Addressing the Elephant

 I have been absent for a long time. It's been busy, what can I say? I have honestly missed this creative outlet that was near and dear for so long. I didn't care if anyone ever read it, but it was always nice to "get my words out." (Our old small group guys and gals will get that one) Now that I have scaled back on work and the kids are in school, I think it may be time to fire this baby back on up. For anyone just arriving, this has been mostly a space of random family updates, recipes, and lots of comma splices and such- and I promise I do know how to properly use punctuation. 

But before I dive back in I wanted to address something that many people have been asking about lately - the "elephant in the room", so to speak. Many of you have probably noticed that in family photos there is one less member there. What some of you may not know is that Steve does not live with us any longer. He is now 18 and is living with his biological family. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on who you speak with at any given time. Like all teenagers, he believed that his abilities to take care of himself were far greater than the wisdom of Jason and I who assured him that this was a path that would be met with many hardships. We haven't made any sort of public announcement for several reasons, but I have had so many people ask recently, I figured that this was the easiest avenue. I won't go into all the "what happened" and "whys" here because some of that isn't my story to tell. \

Adoption is hard. I know people mean well, but this isn't some "great thing" we decided to do for someone. It's hard. Jason and I felt truly called to adopt, and I felt certain that we were supposed to adopt Steve. I remember hearing a sermon about the time we were getting ready to finalize things, and the pastor said, "God doesn't call us to easy, He calls us to obedience." And that's what we were. We made ALL kinds of mistakes along the way, just as we will with those 3 boys I birthed, but we did what we believed God asked us to do. We just didn't know it would be for a season...

We have had contact with him, mostly through texts, and we will see what happens in the future. I am hopeful that some sort of seeds were planted while he was here. He did get to see how a (mostly) normal family functions. He learned how to manage money (much to his dismay) and he also saw what he was capable of when he worked hard for something. We had hard conversations about accountability and truthfulness. I pray that those lessons stick, but for now we must trust that the time he was here was the time he was supposed to be here -even if that seems strange for us. 

People have asked if we plan to adopt again. I don't know what God's plans are, but my initial response is that of a song you can find if you Google. The lyrics go something like, "Hell to the Naw, to the naw, naw, naw." Just keepin' it real, folks...