A LampPost Flickering

The doctors found cancer in my mom. Endometrial or uterine cancer to be specific. It stinks, bites, sucks, rots. All that. Chasing fear away is hard work. It lingers like a sulfur-belching dragon just outside the window. The moment I think it's safe to breathe, its shadow slithers by, and I'm left clutching promises that I hope are meant for me and for her. We have every hope that a surgery to remove the offending part will send her on the path to full health. She is meeting with the oncologist next Tuesday to discuss options and to schedule her big surgery. It's been a month of doctor appointments and phone calls, including a diagnostic surgery, all taking place up north where she can be close to my sister and brothers and their families and have support and care, as my dad's job takes him away for days at a time. Also northern IN has far greater cancer care facilities and specialists available to her. So she has been separated from Dad, which makes the enduran...

Two days before Christmas. (Or as one of the kids joked: today is Christmas Adam, because Adam came before Eve. <Insert rim shot>) The kids are hyped. The parents are excited and already a little tired. Four Christmases worth of gifts are thoughtfully chosen, wrapped, and packed into every available space in the Suburban, along with food to share, extra bedding, wintery clothes, the extra table, Gabe's guitar, the Kitchenaid mixer. Also, the computer for photo editing. And the camping chairs, because seating is going to be an issue. Big family probs. My husband had the pleasure of playing Tetris in the back of the truck, but he got it all to fit, not without bewilderment at the sheer volume of items I wanted to take. "I just want to make good memories for the kids!" I told him when he questioned why on earth I was packing the icicle lights and spinning my wheels to do a thousand other things in my attempt to make this season memorable, hoping that my service will be...

Two moves. One older-child adoption. One deployment. One year homeschooling five children. Maybe I really did fall off the earth. I'm trying desperately to claw my way back on. I want to be back here. I think I'm ready. The last time I left you, we were just a couple of weeks from traveling to bring home Rosy. Some of you are connected with me either in real life or social media, so you weren't exactly left hanging, but for any new readers, she is home. On June 17th, we just celebrated our One Year Gotcha Day anniversary. Rosy signing papers and making her daughtership official. (Momma signed some papers, too. Lots and lots of papers.) Lily was the most amazing travel companion and the perfect big sister. A year later, this fearless kid loves life and shines like the sun in the sky. Princess in search of candy. She didn't have to look far. God was so tender and merciful to us throughout the adjustment of a new family dynamic, which include...

I can't get over the miracles that God has done to get us to this point. And she's not even here yet. Just imagine what He's going to do once His beloved child, His baby girl, is in the arms of the second momma He chose for her and no longer tucking herself into her own lonely bed at night. (I know deep, deep inside that we are not Plan A for this child. My God, however, makes beauty from ashes. The intense complexities of adoption, that is another post for another day. Another series of posts.) If I ever, ever doubt God's timing, please remind me to think back to this time, this day. What was impossible, is happening. Shortly after we began this process to bring home Rosy home, we found out that Rob would be deploying this summer. We scrambled to make the adoption happen quickly so that he would get a least a couple of months with his new daughter, but when we encountered few hiccups in paper process, it became less and less likely that he would even get to m...

I've been so overwhelmed and humbled by the love that our sweet, little XY has been shown over the past few weeks. Her story is one of love from the very beginning. From, "God loved her and sent His Son" (1 John 4:10) to her birth family loving her for eight months before making the hardest decision they would ever have to make and laying her down on the steps of the hospital and walking away so that she could get care for her rare condition (a decision I'm convinced was borne out of a desperate kind of love most of us will never, ever understand); from my eyes clamping on a photograph of hers and a fierce, protective mother-love, the kind I immediately recognized as it mirrors what I have for the children who already call me momma, rising up in my soul, to friends, family and strangers recognizing the miracle of her, and the wonder and necessity of her being adopted into a forever family and making a sacrifice so that could happen. All of it, love. I can NOT get ...

I sure am struggling trying to come up with a good way to re-start this creaky blog. It's like trying to make a phone call you promised to make weeks ago and you really have no good excuse why you didn't just pick up the dang phone and call. I have not good excuses. So I took a big blog break. And now I'm back.  That is all. Shew. There! But, boy do I have a good reason for wanting to start writing again! Good news is no fun if you have to keep it to yourself, especially if that good news is also the start of a life-changing adventure. God sure is full of surprises! Sometimes, God's surprises are the best. (Sometimes they take us through the hardest thing we can possibly imagine, but that's another post.) But this is a good one. A very good one. We are expecting...in the adoption sort of way!!! Introducing the newest apple of our eyes: China is kind of picky about pictures of their kids floating around the web, so unt...

Please stop growing up so fast, little ones! My heart can barely take it. And, also, there is no thumb-sucking in the military.