A Christmas Blessing [May You Know His Nearness and Sense His Pursuit of Your Heart]

The presents surround the tree.  Our woodwork is wound with greenery and ribbon and twinkling with sparkly lights.  It's 11 pm on Christmas Eve and my husband and I sit in our living room with only the tree and the twinkling greenery for light.  Instrumental Christmas music plays in the background.

Our son sleeps - having just turned 2 in September, he's still young enough that we don't think he'll be jumping on our bed at 5 am wanting to open gifts.  Next year... maybe. :)

We reflect on the past year.  The highs and lows.  The wins.  The losses.  [Oh, how 2012 has brought both... incredible victories and heart-wrenching losses too.]  And we reflect on God's faithfulness through it all.  How he's sustained.  Provided.  Kept our hearts close to His.

I reflect on His continual pursuit of our hearts woven throughout it all.  His obvious hand of kindness, how it's been all. over. our. lives.

He is good.  He gives and takes away... and He's worthy of our trust.  

And He's after our hearts in it all.

My dear friends...this Christmas, may you sense in a deeper way than ever before your Father's tangible nearness and His intimate, tender, unrelenting pursuit of your heart.

May you see it woven throughout history, in the prophecies of Christ's coming, in the new-born Babe in the manger, in the spotless Lamb of God who was crucified and rose again to conquer death...to pursue intimate relationship with us... to win our hearts.  Mine.  And yours.

May you deeply know how He has valued you, how He longs for intimate friendship with you.  Everything about Christmas is evidence of His extravagant pursuit.

May you... may we... have tender hearts this Christmas, responsive to His tender, pursuing love.

Merry Christmas, dear friends!

Whether you're a "real-life" friend, or one that I've met through this blog... I love having you in my life.  Be so blessed this Christmas.

Rescheduling AGAIN!

Oh my goodness, this poor birth mom... she slipped today and broke her ankle!  She still wants to choose a family and said she would get back to our agency about doing that.

Good. grief.  What a ride.  And I feel so bad for this mama!

Thanking God and she and the baby are okay.  It looks like she will need surgery on her ankle, however.  Craziness.  Just. sheer. craziness.

Thank you all for your prayers - for her and for us.

Adoption Prayer Request...and Our First Snow!

Just thought I'd share - this is the view from our front window this morning!  Oh, how I love it!!! :)

Dear Friends,

A couple of weeks ago I had asked for prayer regarding a birth mom who was going to view our profile.  She ended up sick in the hospital and was unable to view profiles...and her appointment to do so was eventually rescheduled to today at 1pm.  SO... with this crazy weather we're having here in the Midwest, who knows if she'll make it in to the office today to view profiles or not... BUT, I wanted to ask you all to be praying for her, just in case she does make it in.  If she were to choose our family, we would have a baby next month.  (WOAH?!)  We would be so crazy excited!! :)

Please pray for God's wisdom for her as she selects a family for her baby.  Ask for God's comfort for her heart also... I can only imagine how painful, this decision that's before her.

Please pray for us, also... that God will hold our hearts today, give us peace in the waiting, and that if she does not choose us, we will be steadfast in our trust in His plan for our family.  Stan and I are super peaceful this morning.  I believe we both are deeply trusting God with this situation and with the future expanding of our family.

Thank you so much, my friends.  Both those of you who are "real life" friends, and those friends who I've met via this blog... you are each more of a blessing to us than I can say.

(Click here for a post that does a great job expressing the current position of my heart in regards to our adoption...the journey of my heart in these moments of praying and longing and waiting.)

Today, God, Tangibly Be Emmanuel...

A nation, a town, a school, and so many, many families... The shock and horror of yesterday's events in Newtown, CT are just beyond belief.

I sat in Costco eating pizza with Stan and Isaac and Stan read me the news off of his phone and I just had no grid for it.  No way to process it.  My jaw hung open and passers by must have thought me strange, not having heard the news yet.  I couldn't cope with what had happened.  The terror.  The fear.  The trauma.  The horrific, profound LOSS.  The precious lives.  The children.  Their parents.  Their siblings and friends.  Oh, God....

I have no mental box or spiritual folder in which to file this away.  No way to make it make sense.  No way to answer all of the "WHY, GOD?!?!"s that swirl around in my mind... in my heart.

AND YET....

He is good.  He is unchanging.  He is absolutely committed to those precious children, those families.

So here I sit, with no way right now to reconcile what I know of His heart, His character, with this horrible.... I don't even know what to call it.  Loss is not a strong enough word.  Not even close.

And this is all I can pray...

Wonderful Counselor... counsel every heart.  Give wisdom to those who must counsel the children even as they cope with their own profound loss.  Intimately be Counselor to all who need You in this moment...in the days ahead.

Comforter... You promise that those who mourn are blessed, for they'll receive comfort... Bless them now.  Creator God, who intimately, deeply knows every need of every heart, comfort those hearts today.  May they deeply, unmistakably encounter the God of Comfort.

Prince of Peace... You are capable of bringing peace into even the most horrific circumstances.  Do this now, Father.  Be who You are in all of this.  Make Yourself known as the only Source of perfect peace.  Peace that passes understanding.  


Emmanuel, God With Us... be Emmanuel to those families affected today.  Even now... Tangibly...be Emmanuel to them.  Closer than all of the fear.  Closer than the pain.  Envelop their hearts in Your nearness.  Your "with-us-ness."

These are things we celebrate about who You are, God, in this Christmas season.  Would you make Yourself intimately, tenderly, powerfully REAL in these ways to every heart affected...even today.  Even now.

Father, You are more than enough.  Even in this.  Somehow.  Reveal Yourself, God.  Be glorified.

The Dismantling of Our Lives (A Window Into Raw, Unfinished Beauty)

The sink was piled high with dinner dishes.  The table still had crumbs on it and the dining room floor needed to be swept.  It didn't matter. 

Their hearts were so much more important.

Stan and I sat in our living room chatting and laughing with our dear friends who've been living and working on the other side of the planet for the last year and a half... and who will have to return there right after Christmas.  Our one time together as couples and we don't actually know for sure when we'll see them again.  

The seconds were precious.

The conversation meandered from ministry to life in the country that is currently their home to community and life as a part of the Body of Christ.

And then it happened.  It was the greatest gift they could possibly have given us.

Our friends opened their hearts...and poured them out.  About how it's been hard this last year and a half and how they can't understand what God is doing and how life has just. been. so. painful.

As my friend spoke, I listened intently, everything inside of me keenly tuned into the fact that this was a sacred moment.  A holy encounter.

She stopped talking.  We sat in silence and the seconds ticked by.  

I wanted to speak, to let her know that her heart had been heard, understood, that her story and her heart were being held with grace.  But the words wouldn't come.  I was too much in awe of the gift she'd just given.

It's so sacred - God's dismantling of our lives, of all that's familiar, and the secret ways He works in the deep places of our hearts, miles below the surface... how He fashions and molds and shapes our hearts, and how He's so committed to having His way in our depths, to conforming us more to the image of Christ and to intimately revealing His heart to ours and walking right beside us through it all.  

And how all of this is happening in our secret places, deep inside us, even, and especially, when everything around us and everything inside us are so dark that we can't see His hand.  

He's carving raw beauty in the darkness.  In the pain.  So sacred, His processes inside of us.

So the seconds ticked by and finally my friend whispered, fighting tears and staring down at her lap, "Sorry..." and I squeaked out something about "please don't apologize - this is the real stuff..." and my feeble words in that moment just could not come close to doing justice to all that was burning in my heart.

She had given us the gift of beauty.  Exposed the raw, unfinished, painful, gut-wrenchingly glorious process.  All of the unanswered questions and all of the aching and the not understanding and the pulling out of props and the gentle, tender breaking down of the human soul until all that remains is just that heart, and its Creator... and where do we go from here?  

And she shared it all with us.  They both did.

They apologized for complaining and we tried to explain how this was the furthest thing in the world from that.  This is the reality of life and even though they can't see it in this season, we can see the hand of God and their raw honesty was the gift that made the way for us to see the beauty He's forming in them....

So sacred.  So holy.  So beautiful.  So profound and precious.

More time ticked by.  It was nearly midnight and I'd bet you that not a one of us was thinking about going to bed.  I know I wasn't.

We prayed with them and again my words seemed to fall flat.  I couldn't even begin to express how deeply my heart was affected by their vulnerability and the beauty of God's hand woven throughout their story, in all of its not-yet-completeness.

But I know that God will continue and complete the work He has started in these precious hearts.  And I am so crazy, ridiculously privileged to be able to stand here on these sidelines and cheer them on and behold and wonder at the perfect working of God in the lives of our sweet friends.

What an incredible gift.  I feel so challenged - challenged to more often allow those God's placed in my community a window into all of the rawness and beauty of His processes in my own heart and life...

And challenged to continue to intentionally seek to grow in my ability to steward well the hearts of those I love... 

To learn to hold the stories and hearts with which I'm entrusted with compassion and grace... to be one who sighs with and cries with and rejoices with others and doesn't try to fix... 

But one who, with just a few words of grace and compassion and truth, can toss into place a handful of stones that God will use to begin to form a bridge from the hurting human heart back to the tender heart of its Creator.

This is who I want to be.  I don't know what else to say today.  I just couldn't NOT write out all of these things that have been rolling around in my heart.  

Thanks so much for reading today, friends.  Praying that God will encourage you here.