Winter Blessings

It’s official… We have received approval from the Chinese government to adopt our new son. We can now tell the world and celebrate publicly. Welcome Jackson Chao Ju Alan Barringer!  This has all just transpired so there is a lot we don't know.  As the days go by, we will update here when we will travel, who will be going, how you can pray.  Meanwhile....

Exceed / Hold Up

Here is everything we do know:
Chao means “exceed”
Ju means “hold up”
We love these names
He is 5 ½ years old
He is from the Henan province, and he lives in the Pingdingshan Social Welfare Institute (orphanage)
He is named for three godly men. His daddy,
CS “Jack” Lewis, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
We love him


Once upon a time in the cotton fields of Missouri, I played with my baby dolls in the hot summer sun, and imagined a life of motherhood. I don’t believe I’d ever heard of adoption. Or infertility. Or of how hard life is. There were hints of pain, whispers of tragedy, but by and large I thought that those things wouldn’t happen to me when I was “big".


When I got big, grew up and went looking for work, I applied for my first full-time job at a bank. The manager asked me where I saw myself in ten years. I smiled and said, “Being a mama.” He didn't hire me.


It took a few more years than the ten I’d predicted in that interview, but I did get the mama job.


Have you ever wrestled with Palm 37:4, the part that says that God will give you the desires of your heart. I have struggled with it, and sometimes railed against it. Does it mean He gives you those things you desire, like a Divine Dispenser of the good things you ask for, or that He places the desires within you and you are left to grapple with them?


Could I have known all those years ago, a silly young woman in a business suit and too high heels, sitting in a bank, what “being a mama” would bring?


What if I had known? I would not have changed my mind, but perhaps I would have said it with a little more dignity. A little more gravity.


Motherhood is a fearsome and wonderful calling. There is joy unimaginable. Fulfillment found nowhere else. And yet, for me, it has had it’s difficulties.


Year upon year of month upon month of anguish when another opportunity for conception had failed.
Striving, striving for a marriage in which two very imperfect people try not just to be good partners but to be good parents together.


Watching those we love live in ways we cannot control. Watching our hopes fade, and seasons change, and sometimes seasons of life go forever, while trying to remember and make sense of a God who gives us the desires of our heart.


I did not hold my Samuel the day he was born, and for his first nine months. This breaks my heart.  Now a new life, Jackson’s life, will burst into mine, and there will be 5 ½, maybe 6 years in his life story that I cannot go back through and write “Mama” on each page.


These are not the baby doll dreams from the cotton fields of my childhood. There is no warmth today, only weak winter sunlight, slanting in the window onto weathered hands as I type. But I am thankful, and I am excited.


I will have a 5 ½ year old son, not a baby in a soft blue blanket. What a privilege. I will look into those eyes, and teach him that it is safe and good to look back into mine. I will whisper “I love you“, “you are home” and “I’m your Mama".

And I think that which ever way it works with Psalm 37, I have received the desire of my heart.

Once again.

The Best Laid Plans...

We are in a conundrum. For the last five years, we’ve been waiting to receive a call from our adoption agency telling us that they have a daughter for us in China, a little girl, as young as possible.  Her name has been picked out since the beginning. Baby Juliet.

But yesterday, we saw our next child on our adoption agency’s website. And this child is no baby. This child is no girl. He is a gorgeous little boy, and he is five and a half years old! Boy names? Not a clue!

“How about Hammurabi?” yells Sam from the other room. He is seven. We home school. The Medo-Persian Empire is his current passion. Math….not so much.

Once upon a time, twenty two years ago we got married, and we made all kinds of plans. We counted on staying in love. We have. Everything else has been a bit of blur, and most of our plans have passed into oblivion unrealized. But we’ve tried to keep Christ at the center, and here we are, somewhat taken aback that we aren’t thirty any more, and still caught off guard when our planning runs aground.

Starting a family wasn’t easy for us, and although we eventually had our beautiful Rachel, I never got pregnant again. After nine years of dashed hopes, we realized that God had more children for us, He just wasn’t going to deliver them to our house. We made (what else?) an "adoption plan". First, a son from Russia, then a daughter from China. Samuel captured our hearts and changed our lives forever when he joined us from Russia at nine months old in 2003. We experienced a slight hiccup in the plan when Alan deployed to Iraq for a year, but two years later, almost on schedule, we were ready to begin again, this time, heading to China for our daughter. At the time, the wait was breathtakingly brief, but as we gathered our paperwork for the adoption, the Chinese adoption timeline slowed dramatically.

Fast forward to late 2010. We still waited. For the past several years our concerns had mounted as the passage of time impacted our family dynamics. It had been our intention to adopt a child who would be a playmate for Sam, within a couple of years of his age. Not to mention, our age began to concern us. At 48 and 49, we weren’t the spring chickens we once were, and no matter how healthy and active we stayed, it was difficult to imagine getting up in the night with a 9 month old again…. If we ever made it to the front of the line and got a referral.

So we adjusted our expectations and shifted our focus (see how nicely you can say "changed your plans" when you want to?) to finding an older little girl, ideally between the ages of 3 and 5. Drop “Baby”, and just say Juliet. We began to peruse our agency’s waiting child list, as well as some of the wonderful advocacy blogs for Chinese waiting children. Then yesterday happened.

Cup of coffee in hand, I did an early morning, first-thing quick check of our agency’s waiting children, and there I read a brief description of a little boy. A BOY! There was no photograph. Alan read his information and told me to contact the agency. I emailed the office, then in my excitement gave up and called. Yes, we could have his file for consideration. Yes, they had pictures. Yes, they’d send them right over.

Well, we are in love. There it is. God at work, faith in action. And that has really been, from the very beginning… our plan. Move forward till He stops us. Change direction. Pray.

We believe that Juliet still waits and that until we are shown differently, we will search for her even as we wait to travel for our son. This is how it works in our house. We believe. We believe until we are shown that we are to believe something else.

Today, we have been shown that there is a little boy in China who has our prayers, and if God allows, will have our hearts and hold our hands as soon as we can get there. Once again, we are glad that we are not really the ones making the plans!

Now then, about his name….I’m not sold on Hammurabi. Any ideas?