Our life is a little chaotic right now. It's a long story, but we are moving much quicker than we thought we would and if all goes right (does it ever??????), we will be moving this weekend. I am already exhausted thinking of the work that is coming, but I am excited at the thought of a new adventure. This really has been a time of trust for me.....which leads me to my point.
I learn more and more about this crazy life each day from just having a daughter. She is imaginative, curious and stubborn. I re-learn how to be fun from her and she is also a mirror for me to see the negative behaviors I have that she reflects. I often ask God to show me why He did things the way that He did in the matter of her birth and adoption. To me, a feeble minded human, it seems to me that He did things a little backwards. I can make sense and be okay with her being adopted. Reasonable enough to me. But, I start losing my wits when I think about why He waited two years for her to get here with us. I wonder why she had to go through the painful situations that she did and not be in the safety of our home. I don't know that I will ever know the true reasons for any of these things on this side of Heaven, but I do keep asking them.
About a week or so ago, some of these questions popped into my mind once again. I was driving to work and listening to the sounds of a happy preschooler telling her Barbie to "look me in the eye and don't move a muscle." (I know where she heard those words and I'm hoping that the I love you's that she hears stick too!) The normal questions wandered a little bit to my own self and the questions I have about why I had to go through the pain and heartache of infertility. The Holy Spirit took me through a series of "remember when's" in my mind where I traced back my grief to a span of about eight months where my grief was so bad I am suprised I made it through. I lost friendships in the middle of this grief, my marriage was not in the greatest place and I felt distant and abandoned by God. Not fun. It was the closest to physical pain I have ever felt that didn't quite make it there.
So as I traced these memories, I remembered a journal entry I wrote at the time asking God why I felt so displaced. I wrote, "I feel as though I have a child, but I am seperated from them and can't find my way." Immediately when I remembered those words, the Holy Spirit reminded me of the year that those eight months of heartache took place. 2004. Raylen was born August 13th of that year and obviously her birth mother was pregnant with her the first eight months of that year. I was astounded. The Spirit spoke to me not about the why of our being seperated, but more about how we were seperated. He showed me that just like my individual life was predestined by Him (Psalm 139:16), my life as a mother to Raylen and our relationship together was predestined by Him as well (Ephesians 1:11). I shiver in awe even now at that thought.
The Holy Spirit affirmed my "motherly instincts" that knew there was a part of me that existed but wasn't there and showed me that He had placed that in my heart at exactly the right time. The most important thing that He showed me was that I don't need to know the why's all the time, if ever. I need to trust the One who knows how everything works together.
So, I hope to hide this lesson in my heart so that during this present chaos and the inevitable chaos in the future, I will trust the heart of God who places in my heart the desire to follow and trust Him for every how and why.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
Music that nurtures my soul....
Let now the weak say I have strength
By the Spirit of power that raised Christ from the dead
And now the poor stand and confess
That my portion is Him and I'm more than blessed
Let now our hearts burn with a flame
A fire consuming all for Your Son's holy name
And with the heavens we declare
You are our King
We love You Lord, we worship You
You are our God, You alone are good
Let now Your church shine as the bride
That You saw in your heart as You offered up Your life
Let now the lost be welcomed home
By the saved and redeemed those adopted as Your own
You asked your Son to carry this
The heavy cross our weight of sin
I love You Lord, I worship You
Hope which was lost, now stands renewed
I give my life to honor this
The love of Christ, the Savior King
Friday, January 4, 2008
Happy New Year!
I'm really behind on blogging since Christmas. Rather than write a long journal of all that we saw and did, here are our favorite photos to share.....
Thursday, December 13, 2007
A Tucker Lady Tradition
Each year, the women from my mom's side of the family gather for an ornament exchange. This year, the party was at my grandmother's house. Last year we couldn't have the party because she was in the hospital from December 5th through the holidays with a near fatal brain aneurysm. Here is a picture from our evening. 
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Vulnerable
Webster's dictionary defines the word vulnerable in two ways: 1. capable of being physically or emotionally wounded and 2. open to attack or damage.
Yesterday, I understood more about those definitions than I wanted to. Raylen and I went to my grandmother's house like we normally do once a week to visit and run errands with her. Memaw and I were particularly preoccupied yesterday with a Christmas project we are trying to get done. Raylen was not feeling well and I decided to lay her down on Memaw's bed. A few minutes into her "laying down", I heard her playing with Memaw's jewelry on her dresser. "That's okay", I thought. Harmless enough. A few minutes later, Raylen came to me and said, "That gum is shooey", meaning she didn't like some sort of gum. I hadn't given her gum and didn't know what she was talking about, so I asked her where the gum was and she led me to a little bottle that had been tucked in with Memaw's watch on her dresser. The bottle held Nitrogliceren pills that we all knew was for Memaw's heart during an attack or emergency. I panicked. I don't know why, but I called my mom first. She said go to the ER NOW! I scooped Raylen up and tossed her in her seat. We sped (yes sped) to the closest hospital, all the way telling her to try to spit up whatever she had in her tummy.
When we got to the hospital, I told the orderly checking in what happened. A nurse overheard me and took us right in as she talked to someone on her radio about Raylen. Again, I was panicked. In an instant, Raylen was in a gown, hooked up to all sorts of moniters and I was in tears. As we waited, the Holy Spirit spoke very clear to me.
Looking at Raylen, so vulnerable in that bed, me so incapable of stepping in to save her, I began to understand something about God that I never realized before. He had made a choice to make Himself vulnerable for us. As I write that now, I realize that I had heard that before the Holy Spirit spoke to me yesterday, but maybe I never really got it before. Maybe it was more of a catch phrase of sorts. What I mean is this: Each day, we live in a fallen world. We are keenly aware that this is NOT paradise. We go ahead and have children, knowing in the back of our minds that things can happen to them that won't be pleasant. We haven't experienced a life without anxiety, pressure or trial and so we trudge on. God, on the otherhand, has lived for eternity in a level of peace my mind cannot imagine. He is not someone created, but rather He the creator. He is on the throne of all of time and yet, He chose vulnerablity. As a mother, I can see that God made Himself truly vulnerable by allowing His own son to be vulnerable as a baby and man in this world. He not only knew the joys that a child's life would hold, but He knew the days that Jesus would be sick, that He would have His feelings hurt by another child and of course, God knew the day that Jesus would know the ultimate shame and pain of taking on our sin and dying on the cross for us. Wow. John 1:14 says, "The Word (Jesus)became flesh and dwelt among us..." It could have easily have read The word became vulnerable and dwelt among us. He chose that for us. Chose. We do in spite of, but God chose. Would you choose to let your child go through any pain even for the good of another? I don't think I would. And the whole picture is this: God's choice to send Jesus as our Saviour wasn't an afterthought after we had messed everything up in the Garden of Eden. Jesus wasn't plan B. In contrast, Jesus has always been plan A because God knew the outcome of our days before He set the world in motion. And so again, God chose to be vulnerable when He could have thrown the whole plan out before it began. Amazing.
This season and the little manger scenes in our house becomes tangible when I understand the heart and intentions of the God that loved me enough to become vulnerable so I can experience a peace in Him this world cannot offer. Be blessed to know that the same is true for you.
By the way, Raylen is great. The doctor doesn't think she got any real amount in her. We are very thankful....
Yesterday, I understood more about those definitions than I wanted to. Raylen and I went to my grandmother's house like we normally do once a week to visit and run errands with her. Memaw and I were particularly preoccupied yesterday with a Christmas project we are trying to get done. Raylen was not feeling well and I decided to lay her down on Memaw's bed. A few minutes into her "laying down", I heard her playing with Memaw's jewelry on her dresser. "That's okay", I thought. Harmless enough. A few minutes later, Raylen came to me and said, "That gum is shooey", meaning she didn't like some sort of gum. I hadn't given her gum and didn't know what she was talking about, so I asked her where the gum was and she led me to a little bottle that had been tucked in with Memaw's watch on her dresser. The bottle held Nitrogliceren pills that we all knew was for Memaw's heart during an attack or emergency. I panicked. I don't know why, but I called my mom first. She said go to the ER NOW! I scooped Raylen up and tossed her in her seat. We sped (yes sped) to the closest hospital, all the way telling her to try to spit up whatever she had in her tummy.
When we got to the hospital, I told the orderly checking in what happened. A nurse overheard me and took us right in as she talked to someone on her radio about Raylen. Again, I was panicked. In an instant, Raylen was in a gown, hooked up to all sorts of moniters and I was in tears. As we waited, the Holy Spirit spoke very clear to me.
Looking at Raylen, so vulnerable in that bed, me so incapable of stepping in to save her, I began to understand something about God that I never realized before. He had made a choice to make Himself vulnerable for us. As I write that now, I realize that I had heard that before the Holy Spirit spoke to me yesterday, but maybe I never really got it before. Maybe it was more of a catch phrase of sorts. What I mean is this: Each day, we live in a fallen world. We are keenly aware that this is NOT paradise. We go ahead and have children, knowing in the back of our minds that things can happen to them that won't be pleasant. We haven't experienced a life without anxiety, pressure or trial and so we trudge on. God, on the otherhand, has lived for eternity in a level of peace my mind cannot imagine. He is not someone created, but rather He the creator. He is on the throne of all of time and yet, He chose vulnerablity. As a mother, I can see that God made Himself truly vulnerable by allowing His own son to be vulnerable as a baby and man in this world. He not only knew the joys that a child's life would hold, but He knew the days that Jesus would be sick, that He would have His feelings hurt by another child and of course, God knew the day that Jesus would know the ultimate shame and pain of taking on our sin and dying on the cross for us. Wow. John 1:14 says, "The Word (Jesus)became flesh and dwelt among us..." It could have easily have read The word became vulnerable and dwelt among us. He chose that for us. Chose. We do in spite of, but God chose. Would you choose to let your child go through any pain even for the good of another? I don't think I would. And the whole picture is this: God's choice to send Jesus as our Saviour wasn't an afterthought after we had messed everything up in the Garden of Eden. Jesus wasn't plan B. In contrast, Jesus has always been plan A because God knew the outcome of our days before He set the world in motion. And so again, God chose to be vulnerable when He could have thrown the whole plan out before it began. Amazing.
This season and the little manger scenes in our house becomes tangible when I understand the heart and intentions of the God that loved me enough to become vulnerable so I can experience a peace in Him this world cannot offer. Be blessed to know that the same is true for you.
By the way, Raylen is great. The doctor doesn't think she got any real amount in her. We are very thankful....
Friday, December 7, 2007
Happy St. Nicholas Day
We started a tradition last year of visiting Santa Claus (all be it at the mall), on December 6th to mark St. Nicholas day. If you don't know about St. Nicholas, he was the inspiration for our very commercialized version of Santa Claus. Read about St. Nicholas here http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=38 and enjoy our token photo for this year.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
A New Tradition
I don't know if you were watching Good Morning America this morning, but they kicked off a national campaign to collect donated coats for homeless people today. Ben Affleck was there donating some gently used coats of his daughter's and Burlington Coat Factory brought 300 new coats to donate. Burlington Coat Factory is also allowing their stores to be drop off zones for the coats. All of that is fine and good, but to tell you the truth, I almost turned the channel away. Almost, until I saw the montage of the people they are hoping to help.
Most of you probably know that Raylen was homeless for the first year and a half of her life. She was actually one of "those people" that we feel so disconnected from living in a homeless shelter in our prosperous country. It is very difficult for me as her mother to imagine that my little girl was in that position ever. We have a puffy green coat that is getting a little small for Raylen now, but still it hangs in her closet and will forever as far as I am concerned. Raylen got the coat her first Thanksgiving, I believe. Her Aunt Ro and Uncle Mike went to visit her in the Ft. Worth homeless shelter where she lived with her birth mother. Ro was so sad and moved to see that Raylen didn't have a coat in the cold weather. She went right out and bought that puffy green one and took it straight back to her in the shelter. Suprisingly, through the many ups and downs in Raylen's little life, that coat managed to stay with her right to her permanent home with us.
Today, when I saw the pictures of those children and families in the shelters, I was moved too thinking about my little girl having been one of those kids. I am so thankful for the kindness of Ro and Mike for making sure that she had that coat when I could not.
So, thank you Ro and Mike and here is a picture to document the coat that Raylen and I have given this year in your honor to someone else who's waiting for their miracle.
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