Category

Family

GOTCHA

By | Adoption, Family, Uncategorized

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5 years ago today.

We walked into the orphanage, in the middle of the Congo, and just like that, in what felt like the blink of an eye, they were handing her to me.  All the days and months of waiting felt short, like a flash.

Her eyes were wide as she gazed at mine for the first time.

She clinched my arm and laid her head down on my chest.  Not in a “I fully trust you” kind of way, not even in a “I know who you are” kind of way…how could she have known…she had never seen a white person, much less a crazy one with a mohawk that was smooching her face over and over again.  It was all a little much.

I took her, weeping and kissing and laughing…I’m telling you…all the emotions.  I laid her down in my lap, counted her fingers and toes, you know, just a check.  I was in awe of her and I’m not sure she knew what to think of me.

I replay the scene over and over in my head on a regular basis.  It is so sacred to me.  That moment, frozen in time, protected by my heart, always there when I want to relive it.

It is sacred.  It is weird.  It is beautiful and it is painful.  That moment is the sum of all feelings and emotions shoved into the span of about 5 minutes.

I rounded the corner, locked eyes with her, she came into my arms and the rest is history.

But I am so often struck by what REALLY happened at that moment.

What we could see if we had eyes to see.

What really happened in that one sweeping hand off, from one life to a brand new one:

Darkness lost!

The enemy lost his grip on my little one.  The plans He had for her demise…well he had to lay those plans at the feet of Jesus.

Old to new.  Death to life.  Darkness to light.

Hungry to filled.  Lonely to surrounded.  Abandoned to found.

Gotcha.


It makes more sense when you look at it in this light, that this moment isn’t just a baby getting a family or a family getting a baby.

Death gives way to life in this moment.  Eternity shifting for one heart, the tug of war ending for the right to this child’s life.

The weeks leading up to that moment were, and are, as we approach QueenE’s hand-off, some of the hardest, most hell-fighting weeks of my life.

The Lord has kindly put these words to these past few weeks:

THIS IS THE FINAL PUSH OF LABOR.

Babies do not come into this world without pain, without effort, without pushing and fighting.  Mamas are warriors as they grip tight the hands of their loved ones and make that final push…the one that brings their wee one into the light of day.

The one that brings life right out into the open.

PUSHING.

That’s what this feels like.  As I sit, 6 days from watching another rebirth moment happen for my QueenE, I feel the tug of war intensifying.  I feel the enemy coming in from all sides with distraction, discouragement, financial “surprises”, health concerns…you name it, we are walking through it.

6 more days until that leap in my heart, when they round the corner and there she is, all that I’ve dreamed she would be.

6 more days until I feel the warmth of her skin on mine for the first time.

6 more days until the enemy has to tuck his tail and run…because it is not His day…not anymore for this little one.  He has lost.

And I will breath in deep, and exhale out as my heart exclaims, “Gotcha.”

You are mine.  We are yours.

And what I know now, because of watching my Nima be raised from the dead, is that what happens on the other side of that miracle hand-off, is something I will never get over.


I’ve been thinking.  Is this how our heavenly Father feels?

The days, weeks and years that lead up to our surrender, to that moment where we look to Him and say “I can’t do this anymore”, and that eternity shaking pass off happens; when we go from dead to alive, from old to new, are those days heart wrenching days?

I have to believe that God’s Papa-heart aches strongly for His kids that haven’t found His arms yet.

He knows what happens on the other side of that pass off.  The moment we look over our shoulder as we walk away from all we’ve ever known into the glorious unknown of what He has for us… His heart must leap with knowing just how good it’s about to get.

And this doesn’t just happen once.  Because our hearts are prone to wander…and sin is so sneaky and attractive…we experience His GOTCHA moment when we allow every part of us to be redeemed with each passing 24 hours.

Ours is a constant saving, a constant redeeming, a never ending deep calling until deep.  Securely in His grips, saved by His mercy, but so prone to run away.

Gotcha.  Again.

Gotcha…even more this time.

He has got us.  Always has and always will.


Friend reading this,  I don’t know where I find you today.

But I pray that if you don’t know Jesus….like REALLY KNOW HIM…that you would find Him today.

He is leaning over heaven, aching to have your whole heart…and if you look at your life you can probably see his thumbprint all over it…as He’s been moving heaven and earth to get your attention.

Maybe you know Him, or you’ve known Him forever…and you’ve forgotten Him, forgotten what it feels like to be swept up by His Father hands and carried out of the mess you’re in into all the best that He has for you.

Maybe you’re hungry, starving really; lonely, isolated, cut off, abandoned.

Wherever you find yourself today, know that He is aching to have YOUR WHOLE HEART.

He has already conquered the death that is in you.

Simply lift your head, raise your hands and surrender.  Stop fighting, stop fretting, stop trying to forge on ahead, an orphan heart with no place to call home, because that is not who you are.

He’s GOTCHA.


“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”  1 John 3:1

Naughty & Brave

By | Adoption, Family, Uncategorized

So friends, I have the honor AGAIN of having a guest on my blog today!

These guests this month have been so encouraging and challenging but they have also drawn attention to the fact that I am a social media stalker….it is a problem…

My Insta-friend Katelyn will be answering some questions today on the blog about parenting, adoption and loving a kiddo from a hard place!

I stumbled on Katelyn’s instagram in the middle of the night one night as I was wide awake scrolling through the #chinaadoption hashtag.  Before choosing to adopt from China, this became a habit of mine….my heart was being pulled to China but I had so many fears about the special needs adoption route.  I would scroll through picture after picture, almost looking for something that would settle my heart down and show me that I could do it!  That I could parent a special need child!  That China wasn’t too big and scary for me!

And Katelyn’s feed DID JUST THAT.

A.  SHE’S GORGEOUS….like mama-model kind of pretty!  Awesome style and an amazing sense of humor.  I, of course, decided immediately that we would, in fact, be besties.

B.  HER DAUGHTER, WILLA, IS STOP-YOU-IN-YOUR-TRACKS GORGEOUS.  The hubby was instantly obsessed with little Willa, and you will be too!

C.  Katelyn was honest in her posts.  Honest about adoption and Willa’s special need, honest about the agony of the wait, the nerves about travel…the whole of it.

There wasn’t this puppies-and-rainbows feel to her instagram… I felt like she was giving me the real picture….or at least what can be shown on Insta….which I am well aware is a sliver of reality.

And there’s a truth we are going to pull from her interview today that I believe is so rich and so essential for our hearts, no matter if we’re mamas or not.

So, friends, meet my friend Katelyn Fuson.  (@katelynfuson over on the ole’ Instagram)

Katelyn, tell us a little about you and your hubby’s journey into adoption.

My husband (Chad) and I decided to adopt in December 2013 after seeing a video for a non- profit orphan advocacy group during the intermission of a Christmas concert at the Ryman in Nashville. The non-profit was Show Hope started by Christian musician, Stephen Curtis Chapman and his family.We’d been married for about 3.5 years at his point and were not having success with starting a family biologically. Earlier that year, we had started down the medical route, but decided in late Fall to take a pause before considering IVF in 2014.

It was during that pause that God began to speak.

He spoke directly to each of our hearts as we watched the short video that December night, though neither of us mentioned anything about it until two days later.

On the Sunday following concert, we found ourselves listening to a sermon that “just so happened” to be on James 1:27. God wasn’t just going to “call us,” I think He decided to dazzle us a bit with His Goodness.

Still not really knowing if the other was thinking any of the same thoughts, we went to lunch just like every other Sunday. Over that meal, we spoke our thoughts to each other. We were suprisingly on the same page. And just before I had to leave to head to work, I asked Chad where he thought our child might be. He mentioned the video and said he assumed she was in China.

That statement must have been Kingdom’s cue, because, like clock work, a family we’d never met was seated directly beside our table. I looked over and noticed two black- haired beauties with their light-haired family. I looked more intensely. They were Asian. Of course they were, right? And then one-last glance unveiled an “only-God” moment like I’d never experienced before. They weren’t “a” family with adopted girls from China, they were “the” family… the Chapman family… the exact family from the video two nights before. I could barely breathe.

I had to leave.


Oh man, how amazing.  One of the coolest things to experience is God speaking to you, by any means necessary, on behalf of the broken in our world.  The fact that he “dazzles” us with His goodness and speaks to us in so many unique ways…paying special attention to detail…is amazing in itself.  But it’s a whole other ball game when He is calling hearts to fight for justice,  He will stop at nothing to get our attention, because He knows our obedience will equal a rescued life for the one He’s calling us to. SO GOOD…that will preach my friend.

So, fast forward to the day that you met Willa.  Tell us a little bit about her and about that day.

“Naughty and Brave.” Those were the words given to described Yang Ling Xia on her orphanage file the morning she became our daughter. We laughed and worried a bit, so unbelievably-nervous about becoming parents.  We definitely needed a little humor. “Naughty and brave,” I read those words over and over. Honestly, I was a bit relieved. She sounded more like a Fuson than I was ever expecting.

She sounded fun… and fierce… but also what was I getting myself into?!?

Now, knowing our Willa James Fuson, those descriptive words are humorously accurate, though I prefer  “wild” to “naughty.” Sure, her antics get her into trouble every few minutes or so, but our Willa’s spirit brings undeniable light into every room, to every face. Seriously, it doesn’t matter if it’s checking out at the grocery store, Willa is making friends, including everyone, and exerting all of her opinions along the way.

She is incredible. I can’t believe I get to be her mother/I hope I survive being her mama.

Naughty (Wild) and Brave can be a world-shaking combination in the hands of Jesus!  It takes a little wild and a whole lotta brave to chase after Jesus.  

Willa’s special need was a cleft lip.  Can you tell us what it was like to process that special need?

Finding out about and processing Willa’s special need was like cutting an onion in half.

There was no slowly peeling back the layers… there I was… open… exposed,  and putrid. In the days after first viewing her file and seeing her photos, I felt like a truly crazy person. In moments, I was confident, excited, full of love and thankful for the amazing gift of this child.

Other moments, I was terrified, nauseous and completely unsure I was the right fit to walk with her down this road.

“She needs a mom who already has other kids and knows what they’re doing,” I would tell myself. “Most people wanting to adopt wouldn’t have any hesitation to adopt a baby that beautiful. I am scared. What’s wrong with me?”

For 8.5 days, I wrestled with God.

Chad and I were road tripping through Southern Utah for the majority of those long days. I remember looking up at the breathtaking mountains in awe of God’s design. “How Great Thou Art” continually played through my head, eventually resonating into my very soul.

I prayed… begged… for God to “just tell me” what to do. I was surrendered in a way I’d never experienced. Several days into the “decision” I had no agenda of my own remaining. All I wanted was an answer, I wanted peace.   A yes or a no.

A week went by and I realized my YES from God, the peace, wasn’t going to come… neither was a NO.  God spoke to my weary heart and told me we were going to have to make this decision “inside of the fear”, not on the other side of it.  We would simply have to trust. Once I realized my “answer” from God wasn’t coming, it’s like I knew.

After all, we’d spent years watching God open doors in our adoption process. It didn’t make sense He was leading us into failure now.

So we made our decision.

This was our daughter.

We were not cleft and cranio-facial experts of any kind. But we were the ones God had chosen for this precious girl. With her huge brown eyes, thick hair, open gum line, protruding teeth, all of it,  we were part of His plan for her life. Our decision was made, and instantaneously, there it was, the peace I’d been praying for. That was the beginning of me realizing how God would use the adoption process not only to unite parents and a child, but to work in my soul like never before, to build a trust in Him I would so-desperately need.

My heart resonates so much with you on this.  Esther’s special need rocked me to my core, like you said, BAM there I was open and exposed…and what was showing were some gross beliefs and fears…it was not pretty.  I love the way that God causes all of the things that don’t reflect His heart to come to the surface for us to deal with.

 So often we are praying for “peace”…for God to split the heavens and write on stone YES or NO.  We are so not into the tension of a decision.  We want to know the answer, but not only that, we want to see the full picture…to the end…with a guarantee that it will all work out.  I know, in my own life, there are times that the Lord so gently (sometimes not so gently) reminds me that I need to stop seeking the answer and REMEMBER TO SEEK HIM.  

And Jesus’s answers are never what ours would be.  He’s just not like us….duh.

Ok, so let’s talk China.  What was the transition to becoming Willa’s mama like?

People told me our time in country would later seem like a blur. They said just to get through it, show her as much love as possible, survive, and get home. All of that advice went in one ear and out the other for me. I’d waited so long to be a mom, I was ready to DO THIS. I was ready to love her like crazy and surely have her love me in return. 

REALITY CHECK.

Willa screamed the moment she was handed to me. I kept my cool because so many people were watching around us. I somehow felt calm even amidst her screams. I realized she was scared, and I felt compassion for her in that moment.

The hardest parts of our time in China would come later. 

About 24 hours into our time together, Willa went from a wide-eyed, mostly-smiley little girl to possessive and scared. I realize now she was simply trying to find a bit of control in a world that was completely unfamiliar, but at the time, her choice to withdraw from me completely was heart breaking.

Especially since the one thing she clung to for life was her daddy. 

How could she choose him?? I was the one who was trying to hard. I was her mother!
But the harder I tried, the more she withdrew.

I wrote an email to our home study social worker back home. She would know how to make Willa love me. She wrote back immediately. She said she wasn’t surprised. I remember reading her email: “it might get worse before it got better…” and  “she only has room in her heart to love one right now” and “we needed to just give her time.”

I wanted a fix.

The rest of our time in China did see some improvements in Willa’s ability to tolerate me, but that was about it.

She never trusted me. She never wanted me. It was hard. It was unexpected.

But when we got home, everything changed. 

This right here, I want to spend some time here. 

I will never forget the moment I realized that most of my “mama issues” after coming home with Liv were totally tied to parenting from a selfish perspective.  Not that I was intending to be selfish, but that I was viewing Liv and our relationship, and all the ins and outs of parenting a little one from hard places, through my needs, my emotions and my inadequacies.  I viewed our hard days as “my fault”, felt that I wasn’t enough, that she must know I’m not her “real” mama. (what am I fake??  I know now how silly this lie is)   I had really hard days, even years after being home, where I felt like I was parenting from the second-seat…unable to fill the space of her true mama.

UNTIL I realized that I had a few things out of whack in my heart.  My needs needed to be met by Jesus alone.  All the voids that existed could not be filled by my child…that was unfair to her.  My identity and sense of self and value could not ebb and flow with the ever-changing emotions of a toddler.

And also, that my little loves issues: her processing her new reality, her dealing with the loss of all she had known…HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ME.  

Being 10 days away from having my QueenE placed in my arms I am more aware of this reality than ever:  SHE MAY GRIEVE.  She may kick and scream and cry… she may be terrified.  Or she may clam up, shut down and withdraw.  Or, who knows, she may run into my arms like on the movies and proclaim MAMA…. highly doubtful.

No matter what goes down in that moment…IT WILL BE BEAUTIFUL.  I want to give her the space she needs to do whatever it takes to grieve and mourn…to deal with the obvious loss that is happening in that very moment.  

I will not allow the enemy to define my abilities in that moment.  I will bravely hold my hands out, ready to receive her, NO MATTER WHAT.  

I am thankful that Jesus has taught, and is teaching me, how to do this.  So thankful beyond belief.

AND KATELYN…WHAT A HERO YOU ARE….to take that baby and love her from a distance those 2 weeks in country.  To decide, amidst all the heart ache…that you would love her in any way you could.  You earned the OBVIOUS ride-or-die status you have with Willa now.

And doesn’t that look so much like Jesus?

Ok Katelyn, one more question.   What has Willa taught you about parenting?

Willa, and the process of becoming her mom, has made me feel humbled to parent in a way I’m not sure I would have experienced biologically. No part of her inexplicable greatness can really be attributed to me. I didn’t “do” or “make” any of her. I simply get to be her mom. It’s incredibly humbling.

The way she cuts her eyes, her scratchy voice, it’s all so amazing and none of it is by my design. Still, her assertive personality, her head-to-toe silliness, theirs no doubt in my mind God chose her for us. So I guess you could say we are just in awe, of her… of the Creator… and of how He knit our stories and our souls for one another.

 

Friends…WHAT DID I TELL YOU?  Isn’t she amazing.

I want to leave you with a few truths to take for the road:

  1. Let’s be challenged to open our eyes and ears up to God in a new and fresh way!  How may he be speaking to you?  What is he calling you to?  You can be guaranteed that if He is calling you to something…it will be about others, about people…and He will give you EVERYTHING you need to do it!
  2. Are we seeking an answer instead of Jesus?  Are you desperate for a YES or NO?  Are you clawing for a “GO THIS WAY …NOW GO THAT WAY” and not getting it?  Don’t panic.  Don’t fight with all of your might to decide what the answer is.  REST IN THE TENSION of this.  Those who WAIT on the Lord will be renewed.  Seek HIM in this season.  He wants our hearts more than He wants us to feel comfortable.
  3. We all need to be a little WILD and a lotta BRAVE to be followers of Jesus.  Don’t set your life up to be safe and comfortable and to make sense…thats a sure fire way to work Jesus right out of the equation.  His call on our lives is never in the name of our safety and comfort…He is always in the space that requires us to be BRAVE.
  4. We all, like Willa, and Esther, and my little Liv, have tasted the sting of grief as God calls us out of all that we’ve known into a new place.  Just like the Israelites, who only knew slavery, as they were walking into freedom, continually glanced back over their shoulder and wondered if “Egypt” would be a better option than all this wandering, than all of this unknown.  It’s a knee-jerk response to hold with a tight grip what’s comfortable and predictable, what’s known…even if it’s not best for us or God’s design for our lives.  Even if it’s slavery…we know it..it feels safe.  Lean into the grieving of “what was” and look with expectancy to “what is coming”.  God is faithful to bring you from one place to another,  don’t look over your shoulder anymore.

I hope that you, like me, felt a breath of fresh air as you read Katelyn’s interview.  It was refreshing and so honest, filled with the thumbprints of Jesus.

Make sure you check out her Instagram @katelynfuson…. tell her her bestie sent you.

The Thief of Joy

By | Family, Uncategorized

There’s a word attached to China adoption that has  become a household word for us:  special needs.  It was big and scary and hard to swallow at first.  In all honesty it down right terrified me.  I felt so ill equipped to embark on this journey, and the unknowns of adopting a special needs child threatened to put a stop to us moving forward.

The Lord has changed all that, and one of the avenues he has used was a surprising friendship.

It all started with a little light Instagram stalking.  It didn’t take long before I was TOTALLY fan girling over this super hero of a mom.  I found her through the search page of Instagram, as I was obsessively trying to find families who had adopted from China.  Super weird and stalky…I understand that.  She had brought home the cutest little nugget I had ever laid eyes on.  It felt like proof that it could happen for me too.

And then, as I was stalking this, then stranger, I encountered Deacon, her son, who was born with down syndrome and life as I knew it was over.  I was IN LOVE, obsessed even.  (You too can be obsessed…simply head over to @ahtharpe on Instagram and click on #deacondude)

And to be completely honest, the words special need lost their bite a little after I watched every video ever posted of Deacon.  What I saw was an incredible family, leading a completely normal life, TOTALLY embracing the special need that Deacon was born with in a way that normalized it and put it out there for the world to deal with.  And also Deacon is hilarious and by far the cutest human I’ve ever seen.

I was smitten by this family and continued to stalk them until ONE DAY while sitting on the patio of a local restaurant, SHE WALKED BY….this mama that I had grown so mesmerized by.   What the actual heck?  She lived in my city??  And then….right behind her…came Deacon.  THE Deacon.  I could not even deal with my level of fan girl at this point.

I approached her and I think told her I was obsessed with her and thanked her for the way she lived her life and raised her babies.  My husband walked up and did a fake bowing down gesture….a “we’re not worthy” kind of gesture.  She had every reason to not make eye contact and block me on all social media.  FAN. GIRL.

Fast forward a bit and now WE ARE BESTIES.  This rockstar woman I admired from a far is now in my inner circle.

Being her friend has changed me forever.  I have had to face my own insecurities about a “not so perfect” kid, face the truth of what my role as a parent is, learn to think of people as people before I define them by their diagnosis and embrace the life that God has given me, no matter how hard or unexpected.

Her family has placed a mirror in front of my heart, constantly reflecting back my views of life and causing me to ALWAYS think of the person God created first.

God has used her life as a way of pushing mine outside of the boundaries of what I once coveted when it came to my babies: healthy and “normal”.

God gave me Andrea at the absolute perfect intersection of my life, and the Lord, through her, has prepared my heart for Esther more than I can even explain.

SO…. TODAY YOU GET TO HEAR FROM HER!  Oh my word I’m so excited for you, because what she has to say is going to ROCK YOUR WORLD!

So, blog family, meet my bestie: Andrea Tharpe!

Alright Andrea, tell us a little bit about yourself:

My name is Andrea Tharpe. My husband and I have been married 13 years this month.  We have four kids ranging from 2 to almost 12.  We are evened out with two boys and two girls.  Three of them are belly babies and one is adopted from China.

We recently moved from a gated community in the city to the full blown, middle of nowhere country.  We went from our only pet being a fish to now owning a dog, a cat, chickens, a rabbit, ducks, and my husband who used to just sit on the couch and watch tv has become a farmer/gardener extraordinaire. I don’t even know who we are anymore.

I am a photographer and also run an online shop/blog called Be the Light Project.

(You guys, she is not lying.  They live in that actual middle of nowhere.  NO INTERNET people.  I have a friend with no internet.  Surely I’m the only one.  The first time I went to her house I texted her and asked her, “What should I wear” because I am so unaware of the country and what is appropriate)

One of Andrea’s children, Deacon, was born with down syndrome.
Andrea, can you tell us about the day Deacon was born.

The day my youngest son, Deacon, was born we experienced a roller coaster of emotions.  My pregnancy with him did not go as smoothly as the other two, and because of that we were seeing a high risk specialist.  Six weeks before my due date, I had my final visit with them.  They discovered that my blood pressure was high and my placenta was shutting down, and within two hours of that appointment I found myself lying on an operating table, scared to death as they prepared to deliver my son.  I’ll never forget the feeling of relief when I heard him cry for the first time and the tears that poured down as they briefly held his little face next to mine.  Friends and family flooded in to see me while I waited in recovery.

We were all surprised at how fast things happened, but so excited that he was finally here safe and sound.

But then I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Hours had gone by and they still had not brought my baby back to me.  Each time I asked, they told me they were just waiting on a room to be available.  Finally, the Neonatologist came in with a team.  He started with some small talk, but he kept asking for Dad in a way that I could tell something was up.  I thought he was just going to say that Deacon was experiencing your typical preemie problems, but when we finally got Dustin back in the room, the doctor proceeded to tell us that he noticed many of the characteristics of Down Syndrome.

He said he could not confirm it without a test but that he had seen it enough times to be confident that was the case.

We were stunned. And I was in denial.

I knew nothing about Down Syndrome, and I remember thinking, “Nope. Uh-uh. This cannot be happening.  You’ve got the wrong person, God…I am not cut out for this!”  Later that evening, we finally got into a room and all I wanted to do was go to sleep, wake up, and realize that it had all been a bad dream.  As things got quiet and we laid there in the dark, I heard my husband sobbing like I’ve never heard before from the couch.  I called him over to my hospital bed, where we just held each other close, speechless.  I was still so numb and in shock that I didn’t shed a tear.  But then morning came, reality sank in, and I cried uncontrollably for, pretty much, three days straight.


During that time, I would go visit Deacon in the NICU and hold him, but I did not feel connected to him.  I felt like I did not know him.  I did not feel like this was the same child that I had been carrying inside of me all of those months.

There was a grieving process that took place, I had to let go of the child that I thought I was having and accept his diagnosis, accept him fully for who he was.  Then I was flooded with guilt over those feelings and the lack of bonding.

The time came for us to go home, but we had to leave him behind in the NICU.  He was having some issues with breathing and feeding and needed to stay for what ended up being two more weeks.

Driving away from the hospital was when it clicked….THAT WAS MY BABY.  He was the one God gave to ME. Down Syndrome or not, he was MINE, and I loved him like crazy.  Then a whole new set of tears came over having to leave him there, over him not being in my arms.


So, after the dust settled and the shock of his diagnosis wore off, what was life like?

During those two weeks at home without him, I felt very lonely.  I knew nothing about what to expect having a child with Down Syndrome, so I went searching online.  I discovered the blog of a mom who had a daughter with DS not much older than Deacon.  I read her birth story and discovered that she had experienced many of the same emotions that I was struggling with guilt over.  It made me feel better to know I was not alone in that.  Also, she was a photographer and had lots of pictures with her posts.  Her family looked “normal”.  They looked happy.  That’s when I knew I could do this.  From then on, I knew it was going to be okay. Not easy, but OK.  I also knew then that I wanted to do for others what she did for me by sharing her life openly.

You guys, how cool that the same way God used Andrea in my life, He used a total stranger in hers to display what could be possible inside of the new way of living God had handed her.

In Heather Avis’s book The Lucky Few (EVERYONE GO BUY IT AND READ IT NOW), she says that there is nothing negative about down syndrome.  How do you feel about that statement?

I think I would have to agree that there is nothing negative about Down Syndrome.

I would not take Down Syndrome away from Deacon even if I had the chance.

What a powerful statement.  Let that sink in to your bones.  The very thing that terrified and shocked and looked big and scary and ugly is now the very thing that this mama would not part with, even if given the chance.


(You are now dead over the cuteness of those rolls and those glasses.)

Yes, there are parts of this journey that are not easy, like watching your child fall behind and struggle to do things that come naturally for others, or having to fight harder for your child to receive the education that he or she deserves.  We have been very blessed in that Deacon hasn’t had any serious medical issues, but many of his friends have had open heart surgery and some have even battled Leukemia.

Yes, these things are hard, but life in general can be hard.  That does not necessarily mean that it’s bad.

Hard does not always equal bad, sometimes it’s just hard.  It can be good, it can be the center of God’s will and it can be hard, all at the same time.

Deacon has completely expanded my horizons and taught me how to truly love and appreciate the differences in people.  ALL people.  Deacon has a love for others that is unconditional and resembles Christ’s love for us.  Because of that unconditional love, my mom has this theory that we are the ones with the incorrect amount of chromosomes and that those with Down Syndrome are just like God intended us to be. I think she may be right.



Your favorite quote is, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”  Can you preach on that for a minute?

Having a child with Down Syndrome has definitely changed my view of parenting and what I value as important.  As I began to change, so did my goals for my children.  I remember as a first time parent reading the “What to Expect when You’re Expecting” books.  Each month I would nervously look at the list of things my child should be doing at that point.  I was so concerned with whether or not they were on track.  From there I worried about them getting into Magnet school.  I wanted them to be the best, have the best, do their best.

But then came Deacon.  I had a nephew born one month before him and another born 5 months after.  One of the hardest things was watching them fly by Deacon with their milestones.  I was constantly comparing and being reminded of the things that he was not able to do.

One day I came across a quote, “Comparison is the thief of Joy”.

The more I pondered on this quote, the easier it got for me to not be brought down by the things that Deacon was not doing, but rather celebrate the things he was doing.  Little by little, I learned how to appreciate the small things.  I also realized how much this applied to other areas of my life.  All my life, I had worked to be someone that I thought others wanted me to be, and I began to realize that as a thirty year old woman, I didn’t really know who I was.  I didn’t want that for my kids.  I am now working hard to instill in them, YOU do YOU!  Don’t worry about what others think and don’t compare…just be yourselves.  I am also striving to lead by example and teach them how to love others.  Even those that aren’t like them.

Just last week I was at my oldest son’s school selling necklaces.  He’s in middle school where everybody is awkward but trying hard to be “cool”.  There is a little girl in his class who has Cerebral Palsy and is in a wheelchair.  Her aid came up to me and told me that Noah was one of the first people to talk to her at the beginning of the school year and make friends with her.  When I talked to him about it and was telling him how proud I was, he said, “Mom, I don’t know what the big deal is.  She is SO nice and very smart and really is just like the rest of us.  It just takes her a little more time to talk and do things.”   I could care less if he ever made an “A” on a report card again as long as he continues to love like this.  In my book, this is success!


How would you describe what it’s like to raise a child with Down Syndrome?

One of the best ways to describe raising a child with Down Syndrome is a poem written in 1987 by a woman named Emily Pearl Kingsley after her son was born.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

“I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this……

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy.

You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says,

“Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say.

“What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.

And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.


We’re five years in, and I’ve lost my desire to go to Italy. (Figuratively speaking, of course!)

I’m finding Holland to be a VERY beautiful place! 🙂

Friends, I told you.  Isn’t she wonderful.

So what are some take aways from this conversation:

God’s goodness for our lives isn’t always what we expect.  His definition of GOOD and RIGHT and PERFECT sometimes looks nothing like our definition.  His purposes are so much larger than our very small views of reality.  His purposes are to bring himself glory, to grow us and stretch us and make us more like Him.  And what better way to do that than through something unexpected, unplanned, where we have no manual or strategy.  We only have HIM.

Hard does not always equal bad.  Sometimes hard is good, sometimes hard is the better route. But hard is still hard.  We can be completely in the center of God’s will for our lives and still struggle and grieve and be really heart broken.  Hard is not a marker that we are on the wrong path or have ended at the wrong destination.  Hard is just hard, and hard causes us to need Jesus even more.

Comparison is the thief of joy.  Ain’t that the truth.  Comparison takes our eyes off of what we have right in front of us and places them only on what we don’t have.  We miss out on the goodness that is our own lives.

What we think matters with parenting our kiddos, sometimes doesn’t matter as much as what God would have us teach them.  Our littles are ours to steward and shape.  Their hearts are moldable and curious and they are looking to US to learn all the things.  What I love about Andrea is that she has an effortless way of teaching her kids about the stuff that really matters: loving people.  It is not forced, it is in the DNA of their family.  And they love BIG.

 

Get outside of your comfortable standards, out of the status quo, and in whatever way you can, experience life lived in the full joy of whatever it is that God has handed you.  He is always good.  His ways are always perfect.  The goodness of what He gives is not contingent on what He has given the person next to us.  Comparison is the thief of joy.

 


Want to get in touch with Andrea?
Follow her over on Instagram at @ahtharpe or check out her amazing jewelry at Be The Light Project .

[bctt tweet=”Hard does not always equal bad.” username=”casshamm”]

 

THE HANDS DOWN BEST MAMA’S DAY GIFT IN ALL OF HISTORY

By | Family

So… a few years ago the hubby and my Liv Nima schemed a gift for me that slayed me to my core….took me out at the knees emotionally.

If I didn’t have a life to live I would still be sobbing in a corner watching it on repeat.

Also… IT WILL NEVER BE BEAT.  So after all the feels settled and I realized that my hubby had won….set a standard I would never reach….I was sorta mad.  And also he could never give me another gift because this one earned all the points possible.

I give to you the sweetest most precious thing you’ll ever watch.  Your welcome, friend, and I’m sorry in advance for what this video will do to you.

Happy Mama’s day to all you rock stars out there that are putting in the hours doing all the things that no one sees.  Shout out to all my snot covered heroes that can’t finish a sentence without being summoned.  Just know… you, in all your selfless service to your family look A WHOLE LOT LIKE JESUS.

Soak that in, because that’s all that matters.

Do yourself a favor and click on this little emotion grenade:

 

To the Mamas of my Littles

By | Family, Uncategorized

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Every year, as Mother’s Day approaches I think ONLY of my Liv’s mama.  The Mama across the globe that made me a Mama.  The one who carried my wee one inside of her before the tragic loss that led to that wee one becoming mine.

And this year, I have a new one.  A new mama to think of.  To wonder and dream about.

What would I say if I could sit across from them over a cup of coffee?  What words would I use if I could hold their faces and try to explain the depths of all of my feelings towards them?

Oh how I wish they knew their babies.

Mother’s Day is a weird one for me.  So full of gratitude and welling with pride over the gift that is my daughter.  And this year, so full of expectation as a daughter is coming closer to me by the day.  But also heavy.  Heavy because I celebrate my motherhood under the reality of the loss and separation of the originals, the ones designed to carry my daughters.  Loss for one brought life to me.  It’s a ground that’s not easily navigated.

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Mom Of The Year

By | Family

 

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MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD SUBMISSION
(pick me, pick me please…I have earned it)

I hereby nominate myself, Cassie Hammett, to receive this prestigious award.  Hold your applause please as I present to you my qualifications to carry the weight of this title.

When I first became a mama, in the middle of Africa, away from all the world and all the convenience of parenting, this mama was dealing with a baby who had the smelliest, most deadly-awful-worst-thing-you’ve-ever-smelt-in-your-entire-life poops. So, naturally, I drug her outside on a towel, with a shirt tied around my face and changed her on the ground, because dear God how could we live with that smell in our room.  We could not survive it.  No warm fuzzy moments were had in that process.  Liv stared up at me as I gagged and looked away, masked.  How terrifying.  Sorry about it.

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Rock It, Sis.

By | Family

“She has an un-repaired cleft lip and palate of the 3rd degree…” our caseworker told me as I sat in the packed out DMV (worst place on earth, replacing my ID yet again…I should have a frequent flyer punch card or something).  She was describing what then was referred to as “the file” she was going to send us.  She asked if I wanted to see “the file” and I said YES, of course.

I sat stunned.  I was about to have “the file” in my inbox.  The long awaited possible “file”.

And I was at the blasted DMV, without Brent, so there would be no opening it until I was done.  I heard the “ding” of the email notification and my blood pressure went through the roof.  I was going to have to WAIT to view “the file” until the DMV fiasco was done and I would then have to drive across town so I could view it with the hubby.

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Bitter Sweet & The In Between

By | Family

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On it’s way right now, sailing over the seas and the thousands of miles between us and our Queen-E is a care package, a gift, packed full of things JUST FOR HER.

We included photos of us, her mama, her papa and her big sis Liv.  We filled a book up with fun pictures of us as a family, her new house, her new dog…all of the things that are waiting for her on the other side of this long and drawn out process.

But I must admit to you that this gift, it was a hard one for me to send.  No matter what I added or how I arranged it in the box, it just felt cheap.  It fell severely short in my heart. I couldn’t place why this care package was making me an actual crazy person.  I put it off for 2 weeks…staring at the pile of things I had gathered but not getting enough nerve up to put it together and send it.

But why?  I couldn’t put a finger on the reason for my stalling.

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Outsides and Insides

By | Family

“Instagram makes us compare other’s outsides with our insides.”  -Kate Merrick

Dang.  It hit me hard, square between the eyes, as I ran through my neighborhood casually listening to a podcast.

I knew in that moment that I was being asked to do something.  Something that the Lord had been stirring in me for months.  It was time to be done with social media.

I knew in an instant why.  It’s just not good for ME.  Not everyone….just ME.

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Oh hey girl.

By | Family

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Dearest most lovely Esther,

I have finally seen your face.

The face that has forever wrecked my life and shaped me and taught me more about the heart of my Father.  The most lovely face, every single inch of it created in the image of God.

I know you now.  I know your story, the heartbreaking moments that have led to you becoming mine.

I’ve seen you, watched you play, heard you speak through amazing videos that landed in my inbox, a gift from the heavens.

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