the wall, and then I’d drop my hand, allowing the patch of light to return to the wall. He’d put his little pointer finger out and point point point.

“Always find the light, Harry,” I told him.

The thing about light is that it always wins. No amount darkness in the world can overpower even the tiniest flame.

The Light came into this world so that we would not be overpowered by darkness. So that we would not be lost. So that we could see. He is the light of the world. The light that casts out all darkness.

Tonight, as you sit by your glittering tree or as you hold a little candle during a church service or as you perhaps gaze upon the stars, let your heart look upon The Light. Let Him in. To shine through you. To shine and show the world that darkness will never win. It will be consumed.

Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life,” John 8:12.

 
Filed Under: Jesus Christ Superstar Tagged With: ,

Across the River (And Other Thoughts on a Sunday)

September 25, 2011 By 6 Comments

It’s been so long since I’ve just sat down and written anything here. Just written. Just said whatever it was that I wanted to say in that moment.

Most of the time, thoughts come to me at night right before I go to bed, but I let them go, because I’m tired. (There is always more to be done than can get done.)

But I have been thinking, a lot, almost every day, what it is like to be on this side of the river, delivered to the land for which I prayed.

The problem with being on this side of the river is that it’s filled with the business of living, which leaves less time for reflection.

Because all of a sudden you’re married or you’re parenting or you’re working hard at that job you longed for or you are studying at the school you worked hard and prayed fervently to be able to attend.

The thing about being delivered is that it happens in an instant. One day I was single and the next day, there he was. Just a guy I met at the dog park.

One day we were childless; waiting and preparing. The next day, our son was born and we journeyed across the country to get to him.

Those are the stories that I wish I could go back in time and tell to myself.

How frustrated God must have been with me at times (if God gets frustrated, which maybe he doesn’t?) when I cried and whined and felt persecuted. When will it be my turn??  I so often asked.

I bet He shook His head and said, “Johanna, I am working. It is coming. It will be worth the wait. Would I give you anything less?”

And that’s what I want you to know: God cannot give you a bad gift. If evil fathers give their children bread, rather than the snakes and scorpions they perhaps deserve, HOW MUCH MORE will God give you when you ask him for something? (Matthew 7)

If you are still waiting. If you are still in the desert. Your river crossing is coming. It may take a wild act of faith (step into the rushing river, Joshua!), but you will cross that river. The land on the other side may not look how you imagined or even wished for, but there is land on the other side of that river, and it is filled with the exact thing that you need. And it will be good.

Even thought we are now parents—I am now someone’s mother—I feel like our story is still being written.

Our house is not full yet.

My friend Amy, a prayer warrior if there ever was one, e-mailed me a few months ago to tell me she was already praying for the continued building of our family. She said, I’m not sure if you’re ready for more kids, but I am calling out for them!

He settles the barren woman in her home, the happy mother of children (Psalm 113:9).

I see a house bursting with children. Harry a big brother to many. Can you imagine?

We may be old. We may have gotten started later. We may still have little ones when most of our friends are sending their kids off to college.

I don’t know.

I can’t see everything, but I see a glimpse.

I am trusting Him to write our story, because why wouldn’t I? Look at what He has written so far!

Jesus saved me, the worst of all sinners, so that you would see what He says and what He has done is TRUE. (1 Tim 1:16, paraphrase).

I don’t know what your story looks like or what you are waiting for.

I know that life is terribly hard. This world that we live in is mightily unfair.

But He longs for you, sisters. His heart breaks for you. He wants you desperately.

A few months ago, a member of our church lost her baby at 15 weeks gestation. It was her second loss; her first was also born too early and in between her two angels she gave birth to two more sons.

They held a short memorial service to remember their fourth baby, and the pastor told the story she’d relayed to him after she’d lost their first baby, before she was a believer.

She said that she related to the analogy of Jesus being a shepherd, because of one of the ways a shepherd draws his sheep.

The reason we often see shepherds holding baby lambs over their shoulders is because the sheep will follow wherever their babies go. So when the shepherd wants to move the flock, he wraps a baby around his neck, and the flock follows. She said that when they lost Aiden, it was as if Jesus gathered up her baby, placed him on His shoulders and took him to heaven.

“And I followed,” she said.

I don’t know what pain you are suffering today, but I know what if you trust Him with it, He will redeem it.

I want you to remember that we are already more than conquerors.

 
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Restoring Me

September 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

dippy1

Jen Hatmaker’s most recent blog post, After the Airport, has been making the rounds on Facebook.

It is an honest look at the hard, beautiful work of parenting after the “Gotcha Day.”

I couldn’t personally relate to most of it, because that is not our adoption story.

There are the obvious differences in our stories in that one, our son is still an infant, so most of the parenting that is required of us is maybe not easy, but is simple; and two that I have never borne children. I do not know, and will likely never know, if feels differently to parent a child you birthed versus one whose was birthed to you.

But what did resonate, where I did see our story, is where it intersects with the cross.

Jen wrote:

I followed a God into this story who heals and redeems, who restores wasted years and mends broken places. This God specializes in the Destroyed. I’ve seen it. I’ve been a part of it. I have His ancient Word that tells of it. I love a Jesus who made reconciliation his whole mission. My children will not remain broken. They are loved by too good a Savior. I will not remain exhausted and spent. I am loved by too merciful a Father.

In early June I heard Gabe Lyons talk about how the Gospel story is a bigger story that we often see.

How the big picture is a story of not just the Fall and Redemption, but also of Creation and Restoration; and how Christ’s work on the cross is not just for what will be in eternity, it was also done for what can be here. On Earth. And what can be done here is restorative work. Turning what is broken into the whole thing that He created it to be.

And ever since I heard him talk about that, thoughts about how that idea relates to infertility and adoption, how the Gospel is mirrored in them, have been crackling away in my brain.

When God created the world, he created it so that every mama could bear children and every baby would stay with his mama. Be fruitful; multiply. Be a family, He instructed them.

But we don’t live in the Garden anymore. We are outside its gates.

And in this world, bodies are broken. Not every mama can be fruitful.

And for reasons that are too personal, too individual, too more to try to categorize, not every baby can stay with the mama who bears him.

But adoption. Adoption redeems the broken and it restores.

But it is only because of the cross. The cross is redemption. It made wrong right. And ever since that day, God has been in the business of restoration. He is restoring us back to how He created the world. Because of the cross, because of adoption, I have been restored to motherhood. To the role for which I was created. Adoption, the gift of grafting in what was not to what now is, is restorative work. Not just of the spiritual, me a sinner grafted into God’s family with the rights of an heir, but of the earthly as well. Because Christ went to the cross, I can be restored to the position of mother.

When I think of Harry or write about him, I feel like I should be spinning in a field on top of a mountain. My story sometimes feels as impossible as Fraulein Maria’s, but true both our stories are.

And yet. I don’t want to mislead. Adoption begins with loss. And is a mistake to pretend otherwise; to not recognize it, mourn it and heal from it.

I can see that our infertility has been redeemed in the gift of life that is our son. Harry’s very life is redemption.

And while I see our restoration, mine and Aaron’s, I can’t yet see more. Yet.

At 10 months old, most of Harry’s story is still unwritten. And I can’t tell you how He is working in Harry’s birthparents’ lives.

But I know that He is working.

Because I know Who is writing their stories. And I can tell you that there is restoration at work, because that is the God I serve. He is Redeemer. He is Restorer. That is who He is.

I am so thankful.

 
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Thoughts from the Summit

August 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

As it typically happens during a learning conference, a theme emerged for me the past two days at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.

And for me, as it almost always is, that theme was children.

First, I heard Mayor Cory Booker say: stand up from the banquet prepared by those who went before you, metabolize your blessings and do something. Do something.

Then I heard Rev. Brenda McNeil talk about how the future of the church is a multi-nation, multi-ethnic, multi-racial. That Jesus instructed us to go beyond what we know into the unfamiliar and the unknown. She asked if we’re brave enough to ask God: what is breaking your heart? And then ask Him to break ours for the same.

I heard Pastor Steven Furtick say that before we even see the rain clouds, we need to be digging ditches. And that only God can make it rain. (From 2 Kings 3.) What I heard: Only God can send children. So I am to dig ditches: to prepare our hearts, our house and our pocketbook for when God sends us another child(ren).

This morning I was wrecked past words by a woman who reflected the image of Christ so clearly that people gave her a standing ovation before she even spoke a word. She, an upper class Egyptian, left her work as a professor at a university to minister to (and to mother) the poorest children in Cairo. “When I touch a child, I am touching Jesus,” she softly said. “When I talk to a child, I am listening to God’s heart beating.”

Everything in me broke.

Do I love my own child like that? When I look at Harry, do I see Jesus first?

And more than that: am I open to Him leading the building of our family, or am I going to be like Sarah, who laughed when God told her that she was to bear a child, and instead told her husband to bear a child with her servant?

Am I making my own plans, trying to control our futures, when His plans are so much greater?

And then I heard Erwin McManus say that there has never been an ordinary child born ever, but that many of us die ordinary. That our God-given dreams are beat out of us; tired out of us; stressed out of us.

The only consistent dream of my life was to be a mother. And I am now a mother, but my heart still beats for children. I don’t feel in any way “done” with one.

Psalm 113:9 says: “He settles the barren woman in her home, the happy mother of children.”

Of children, it says. I am claiming it.

I don’t know what the future of our family looks like; how it will grow or what it will look like. But I am resting in the promise that He does.

And the good works that He has started in us, He will see to completion.

 
Filed Under: Jesus Christ Superstar, Making a Family
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