One of the reasons that I so seldom post, is that as we stare down the beginning of our eighth year in China, very few things get my attention. In the beginning there was so much culture shock (even when we thought we weren't really experiencing any), that everything seemed notable.
Things that seemed outrageous, strange or irritable marked our every day, and I wrote about them. Now, there is a noticeable vacuum where my observations used to germinate. The commentary department of my brain, too often now switches to white noise...and I seldom think..."I've got to write about that!"
Today, we rose at six as usual. It is always a harried and hectic race to feed all twelve of us, and load into our nine-seater vehicle, with enough time to make it to school. Usually on Thursdays, according to the great white board in my bathroom hallway, is shopping day. This is the case because on Thursdays, Daddy only teaches one class in the morning...and then he comes home and we sort of date/shop/talk/summit/slay the traffic dragons...as a team. Alas, today however, Daddy, as King of the school's science department, must devote all his attentions to the 2015 Science Fair! (I cannot share the location for fear that our crowds will likely already be a capacity.)
Anyway, I dropped of the Hs at the school campus and like a fish swimming upstream, proceeded to make my way to the local market to get our weekly supplies for the larder. I arrived just prior to the doors opening, and was surprised at the numbers of souls already gathered to get shopping. I casually alighted from the van's drivers seat, and made my way down the moving ramp, into the bowels of a massive building's basement (where no natural light has ever been.)
I made my way through the market without any incident, straining to find familiar brands that would not require me to translate the Chinese labels...and finally found my way to the meat portion of the store. A young "meat worker" came to my side as I eyed the chicken breasts. He, apparently recognizing me as the woman who buys more food in one week than other shoppers do in two months, inquired of me if there were enough chicken breast present for my weekly haul. I smiled and told him that in fact there were not enough, and could he bring me some more. Out came a big cardboard box, lined in plastic (I have trained my mind to not dwell on the food handling practices)...and he began to help me choose the ones I would like the most. He nattered on about the price of chicken, the type of people who buy these sorts of chicken breasts, and eventually he worked up the courage to ask why I buy SO MANY chicken breasts. I was surprised at the easy banter we shared, gone are the days when I had to pantomime to communicate, and his shock and awe at our family's size resulted in the universal thumbs up and strokes of "you are so good", "you are so capable"...
Feeling warmed by our exchange over the breasts, I pressed forward with my cart that has wheels that go in all directions, so you have to constantly fight it to keep it going straight (something that used to drive me to near lunacy on each and every shopping trip at any store in China.)
I joined the throngs of early shoppers waiting in just three lines (with 10 registers that could have been opened...another matter of sheer madness about which I used to fume and froth)...and I realized that I was towering over the early-shopping set. All of them, fifty or more, elderly, with their hands clutching a sale item of the day, ready to fork over their one or two yuan, and to go home, or to the Mahjong tables...or just a stool in an alley...to while away the rest of the day. I watched as some gave warm greetings to each other...and then the grandma nearest me...turned to me and said, "you buy so many, many things!" I smiled and told her of our family size...she responded in shock and awe, giving me the thumbs up and telling me "you are so good" , "you are so capable." I assured her that I wasn't. This exchange in Chinese drew dozens of more pairs of eyes our way, and old aunties and uncles who clearly forgot to protect their sacred places in line...and gravitated toward us...amazed at how "you speak Chinese beautifully" "you are a good speaker of Chinese." I gave the culturally-correct refusals of such lovely complements, and we settled into a chat about their families, their grandchildren, where they were from, what their lives were like, what I thought of China, why did I come to China, and on, and on it went.
Finally, the first auntie, and the man and his wife stuck in the unenviable position of being behind the foreign woman who had more food in her cart that anyone had ever seen, helped me to unload my cart, bag my things...and walked me out to my car. They admonished me that I didn't bring enough bags, that I should have my husband there to help me, that I would get too tired and too old if I did so much work caring for so many children each day...and so much more.
It was delightful. Purely, delightful. I was just sort of one of the early morning shoppers, here in my neighborhood.
I finished up my shopping, after doing a brilliant parallel parking job in a rarely-found street side spot...by walking to the butcher, taking my meat down off a hook, and watching him grind it in a machine that looked like it had been used on my great, great, great grandfather's farm...then stopping and the fruit vendor to buy two pounds of the cherries that are now in season, after accusing her of the highest prices I'd ever heard of and settling on $1.50 a pound, and finally getting some steamed buns from the corner shop's bamboo steamers that fogged my glasses while I found my $1 to buy seven buns filled with mystery meat...
A good China morning, indeed.
28 May 2015
22 March 2015
Marveling
Just a quick note, will post more later...
He is faithful. He covered us and made the way as we traveled into the past...the enormity of a connection that was made during the recent Spring Festival that led us to a village, and into a home to see a woman who says she is Potato's paternal Aunt...is NOTHING short of MIRACULOUS. I will detail that in my next blog. For those who read this and believe that God is not involved or interested in the details of our lives...you need to read this story.
We saw her. We heard a story that fills in gaps of a story that was told to us nearly seven years ago now...and we sat in a room with three different people who at one point and time, claim to have shepherded our girl from one step until the next. Mercifully, we did not see the potential biological parents...but avenues opened for more research, more people to search for, and hope for resolve through scientific testing.
Our eyes were opened again to His mercy, His grace, and the individual plan He has for each of us...it was overwhelming for me and so life-giving to my faith.
The sun was shining on us as we arrived in the village, and Potato and I spoke many times during the day about how God has had his hand on her life from the beginning...how he was with her when she was first born (part of her story we were told), along each step that led her home to us, and ultimately to yesterday when we returned to that village...He was PRESENT, it was undeniable.
He is faithful. He covered us and made the way as we traveled into the past...the enormity of a connection that was made during the recent Spring Festival that led us to a village, and into a home to see a woman who says she is Potato's paternal Aunt...is NOTHING short of MIRACULOUS. I will detail that in my next blog. For those who read this and believe that God is not involved or interested in the details of our lives...you need to read this story.
We saw her. We heard a story that fills in gaps of a story that was told to us nearly seven years ago now...and we sat in a room with three different people who at one point and time, claim to have shepherded our girl from one step until the next. Mercifully, we did not see the potential biological parents...but avenues opened for more research, more people to search for, and hope for resolve through scientific testing.
Our eyes were opened again to His mercy, His grace, and the individual plan He has for each of us...it was overwhelming for me and so life-giving to my faith.
The sun was shining on us as we arrived in the village, and Potato and I spoke many times during the day about how God has had his hand on her life from the beginning...how he was with her when she was first born (part of her story we were told), along each step that led her home to us, and ultimately to yesterday when we returned to that village...He was PRESENT, it was undeniable.
21 March 2015
Searching
I am posting this largely for posterity.
I hope that some of you who might read it would join us today in prayer. We will journey further into a search that I never quite gave life in my imaginings nine years ago when we were completing our first adoption and just weeks away from laying hands on our treasured daughter, Potato, a grip that began then and holds fast to her today.
Her adoption, her force, the sheer velocity at which we bound ourselves together revolutionized my thinking on love and family like nothing else in my life has ever done.
Loving my husband's children upon our marriage was so easy...they were imminently loveable and it there was an open invitation to love them first through their Daddy's eyes...and then my own wellspring grew for them...it was so natural. When our biological daughters were born, their lives placed in our hands, I discovered the joy of falling in love with someone who, though I birthed them and they shared my genetic material, were creations vastly unique and ...love was so natural. When Potato's photo was on my computer screen for the first time, I have reported to hundreds, that she looked "familiar" and I knew in an instant that my life was now headed, no matter the cost or challenge of the course, to the moment when we would no longer be separated...and to my utter awe and amazement...the love I had for her....was so natural.
But for Potato, her heart has always yearned to know. She simply has to know where she came from, what her story is...and why. I will never forget watching the tears slide down her face for the first time when she processed that she, and her brothers, shared the same trait...they were born of different mothers, who we most likely would never know. If my chest would have been surgically opened at that moment, exploded shards of my heart would have painfully littered the floor.
It became clear that in the Master's flawless design of our Potato, she believes there is an answer. For every thing there is an answer, and if you do not know the answer yet, you simply have not yet asked the right question. For five years or so now, she has been asking every question she could formulate...and I have weakly answered...'I don't know.'
When in SE Asia this year as the shroud of pain and questioning fell over her beloved features...as it has countless times in the past few years...I knew that as her mom...I MUST do everything I can to help her find the answers to her past, and I felt an urgency for the first time...that I must take action before the trail grows any older....so as to preserve my daughter's heart and her future.
A quick call to our Chinese family, purchased plane tickets, a request of Potato's foster family..."will you help us track back to the time before she came into your loving home?"
We have long since learned that everything presenting in her file as her story...is not her story. This brought a great deal of comfort as we know MUCH about her life from one month of age until two years, four months, and 2 days later when our hands laid hold of her...
But what happened before....in the one month from birth until she came to her foster parent's home...that one month overshadows everything in Potato's life now...
The details of what we've learned thus far are her story, not mine to tell. She is the owner, and I will not steal from her. But I can share that in what must be an answer to my precious daughter's countless prayers...today we journey to her hometown...and we've been told there is a surprise waiting for us there. Even talk that we might meet a couple who had a daughter at the right time...whom they have no more...who once gave her to a family because they couldn't raise her...
I woke up in the dark today, just Potato and I on this trip, Daddy and the others waiting prayerfully for news...and my heart was asking the Lord..."is today a good day?" "Please, PROTECT her...don't let her hear anything that could be used for her destruction...PRESERVE HER!" And this is what I found in the Word this morning...
Psalm 112:7-8 He is not afraid of bad news, his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord, His heart is steady, he will not be afraid.
118:6 - The Lord is on my side, I will not fear, what can man do to me?
118:24 - This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.
Today we step back into time. We open a box, closed and covered more than eleven years and one month ago...we will peek in and see what we find. Will we finally see their faces? Will we be in the same room today with the ones who gave life to this precious treasure who has changed my life?
Of this I am sure...my heart is firm, my heart is steady...I will not be afraid...for this is the day that He has made, just for us...and I will rejoice and be glad in in...come what may.
I hope that some of you who might read it would join us today in prayer. We will journey further into a search that I never quite gave life in my imaginings nine years ago when we were completing our first adoption and just weeks away from laying hands on our treasured daughter, Potato, a grip that began then and holds fast to her today.
Her adoption, her force, the sheer velocity at which we bound ourselves together revolutionized my thinking on love and family like nothing else in my life has ever done.
Loving my husband's children upon our marriage was so easy...they were imminently loveable and it there was an open invitation to love them first through their Daddy's eyes...and then my own wellspring grew for them...it was so natural. When our biological daughters were born, their lives placed in our hands, I discovered the joy of falling in love with someone who, though I birthed them and they shared my genetic material, were creations vastly unique and ...love was so natural. When Potato's photo was on my computer screen for the first time, I have reported to hundreds, that she looked "familiar" and I knew in an instant that my life was now headed, no matter the cost or challenge of the course, to the moment when we would no longer be separated...and to my utter awe and amazement...the love I had for her....was so natural.
But for Potato, her heart has always yearned to know. She simply has to know where she came from, what her story is...and why. I will never forget watching the tears slide down her face for the first time when she processed that she, and her brothers, shared the same trait...they were born of different mothers, who we most likely would never know. If my chest would have been surgically opened at that moment, exploded shards of my heart would have painfully littered the floor.
It became clear that in the Master's flawless design of our Potato, she believes there is an answer. For every thing there is an answer, and if you do not know the answer yet, you simply have not yet asked the right question. For five years or so now, she has been asking every question she could formulate...and I have weakly answered...'I don't know.'
When in SE Asia this year as the shroud of pain and questioning fell over her beloved features...as it has countless times in the past few years...I knew that as her mom...I MUST do everything I can to help her find the answers to her past, and I felt an urgency for the first time...that I must take action before the trail grows any older....so as to preserve my daughter's heart and her future.
A quick call to our Chinese family, purchased plane tickets, a request of Potato's foster family..."will you help us track back to the time before she came into your loving home?"
We have long since learned that everything presenting in her file as her story...is not her story. This brought a great deal of comfort as we know MUCH about her life from one month of age until two years, four months, and 2 days later when our hands laid hold of her...
But what happened before....in the one month from birth until she came to her foster parent's home...that one month overshadows everything in Potato's life now...
The details of what we've learned thus far are her story, not mine to tell. She is the owner, and I will not steal from her. But I can share that in what must be an answer to my precious daughter's countless prayers...today we journey to her hometown...and we've been told there is a surprise waiting for us there. Even talk that we might meet a couple who had a daughter at the right time...whom they have no more...who once gave her to a family because they couldn't raise her...
I woke up in the dark today, just Potato and I on this trip, Daddy and the others waiting prayerfully for news...and my heart was asking the Lord..."is today a good day?" "Please, PROTECT her...don't let her hear anything that could be used for her destruction...PRESERVE HER!" And this is what I found in the Word this morning...
Psalm 112:7-8 He is not afraid of bad news, his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord, His heart is steady, he will not be afraid.
118:6 - The Lord is on my side, I will not fear, what can man do to me?
118:24 - This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.
Today we step back into time. We open a box, closed and covered more than eleven years and one month ago...we will peek in and see what we find. Will we finally see their faces? Will we be in the same room today with the ones who gave life to this precious treasure who has changed my life?
Of this I am sure...my heart is firm, my heart is steady...I will not be afraid...for this is the day that He has made, just for us...and I will rejoice and be glad in in...come what may.
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