A GREAT Story!!

One of the things about adopting an older child that I have found to be particularly challenging is teaching her about God and Jesus...  How do you explain God to a child who has never heard of Him and (in the beginning) doesn't speak the same language?  Over the last couple of years she has asked MANY good questions like...  Is Jesus coming for His birthday party?  How old is He?  How old is God?  Who is God's daddy?  And if God made us, then who made God?  Pretty amazing questions for one so young...

But I have to admit, I've been a little discouraged because when I talk to her, I'm just not sure she really understands...

So today she came home from school and sat down with me to do her homework...  I was working on jewelry and she was supposed to be writing her spelling her words when she looks up and says, "There's a little girl in my class who doesn't believe in God."

Me...'Really?  That's pretty sad.'

Abby... "So I asked her, 'Then who made the world?'"

Me..."Well what did she say?"

Abby... "She told me it grew....  Now mommy, isn't that silly?!"

Me...  "Do you understand why it's silly?"

Abby...  "Not really"

Me...  So I picked up a bead and I said, "Abby, can this bead decide to become an earring, all on its own?"

Abby with a giggle...  "No mommy..."

Me...  "You're right...  It needs a creator, or a designer, to make something of it.  That's just like the world...  We needed a Creator...  We couldn't just make ourselves on our own."  (Now I admit, I didn't go down the path of trying to teach how God created from nothing...  I'll save that mind boggling truth for another day!)

Abby...  "So it really was silly.  Well then I asked her if she knew what the Bible is...  But I don't think she does...  And do you know, she believes that Santa Claus is God!  That doesn't even make sense!"

I don't know when these little seeds started to take root, but I couldn't be more thrilled that she feels strongly enough about the beginnings of her faith that she's willing to take a stand for it!  How cool it is to watch faith as it begins to grow!!

Since I've been very remiss in posting photos lately, here's a few from our Christmas Tree Cutting this year...  It amazes me how quickly they're growing!

That's our 12 year old daughter walking with her over 6 foot dad!

A Second First Christmas...

So technically, Abby had her first Christmas with us last year.  But she'd only been home  4 months, her English wasn't great and it was just really hard to explain the whole idea of Christmas...  Everything seemed new and overwhelming...  

BUT this year has been a whole different story...  She has a whole memory of new (to her) traditions created last year and she has had so much fun...  She LOVED going to the mountains to cut the Christmas tree...  She couldn't wait to decorate it...  When we put the manger scene out, she remembered exactly where she had put baby Jesus' blanket that my friend had made for her when she heard how Abby was upset last Christmas that baby Jesus was cold and covered him with a piece of cotton...

And we have baked and baked and baked and baked...  Well, you get the idea!!  And she is so excited about the presents under the tree!!  This morning she came in the kitchen and said, "Mommy, I love Christmas, I am so excited!"

"Abby, why are you so excited?" 

"Because we get to open presents tomorrow..." 

"Well, what about baby Jesus?  It's His birthday afterall, and He's the only reason that we get to celebrate Christmas..."

"Mommy?  Is He excited too then?"

I had to stifle a giggle with that one...  We talk about Jesus all the time...  We pray...  She still clearly doesn't get the significance of Jesus, but I love how she thinks of Him...  She doesn't question His realness, she just doesn't understand yet what He did for her...

I told her that Jesus was very excited when we remember to celebrate His birthday and not just think about the presents...

And then her question that once again stumped me (there's been several of them over the last year)...

"Mommy, when is God's birthday?"

How do you explain to a 7 year old... who heard about God and Jesus for the very first time, just 17 months ago...  who has great social language, but is still struggling with taking thoughts and ideas and processing them on a deeper level...  and explain to her that God is not a created being?  That He has existed for all time?  That He doesn't have a birthday?  He just is?  Those thoughts blow my mind and so much of it, I just accept on faith because I see evidence of God and His love for us EVERYWHERE...  But I have no clue how to explain that to Abby...

The God we love is truly mind boggling...  He is so BIG...so HOLY...so GLORIOUS...so AWESOME...  And yet, He loved us so much that over 2000 years ago He sent His beloved Son into this world, born in a smelly manger, for the sole purpose of dying the most horrible death imaginable so that we could be in relationship with Him...

Now that kind of love blows my mind even more than the fact that God doesn't have a birthday...  I pray that someday Abby will look at me with the same wonder over what Jesus did for her on a cross as she did when I tried to explain to her that God has existed for all time...

May we all remember David's beautiful words from Psalm 8:3-4...

"When I consider your heavens,
       the work of your fingers,
       the moon and the stars,
       which you have set in place,
  what is man that you are mindful of him,
       the son of man that you care for him?"

Merry Christmas...  I pray that as you remember the birth of our Savior, you are overwhelmed by His love for you...

Catching Up...Part 2

Ok...April friend, this one's for you! (You'll have to read her comment on my last post! LOL!!)

So thank you for hanging in there with me, I guess I just needed a break from blogging...

So here's the rest of Christmas!!

On Christmas morning, Abby got up and put on her new dress that Ms. Trina and Alaina sent her (thank you friends)...she was so excited to get dressed up for Christmas morning!! Scott and I were getting everything ready downstairs and I hear from the top of the stairs, as she's been asking to come downstairs, "Mommy, I give you howg!" (You'll have to read the story in the last post!) She's catching on!



Christmas morning was wonderful. All of the Santa presents were wrapped so the kids had to take them one by one! She was so patient and so willing to wait on everyone to open their presents...

Abby got her Bitty Twin...



Mackenzie, her digital camera...



Nick, his IPOD...



And Zack, his cell phone (yep...he's 15 and just getting his first cell phone!)



Noba (my mom) and my grandmother, Mama H. were with us too...



The day after Christmas we headed somewhere else in the south and spent a few days with my PawPaw and Granny...



And from there, on to Grandpa J's and Grandma C's, where we got to hang out with cousins too (Scott's brother and his family)... The kids had a BLAST!!

The first night, Uncle B, brought everything and made dumplings (from scratch, even the dough) for Abby... She LOVED them! So did we...they were delicious!! Thank you Uncle B for going to so much trouble, it was really special!!



Abby chowed on them!!



The next day the older kids headed off to a ropes course (they had a blast) and Abby hung out with her cousin, E... She finally got to swing on the rope swing and just as I suspected, she LOVED it!!











Mackenzie, as always, loved being with her cousin S...they get along so great...we just need to live closer to them...







Then we added little R...our other cousin...we had 9 kids in the house! It was wild!!



This was our dog Pippin...he found a quiet place to hide and fell asleep (Yes, he's wearing a sweater...LOL...Abby was so worried about him being cold that she asked for a sweater for him for Christmas)



The whole gang!!



It was a wonderful Christmas and we ended on a great note with my cousins driving from somewhere else in the south to come and see us, it was a girl's weekend and we had a GREAT time!!

We did lots of crafts, Scott made us waffles for breakfast and cooked dinner for us on Saturday night!



Ok...I think that catches us up through the New Year... I'm not too good at posting all the details, I really love to just write, so thank you for hanging in there with me, I'm amazed at how many of you have continued to check in on us...

We started our study in Daniel in Community Bible Study, after the New Year, and it is an amazing study... God has been stirring up some things in my heart that I'm looking forward to sharing. I'll share some thougths on that in a few days. I promise not to wait so long!!

Catching Up...Part 1

Ok…time to catch up on Christmas.

Abby LOVED Christmas! And it wasn’t even the presents that were the highlights for her…oh, she liked those, but it was the Christmas tree, the lights, the gingerbread house and baby Jesus that seemed to fascinate her.

Our Christmas celebration began the day after Thanksgiving with our usual trek to the north to cut our Christmas tree. We do this every year (we even drove home from our visit to family on Thanksgiving Day because we weren’t willing to compromise on this tradition!). We cut our tree, eat at Sonic and pull out the decorations. Of course, we have to put the tree up, fill the stand with warm water and then we wait until Sunday evening to decorate… it has to settle! (That’s Scott’s story and he’s sticking to it! LOL!!) But hey, now it’s tradition!!

Abby LOVED decorating the tree, but much to my dismay, I realized that we didn’t have any ornaments with her picture or a special stocking just for her… YIKES, that was one I didn’t anticipate very well and Abby noticed too. So I made a big deal that we would go shopping and she could pick her own special stocking and she was happy with that, but what about the picture ornament.

Well, on Monday after school, she disappeared into her room for a while, she didn’t want me to see what she was working on and she emerged with her own homemade picture ornament (yes, it is carefully stored for next year!). I love how she doesn’t stand on the sidelines but just jumps right in… She’s right where she belongs and she seems to get that!!

Unfortunately, we didn’t do such a great job of choosing our tree this year…we cut one off of a hill and couldn’t see how crooked it was and it fell three times and of course it was the biggest tree we’d ever had so it was a nightmare dealing with it when it fell. Thankfully it always fell against the shutters, so it could have been much worse.

I loved how Abby interacted with the nativity scenes… She was always checking out baby Jesus in the gift box and I found Bitty Bear on the camel!

But one of my favorite nights was a night that Scott had to go somewhere with the boys. I took the girls to Chick-Fil-A and after chicken and fries, and of course and Ice Dream Cone (Abby loves, I mean LOVES, ice cream) we set off to look at the lights.

I drove forever through neighborhoods (of course we were in the new Jeep so it made it doubly fun for me, that is the funnest car to drive! I almost forgot, my van was dying...9 1/2 years old, almost 160,000 miles so we took the plunge and bought a used (new to me) red, I mean RED, Jeep Commander!! Now the boys are no longer embarrassed to be seen riding with me!!)…

Anyway, Abby got excited over every light we saw! But the highlight of the evening was in a neighborhood of cluster homes with postage stamp yards. We found a house that had gone all out and not only did they have a yard, porch, and roof, packed with lights, they had synchronized it to all of the fun Christmas songs.

So I pulled over in front of the house, rolled down the windows and the next thing I knew… Abby was singing at the TOP of her lungs! I was laughing so hard…I hope the mom or dad (probably dad) who did all of that work could hear her!

This year we decided to try making a gingerbread house! YIKES…that has never been my thing, but we had fun, even if it was a HUGE mess!! And then Abby found a kit for making reindeer out of candy canes and so we now have a family of reindeer candy canes!!

With Mama H....my grandmother...you would NEVER believe her age! She looks AMAZING!!

On Christmas Eve, we have a tradition of the kids opening one Christmas present. Abby was so excited, she talked about it all day long and naturally I assumed that she wanted to open one of her presents. So evening came and the kids were playing cards with my grandmother and Abby couldn’t get anyone to go along with her plan to open a present.

I tried to educate her in the ways of plying her daddy… “Abby, go and give him a big hug with a sweet smile and say, ‘Daddy, can we pleeeeeeeease open our present?” Abby’s translation… She walks over to Scott open her arms and says, “Ok, howg me! Now open present?!” Yep, we have some work to do on that one!

But when the time finally came to open a present, it wasn’t her present that she was excited about! She had made a present for Scott and I at school and couldn’t wait for us to open it! It was a wonderful calendar that she had made!!

She really has such a sweet, generous spirit! We saw this many times over Christmas in such simple ways… Wanting others to open their presents first…offering her candy or snacks to whoever was around…bringing me a pillow one afternoon when I laid down on the sofa…even watching me play with my new toy, my IPO*D Touch, she brought me her stylus from her game to try and help me. She always seems to be watching to see how she can help someone else. It’s a special treasure in her heart that I hope we can foster and grow in some really special ways…

More in a day or so about the rest of Christmas…

"But Baby Jesus..."

We are somewhere else in the south visiting family, but I wanted to post a quick story from Christmas Eve...

Every year, when I put out our manger scene, I put baby Jesus in a wrapped gift box addressed to everyone who will be at our house on Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve, Scott will read the Christmas story from Luke and then the kids puts baby Jesus in the manger.

This year, Abby was so excited to finally get to put baby Jesus in the manger. The time finally arrived and she and Mackenzie went over to do the honors. But as they laid Jesus in the manger, we heard, "But baby Jesus cold." Sweet Abby was distressed that baby Jesus didn't have on clothes and He was laying in a cold manger.

"Blanket for baby Jesus?" "No Abby, we don't have any tiny blankets." Not to be deterred, Abby pulled the cotton out of the gift box that He had been in and covered baby Jesus!



A little girl, who has probably never heard the name of Jesus until a few months ago, had such a tender heart for Him that she wanted Him warm. There was no room in the inn, but there was room in Abby's heart! I know she still doesn't grasp the full significance of Christmas, but somehow she understands enough to know that baby Jesus shouldn't be cold... I think in her heart, probably no baby should be cold.

A few weeks ago, she 'dictated' a Christmas letter for her daddy (she talks, I write) and she had me write, "Jesus loves me...I know!" Oh to have the incredible blessing of watching faith blossom in the heart of a child...

As much as she is enjoying the presents, she is also beginning to grasp the heart of CHRISTmas!

I'm going to take another break from blogging for a few days and I'll see you in New Year! Happy New Year!!

A Picture Of What God Intends...

The last few days have been so amazing…

Usually, Thanksgiving is our holiday where we don’t travel... 5 days of ‘homebody’ bliss… we guard it like a precious gem. But this year, there were still so many that hadn’t met Abby, that we decided that meeting family was far more important than our tradition, so we packed up the car and headed somewhere else in the south.

My aunt and uncle were staying nearby, so on Wednesday evening, we were able to introduce Abby to my Uncle S. and Aunt S., as well as her brother and family. We had so much fun and Abby was in rare form…


Abby with Aunt S.


Abby with Aunt S. & Uncle S. (Mom's brother & sister-in-law...in many ways, my second parents and an amazing influence in my life...they are a treasure to me!)


My aunt's brother and sister-in-law...they were so generous to open their home to us so we could all hang out together for the evening!


The crew!

On Thursday, we headed out to another cousin’s house for Thanksgiving… B. & R. are always so amazingly generous to open their home on that day, there’s always a crowd…


The entire Thanksgiving clan...they were so amazing with Abby!


Us with my mom! Doesn't she look amazing!!


Abby with cousin R, in front of one of his really cool cars!! I love this photo!!


I had a hard time getting her out of the car!

This year was especially special to our family…Abby was experiencing her first Thanksgiving, and even more importantly, the overwhelming love and acceptance of my amazing family! I’ve read so many stories of extended families who opposed an adoption, especially an international adoption, but not my family, or Scott’s either.

I knew our families would be welcoming, but their love for her has touched me and moved me in a way that I can’t possibly put into words.

Abby has been celebrated…she has been accepted unconditionally…she has been loved…she has been treasured…I will be forever grateful to mine and Scott’s family for so completely showing her the love of Jesus…

But here’s what struck me as I considered this…

What has happened with Abby is a picture of what should happen in the church, it’s what God intended… We are all adopted children in the family of God, when a ‘new child’ enters the family of God, we should celebrate them, unconditionally accept them, love them and treasure them…just as God does each one of us.

But sadly, that is often not the case… Too often it seems that we want people to reach some standard of behavior before we accept them completely. We speak harshly and judgmentally of sins we feel passionate about, and we strip people of a safe place to heal from the past actions that have eaten at their soul. Ultimately, we don’t love others as Christ loved us…

At Thanksgiving this year, I am so thankful for mine and Scott’s family... A family who has taught me, through their unconditional acceptance of Abby, a little bit more of what God intended for the church, the body of Christ, to look like.