This week. Mother's had their babies blown from their arms, the storm too strong. Other's clung tight as their infants breathed their last in my best friend's back seat, blood transfusions and machine-oxygen not enough to revive.

I hold the hearts in my thoughts and I pray harder. I lock eyes with this one momma, baby growing cold in her lap and I whisper, "I know." And I murmur a prayer over her but there really aren't words so we just cry and we hold each other all the way home. I remember too well what it feels like to go home without your baby. To wake up the next morning fuzzy and not want to be this woman because things like this only happen in movies and on new stations, not to me. Please, God, not to me?

And no, it won't be ok, but it will be glorious one day when you lock arms in Heaven. And it only hurts this deep because you loved so deep and that memory, that love is what you live on some days.

So we bow down and we pray for you mothers. We snuggle close the babes still here. And while the head spins, "where is God in this mess," the heart knows the answer, "right here."

God is right here with us. And He knows.

This pain, this is what He did for us. Willing. He knows this hurt because He chose it to save us.

And that love is what we live on every day.

“I don’t want to do this,” I half scream at her, half plead to God. “I don’t want to walk this path, I don’t want to be this person, I don’t want to raise this daughter who doesn’t know who she belongs to and sometimes hugs me tight but sometimes pushes me far. I don’t want to let this birth mom live with us, knowing she can leave whenever she pleases and rip these wounds wide open again. I don’t know if I can do this.”

“I don’t want to do this,” she sobs into my shoulder. “I don’t want to tell another parent that her child is dead. I don’t want to hold another baby while he struggles to hold on to life, ultimately failing. I don’t want to feel responsible when children in my care die. I can’t do it.”

We sit in the lantern light late into the night and the tears stream. We sit broken and I choke out the ugly words, words that have been there but I have been too appalled to voice, “I think sometimes, I am afraid to trust the will of God.” Ugly sin. All these shortcomings, all these iniquities, I let them flow. “I mean. I do trust Him. But sometimes I am still afraid of what He might bring next.”

We sit long and spill the ugly, inadequate tears and we let His light fill up the holes.

I murmur, thinking out loud. “God did not give me a spirit of fear… perfect love drives out fear… do not be afraid I am with you…” I know these words well; they are etched in my heart. Do I believe them? “Am I dumb enough to think that things would be better if I was in control? That things like this would not happen if I was in control?” It hits me. “If I was in control, I would not send my only child to die for this crazy world.”

I think of Him who would carry my burden. I think of a pool of blood drenching my brokenness and I can hardly stand as I think of Him bent low carrying my sin – that too heavy cross - and all of this.

He knelt in the garden and He prayed, “Abba Father, everything is possible. Take this cup from me.” (Mark 14:35)

“I don’t want to do this.” My Savior. Fully God, but fully human. He knows. He knows sorrow to the point of death, anguish and sweat like great drops of blood, this fear of what might come even at the hand of the Father. “Yet not my will but Yours,” He says. Can we follow His lead?

Yesterday we pressed the blood out of the lamb, the stench enough to make one gag. We kneaded bread free from yeast reminding us to be free from sin – only by the blood of this Savior. We are reminded to run hard from our distrust, “Not my will, Father, but yours.” We eat the bitter green and remember bitterness in life and the way our Savior has just soaked it all up. Remembering all the long way He carried those Isrealites, remembering all the long way He carried that cross, and remembering all the long way He has carried us. Oh, how He has carried us!

Now my tears flow not because I don’t want. I am crying because how can I not when I think of this life blood flowing from His side and Him in such anguish thinking of me, of all of us. I weep knowing that each time I hide my face, refuse to take this cup the Father has given me, I drive those nails deeper and He in great pain hangs there willing.

No. We wont’ hide. Today we approach this cross unworthy and we grab onto the Saviors feet and we cling tight and we let this blood cover and pool and we remember the ugly stench of our sin and we believe that when He rises Sunday we will rise with Him, He will take us by the hands and pull us with Him yet again allowing us to rise into His glory.

Daily I turn my gaze in distrust. Daily I remember the Jesus who already washed clean this mess and I fall to my knees, sorrowful and repentant. How can I not trust? And He reminds me that I must die with Him – not just that once but every single day – choosing to throw off the distrust and walk with Him in the newness of life. Daily. Hourly. Sometimes seemingly every five minutes.

Today I gaze at my Savior and I know: courage is not the absence of fear.

Courage is to say, “I am afraid,” but walk it anyway. Courage is to stand broken and limping and look into these faces around us, His faces, and say, “Not my will but yours Father.” Courage is to say, “I don’t want to do this,” but to grab tight to a slaughtered Son and let His blood pool in my sin-holes and allow Him to pull me with Him into glory.

Today we remember the moment that we were engraved into the palms of His hands and we believe that He holds us there still. Tonight, He dies and I learn to live. To live willing to spill out, spill out and let Him fill.

Praising Jesus for a sister to sit broken with.

breathing deep

I stand at my laptop in its corner on the kitchen counter, stew bubbling, children playing, clock ticking. I stand here and I read the prayers of friends and strangers alike who love my family enough to spend their time whispering to Him on our behalf. Tears stream and I am blown away by this love and His grace.

I look around and I type out words and layers of my heart peel back, bare on the screen. Yes, this is life, Yes, this is real, Yes this is happening.

Monday morning the gate rattled and there stood Jane and her birth mom Nancy. Evicted from their home, Jane’s leg wound still festering, and in desperate need of a shower and some love.

So we opened the gate, and my heart, a little wider.

And it hurts from the moment I wake up until the moment my head hits the pillow. And this that I once wanted – my daughter back – it’s not what I want anymore and this is not how I wanted it. Now it comes with a grouchy grown woman who doesn’t know Him and doesn’t care to love us back or take responsibility for anything. Now it comes with my four year old, confused and traumatized who calls two women Mommy and only half obeys and does things that she didn’t learn in my home and wears the wounds of the last six months on her sleeves.

But in the hard, I see the healing. In the mess of it all, I see the redemption.

One step forward. Two steps back. And He doesn’t let go. He doesn’t let go.

I spent the whole weekend trying to come up with a solution. Begging God to show me what to do. Should they live here? Should they live near by? Should I keep Jane? Should I try harder to make sure her birth mom is taking care of her and has the means to do so?

The answer is, I don’t know.

There are the obvious arguments: She has a living birthmother! Of course she should stay with her! Or. Her birthmother is obviously not caring for her, she is still bonded to you, take her, that is what is best.

The thing is, this is real life and so there is this huge gray area in the middle and that is where we are living. In the gray area. That is adoption though. Big, beautiful, scary, confusing, unnatural, redemptive, tragic, wonderful gray.

I found myself diving back into 1 Kings 17, a story I felt so strongly led to just days after Jane was taken from our home in November. Over and over this widow reminds me of whom I want to be, and the end result of provision reminds me of who my God is.

Elijah asks her to make Him some bread but the old woman does not think she has enough. Regardless, she takes the little she has and obeys. She is faithful with the little that she has already been given. And, as she remains faithful in the things she has been asked, He is faithful to provide more, exactly enough, exactly when it is needed.

I do not need to know the answer. There may very well not be one right now.

However, I do know what to do about it. Obey. Do what I know to do. Love like Jesus. Invite in the stranger, accept the outcast, live the Gospel. Be faithful with the little that is entrusted to me and watch Him be faithful in the big picture. He always provides, exactly enough, exactly when it is needed. He asks me to take this next step and I protest, “but I don’t have enough!” Not enough grace, not enough love, not enough strength, not enough time. And the widow reminds me to be faithful anyway. Of course I do not have enough. But I have Jesus and He, He is always enough.

I am faithful with little. He is faithful with much.

So we breathe in. We put one foot in front of the other. We love each other well and we laugh until we cry and sometimes we just cry but He holds us then too.

Holds us even now and knows best even now and loves these dear ones even more than I do, even now.

He who promised is faithful. Not necessarily faithful in what I want or see fit, but faithful in His promises. And He has promised to prosper and not to harm, He has promised a hope and a future. For Jane, for Nancy, for Patricia, Grace, Sumini, Joyce, Scovia, Sarah, Tibita, Hellen, Mary, Zuula, Agnes, Margaret, Prossy and even me. He has promised to give good.

So we try our best to obey, to do what we already know to do - love like Jesus, open up our home and share what He has so graciously given us, preach the Gospel with our lives, breathe Him deep this moment. We do what we can do and then we let Him take over because oh, how His power is made perfect in my weakness!

Bottom line is, I don’t really like Nancy. But I can’t help but love her, and out of love I deeply desire to spend eternity with her. And in light of eternity, nothing else matters.

So I give Jesus the trauma and the confusion and the rolling eyes and the pinching and the things that Jane says that I didn’t teach her and I smile big and I laugh hard at the gift of one more day. I give Him Nancy’s heart and Jane’s too and I thank Him for 14 pairs of flip flops again and watermelon juice on eager chins and her toothbrush back in the cup on my sink and hurt that draws us closer and a home where strangers become family.

I can trust God. I look at my life and I see the miracles and because of what I know, I can trust Him for what I don’t know. Because of what I have seen, I can trust Him when I can’t see.

And when I don’t know what else to be, I am thankful. Thankful for you and your prayers that carry us and His love, through you all, that never runs out. We covet your prayers. We SO appreciate them. He must become greater, we must become less.

Wishing with all my heart right now that the internet was not the internet and was a safer place for me to share the specific cries of my heart.

Right now though, we are just asking for prayer.

I am so thankful for the Body of Christ who will lift us up during this especially difficult season.

I am so thankful for the Spirit who intercedes on my behalf before I even have the words to pray.

I am so thankful for God’s grace that never runs out and is enough for today and enough again tomorrow.

“I am so old. My whole body hurts. I have suffered much,” her eyes shine with joy as she speaks, “oh, I am suffering. But whatever He wants. Whatever God wants!” And she laughs and she laughs.

We sit in our circle in the dust of a slum and we share our hearts and our prayers. Jja Ja Maria, who looks to be a hundred years old and reaches no higher than my shoulders, is the last to share.

Her life, it has been hard. She is in Jinja because she had to flee from the war in the North that tore apart her life and her family. Her son was shot last week by a soldier on the border of Uganda and Sudan and frail, little Jja Ja had made the 13 hour bus ride in the stifling heat and watched as they had lowered her last living child into the ground. The journey had taken almost a week and when she came back she found her grandchildren sick and even though her whole body ached from travel she still took them to the clinic and continued bending over her work so that she could make enough money to put food on the table. Now she is back and we are happy to embrace her and ask about her journey and ask how we can pray for her.

“What ever He wants," she chuckles.

I look at the joy that is spilling out of her wrinkled face and I repeat the words that she has spoken in my head and that doesn’t make sense. She is hurt and she is suffering and she is laughing about it and sparkling with beauty and radiating Joy.

That doesn’t make sense. Not to me. Not yet.

But she already knows what I am just learning. That even this, it is from Him. Even this, it is Holy ground. This thing that I label suffering, it is really Joy.

“Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?” Amos 3:6

I live with these human eyes, and with these human eyes of mine I label. I label one thing as good and one thing as bad. I label moments as blessing or burden. And I forget that all this labeling, it is not my right, not my place, not mine to do. To declare what is a gift in my life and what is a curse is to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, to sit in the garden full of abundance and beauty and choose the forbidden. The knowledge of good and evil, that was never intended for me. Could I, like Jja Ja Maria just quit my labeling and say, "Whatever God wants. Whatever HE wants!"

Because God IS. “I AM.” He tells Moses and still today He IS. And if every good and perfect gift is from above, and a Good and Beautiful God can create only good and beauty then these moments that I choose to label as loss and suffering, they are really good and beautiful, perfect gifts?

“See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and I who give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal.” Deuteronomy 32:29

Suffering, pain, loss, shame – all these things I have blamed on a broken world, Satan even. But can’t a broken world and even Satan only give what God allows? Suffering, pain loss and shame are only these things because I label them as such. Because I, a sinner, choose to eat from the tree, choose to turn away from nail-scarred hands and ignore the grace and miss the gift. He is beautiful and everything He creates is beautiful and if I choose to label it suffering I am choosing to miss the beauty that is freely offered me.

On Friday I got a call from Jane’s birth mom that she had gotten her leg stuck in the chain of a bicycle. Five hours later I walked into a hospital room where she lay sedated, her heel bleeding and her tendon exposed, but untouched. The nurse saw my appalled, grief twisted face and shook her head. “God is good,” she whispered. “God's grace...She could have lost that foot.”

“God’s grace,” I thought, and I wondered what if she had? What if the tendon had been ripped clean through and she never were to walk again? What of when she was ripped from my life and left with a woman who doesn’t even care to supervise her and so she lays here hurt and bleeding and so far, far away from me?

What if God’s grace is not when He saves us, but that He saved us.

“Surely, just as I have intended, so it has happened and just as I have planned so it will stand.” Isaiah 14:24

Just as He intended. Even this, planned by God.

And if this is what He intended (and it is), then that means that every moment – the moment when my daughter’s tiny fingers were pried from around my neck, the moment in that hospital room, the moments when I hold babies and watch as they breathe their last and their mothers crumple to the floor and the moment when a dear grandmother hears that her son has been shot, and the moments when the laundry piles over my head and the children bicker and hurts from their past make them do the unspeakable and I don’t even know how to parent – every moment is His grace, a gift. Could I look and say, "whatever He wants, this is my gift for today."

God, who is Good and who is Beauty, and who saved us, even me undeserving, He can only give grace.

And I have a choice. I can let those wounded hands pull me close and I can choose to see the grace in this moment or I can again label, choosing to ignore the gift.

I see it deep in Jja Ja’s eyes, she knows. Even this suffering, He did this. He did this, not because He doesn’t know the ache – He does. He did this, a gift to me.

For the good of me. For the good of her. For the good of us, those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. For the good of all this world and the glory that is His.

And I know in that moment, I can choose to label the ripped open heel and the ripped open family or I can choose to count it as a gift, God’s grace. And the beauty is not in the circumstance or the label but the fact that in His graciousness He is here with me anyway, regardless of the circumstance or the way I choose to view it. The grace of being near to Him in trial, as long as I can chose to see it, is certainly the greatest grace of all.

This is what Jja Ja knows and this is what I am learning. God’s grace is not blessing, earthly reassure, our security or even the security of our children. God’s grace is not that all is “well” and right in my eyes. God’s grace is not when He saves us but that He saved us.

Here I am face to face with Jesus in the dirt and all I have to do is choose to see, accept the grace offered freely. His compassion and His mercy, this Grace, it never fails. Each moment each breath, is a gift simply and only because I get to spend it with Him.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23

Whatever He wants. And I am thankful.

** Ps. I am reading this FABULOUS book that is healing my heart and helping me to see more clearly. One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. If you don't have a copy, you should get one, TODAY and prepare for your view of life to be forever altered - for the better.

“Jesus! Mama, baby Jesus! I want to see! I want to see Jesus!,” shrieks my littlest darling.

How can I refuse? I lift her, for what seems like the hundredth time this morning, to the manger scene on the living room bookshelf. She gazes in wonder, oohs and ahs, gingerlyfingering the cornhusk baby in his twig and banana fiber trough.

“Jesus, Mama,” she whispers.

And so, the nativity scene that once was packed away each year after Christmas remains on the bookshelf still, because my darling baby, in all her wondrous excitement reminds me daily of who I want to be, the kind of life I want to live.

A wide-eyed, expectant child, gazing in wonder on a beautiful Savior.

In the middle of a broken, sin-crushed world, my soul cries out, “I want to see! I want to see Jesus!”

I want to see Jesus.

My darling Karimojong sister Maria, who is battling severe, gripping alcoholism, and her sweet baby are living with us still. People wonder, even gasp, that I would let her join us at our table. Isn’t she a poor example? Why would I subject my girls to that?

I want to see Jesus.

Newborn baby Noah snuggles to my chest as his mother lays dying in a hospital bed. He cried through the night and I feed him and kiss his pink toes and pray over his little life. Why do I do it? Don’t I have my hands full enough already?

I want to see Jesus.

Zulaika, her severely malnourished baby and her 8 year old daughter move into our home while we teach Zulaika how to care for her children and find her a job so she can continue to do so. They have lice. They do not bathe. Fear creeps up the back of my throat and I wonder, what if all my children get sick? But we have taken in sick people before, and each time He hedges us in protection. People ask, do I feel that I am being responsible?

I want to see Jesus.

Jane and her birth mom spend the weekend in our guest room. I figure if I cannot parent this my daughter, the least I can do is teach her mother about our Savior, invest time in their lives, pray over them while we love them. My heart breaks in two as her high pitched, breathy giggle once more fills my home and the pain threatens to paralyze me, but I won't let it.

I want to see Jesus.

Strangers eat at our table, bathe in our showers, sleep in our beds, share our everything. And I fleetingly wonder if it wouldn’t be better for my girls if I maintained some semblance of normal, but He shows me that HIS definition of family is not at all limited by my own.

I want to see Jesus.

I want to see Jesus and if I don’t step out, how can He come in? If I don’t give all of myself, my home, even my family, how will He be magnified?

Do I want my children to be safe? Absolutely. Do I want them to have a “normal” family dinner sometimes and be healthy and not be subject to the rage of an alcoholic or the hurt of friends dying and siblings leaving? Of course. But more than that I want to take a cue from my baby girl.

I want to whisper to them excitedly each morning, “Look, Jesus.”

I want them to see Jesus. In my life. In my actions. Lifted High. Magnified. In our neighbors, no matter how sick or dirty. In our home.

I want the best for my children, I do. And I believe with all my heart what is best is for them to have a mother – a crazy mother even – wide-eyed in wonder, recklessly chasing after her Savior.

More of Him. We want to see Jesus.