A Great Chorus Of Songs

As I approach my 40th birthday this month, I've been reflecting on this beautiful tradition... 

"There is a tribe in Africa where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the child’s father, and teaches it to him.

 

And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome them into the world. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts themselves, someone picks them up and sings their song to them. When the child does something wonderful, as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song again.

If at any time during his or her adult life, the person is struggling or they fail at something, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.  The tribe recognizes that the answer to the person's struggle is love and helping them remember their identity."
  
We all start off as innocent little children who have a sense of our identity and who we were created to be. It's just easy to be who we are as little kids.  But over time, and through a number of factors, whether painful life circumstances or the negative messaging we battle on a daily basis about ourselves,  we can start to forget who we really are - we forget the song we've been given.  I spent many years going through life striving to please other people and find my value through that.  Before I knew it, I was stuck in relentless cycle of running as fast as I could, but only exhausting myself and never getting anywhere meaningful.  I lost myself in the fray and the chaos that was my life, and in turn, my song became a faint whisper that I strained to hear only on occasion.  
I can picture the importance of each of the moments when a child in this African tribe is picked up and sung to - both during celebration of milestones reached, as well as when they need comforted.  But I am willing to bet that the most transforming moments are those when the child has become an adult and they are struggling to find even a whisper of who they once were, or they've simply just forgotten over time.  Then there it is - that invitation to come into the center of the village where they are surrounded by their loved ones and their song is sung to them.

I believe in the power that people intrinsically have to look deeply at another person and see their light and what the unique thing is that they alone have been created to offer the world.  It isn't that we look at someone and decide FOR them what that unique thing is - it's that we remind them of what we see that has ALREADY been placed within them. They already have been given their own song, even before they drew their first breath - and our great responsibility and deep joy is reminding them of it over and over again.
  
I believe the greatest privilege of our lives is calling out the beauty and gifting in others. There is a reason we have been given community within which to live, work and play.  We NEED each other. Not only do we need each other so that we can be reminded of our own song, but we need each other's SONGS!  Every person's song and purpose is part of something larger.  Imagine a world where people know truly and deeply who they are, what their purpose is and how they are to live it out.  Imagine your children growing up into adults with their song having been sung to them and affirmed all their life. Imagine your work place full of people who are secure and confident in who they are, what they are doing and why they are doing it. Just imagine the kind of world that could exist!

And so the question becomes "Will we show up and give attention to our own song, letting it penetrate the deepest parts of our lives? Will we choose to remember who we have been created to be and engage whole-heartedly in our purpose?  And then, will we gather around the people who come into our lives and sing their song to them over and over, until they remember it and believe it to be true?  My answer is yes, because I can't afford not to.  There's a force inside of me that compels me because I know that time is precious and life is but a vapor - it's here for a moment and then it's gone, so there isn't a moment to waste living outside of my song. 

I will count it the greatest blessing, if at the end of my life when I am taking my last breath, there is a chorus of thousands of people's songs being sung in my heart.  If I have taken the time to truly see people for who they are and what they can become... if I will have sung their song to them over and over... then, I will have been true to my own song and will have found the greatest joy. 

The Seemingly Impossible

This boy.  Sigh...  oh how he has my heart!  We are celebrating his 9th birthday today.  There are days I look at him and I can't believe that he ever lived on the other side of the world, far, far away from me. It feels like he's always been here right beside me.  Yet he has this whole beautiful, raw history - an entire lifetime that he lived in a matter of four years in Ethiopia when he was with his birth father.  

When I squeeze my eyes shut tightly I can imagine the stories he has told me playing out- the good and the bad.  I can hear the pitter patter of his bare feet as he walked in nothing but a t-shirt through the dirt to the rancid pond that provided the only drinking water available for his birth family.  

I've seen video footage of the actual pond he drank water from. I've seen his birth father and step-mother pour drinking water from that very water source into a simple cup and bring it to their lips.  

I can imagine the cries of his little brother suffering through severe stomach pain and diarrhea.  I can imagine the day when he took his last breath and never cried again - because of the water he was drinking. 

I can all too easily imagine how that could have been my son.  MY son.  By all logic, he should have been a statistic just like his brother - one of over six thousand children who die every day because of water-borne illness.  His stomach was riddled with parasites when he came to the United States.  After a quick regiment of strong antibiotics, he was fine.  TOTALLY FINE.  But you guys, there are so many people who are NOT fine.  Things will never be fine for them unless people like Tariku and you and me help make them fine.  

It's been said that water is life, and truer words have never been spoken.  But what about when the water you lift to your lips carries death within it? What then??

My son is passionate about people having clean drinking water.  He has been since he was 5 years old.  He has decided that every other year on his birthday he will work hard to raise money through charity:water for people without access to clean drinking water.  If I'm being super honest, I have mixed feelings about this. As his mama, I don't want his little heart to be disappointed if people don't respond the way he wants them to.  Isn't this the story of all of our lives? Don't we all feel passionately about something, and we FEEL it so strongly and so much that it's a risk to put it out there and not have that same level of feeling returned? Don't you sometimes feel the blank stares as you talk, and the "oh, that's nice" sentiments when your very heart might burst out of its rib cage because you realize they don't feel it the same way you do?

I have all those fears for my son.  His heart is SO pure.  His dreams are SO big around this issue.  As we were talking about what financial goal he wanted to set for this campaign, I had to bite my tongue when he said $10,000.  I wanted to say "Sweetie, how about we do the same thing we did last time - $5,000?" Typical.  Let's do what's safe and what we KNOW can be done.  Let's do what we KNOW my son can achieve and not feel disappointed with. 

Oh. My. Goodness.  Come ON, Amy!!!  How dare I not let him try for what he wants and believes can happen!  So, $10,000 it is.  And you know what? Whether he makes it to 10k or not, I know that he is learning the importance of showing up and doing what his heart tells him to.  I want him to learn how to be faithful and persistent and believe the best about himself and others no matter what.  I want him to be true to himself. 

And so we keep on keeping on.  We keep on talking about the impact of dirty water on families across the globe.  We keep on hoping that people will engage with this issue.  We keep on letting his classmates at school haul heavy jerry cans full of water across their room to get a feel for what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes.  We keep on believing that families everywhere will have easy access to clean drinking water so that they too can go to work, and go to school and have the hope and opportunity that we so easily take for granted. We keep on because we know that beautiful, seemingly impossible things happen when people join together and do what they can to make life better for each other.  

I have this picture in my head of Tariku as an elderly man sitting in his recliner on his 80th birthday, not having to create a fundraising page for clean drinking water because EVERYONE will have access to it.  I picture him tossing his head back and belly laughing at the glorious beauty of it all - the reality that he did indeed make a difference for the generations that will come behind him.  And it will all happen because people like him and you and I will have used our voices, our platforms and our gifts to make it happen.  It will happen when we all start to realize and live like all people everywhere are OUR people. And OUR people are drinking water that is killing them. We get to be a part of putting an end to that.  

So, here's to my 9 year old son, the trail-blazer.  May your love for others remain deep and steady, and may you indeed live to see the water crisis ended in your lifetime.  I am so very proud that you rest your hand on my cheek and call me your mama. You make my heart sing. 

If you'd like to be a part of Tariku's adventure, we'd be so grateful if you'd kindly click HERE. Thank you, friends.  

Dear Daddy

Dear daddy,

It’s the week of Father’s Day and I couldn’t be more ready to jump on an airplane to come visit you and say all these words to you face to face.  Instead, I had to jump on an airplane to go stand with my friend who had to bury her daddy just a few days ago.  One day her kids were playing Legos with him and the next he was suddenly gone. 

I know you know that feeling too because your own daddy leaned over and kissed your mom that unsuspecting day when he came to visit her in the nursing home, and as soon as his lips touched her head he went home to be with Jesus. 

People leave us suddenly – with no warning.  It could be you or I next – who knows?  What I do know is that I don’t want to leave anything unsaid.  I know I always tell you “I love you” when I see you or talk to you, and I mean those words with everything in me.  But I can’t help thinking that maybe, just maybe you don’t know all the heart, all the love, all the emotion that goes behind them.  And I don’t want either of us to ever leave this earth without really knowing that we said it all – or at least we tried. 

My friend Lindsey and I sat together under the moonlight in her backyard a few nights ago with her daddy’s Bible and a box full of letters that he had written her over the years.  We went through his Bible that had notes etched on every page with dates and places next to verses that meant something to him.  His prayers for himself and his family were written in the back of his Bible.  I know that for years to come that Bible will be a piece of him left for Lindsey to guide her and speak to her through the very pain and joys he himself went through.  As I looked at his handwriting all I could think of was yours – that super neat and legible left handed scrawl that is visible in every book you have ever read and every legal pad laying around your house.  I kept thinking about all the wisdom stored up in that mind and heart of yours, and am fully aware that only a fraction of it has ever made it to paper.  I know there will come a day where I will sit and run my fingers over your handwriting in your Bible and cherish it with all my heart.  But today, I simply cherish you.

I cherish the fact that from a very young age I knew you loved me.  The countless pictures of you making faces and being silly with me when I was a baby… I know I must have been a lot of hard work, but you’d never know it from how in love with me you look in those pictures.  I cherish the countless bike rides through Madeira, Ohio – down Thomas Drive to the convenience store for an ice cream cone; the thousands of times I felt the whiz of a softball in my ball glove that you tossed to me; all the sawing and staining and hammering you did to make us a tree house in the apple tree in the back yard – remember us sleeping out there on summer nights?   I cherish all the camping trips and state parks you took us to; the LONG drives down to Florida where you blew up a raft and spent hours with us kids out in the waves while we screamed and giggled and loved every second of it.  There was just never a time I remember you not being with me.  If you had free time after work, you were with your family.  I know I took your steady presence for granted – I just thought everyone’s daddy was like you.    

I cherish all those Sundays standing next to you in church listening to your voice singing hymns, all those car rides where you’d be driving and reach around to tickle me, every Sunday morning that you made toaster strudel and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.  I love that you are a learner – you always have been.  You suck down books like air and always have stories to tell from what you’ve read.  I love that you introduced me to Frederick Buechner and Brennan Manning and Henri Nouwen.  I love that you have this ability to single out the person in the room who just needs to be seen and heard and you have them sharing their story in no time flat. 

I cherish the fact that your full head of red hair is now a beautiful silver gray thanks to me and my siblings.   All the times I did stupid, ridiculous things that cost you sleep, tears and near heart attacks – you just loved me through them.  I’m sure I’ll never know all the prayers you prayed on my behalf, all the tears you shed for me, and all the times you thought your heart would explode from me finding my own way in this world. 

And then there’s the way you love my kids.  All the walks in the strollers when they were little, all the pushes on the swings, all the books that have been read, all the Legos that have been built, all the tractor rides that have been taken, all the Ernest movies that have been watched, all of the diapers that have been changed, all the cries that have been calmed, all the laughter that you have brought out of them.   As much as you adore them, they adore you.  Your love is strong and steady and sure. 

One of the biggest things I cherish about you is that you don’t presume to have all the answers.  You have your experiences that have shaped your beliefs as well as your doubts.  I find such comfort in knowing that you don’t have it all together - it gives me hope that I don’t have to.  You bring to the table all of who you are – your gifts, your joys, your failures, your sorrows, and you just are who you are.  I wouldn’t have you any other way. 

But the very best, most fantastic thing about you, daddy, is that you know Who you belong to, and that one thing has shaped not only your life, but all the lives you touch and will touch, including mine.  God has met you and made such a mark on your life that it in turn marks those around you in such beautiful ways.  The biggest gift you have ever given me is to point me to Jesus.  He has radically and beautifully changed my life.  I didn’t know it was possible to love Him like this - I didn’t know it was possible to be loved like this.  I am forever grateful to you for living and breathing the love of God.  Thank you seems trite, but I mean those two words with all my heart. 

Thank you for being a daddy I can be proud of and grateful for.  I love you for all the reasons I just wrote and then a heap more.  Happy Father’s Day, Papa.  You are loved more than I can say.  XOXO.

*And to anyone reading this who wonders if it even matters if you say the words that you feel - SAY THEM.  For the sake of all that is precious and important - just SAY THEM.   Even if it means you say them while tension is in the air or there are unresolved issues. SAY THEM.  Even if you're not sure you've forgiven that person or they haven't forgiven you.  Please.  Just SAY THEM.   

Radically Loved

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”  - Brennan Manning

It’s that time of year again – my son’s “Gotcha Day”.  For those not familiar with the adoption world, that is the celebration of the day that we first met him – a birthday of sorts symbolizing when our lives began with each other.  I’ve written quite a few blogposts about what adopting Tariku was like over the past three years.  I really don't feel like each annual “Gotcha Day” demands a blog post, but every single year April 9^th rolls around and I feel compelled to write one.  Maybe it’s because my son’s presence in our lives absolutely amazes me when I take time out from the daily grind to think about it. He spent the first four years of his life in a mud hut on the other side of the world sleeping next to a donkey and now he sleeps down the hall from me - it takes my breath away sometimes.  Don’t get me wrong.  This boy has an ability like no other to rub me the wrong way and exasperate me every day.  Our family life is not all roses and sunshine, trust me.  I lose my temper with him, I sigh and shake my head at him plenty of times and there are days I look at the challenges he has in front of him and I think “Um, God… you chose the wrong person for this journey… this is waaaaaay beyond me.”

 

But here’s the thing… God took a really broken, complicated situation in which my son wasn’t properly cared for, and he brought a whole lot of life and love and happiness from all the wreckage.  And don’t get me wrong… it wasn’t just my son’s life that was headed for destruction – it was mine too.  While he was a victim of circumstance, I was headed toward a life of selfishness and ignorance. But adoption changed so much of that for me, for which I am so incredibly grateful.

I was putting T to bed last night and I was telling him about the first time I learned his name and saw his face load ever so slowly on my computer screen.  I told him how I was holding the phone to my ear as I saw his picture for the first time, and with tears running down my face I said to my friend Lindsey “He’s mine.  This little boy was meant for our family.  I just know it. I can tell just by looking in his eyes.  He’s really, really mine.” I tried to explain to Tariku last night how we had waited for years for a referral and how amazing it was to finally see a face and know a name four years ago… how in that moment, I knew both our lives had changed forever.

 

I’m not sure why it is, but I have these moments of absolute raw tenderness with my son that I didn’t know were even possible.  As I was laying in bed beside him telling him about how overjoyed we are that he is our family forever and always, he reached over and wiped the tears that were trickling down my face and said “You’re crying because you are happy, right mom?  I know what that’s like.”  And I’m just so relieved that he does.  I’m glad that he knows what it means to cry because he’s happy, because there are so many children who don’t or can’t or won’t let themselves know that feeling. He said “I am so glad that you are my mommy now… because you are kind and you help people, but mostly because you love God.”  Well, okay…. there went an entire box of Kleenex.  Isn’t that all we can ever, ever hope for as parents?? That our kids see us as kind and helpful, but most importantly – lovers of God?  All those moments of my failure as a parent and a human being… every second I have snapped at him or had a bad attitude or been unsympathetic… he still sees my true self – the person covered in grace who just wants to love people and God no matter how much I fail at it.  He sees the me that God sees.  How amazing is that??

When Tariku came into our lives four Aprils ago, I wasn’t thinking about all the ways he might fail in life, how he might disappoint or hurt me, or the struggles that he would have.  I was just overtaken by the sight of his face.  I was in love with his four year old little arms that reached out to me and his precious little heart that was just so ready to be loved. There was nothing like it.  And it has taken me a lifetime –literally my entire life, to realize that that’s just how God looks at me - He's overtaken by the very sight of me - He's not worried about all the "what if's".  I’ll be darned if God doesn’t look down at me with my arms wide open and think “Look at her! Just look at her!  That one right there – she’s mine and I am SO stinking proud of her.  I see her for who she really is and she’s beautiful.  Nevermind the failures.  Nevermind the inconsistencies.  Nevermind the mess.  I see beauty and power and grace when I look at her.  I made her just right and I’m head over heels for her.”  That one thought right there is absolutely life changing if we let it be.

When I look at Tariku I see a pure gift. He was literally placed in my hands to love, comfort, guide and grow with.  I had ZERO idea how much he would teach me about how my Daddy looks at me.  Tariku just showed up that day on April 9^th as he was… nothing fake about him – no pretense - he brought all of who he was to the table.  And we responded to his little outstretched arms instinctively with our own arms wide open. There’s nothing Tariku did to make us love him – we just loved him because he belonged to us. He was ours and that was enough.  God’s love for me and for you is just the same. It’s not contingent on anything we do – we belong to Him... every last one of us. God's great big arms are without fail, always open and coming towards us - always. There's just never a time when they're not. 

Most every night I put Tariku to bed I tell him all the special things I see in him – I name all the gifts that God has given him so that he won’t grow up to doubt his value or how loved he is.  I pray out loud over him that God would use his gifts of compassion and his heart for justice to change the world and help people catch glimpses of the God who is crazy for them.  And I wrap my arms around him and squeeze him tight and tell him that there’s nothing he can ever do to make me love him less or more. I tell him that he is so very loved just as he is – right now (at which point he normally farts and laughs so loud I have to cover my ears).  

It’s this same comfort level that I think God craves from us (okay, maybe he could do without the farting, but)… our ability to let down and just be who we are, without fear or shame or pretense must stir his heart the same way Tariku stirs mine – and then some.  God’s got his arms wrapped around us saying “Geez… I just freaking love you!!  Do you know that?  Do you REALLY KNOW that??”  Love like that has changed everything for Tariku, and Love like that has changed everything for me in recent years. My heart aches when I think about all the years I have spent striving, fighting and clawing my way to ensure I had that love when the whole entire time my Daddy was there saying “I’ve got you.  You belong to me.  Stop trying to earn my love – you HAVE it… you always have.  Just enjoy it."

Someone once said that God is never just doing one thing through a circumstance – He’s always working to accomplish many things through the one. And so it goes with our adoption of Tariku.  Not only was God providing T a home to be safe, cared for and loved in, but He was teaching me what His love really looked like.  God was showing me what my true home looked like in that same way.  I cannot tell you the amount of peace and satisfaction I have now knowing that I am God's beloved.... that there are no lengths He won't go to to show me that.  Watching my son grow in compassion has stirred and grown my own heart toward compassion.  My son might be my greatest teacher thus far in life, and I am just so grateful for his beautiful, miraculous presence in my life.  Thank you, God, for knowing just how much we needed each other and for bringing us together.  Life will always be richer because of it.

I’ll leave you with Tariku's “Gotcha Day” video from April of 2010. Fair warning though…get some tissues first - love like this makes you cry sometimes, but oh it's worth it!

Just Show Up

Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit about what it means to suffer with others.  Most of it has been in the context of my experiences in Africa where I’ve seen excruciating poverty rob children of parents and parents the opportunity to provide for their children in even the most basic ways.  I have never personally suffered at the hands of poverty, but as human beings, we carry an innate ability to suffer with others as they suffer even if we aren’t experiencing the same circumstance they are.  I have shed many tears over the pain that people have had to endure, but I haven’t always wanted to engage in feeling that depth of hurt for others because it’s painful and it costs us.  But coming alongside and choosing to suffer with someone else in the midst of their anguish or difficulty is not only a place where beauty is born – it is a privilege of the highest degree. 

I was gently reminded of this last week as I spent time with a dear friend whose brother lost his battle with depression last month.  There is no describing that kind of pain, honestly.  As I drove through four states on my way to see her, I kept wondering how in the world to help her.  What do you even say in circumstances where there are just no easy answers?  How do you be a good friend when your heart can’t fathom what she must be feeling? I felt small and inadequate – mostly because I was exactly that. 

Yet, we go anyway.  We show up for each other even if it feels like we have nothing to offer.  We run to where the suffering is because that is what God has built us for – engagement with a broken, messy world where things don’t make any sense and we have more questions than answers on most days.  We go because we need each other.  We don’t necessarily need each other’s words – we need each other’s hearts and presence.  And I think more than anything, that’s what I wanted Lindsey to know – that I was there.  There are so many, many times where our words need to be limited to “I’m so sorry” and “I love you”, then we need to shut up and throw our arms around our people and just let them get it all out.  Because sometimes love looks like letting your friend sob and wail as you hold her on the bathroom floor while your heart feels like it will explode. 

I was talking last night with some friends about the mystery of compassion and how our hearts are made to connect with other people’s pain and emotion – in a way, it becomes our own when we choose to connect with it.  While sometimes this can feel burdensome simply because of the nature of pain, I am convinced that suffering with others and embracing them in the struggle is actually one of the most important gifts we can (and must) give each other.  The thing about pain and suffering is that while the ache never seems to fully go away, it heals.  People are permanently marked by whatever they have survived, but they heal.  And as we watch the healing process in others, we start to hope just a little bit more.  We in fact, might even heal a little bit ourselves. I know my own heart healed a little this past weekend as I spent time with my precious friend.

Lindsey has become an avid gardener over the past few years.  I walked with her through her garden as she showed me where certain plants were going to go in, and told me about how her raspberries grew last summer and her kid’s joy at popping them in their mouths.

She bought a greenhouse so she could get her seedlings started before planting season arrived. 

The more she talked about what she was going to grow, the more her face lit up.  I realized that this garden had quickly gone from a place to simply grow and gather a harvest to a place of hope for her.  Last year, a tornado tore through Moore, Oklahoma where Lindsey lives.  What a stark reminder that there will always be something that threatens our hope.  Always.  Yet we build anyway.  We bend low and sink our hands into the dirt and we choose to hope.  The storms may come.  There may be wreckage, but we help each other rebuild. The soil may be frozen, but the cold ground thaws.

Flowers thought long gone make an appearance again.

Life grows out of brown dirt.

I glanced over at her heaping compost pile.  Amazing how the rot of our lives is the catalyst for growth and beauty. 

We spent hours on Friday moving two tons of mulch and dirt into their proper place.  We were making the ground ready and we were doing it together. 

As we worked side by side I was keenly aware that flinging that mulch and pouring that dirt was likely the best way I could have loved Lindsey that day.  No words necessary. We built a little bit of hope together in that garden on Friday and I learned that no matter what, you always show up.  Always.  Even when  you feel you have nothing to offer, you do.