our story

About 6 months ago, Adam and I started to view our next step in building are family a little differently than we ever had before. we prayed, asked hard questions, read a ton and sought prayer from extremely close ones, asking God over and over to open our hearts and our plans for what he wanted us to consider. Our hearts and eyes opened wide and with that came this immense sense of loss of control. Right where He wanted us. He began to put within us a desire to help a child in need. Maybe that was through adoption and maybe that was through emotional or financial support of a child even within our own town, or maybe across the world. We often pray for and talk about a sweet little 11-year-old girl, "K," in Nepal that we support. Sharing with miles our love for her from afar, but the stirring was something different than from afar- but what and how?  As months and months passed we became more and more aware of the desire we had to give a fatherless child a mom and dad that loves them. But how? Where? When? We still don't have those answers, but we do know that God has given us a vision bigger and better than what we had pictured our family portrait above the mantel in 8 years to be.

In this process I have wept over children without a home, over hundreds of orphans, over corrupt adoption systems, over my lack of faith and vision for His kingdom on earth. I wrestled with this word "adoption;" I mean I feel like I have duked it out with Him, fought tooth and nail to see where we might fit into this.  What we do with hard information constantly coming out about international adoption? What we do with the fact that it costs so much? I have come out on the other side with a heart that is hopeful and surrendered to Jesus. We still don't know what this means for us, we believe He has us in a place of uprooting the hard places within our soil to make fertile ground.

But as I sit here in my quiet kitchen, tonight my heart is in the Congo. Why? Because thousands of children sit in orphanages, without a mom or dad to tuck them into bed at night. Because for the last decade the Congo is experiencing what some are calling the world's deadliest war and I didn't know much about it until four months ago when I started researching the state of the Congo on my own.

I guess when I hear painful heartbreaking information I often want to recoil. I say things like "I can't handle that,  or I don't want to hear that." Why do I do that? Why do I avoid feeling that pain? Even though in this moment I feel powerless, I choose to stay open. Sara Groves explains this so beautifully in her lyrics to "Open Like a Lake"

so much hurt and preservation
like a tendril round my soul
so much painful information
no clear way on how to hold it
when everything in me is tightening
curling in around this ache
I will lay my heart wide open
like the surface of a lake


Would you take a moment to visit Falling Whistles. This is an organization born out of seeing the painful situation in the Congo first hand. They are educating us westerners about the crisis and asking us to help. If you go to the website and click on "story" you can read a hard-to-swallow story about how Falling Whistles began. How young boys are trained to be child soldiers and sent unarmed to the front lines as a strategic move, sent to blow loud whistles to startle their enemy, then they are used to take the first blow. Their bodies becoming shields. Falling Whistles started as a way to "make their weapon your voice and be a whistle blower for peace in Congo"

Then will you go here: and sign a petition for free and fair elections in the Congo

Would you also take some time to pray for Adam and I. That we would continue to search our hearts and make decisions lead by his Spirit.

I wasn't planning on writing this post but was sitting here feeling the weight of this and maybe this is my way of staying wide open instead of "curling in around this ache"