The Forty Days of LENT

What is the purpose of Lent? The Church teaches that it is a time of reflection and sacrifice to prepare for Holy Week. Reflection. Many of the recent homilies and scripture readings over the past few weeks have been on Holiness. What does that mean? We should reflect on our goal to be Holy like Jesus. We should aspire to be Holy. How do you become Holy? What do you do to move toward Holiness? I gave up yelling for Lent. I have caught myself yelling more in my house over the past week. I was good for the first few weeks of Lent but as my frustration mounted last week with my childrens' behavior I went back to old habits of yelling at my kids to get my point across. It never works especially since they are at the age that they can yell back. It takes me a while to reflect back on these behaviors and realize that yelling does not achieve Holiness. What does achieve Holiness? Reading the Bible, going to Mass, praying for others, taking care of others, doing what is right in all situations, standing for Christianity instead of popular culture norms, being active in spreading God's word. I try to do all of these things and many times I truly fail. God blesses me with another day. Each day He gives me a "do-over". Each day I take it. I don't know if it is God's goal for us to achieve Holiness here on earth, but I will try each day to move forward and not look back. I think of Abraham. He was a Holy man of God, but he did things that were not Holy. God told Abraham he would have a son that would become many nations. Abraham and Sarah speeded up the process by bringing Haggar into the picture. Bad idea, it caused them more problems later on, but God worked His plan around Abraham and Sarah's sidetrack plan. He just moved on with His plan and helped them deal with the issues they created. Abraham continued his trek toward Holiness and God continued to lead him on that trek. I think God does this for all of us. He has plans for us and we get side tracked and He continues on His plan for us and deals with the consequences of the messes we make along the way. I pray that the Lord will continue on with His plan for my life and will give me each day to move toward Holiness. As Holy Week comes I pray that every part of Lent offered me ways to learn, reflect and move toward Holiness.

REJECTED AND ALONE

I was just today watching a Christian show with Michael W. Smith performing. He was singing about our LORD being crucified and in the background they had the video of the LORD being crucified in the movie PASSION OF THE CHRIST. I was listening to the words, "CRUCIFIED, REJECTED AND ALONE." It made me think of the older children that are still orphans in China. They have not been crucified, but the words "rejected and alone" are words they know. I could not imagine waking up in the world each day and knowing that you are all alone. Another baby died last week waiting on the shared list. He had a seizure and died. It was a complication from the seizure. It does not make it any easier. I was taken aback because I knew this boy. I had seen him countless times on the shared list. He was so incredibly cute and his name was Tia Xian. I have a girl from Xian myself and that name and face just stuck with me. He was a beautiful boy and just a little fella. I just can't imagine how this happened. I know the LORD wanted him home, but it just seems so sad. I know that one of the charities I follow and send money to has lost a lot of babies this year due to pneumonia and other complications of winter and illness. It just saddens me that so many have passed away. I know that my baby could have been one of these statistics. Charities can work in any of these orphanages, but they can't change the fact that some do not have heat or air condition. They can only do what they can do in someone else's building. It makes me think how wrong life can be for some of these kids. How they must feel to be all alone? How God must feel that we continue to leave them there to die alone. It is hard to understand, but I am sure GOD will use these deaths to lead people to adopt others. I pray that happens.

Visions of Children Dancing in My Head

I have had a bout of insomnia recently and I hate when that happens. I get a little nutty and I start analyzing every part of my 40 year old life. Between 1995 and 2000 my husband and I went through years of infertility treatments and several doctors. In that time we had a miscarriage and countless disappointments on the pregnancy front. I also met my very good friends the Jays. They too had dealt with infertility much longer than we had and had given up. They were just a few years older than us and just at the point we met them they just did not care anymore. Dogs were good and they borrowed kids often when they needed a fix. For the life of me I could not understand how they just gave up and put it in GOD's hands. I just could not grasp it. I was constantly giving them doctors names and suggestions. They were nice about it, but just did not care. I was envious at the time because I did not want to care either. However, for me it was a nightmare and it was doing our marriage in. GOD brought me this couple to show me that life will not stop if you don't have kids. It does go on and you won't self destruct. Being Catholic is hard without kids. People at Church just don't get it. They always ask and they assume the worst about you. They assume you are on birth control and you are not leading GOD's plan for you. They can be rude and not really mean to be. Anyway, I was crazy at this point. I was hyped up on fertility drugs and lived this insane roller coaster life. I can not imagine how I kept my job and my husband. But in all of that my friend started praying for me and out of nowhere I had this crazy dream. In the dream there was a little light-headed toddler in the background and in the foreground (art teacher in me, lol)was my husband carrying what appeared to be a dark-haired boy and holding the hand of another dark-haired boy. They were toddler age and you could not see their faces. So, I woke up and I was at PEACE. I knew finally that I could no longer try to control when and if I would have children it was completely and totally in GOD's hand. There was nothing I could do. Absolutely, nothing. I had to let it go and live on. GOD's way of saying, STAY CALM AND CARRY ON! It did not make fertility drugs easier, but I knew if we struggled through, it was going to happen. I pleaded with GOD after my miscarriage to help us. Within in three months we were pregnant again. When we found out we were pregnant with twins, I decided that the light-colored baby must have been someone else or our miscarried child and the boys were our soon-to- be twin boys. When we found out we were having a boy and a girl, I just thought it did not add up, but I knew GOD had a plan. I then decided that maybe the dark-haired boys were a boy and a girl. When we found out that Will had the heart condition, I knew he was going to be fine because of the dream. I just knew it, but I prayed every day for him to be healed. In the end I gave birth to my son, who was stillborn and our daughter. I could not figure out what GOD was trying to tell me in that dream I had 3 years before. I did not get it. Both of my children had light hair. No dark-haired children were born that day. So I just questioned GOD for days and months after we lost our son. I just did not understand because I had been living on the dream and it was blown apart. It exploded before me and I did not understand why I was given a revelation that did not relate to my life. I also wanted some serious answers to why my boy was gone. In the end all I got from the LORD was peace and joy. Peace and comfort to heal my heart and Joy from spending all my days with my precious little girl. That was what I got that year and the years to come.

Who knew that five years later we would travel to China to bring home our Asian princess. Where did she fall in GOD's dream for us. I did not know. I thought just maybe she was one of the dark-haired children I thought was a boy. And the light-haired child, I just assumed that was our oldest. That is all I had and I clung to that throughout the adoption. I just assumed that we would go back and bring home the other dark-haired toddler some day.
TODAY! In the past five years not a day has gone by that I have not thought about adopting again. NOT A DAY! As I get older the more it comes to mind. Every thing I do in my life I consider what the ramifications of that would be if we adopted again. Purchasing cars, going back to school, getting a job, etc. Every decision that is made adopting again comes to mind and plays out in my head as we consider options, etc. So in the last few days of insanity due to lack of sleep, I have been racing these ideas of adopting more children through my mind. My husband is done so he says. If I came home tomorrow and told him I was pregnant, I think he would be thrilled. If I came home and told him I had paper work so we could be paper pregnant, he would ask me if we had won the lottery. I feel in my heart that GOD would provide the funds for us to adopt again. I am not sure my husband has that kind of faith at this point. As I was trying to sleep during insomnia insanity this weekend, I had another vision and it took my breath. It took me aback. It was a what if? moment. I had this realization that came over me and literally knocked the wind right out of me. It has been coming for a while. Just little things have reminded me of that dream I had more than thirteen years ago. It has been weird now that I think about it. About six months ago I had this horrific thought that something was going to happen to our oldest daughter. Like it kept me up at night. I got this feeling that the child in the dream that looked like my daughter was going toward Heaven or was near death or was dead. This child was like way in the background and there was like clouds around. Okay that has always been part of the dream, but it came to me that maybe death is what it meant. I freaked out and I let GOD know that I could not bury another child. It was not anything that I could do again. I just could not. So, realizations like that have been coming to me for six months to a year now about this dream and I guess it is because of my turning 40 and wanting another child obsession thing I have been dealing with over the course of six months or so. I think GOD was revealing things to me in small snippets before He gave me the big Kahuna. It all came together the other night and here it is. What if the light-haired child was my son in Heaven and the two dark-haired children were boys? What if the vision had nothing to do with my girls at all? What if the dream was given to me to let me know that even though GOD was taking my son, He would be blessing me with not one, but two little boys. What if GOD gave me the vision to help me through my soon to be darkest hours and I was not versed in Him enough to understand it at the time or at the time of my grief? What if it was a plan prepared 13 or 14 years in the making? What if we are still supposed to go back and bring home twin boys? What if I am just loosing my mind? Or What if GOD has genuine plans that we have to willingly ask Him to let us participate in? What if we just let Him have all the control and leave it in His hands? This is how I see it. I am going to pray daily for my unknown boys and my husband, their father to be. I am going to ask GOD to provide the means to bring these babies home and I am going to ask GOD to make this happen in His time and not my own. I will also ask Him to give me Peace in my heart about it and to truly let Him take control over the entire situation. If it is part of His plan that has been in the making for all this time, then the financial plan is in place as well. I know that GOD almighty will make it happen and there is nothing I can do about it. I can't force it to happen and I can't control when it will happen, but in my heart I know that GOD HAS THIS! He is all over it. The money will come and the babies soon after. I just have faith that it will happen. I am in awe of HIS love for me and our family. Just at peace and know that the LORD hears my prayers in all situations. I am just going to take it all in and watch GOD work right before my eyes.

He is after all, as Chris August sings,
"From the Birds that Sing, In the Tallest Trees.
To the Human Life, of you and me.
From the Desert Sands, to the place we stand.
He is God of All, He is Everything.

Waohhh

I'm giving my life to the only One who makes the moon reflect the sun.
Every starry night, that was His design.
I'm giving my life to the only Son, who was and is and yet to come
Let the praises ring, 'cause He is everything
'Cause He is everything

From the autumn leaves, that will ride the breeze
To the Faith it takes, to pray and sing
From the Painted sky, to my plank filled eye
He is God of all, He is everything"

Not only is He everything, but He can do anything, and these mountains will move!

Welcome the Year of the Dragon!

So we find ourselves celebrating another Chinese New Year! My heart once again pulls back to China. We watched videos of our first trip. The first second we saw our baby girl. I am still amazed at the whole process of adoption and how it works and how GOD makes it work. Mark and I both cried tonight as we watched the video and watched our little girl cry. It was very hard to watch, but we did and this time MA watched it with us. She was amazed by the whole thing and she had tons of questions. Some I told her we would answer at another time. As I watched the video I had so many thoughts going through my mind. Where does the time go? Were they both that tiny? I can't even remember that tiny? Am I a horrible mom because I don't even know where all of our videos are of them when they were small? I miss that age so much and yet I am enjoying them now. They are so grown up and I just love hanging out with them and watching t.v. or doing nails, or going out to the "smelly, smelly store" a.k.a. Bath and Body Works. We call it this because we walk around and spray stuff and say to each other, "smell this, smell this, no smell this." All we do is "smelly, smelly". If they charged for smelling, I would be broke. MA also likes to wash her hands in the sink and use all of the different soaps. She washes and we smell and then she washes again and we smell until the lady in the store starts coming toward the sink. We leave at that point and go mess around in the lip gloss which I still think is not germ proof, but the girls think different. I would love to think that some day China will call us once again, but my husband continues to say no way. I heard last week that some friends in our China group are going back to adopt 2 more boys. This will be adoption 5 and 6 for them. Mark believes they are millionaires. I don't think so. I think they do fundraisers for their adoptions. He just thinks financially it is out of our grasp at this point. I trust him, but I will continue to pray that we will be able to afford to go back some day. The thoughts of having another little one in the house brings a smile to my face. I don't know how I would do it with work and the girls and their activities, but people with many more kids make it work and I am sure we would too. The largest migration of people in the world has taken place over the last six days. People from all over China and the world migrate back to their Chinese families for the Chinese New Year celebrations. Tonight thousands of orphans have no one to celebrate with and they are heavy on my heart. I could not imagine my baby being anywhere but here. It hurts me to even think about it, but somewhere tonight there is a China baby waking up with 10 others laying next to him. He is alone in this world with only one caretaker for him and his 10 friends. He fights each day for attention and he receives little. He needs a Mama and Baba to love him and care for him. I pray his family finds him soon. I pray the Year of the Dragon is his year to have a family. Happy Chinese New Year to my sweet girl and to all the babies and older children that still wait for their family. May GOD give you peace in your heart and may the guardian angels come down from Heaven and protect you while you wait.

Faith and Love Amaze Me

I was just reading a blog of an adopting mom. She is waiting to go to China to get her Princess in the next month or so. She starts her post with we and ends it with me. She is now a single mom and she hasn't even gone to China yet. Her husband became ill 18 months ago and passed away last summer. They both kept thinking he was going to get better and he didn't. She buried him in June and within a few days she got a yes from China that her and her husband were accepted to go and get her girl. How GOD works amazes me. GOD knows she needs this girl and this girl needs her. How do you explain to your girl that Daddy is not going to be a part of this family picture? I know that will be a tough conversation. She chose to get her girl anyway. I am just amazed by that. They decided together that this little girl was theirs and then tragedy happened. What a heartbreak and miracle at the same time. 18 months ago, she would not be able to get her girl. The rules about single moms has changed in the past year. Everything is in God's time. I will pray that this sweet little one will bond with her mommy quickly and they will lift each other up this next year. I am sure it will be a hard one for this mom. May God Bless Her and Keep Her!

I am the worlds worst mother!

Every now and then, my oldest daughter likes to remind me that she has never been to Disney World. I am always excited to here how she is 10.5 and she has never been but everyone in her class has been to Disney World. Mark and I have looked into it several times and it is really expensive. And our girls don't like amusement park rides. And we chose 6 years ago to sacrifice ourselves so we could send our girls to private school. It would cost one child's tuition for a year to take our family to Disney World. I told our oldest that we love her and her sister and we have taken them on great vacations, and we took a trip to CHINA. NO ONE in her class has ever been to CHINA, but she never brings that up. I finally told her that all of the money that has been spent on Disney Vacations in her classroom could probably feed 10,000 starving African children for over a month and possibly longer. Disney World is not the reality that I know of the world. It is a fantasy. Why would I want to spend the money to go to a fake China in Disney World when I have been to the real one. I just don't think I am going to change my mind about this. Parents have asked me,"Why don't you take the girls to Disney World?" Honest answer, "We can't afford to spend that much money on any vacation." And the whole time I would be thinking about how far that money would go in any orphanage program around the world. I would think of how it could pay for one installment in an adoption. I just can't forget what I know. "I am forever changed." I just can't erase the scars on my heart. The experience of what I have seen with my own eyes, what I have read about in other parts of the world, and what I know to be reality. No, I can't save them all, but I don't want to feel guilty about spending money unnecessarily for a short good time. I can't explain to my sweet girl that reality is harsh and it does not involve Disney World. The real world involves homelessness, starvation, and endless poverty. If you have ever read about the real world, your world will not be the same. We sacrifice for our girls in many ways, but I just can't bring myself to sacrifice for this when a charity somewhere could use that money to feed hungry babies. I am the world's worst mother!

A Turtle named Ed

We took the girls on a wild adventure vacation last summer. In our journey we spent a couple of hours at the Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island. It is now one of our favorite places to visit. If you have never been, you get to take a tour of the hospital and a guide walks around to the tanks and tells you about the turtles they are currently caring for. Ed was my favorite. Ed was found originally stranded on Cumberland Island, GA. She was brought to the hospital at Jekyll and evaluated. She had an obstruction that was pressing on her lung. The lung was not inflating and deflating properly and so she could not dive to get food to eat. She was rehabilitated and was released off the coast of Jekyll only she would not go. She just looked at the staff and would not go. They did everything to get her in the water and she would not go. So a few weeks later they took her by boat out in the ocean and basically sent her on her way. She was finally released and the staff and volunteers were so happy. In May she was found off the coast of St. Augustine. She was floating. They brought her back. See I really think in the year she spent at Jekyll she developed a bond that she was not ready to let go of just yet. She was a young turtle when she was found. So, young that they named her Ed because they had not determined if she was a boy or girl until they did a CT scan and saw her ovaries. So at such a young age she formed a bond with her caregivers. They became her family. They loved her and took care of her. She just kept coming back to her family. She did not want to go that first time and she probably would not have jumped off that boat. She wanted to be with her family at the Turtle Center and GOD found a way to get her back there. She now is waiting for a permanent place at an aquarium. I guess the staff figured Ed prefers spending time with people rather than a big, huge ocean of fish. The staff and volunteers found her quirky, but I related to her. She stands for all that GOD wants for us. He wants us to be a part of His family. I think about Ed and how she swam in the big blue sea probably hoping to get back to her little pool at the turtle center. She had no idea how to get there she just swam until she could no longer swim. I wonder if she just floated off the coast of Jekyll for hours wondering if the turtle center boat was coming back to get her. I am sure turtles have feelings too. I wonder if she felt abandoned. You know most of the turtles there probably feel captured and want to get back to their life in the open sea, but baby Ed did not like what the sea had to offer. She wanted to be with her hospital family. For her the ocean world was way too big for a little green sea turtle to take on alone. I wonder how a baby in an orphanage feels on that first day they find themselves in an orphanage or abandoned on the street or in a bus station. An infant probably only knows how cold they are at that age, but a toddler or older child knows that their whole world has been turned upside down. I met a couple that adopted their daughter at five years old. She was beautiful and I met her when she had only been home about a month. I spoke to her in some broken Mandarin because her parents knew none. She shyly answered my questions as she partially hid behind her new mother. I was in awe of her ability to bond so quickly and to trust so wholeheartedly. Her mother told us when she left the room that at the age of 3 she was abandoned at a large train station in Beijing. They have no clue where she is originally from. They were told by the citizens they met in Beijing that she was definitely not from there. The Chinese have different features and different dialects of Mandarin in every region and those citizens in Beijing knew she was not from around there. I am sure when this little one found herself in a sea of people at that train station she felt a lot like Ed. She was in a big train station and all she wanted was to get back to the family that had taken care of her over the last three years. GOD has great plans for this little girl because the possibilities of what could have happened to her in such a huge place are truly endless. Besides being kidnapped, she could have fallen onto the tracks, or been knocked down by the sea of people coming on and off the trains. GOD does have plans for her and what a blessing she is to her new parents. Five years from now her memories will reflect the love she has in her new family and the prayers sent up to bring her into their lives. Ed the sea turtle was born somewhere on an ocean coast, but that was not what she knew as home. She knew the hospital pool as her home and that was where she longed to be. I am sure this precious child has memories of many things, but for those weeks before I met her she had the love she had been looking for since the day she was left at a train station all alone. I think of all the aged out and aging out children in orphanages around the world. I know they all seek the same thing, LOVE. God is LOVE and that is why we all seek it. I pray that these older children find the LOVE they are seeking in the Father and not in drugs, alcohol or prostitution. I pray that GOD will protect them from the evil of this world and help them find the LOVE they seek in the right places. I know Ed is swimming in her pool right now at Jekyll. She has no clue that they are seeking a new family for her at some aquarium. I hope Ed is happy in her new adoptive home wherever it may . I hope Ed finds the love she found at Jekyll that kept calling her from the sea. Jekyll calls me once every couple of years, too and every time I am there I feel like its home at least for a few days.