365 People Photos ~ Number 112: I Heart These Sisters

Our two oldest Russian daughters through adoption, Sarah (almost 21) and Zhenya (22).
I thank God for them daily.

365 People Photos: Number 106 ~ Daddy Love

Last night we had a long wait at our local airport waiting for our daughter, Sarah, to return from Zambia. (For more on this, see our family blog Unto Him We Live) During that time 12-year-old Hope, our eleventh child, talked and talked with her daddy, sharing her heart with him. During a break in their conversation, I couldn't resist urging them to pose in front of the airport's flag. Hope is a curious child, and her daddy is willing to field question after question as she wraps her mind around her ever-expanding world as she prepares to enter her teens later this month. I'm so thankful to God that my man is such a great father!

365 People Photos: No. 71: The Blues

This time...just the eyes.

 

Brielle was rolling around in her bedding as Oksana, our nine-year-old daughter, played with our favorite toddler in her bedroom. The blanket casting the yellow glow is her favorite. The birth-grandmother of Brielle's mama, Anna, made the blanket for Brielle. Adoption is creating the most beautiful legacy in our family! Thank you, Sharon, for your love for Brielle!

365 People Pictures: No. 64.--Dance of Love

Our family attended a wedding last summer in the beautiful mountains of New Hampshire. The ceremony took place in the early afternoon, but the celebration carried on until dusk. Warm sunshine kissed the afternoon as those in attendance ate and fellowshipped and danced. I was captivated as I watched the brother and sister in the foreground gracefully sweep the gravel dance floor. Their bond as friends was evident in the unison with which they moved. Then something caught their eye and the pair paused, watching their father dance with their little sister. The thin waif of a child is a former Russian orphan, now doted on and enveloped in the love of a family. Now she has a daddy! Now she has a daddy who wants her as his dance partner! Adoption is beautiful!

365 People Photos: No. 58--Kindred Spirits

On the rocky path that is life there is that rare person who brightens your world from the first moment. You somehow just click. For our daughter, Jaynie (on the left), Rachel is one of those special gifts from God, a precious kindred spirit. The girls live several states apart so they were overjoyed last summer to be able to spend a day together at the wedding of Rachel's brother.

There is an unusual bond between the girls. We adopted Jaynie from Russia at age eight, while Rachel's family has adopted three preschoolers from that country in the past couple of years.

365 People Pictures: Day 54--We Do Donuts!

When we traveled to New England last summer, I was surprised to find a Dunkin' Donuts on nearly every corner. After all, I love a good sour cream glazed doughnut! On that trip I also came to enjoy Boston Cream donuts, thanks to an introduction by our daughter Lissie's soon-to-be father-in-law.

However, this photo wasn't taken in Massachusetts. In November we drove to Denver to celebrate my mom's 81st birthday. About seven hours into the 11-hour drive we stopped in North Platte, Nebraska. To our surprise we came upon a Dunkin' Donuts there. We boosted their profits on their very first day of business by purchasing a dozen for our mini army, and then the kids were kind enough to pose for a photo.

(My husband and I have the rare blessing of parenting twelve children. Our three oldest children weren't able to travel with us on this trip. The kiddos pictured here are the nine Russians we adopted as older children--ages 3 to almost 16 at adoption--over the past 12 years.)

365 People Photos--No.50: Twins Born 5,103 Miles Apart

Of our 12 children, these two get the most comments that they look alike. Often people even ask if they're twins. These questions and remarks tickle our family because Lissie (left) and Jaynie (right) may be close in age (16 months apart) and height, but that's where the similarities end. After all, the girls were born on different continents to different parents. Perhaps the assertions that the girls must be twins is especially funny to us since Lissie does have a twin--John. People rarely ask Lissie and John the same query she and Russian-born Jaynie get.

It was God's doing that these two look like sisters even though they share no genetic heritage. The wonder of adoption continues to amaze our family each time someone addresses Lissie or Jaynie with the familiar words, "Boy, you and your sister sure do look a lot alike!" When the question inevitably comes when the two girls are together, the rest of us just turn away and exchange knowing smiles. God certainly knew what He was doing when He placed Jaynie in our family!

Relishing Russia's Beautiful Craft Heritage

I'm having significant connection issues and our current adoption effort (combined with the "normal" craziness of life in a super-sized family) is keeping us from attending to the household electronics issue. So just a photo tonight:

Two years ago, my husband, Jim, and I spent a couple of days in Moscow finishing the very last official details of our adoption of Daria, Alexander and Oksana (at the time 15-, 11- and 6-years-old). We then traveled to the region in which they lived for the long-awaited court date that would make them our babies.

Before getting on the train, we also shopped for souvenirs for the nine children we'd left back home. This picture beings back sweet memories of the long time the two of us spent carefully picking out just the right item for each child. The beautiful shop is located on the world-famous pedestrian mall called The Arbat.

Our Adoption: Urgent Prayer Request

At the orphanage -- September 2012
Our little girl is the one in the middle!

We would be so grateful if you would pray one simple prayer for us perseveringly until we get news that God has answered our collective cry.

Please pray that we will get a court date before the end of the year. We were told this week by our adoption service provider that this will be nearly impossible. She also informed my husband, Jim, that if our case goes into the next calendar year, many of our documents will have to be redone simply because the year 2013 now appears at the top of the calendar. This redoing of paperwork is not a quick process. The cost in time is likely to slow down our ability to bring home our four siblings by two to three months.

So, please, would you cry out to the Father of the Fatherless that He would do the impossible for us--yet again and give us a court date in Russia before January 1? After all, "For nothing will be impossible with God." (Luke 1:27). In your prayers, you partner with us in orphan care (James 1:27)! Thank you, we simply couldn't do what we do with out an enourmous prayer team!

Learning to Love, Part 2a--"Self-Sacrifice"

A restaurant in which my husband and daughter, Lissie, ate a couple of weeks ago in a Central Asian capitol.
Like this beautiful ceiling, I want my love for others to be lavish and rich

 

As I said in Part 1 of this series of posts, I want to share Paul Tripp's wisdom when it comes to a biblical understanding of a very misunderstood concept--love. Here's his definition:

"Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving."

Paul David Tripp, What Did You Expect??, Crossway; pg 188--hardback

For me, this definition comes at my soul with pricks and pokes. This isn't really how I want love to work. I want love to be about me. I want attention to be focused on my needs and my wants. In fact, I want to be the center of attention.

However, Tripp makes it painfully clear that there is no such thing as self-focused "love." In his book, Tripp not only defines love. He carefully breaks down each of the thoughts embedded in his scripturally-based definition. Today we'll look at love being an act of self-sacrifice, which, of course, is as far as you can get from the selfish, self-focused "love" our culture touts and which, truthfully, my natural self craves.

"Love is willing self-sacrifice. There's no such thing as love without sacrifice. Love calls you beyond the borders of your own wants, needs, and feelings. Love calls you to be willing to invest time, energy, money, resources, personal ability and gifts for the good of another. Love calls you to serve, to wait, to give, to suffer, to forgive, and to do all these things again and again." (pg.188) 

I mentioned in my last post that Tripp's book is on the subject of marriage. As things so often are in God's economy, the choices I must make to have a strong, healthy, delight-filled marriage are the very same choices that will enable me to be the parent which I long to be.

Whether my focus in any particular moment is on my husband or my children, I cannot do what Tripp lays out as he expounds on the term self-sacrifice. I can't. Not without help anyway. Thankfully, I have a Saviour who has promised me the very strength I need to die--to self that is. All I have to do is ask. Experience--28 years as a wife and 22 years as a mother--tells me that I will, however, have to ask again and again and again and... But God sets no limits on His willingness to come to our aid in our desire to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.

Paul Tripp has more to say about the concept of loving self-sacrificially. I don't know about you, but I need to chew on just these few sentences for while before I'm ready for more. So, Learning to Love, Part 2b--"Self-Sacrifice" is yet to come.


Learning to Love, Part 1

A restaurant in Central Asia--May my love be large and expansive like this beautiful place!

In his book on marriage, What Did You Expect?, author Paul David Tripp shares some of the best wisdom Jim and I have read regarding getting along with people in any relationship. Period. With a family of 15 (soon to be 19 as we add four siblings through adoption), Jim and I are keenly aware of our need to live well with others!

In fact, we've taken Tripp's definition of love as our family's. He boils down so much Scripture into one powerful (and sometimes powerfully convicting!) sentence.

In the next few posts, I'm going to share Tripp's break down of each of the components of his definition. I need the reminder. If you do too, may you be blessed!

"Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the other person being loved is deserving."

Paul Tripp, Crossway, pg. 188 (hardback)

Tripp says:

"Love is willing. Jesus said, 'No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.' (John 10:18 ESV). The decisions, words, and actions of love always grow in the soil of a willing heart. You cannot force a person to love. If you are forcing someone to love, by the very nature of the act you are demonstrating that this person doesn't in fact love." (pg. 188) 

What if my heart is, when I'm really honest, unwilling? As many commandments as there are to love in the Bible (Please, if you're not familiar with them, get out your Bible and go on a hunt!), it's time to fall to my knees, confess my sin, and ask God to make me willing. And then ask again, and again, and... Just like the nagging widow (Luke 18:1-8). We know this is a prayer He will answer because we are praying for His will to be done. And, what He commands, He enables!

Project 366 -- Homemade Valentines

Day 33

One of our family traditions is to make Valentines for grandparents and the kids' widowed great aunts.

Here Cassandra (17) is making use of her drawing skills. The day my husband and I met Cassandra and her two siblings, Jaynie and Mark, in their orphanage in July 2001, we got the opportunity to watch them draw at the table in the orphanage director's office. We commented to each other that we were surprised at their skill level since they were just eight, seven and five.

Over the years, God has grown Cassandra into a young woman capable of creating the most winsome creatures. I hope some day she gets the chance to illustrate a children's book!

"What Every Child Needs Most"

I wept as I edited these photos. I was overwhelmed as the images of my friends' devotion for their newborn grew large on my computer screen.

My wave of emotion stemmed, oddly enough, from an experience in a Russian courtroom. A little more than a year ago, my husband and I spent two days before a shrewd, droll judge, the last step in the arduous process of adopting Daria (15), Alexander (11) and Oksana (6). He repeatedly insinuated that he might not give us his approval. During the orphanage director's requisite testimony, she made a poignant statement. She locked her gaze on the judge and made it clear that she was in favor of the adoption, "At the children's home, we can give children everything they could ever need but what they need the most -- parents."

God prevailed, and the judge did make us Daria, Alexander and Oksana's parents. As that wonderful day closed, we had the opportunity to spend several hours at the orphanage with Daria and Alexander as our tour guides. The children's home astounded us. It was clean, well-equipped, and decorated with the brights colors children love. The staff dedicated themselves to creating a healing environment for their charges. The place seemingly offered everything a child could ever need. The only thing missing -- parents.

God, the Originator and Architect of the family, designed children to need tender affection and protectection from both a mother and father. Baby Caleb, whose photos I was recently priviliged to take, is fortunate to have parents united in their commitment to shelter him, teach him, train him and, probably, even suffer for him. They are devoted to Caleb's well-being and will do nearly anything to seek life's best for him. With tenacity, they'll pray and pray and pray for Caleb as they teach him about Christ and point him to the cross in their desperate hope to secure a perfect eternity for their son with Jesus as his Savior.

My friends' son is a blessed. He has what more than 147 million orphans lack. My heart aches for them as it rejoices for Caleb.

Announcing: NewSong Photography

One of my greatest joys is photography. One of my greatest passions is orphan care. A few months ago, it occurred to me that the two could be combined.

I need more study and practice...a lot more. I can't yet consistently take pictures of the quality that I would like. But eventually, with God's good grace, I would like to reach a professional level and then donate any profits I make from photographing children to organizations that participate in the care of the fatherless.

My hope is to call my business NewSong Photography. Repeatedly in God's word we're told to sing a new song to the Lord. For me this has been difficult. You see, I can't carry a tune; I'm not even able to sing the happy birthday song correctly after the hundreds of times I've heard it in my five decades of life!

However, I've discovered that I can express my own kind of 'new song' through photography. I look forward to the opportunity to serve my Saviour with a camera and computer.

(Here our four youngest children were willing to let me "practice" on them as we vacationed on the North Shore of Lake Superiour in Minnesota in September)

Nathasa (11-1/2), Oksana (7-1/2), Amy (9-1/2) & Nathaniel (12-1/2)

Oksana and Nathaiel were adopted from the same orphanage in Russia, November 2010

This star was the idea of our 16-year-old daughter, Daria. She and her 13-year-old sister, Tatiana, worked hard to get everybody positioned just right. Quite a bit of giggling went on before Daria was satisfied.

Amy (r) and Natasha are biological sisters with 14-year-old Tatiana. They were adopted from Russia in 2005.

Now the sibling bond they share is based on love alone, through a shower of God's grace.

For the Sake of My beloved Saviour's Name:

"I will sing a new song to You, O God."

~Ps 144:9a

Vacation = Family Glue

Our family's vacation has been everything we'd dreamed it would be and so very much more. I want to write more and post more photos, but it's bedtime on our last evening. "Real" life begins again tomorrow so sleep is important tonight.

For now, I'll share one photo that captures how blessed I feel to have had this special time with my beloved family (sans Anna & Aaron and our Jaynie). This particular picture was part of a photo shoot I did with our youngest four while here, but the photograph symbolizes for me all the sibling bonding that went on this week. With our still fresh adoption of Daria, Alexander and Oksana, more time for all of us to get to know one another is truly a gift from a kind and generous Father.

I guess I'd title this photo "A Mother's Paradise".

Photo of the Day: A Good Listener

This photo of our youngest two daughters was taken in April, just after church. We'd had our first thunderstorm of the season the night before, and it was the first storm of that type since we'd adopted Oksana (r) four months earlier.

Here, Oksana (6) had just used hand motions to describe the thunderstorm to Amy (8). Amy is demonstrating an understanding of what her sister is trying to communicate, despite Oksana's lack of English. Oksana's face radiates her sense of satisfaction in Amy's response to her narration of the lightning flashes and thunder booms.

Amy's ongoing ability to "get" what Oksana is trying to say even when some of the rest of us don't has cemented a strong friendship between them.

Photo of the Day

Our new daughter, Daria (15), on her first "date" with her first and only daddy

A Beautiful Change

July 4th, 2011 -- I love this photo of Daria (age 16, adopted from Russia in November) pushing a little one on the swing whose family immigrated from Ethiopia. She tickled her fancy by tickling her bare feet between pushes.

This reflects God's amazing work in Daria over the past few months. When we first adopted her she had little interest in small children and limited exposure to people of other races. Now she seeks them out. Praise be to God!

Double Celebration of Adoption

I have much to discover about blogging and ask you to bear with me as I learn. I just posted but did so on my "Photos" tab. Here's a link, if you'd like to take a peak: What a Smile!

Samuel Barros and me way back in January 2010. The group we were with celebrated that month's birthdays.

Also, please take a look at the past few posts of our friends the Barros. We've mentioned them several times on our family blog. You may have met them or at least seen them at Anna & Aaron's wedding.

Their new son, Samuel, was in the same orphanage as our three newest children. In fact, he was born in the same Russian town as our Daria.

Tomorrow is the end of the beginning and the beginning of forever as they leave Russia for America.

Having met Samuel in Moscow in January 2010, I can't begin to imagine a teen boy who could possibly be better matched with his parents, even though Marcos and Jamie have never parented before! Isn't that just like our wonderful God?!? The three of them became a family in their hearts a year-and-a-half ago. To use the cliche, it was love at first sight! Starting August 4th, they'll be carving out life as a family in central Illinois under the watchful care of the God they love passionately. I know they would be grateful for your prayers.

Two Former Orphans, Two Continents, One Great God

Our Cassandra (adopted from Russia in 2001) with 4-year-old Meddie Grace (adopted by the Nordstroms from Ethiopia this April)