spent today with the family. my sister and her fam drove in to hang out at with my bro and new family. my mom & dad drove up as well to hang, but they are staying with us. for what has been a real trying week, personally & spiritually, this is a fun way to spend the easter weekend. got some fun pics from our weekend.
this is a little how i am feeling right now.. tonight for our maundy thursday service we sang hymn 482.. but what was nice was hymn/prayer 481.. you know it like this
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon’
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.O’ Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
not quite your maundy thursday experience, but it was much of what i am needing in this odd time.
my friends jennifer & david have started the process to adopt their first child. they are just salt of the earth people and erin & i love them dearly. they started a blog to give some updates on the process, which i have kept up with. their recent post has my mind just spinning… they have to fill out a form stating their preferences for how they want their child.
personal note: i love folks who adopt. when i was at my youngest years our family was a foster family. i don’t remember the names of the kids who would come and stay at our home (sleep in mine & my bro’s room), but i remember their faces. scratch that, i do remember taylor, but only because his real name was david & my older brother’s name was david so we called him taylor and that had me confused.. where did we come up with that name.. sorry, tangent.
children need a home, and these two will provide a great home. i would also expect that they will provide a great home for a child that might not be ‘ideal’ by some standards. which is where they find themselves in a lot of exploration
for clarification sake: their current struggle is about race. i’ve expanded it by using ‘ideal’ as simple term to encompass a same ethnicity, non-conditioned/special-needs, premature, high risk pregnancy, etc. child. you get the picture. i think their honest thoughts expand more than just race.
And the big thing for us is the question of race? I can hear your
wheels turning?! Here’s the thing….we could choose to accept only
healthy caucasian infants or we can just keep it wide open or anything
in the middle. So we have considered many things:If we are willing to adopt outside of our race…
*how will our friends and family feel/recieve us?
*how will our church family recieve us?
*how would we handle the questions, the stares, the looks?
*what issues would our child have to face because their skin may be different from ours?
*at the end of the day, do the stares, the looks and the comments matter?
you need to go and check out their thoughts. it has me thinking about it all. maybe you have an adoption story to share.
and just for the record: without giving their family history, these folks know what is like to be looked at and talked about. they live in a world & have lived in a world that is not ideal by most standards. which i have always thought makes them especially capable to love those who are not ideal & in ideal situations.
i am with amy on her theology of dog. my coe is one of the best dogs in the world. my crimson, is a little neurotic, but she is fun and sensitive most of the time.
this i my little bro with the women of the day. tiff, his wife, and little madalyn on her birthday. things have gone rather smoothly, long, but smoothly. even with shawn intervening into the birthing, he managed to not drop little madalyn.
both daughter & mother are doing wonderfully. i am uploading pics as i get kicked out of the room for various things, the first installment of the madalyn birthday set.
happy birthday madalyn! welcome to our fam. now for this uncle to start the corruption! muhahah!