Merry Christmas Everyone!
Welcome to our first video-enhanced Christmas letter with the help of our blog. (No, they're not 3D videos, maybe next year...) If this is your first time to our blog, feel free to browse through past posts for a more detailed look at our 2011 or you can just take a gander at the two videos we made to sum up the year.
Our first video sums up our journey to bring our little girl, Sarah, home from Ethiopia. We just got home with Sarah in early December. As things kept getting delayed this year, we kept having to push out our "plans". I just hope we bring her home by her 1st birthday. Well, maybe by Thanksgiving? OK, not Thanksgiving, but can we PLEASE bring her home by Christmas? Yes. Yes, you can.
Welcome to our first video-enhanced Christmas letter with the help of our blog. (No, they're not 3D videos, maybe next year...) If this is your first time to our blog, feel free to browse through past posts for a more detailed look at our 2011 or you can just take a gander at the two videos we made to sum up the year.
Our first video sums up our journey to bring our little girl, Sarah, home from Ethiopia. We just got home with Sarah in early December. As things kept getting delayed this year, we kept having to push out our "plans". I just hope we bring her home by her 1st birthday. Well, maybe by Thanksgiving? OK, not Thanksgiving, but can we PLEASE bring her home by Christmas? Yes. Yes, you can.
We
are SOOOO thankful to have Sarah home for Christmas this year! While we waited for Sarah, life didn’t
stop here in Dallas. Henry and
Owen are now in 3rd and 2nd grade respectively while
Meghan is enjoying her last year of pre-school. Henry has dropped soccer for the moment and is focused on
his love of basketball. Owen is
still on his swim team and is experimenting with sled hockey. Meghan loves her ballet/tap class. In order to showcase our children’s
amazing musical abilities, we put together a brief “music video”. I know you may be thinking “Hmmm,
home video of piano and ballet recitals that look like they were filmed during
an earthquake. I’ll watch that
after I get done watching this youtube of a hamster that gets stuck in his
exercise wheel.” But don’t let
your fear of home videos scare you away.
Check this out.
I’ll
give you the straight scoop on Laura and I. This has been a tough year. We never expected the process to adopt to be this
emotionally draining. Good friends
warned us that it would be difficult.
But who listens to those people anyway?
If you’ve ever read any Christian book, article, or blog post about adoption you’ve seen all of the parts of the Bible that talk about how much God loves orphans. In fact our decision to adopt was largely based on the fact that God loves us, we love God, God loves orphans, so we should love orphans. Makes perfect sense, right?!?
So here’s the question Laura and I struggled with this year “God – If you love orphans so much, why is it so hard to adopt one?” But when I said “hard”, it was probably more like “HAAAAARRRRDDDDDUH.” My perspective on this question started to change when I read this blog post by Jen Hatmaker. I began to realize that we aren’t fighting against God on this. We’re fighting along side of Him and He has been fighting this battle for a lot longer than we have. God isn’t surprised that the life of an orphan is not fair and that the processes that are designed to protect orphans also end up hurting them by keeping them from being with families that want to love them. Nothing about an orphan’s life is fair, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t in control or doesn’t care.
God loves us enough to allow us to choose and unfortunately for all of us, we don’t make good choices and we end up with orphans, genocide, rape, war, and other things we don’t like. God isn’t crazy about them either. I heard Gary Haugen, CEO of the International Justice Mission, say something along the lines of “We are God’s plan for solving injustice in this world. There is no Plan B.” I’m not crazy about this idea because it puts too much pressure on me, but I think he is right.
If you’ve ever read any Christian book, article, or blog post about adoption you’ve seen all of the parts of the Bible that talk about how much God loves orphans. In fact our decision to adopt was largely based on the fact that God loves us, we love God, God loves orphans, so we should love orphans. Makes perfect sense, right?!?
So here’s the question Laura and I struggled with this year “God – If you love orphans so much, why is it so hard to adopt one?” But when I said “hard”, it was probably more like “HAAAAARRRRDDDDDUH.” My perspective on this question started to change when I read this blog post by Jen Hatmaker. I began to realize that we aren’t fighting against God on this. We’re fighting along side of Him and He has been fighting this battle for a lot longer than we have. God isn’t surprised that the life of an orphan is not fair and that the processes that are designed to protect orphans also end up hurting them by keeping them from being with families that want to love them. Nothing about an orphan’s life is fair, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t in control or doesn’t care.
God loves us enough to allow us to choose and unfortunately for all of us, we don’t make good choices and we end up with orphans, genocide, rape, war, and other things we don’t like. God isn’t crazy about them either. I heard Gary Haugen, CEO of the International Justice Mission, say something along the lines of “We are God’s plan for solving injustice in this world. There is no Plan B.” I’m not crazy about this idea because it puts too much pressure on me, but I think he is right.
The
point of all this is: This has
been a very tough year but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not only because the end result is
Sarah being in our family, but also because God used this to expose us to a
world outside of our little bubble. That
world is broken and messy but guess what?
God is out there fighting and we want to be there with Him because in the middle of pain and heartache we found true joy.
I’ll
close with some lyrics from “Don’t Waste Your Life” (the rap song we used in
our music video…)
Your
money, your singleness, marriage, talent and time
They were loaned to you to show the world that Christ is Divine
That's why it's Christ in my rhymes
That's why it's Christ all the time
They were loaned to you to show the world that Christ is Divine
That's why it's Christ in my rhymes
That's why it's Christ all the time
Merry
Christmas everyone and we’re praying that everyone has a great 2012 that
completely rocks your world like our 2011 did!
Love,
the
Lakeys
