Luxurious Hope

When I was in high school, my friend Shelby lived in a house with a hot tub. It was outside on the back deck, and one wintry evening, she invited a bunch of friends to use it. I remember how fun it was to race the few freezing steps from the back door in our swim suits to the steamy hot water and jump in. Foggy clouds of condensation encircled us, and we laughed and talked and had so much fun.

Until we had to get out and run those few freezing steps back into the house, soaking wet.


I don't have a hot tub in my home, but I have created the cheap-o-hack version. On a cold wintry day, when the temperature is hovering around zero, I take the hottest shower I can stand...with the bathroom window wide open.

It's luxurious.

The added bonus is that I get a great view of our backyard. Our bathroom window is up high, but since I'm tall I can manage to peer out and see what's going on.

This morning, as the outside thermometer showed a giant goose egg--zero degrees--not too much was going on in the back yard.

The trees are brown and bare. The ground is covered with last fall's dead leaves. There are no children laughing or playing or climbing or swinging or sliding.

But I didn't see the barrenness. I saw this:

I was day dreaming about our Annual Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt.

I remembered all the children listening so intently as they heard the story about the empty tomb.

The kids, perched in the clubhouse, discovering the treats inside their plastic eggs.

And this.

New life.

Hope, pushing through the dead leaves and stray sticks, declaring the goodness of springtime. Of God.

For the past two and a half years, I've dreamed about our three Ethiopian children joining us for this wonderful celebration of Christ's resurrection. Of spring. Of all-things-new. Of neighborhood and community and friendship.

And this year...finally...

They.will.be.here.

Lord willing and the Ethiopian-creek-don't-rise, they will be here!

And that gives me hope. HOPE. And joy. And a heart filled with song and toes-a-tapping.

I can't stop smiling.

More than four million orphans in Ethiopia. But this spring, that number will be four million (MINUS THREE).

Hope. The best gift ever.

Today is Christmas in Ethiopia, and my wish for you is that you'll have hope as well. Don't stop believing. It may seem like you've been praying for that thing forever, but hold on.

Hold on to hope.

Melkam Genna. (Merry Christmas!)

Black and White

I'm sitting in Starbucks, where I should be working on a freelance project, but am instead staring at three little faces on my computer screen.

Joy and sorrow. Elation and grief. Every adoption is borne in tragedy and loss. A mother dies. A father dies. Children are left without the most basic need: someone to care for them. Someone to love them.

But God. ... He places the lonely in families. He cares for the orphans. He makes beauty from ashes. He turns mourning into dancing.

Today 168 pages of documentation have been sent to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Fifty-six pages for each child we are adopting...proof that they are indeed orphans. Testimony from witnesses who know their family and can verify their parents are dead and they are in need of care. Birth certificates. Death certificates. Official translations.

Ken and I knew much of the children's history, but there's something about seeing their parent's death certificate in black and white.

A  mother died. I wonder what her final thoughts were. I try not to think about it too much. The thought of it is almost too much for my heart to bear.

But joy... The documentation also includes baby pictures of our three Ethiopian children, pictures I had never seen before. They are black and white, and photocopied on the world's worst photocopy machine. But I see their eyes. I see their little ears and mouths and all the things a mother loves.

Tears of joy, tears of sadness.

The next part of the process usually takes 12 weeks, and then we're getting really close to the Big Day. Twelve weeks from today would be just before Christmas.

I can't think of a better gift.