Norah, I love you so much.  You are in your own little world sometimes, but I love you.  And you had better watch out for your undies – your little sister now wears the same size as you!  (Laundry just got a lot more complicated around here.)

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When you try to get the bikes down
For ten minutes…

And fail.

And a small voice says,
We can just take the Durango, Mommy

And the clock says that is the only choice
And you are still late for school.

And the disappointment still clouds her face
As she says good-bye.

Opening our hearts to a precious child born physically outside our family – EASY.  Flying halfway around the world, adjusting to the 12-hour time difference, and spending 2.5 weeks away from our other children – NOT HORRIBLE.  Loving a little girl as she howls over the loss of everything she has ever known?…Teaching her the rules of the home while still giving her the extra care she needs to work through her grief?…Living nearly an entire year of your life in a sleep-deprived state, waking up every one to two hours and hoping that prolonged screaming won’t be involved?…well, you get the idea.  Adoption is HARD.

But then, somewhere along the way the days become marked by more joy than sorrow.  The grieving becomes an occasional occurrence rather than a daily event.  Crawling gives way to first steps, followed by running.  First smiles turn to tentative giggles, which evolve into quick smiles and belly laughs.  And stress and tension give way to familiarity and love. But I think pictures speak louder than words…to me this picture of Julia is a perfect, adorable representation of how far she has come in the past year.  (Special thanks to Warner Photography for capturing the moment and allowing us to share it here!)

I could spend paragraphs telling you all the milestones that Julia has achieved already – and maybe I will at some point.  But for now, I just want to say thank you.  Thank you to all of you for your support over the last year while we adjusted to our new family.  Thank you to Julia’s birth parents for bringing her into the world.  And thank you to Our Heavenly Father, who led us to Julia and shows us all the ultimate model of adoption through His love for us.

And to our precious Julia – sweetheart, it has been a very long year in so many ways yet I also can’t believe it has already been a year since you were placed in our arms.  I am constantly amazed by your resilience, amused by your antics, and in awe of the progress we have all made together in the past year.  We love you forever.

Speaking of enjoying my family – we really had fun this year celebrating Chinese New Year, our first with Julia home.  Our celebration was spread out over several events.

The first part of our celebration this year was a small gathering at our friends’ home.  Tony and Sara also have a daughter that was born in China and have started the tradition of hosting a Chinese New Year pizza party with a dragon pinata and red envelopes for the kids filled with dollar bills.  It was lots of fun spending time with them and all the kids loved the pinata.

On the day of Lunar New Year, we made traditional dumplings for dinner – from scratch.  They were oh so delicious, and it was fun working together to make them (although I must admit that Dan, Emily, and Norah did most of the work).

Finally, on the Sunday following Chinese New Year, the girls all wore their traditional silks to church.  They had been looking forward to wearing them the week prior on the eve of CNY, but illness in the family prevented us from going to church that day.

Xin Nian Kuai Le.  Gong Xi Fa Cai!

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1. The idea that the Lord stopped caring about us enough to perform miracles. We know from Hebrews 13:8 that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” so if He performed miracles then, He will continue to perform them now. And Psalm 136 is just one example of countless mentions of God’s enduring love. OK, so we know that God showed His love for all of us by sacrificing His only son to pay the price for our sins (John 3:16) and that this love is unchanging. But what about…
2. The idea that the Lord is not powerful enough to perform miracles. Now I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that would say “God doesn’t have the strength/power/authority to do XYZ” but let’s face it – we often live like that is our belief. We try to take matters into our own hands, even when it is our faith that has led us there. We read verses like Psalm 46:1 (“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble”) and try to believe it but then our Type-A personalities take over and we think we can do things better our way. But 1Corinthians 1:25 tells us “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” Oh boy, have I seen that truth in my life over the past few months.

Our journey to adopt Julia was truly a faith walk that started almost 15 years ago as God placed adoption on our hearts – shortly after Dan and I met and long before we were even married – and culminated in meeting our youngest daughter on March 7 of this year. But ever since then, my faith has been challenged. It is only recently that I have realized that my struggles are related to my perception of God. Do I really think God stuck with us all that time to bring Julia into our family and then walked away, brushing His hands as if to say “my job is done here?” I have seen the results of trying to carry this burden on my own – at times, I have sunk into the depths of despair, and my words, thoughts, and deeds have been completely outside my normal character. To put it mildly, Satan has been having a field day messing with me.

Today, I say NO MORE. I will rely on that which I know is true:

Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Romans 5:2-5: “We boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

2Corinthians 12:9-10: “[The Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

God has been faithful all along. I know now that this season is meant to pull me to Him closer than ever before. And recently, as I have started to TRY to release my “control” He has shown me glimpses of progress. Over the past two weeks, we are to a point where Julia will fall asleep in her crib with one of us just sitting beside it (after 9 months of her needing some form of physical contact to fall asleep.) And now, as I admit my weakness, and my sin in not relying on God (knowing that I have a LONG way to go on that front), He has done a modern-day miracle.

Last night, Julia slept. All. Night. Long! She was asleep at 8:00pm and we neither saw nor heard anything from her until 6:30 this morning. All I can say is PRAISE THE LORD!

Does this mean we have turned the corner? Not necessarily. Can we expect this every night? Definitely not yet. But oh, how this has given me a renewed dose of faith and awe in my Creator. Now my prayer is that I would continue to draw close to Him and not get in the way of the mighty things He is doing in our family and in my heart.

In adoption circles, an oft-quoted Bible verse is found in the first chapter of the book of James. Verse 27 states, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” But for my journey right now, that first chapter of James offers a couple of additional nuggets that have me thinking this morning:

James 1:2-4: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

James 1:19-20: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

James 1:22-25: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”

How has God’s Word blessed you lately? And are your eyes open to the miracles, big and small, that God is setting in motion all around you?

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We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home
It’s not our home

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise