San Diego

I am back again. Maybe. It's been an interesting year and I hope to be more faithful about blogging. Thank you for sticking with me!

We went to San Diego for our 10th anniversary. It's not until December 15th but the ticket sales forced us to use them in November. So, happily, at the beginning of November, we went to San Diego for five glorious days.

We had not been on vacation, really, since our honeymoon. Well, let me clarify. We have taken many trips to Brazil, South Dakota, Kansas City and St. Louis to see family and friends. We took a weekend getaway each year. I guess what I should say is we had not been away together, just the two of us, for an extended time since our honeymoon. Because, honestly, as wonderful as it is with family and friends, that typically means little time together, even if you are always together. So, although I was grateful we had taken trips away, I just wanted Joa to myself.

This trip was glorious. Yes, San Diego was wonderful. It was easy to explore. It had a lot to do and see. And Joa loves the ocean so he was just happy to drive along the coast. It was a bit cold so all we could do was stick our toes in, and even that was a challenge. We road bikes, took naps and ate out. We went hiking. We went to LA for a day. We watched a few ocean sunsets. 

But what was most glorious about the trip was just the chance to reconnect. We didn't have any deep-solve-the-world-or-our-lives conversations, but we also didn't have a lot of distractions. We had fun. Joa ignored his phone for five days. We left our problems behind and lived carefree for five days. Every move was the chance for adventure and we embraced it wholeheartedly.

I came back with hope and renewal at our friendship, our partnership and our marriage. It's been a long season of adoption waiting, school pursuing, and goal accomplishing that makes satisfying time alone together a rarity.

Thank God for vacations. Thank God for time away, for renewed perspective and fun. Thank You, God, for time with each other filled with hope.

Gratitude

I’ve been reading a book titled One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp. I stumbled across a review of it a few weeks ago and was intrigued but fearful. It seemed to offer what I was looking for and speak into the topics in my life that are most pressing. I read an excerpt from it that made me cry, I was so moved by it. And yet I was afraid it would be one more disappointing book that promised something – a way out? Hope? The possibility of change? – and mostly turned out to be fluff. The same words just shifted around. No real substance. I was really looking for a new perspective, a new way of looking at life and my relationship with God, and sustenance. I found it – in part, at least – in this book. I haven’t finished reading it yet but have been savoring it one section at a time. 

She takes these two subjects of living fully where you are and gratitude – one which has always eluded me and another which I have valued but not lived – and she gives a new perspective. She – in a back way that catches you off guard – brings life and energy and hope with an intriguing way of writing. A disarming and vulnerable way of writing that allows you to be with her, feel her story, and be touched by what God was doing in her life. A way of writing that leads you right back to God although you never suspected you were headed in that direction. There were no trite Christian sayings, no shaming over not being a super Christian, but there was God. She writes in a way that allows God to open up life inside of me without me working so hard or trying to force it. In a way that allows me to step into where God is already at without all the legalism and the knowledge that in the end blocks me from God. 

I highly recommend her book. Someday I would love to write something as equally powerful, vulnerable and inspiring. 

Last night I ended my evening reading this quote. “I, too, had read it often, the oft-quoted verse: ‘And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 5:20). And I, too, would nod and say straight-faced, ‘I’m thankful for everything.’ But in counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life. A lifetime of sermons on ‘thanks in all things’ and the shelves sagging with books on these things and I testify: life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.” (page 57)

I like this. I think this is where I miss out on the life that I do have. I am always rushing ahead to the “someday” things, the big things, and I am rarely here in today. I am rarely thankful and I am often longing for what I do not have. I want to be here, now. Enjoying all I have – which is this very day. I can’t change the past and I don’t have the future guaranteed. Only this moment in time, right now. So I will start with the small things I am grateful for. I am thankful for a ticking clock, a soft blue blanket, an overstuffed armchair. I am thankful for bathrooms and my doctor. I am thankful I don’t have a needle in my arm now. I am thankful for writing classes. I am thankful for soft dogs, for my soft dog, who is goofy. I am thankful for naps, and this day off work. I am thankful for lists but also for trash cans where sometimes lists need to go. I am thankful for friends who listen and ask thought provoking questions and who journey with me in this life. I am thankful for a husband to share life with. I am thankful for the breath God gave me. I am thankful for how intricate and amazingly God created our bodies, to work so efficiently, to be so complex and yet run (mostly) smoothly. I am thankful He literally holds our cells together, holds my cells together. 

And now, with all this thankfulness, I am tired. It is time to take a nap.

Hope

This weekend I went to a Waiting Families group. It is a casual meeting once a month where adopting families gather to encourage one another, ask questions, and struggle together. I didn’t necessarily want to go but I am glad I did. I think I was worried; I mean, even if you understand each other, how can the shared frustrations of waiting and other common adoption issues bring hope? Because that was what I was really after, hope.

But it was good. I did end up leaving with hope. What brought hope was not necessarily the shared frustrations of those waiting, but others there who had walked before us. In fact, I think had it just been those of us waiting, we might have left more discouraged than we came. The leaders did a good job of redirecting our focus and also encouraging us with a different perspective. Because let’s face it, you have a much difference perspective when you are in the middle of a struggle as opposed to being on the other side of it. One of the leaders repeated a phrase I had heard her say often before and am always encouraged by it. Are you ready for what this huge phrase of truth was?

“The waiting time always seems long while you are in it but it will happen.”

That simple phrase, said by a compassionate and understanding friend who has walked that same road, gave me hope. A million people who have not adopted could say this to me and I wouldn’t believe it, but I do believe her. She knows! I thought. She has been there. She has walked this road. There is something about the combination of compassion, understanding, and truth that is a balm to a hurting heart. That brings hope.

It made me think of so many other situations that need this same help. Reality is, we all need each other. We need others who have walked before us, who can remind of us truth, treat us with understanding and compassion, and yet are living examples that we will survive and we will get through whatever hard or discouraging situation is facing us. And, in the situations that God has brought us through, we need to be that to others.

I walk away with hope this weekend. Not because my circumstances changed. But because others shared their experience with me with understanding and compassion. They helped me put it in context. They gave me a fresh perspective when I was stuck in a negative one. They drew my heart not to where I was but where I would be someday. They reminded me that God was at work and one day would “show up” in a way that was tangible in this area of adoption. Isn’t that what hope is? “But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?” Romans 8:24

And that made all the difference. Thank you, Kristin.