There Goes the Honeymoon {So Much for Hawaii}

Dear John,

It wasn't much, but it was something beautiful. More beautiful than I had ever dreamed.

Two college kids just having graduated from university who fell mad into love, we didn't have a lot of money for a super-fancy wedding, but we had enough to make a day and evening we would remember even ten years later, today, on our tenth wedding anniversary.

It's a memory that almost didn't form, though, because we thought to ourselves maybe we should jump a plane, invite our closest people and get married on a beach in Hawaii.

But we couldn't do it; more than we wanted the sunset vows of forever and the sand between our toes, we wanted our people, all of our people to share our day. I know you really wanted to go, but you knew what mattered more to me ...

And when the whole thing was said and done, when we had vowed our love and loyalty before God and family and friends and we had danced until our feet couldn't dance another step, we were glad we didn't go to Hawaii; we were glad we stayed with our people. And we reasoned, we could always go to Hawaii for our honeymoon ... well, a very belated one after we'd worked for awhile and saved some money.

We were going to make it there for our anniversary; remember how your dad even bought us books? I laugh now thinking about those guides. We'd scoped out which island we wanted to visit. We looked at flights. We talked about what we'd do and see. We saved money.

And then two little pink lines on a pregnancy test told us that we'd be celebrating our second wedding anniversary with a newborn who wanted to party all night in our apartment instead of on the beaches of that far-away island we'd dreamed about for the past two years.

Life happens while you're living, and ours was no different, was it? I remember that we thought -- why pause now with one child?  Why wait to add another to the mix? Because we were mad in love with each other and mad in love with that baby boy and knew we'd fall mad into more love with another little person ... And where are we going to put these people anyway, we asked.  So we bought a house and made it a home instead of buying plane tickets to take us away from home ...

Years passed, as they do, and you began dreaming aloud, saying you wanted to whisk me off to celebrate our ten-year anniversary on those very beaches we'd thought of when we first said we wanted to do forever together.

But instead of planning our ten-year anniversary, the honeymoon we always dreamed we have, we began planning a trip that would take us around the world to bring home two very special little girls who have become our daughters. Because, you know, we went and fell in love again. Not just with each other or the children we'd brought into the world through our love, but with a crazy-amazing God who had a plan much grander than we dreamed. We fell in love with Him, and His heart for caring for the least of these and with two little ladies who we just cannot any longer imagine life without.

Instead of booking airfare to Hawaii, and you were just so close to making it a reality this year, we are instead booking plane tickets that will soon take you back around the globe to make this family theirs forever.

And I have to tell you, here we are again. With our people. And it's so much better than Hawaii.

So this isn't actually a story about Hawaii. But rather it's a story about what's happened instead of Hawaii.

And it's so much more than what I could have dreamed for us. It's so much more beautiful than all the beauty I'd hoped we'd have glimpsed on that long-awaited honeymoon we've still yet to take.

Tonight, on our tenth anniversary, we laughed uproariously around the table as we played mom-and-dad-wedding trivia, we roasted marshmallows around the fire and watched the chaos that ensued in the aftermath of sugar, snuggled with each of the littles before bed, stole a longer kiss in front of the sink and curled up in bed next to our oldest daughter to pray before she drifted to sleep.

As we watched the star-reflections on her ceiling flicker from the lamplight on her dresser, I said I thought this view was better than the one we would have caught in Hawaii.

And I meant every word I said.

There's no place I'd rather be in the world, than in the thick of this adventure, right here, right now, than being with you, with our people.

I love you. Happy tenth anniversary. May God give us many many more, as He's done with everything else in our life.

Hosting: It Never Gets Easier

It never gets easier. 

Even after three times, the weight of putting a child you love, a child who will return to her home country, on an airplane at the end of a hosting period is so heavy on my heart that it feels like that very heart might fall clear out of my chest. 

I spent the morning tending to our second host daughter's heart after spending a month coming to know and love her, all while knowing that I would need God to tend to mine after her plane departed. I spent the morning softly stroking her hair as she leaned against during the car ride to the airport. I spent it silently praying to be reunited ... someday. Sooner? Later? Never? It's not in my hands. Governments and courts and also she will make decisions now for the rest of her life, and I quietly entrusted this child, this daughter of my heart but not my womb, to the only Father who will never let her go. 

It's not easy, this whole hosting thing. 

But I love her. 

She stops before she boards the plane and turns to look at us again. I can't not go to her; tears in my eyes, I hug her again before she disappears from my sight. 

She boards, and my heart breaks under the heavy. 

I cry long and hard into my scarf, shoulder shaking just a few feet away from the boarding walk.

Still, even amidst the heartache, I wouldn't change anything. 

I would do it all again, time after time after time. I would cry all of the tears, feel the heavy ache of departure time and again because I know one thing is true: we never lose deposits of love. 

No matter how hard the separation, the trials, the pain of goodbye, the hardship of living with distance in between, the love remains. 

It remains when it isn't readily accepted.

It remains when arms cannot hold. 

It remains when hearts hurt 

and when hearts turn away

and when miles spread out thick in between.

Before I held our girls in our arms, they were only those whom I'd read about in articles regarding the orphan crisis. Before I held our girls in our arms, I was certain that I could never host a child or foster a child because how would I ever go on after these children left my home? 

I now wonder at how much richer my life is, how much deeper our family runs for having known and having loved these girls. I now wonder at how much bigger God is and how terribly small my own little understanding of what loving the least of these actually meant ... and there's nothing easy about it. 

There's nothing easy about entering into the distress of the fatherless and coming alongside people who have suffered great brokenness. To be clear, many of the kids are so lovable, our girls both have are so lovable, but their stories are heartbreaking. And there's nothing easy about being even a small part of binding up bits of brokenness ... but love prevails. 

Love, the hard, messy, kind of I-choose-to-love-you love, remains. 

It stands strong in all of the pain, and each deposit made in love is secure. 

So, no ... this never gets easier.

But I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that I don't want to live an easy life; I want to live a rich one, deposits of love securely made and stored safely in our hearts. 

God-Sized Dreams: Cracked Wide Open

For days now the air has hung heavy in the midwestern sky, dripping daily with gray and rain.

My youngest son asks where the sun went and if that is it -- is summer over?

I assure him it wasn't even though I don't really know; it's only August, I reasoned. But really I only am following the patterns of seasons I've known for 31 years. I tell him we could pray we'll have more summer sun to soak up before autumn emerges.

The forecast doesn't agree. Rain and more rain on the horizon from now until as far as forecasts stretch.

We wake this morning to more of the same.

And it doesn't just sprinkle; it pours and it thunders and the whole day is lost to more of the same.

These days have been like a mirror of our adoption journey for the last week and day since our communication came to a screaming halt with the girl we already think of as daughter. She is silent with me day after day after day.

I am a broken record of reassuring love, and still she is silent with me.

I pray this evening --

as my little family curls up on the couch together to watch a movie

as a friend messages me that she has witnessed so many tiny miracles at the school where our kids all attend, whereour girl would attend if and when she comes home, that would make it possible for her to enter in smoothly, comfortably

-- I pray

that the clouds

the sky

the silence

her heart

that it all might just crack wide open, shine something glorious and beautiful. That there might still be something lovely left yet.

The light shifts in the corner of my eye, so drastically that I immediately rise from my seat and walk to the front door

to see it all cracked wide open -- glowing something beyond bold-beautiful.