friendship is not a razor blade. friendship is a life raft.

I don't know where this notion that friendships exist to filet you open to provide an opportunity to get healing came from. I've heard this perspective so many times and I have to say it is ridiculous. When I look at the Word of God, friendship is love. It is support. It is encouragement. It is life. Saying that real friendship is "messy" is like saying real friendship is volatile. Not true. Of course, every relationship whether it is familial, romantic or purely social is going to have it's ups and downs. When different personalities and backgrounds mix, you are sure to get some sensitive patches.

But I have seen so many situations in the lives around me and in my own when a friend is untrustworthy, manipulative or controlling and after the bombs go off and everyone is recovering, it is brushed off as "God is just doing something in me" or "God is just doing something in them" or "the enemy is after me". Then you hug and re-enter the destructive cycle you just hopped out of. Sure, God can use anything. But just because God uses something sinful or tragic to teach His people about holiness does not mean that He planned the murder or orchestrated a fatal car wreck.

I think I definitely subscribed to to this line of thinking for a long time. Mostly because I have spent most of my life in very unhealthy, self-seeking friendships. Because of their un-wholeness and mine. What I am realizing, coming out of an incredible season of healing, is that it just isn't true. For the first time, I am engaged in deep relationships with other women that are lifting me up and teaching me to serve. Do I sometimes get annoyed? Absolutely. Do I sometimes get offended? Absolutely. Do I still choose to believe the best about them? ABSOLUTELY. Do I still choose to try to be selfless? ABSOLUTELY. Do I feel safe? ABSOLUTELY. Am I perfect? No. Are they? No. Then when people on the outside look in on relationships like this, the only thing they know to do is to evaluate what it says about them. Even though nothing is being said.

I hope that if you find yourself in a relationship that is
- constantly producing drama
- inflicting emotional injury
- feeding insecurity
- surviving on manipulation
- encouraging negative behavior
that you can start to believe that although it is common, it is not acceptable or spiritually enriching. The easiest way to believe this lie - please hear this - is when it is the one dead flower amidst a colorful bouquet of sweetly smelling flowers like fun, humor, adventure and common ground. The important thing to understand is that this one rotting quality will eventually infect the rest and you will be left bleeding at the end.

Can people change? YES! I DID! When it all boils down, the simple solution is deciding you want to love someone vulnerably and selflessly and that you want not just to live life together, but that you want to live a fruitful life together.


WOMEN! STOP HURTING EACH OTHER. STOP COMPETING. CHOOSE TO LOVE.

Welcome to Reality

2010 has really been a swift kick into reality. When I say kick, I don’t mean a kick in the tush, more like a kick in the face. I began the year in full frantic planning mode for my sister in law’s birthday. Another friend and I had planned to surprise her with an all-expenses paid girls getaway to Carmel. We whisked her away for a weekend of fun and pampering, stuffing ourselves with good food and ocean air. It was pretty much amazing. Our last night there, we were sitting in our room at the inn, drinking wine and eating chocolate by the fire, completely oblivious to the outside world or any of it’s problems when I got a phone call from my husband telling me that our friend, Lyndsay had just been diagnosed with cancer. I hung up the phone, shocked, unsure of how to respond. We were kind of ripped from our little paradise bubble. We drove home the next day, talking about the weekend, Lyndsay, our plans for the following week. We had no idea what was waiting for us there.

A couple of weeks later, we got another call no one saw coming. My nephew Nolan, Amy’s one and half year old son, was on his way to the hospital. After a few confusing days of tests and opinions, he was also diagnosed with cancer. I think the best way to describe this couple of weeks in our life is to say that it was like being under water. I feel like I barely remember it. It was devastating, but I kept thinking, “This doesn’t happen to us.” We were in the hospital sitting around Nolan’s hospital bed and all I could think of was sitting on the beach eating olives and grapes and cheese, watching the sunset.

Each month that followed brought a new challenge with it. One by one, the people around us were being faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In May, a few days after I had my son Josiah, we were admitted back into the hospital because his body temperature was really low. Talking to the doctor that night, somewhere between the words “spinal” and “tap” I started feeling like the room was spinning. Literally. Thank God, Josiah’s temperature regulated throughout the night and we were able to skip all of the invasive testing. But in the middle of the night, while things were still uncertain, I thought back to the previous week at our community group meeting. One person battling cancer, another stuck overseas trying to complete an adoption gone wrong, another couple facing emotional turmoil in their domestic adoption, another mourning their struggles with infertility, another battling depression and anxiety, another flying to hawaii where his mother was thought to be on her way out of this world due to a mysterious disease, and me, sitting there in the dark hospital room wondering if I am going to watch my 5 day old son get a spinal tap the next day. It was a profound moment for me that I really believe shifted some deep inside of me. The way that I saw the world was changing and I wanted to yell, “I don’t want to live in this world! I want to go back!”. Back where? To the time when we all felt young and invincible; when the world didn’t touch us. But I realized that you can’t live in that world forever. It felt like we crossing over to a new realm of life together, the realm where the world actually touches you. I was and still am seeing everything differently: people, relationships, things, etc.

Although these things have been hard to deal with on an emotional level, I really believe it has been the catalyst for major change in my life that has been a long time coming. I feel like a different person than I was, sitting around my Christmas tree on December 25th. My perspective, my lens, has changed and I don’t think it will ever go back to the way it used to be. In a way, I mourn it. But I also see that it has allowed me to connect with the suffering of the world in a way that I never have been able to. I think of Job when his wife tells him to curse God and he says, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job 2:10. It is not a negative or pessimistic view of the world, it is a deeper understanding of it.

In our unexpected relationship with cancer and other ugly realities, I feel like I am seeing life and people for the first time. I have seen Lyndsay and Amy rise up to the challenge with a supernatural and inspiring strength that blesses the purposes of God despite their inability to understand it. Later in Job chapter 4, Job is doing a “woah is me” speech (that he has kind of earned) and his friend responds with this:

“In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak. Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees. But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you.” Job 4:3-5

In the midst of extreme trial, I have had the privilege to watch the people of God believe that His purposes endure. I don’t want to be the one that looks at my friend and says, “Take courage, be strong!” yet when trouble comes to my door, not believe it in my own life. Although I am sure that behind closed doors, there are moments of despair, I am so challenged by the response by my friends to the hard things. I don’t know if I will never be happy that these things crept into our life, but I do know that we are a small part of something so much bigger. It may be easier to watch life through a rose colored glass, but it is not what is real. Cancer and the sunset on the beach exist together in this life. It is not two worlds, it is one.

Africa

I just had to take a deep breath before I started typing, because talking about this makes me feel like there’s a wind storm in my chest. The topic? Africa.

When I was really young, I saw the movie “Out of Africa” with Meryl Streep and it pretty much set my soul on fire. There has always been something about Africa that has had a grip on the core of me. The thought of it was like thinking of finding my long lost biological mother or something. I was able to go for the first time when I was 18 and stepping onto the ground from the plane literally made me want to pick up handfuls of dirt and rub it into my skin and hair. Sound crazy? Yeah, I know. I have had the enormous opportunity to go to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nimibia, Botswana and Ethiopia. Let me tell you some of the things that I love about this place.

First and foremost, there is the smell. With the exception of densely populated areas like Johannesburg or Addis Ababa, there is this smell in the air in Africa that is unlike anything else. It is kind of like the smell of soil, but it is mixed with fire smoke and that waterfall mist smell. There is something fluid about it, like you are breathing under water, because the air is so clean and clear. Then there is the landscape. Africa varies widely as far as what the land looks like, but it all has this harsh yet soft feel to it. It is really hard to explain. It has to do with the textures. The barrenness of some of the trees but the fluffiness of some of the grasses. Even the lush jungle areas have these subtle African reminders, like dark black rock outcroppings. The colors are like nowhere else, as you can see in the picture above. I took this on the side of the road, driving down the middle of Ethiopia. It’s the green and gold mix that makes it unique. Most of all, I love the people of Africa. I feel like sometimes people view Africans like they are ignorant or irresponsible. Like everywhere, this is true in different dimensions, but there is a deep and eternal wisdom that comes from the people’s connection to the land. They are living with the earth, not on it. I feel like they are living on some higher plane when I am with them. Yeah, I may have the knowledge that washing my hands consistently will help keep certain bacteria out of my body and it would help many communities in Africa if I shared that knowledge with them. But there is a way of viewing life that Africans have that the world would greatly benefit from if we were able to admit that there was anything we could learn from them.

There is a supernatural connection I have with the entire continent that I cannot put into words or account for in any way. I can’t wait to go back.

Adoption

Joel and I were married in 2005, we just celebrated our 5 year anniversary! We always knew we would adopt one day, but it was always something way down the road. We had our first son, Ethan Isaiah in 2006. He is a bright, sweet little boy whose wheels are always turning. In 2008, we decided to have another baby and quickly became pregnant. At the end of our first trimester, we lost our baby and were totally heartbroken. We were confused and frustrated, but with a “dust yourself off” attitude, we started to try again. But In the midst of our anticipation, I began to think about adoption. I started doing some research and wound up ordering an information packet on Ethiopia adoption, telling myself I just wanted to be prepared for the future.

A few weeks later, through a random and interesting series of events, we became heavily involved with an effort to rescue tribal children in rural Ethiopia. You can read more about this organization at drawnfromwater.org. Our first thoughts were a hesitant, “God, what are you doing?”. We continued to wait for our second child through the spring of 2009, and were given the opportunity that summer to go to Ethiopia to work with Drawn From Water. The trip was life-changing to say the least, and while we were there, our heart for adoption expanded into something bigger than we could have imagined. Once we returned, however, we quickly realized that we were not in a position to adopt for many reasons. I think that we were pretty confused and almost disillusioned with the whole experience because we didn’t understand what God was doing at all. I almost felt like I was mourning again. And to make matters worse, we began to watch several friends begin their own adoptions. To our surprise, we found out just a couple of weeks later that we were pregnant! My first thought was “Thank you!” and then my second thought was “Why now?”. The road just kept twisting and twisting.

During the pregnancy, a lot of changes occurred in our home and finances. We had Josiah Clay in 2010 and began to settle into life with two little boys but we could feel something brewing. Something big. While at a church event, we had the chance to listen to a presentation by a foster-adoption agency and quickly figured out that the time had come to start down this road. Our immediate thoughts went to Ethiopia, but the intimidating cost made us skeptical. We decided to find out more about foster adoption through the state of California and at first, it looked like it would work out. However, once we began the training in our home study, some of the county policies made it clear that it would not be a good fit for our family. In the midst of this decision, we had a conversation with some friends who are nearing the end of their adoption process. We realized that we had been running from what we were meant to do because the obstacles seemed too large. We thought of Caleb in the Bible and knew that we had failed to have faith. We were deeply challenged and decided once and for all to do what we knew we had to and that was to walk forward into our adoption from Ethiopia.

So here we are, walking into the unknown - the world of international adoption. And believe me, it is a whole different world. We are excited and moving forward without fear, waiting to see what God does and waiting for him to make the way.