Redefining Love.

I remember thinking how strange it was that one little baby could have so many toys. And bags of clothes, and shoes, and gear. But we were required to take it all, so his worldly possessions were transferred from mini-van to SUV and we drove home to await the arrival of our foster son.

The toys jostled around in the back of my Yukon, piled high and creating a battery-operated symphony as they bumped into each other. It was these noises from the toys -- honks and sirens and overlapping versions of "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Pop Goes the Weasel" -- that I mostly remember from the drive home that Valentine's Day. We had just left the Social Services office, after a meeting that would forever change our lives.

We met with his biological family that day. He was 16 months old, running around the room like he'd been doing it for years, as a bunch of grown ups sat around discussing his future. He'd been living with an aunt and an uncle, who'd raised him since he was a newborn. But they were burnt out, exhausted by the drama that is foster care. They wanted to find a family that would adopt him once parental rights were terminated, and we fit the bill. We sat across from them, and asked about his likes, his routines. Favorite food? Graham crackers. How do you handle his tantrums? Wow, he does that? Ok, we will figure that out. How do you tuck him in at night? Rocking and singing and prayers. Yes, of course, we will do that too. It was so strange, and we all had tears in our eyes, and I kept thinking "This should never, ever happen to a kid."

To him, they were his mom and dad. How do you tell a baby that he is going to live with strangers? How does he say goodbye to the only parents he'd ever known? That this ever happened to my son, that he suffered such loss and heartache, and he didn't even have the words to communicate how deeply he felt this wound, it still squeezes my heart so tight I find it hard to breathe. And we've spent the past 3 years trying to help him heal. (And that, let me tell you, is an extraordinarily messy and imperfect process.)

For 3 years, we have fought for our son. First, we fought for reunification with his biological family. If that was best for him, that's what we wanted. When it became evident that reunification was not going to happen, we switched gears and fought the tendency to think of him as someone else's child. And the real work began. We fought every day to overcome our own frustrations, discouragement, and overwhelmed-ness (not a word, but should be) at the mess that was our boy. We fought to show him love, to reassure him that we would not give up on him, to help him feel secure and safe, when really, truly, it was oh-so-difficult to even like him.

I did not know a baby could be so angry. At 16 months, it felt like we had an explosive 9-year-old boy living in our house. He threw anything he could find in rage. He hurt the other kids (and they loved him anyway...praise be to God), he cried in angry sobs in the middle of dinner, spit in our faces, clawed us, bit us, and banged his head on the floor. I think we were prepared to deal with sad. Sad is sweet, sad tugs at your heart. You want to hug and hold and wipe the tears. I don't think we were prepared for angry. Not with a baby. We should have seen past the display of emotions and just addressed the hurt, but that was so hard for us. Anger in your home is contagious, and we fought hard to keep ours in check so we could help our little boy work through his.

Somewhere along the way, we began to redefine love. I struggled with the feelings we so often associate with love. I wanted to feel mushy toward this boy, to have him warm my heart and to find everything he did adorable in the way that only a mother does. When I would voice this to Kevan, and wonder how we could ever adopt without those feelings present, he would remind me what love is: Love is patient. Love is kind. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Oh my, how I love this boy. Probably more than I've ever loved another human being in my whole life. It's in the fighting for that we truly love.

But, the feelings, they came too. Through fervent prayers and God's abundant grace, they are stronger all the time.

Today, we celebrate victory. Three years of fighting for our son, three years of nurturing a relationship, of healing a heart, and healing in our home. I celebrate the heart swollen with pride watching my son write his name, and draw pictures, and play happily with action heroes. I rejoice in all the ways we really  know him now, not from a piece of paper with scribbled notes, but from hours and hours of peeling back the layers to find a kid who loves painting, and Spiderman, and his back scratched. Who is a water baby, and good at memorizing, and, as it turns out, has a pretty decent arm. Who loves to be tickled (And has the greatest laugh. You simply cannot argue with me on this.) And loves mama singing Twinkle Twinkle and Jesus Loves Me at bedtime. We've found a boy whose heart is sensitive toward Jesus, and whose unprompted prayer, "Thank you, God, for giving me a good family" brought tears to our eyes. Yeah, warm fuzzies, goosebumps, brimming heart...it all came. There are still hard days, days when we're back in the trenches, and we're fighting for our boy. It may always be that way.

But God continues to do a work, continues to bind us closer...and to teach us to love.

The Good Days.

There are patterns in my parenting. Peaks and valleys that have some sort of inexplicable rhythm to them, but are as sure as the sun will rise. Stretches of days on end - sometimes weeks - where things are just...tough. Out of sync. An upward climb. I am perpetually worn out and overwhelmed, and the kids seem unresponsive, whiny, unpleasant. Days where it's easy to fall into the trap of "I can't do this" and "I just may lose my mind."

Thank you, God, for the flip side.

Because there are the peaks too. The days, the weeks, when things just sort of beautifully fall into place. The house runs smoothly, the kids are learning and responding to instruction, they are happy and kind and imaginative, and I have energy enough to stay consistent and tend to the tasks at hand.

It begs the question: What makes a good day? Why the seemingly sudden switch? I've begun to take note:

Beautiful weather seems to help.  (I know, we're supposed to "make our own weather", but it's a whole lot easier when God just showers us with sunshine.)

Getting up early is almost always part of the equation. (Me, not the kids.)

Not going to the ER makes for a good day. (Although, truly, we've had some pretty decent days at the ER too. Especially when you know all-too-well it could always be worse.)

Kids playing together happily and kindly, making up all kinds of games and getting lost in their imaginary world...that just may be my favorite kind of day.

Fun with friends.

When one of them learns a new skill, or gains confidence in an old one. (Samuel just learned to write his name. Kyrie started crawling. The Olympics pale in comparison.)

Planning ahead, and providing just a little bit of structure to our day. That really seems to help all of us.

The days when I get to play with them a little bit extra, read to them even more than usual. When life is slow, and I can really just focus on being their mom without distraction.

Not over-scheduling.

Ignoring phone calls when I'm reading a story, doctoring a scraped knee, listening to my 7-year-old perform "Let it Go", and cracking eggs with my daughter.

Staying off the internet until the afternoon or evening. (Interesting, but it's really seemed to help our day run smoother when I avoid online stuff in the morning hours. Less time wasted? Sets a tone of productivity for the day?)

Sweet things out of their mouths. Funny things out of their mouths. (i.e. "Mom, you looked beautiful in that football jersey today." -Ezekiel, at bedtime on Super Bowl Sunday)

But, here's the thing: What REALLY makes a great day -- the kind of day when I fall into bed at night full-hearted and content and rejoicing in my day's work -- is not when everything goes just right. It's in how I respond when things go wrong. 

It's my tone of voice when asking my 3-year-old to stop whining, it's graciously handing my son a towel when milk runs down the legs of the table and pools on the floor...for the 3rd time that day. It's in the taking a deep breath before reminding little boys that, just like yesterday, we do not run in the house, or throw toys, or sneak in the pantry and drink syrup (a-hem, Elijah). It's calmly responding to tattle-taling, and patiently teaching siblings to love each other instead of the toy-of-the-day they are fighting over. It's moments of trust, and peace, and leaning into Jesus when a baby is sick and worry looms, when washing machines overflow and pipes back up and bills pile high, when buttons are pushed and anger builds and yet, somehow, I am able to stay the course.

It's seeing God at work in me.

Not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit. It's because of Jesus that we have life, and peace, and righteousness. And we know that God is conforming us into the image of His son. Which means we can change. We can change! God is at work in us, changing us. Making us more like Jesus, more like the mamas we want to be. He has given us His Spirit. We can lean into him, and He will change us.

And this, the knowledge that God is conforming me, is what gives me hope: Sunshine or rain, through joy and pain, there will be many more good days ahead.

My Timekeeper.

If there is one thing that regularly reminds me that life is flying by, it's my oldest daughter. For some reason, I feel like her life in particular is on warp speed. Kevan has noticed too. All too often I look her way and think, "When did THAT happen?" How did her hair get so long? When did she get so tall? How does she have so many ideas, and goals, and interests? How has she even been alive long enough to come up with this stuff?? There is just something about Bekah Jane that makes me want to hold on that much tighter, because I'm all-too-aware that childhood is fleeting and the days where I have her heart are small.

She turned 6 a couple weeks ago. SIX. I spent a good chunk of time looking back on her baby pictures, at her as a toddler, just trying to relive it...to remember, to somehow make sense of how we got from there to here.

She spent her birthday playing with her brothers and sister, and then later with Kate and Everett during a surprise slumber party at our house. And I spent yesterday just soaking her up, one on one, during an impromptu girls day out.

I loved sitting across from her at Starbucks, sharing a tiny little table she made by pushing the arms of our chairs together. She was chatty, telling me all about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the dream he had. "It doesn't matter if you have, like, brown eyes or maybe blue eyes. It doesn't matter at all. Everyone should just be kind to everyone. In the whole world."

And later she got to live it out, this ideal that she apparently shares with King. Leaving Target, a young couple sitting outside asked for some money. We took them out to lunch. We talked. Bekah Jane was quiet, saying hello, then staying close to me. But when we left that restaurant - and I mean as soon as they were out of earshot - she unloaded all that was swimming around in that head of hers. "MOM! We need to sell some stuff! They are sleeping in the BUSHES! That is not COMFORTABLE for humans!" (I love it when she refers to people as "humans".) "I have some toys. And clothes. And dad has a lot of clothes. We can sell that stuff and buy them a bed. I'm going to buy them a house. It is COLD at night!" She ranted and raved for a while. All this from the girl who barely said 2 words during lunch; I'd wondered if she was even aware of our company. Was she ever. We did find that couple again, a bit later, and Bekah Jane was able to give them a gift card as a present, and we talked with them a bit more. I loved hearing my girl's heart that afternoon. Her love for people, her desire to care for others.

(She also told me a few weeks back that she was going to marry Everett, and live on a farm, and grow food for all the poor people.)

This girl, with the long blond hair, and straight little rows of pearly white teeth, and the gleaming blue eyes, she is a bit of a mystery to me. She loves clothes, and fashion, and making outfits. She has an eye for color, and even wanted to decorate her room special for Christmas. She loves teaching (tonight it was a ballet class to her little brothers), and dancing, and prancing (always on her tip toes, that one). She loves to sing for us, to perform gymnastics or dance moves. She loves to cook, and bake, and she's good at it. She loves her baby dolls, and often asks me to help care for her "children." One day she actually said to me, "My kids are driving me CRAZY!" And sometimes she walks around a bit frazzled, pushing a baby in her stroller, carrying a few more, telling me, "I have A LOT of children! This is hard work!" Nevertheless. she really, really wants to be a mommy one day.

But she is also happiest playing by herself. Completely lost in her own world. With ponies, with her dolls, with her bunny. Sometimes she invites me to play. And sometimes I invite myself, only to get turned down. "Mom, I am PLAYING. You are distracting me!" "But you're so cute," I respond, "I want to play with you!" "Ok," she concedes, "You can listen at the door."

These are the moments when I remember that time is flying by.

This is why I invite her to come along when I have a day to myself. Because I don't want to miss these windows to really KNOW her. To see her heart in motion, to listen with attention undivided. This is why time stands still at bedtime, when I have her all to myself as she rambles about her day, and I sit bedside captivated, in awe that she is my girl and I get to be her mama.

Happy birthday, my beautiful daughter. You know that man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart. May you continue to grow more lovely from the inside out as your heart reflects Jesus and you live to honor him.

Love is not a big enough word, but it will have to do.

Mama.