Reading more.

Last January, I decided that I wanted to read more. I'm mainly neutral to reading, but being a stay at home mom with little ones, I felt like my world was feeling pretty small and my brain was getting in a rut. I decided to try to change that by reading more and adding a news source. (I typically avoided the news because it's depressing and stirs up strife, but I found a news podcast that I like.) 

I set the goal of reading 12 books in a year (one per month), including reading the full Bible chronologically. That may sound like a low goal, but for me this felt like a lofty one. I've never been an avid reader because I was always nervous I'd not get the book finished, and I didn't feel like I had any buffer time to read. In actuality, I realized that I just spent/wasted my buffer time on a Netflix show or scrolling social media (hence my feeling of having my brain in a rut.) To my surprise, I exceeded my goal and read 13 books plus the Bible!

Here's my list:

1) The Bible

• Regardless of your beliefs, I totally think everyone should read the Bible from beginning to end... this was my first time completing it chronologically. Amazing experience. It's a commitment definitely, but worth more than you'll ever imagine.
• I got this beautiful single column, ESV journal Bible for Christmas last year. It was a different feeling reading through an unmarked, brand-new Bible. (My other Bibles are written all over from years of use.) It's a heavy Bible, but I love the single column feature along with the lines for notes.
• This is the daily plan I used.
• Also, a local group, "Dayton Women in the Word" is doing a yearly reading plan too. So if you want accountability, or insight for others, or even just community, look them up on Facebook, Instagram, or at their website here. 

2) The Red Sea Road by Robert J. Morgan

• I HIGHLY recommend this small book to anyone facing an especially challenging time! This was my 2nd time reading it. Seriously, get this book.

3) ‎The Lucky Few by Heather Avis

• This was a super fast and easy read, loved her style of writing, and loved her life story. I've recommended this to friends already.

4) ‎Dear Birthmother by Silver and Speedlin

• If you're thinking about adoption, I recommend this. Very interesting and enlightening to read letters written by birthmothers.

5) ‎The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines

• I finished it in two days - neat to see how far they've come. It was a nice, light read.

6) The Unveiled Wife by Jennifer Smith

• This was very interesting, especially if you have a chronic pain or illness, but I felt like it was much too drawn out.

7) The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

• This is not an easy read, but very thought-provoking. I feel like I need to read this one 3 more times to get the full message, ha!

8) Don't Make Me Count to Three by Ginger Plowman

• I don't agree with absolutely everything in this book, but it offered some really good parenting principles and framework.
• I like the chart that is a companion to this. It lists the issue the child is doing (i.e. hitting, complaining, tattling, etc.) and then some helpful verses, questions, and encouragement to address the issues. It's on amazon here.

9) Twenty Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed by Sherrie Eldridge

• Written by an adoptee, so it's a helpful resource for sure if you're interested in adoption

10) Gracelaced: Discovering Timeless Truth Through Seasons of the Heart by Ruth Chou Simons

• I love her art, all she stands for, her heart for God. This is a beautiful book, and I gave it to 3 different people for Christmas. I've also purchased several prints of her paintings.
• If you don't follow her (@gracelaced) on Instagram, you should.

11) The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp

• Ann Voskamp's writing is poetic and powerful. She has a gift. Her book, "One Thousand Gifts" is one of my absolute favorite books ever. All that to say, this wasn't my favorite book but I did enjoy the overarching concepts. 

12) The Best Yes by Lysa TerKeurst

• I liked this one. If you feel over-booked, stressed, or struggle to say no, this is a great choice.

13) Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequest

• I've heard such good stuff about this book, and I really wanted to love it, but I didn't at all. Speaking from a theological perspective, it falls quite short (and incorrect in some portions of it, in my opinion.) I don't recommend this. 

14) Audacious by Beth Moore

• This was good, not super elaborate, but had some great thinking points.

This year, I want to keep the same goal of 12 books. I plan to go through the New Testament slowly and dig a little deeper using commentary, while continuing my BSF and inductive study of Romans. I also want to make sure I read a couple fictional books, since I tend to naturally gravitate to non-fiction. I'd love any recommendations you have! 

FAQs

We've noticed that people have a lot of questions regarding our adoption. It has been neat how many nurses get rolling on questions for us once we tell them we welcome the questions. Quite a few of them tell us they're really interested in adoption. It's not so surprising given all the brokenness they see at the hospital. I thought I'd post some of the main questions and our answers here.

Q: What made you decide to adopt? (Also worded, have you always wanted to adopt?)
A: The story of what led us to adoption is in the blogpost: A new journey.

Q: How long did your adoption process take?
A: From our first introduction meeting with the agency where we received the stack of papers to begin filling out was exactly one year from our first post-placement visit. It took us 2-3 months to complete all the paperwork, background checks, safety regulations, and home study visits. Then the remaining 9-10 months were spent waiting for a birth mom to pick our family.

Q: Did you already know the birth mom?
A: No. We met her a week before baby boy was born, and then she selected us the night before her induction. We were blessed with the huge gift of her asking us to sit in her room during the labor while she was still comfortable, so for a few hours we got to get to know her more, and she us.

Q: Will your adoption be open or closed?
A: The plan is for it to be open.

Here's the biggest question we get from the nursers...
Q: Did you know about his medical condition before you decided to adopt him?
A: Yes.

Q: Is your adoption final?
A: Not yet. We currently have monthly post-placement visits with our social worker. In about 5-6 months we should have a court appearance to finalize the adoption with a judge. We can't wait for that great day!

We welcome (most, ha!) questions so feel free to call or message us directly. :)

He's here.

We are beyond excited to introduce to our family and friends: our sweet son!

It's a long story - one with God's handiwork all over it, and I'll likely share more later, but for now we just wanted to share our joyful news of gaining a son this week! He was born on the day that marked our 14th year together as a couple,  Wednesday, October 18. He was only 34.5 weeks, but we praise God for his solid birthweight of 5 lbs. and 5 oz!

Along with announcing his birth and the start of his official adoption into our family, we are also asking for prayers for him. He was born with Gastroschisis, a condition where basically his small intestines are outside his body. Even in just is his first few days of life, our feisty guy is making amazing progress. He's off the ventilator, has a successful PICC line in place, had his intestines lowered quite a bit, and is breathing well on his own. But our son will have a long journey of healing, and we're expecting him to be in the NICU for possibly up to three months.

We would love prayer for this journey, and if you prefer specifics, here are some right now:

• PRAISE GOD for his amazing life and connecting it to ours!! (There are a million more praises along with this too, but that's for another post.)
• his intestines to lower successfully into his body and for them to be fully functioning soon
• his stomach to be closed without surgery 
• his agitation and pain level to subside
• his birth mom 
• our family, especially the kids, as they adjust to having a new baby brother and having mom and dad gone at the NICU often, and not being able to meet baby brother for a while
• God's continued provision for all the needs that are coming

 "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21

Far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. Thank you God, for this incredible gift!

A new journey.

So, I've thought a lot about returning to this blog, but honestly, it hasn't felt right yet. Crazy that it's been three years since I last posted! Now that the kids are getting older, I've found myself wanting to protect their privacy. I still share some of our wondrous things on Instagram and a few on Facebook (I think Instagram is a much happier, more peaceful social media place in general, so I usually camp there for my public sharing), but majority of our details are saved sweetly within our family. And it feels right.

But... now, we have a new journey to share, and keeping it within our own family just isn't enough for such a big, exciting, scary, amazing story that God's writing.

So here goes:

We are, Lord willing, going to adopt a baby.

Bear with me through this; it's hard to write confidently about such an uncontrolled thing. Well, it's controlled, I guess, just not by us. I have a lump in my throat even as I type these words -- stating that we're adopting seems like such a big claim. What if we never get "picked?" Yet, God has without a doubt called us to take these steps. There's no other way you can frame it. God led us to this. And we really trust, we believe, that He has a baby for us through adoption.

Eugene and I were faced with a very likely possibility of infertility issues early on in our marriage when I was diagnosed with endometriosis, had a surgical procedure for it, tried to conceive for a while unsuccessfully, conceived but resulted in a miscarriage, then had another bout of waiting until finally we were blessed with sweet "big sister." The point of sharing all that pretty private info is that through that entire time of wondering daily - sometimes, hourly - whether or not I could carry a sweet healthy baby in me, Eugene and I had an honest conversation about adoption. It was a simple one. (Those of you who know Eugene aren't shocked...man of few words when it comes to serious topics!) I asked him if he felt like we should consider adoption, especially given our struggles and odds of having a child biologically. He said he didn't really feel like that's what we should do. He asked me the same questions, and my answer was the same. We didn't have anything against adoption, but for some reason (aka God), neither of us felt like pursuing adoption was the right thing at that time for us.

We pressed on through what was probably the toughest time for me personally and for our marriage, and God knocked our socks off with His plan in His time: our sweet little girl was born. Two years, two months later, enter "little brother." This kid is silly, and sensitive, and so ridiculously sweet. And God again knows just what He's doing. Parenthood has refined us in ways we never knew we needed refining. I've watched Eugene grow into a complete leader of our family, a fun, solid, intentional father to our children, a sacrificing, hardworking husband for me. I've since willingly killed my career in Events, trading angry mothers-of-the-brides for giggling toddlers. Staying at home with them has been the hardest job I've ever done - dare I say, ever will do. Hard, not because my kids are tough, but because it highlights every ounce of selfishness, pride, and identity issues in me. I've grown so much. And my kids are awesome. Best job ever, seriously.

Fast forward to about six months ago... Eugene took a new job as an Athletic Director in a new area. We bought a huge house (that's a whole other God-story to tell.) We moved from our hometown, and started new with our family of four. But right after we bought our house, I suddenly - strangely - felt that adoption/fostering might be something we needed to consider. It seemed super weird to me because we were already talking about growing our family the "traditional" way soon, going for around three years of an age gap. Adoption wasn't on our radar at all, so to think of adoption was not my timing and not my idea.

A week or so later, after thinking about adoption/fostering constantly, I brought it up to Eugene. I told him that I had no clue why I couldn't shake thinking about it, but I asked that he would pray about it. He said, "sure." A few days later, I went to one of my Norwex demos (I sell Norwex which is basically cleaning products that only use water and microfiber with silver in it.) At my demo, I began to chat with the first guest to arrive. I don't normally chat much with guests because I'm busy setting up, but I did this time, and she told me she was a retired social worker from our county for foster and adoption. She still works as a social worker for a Christian private foster agency. Next guest enters, and it's a woman with her 18 month old foster child. She shared that she was planning on adopting him when he turned two. Now this might not feel like much to you, but to me it was huge. I felt like God was waving a massive banner in front of my face saying, "I'm working on something here. Follow along!"

A few days later, my mind was still spinning. I didn't know why this whole adoption/fostering thing kept pressing on me. It didn't make sense for our "plan," but it was really intriguing to me. And the more I thought about it, them more my heart began to ache for the idea that adoption might be in His plan for our family. The biggest moment of this story was when I went to take a shower. I was kind of at a breaking moment. Eugene hadn't really said much about it yet; he listened to me when I shared bits of my encounters and thoughts, but I didn't really feel like he was feeling like it was much more than interesting. I headed to shower, and through tears, I prayed honestly - almost desperately - in my confusion of what God wanted me to do with everything, "Lord, I'm willing, but if You want us to adopt, You need to have Eugene bring it up." I absolutely did not want to jump into such a massive family decision based solely on my hunch, but I also couldn't stop feeling like it was something we needed to pursue.

Eugene is amazing, and I know he would be on board with it if he felt I was called to it, but that wasn't enough for me. I wanted Him to be called too. I wanted him to feel it on his own, as strongly as I felt it on my own. So I got out of the shower, got dressed, wrapped my hair in a towel to dry and headed downstairs to plop next to Eugene who was watching TV on the couch. I kid you not, at that moment he looked at me - unprompted by me - and told me he thought we should adopt. (WHAT!?) My hair was still wet, and HE brought it up. Those of you who know him, know it is very out of character of him to bring up anything serious ever. He brought it up! I teared up and shared with him all about my prayer, and from that moment on, we've been trying to simply take the next step in this journey while praying we are walking in God's will. That's the only place we ever want to be.

God's done a bunch of other small crazy things to keep shouting at us, for which I'm so thankful. Eugene and I put on a random Doc McStuffins show for the kids to watch, and low and behold, Doc's parents are adopting a baby! (What?!) We meet a family at the pool in our new community, non-social Eugene starts chatting it up with the dad (what?!), and the dad soon shares that they have two biological kids, and adopted son, and a foster daughter who will likely be adopted soon. We walked away from the pool unsure of whether we should laugh or cry! Other moments like God working out a meeting with our only friends who have adopted who just so happen to be where Eugene was, willing to meet at that time,  and had a great experience using the only agency we had really researched at that point.

I think I'll keep some updates of our journey here, for my sake mainly, but also because I like to think that there are family, friends, maybe even strangers who might be intrigued to hear our story and see how it unfolds. I know I'm so anxious to see what God's going to do. I just have a feeling, it's something big and maybe even beautiful.

We are feeling quite the same way as we did when we first found out we were pregnant - giddy, excited, thankful, scared, slightly overwhelmed, and resting in our full hearts.

We've gotten quite a few questions from the few people we've told. So here's a quick rundown of the basics. We're using a private, local agency. We've completed the mounds of paperwork, had all the inspections, background checks, physicals, profiles, etc. We just finished the interview and home study, and our social worker will be working on inputting all our home study information into their system over the next few months. Our agency mainly does infant adoptions, so ours will be a domestic (Ohio), newborn, but we're leaving pretty much all the parameters open in terms of gender, race, drug use, incarceration, mental and physical background, etc. We could get a call regarding a birth mom at the hospital in labor, or we could be matched with a birth mom only a few months into her pregnancy. We have no idea what the timeline will look like - could be one call and a new child all in a day, or we could be on the wait list for over a year. God knows.

Pray with us, please? Pray for us to walk in God's will. Pray for birthparent(s) who are making quite possibly one of the most heroic decisions I can even comprehend. Pray for us to make wise decisions in this process. Pray for God to provide for the very large financial need we're facing. Pray for us to have opportunities to share God's love in lots of ways through all of this. Pray with thanks that God's at work and doing something big, and graciously allowing us to be a part of it all. Pray with us for a sweet little baby to grow our family in love.

We're so excited!

Ephesians 1:4-6 (English Standard Version)

...He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 

Ephesians 1:4-6 (The Message Version)

Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

Changes.

The past three months have been growing months for me. Growing months, with growing pains. But at the same time, I’ve also had a calmness, hopefulness, and odd sort of peace through the whole process too. A ton has changed for my family in the last three months.

Obviously, the biggest change has been adding little brother to our family. Big sister took that change the hardest. I’ll be honest, the first two weeks weren’t pretty at my house. She struggled to accept the fact that momma just couldn’t play with her and focus on her all day…in fact, momma was stuck on the couch one out of every three hours trying to nurse baby brother. That’s not an easy thing for a two-year-old to adjust to! However, after two weeks or so, she started to understand the routine and began to return to her joyful self. Since then, we’ve certainly had our fair share of tough days, but I’m happy to say that we have more good days than bad. ;) {It’s tough being a toddler, isn’t it?!}

{The kids with Eugene while he covered a HS volleyball match. Big sister is playing with a mini volleyball she was given.}

It wasn’t just our family that changed. Eugene took a new job at a new school and is now an Athletic Director and teaches a couple classes, instead of a full time teacher who coaches two sports. We really miss his old school {just 5 min from our house} and his friends there, but he truly enjoys his job now. He said for the first time, he looks forward to doing his job. He loves students and the school atmosphere, but he just didn’t love teaching. Now, he can still be around students and teachers, but with a sports focus; it’s perfect for him.

It’s a huge blessing to see him happy with his work, but it hasn’t come without sacrifices too. He was hired and started his job just a week or so before baby brother was born. He had a ton of catch-up work to do since he was hired so late, and instead of his plan {prior to this new job} of taking off 2-3 full weeks to stay home with me after the delivery, he no longer was able to do that. He only stayed home a couple days rather than a few weeks. Thankfully, he had some flexibility in his hours, which helped, but it was a much different circumstance than when we had big sister {it was the summer so he was off for a full month with us.} In addition, the AD job requires many evening hours, especially for Fall season which started right when little brother was born. It’s been a personal challenge for me to be supportive and encouraging to him as he works such long days, when I’m equally exhausted from lack of sleep and just the wearing nature of being on my own all day and night with a toddler and a newborn and trying to nurse. I’ve really been feeling God working on my selfish nature and also on my interactions and words towards Eugene. I’m trying to think over my words instead of just spilling them everywhere, encouraging him in action and words, and really trying to see his true intentions before my fatigued self assumes the negative. I won’t pretend that I’ve done well at this, but I’m aware of my incredible ineptness, and I’m trying to improve each day. It’s been a personal refining process for sure, and I’m thankful that his job change has challenged me to be a better wife. I will say, Eugene has been so kind to get home after 17 hours of working and go straight to the sink to wash dishes or immediately do a load of laundry or do bath time so I can have a break. He has been working so hard in the office and then coming home and working just as hard. He’s clearly put our family as his first priority – supporting us with his job, and doing his best to make us his focus when he isn’t working. I appreciate how hard he’s working at being a husband and father, and I wouldn’t want to walk through all this change with anyone else.

Another huge change for us is that I am no longer a full-time Event Coordinator and Department Manager who splits time at the office and at home with a toddler. I recently walked through one of the hardest decisions in my life to actually to implement: I quit my job. Gah, even typing that stirs up some tears of sadness. We planned for me to become a stay-at-home mom when I was pregnant with big sister, well, actually way back when we first talked about getting married. We purposely bought a foreclosed {read: cheaper} house, focused hard on paying off debt, and made other decisions to set us up to be able to survive {barely} on one income. But once I told my employer I didn’t plan on coming back to work after having big sister, God led us a different direction with my job and the offer to work from home a few days a week. Two years later, with this pregnancy, we were pretty certain {unless God showed us a different way again} that I should leave my job once little brother was born. I know it’s what’s best for my family, but it didn’t make it any easier to actually do. I love my job and my employer. I would be happy doing that job until I retire, which I know is a rare thing. I love my coworkers. They’re my friends, and to leave them without a manager during the busy season just broke my heart. However, countering all those feelings was an even stronger feeling on certainty that for right now, in this phase of life, for my family, I need to be home with my children, 100% available to them, and focused on pouring into their lives. Now, just because I knew it was the right decision, didn’t mean it wasn’t a sacrifice to actually make it. It’s a scary thing to quit a job you love and one in which you’ve worked so hard. Selfishly, on the surface I wanted to keep working; however, I just knew deep down it was the best choice for me or my family right now for me to quit…even if it didn’t necessarily feel right every second along the way.

When I actually had my meeting to resign, God graciously confirmed my decision with very positive feedback and affirmation from my CEO and other coworkers. Despite others telling me it was a good choice, once the decision was final, I really struggled mentally with no longer working outside of being a mom. I’m a type A personality. I like having clear expectations, clear measurements for success, clear feedback, and comfortable finances. Also, {I don’t mean this to sound conceited}, but I like doing a job I’m good at. All of those things, they just don’t exist in the SAHM world. I don’t feel like I’m ever doing a good job as a mom. {I’m pretty sure most mom’s experience that feeling too.} I don’t have any clear measurements for success or feedback. My two-year-old can’t tell me I did a good job at the end of the day, and honestly, neither can my husband. I’m learning to try to find my affirmation from my relationship with Christ, but it’s a hard thing for me right now.

My friend gave me good advice of setting goals for the day, like to keep my cool and not lose my temper, prioritize my kids above my to-do list, teach them something new each day, etc. That has helped me stay motivated and focused. And honestly, I’m so busy and involved with two right now, I can’t even imagine working. I always said that I wanted to do my job well, and I would quit my job if I felt like I wasn’t doing my job in the office well or my job at home as a mom well. As humbling as it has been to experience this, I’m completely sure I cannot do both jobs well. Even doing one {being a mom} is a stretch! I’ve been both a working mom and a SAHM, and let me tell you, both are incredibly hard. I Right now, being a stay at home mom is the hardest job I’ve ever done. It’s also the most important job I’ve ever done, so perhaps that’s why it seems so hard to me…I put lots of pressure on myself with the immense responsibility I feel for my kiddos.

It’s been a big change, but with the loss of my job, I’ve also added in other very positive things that I wasn’t able to fit in while working. We go to playgrounds, we play with friends, we go to a weekly Bible Study {BSF}, we hike at the park, we have coffee dates with family, I do a small group with church friends, etc. We stay very busy, but it’s a quality, focused busy, not just preoccupied busy, answering calls and emails while trying to keep little sister distracted. This new kind of busy makes my heart much happier.

I miss work. I miss lots of things about work. But I’m truly happy with the change. I realize I’m so blessed to even have the opportunity to choose not to work. Financially, it’ll be tight, but I’d rather scrimp, live on little for a few years, and even dip into our savings if we have to. I’m okay with being poor. It’ll be a sacrifice for us, but one we’re happy to make. As cliché as it sounds, even if we’re poor financially, because we’re living how we want to and how we think God wants us to, in my eyes, that means we are pretty rich! I may take on a part-time job later on, but for now, this is where we are – Eugene working his tail off at a new school, and me working my tail off at home with the kids. I’m learning so much about myself and humbly seeing many areas in which I need to grow. We are adapting. We are maturing. We are showing each other grace through the sometimes painful process of change. And we are most certainly blessed.

Makeshift family pictures.

Okay, in case you were wondering, I’m still alive…despite my lack of presence on this blog. It’s a little time-consuming keeping up with a two-year-old and feeding an infant! I have a lot of pictures from the past two and a half months that I hope to post on here sometime soon. Maybe when my kids are 20 and 22 I’ll get around to posting them. ;)

Anyway, here’s some makeshift family pictures. As hard as it is to take a shower, squeeze into my too-small jeans, get the kids dressed/fed/groomed, and drive to a park before it’s time to feed little brother again – I pushed to get these pictures because I know I’ll want to see my little ones and our sweet family at this stage in life. Exhausting, but probably worth it.

I asked Eugene’s sister to take some pictures for me. Basically I posed us and told here where to put the focus dot, and then she’d snap it for us. It was more challenging than I expected to pose a picture that I’m supposed to be in –just kind of odd. I’m really appreciative to Rita {and Mark} for their willingness to tag along with us and help us out. Not surprisingly, I think I look gross in all these pictures, but I still think we got a few good ones of everyone else. {It’s really tough to adjust to the constantly changing body of pregnancy/post-pregnancy fluctuations. Not fun. I miss my volleyball days when my body was that of an athlete.} Okay, I’m off topic. Blame it on the lack of sleep. Enough rambling – here are the pictures.

  

  

Life as a family of four sure has been different. It’s been a growing season for me especially. I’ll try to share more on that later too. I look at these pictures and see two complete miracles. I’m so humbled to see the pictures of us. It’s still surreal to me. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the idea that I’ve been gifted two sweet babies and a husband who loves us. Truly a gift.

Backyard photo session for little brother.

I captured a handful of photos of little brother in our backyard while he was napping. I’m pretty sure I’ll cherish these forever. I love this sweet little guy and his big sister too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That last pic. Oh my, love.