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Home Again

Moving to college was the first time I had ever truly left home. It was two hours away, but initially, it felt like it was clear across the country.  My parents drove me down the night before the beginning of Welcome Week. We stayed at a sweet B&B and ate at the Stagecoach Inn, but all I really remember were the two rocks in the pit of my stomach, the rock of beginning and the rock of end.  I couldn’t help but feel as if my childhood was over. I was no longer going to be a daughter, granddaughter, or sister. I was no longer allowed in the DFW area. I was cast out to set sail on this new chapter of my life during which I would receive an education, marry my husband, and begin my own life separate from all I had previously known.  The past had served me well, but as soon as my parents unloaded their car and drove away, it would be just that, the past.

My roommate and I decided to unpack on our own, so my parents were on the road faster than they would have cared to be and I was on my own.  The rock of end began to clang against the rock of beginning just as heavy in my gut, but not quite as wistful. Where would I put my things? What would I wear for my first walkabout campus?  Who would be my friends now that I was alone?

Days past and my phone dinged with a message from my dad that simply read:

“Call your mom.”  

I replied,

“I can’t.  I’ll cry.”

And I did.

Through the heaving sobs of tears, I released the rock of end. I realized for the first time that there was no morbid finality to my leaving home. It was there waiting for me.  I had not been cut off from it. In fact, my home was the foundation on which I was now placing the bricks of my life. That tearful phone call insured what I needed to know, that home was always going to be there and it was.  It was never the same, but always welcoming and exactly what it needed to be for the layer of bricks in which I was laying at the time.

Thursday, We watched a massive truck fill to the brim with bricks, our bricks, bricks that composed the life we have built over the years.  I directed the parade of boxes and furniture into various spots. The days of cleaning, hauling, nailing, and breaking down boxes that followed gave way to familiar pangs in my stomach.  Again, the distance was not exceptionally cavernous, but space isn’t always calculated in miles. Again, I have left home and rocks clang in the pit of my stomach. However, now as I slather mortar on a new row of bricks, I know what I did not know before:  

You can go home again.

To James: Her Abuser

Today I rolled out of bed and took my girls to school like a typical Thursday morning. 
I came home and got dressed and my husband and I drove downtown to the criminal courthouse, not like a typical Thursday morning.
In the courtroom, it was business as usual, a "full docket day".  There was hustling, bustling, and benches full of somber faces.  After some waiting, a man stood before a judge and plead guilty to two charges involving one of our precious sets of pigtails. 
There was a sentencing and then the presenting of an allocution... our turn to speak.

Tuesday I began to type, but no words came.  I prayed and like mana from Heaven, he provided what we needed.  Words of redemption flowed from the cursor on my screen.  I finished and sent it to my husband.

Today he stood tall and confident before the accused, now convicted, and read words of redemption, justice, grace.
He proclaimed what we believe in our hearts to be true and desperately pray resonates in the hearts of our girls that Christ redeems all things and all things need redemption. There is no action or soul out of the range of His redemptive power. 
He captured this mans gaze and delivered this message with confidence as the leader of our family.  And then it was finished. 

Now comes the hard part as we beg to mean, believe, and live these words to the glory of God...

Dear James, 

That September evening when two little girls showed up on our doorstep was one of the most life-changing days of our lives.  They walked in that door broken, frightened, and utterly confused. The whole of last year was riddled with residual effects of their past prior to being placed in your care, but most fresh the effects of your choices.  We’ve had many conversations with them about choices and how they all have an effect, good or bad.  We pray desperately that every conversation frees them more from the lie that they somehow played a role in the neglect, abuse, and lack of care that they have experienced in their short, precious lives.  We have tried to establish a routine at bedtime in which we read books and the Bible together before bedtime. One evening we read the story of Joseph.  If you aren’t familiar, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up in a foreign land in prison, but God saw Joseph.  He chose to redeem Joseph’s life.  He was taken under the care of the Pharaoh and ultimately given a position of royalty from which he was given the opportunity to extend grace to his brothers, the very ones who left him for dead.  After the story, Isabelle said, “my old dad touched me here and I didn’t like it”.  In that moment we were able to reinforce the story we had just read and what we as a family genuinely believe, that God is the great redeemer.  We told her that just as Joseph’s brothers had intended evil, God worked it for good.  Even though her old dad’s biggest job was to care for and protect her and her sister, God brought them to us.  The effects of your choices will impact these girls for the rest of their lives.  You caused pain, scars, and memories that will be with them the remainder of their lives.  They will struggle physically, emotionally, sexually, relationally, and spiritually due to your actions. The hurt runs deep, but God’s redemptive work runs much deeper.  Our girls walked into our home broken, frightened, confused little souls, but by God’s grace they walk in everyday whole, confident, and assured of our love for them.  God is a god of redemption, which we’ve already seen at work.  God is a god of justice, which we are thankful is being served here today. God is also a god of grace, which he has extended to all people and we would like to extend to you today on behalf of our family.  We forgive you for the pain and scars you’ve left on our beautiful daughters.  We forgive you for the pieces we’ve had to mend in your absence.  We forgive you for the residual scars lurking under the surface of their hearts.  We pray that you find grace and repentance in Jesus Christ and that he would redeem your story as well.
-The Lamb Family

If Houses Wore Shoes

Our first little apartment was 700 sq feet on the westside, a rundown, six apartment complex still hanging on amidst million dollar townhomes.  Often we would drag our lawn chairs on the curb and drink beer and smoke cigars.  We joked that our country club neighbors would drive by real slow and watch the white trash in their natural habitat and disapprovingly shake their heads. We planned our lives in those chairs, on that curb.  We discussed children, careers, dreams and buying a home.  As a lover of change, commitment makes me nervous, so when after less than two years of marriage, he suggested buying a house, I wanted to throw up.  He explained the investment of owning over renting and I just nodded, anxiously wringing my hands. When we toured our home, I was not crazy about the lavender walls, pink carpet, or vertical blinds, but the backyard sold him and the bright turquoise front door, me. We started looking in February, closed in March and were entirely moved in two weeks later.  Compared to the majority of society, our first home buying experience was sweet, simple, and virtually painless bar the massive amounts of money and signatures involved.

We still talked about our future, this time in the privacy of a backyard we owned at the house we both loved. Our housewarming party in May was a lovely mixture of compartmentalized worlds suddenly colliding.  We all laughed, drank, and ate ice cream.  We had filled our home with people we loved and that was only the beginning. We had big plans for this pile of bricks.  

From there we had guests from across the country and the world sit and sometimes stay.  We had teenagers camp out across the floors and even two who came to stay for a long time.  We celebrated numerous births and marriages.  The word of God was read and studied gathered in the living room or around our table.  We hosted holidays, birthday parties, and missionaries.  My knees kissed the floor in moments of brokenness, it's paneling absorbed my sorrow. Through our turquoise front door, we welcomed our daughters into our forever.  We’ve kept and loved on kiddos without homes for a day or two at a time.  I’ve heaved sobs of tears from the darkest depths of my being and laughed until my stomach ached with joy. We have written names on our wall and petitioned the Lord in prayer for them. We’ve had conversations of intervention and repentance sitting in the living room. We’ve experienced flooding in the intake vents, shifting foundation, and bed bugs. It’s been nearly four years since we darkened the front door, but I feel we’ve done right by these walls.  

Love has lived here.  Souls have gathered here. The Lord has worked here.  Now we box up the things that take up space and move them to a new place. Where we will ultimately end up? We aren’t exactly sure, but it’s got big shoes to fill if houses wore shoes.

A Year Ago Today...

A year ago today, I dragged myself out of bed and got dressed for work.  

I'm not a morning person, but at least it was a Friday. 

Friday's mean jeans and art centers, so, all in all, it was bound to be a relatively easy day. 

I eat lunch at my desk. 

I've never been one to sit in the lounge.  

My phone buzzes.

Adoption Agency.

 Message reads: "Can I call you?"

Oh boy. That's never good. 

I mentally log all of the paperwork and pieces of training recently due. 

I know we're up to date. We have to be! What did I forget?

The phone rings. 

Emergency. 

Two girls. 

Respite. 14 days at the max. 

Three and six years old. 

My stomach ties in knots.  

There was something different about this call. 

I can't make a decision without my soul mate, so I'll have to call back. 

I call him. I feel his stomach knot too. 

We talk in circles and stop. Let's take an hour. 

He calls back and we're taking them. 

They'll be at our house At 5:00. 

Oh, and the 3 yr old has a birthday tomorrow. 

The afternoon was full of frantic text exchanges trying to locate and secure necessary items and plan a birthday party. 

They arrive and cautiously walk into our living room. 

We eat at chick fil a, lose a tooth, and go to bed.

First photo a few minutes after their arrival

A late night trip to Wal Mart produces a birthday crown and gifts ready to be opened the next morning.  

Three shiny and well sought out quarters are slid under Silverbell's pillow.

 

We went to bed as parents, never to wake up again without two little angels under our care. 

At 7:45 AM four little feet patter across our bedroom floor: a birthday girl and a toothless wonder.

Today I slept in, a gift from my soul mate. 

I got dressed and headed out for the day leaving two little sets of PJs eating cereal in our kitchen.  

Everything about the scene was normal, natural as if this has been our reality longer than a year.

Tomorrow we celebrate another birthday.  This time with a little more warning and planning involved. 

There have been 365 days heavier, fuller, and sweeter than I could have ever imagined. 

They changed my world.  

They changed my role.  

They changed my heart.  

Just like asfter five years of marriage, I don't remember a life without my soulmate, I can't remember life before my Little Bit and Sliverbell.

She Wants My Name

She wants my name.

What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.  I agree, Sir Shakespeare, but when has a rose feel the earnest, soul longing desire to be known by name?  Being known gives life. Being known by name gives identity, be it in renown or infamy. Your name is known, therefore, you are known.   

I changed my name only once and it was a sign of commitment and love. The commitment and love are not just in my covenant marriage to my soul mate, but also because it required a full day off of work and four hours in the buzz of fluorescent lights of a government office just to hand a form to a person behind a desk. In the changing of my name I did not lose my identity but increased it.

My little curly headed beauty and her little sister were in another home just merely one year ago, promised forever and a new name.  In reading her story, she had expressed excitement at her new name.  She learned the order of its letters and began to identify with its title and the people with whom it was also associated. Months of promises were broken in a selfish instance. Her name remained the same and again, she is moved.  

This time she requests not just the last to change, but the first as well.  She chooses a name for herself. She is five years old and chooses a new name, a new identity and helps her sister choose one as well. The justification of her selection- "it sounds like a princess' name."  Little does this young soul know that the name she has given herself actually means “devoted to God,” a prayer her daddy and I have lavished on her soul long before we knew of her existence.

They find themselves in another home, fourth in a year and a half, the second to promise forever and a new name. She learns another sequence of letters that would complete the new identity she has created. It's written on her folder and on her backpack even though the state has not recognized it legally. She is excited and bonds to her new name only to have its promises fractured just as the first.

When she comes to us, she is unsure of which name to claim.  The little one clings only to her first and is adamant that she no longer identifies with the former.  Her last name is of no significance. I scratch out the old names and leave only “Devoted to God” on all of her things.

One evening, we sit them down and ask if we could give them our name. My curly headed beauty beams with excitement as if she’s never tasted the bitterness of broken promises.  My littlest simply accepts with a skepticism she must have inherited from me. Yet another name to be memorized. She identifies it in books and signs.  She asks with anticipation when it will be her name for good, but behind those eyes of hope lingers the scars of doubt left by the promise breakers.  She knows the weight of a name. She knows that a name can bring belonging.  She wants to belong, to be known.  

I've had a lot of names, Mama.

One day I won’t have different names.

One day I will have your name, Mama.

Yes, sweet girl, you get a new name, but there is truly only one name that matters.  It’s the name that is above every name.  At this name, every knee will bow and tongue confess.  By this name, your wounds are healed and your soul secured within the book of life.  This name claims you and knows you.  This name is everlasting.  There is only one name, my precious girl, that I desire to flow from your lips and cling to your heart.  This is the name to which we continue to pray you and your sister will devote yourselves.

Your daddy and I are delighted to give you a new name but long for you to know the one who gives you new life.
Jesus.

And still He writes...

This month last year I sat in my living room and wrote about Anticipation.
The anticipation, the hopeful expectation of anxiety redeemed, as we waited for our home to be filled with the sounds and the scared, chaotic rhythms of family.
I sat alone in my chair with a cup of coffee and thought on the papers being processed and the personnel who would deem us "qualified parents," as if such creatures exist.
As I sat, God was writing, as He always does.
He wrote us into the life of a young woman who was choosing life, such a courageous decision. Would we be the parents of this little baby boy?  We answered yes.
God honored our "yes" with peace as his mom not only chose life but motherhood as well.
And still, He wrote...
In my impatience with timing, He wrote moments meant for just the two of us that grew us together as one and of which I wistfully and thankfully hold in my heart.
As I doubted the call, He introduced characters who restored the faith and encouraged the soul.
As I feared the call, He allotted courage in divine increments meant to help me remain in complete reliance on the one who calls.
As I am sitting now in the same room one year later, He writes.
The same decorations hang from our tree and the same smells fill our home.  I sit in my chair.  I welcome the pangs of anticipation.  All is silent, much like last December.
The difference, however, is that two more stockings hang from our fireplace.  The difference is that in thirty minutes two sets of feet will come barrelling through my house. The difference is that separate accounts of the day will be shared at a high volume and all at once.  The difference is that though I allowed my anticipation to lose hope and sometimes heart, He writes according to His goodness, not mine.
Every day He adds to this narrative. There is tragedy, comedy, adventure, and true love.
He writes a greater story.  We are just a scene, an insignificant one at that, in this grand tale he composes. It's an honor to be the Mama of the two characters He's introduced into our scene. So I sit in anticipation once again...
And still He writes...