Love and Life

“Where you invest your love, you invest your life.”

-Mumford and Sons (Awake My Soul)

I just love those lyrics.  Mumford and Sons is a secular band, but even they understand that deep truth.  I love the word ‘invest’.  That implies action, and love is a verb.  We have to choose to love, and who we choose to love determines our life. 

I choose to love God.  Because He first loved me.  The rest of my life, well, if my love is invested in Him, then it will be one perfectly wild adventure.

As we celebrate Easter and the most loving sacrifice ever to be displayed, let’s thank God for His abundant love.  Because without it, we would be left to die, with no hope.  But what a glorious Savior we serve! 

Thank You, Jesus, for Your blood that washes my crimson stains white as snow.  Thank You for the love You have so lavished on me.  Help me to love as You have.

My Bug Bug (Selah)

Ask anyone-- Selah and I are BFFs:).  Her first word was ‘Mattie’!  I’ve said before that I love her like my own daughter, which is kind of a weird statement to most people since she’s my sister.  Let me explain:

As I said in my testimony, when Mom and Dad went to Ukraine to adopt Conner and Cooper us kids were left to take care of each other.  Most people would look at that situation and blame my parents for being awful to us for placing such huge responsibility on our shoulders.  It wasn’t like that at all.  My Nana died unexpectedly just three weeks before my parents were leaving for Ukraine.  Since she wouldn’t be able to come stay with us, my parents asked us who we wanted to come help us.  We refused to let anyone come help.  We wanted to hold down the fort on our own, and because my parents’ awesome friend, Stephanie (our school teacher), lives here on our ranch, just a hop, skip, and a jump away, my parents agreed to allow us to stay home.  Stephanie would be here 24/7, but she would sleep in her home, unless we asked her to stay in our home overnight. 

During that time, all I could tell people when they asked how I was doing was, “I have never felt so completely in the center of God’s will.”  There was something so fulfilling about using my hands and feet to really make an impact.  Without us big kids staying home and taking care of all the littles, we wouldn’t have been able to adopt Conner and Cooper. 

I was reminiscing about that time in my life the other day, and I had a revelation.  I kept Selah alive and well for two months of her life!  I was her mommy for that time, and I enjoyed it!  Sure, I was really tired after being up all night, having to go to school, doctors appointments, and all that, but it was phenomenal.  I grew so much in responsibility and maturity. 

I want to thank my parents for being so in love with Jesus that they would have the faith that God would equip us big kids to get the job done, and to leave the country to rescue my sweet brothers!  My life would be so much more empty without the blessed extra chromosome my brothers have. 

Back to Selah, we grew very close in that time.  She is my Sweet Love, Bug Bug, Sugars, Selah Ka-wis, Turkey Monster, Mi Vida, and Miracle.  I adore every inch of her!  I get all emotional thinking about my life if she weren’t in it.  Sounds like a mom, huh?:)  That girl takes my breath away, and I will forever be grateful to God for her life. 

I’ll close with this story:

The other night we were driving in the car and I was sitting next to Selah.  It was all girls and we were listening to the song Call Me Maybe, one of Selah’s favorites:).  She loves to sing, “Call Me BB!”. Anyway, we were all dancing, swinging our arms up and down, and I look over and there Selah is, looking right at what I’m doing and giving it all her two year old self.  She was getting down!  She was trying to throw in her own moves, too, and it was all isolated and choppy, so adorable!!  I almost started crying I was so in love.  She is getting to be so much fun:). 

I pray God blesses you to love someone as I love Selah:).  Children with special needs are a blessing, no matter what anyone tries to tell you!

Words

Before you read this post, please click HERE and be praying for those precious boys!

Proverbs 18:21, “The power of life and death is in the tongue.”

Those are some heavy WORDS.  God has been reminding me so much lately about the power of words.

Most of the time, I don’t like to think about the consequence of my words.  “They’re just words…” I think to myself.  Every word has the power of life and death in it, says the Word of God.  We have the ability to bless or curse in our tongue.  Curses are real, not just hocus pocus.  Why do you think that in the story of Balaam and his donkey in the Bible that they tried so hard to get him to curse Israel?  Blessings are also real.  When we speak positively and encouragingly, we bring forth blessing through our words.  Words are serious.

There’s a new song out by Hawk Nelson with Bart Miller from MercyMe called “Words”.  I encourage you to listen to it if you haven’t already heard it.  What he’s saying is so true.

For a long time I have struggled with controlling my tongue.  I have a very strong willed rudder for my ship:).  I can’t even count how many times I have regretted what I spewed out in my anger or frustration.  In doing a study of James, I was very convicted.  I repented but still struggle.  I cannot control my tongue without Jesus!  I absolutely cannot be what my Father desires in my own strength.  I am forever grateful that Jesus does not leave me stranded!  When I mess up and send some hateful words into the atmosphere, and I humbly admit to my Papa that I have indeed sinned, again, He takes me right back!  It blows my mind.  What a gracious God I serve! 

I don’t ever want to pervert grace, don’t get me wrong.  I desire with everything in me to bring glory and honor to the One who deserves it everyday, and I know God looks at my heart.  When I ask for forgiveness and try (in His strength) to be conformed to His image, He looks past my failures into my heart.  Praise be to God Most High!! 

Will you join me in the fight against our depraved tongues?  Let’s be like Isaiah and admit that our tongues are sinful, but accept His cleansing.  Although the purification process through fire can be painful, we will be able to see our Creator’s reflection in us even more clearly than before.  Let’s take Jesus’ hand and show Satan Who’s boss!!!! 

The Future

Thank y’all so much for praying for Buckshot, he is home now and getting better every hour! 

The future.  Those are some pretty intimidating words for a 15 year old.  Especially a type A planner-likes-to-know-all-the-answers girl like me:). 

It seems like everyday someone asks me something like, “What college are you going to?” “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Do you know what you want to do?” 

I am blessed to live in blessed family in a blessed nation where the possibilities are endless for my future.  That also scares me, though.  I for sure like to have things all figured out.  I believe God has gifted me with the ability to organize things and plan well. There’s a balance, though.  I don’t want to plan my life, because my plans are the ugliest shade of pale compared to my Author’s plan for my life! 

Just so everyone knows, I don’t know if I want to go to college.  I don’t know what God has in store for me.  I believe He will reveal it to me in His timing. 

He HAS revealed to me that I will work with Eastern European special needs orphans in some way or another.  That’s a long story, but I believe that’s the direction He wants me to go.  I want to do what He wants me to do.

I also want to get married and have children and be a blessed among women type of mother.  I so desire to raise kids!  I want to stay home with them and be available to them 24/7.

I’m so glad all of these details about how everything fits together are not in my hands.  Up until a few weeks ago, the questions I would get would make me get real flustered.  A lump would come into my throat and I felt like if I talked about it, I would cry.  I’ve needed to make some decisions about school and things like that (because my current course load is somewhat dependant upon what direction I want to take for my future), and talking about them just about did me in.  I prayed, and I was prayed over.  I read some of my favorite chapters like Isaiah 51 and Psalms 139.  I wanted so badly to not feel so heavy about these decisions!  What I’ve learned is that He doesn’t want me to, and like a good Daddy He lifted them from me and gave me exactly what I was needing at that time. 

Anxiety is something I’ve had to combat my whole life.  While I have a bold spirit, anxiety about the “answers” always seems to creep in.  Just recently I have grabbed a hold of God’s many promises in His Word about this subject and have warred against anxiety with all my HIS strength.  Jesus has already won!  He has redeemed my heart from anxiety.  When that sick feeling overcomes my stomach and I feel like I might throw up, or when I feel so flustered I can’t even talk without crying, His promises are there.  He’s right there holding my arms up.  And I’m right there staring up into His eyes proclaiming what a magnificent King He is!  Praise is the key.  Through praise, chains are broken!  All blessing and honor and glory BELONG to my Papa, forever and ever, amen! 

So, for anyone who is struggling with “knowing the answers”, take heart.  Our good, good God is right there.  Just tell Him what’s up and praise His worthy name and He will NEVER EVER fail.  Don’t be afraid of failure (because I have a lot in my life) but ask Him for guidance.  He’s not going to spank you and put you in a time out!  True love casts out all fear, and if you’re scared to admit to God that you don’t have it all figured out, don’t be.  He already knows how you feel, and He wants us to cast all our burdens on Him.  His love is so immense.  He will pull you onto His lap and sing into your ear how precious you are to Him.  How the day you were born was a day to rejoice in heaven, for you bring Him such delight! 

I am taking my faith walk minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, and I know my God will come through.  I’m so excited for the plans He has in store!  When I won the mission trip to Guatemala,  I felt like God was calling me out and saying, “You, precious daughter, I want you to go to Guatemala!” It’s almost too much!  That kind of stuff just doesn’t happen unless God clearly did it.  It was a drawing with a bunch of names.  I’m just so excited about what He has in store.  I am forever thankful to my Savior for His blood.  Without it, I would surely die. 

My hardest time with anxiety is laying in bed trying to go to sleep.  My mind will not turn off and I mull over every detail of my life and try to figure everything out late into the night.  What I’ve found is listening to the Bible with the YouVersion App is awesome.  Something comes alive in me listening to His Word being read.  Also, getting a good Jesus Culture CD and listening to it as I fall asleep.  Worship music places my thoughts on true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy things. 

I know this post is all over the place, but I hope it was encouragement to someone out there!

This song has been on my heart lately, Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble by Delirious:

Did you feel the mountains tremble?
Did you hear the oceans roar?
When the people rose to sing of
Jesus Christ the risen one

Did you feel the people tremble?
Did you hear the singers roar?
When the lost began to sing of
Jesus Christ the risen one

And we can see that God you're moving
A mighty river through the nations
And young and old will turn to Jesus
Fling wide your heavenly gates
Prepare the way of the risen Lord

Open up the doors and let the music play
Let the streets resound with singing
Songs that bring your hope
Songs that bring your peace

Dancers who dance upon injustice
Did you feel the darkness tremble?
When all the saints join in one song
And all the streams flow as one river
To wash away our brokenness

And here we see that God you're moving
A time of Jubilee is coming
When young and old return to Jesus
Fling wide your heavenly gates
Prepare the way of the risen Lord

Let’s dance upon injustice today, my friends!!

 

 

I Won……

a mission trip to Guatemala!!!  You can click HERE to read all about it from my mom.

If you clicked to read the post my mom wrote about the trip, then you saw my reaction.  I was so excited!!  The past few weeks I have been wrestling with my future.  All of these questions are before me, and in my human nature, I’m trying to answer all of them and get a plan for the rest of my life.  This past weekend I let go and let God, and He GAVE me a trip to Guatemala!  I am blown away by His faithfulness and am continuing to trust that He’ll give me all the details and plans of the trip.  God has such an awesome plan for my life that I can’t see right now, but I’m excited for this next chapter!!  Thank You, Jesus!!!

A Little Devo

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  I sure did!  I was able to go to a women’s retreat for my birthday with my mom.  We rode with our friend, Bonnie (who was a speaker at the retreat), her mom, and her daughters, Emily, Bailey, and Abigail.  It was awesome.  I had a blast hanging out with my good friends Emily and Bailey! Here are some pics:

Emily, me, and Bailey

Emily and I (I love her!)

 

Now to the devo:

I read this verse the other morning and it hit me like a rock:

“Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, and plead for the widow.”

Isaiah 1:16-17

God told Isaiah to tell the Israelites this, because they had gotten so corrupt.  They had walked away from all of God’s statutes (again) and needed a Savior. 

What hit me is that God was just basically saying, “Here’s what my heart is, follow it”. 

Think about it.

Cease to do evil.  God is the opposite of evil.

Learn to do good.  God is all things good.

Seek justice.  He is the all time most just Judge ever.  He is the epitome of justice.

Rebuke the oppressor.  God rebukes Satan all the time, and the same power that raised Christ from the grave lives inside of us to do the same.

Defend the fatherless.  He says it over and over in His Word that this is a big deal to Him and desires us to do what He does.

Plead for the widow.  He wants us to plead for the widow and take care of her, because that is His heart, according to other verses.

I think that if we do all of this, encased in love (because without it, these things would be nothing) we would be accurately following God’s heart. 

Just a cool thing God showed me!

May you be blessed from the tip of your head to the soles of your feet today, my friend.

My Story Part 3

Our family now had seven kids, Naomi, Parker, Meribeth, Mattie, Sawyer, Asher, and Kiefer.  Naomi and Asher were still adjusting in November when God surprised us with Ella and Selah.

Ella and Selah’s story is pretty crazy, you can read it HERE.  I had always wanted a baby sister (doesn’t every girl?), and so all of my dreams came true with Selah Karis.  She and I have a special bond and I love her almost like my daughter (is that creepy…..?).  I loved every minute of rocking her to sleep and playing on the floor with her.  I remember sitting next to her Bumbo seat while she was watching Barney, reading my Bible every night.  She was just my little love!!  Even though she had THESE diagnoses, I still loved her recklessly.  She ended up undergoing skull reconstruction (the last picture of her is in the hospital for that surgery).  We also had to figure out ethnic hair with Ella.  Man, that was an uphill climb! 

My little Bug Bug (Selah):

 

 

During this time, God was really teaching me about worship.  We started going to a new church after Chrissie died because it was too hard on my dad to sit in the same sanctuary where her celebration of life was.  I was soaking all of the teaching up.  I joined a worship dance team and God birthed a love of worship in my heart.  He was revealing His Holy Spirit to me, also.  Then God called us to another church in the summer of 2011, and we still go to that church.  He was taking me down a road to intimacy with Him.  Now, my eyes are still being opened all the time and I have SO much to learn it is ridiculous, but during that time our relationship was deepening every day. 

God asked our family to host two Ukrainian boys in the summer of ‘11, Vlad and Dima.  That was an amazing summer.  11 kids running around in the Texas heat, it was pretty sweet.  I still love ol’ Vladdie and Dim-ka.  They will always be in my heart.

We believed God asked us to adopt them, and both Vlad and Dima wanted us to adopt them, so after they went back to Ukraine at the end of the summer, we started the process to adopt them. 

I had the privilege to go with my dad to Ukraine in December of 2011 to go bring Vlad and Dima home (so we thought).  When we got there, we were told they were no longer available for adoptions.  They put a bunch of pictures of other kids in front of my dad and basically said, “Pick some different ones”.  We went back to the apartment and were desperately trying to figure out what to do.  After a series of crazy events, God led us to Conner and Cooper.  They were two boys who had Down syndrome living in a dark place.  They were both so tiny from malnourishment, and we feared Conner wasn’t going to make it very much longer.

Dad and I flew home on December 21st, and on December 23rd, my Nana suddenly and unexpectedly died after having a heart attack while she was alone in her home.  That Christmas was the worst ever.  I was battling jet lag (it was way worst coming home), Selah was not sleeping through the night (the beginning of her sleep disorder, I’m talking staying up for hours on end), my Nana had just died, and we didn’t get to even “do” Christmas until the 31st.  I remember Christmas day was a Sunday, and the night before Selah was up for a LONG time and Meribeth and I switched off all night because we were trying to let Mom sleep after Nana had died.  We walked into church dead tired.  Not even functioning.  Blah. Then a few days later I spoke at my own grandma’s funeral.  Again, not trying to complain, this was just a pretty stinky week.

A big part of the next few months was Selah’s sleeping disorder.  Mom and Dad left to get Conner and Cooper in January, so Meribeth and I switched off staying up with Selah every other night.  Selah would go to bed really late (because we couldn’t get her to go to sleep earlier) then she would wake up, and we would rock her for anywhere from one hour to five hours.  Then she would usually wake up another time for a while.  But there was really no pattern.  I remember trying to do Chemistry after staying up all night, and just being blank.  A 14 year old really just can’t function like that.  But God!  He really did give me the strength to get through that.  I was able to get an A in every subject that year and eventually Mom did come back.  And with two new blessings!

Conner and Cooper are awesome. I love Down syndrome.  Coop-Coop and Ner are the nick-names I’ve given them, and I can’t get enough of their love.  Sure, Cooper’s breath smells pretty bad (because he always has his mouth open, which breed nasty-smelling bacteria), and Conner has spit up on me more than I can count, but those hugs are worth it. 

Me with the littles:

Fast forward past an awesome summer, some more sleepless nights, Asher leaving our family (after two years of respite, he returned to his original adoptive family), and a lot of adjusting since Conner and Cooper were 7-year-olds, but developmentally at about 6-month-olds.  God led us to an awesome sleep specialist who put her on an awesome sleep cocktail which has allowed her to have more predictable nights!  Which means SLEEP for us (a chorus of angels singing “Halleluiah”)!  We now have ten kids in our home, and four new kids in our school room (we are doing respite homeschooling for another family).  It’s been a wild ride, but I wouldn’t change any of it (ok, I would choose to have Chrissie by my side right now).  I will continue to strive to bring honor and glory to my Papa God, love my neighbor as myself, and be like Jesus.

I have a whole lot more to learn, but hey (as my favorite Uncle Si would say), I’m only 15!