Our Stories

The last week has held lots of stories in my heart.  I have had a quiet hermit time and have read several wonderful stories and seen some impacting movies.  One of the books that I have been reading is about a boy who became a part of an action-packed adventurous bedtime story that creatively included the readers to navigate through the story layers.  Tonight as I watched the movie, "The Life of Pi,"  I thought about my book and the child who entered the story because I certainly became a part of  Pi's story in the movie!  I am still feeling somewhat seasick from those hours in the boat with him and the Tiger.  It actually was an important movie that has personally intertwined with my own life adventure.

For some time, I have been wanting to explain a bit about the story of this blog.  Many years ago  I was deeply encouraged and helped by several women who shared their daily adoption stories in their blogs.  Their expression of many of my same struggles gave me a deep sense of companionship and hope for my own journey.  As I read their blogs late at night I  felt less alone and isolated in my rather different life choices.  I started writing this blog so that I, too, might be of help to others in the adoption world who are often struggling to keep their heads above the watery storms of life with children who come from challenging places.   In spite of this initial goal, a rather different kind of story has emerged from my blogs.  Partly because I am very sensitive about sharing personal stories other than my own and because all my children read my blog, I have tended to be much more general in my blogs.  Perhaps rather self-centeredly, I have also written the story of my days that is most encouraging and hopeful for me!  Most often I am writing words that help to keep me centered and on track and grounded in the challenging, uncertain, chaotic and rather messy walk of my life.  After several years of thinking that I could function by myself with my blog friend supports, I did realize that I actually needed a few skilled and experienced  face-to-face people in whom to confide the specifics of my walk! Often my blogs are a reflection of the general undercurrent of their words that I am trying to integrate into my own heart.  I also am realizing that though many challenging issues belong to those around me, the main person over whom I have control is myself.  Adoption and challenging parenting are just a couple of many varied adventures of life that people face that can be used to ultimately shape our characters and lives for both better and worse!

All of our life stories can be told and understood from different angles and perspectives.  The stories of several of my children can be seen from many angles on the whole spectrum between being  tragedies brimming with the results of the evil choices of others, or exciting adventures of perseverance that give testimony to the depth of human suffering and ability to keep on going.  My own responses as a parent on this journey can also be viewed as the pervasive power of evil to bring out the worst in me as a parent, or a most wonderful opportunity to accept my own self as a human being and to use the worst in myself as a place to grow and become a deeper and more understanding person.  Pi told us the story of his life that he liked the best.  In this blog, I too am telling the story that is most helpful for me.  Like Pi, I too echo, "So it is with God!"  I believe that ultimately God sees the best story within each of us.  There is the ugly and evil and terrible in our midst, but increasingly I am training my heart to lean toward God's best story of the unfolding redeeming of my life and yours too!  I delight in the intertwining of many stories in our hearts and lives, where so often those vicious and unpredictable Tigers in our midst are what ultimately save each of us in more ways than we will ever know.