Relentless Warrior

From my blog on Established in Grace
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I was praying for my daughter and saw the verse Matthew 15:28 on my list of verses to pray for her.  So I turned to it and read,

Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted."  And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

Then I went back and re-read the story, verses 21-28 and I felt as if Jesus was opening my eyes anew to something I already understood and had read many many times.

This Canaanite woman is asking for something that Jesus will grant her.  He wants to grant her the request she is making but He delays her request.  Making her ask again and again.

Did He deny her request to test her faith?  To grow her?  Was it for the disciples?  Was it to grow them?  Whatever the reason Jesus denies and puts her off.  But she keeps asking.  It's her child, her daughter.  She won't give up even if it means to humble herself over and over again and relentlessly ask.

I imagine Jesus smiling when He answers her, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted!"  Could she feel His heart of love even though it seemed He was denying her request to heal her daughter?

I don't pretend to know the ways of God, or how prayer works, but as I read this story and prayed for my daughter I felt God move on my heart.

Keep praying.  The answer might feel like a "no" but keep asking.  Don't give up.  Pray relentlessly even in the face of obstacles and doubt. I have given you this burden of prayer, this love to ache and pray for her, don't stop praying.  

Being a warrior doesn't mean that things come easily.  It means that we fight for them.  As Christians we fight spiritual battles. We fight in prayer.  Praying for our daughter is a joy and sorrow. Some of you understand that kind of prayer.  Some days I feel parched and empty.  Other days full of hope and expectation.  But even on the days where I feel weak to pray I won't give up.  I clutch Jesus' feet and pray our daughter.

Have you felt impressed to pray for someone or something?  Have you felt you're praying on repeat without any movement?  Don't give up.  I can't explain why there is this silence or seeming delay but I do know that there is a loving God who wants to give you all good things.  Keep praying.  Ask for clarity in your prayers and search the Bible, but don't give up praying.  You never know when or how He will answer.

Silent and Unknown Warrior

From my blog post on Established in Grace
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Over Mother's Day weekend I thought about her.

Not my daughter but her birth mother.  My heart skitters and slides over that messy and beautifully painful truth.

I don't have our girl home yet. I don't have her picture or her beautiful Chinese name to look at and memorize, but already the magnitude, tragedy, depth, and privilege begin to expand and grow in my soul.

And this woman that I don't know is a warrior.  I don't know her story and I cannot claim any knowledge about her and our shared daughter.  But this woman chose to grow our daughter in her womb.  And give her life.  It is not an easy choice.  But she did it.  This warrior woman gave our daughter life and gave her to us.

In response to this warrior woman I will be a warrior to fight for her spiritual life.

So I fight in prayer for our daughter's birth parents. Praying for God to work in their hearts and lives and have them accept Jesus as their personal Savior, so that one day we can all be together in heaven and love on our girl as a family.

"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."  2 Peter 3:9 (emphasis mine)

Prayers are often silent and unknown except to the person who is praying.  But prayer is powerful.  Here at Established in Grace we want to pray for you. To be silent warrior women for you as we pray for the needs of your heart.  We may not know you personally but we can join together in prayer to the One who knows and loves you best.

I also invite you to become the unknown and silent warriors for someone.  Who are you fighting for?  Who do you need to be wrestling in prayer for?  Be a warrior and fight for the eternal lives of those God is placing upon your heart.

I think of Jacob's reply after wrestling with God,

"I will not let you go unless you bless me." Genesis 32:26

Don't give up. Don't let go of God as you fight for those He has laid on your heart.  And one day I look forward to being gathered together in heaven and seeing and hearing all the ways God has answered our prayers.

Learning to Cry

From my Established in Grace blog post
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Learning to Cry

I want to rush over to China and scoop up my daughter.  Cuddle her to my chest the way I do with my son and hold her, hold her, hold her until she begins to understand that when she cries her needs will be met.  To whisper love to her and show it to her on a daily basis. Who would think that I might have to re-train my daughter that when she cries she will be met with love?

In my previous post I shared about Silent Orphanages.  In short it is where orphanages are silent, even when full of babies because they have learned that no matter how long they cry that their needs will not be met.  So they stop crying out loud.  The needs are still there but there is silence. Awful silence.

I had asked some adoptive parents to share on experiencing silent orphanages and these three responses made me realize that it wasn't just getting my daughter into our home and being there to love her.  I was going to have to re-train her ability to reach out when she is in need....

A few parents shared this:

• I don't recall it was quiet. But I can tell you my toddler was trained & terrified to not call out or cry at night. It took a couple of years before I could persuade her it was okay to get up to potty or holler out for me. It was deeply ingrained in her to keep quiet at night. I get that one toddler crying would wake everybody up & they'd all be crying, but it still makes me horribly sad the toddlers have to go through this hell. This was probably one of the biggest behaviors I deal with.
• It's silent in the rooms because their needs are not met, especially on demand. They know their needs will not be met so they stop asking. We had to teach two (out of 4 adoptions) of our kids to cry. To feel emotions. To understand that it hurts when you ...pinch a finger, skin a knee, etc. Those two still have extremely high pain tolerance levels but they have learned appropriate responses now.
• There is often a big difference between the baby rooms and the preschoolers. With a 10:1 ratio of children to caregiver, a preschooler has more likelihood of getting some attention and will get interaction from his peers as well. The babies...just what you have read here. If they survive to get out of the baby room they can learn to interact, but many still don't learn to seek comfort.

My heart just breaks.  Because the truth is that even though I will know that she is in a safe place, she will not.  And even though I know that Matthew and I will reach out and comfort her and be happy to comfort her, she does will not.  She will remain silent.  She will have to learn to cry.

Children tend to either be silent or crying on the initial "gotcha day" but afterwards some parents will share that after being home for a while then it seems that the child will regress and start to cry and be clingy. In our adoption training that we had to go through they shared that when a child begins to cry with you, that is when you know you have begun to create a connection and that attachment can form.

As a mama it is hard when Edmund cries when he is hurt or sick, but I am so glad that he comes running to me to be cuddled and loved.

Right now I can't be there for my little girl.  But I know that God is.

And God is here for you too.  Have you been bottling up your emotions?  Have you stopped crying out because you have tried and there has been no response?

Isaiah 49:14-16 says:

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
And my Lord has forgotten me.”
 “Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you.
 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;
Your walls are continually before Me.

These verses strike my heart as a mother.  Could I forget my son?  Never. Impossible. But even if that were possible God could not forget you.  He is with you.  He has inscribed you in the palm of His hands.  Permanently linking Himself to you.  Your needs and wants are continually before God.  You might feel forsaken and forgotten but you are not. 

My daughter is not forsaken and forgotten.  Though she may be in silence now I am praying that very soon she will know the safety of a place where she can learn to cry and know she will be met with love.

You are not forsake or forgotten.  Through you may be in silence now I am praying that you will feel God's love.  You will open God's Word and read of His love for you that surpasses any you have ever known.  I pray that you will know the safety of God's arms around you, holding you as you cry.  You are continually before Him and loved beyond comprehension.

Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

Silent Orphanages

From my Established in Grace blog post.
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This is a heavy post for me.  It is heavy because of the reality of it.  Because of the silent suffering that is going on for more children than we care to admit.  And this is just one area of suffering for children.  There are so many other areas it makes me sick.  Physically sick and emotionally drained.

And it can all seem so far away and so far removed.  Until it is your child.  Your daughter.  Our little girl.

Silence comes to a baby no by natural means.  Babies cry.  They cry to express their needs.  And a loving adult hears those cries and comes to them.  In an orphanage this is not always the case. Babies are overwhelmingly outnumbering their caregivers. So the children cry. Because that's what babies do.  But eventually they learn that when they cry, no one will meet their needs.  So they stop crying.  There is silence.  Roaring, deafening silence.

I asked some of the members of an adoption group I am a part of to give me some first hand experiences of this.  Here is some of what they shared:

• I have walked into one in Brazil and if I hadn't seen the babies all laying in cribs I would have assumed it was an empty room of cribs. I had to look at each baby several times to believe that most weren't even asleep.
• Our son's orphanage was quiet. I told my husband the silence in that room was the loudest sound I've ever heard.
• It is so hard to walk into an orphanage where there are hundreds of children and hear NOTHING!
• I have a video from my daughters orphanage...they showed the room, and you never would have thought there were babies in the cribs until they zoomed in.
• When we visited our second daughter's orphanage you could hear a pin drop. In the first room we went into it was silent except for the cries of a little boy who had just been abandoned and admitted to the [orphanage] who had yet to learn that no one would respond to his cries...I about lost it.

Picture from: www.growingyourbaby.com/2014/02/03/abandoned-babies-of-china-from-girls-to-sick-and-disabled/

• We adopted from Russia and the loudest sound I've I ever heard is the clock tick for so, so long while waiting to meet our daughter. There were 100 babies ages 0-3 in he orphanage and all I heard was the clock tick and an occasional pot and pan bang around from those preparing food.
• All the videos we got of our daughter it was completely silent in there. None of them talking or crying. The worst sound I've ever heard.
• This is my experience five times over. There was even minimal noise from the preschoolers (unprompted noise, I mean). ...In the orphanages it was almost totally silent.
• Only heard one baby cry while I was visiting my son's orphanage. That baby had been there less than a week. The others... some had ants crawling through their blankets (my son came covered in ant bites) and didn't make a peep. Saw one baby treated very roughly and didn't make a peep either. I could have so much more to say...
• I went to China this past summer and saw things in the "good" orphanages that I wish I could un-see. It was one of the most heart changing experiences of my life. Knowing those particular children are still there, in the exact same positions, make me question the actual future of humanity.

Not all reports were bad. Two parents shared that they saw lively and humane orphanages with nannies who would hold the baby when they were crying.  But this is the exception, sadly, not the norm.

The more I read and asked questions about silent orphanages the more my heart cried out against it.  Each child is precious. Deserving of love. I want to fight this silence with love.  Love that teaches us each child that when they cry they will be heard.  In the book Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis she shares this:

“The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitutes, or under other horrific conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children. And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth proclaim to be Christians. The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would not be any statistics left.” (emphasis mine)

I will be that 8 percent. Will you?  Some of you already are.  You sponsor children through programs for them to stay with their families but have access to healthcare and education.  You foster children in your homes.  You financial support those adopting or fostering.  You adopt. There are many different ways to help.  I encourage you to find one.  We are not all called to adopt, but as Christians we are all called to do something.

You know, I looked it up in the Bible.  God not only hears the cries of His children, but He responds to them.  Here are just a few that I looked up.  Go read them. Hear God responding.

But Psalm 18:6-19 is currently my favorite.

"In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From His temple He heard my voice; my cry came before Him, into His ears."

Then in verses 7-15 it tells of the power and anger of God toward evil and sin that is hurting the psalmist.  It might seem scary but it is a strong and powerfully beautiful picture of the Hero fighting for His beloved.  He hears the cries of His beloved and He is not passive.  He fights for His beloved.  Then verses 16-19 speaks to the rescue,

"He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted  me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delights in me."

This is also for you.  Do you cry out?  Let it be known that God hears you.  And not only does He hear you but He will fight for you!  He is coming, even now, He is on His way to rescue you.  Hold on, don't give up.

I cry out to God to tell our daughter the same thing.

Don't give up. Keep crying out.  Mama and Papa are coming.  We are coming and God is with you even now in the silence. 

 

Pressing In

From my Established in Grace blog post.

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Sometimes it's in the middle of the day. The deep ache for our daughter.  Sometimes I wake up with a prayer for her on my heart and I plead with God, knowing  He loves her more than I do, to be near her and bring her home to us soon.  I don't always know when it will come but it does come.  The ache and the longing.  But each time it presses me to pray.

I was texted with another adoptive mother and I said, "It is the waiting and the unknown that presses us more into God, isn't it? I can't bear the separation from our girl and so I press into God more and more."

It is like burying my head again my Father's shoulder.

I pull out my Bible and journal and I write. I pray the promises God has for her and for us.

John 14:18, "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you."

And I press deeper into Jesus. Deeper into God our Father.  Deeper into the Holy Spirit Comforter.

Luke 18:27, "[Jesus] replied, 'What is impossible with man is possible with God.'"

And I pray bolder, louder, persistently.  And I press into Him.  Savior, Father, Comforter.

We went to visit our dear friends in Massachusetts over our spring break and on Sabbath we took a beautiful walk in Ashley Reservoir.   It was a bit cold and for most of the walk our little boy, Edmund was happy.  Matthew carried him in the backpack-carrier for a while and then near the end he squirmed to get out and wanted me to hold him.

But he didn't just want to be held. He wanted to curl up tight against me. He wanted his legs tucked up tight against me and his head buried into my shoulder.

He needed me and I cuddled him up and held him close. I loved his little body curled up into me. I didn't mind his need for me, instead I felt love pour through me for him and our relationship that makes him feel safe with me.  His need for me was based on our relationship and him knowing that I would love him.

I didn't mind at all.

God doesn't mind at all. 

Do you find yourself aching?  The love in your heart hurting?  Press into God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  Open up the Word of God and see all the promises and love He has for you, and press deeper into Him.

Louder. Bolder.

From my Established in Grace blog

I've been spiritually wrestling again.  A recent phone call with our adoption agency was discouraging to me about wait times to be matched.  What frustrated me is that before that phone call I had been feeling full of faith and belief that God would match us soon.  That phone call sucker-punched me.  And I was frustrated that it did.

There is this story in the Bible that grabbed me back in February.  It is the story found in Luke 18: 35-43.

There is a beggar.  A blind beggar who hears a huge group of people passing and asks what is going on.  When he is told that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by he begins to cry out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

The people passing by rebuke him.  Tell him to be quiet.

To me, this part is the part that arrests my soul: But he only shouted louder, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

I felt rebuked in my soul about my hope and belief that Jesus would hear my prayers to bring our daughter home very, miraculously soon.  I felt in my soul to "be quiet" and settle down.  No need to makes so much noise about it. But then I think of this story.  I think of all the promises and ways that God has already showed divine intervention.  And I press forward.  I shout louder, I pray bolder, I continue to be persistent.  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!

The Bible says that when Jesus heard him, He stopped and had the man brought to Him.

If the blind man had not continued to shout boldly and loudly it is possible that Jesus would have passed by.  How much do I want Jesus to stop?  I know this is a tricky ground spiritually--because it is not what I do that makes Jesus listen to me, and yet it is.  The Bible has many, many examples of why we are to pray persistently and not give up.  And this is an example of that same thing in one of Jesus' miracles.

This is the other part of the story that really gets me: Jesus asks the man, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Jesus knew.  He had to know.  Even those in the crowd must have thought it was a crazy question--the man was blind, of course he wanted to see.  But...Jesus makes him ask specifically for what he wants.

The man says, "Lord, I want to see!"

Direct and to the point but bold.  Faith pushing aside any doubts and just, "Lord, I want to see!"  There isn't a wavering of faith, but bold faith.  When we pray for our daughter we have very specific things we pray for her.  We have laid them out before Jesus, specifically asking Him for those things.  We are praying them in faith.  It is scary to pray specific prayers. Why? Because there is risk involved. It's bold to say that I want my daughter to have excellent medical care and loving and competent caregivers.  It's bold to ask Him to bring her home to us soon.  But, it was also bold to ask Him to help us with our first fundraising project--and in a month and 10 days we had completed it!  A miracle!  Bold specific prayers are scary but they are also faith building both in the wait and the answers.

And Jesus speaks directly to that saying, "Receive your sight; your faith has healed you."

Doesn't that make your heart race?  Make your heart beat a little faster?  It does for me. Thrills my soul actually.

Faith heals.  My faith in God and my faith that He will answer these prayers we are praying for our daughter.

Is it too bold for me to type here that I can't wait for God to say, "Receive your daughter; your faith has brought her to you."

I think not.

And so, instead of giving into the rebuke and discouragement I have felt, I wrestle against it, crying out louder, "Jesus, have mercy on me! Jesus, have mercy on our daughter!"

We won't give up praying.  We won't be silent.  We will pray boldly and persistently specific prayers of faith.

What are you afraid to ask for in prayer?  Search God's Word, ask for direction in accordance with His Word, and then pray boldly what He give you to pray.  Pray in faith.  And don't give up though you might feel discouraged or rebuke.  Pray louder.  Pray more boldly.  Pray in faith.

And you know what is crazy about all this prayer and boldness in our own lives?  When God does move in our lives, and we praise God for it, it affects others to praise God.

The last words on this story in Luke say, "When all the people saw it, they also praised God."

So in your boldness, in your loud persistent and specific prayers you can increase the faith of others.  

That's why I'm choosing to be vulnerable and tell you about my specific prayer request for our daughter.  To tell you about our faith and our prayers.  Because it is my prayer that as you see God's hand move in our lives that you too would praise God and be encouraged to seek Him.

Persistent Cat and Prayer

From Established in Grace blog post

My cat, Hana, has this super annoying thing she does.  She pounds on doors to get what/where she wants.  In the day, it is annoying and sometimes I ignore her for a while, but eventually I give in and get up or go over to where she is and open the door she desires to go into. If she is where carpet is, and the pounding is not working then she takes her little kitty claws and tears up the carpet with a sound that is like nails on a chalk board to me. Between the door pounding and carpet tears she is pretty persistent and gets her way.

Especially at night.

Seriously.  There is not one part of me that wants to get up and open a door for her at night but she won't give up.  And as a parent, what really makes me get up is that I am afraid that if she is not quiet she will wake up our toddler.  And seriously--seriously--who wants to deal with a crying toddler because the cat woke him up?  Not me.  So I will drag myself out of bed open doors.

I have been learning a lot about prayer recently.  In very practical ways that I hadn't before. 

 Many of you have heard the parable that Jesus told about in Luke 11:5-10.

Here is the setting.  The family is all in bed.  Snuggled in, warm and asleep.

Then at midnight. Midnight. A friend comes knocking.  Asking for bread for a friend who is on a journey.

The man in the house says what we all would say.  Go away.  I am in bed with my family. I cannot help you.

But the man is persistent.  Keeps knocking.  At midnight.  If I was the man I would be thinking about my family and how I don't want to have this friend knocking and knocking and wake them up.  The Bible says that the man gives his friend the bread, not because they are friends, but because the friend's importunity.

The word importunity comes from importunate.  Importunate means: persistent, especially to the point of annoyance or intrusion.

Then Jesus ties that parable into a famous quote: "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

Persistent prayer.

This story reminds me of my cat.  I do love her, but it's not because I love her that I get up at midnight to open doors.  I get up because she is persistent and won't give up.

How often do I pray things and then just let it go?  A lot.  I have called it faith.  Praying and then trusting God.  But what if God is really asking for prayer to be faith filled to ask and ask and ask? Always believing? I am learning to pray differently.  And honestly it is because some really hard things have happened.  Things that make me realize that now is the time to fight spiritually and that prayer is a sword of faith.

I want to share bits of my prayer journey here because it is tied directly to our daughter we are adopting.

We have been praying about our dossier.  Praying for the documents to get here to us, and to China.  The dossier could not arrive in China before I was thirty (which was on 2/20 a Sabbath).  Our dossier was mailed to China on 2/19.  China received the dossier 2/23.  That timing is incredible.  I don't believe that it just happened like that.  I believe that it is because of our prayers.  God had it leave the USA the soonest it could have without risking it get there before my 30th birthday.  And it got there the Monday after I turned thirty.  That was the soonest China could have received it. On 2/25 we were logged-in.  The emails from our adoption agency said that being logged into the system could take around 2 weeks.  God did it in a few days.  Chance? No.  Persistent prayer?  Yes.

I want to be honest.  It is scary for me to boldly proclaim this to you.  Why?  Because I know that I have so much to grow in my knowledge of prayer.  And because there have been times in my life where I have prayed persistently and the answer has been not what I wanted to hear.  But I feel that God is calling me to walk this path. To ask, seek, and knock over and over and over.  Not giving up.  Not when I am tired at midnight, or worn out from asking, or afraid.  But to ask full of faith and belief.

I want you to join me in this persistent prayer journey.

What are areas of your life that you want radical change?  What are areas that you want to see the power of God working?  He doesn't promise things to be quickly resolved but for you to knock, knock, knock...

Keep knocking and seeking and asking.  He will answer.  Everyone who asks receives.  The one who seeks finds.  The one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Those aren't my words--they are Jesus' and He is true and faithful.