How Time Flies....

We attended our niece Jana's wedding this weekend. When David and I got married, she and her big sister Julie looked like this:

How is it possible that we have been married long enough that these two little blond girls now look like this?:

It's completely mind-boggling to me, and it's no wonder that I am feeling very old on this Monday morning! :-)

Overall, we had a lovely weekend celebrating with family and friends. The wedding was beautiful, and Jana married a wonderful young man named Tim, whom we welcome to the family with open arms.

Jana and Tim are both finishing their last year of pharmacy school at Ohio Northern University, and are about begin pharmaceutical residencies in the state of Minnesota, where Tim's family lives. Tim has lived in our basement for the better part of the last two weeks, as they finalized their wedding plans, and we have enjoyed getting to know him a little better. My boys were completely obsessed with him, but that's another post for another time!

My youngest brother, Seth, is also graduating from pharmacy school at ONU next month and was an invited to the wedding, so we had the pleasure of spending time with his family this weekend as well. Our kiddos are close in age, and they love to be together. I treasure the time that my boys have with cousins.

As I look at the photos from the weekend, I am struck by the never-slowing march of time. Right now, my little family looks like this:

Our days are filled with teaching letters and numbers, riding bikes up and down our street, reading picture books, interrupting fights over toys and refilling sippy cups with milk. Some days feel like they go on forever, and yet the weeks and months are flying by. Before we know it, if time stands, our family will have reached this stage:

or this one:

and we'll be here:

at our granddaughter's wedding, wondering how in the world we have arrived at this place so quickly?

Today, I am reminding myself to enjoy my precious little boys, even during their not-so-precious moments, because they won't be here for much longer.

 

 

Life With Little Boys

One of the online learning games in Yikealo’s Phonics class makes a distinctive sound if he gets an answer wrong. On one particular day, Sintayehu was playing with cars out in the hallway when the computer sounded off on one of Yikealo’s misspelled words. Sintay immediately piped up in a firm voice, “Tay appension, Kahlo!”

One day the boys were crashing around the house, jumping off of furniture, and making some crazy ninja moves, all while shouting, “Yikealo-bunga!” Just so you know, guys…..I’m pretty sure it used to be “Cowabunga.”

We get all kinds of random questions from the back seat whenever we're in the van. A couple days ago Yikealo asked, "Hey Mom, what if Dad couldn't see or hear, and what if he didn't have any arms or legs?" I responded with something like, "My gracious! That would be pretty hard, wouldn't it?" to which Yikealo replied, "Yeah...because he couldn't even go to the arcade with me at Disney!" Obviously, that WOULD be the worst of it.

We found a toy of Yikealo’s that had been broken, and Sintay was quick to inform us that, “Dolphin did it.”

On another day, he was staging quite a battle between a couple of his toys, a dinosaur and a rescue hero. When I heard him shouting “Tupid!”, I informed him that he was not allowed to say “stupid.” He hurriedly set me straight, “I DINT! Dinosaur did it!”

When I asked him to please take his hands out of his pants, he tried to tell me, “I dint! It was Kahlo!”

We were getting ready to pull Yikealo’s crazily angled loose front tooth, and Yikealo was nearly beside himself with excitement. He looked at me gleefully and pronounced, “Mom, I am going to be JUST SO CUTE!!” Later that day, he asked David if the tooth fairy was pretty. David responded that she was very pretty, but “not beautiful, like your Mom.” Ummmm….I’m pretty sure that’s called being deceitful, Dear.

At the library one morning, I made the mistake of complimenting Sintay on his good behavior. For weeks afterward, whenever I told him to stop doing something or mentioned that his attitude was not very good, he would respond, “No! Nuh bood boy, liberry!” (His way of saying, “You said I was a good boy at the Library!)

Along those same lines, whenever we tell him to go potty before bed, he complains, "I alweady did...last night!"

While shopping in a large department store, I pushed Sintayehu’s stroller down an aisle of women’s dresses. He pointed at every one we passed and deemed it, “Yummy”, “Yucky”, or “Uh-TUCK-ting!” (disgusting.) He was pretty clear on his tastes: almost everything was found wanting except for three or four sleeveless, color-blocked sheathes, all of which were declared, “Yummy!”

On the way to work one morning, Yikealo, who had been riding quietly behind me, suddenly announced, “Mom, I have a really bad idea. What if it was the law that if you burped while you were on your way to work, you would get fired? Even James would have to get fired if he burped.” (James, for those of you who don’t know him, is my brother-in-law and the president of our corporation, and is much beloved by my boys for his belching abilities.) I asked how anyone would know if you had burped in your own car, and he said, “Because that would be the first question that you would have to answer when you got to work. If you said yes, then you’d have to go home again because you had broken the law.” Where does he come up with this stuff?

Earlier this week, we were eating lunch at a restaurant. Across the room, someone sneezed, and Sintayehu immediately turned around and shouted, "HEY! Say 'cuse me!!" Right....this from the child who tries to see how many times he can burp after every time he takes a drink.

I was exclaiming about how warm the boys’ hands were one snowy day on our way to work. When I mentioned that mine were freezing, Y gave the following suggestion for warming them, “Well, if only we were a robot family, but we had people hands, we could sleep like this: we could have a bed that was made of 2000 cushions and you could climb up a ladder fer you could sleep on the top, and then you could stretch your arms down fer you could put them under the bed (because it would be made of cushions) and then your hands would get all warm, and then Dad could snuggle you and warm up the rest of you, fer his hands are never cold.” Okay then…and here I was thinking that I should just put my gloves on. :-) His random, stream-of-consciousness imaginings just make me smile!

While Yikealo was taking a math test, I temporarily forgot to fill in his answer to one of the questions on the online test sheet. He informed me that I was “a troubler of Israel.” (King Ahab calls the prophet Elijah this on one of his audio Bible stories.)

David drinks his coffee black, while I add plenty of flavored creamer to mine. While painting a self-portrait in Art, Yikealo was trying to mix the right shades of brown for his skin and eyes. When I told him that the colors were good, he exclaimed, “I am the same color as your coffee, and my eyes are the same color as Dad’s coffee! No wonder you always say you’re going to eat me up!”

On Easter Sunday, the first words out of Yikealo’s mouth were, “The Lord is risen indeed!” followed by, “Hey! It sure is a good thing that God is alive now so that He can help my cough get better!” Oh Buddy….your cough is the least of it, and apparently we need to clarify some of the finer points of the Passion week story for you, but I’m so glad that you’re getting the main point: that we serve a risen, LIVING Lord!

The God Who Sees Me

We've had so much going on lately, and I have so many things to say about our current lives that I will never be able to get them all said, so this seems like the perfect time to tell a story that's four years old, right? Actually, having said that, I'm first going to start with a much older story, one that's several thousand years old. God has been revealing much to me through the story of Hagar found in Genesis 16. It struck me powerfully when I read it earlier this year, and then a few weeks ago, it was used as the topic for the closing session at a wonderful retreat for adoptive mamas that I had the privilege of attending. This will be a long post, but I promise that eventually I will tie it all together, so bear with me here!

To put the whole Genesis story in a nutshell, Abram and Sarai had been promised a child by God. When things didn't happen in their time-frame, Sarai decided to help God out a bit by taking matters into her own hands and offering her Egyptian slave to Abram as a surrogate. (Oh what disasters we create when we try to take over God's plans!) I want you to put yourself in Hagar's shoes for a moment. She was a foreign slave, the lowest of the low. She had lost everything that she knew years earlier when she had been taken from her homeland. She had been abused by her master and mistress....used for her body's ability to have a baby....and now she was pregnant with a child that she would not be allowed to call her own. This is undoubtedly NOT how she had pictured her life turning out when she was a little girl back in Egypt. For a moment, she may have thought that her circumstances would change. She was going to mean something to a wealthy, God-fearing man, because surely, bearing him a child would make her indispensable, right? At any rate, we know that when she conceived, she began to despise Sarai, who in turn, complained about her to Abram. Abram took the coward's way out and essentially responded, "Look, she's YOUR servant. You deal with her." This resulted in Sarai treating Hagar harshly, and Hagar, having reached her limit, runs away into the wilderness.

Here's where the story gets really interesting. "And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness....and he said, 'Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?'" Did you get that? God Himself....not bound by time or place or class distinction or any of the other boundaries that we put on ourselves....chooses to reveal truth in a personal way to a runaway, pregnant, unwed slave girl. He calls her by name, and he asks about her welfare. He tells her to return to Sarai and submit to her, and then He gives her promises for the future. "Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him..." Notice what God doesn't say: "Hey, Hagar! I've just been to talk to Sarai, and I've completely changed her heart toward you! Go back home because you're going to be best buddies now. Oh yeah...and by the way...YOUR child is the promised, chosen one, and he's going to be a wonderful, loving, affectionate son." No, not at all. In fact, God has just told her that things are still going to be pretty tough. She is going to have to submit to her mistress, and Ishmael is going to have a difficult personality. God didn't change anything about her circumstances....but He changed her heart by revealing Himself to her. Look at the way she responds. In verse 13, she says, "You are the God who sees me" and she names the place "The well of Him that lives and sees me." Because really....what else do we need when God has taken the time to meet us where we are and speak directly into our lives? At that point, what others think of us or even how they treat us ceases to matter nearly as much as it did before.

Now I'd like to share a story from my own life....of how God met me during one of the most difficult days that I've experienced so far. Passion week 2009: David had just had surgery to have the remainder of his colon removed. We had also just accepted the referral for Yikealo, and were nervously anticipating our entrance into parenthood. David kept this picture by his hospital bed and showed it to everyone who came into the room.

There's an interesting side note to all of this that we've gained by hindsight. There are 5 distinct times in Yikealo's adoption story when something happening in our case to move it forward, corresponded exactly to a marked turn for the worse in David's health. Satan is not very sneaky sometimes. It is so clear as we look back at our story that he did NOT, under any circumstances, want this adoption to happen, and he threw up some crazy, scary roadblocks at the time.

On Thursday of that week, we hit a low spot. David was on his third day post-op and was getting worse instead of better. He weighed a whopping 130 pounds, couldn't keep any food down, and his pain meds were really messing with his moods. David has always had a great attitude about his not-so-great health, and he typically keeps things very light-hearted and positive. Not so on that day. He was angry, and depressed and so sick, and he appeared to be giving up. He said over and over that he would never get better, that he was going to die, that he couldn't see the end of the darkness and the pain. He was very demanding with me and very rude to almost everyone else. He'd been in the hospital for a week at this point, and I was feeling exhausted with the worry, the long drives to and from Cleveland every day, and I was starting to panic about the adoption (again.) WHY was God asking us to move forward with a child now? Where was the healing that we'd been so sure God was promising? How in the world was I going to be a mom to a needy little boy when I had an invalid husband to care for? Who was this person in the hospital bed? He didn't resemble my husband of 14 years in any way. I had a minor melt-down on my sister-in-law's shoulder at one point that afternoon, and by the time I left the hospital around 9 that night, I was utterly spent. As I made the hour-long drive home, I called my parents and our best friends and filled them in on the latest, pleading for their prayers. Did we need to back out of the adoption, or should we stay on the current path even though it seemed completely impossible?

When I got home, I turned on some music as I went through the stack of mail that had piled up that week. The first line of one song grabbed my attention, "Oh God, my God, I cry out. Your beloved need You now," and I fell apart on the living room floor, on my face before the Lord, sobbing out my fears, my pain, my anguish and begging for help. I remember feeling so discouraged and alone, and telling God, "If only You would have someone call me right now. That would show me that You are listening to me....that You hear me." I dismissed the thought almost as soon as I had it. It was well after 10:00 on a week night. I had already spoken to the very few people who might have called that late. The song ended with the same line, "Oh God, my God, I cry out. Your beloved needs You now,"....and the phone rang. I stared at it in disbelief. NO. WAY. But there it was again. I walked over and picked up to hear the voice of a dear friend of David's. He apologized for calling so late, but said that he had suddenly had the overwhelming urge to check in. He had the most beautiful prayer with me over the phone, and that moment shimmers with holiness in my memory.

God wasn't done either. After the phone call, I took a quick shower and headed to bed. As I was climbing into bed, I realized that I hadn't checked e-mail that day. We were communicating closely with our adoption agency at that point, and I knew that I needed to check it, so I dragged my weary body to our basement computer. There I found the most incredible gift of an e-mail from one of my closest friends. It was a link to something she'd heard on Christian radio earlier that day, and she had typed in huge letters, "A MESSAGE FROM GOD!!!! You have to read this!!" What followed was one of the most perfectly-suited-to-my-situation things that I have ever read. Read it here: "A Bumpy Road to a Beautiful Place". I read it with tears of awe streaming down my face. Not only had God heard me....He knew my exact circumstances and had answered me in precisely the way I had needed Him to. That question about whether or not to back out of the adoption was answered with crystal clarity.

Today I cannot look back at that night without seeing God's mighty hand gently moving the pieces of an extraordinary story into place. I am stunned and driven to my knees over the way that He chooses to continually reach out to me, and really, to all of us. I want to leave you with the encouragement that He is the God who sees you too. No matter your circumstances, no matter your level of pain, discouragement or despair, He knows you. He knows where you are, what you're going through, WHY you're going through it. When you can't see how the pieces fit together, when you can't see any hope of good, HE CAN. He's not going to speak to you in the same way that He spoke to Hagar, or to me, because you are YOU, and He's going to speak intimately to you in a way that is most likely to reach you where you are. Not because you deserve it....but because THAT'S WHO HE IS, AND THAT'S HOW HE LOVES US.

"He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Roman 8:32

Referral-versary!

One year ago today, we got "the call" about Sintayehu (or "Sin-tuh-yay-hoo", as our case-worker mistakenly pronounced his name!) We'd had the feeling for several days that we were going to hear news of our child very soon, but no matter how prepared you think you are, that moment still catches you off guard and takes your breath away. There really is no possible way to prepare for the crazy, overwhelming emotions that you experience.

This was the first picture that we saw:

Right away, I just knew that he was MY child. I hadn't felt that immediately with Yikealo, and the feeling caught me by surprise. We saw more photos, filled with haunted, sad eyes, thin, weak looking limbs, and exhaustion....and yet I knew that THIS was my son. The immediate, all-consuming love that God can create for a child that you've never met is an astounding, beautiful thing.

Today, my beautiful little guy looks like this:

He is such a happy, smiley, crazy, full-of-life little boy that it is nearly impossible for me to reconcile those first photos with the child that I see in front of me on a daily basis. He's been talking a lot lately about how he was "sad in Pope-ia because Mommy not come." We praise God for the healing and the miraculous change that He has brought to Sintayehu's countenance over the last year, and we are so thankful for our beautiful second son!

On Love, Marriage, Honeymoons and Boyfriends

Twice a week, Yikealo has an online group session with his virtual academy teacher and a few other students. They study math or language arts concepts for about 45 minutes, and using the online whiteboard and the microphone gives them a taste of what it’s like to be in an actual classroom. A couple of the little girls in the class are usually drawing hearts in garish shades of pink or purple on their whiteboard sections, and Y is convinced it is because they are in love with him. Never mind that all we know about any of these kiddos is their first name. In addition, he has developed quite a “crush” on a little girl named Zoe, because he thinks she “has a nice voice.” Whenever it is her turn to talk, he giggles and simpers and makes the most ridiculous faces. At the end of a session, Y's teacher gives microphone access to all of the kids in the group so that they can say goodbye to each other. One particular day, Y shouted into the mic, "Bye! Zoe, I hope you marry me!" Ugh...who would have thought I'd be dealing with this when my son was only six? Heaven help us!

Yesterday, we had an online class again, and upon hearing Zoe speaking, Y started his typical swooning. Later in the day he presented this picture to me and told me it was him and Zoe getting married.

Yikealo, making a smoochy face, is running up the steps of a horse-drawn carriage to go away with his new bride. To the left, the coachman is "wapping" the horse, which is rearing and neighing loudly. To the right, David is waving goodbye, while I am praying (or so he informed me.) When I asked where Sintay was in this picture, Y responded, "Oh, Sintay is off getting married somewhere else....probably in China." Great.

He DID tell me at bedtime last night, "Mom, I really wish you could be Zoe and I could be Dad. Then I could be married to you, but you could be Zoe too." Hmmm....how's that for some seriously convoluted thinking? Maybe I just need to practice speaking in a Minnie Mouse type voice, since that is what attracts him to Zoe in the first place!

On Sunday morning during church, Y spent his time drawing all kinds of random pictures, which he then handed out to a bevy of teenage girls afterward. He is SUCH a flirt! This does not bode well for us when he gets to be a teenager himself, I'm afraid.

When we told Yikealo that we were going to a hotel as a family over our anniversary, he was overjoyed that we were all “going on our honeymoon!” He then proceeded to ask, “Mom, tomorrow on our honeymoon, would you like it if Dad and us boys all went off to do boy stuff while you just had some quiet time by yourself?” David smirked at me and said that it sounded like the exact opposite of a honeymoon to him.

Which brings me to David's take on me and my boys. I read on a blog awhile back that having little boys is rather like having "little boyfriends." There is something breath-taking in their all-out, no-holds-barred, physical affection. Both of our boys love snuggles with Mommy, which is kind of awesome for me most of the time. David has started laughingly referring to himself and the 2 boys my "3 boyfriends." David also writes me a letter each year on Valentine's Day, and this year, it was a persuasive argument about why I should consider him the best of my "3 boyfriends." It included such statements as:

• I have never misspelled “bake” for half an hour
• I have all my teeth
• I only yell during hours where you are supposed to be awake
• When I pray for 20 minutes I use words with more than one syllable
• While I do rack up the most expenses, I also contribute the most income
• You named your other boyfriends after me
• I’ve not embarrassed you in public this week
• I change my underwear regularly... without being asked
• I am not nearly so jealous when you’re hugging one of your other boyfriends
• I am the only one without peanut butter constantly smeared on my lips when you kiss us
• I am one of only two without peanut butter constantly smeared in my hair
• I am 50% less likely to leave my shoes lying about the house
• “Be quiet” actually means something to me
• I have an inside voice

I did think he included some excellent points! :-)

"Adopting" Skippito

Last summer, Kohl’s had a large selection of Skippy Jon Jones items available through their inhouse charity fund. Yikealo is a big fan of the Skippy Jon Jones books by Judy Schachner, so when he saw that the stuffed animal Skippy was only $5, he immediately wanted to spend some of his money on it. Skippy (or Skippito, as Y calls him) has been close by Y’s side ever since. For those who don't know, Skippy Jon Jones is a Siamese cat who is constantly pretending to be a chihuahua and creating all sorts of disasters in his room. What better companion for a wildly imaginative boy who loves dressing up and making messes? Skippy has traveled with us, he sleeps with Yikealo every night, and he sometimes shows up to do school with us. He's been a superhero sidekick, a scary bad guy who gets nabbed by the police, and apparently he's been a patient as well, considering that I recently found this "prescription" lying about the house!

Last week, Y wrote in his journal one morning, “When I gro up I will be an inventr. I will bild spaseships and cars and a holl bunch mor things. I will macke toys too. I wundr if God will wunt me to udopt kids.” That same day we drove by Kohls on our way home from work. Y pointed excitedly out of the window and said, “Hey! That’s where I adopted Skippito! I guess God already DID tell me to adopt a kid!”

After work yesterday, I mentioned to the boys that we were going across the street to buy some presents for a bridal shower. Yikealo wanted to know, “Are we going to Kohl’s, where I adopted Skippito?” When I said that we were, he added in a wistful voice, “If ONLY I had brought Skippito with me today. I bet he would LOVE to see his birth-country!”

Today, after conferring quite seriously for awhile with Skippy, he wrote this in his journal, "You may think I am a baby and you may think this is a sily topik. But I am going to rite abut one of my friends Scupeto. He is a chiwowo. I adopted him from Kol's. I sinugall him evry night and shar my dogy blanket with him every night. He felt happy glad and safe but best of all speshol. I am glad Scupeto was not scared when I adpted him. I love him with all my hort." He even drew a little heart in place of the o in both "love" and "hort." :-)

I've read that it's not uncommon for adopted children to use inanimate objects such as dolls or stuffed animals to "give voice" to their feelings about what has happened to them. I don't know if that's what's going on here, as Y has always talked openly with us. If it is, though, I'm glad that at this point in his life, those feelings appear to be mostly positive! We love this kiddo with all our "horts" too!

The Bad, The Ugly, and The Very, Very Good

Yesterday was a rough day. The boys were horribly behaved, and my reaction to their behavior wasn't much better. Around noon, I called David to vent and turned into a sobbing mess on the phone. I really just felt like running away....from the fighting and tattling and disobeying and also from my own feelings of being completely out of control for the day. At one point, Yikealo told me that Sintayehu had done something which resulted in punishment for Mr. S, after which Yikealo admitted that he had been lying. I sat down with a sobbing Sintay in the rocking chair to apologize and ask for forgiveness, admitting that "Mommy did a bad job." (We believe in freely admitting to our kiddos when we're in the wrong, so that they can see repentance and confession modeled out for them.) I asked what we should do with Mommy: should she have to stand in the corner? Should she sit in the chair? Sintayehu shook his head solemnly at all of my suggestions, and then, borrowing his little head into my neck, gave his own solution, "Kiss Mommy." I dissolved into tears for about the 15th time that day.

There might be some who would say, "Oh, give yourself a break! So you had a bad day as a Mom. We all do that....it's no big deal!" While it's undoubtedly true that we all have bad days, I also think that it is utterly false to give place to the idea that it's not a big thing. It is so hard to be confronted with your own sin, but it is so necessary to make it right, because sin has a way of snowballing. Things that we like to call "mistakes" or "faults" to make ourselves feel better about them can ruin our relationships and wreak havoc in our spirit if they are not rooted out.

See, here's the thing....the Bible says it this way: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."

The truth is that there was quite a bit of bitterness (acridity, poison), and wrath (fierceness or indignation, breathing hard), and anger (implying vengeance and punishment) and most certainly clamour (an outcry in notification, tumult or grief) going on in our house yesterday. I wasn't edifying or ministering grace to my boys when I was infuriated over yet one more bout of disobedience. I was wrong....no matter what had provoked me in the first place....and I needed to repent. To my sons, to myself, and mostly to my God.

Look at the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar for a moment. In Chapter 12 of Genesis, God speaks directly to Abram, telling him to leave the land of his fathers and go into a new land, where God promises to bless him and make a great nation from him. Abram obeys, steps out in faith and begins his journey toward greater communion with God. God appears to him in Canaan and makes greater promises. Imagine that for a second! God appeared to him, and Abram, recognizing the occasion as one of great honor, marked the place with an altar. Immediately after, though....literally 3 verses later....there is a famine in the land, and Abram forgets to trust the God who has already promised provision. Instead he takes matters into his own hands and goes to Egypt, where he is obliged to make a deal with Pharoah, which includes lying about his relationship with his wife and handing her over to the harem. In fact, Abram temporarily traded Sarai for all sorts of worldly goods, including "maidservants" (verse 16.) The Bible doesn't say for sure, but this is more than likely when Hagar entered the picture. When Pharoah rushed them all out of Egypt a short time later, hoping to undo the plagues that had come on his household, Abram took all of the riches with him, probably including future temptation in the form of Hagar.

Abram and Sarai made the same mistake later when they again forgot to trust God for His provision and plan. They weren't having children, despite the Lord's promise, so they decided to take matters into their own hands again by using Hagar as a surrogate mother. Now, this was a perfectly normal, accepted practice of the day, but it wasn't God's way. Anytime we step outside of God's will, we are opening the door to all sorts of potential evil. The world is STILL paying the price for that bit of disobedience, as the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac hate each other to this day.

Abraham and Sarah sinned again and again. They forgot to trust God, they were willfully disobedient, they lied, they committed adultery, they were unloving and harsh to those whom they were to care for. The book of Genesis makes that pretty clear. Yet here's the wonderful part: that's not the end of Abraham and Sarah's story! There is the most amazing statement in the 4th chapter of the book of Romans: "(Abraham) being not weak in faith....he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform. And therefore, it was imputed to him for righteousness." Now wait a minute! Abraham absolutely DID waver. He chose the completely wrong direction at times, and yet because he did the right thing in the end, because he finished well, his obvious sin does not even enter the picture in Romans. Instead, the faith that he ultimately had in God's promises becomes his defining characteristic.

Here's the other awesome part: Romans 4 fnishes with this statement, "Now it was not written for his (Abraham's) sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification." When we fall to our knees in repentance over our actions, when we ask for forgiveness and grace to move forward, we won't be remembered for our sin either. Rather, the righteousness of Christ is given to us....because we have faith in Him and His atoning sacrifice.

I am so thankful....for forgiveness, for redemption, for mercy, for the righteousness of Jesus that has been credited to my account over yesterday. I am grateful for the chance to start new and fresh every morning. I am awe-struck at the 2nd, and 3rd, and 917th chances that I've been given. I'm glad for growth....even when it hurts a bit. The sun shining outside on the fresh snow is an excellent reminder of King David's words in Psalm 51, when he came to the Lord in repentance, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow....Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities." 

Today, by the way, has been an incredible, beautiful day with my boys...