Blog to Book

I've been meaning to write this for a long time, but keep forgetting (do you know me? hahaha). Many of you have been so great about commenting on my posts - so appreciated! Mostly, though, people comment on my Facebook posts about the blog or email me responses back. And I haven't saved most of those comments.

SPECIAL REQUEST: A while ago I decided that I wanted to capture for our little ones the journey their parents were on to bring them home. Thus the blog. But beyond that, I want to re-purpose the blog into a book just for them to read someday. I want them to know how thought of, prayed for, longed for, hoped for, and dreamed of they were. I want them to see the thousands of people who helped bring them home via donations, prayers, blog hits, etc.

So, from now on would you post comments on my blog? I want for them to see your names, comments, prayers, and dreams for them, as well as what their momma wrote about them.

African villages get it right:
it takes a village to raise a child.
And we want them to know how big and loving their village really is!

The Connected Child

I recently finished reading The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis, and it was fan-tab-ulous!!! I think it's a great parenting book, not just adoptive parenting book. Purvis does a remarkable job addressing parenting adoptive children from a deep, psychological, research-based, and compassionate perspective, while being highly practical and example-oriented. I couldn't read it fast enough!!

Here are a few highlights:

• "Compassion will help you be tolerant of a child's deep neediness, and to be forgiving when he or she doesn't understand something that seems so basic, like how to sit at a dining room table with the family, how to use toilet paper, or how to read people's facial expressions."
• "If you want to discipline or correct poor behavior, it is better to bring the child in closer, instead of pushing him away or rejecting him [ex: a timeout]. To correct behavior, stay nearby and keep the child under close supervision."
• "Effective parenting is a balancing act...an effective mix of nurturing and structure. When we achieve the right balance of nurturing and structure, a child experiences a sense of safety, a sense of trust, a release of control, the capacity to try to new behaviors."
• "Whenever a child is really wired, upset, and about to explode, that is clearly not a time for asking about feelings. (At these volatile moments, you probably should ask what the child needs, however.) A good opportunity to ask about feelings is when you and your child are sharing a calm and relaxed, interactive and safe time together."
• "Progress naturally zig zags. Mistakes are an inherent and valuable part of the learning process."
• "When a parent models the ability to know and accept personal feelings, it becomes far easier for the child to heal and handle his or her own emotions."

The Connected Child deals with seemingly everything from healing yourself to heal your child, to being the boss, to how to build new neurological pathways for your child, to building trust, to nutrition, to discipline, to dealing with defiance, to understanding their birth place, to leaving your child with another caregiver, and on and on...

This book has caused me to pray this week for our kiddo's holistic health and that they would experience life in all its abundance. If you're a parent - adoptive or biological, I highly recommend this book!

There is no Plan B

I've been thinking once again about the title of our blog: Plan A Ethiopia. I realized that many of our current readers weren't a part of the beginning of our adoption story. If you want to read the original post describing our blog's origin, click HERE.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend, Dave Brubaker [Bru], about Plan A. He's been such a great support and encouragement in the past couple years at the most opportune times - divine moments actually. He inspired me re-visit the original heart and vision behind this blog. Here are some edited snippets from our conversations...

• The only thing weirder to imagine than Plan A is Plan B. To God there is no Plan B. As the Sovereign God of the Universe, he only operates with this first plan in mind. When it comes to our infertility and our babies' birth parent's loss, he has a Plan A, too.
• You can hit a lot of walls with Plan A, but it doesn't change the plan. Oh man, there have been plenty of days and tests and conversations where I've felt like I've run into a brick wall. Even though I believe to the tips of my toes that this is God's Plan A for our family, it doesn't eliminate the difficulty of not being able to get pregnant or going through the highs and lows of adoption. And even when we hit walls in our Plan A, it's to redirect us to God's true Plan A.
  

Bru was talking about the cloud of witnesses [Hebrews 11] and how much we'll have to talk about in heaven about the way we think things should have been - in our timing - and how things actually were - in God's perfect timing. Those Hebrews 11 "heroes" faced floods, deserts, infertility, imprisonment, torture, and all kinds of other crazy things, yet these men and women continued to hope and trust in the God of Plan A. I love this passage:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. [Hebrews 11:13-16]

May this serve as a reminder to us, wherever we are at in our pilgrimage. May we remember there is no Plan B and we can have hope...

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? [Luke 9:24-25]