What is Love?

I have a friend who is an adoptive mom and she shared with me recently that very often her little boy who has been home over 2 years, tells her, "I don't love you, Mommy."

It's a painful thing to hear for sure and a scenario that is even more complicated in the dynamic of a child who is still testing his relationship with his adoptive mom.

But, what creates a lump in my throat every time I think about it is what my friend replies back to this little boy every time he tells her he doesn't love her, "That's okay, you don't have to love me, but, I love you very much and I always will!"

That, my friends, is unconditional love, only made possible by Jesus shining so brightly through this dear woman of God!

And it reminded me of this post I published on October 5, 2011 (the 4 year old I spoke of is now 6 and the Ethiopian daughter is now home and KNOWS we are her family!):

Recently as I was putting my 4 year old son down for a nap, I kissed him and said, “I love you.” He said, “I love you, too.” That exchange happens often, but then he asked me a question that stopped me cold.

“Would you love me even if I didn’t love you?”

It was a good question. A big question for anyone to ask of another human being, much less to come from a 4 year old.

I began my answer to my little guy like many parents probably would, "Of course I'd love you! No matter what, I'll always love you, even if you did not love me."

But because we've been in this process to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia for over 2 years, it's something we've talked about for so long that my 4 year old son probably does not remember life before adoption was a regular family topic of conversation, I was also able to illustrate it for him like this, "You know (insert name of our Ethiopian daughter here)? She doesn't love us right now, she doesn't even know we are her family, but we love her, right?"

And oh how we love her! How we desperately want her home with us!

But, we do not love her because she loves us.

We love her because she was created by God in His image and because hers was the picture He predestined to have flash up from an email onto our computer screen that wonderful referral day.

We love her because that is how God first loved us, when we didn't love Him.

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
1 John 4:9-11

"We love because He first loved us."
1 John 4:19

Hair bands For My Daughter's Kinky Curly Hair

I posted a while back about our haircare routine for my Ethiopian daughter and I realized that I forgot to share about the hair bands I use.  When we first brought our daughter home, I tried out several different types of hair bands and had terrible problems with the bands breaking, typically a few minutes after I'd somehow managed to wrangle the hair into some sort of puffs or twist style.  It was really frustrating!

Finally in desperation I asked for advice from someone with much more experience than me and she told me that all the leave-in conditioner and oils that are typically used on kinky curly hair can saturate hairbands and cause them to break easily.  Thankfully she was able to recommend some rubber bands from Sally's Beauty Supply that do not break!  They come in black or assorted colors.  I've used them for well over a year now, and they work SO much better than all the others I tried at first!

Here's a picture, they are Proclaim brand:

I realize that to many people hair bands may seem like an extremely minor life detail, but I'm here to tell you as a white mama of a black little girl, having hair bands that do not break easily is HUGE, especially in those early days caring for a newly adopted child!  Ever heard the saying that sometimes it's the little things that finally put you over the edge?

Find more Works For Me Wednesday here.

The "Soccer Shirt" Little Girl Picked Out

I took my 4 year old Little Girl to Academy today.  She is starting soccer soon and needed some soccer shorts.

I tried a few pairs of PINK - had to be PINK - shorts on her and they swallowed her, fell right down or had to be clinched so far they ballooned like clown shorts.  She is apparently too tiny for many of even the girls XS size shorts!  While I make it my mission to find XXS pink shorts there in the Academy Sports and Outdoors, Little Girl decides she needs a SOCCER SHIRT!  I knew we had a bunch of t-shirts to practice in and that she'd get a team jersey so I was not at all on the hunt for a soccer shirt, only the shorts.  But, if there's anything I've learned in the short 19 months I've gotten to parent Little Girl, it is that when she sets her mind to something there is not much that can stop that train.

So, I let her look around a bit for a "soccer shirt" while I identified exactly 1 pair of pink XXS small shorts in all of Academy.

Little Girl ran up to me as I was rummaging through the very back section of a rack.  "Here it is!  I want THIS soccer shirt!" she gleefully (read: loudly) exclaimed!

It took me a few seconds to get out from behind all the clothes and when I caught a glimpse of her "soccer shirt" I died laughing (and so did a man in his 40s shopping near me)!

I give you Little Girl's dream soccer shirt:

And holding it up so you can really appreciate the ensemble:

A yellow sports bra!  Is what she picks as her "soccer shirt".

Sweet mercy, somebody hold me, I am never going to survive this girl as a teenager!

As it was, she was not at all happy with my answers of "No, that is a bra and you are not old enough for a bra!"

Ziploc Bag Packing, Shower and Tooth loss Drama

My 2 oldest kids have been at overnight church camp for 2 nights.  See!  I DO send my kids to camp, a little, if you count sleeping on air mattresses at the church and getting to go on crazy field trips like laser tag, as camp, which our church totally does for 3rd through 5th graders.

The kids needed swimsuits, pajamas, and extra changes of clothes because they were going to have some messy fun.  I organized everything in Ziploc bags for them, which is my new favorite way to pack:

I did all our stuff in Ziplocs first and then put it inside our suitcases for our recent mission trip to the Dominican Republic, mostly to keep out the bugs, but it made for so much less digging through the suitcases which I always hate!  Not to mention I could squeeze the air out and get the stuff really compact.

I just KNOW my 10 year old son felt really cool in his roomful of 30 other boys when he opened his bag at camp and all his clothes looked like this:

I did find a kindred spirit, though, when I giggled to another mom of a 10 year old boy at camp drop-off that I'd packed my son's clothes in Ziploc bags, she said, "ME TOO!"  And then she lamented that when her son went away for 1 week camp earlier in the summer she had clearly labeled each Ziploc with the day the outfit was to be worn on, you know, so he'd fit in with the day's theme, like Hawaiian Day.  But, she noticed from the pictures that he wore the outfits on the wrong days!  Honestly, we moms are doing our best for these boys, but there is a level of cluelessness that even a Ziploc and a Sharpie marker cannot cure!

I am fully expecting my son to come home with only about 30% of the stuff I sent him to camp with.

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How much do I love that my 10 year son stuck a book into his bag at the last minute?!!

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So, I've had a few days with just these 2 superheroes:

Which is fine!  They are THE BEST of friends without the older siblings around to complicate things!  Seriously, they have been so sweet to each other, it's like they get that there is no other kid around to play with so they'd better work it out!  Those 2 are my extroverts who prefer a playmate to playing alone. 

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Did you notice anything different about Little Girl's smile?

She lost a bottom tooth yesterday!  A bottom tooth she desperately needed to lose because the permanent teeth have already come in behind it.  She's scheduled to have some bottom teeth pulled at the dentist on Monday morning, so praise God for one less she'll have to get pulled!!

It's a crazy story, though, the tooth loss.  I needed to drop the big kids at camp in an hour, we'd just gotten home from some errands where the 2 little kids were terrible, so they were sitting in some "think about it time".  I was doing some last minute packing for the big kids and simultaneously making dinner to feed everyone before heading to the church.  I sent my 7 year old daughter upstairs to shower because they wouldn't be showering for the 2 nights at camp and I figured better to go freshly showered.  She started screaming that there was something wrong and water was spraying all over the bathroom.  I raced upstairs and sure enough there was water everywhere!  I fixed the shower sprayer issue just as my 4 year old little girl started SHRIEKING from her spot in "thinking time" downstairs, "I broke my tooth!  I BROKE MY TOOTH!"  I raced downstairs to her bloody mouth.  She handed me the tooth and I was relived to see it all intact and not at all broken, but had just come out like it needed to!

But, really, the chaos?  Couldn't we just shower and lose teeth without all the drama?!

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Happy Friday, Friends!

Find more Friday Fragments here.

What she did over her summer vacation . . .

Something very special happened at the end of our Dominican Republic mission trip.

Our 7 (almost 8) year old daughter was baptized in the Caribbean Sea by our church pastor on the last day of our trip (which was our rest and relaxation day on the beach).  It was not something we planned on doing before going on the trip, but our girl has been accepting and understanding more about Jesus and the truths of our faith over the past year or two and we have had a some conversations about when she might be ready to be baptized and she kept saying maybe around the time she turned 8.  This mission trip was a great thing to help my daughter practice the part of following God that is hard for all of us, but definitely kids, that is selflessly serving God even when it's hard or uncomfortable for us.  

We had one morning early on in the trip where my daughter was not really wanting to work on the construction job our team was doing, it was hot (and it WAS and No A/C where we were working in an open air church!) and she wanted to do something else, anything else.  But when the whining started I began praying and I gave her some space.  I think God did a work on her heart during that time, because after a little while she came up to me ready and eager to work with a completely different attitude.  I was really impressed to see that she that she had the maturity to put aside the self-centeredness that young children often have.

When our pastor announced on that last morning that another lady from our trip was getting baptized, my daughter decided she was ready too.  We talked to our pastor by the pool, he said he doesn't typically do baptism counseling poolside, but when God leads, you go with it!  He agreed she was ready.

Here she is on the beach shortly before the baptism (10 days shy of her 8th birthday):

We are so proud of her for taking this next step in her faith and can't wait to see what God is going to do with her life!

Great Motivation to Clean Out

I've found some great motivation to get rid of clutter in our home is visiting a 3rd world country.

I felt the same way when I returned from Ethiopia 2 years ago, looking around my house and wondering why exactly we have SO MUCH STUFF!  And now returning from the Dominican Republic it feels much the same.

This week it's clothes, ruthlessly gone through.  Four large garbage bags.  One trip to drop them off for donation.

Yet, we still have plenty to wear!

While in the Dominican Republic we met people with so much less than most of us in America but with more joy than most of us, too.

One can't help but start to thinking, whose lives are really better?

They may not have electricity or water they can drink from their faucets or 2 cars per household, but I saw thankfulness and love shining bright from so many of the people we met.

Our kids from our church noticed it too, without any of us adults pointing it out.  One 15 year old American boy commented during our trip, "They have less than anybody I know back home, but they are happier than most people I know."

What can kids do on a mission trip?

I shared yesterday that I'd just gotten back from a family mission trip to the Dominican Republic with my church.  My husband and I took our 10 year old son and our almost 8 year old daughter (the 6 year old and 4 year old got to spend a week being spoiled at Nana & Papa's house).  I love the concept of serving alongside my children but when they are younger than teenagers it can be challenging to find things they can do to serve people in need.

From my recent mission trip, here are some things I learned that kids can do to help others:

Light Construction work
My 10 year old using an electric saw, with close adult help, of course:

My 7 year old sanding the desks our group made:

Several of the kids from our church painting a wall in an open-air church in the Dominican:

Help put on VBS for local children

Our group of 38 split into 2 groups and did VBS at 2 different sites for 2 days.  Each site had around 100 kids attend.  The VBS was for kids in a very impoverished churches who would otherwise not have an opportunity to attend VBS.

Look at all those precious children!  There was a hill out in front of the site I was at and Dominican children were literally carrying their younger siblings on their backs up the hill to get to VBS!

Our American kids were able to help act out Bible stories.  And help with games and crafts:

 
We made animal visors and salvation bracelets

Entertain kids who are waiting to see the doctor during a medical clinic 

We had a pediatrician in our group and a nurse, so we were able to provide 2 medical clinic days.  The kids in our group were a huge help entertaining the kids who were waiting to see the doctor!  And with 100 patients waiting to see 1 doctor, there was a lot of waiting!  But, the Dominican children didn't seem to mind because they were soaking up all the attention they got as we colored with them and did puzzles and bubbles.  I had one child in fits of laughter when I attempted to read her a Spanish children's book with my horrible mispronunciations!

Kids relate really well to other kids, so having kids in our group was actually an advantage many times.  And kids serving kids is just such a beautiful thing, it's worth it to get creative to enable it to happen!