2020

On Saturday, September 14, my husband Randy and dad Tom were finishing putting soffits under the eaves of the second story of our house. Dad was on his way down the ladder and Randy was up above him on a walkboard. The ladder where Dad was standing buckled, folding beneath him. He said it felt like the ladder was ripped right out from under him. That is the last thing he remembers. Randy also remembers feeling like the floor was pulled out from under him. He fell 20+ feet, landing squarely on top of my dad. This perfect landing saved Randy's life and spared him from major injuries. Dad, taking the brunt of both their falls, sustained 8 broken ribs and a punctured lung. We spent the next 15 hours at one hospital and then another. Dad had a chest tube for three days, draining the fluid from his lungs. He has been home since the 18th, but returns to Miami Valley Hospital today to see if his lungs and ribs are showing signs of healing. Please join us in praying that he...

This month I had the opportunity to share a Sunday morning message with Dover Friends Church in Wilmington, Ohio. Actually they had invited me to share in January, but lucky for all of us we were snowed in that weekend and church was cancelled. I say *lucky* not because we got to stay home but because my message wasn't ready yet. It needed to--as my chef husband would say--simmer and season a bit more before it was truly ready to be consumed. The topic of my message was "rejection". Randy and I were blindsided by rejection during the last week of December, so it was very fresh on my heart in January. Too fresh. Too painful. If church hadn't been cancelled that Sunday I would have spoken specifically about the hurts we had experienced. The lies. The betrayals. And I would have shared this advice from Jesus: "Whatever village or town you enter, search for a godly man who will let you into his home until you leave for the next town. Once you enter a house, ...

If you’ve never taken a road trip with a 10-year-old boy, here is my depiction: Rand : “Hey Van, look, a volcano!” Van : “Cool.” Rand : “Hey Van, look, a buffalo!” Van : “Cool.” Rand : “Hey Van, look…” Van : “What’s for dinner?” It has taken me a few states to get used to this. Rand and I imagined Van being mesmorized by literally everything that passed our windows. Lassen volcano, a Bengal tiger, the ocean... but we can’t even get him to look out the window! The couple of times we’ve tried to force him to he’s simply fallen asleep (this kid can nap for hours!). To be honest, I was pretty disappointed at first. I had the expectation that experiencing this trip through his eyes would be a new way of seeing the world, with child-like wonder. But he’d rather read a zombie book for the third time than marvel at the random waterfalls along the highway. Disappointment was my attitude going into our trip north to Mt. Rainier in Washington state. It was recommended to us ...

Way back in February -- Valentine's Day and the first day of Lent, to be exact, I took on the challenge of giving $40 to 40 different organizations over the course of the 40 days of Lent. 40-40-40 . Shortly after starting that challenge, my grandmother died unexpectedly, knocking me off course for a few weeks. Committed to seeing the challenge through, however, I decided to keep my eyes and ears and heart open while undertaking the Great American Road Trip with my husband as we transition from Mexico to Ohio. What I discovered on that journey was a great big world that is both beautiful and in need, and it is full of beautiful people who want to help. The problem is, sometimes our helping hurts . While getting to know my high school friend Jim's wife over dinner one night in Sherwood, Oregon, Mel shared with me about an organization called "Days for Girls." Days for Girls was started when a woman named Celeste inquired about what girls in India do when they ar...

2017. My word of the year was "compartir." To share. All year I've pretty much felt like I was failing at this. No better at sharing than my 3-year-olds. (Someone seriously needs to put the kibosh on the phrase "terrible twos." Twos are like peaches and cream compared to threes!) Sure, I had bursts of inspiration. And I have gotten better at sharing some things. But I'm still not great. At least not in the way I have been defining "to share." When I look back at the year, the one thing I see the most is how much time I've spent on my knees in prayer. Prayer for family. For my marriage. My kids. Prayer for God's will in my life. Which makes me wonder... What if, in directing me to share this year, God wasn't talking about candy or toys, bags of beans or cute t-shirts, money with those in need or even prayer requests with my friends? What if God wanted me to share... with HIM? In which case spending so ...

I was sitting on the floor playing with 9-month-old Milly when our handyman Pablo walked into the room holding a toilet flapper. Assuming Pablo's task for the day was to repair the flush valve I asked, “Which toilet broke?” He knelt down beside me and replied, “Do you have gasoline?” “Gasoline?” I said. “You mean like an extra gallon?” “Gasoline,” he repeated. “We used to,” I said. Everyone seems to run out of gas in San Felipe, so we are constantly loaning out our gas can. “Ask Randy.” “Randy told me to ask you,” he said. “Me?” I couldn’t fathom why Randy would tell him to ask me for gas, unless he needed gas money and Randy didn’t have any money on him. So I asked, “Do you need money to buy gasoline?” “No,” Pablo said. “Randy said you have gasoline.” “Randy is crazy. I don’t have any gasoline.” Pablo shrugged his shoulders. “I will use a hose and syphon some from the boogie,” he said, referring to the dune buggy with flat tires sitting in ...

As Mother's Day quickly approaches (Wednesday here in Baja; Sunday in the United States), my social media feeds are filling up with tributes to moms, memes about moms, gushy sentimentality about moms. But one Instagram post in particular jumped out at me this morning. It said: "No one can be a better mom to your children than you." This one stood out to me because it's not the world I live in. The world I live in is one where moms are controlled by addictions and abusive husbands and have been rendered incapable of being the best caregiver for their children. Some of our children were found living on the streets, ten-year-olds caring for four-year-olds, with fetal alcohol syndrome, severe handicaps, sleeping in cars, dirty, bruised, burned, afraid, scared and scarred. Three months ago four siblings were brought to us. They had their first visit with their mother on Friday. After accepting new children, we have a three-month waiting period before they are allowe...

I’ve noticed that more often than not, when we tell kids to “share” we don’t actually mean it. Randy and I have very different communication styles. I am literal; he is general. Por ejemplo (for example), if someone asks “Is that what you mean?” I will answer “si” or “no.” Randy will answer “mas o menos” (more or less). This is too vague for me. I want to mean what I say and say what I mean. The literal definition of sharing is to “give a portion of something to someone else,” or to “enjoy together.” But when we tell our kids to share, isn’t it true that we are more likely to praise them if they give away their toy and go off to play with something else? Isn’t it true that we are more likely to praise them if they give away a bigger portion of the snack they have and settle for the lesser portion? Yet it would still be sharing if they gave away a lesser portion. It would still be sharing if they asked for 5 minutes alone with their toy first before giving th...

Every Saturday morning I lead devotions for the kids. We use "El Libro Devocional de Maravillas" ("Wonders Devotional Book") to guide us. It includes a Scripture, a short explanation about what the Scripture says, and why it is important to our lives. In addition to the reading, I always try to have a little activity for the kids -- something to help them remember the devotion. Last Saturday's devotion was about the importance of trusting God, so I decided we would do a "trust fall" as our activity. We used to do this at camp every summer when I was growing up. We would have to stand on platforms of various heights and fall straight backwards into the arms of our friends and fellow campers. Terrifying. As I was preparing for the activity on Friday night, 7-year-old Anita walked into the room. I asked her to turn around and fall into my arms. She did without any hesitation. Such trust! I was totally jealous. On Saturday morning, Anita an...

I'm not very good at sharing. That may be obvious to you, as my word of the year is "share" and I haven't even managed to write a blog a week. For one, I'm busy and tired. But more so, I think I'm overthinking the whole thing. Like I'm waiting for this Divine inspiration, this deep meaning to life, before I can put words to "paper." It dawned on me, however, that I started this whole blogging thing four years ago to simply share daily life with you. And it felt more meaningful and purposeful then, in the ordinary, than it does now, waiting for the extraordinary. So I'm going to try to go back to the daily and see if I can't be a better sharer. Today I'll share a little story from Randy and my trip to California on Wednesday. Wednesday is our "descansa" -- our rest day each week. Some Wednesdays we don't get off the couch. But that isn't always restful. We live at the children's home, so we still ...

This week we officially became card-carrying residents of Mexico. We celebrated with street tacos and binge-watching "Santa Clarita Diet" on Netflix. It was as anti-climactic as it sounds. "I thought I'd be more excited," Randy said, when we sat in the car staring at our green cards. Which really are green. After 7 months of time, money, and paperwork, we were worn out. Only to be told we'd have to start the process all over again every October. More paperwork. More money. More waiting. Randy and I are very clear that this is where God wants us to be at this point in our lives. But that doesn't mean it is all easy or all fun. It's a lot of waiting. It's a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of doing things wrong first, so that we can be corrected and then told how to do them right. It would be easier to just pack up and walk away. But we are committed to the process. For better and for worse. Until God tells us othe...

When Randy and I visited Sonshine Hacienda in August of last year to finalize the plans for our move to San Felipe, one of the first words I realized I didn't know how to say in Spanish was "share." Imagine working with children all day, and not being able to tell them to share? The lack of this one word in my vocabulary made me feel completely incompetent. But this one was easy for me to memorize, because as soon as I learned it I started saying it every day, often multiple times a day: COMPARTIR (pronounced: comb-par-tier): to share Of course, I've added lots of other words to my vocabulary in the two months that we have been here. ( Google translate  and I have become fast friends.) Other important words to know when spending time with children are: puzzles - rompecabezas  kick - golpear fall down - cayó trust - confianza angry - enojado itch - picar stuffed animals - peluches hair bows - moñas  lice - piojos Give it to me - darmelo ...

On Thursday morning, Randy and I had a short two-hour drive to El Centro, where we would return the U-Haul and transfer its contents into a trailer pulled by Gary and Karen, the directors of Sonshine Hacienda. We were so excited to see them! Even though we hadn’t yet crossed the border into Mexico, it felt like we’d arrived. During the morning drive, a semi-truck kicked up a rock and cracked my windshield in two places. So, while Gary and Karen ran errands, Randy and I found a local glass repair shop. They were so nice, quick, and did great work. We took their business card and promised that if we couldn’t get all our needs met in San Felipe we would return to them. We met up with Gary and Karen again and went out to lunch at Sizzler. I was craving something healthy, seeing as we’d been grabbing fast food for the last three days. The Sizzler salad bar was just the ticket. We had an opportunity to talk and reconnect and share all of our excitement over our arrival. Kare...

Randy and I have very different packing styles. We’ve know this since about day 3 of walking the Camino, and yet still we haven’t quite figured out how to mesh our styles. Randy is a hurry up and get it done packer. I’m slow and methodical, making sure everything is in its perfect place. Dusting it before it goes into a box, maybe conjuring up a couple memories, feeling all the feelings that go along with that particular item. The one thing we do have in common is that we are both procrastinators. So even though we’ve known since August that we were moving to Mexico, even though we’ve known since August that we would have to pack up our entire house and put it into a 16-foot trailer, even though we’ve known since August that we would have to itemize every single box in order to satisfy Border Patrol, we still waited until 3 days before we had to be out of our house to start packing. We were busy! We had a party to plan. Work to do. A yard sale to have. Friends to ...