A pull-apart cookie dough kinda girl

"Mommy, can we please bake cookies?  The kind where you have to mash them down with the rollie thing?"

This is what my six year old daughter asked me last Tuesday morning.

She was referring to homemade cookies rolled out with my wooden rolling pin.  I'm sad to admit I wondered how she even knew what this kind of cookie is, since she has never made them before.  She was referring to a rolling pin we had unfortunately never used together.  You see, I am of the "pull-apart cookie dough" life style.  If I bake cookies they are from store bought dough that comes out of a package.  You pull apart the square dough, plop them onto my cooking stone, and 12 minutes later, voila!  Fresh baked cookies!  Good enough for me.  But, maybe it shouldn't be. 

I stopped when she asked me this, and my first reaction was to say, "Not today honey.  We have so much to do, especially since Mommy just got out of the hospital and 'lost' a few days."  I had just been home a little over 24 hours and felt the burden of making sure the kids completed their schoolwork, I get my work caught up from my work-from-home job, and conquered the list of household chores still waiting.

But that was not my answer.  Since I had just spent three days laying in a hospital bed reflecting on what is truly important, that was not my answer.

"You know what?  Let's finish our math lesson and then we will bake homemade cookies!"  My sweet Hope's eyes lit up.  Such a simple thing.  Such joy as a result.

So, I did what any pull apart cookie kinda girl does...I hit Google!  I googled the highest rated sugar cookie recipe I could find and then thought, "Let's go crazy!  Let's make icing, too!"

We gathered up all of the ingredients and was thrilled that we already had everything we needed.  And we baked cookies.

We worked together, Mother and Daughter, kneading the dough.  We talked and giggled while the dough chilled.  Hope picked out just one cookie cutter she wanted to use.  The Star.  She said we were making Sea Star cookies, in honor of the beautiful ocean she was able to see for the first time this past summer. I listened.  I found out how much she loves the ocean, just like me.  She chose blue food coloring for the icing.  Ocean blue.  We licked our fingers free from wonderful sweetness. She said we needed sprinkles.  Just because everything is better with sprinkles. She asked if we could take pictures of us making cookies. 


 As the last of the cookies were set aside for the icing to set, Hope wrapped her sweet little arms around me and said this was the "best day ever!"  She ran off to play, and as I stood in my kitchen watching her skip off, I began to weep.  Truly weep.

How many of these moments have I missed out on because I was "too busy?"  Because I was preoccupied.  Because my priorities were messed up.

As a Momma that works from home and homeschools my children, I am almost always with my kids.  But, how much of that time am I truly present?  How much of that time am I really there?

You know, there are absolutely times when it is necessary in today's world to be a pull-apart cookie dough kinda girl.  But, I truly desire to be more of a "mash them down with the rollie thing" kind of mom.  One of these are quick, convenient, and less messy.  However, I think there is so much joy missed by that choice.

Thank you Lord, that you prompted me to say Yes.  Thank you for the blessings that came from choosing in that moment the more time consuming, harder to get to the reward, and definitely more messy route. Thank you for my reward of Joy!

And, thank you Lord for little brown-eyed girls and sparkly blue Sea Stars.

Darkness to Hope

Ever since I allowed myself to write a few days ago, I have been extremely weepy.  I have cried more the last few days than I have in 8 months.  I am crying at everything.  Happy tears. Sad tears.  Just because tears, which are maybe really cleansing tears.  I am realizing I am feeling again.  I think in a lot of areas I had been going through the motions of life for a while now, and didn't even realize it.  As I have been reflecting these last few days and allowing myself to embrace what it feels like to be emotionally raw, I have been shown scriptures that have to do with remembering.  God remembering his covenant with Noah through the symbol of a rainbow (Genesis 9:15). God commanding his people to "Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm." (Deuteronomy 5:15)  And as I've been reading this, I feel God calling me to do some remembering of my own.

There was another time in my life that was marked by a darkness.  It began shortly after the birth of our second son in 2000. I was completely blessed with two step-daughters that I gladly claimed as my own (the oldest lived with us), our seven year old son, and now our newborn baby boy.  We made the choice for me to have a tubal ligation during my last cesarean.  Our family was complete.  

However, within a month of having this sweet, baby boy my heart began to ache.  Truly ache for a little girl we would never have as husband and wife.  It became a completely frustrating situation.  I could not even begin to guess how many conversations I had initiated with my husband over that six year time frame about "never having a little girl" and all the things I would "never" do that ended up with me in tears.  He would just simply say with the saddest look in his eyes for me, "I'm sorry."  And that is where it would end.  It had to end there.  There were no options.  God, please just make this go away.  I am so selfish.

But, this feeling didn't go away.  And the more I prayed for God to relieve me of this overwhelming desire, the more suppressing it felt. I lived in a private world of complete heartache and isolation that I could not explain.  I didn't think I could share my emotions with anyone that I mourned the loss of a little girl that I never had.  Even the thought of it sounded ridiculous.  I was blessed with four children through marriage and births, and yet I was having nightmares about empty pink cribs. There were three different times over those years that I walked into the local grocery store only to leave a full basket of groceries and walk out in tears because I had been so overwhelmed by watching a mom push a little brown-haired girl in a cart while they giggled and smiled.  This same image was a frequent of my dreams at night.  It was always a brown-haired little girl. I could never see her face in my dreams, but I could always see that she had long brown hair, sometimes pulled up, and sometimes I would hear the sweetest, most infectious giggle as she threw her head back in joyous abandon while I smiled.  They felt so real. 

Then, finally. An answer, or so I thought. I had to have a complete hysterectomy in March of 2005. Relief and rest in knowing that the thoughts in the back of my mind to ask my husband to support me in a tubal reversal were gone.  No turning back now.  Right?  Wrong.  Again, the darkness quickly came back. 

I was so selfish. I had friends dealing with infertility, so what right at all did I have to desire more? What was wrong with me? Weren't my boys enough? That was the question I feared the most. I struggled to put into audible words what I was feeling for fear of this single question. Why weren't they enough?  

However, one moment can change everything. I hit a point where I could not breathe.  I finally cried out to my husband on that summer day in August of 2006 and through gasps for air and a flood of tears, I said out loud what I had been burdening alone for six years. I read him my journal entry from that day.  I don't think at first he knew what to do with me, let alone with what I was saying. I just knew I was to a point that he had to make it better.  He had to make me better.  He had to help me get out of this pain I had been carrying around in secret.  Even though I feared all of this probably made no sense to him at all, he had to do something.

He did.  God had prepared my precious husband's heart for this moment.  He stayed very calm and I could see in his eyes he understood.  He processed my cry for help for barely a moment, and then looked right at me and stated with the confidence and clarity that I so desperately needed, "We need to adopt a little girl." Wow.  Why had I not thought of that? That is honestly what I thought.  I am sure partly I thought this because in fourteen years of marriage, we had never talked about adoption, at least not for us.  Through all of the years of desolate heartache, I never allowed myself to think that we could adopt.  Why would I?  It made no sense with four kids (couples adopt that couldn't have children), where would the money come from (we already supported four kids), and we are older (at the time my sweet husband had barely turned 42 and our oldest daughter was married).  It didn't make sense.  But it did.  To God it did.  To God it always did.

You see, in that moment, God allowed a new journey to begin to overcome my darkness.  One that my husband, not me, would lead.  One that showed me in an instant how God had required me to carry an unrelenting burden for a little girl I did not know to force us to do something to "make me better" which in turn would lead us to her.  One that showed me that it was NEVER about my boys not being ENOUGH, but it was ALWAYS about the fact that our family really wasn't yet COMPLETE.  

Praise God for never forgetting us, and being willing to always remind us to remember Him. Always. In all things. Even the darkness.

And so, our journey to overcome this darkness began on August 19, 2006.  Little did we know at that time that our daughter was about to turn four months old.  

What a blessing it is to remember a journey from darkness to Hope...


PS~This is a re-post shared on Ann Voskamp's site A Holy Experience for Walk with Him Wednesdays.  Please join her and others for encouragement to find Joy during times of suffering.

Too long

My 5 year-old's reading lesson this week includes three new sight words...to, too, and two.  She understood the concept of two (the number) and to (in the direction of) pretty quickly.  It took a bit more to understand the word too.  Too - also or very.  As I was trying to give her examples of how to correctly use this word, I kept coming back to "too long" as in, "it has been too long since ____" and she would fill in the blank.  Later that evening, my mind kept coming back to that phrase.

It has been too long.  Too long for many things.  Too long since I have allowed myself the freedom to write in the quiet moments.  Too long since I have slowed down enough to appreciate the gray that is being added to mine and my husband's hair that represent wonderful years together.  Too long since I have sat back and just listened with contentment to my children laughing.  It has been too long since I have eagerly embraced whatever it is the Lord may be doing, knowing full well that we should count it all joy.  It has been too long since I have counted it all joy.

It has been almost a year since our family began a journey of new ministry, adoption, and surrender to whatever the Lord had planned on those journeys...with great excitement!  However, just because you seek hard after the Lord and follow Him, doesn't mean you are going to end up in the place you thought He was leading.  Excitement turned to heartache, overwhelming sadness, and a brokenness unlike anything experienced before in my life.  For too long there was a darkness over our home due to a failed adoption of a sibling group.  Friends and family did not know what to do with us during this time we now just simply call the "darkness."  So, instead of saying the wrong thing, they just didn't say anything at all.  We felt abandoned.  They felt abandoned.  Guilt is heavy. You get up every day and put one foot in front of the other because you have to not because you want to.  Darkness is thick.  Isolation results.  But then, in a moment where you feel your next breath just might not come, something happens.  Something stirs.  It comes in a whispered prayer from your broken husband late at night.  I didn't want to hear it because in that moment, months later, I realized I was mad.  At family.  At friends.  At God.  But, God loves me.  A God who won't relent.  Thank God.

After that late night prayer, for the first time in months, I reach for the Word.  This was my gift God gave me in that moment.  I reached for my phone on the bedside table as I begged God to let me know He had not forgotten me and saw me in my darkness.  I pushed a bible ap and the random reading for the day shows.  This is what it read (highlighted in yellow on my phone!) I am worn out from my groaning.  All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.  Psalm 6:6

God heard my prayer.  God had not forgotten me.  God saw me.  Even though it had been too long since I had trusted Him as the Sovereign God he is.  As I awoke the next morning, for the first time in months, I knelt beside my bed and prayed out to Him.  I could hear the pages of my bible turning on their own by the force of the fan while I talked to Jesus.  When I finished praying, in the middle of the page, already highlighted in my familiar worn yellow, were these verses - "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.  I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me." Psalm 13:5-6  Restoration is such a beautiful, overwhelming thing.

God is Sovereign.  He can do what he wants in the way he chooses to do it.  But, it is all good.  It is all right.  It is all for our best.  It is all because He loves us so very much.  I am so incredibly humbled that the God who created the universe loves me enough to speak to me in my darkness even when it had been too long since my heart had been open to Him. 

Praise God that He doesn't consider it EVER too long.