A year ago I was mourning the loss of something, but for the
life of me I can’t remember what. I guess I could read my old posts but I don’t want to. That was our old life, and behold, all things have been made new. Back then I called us the Penland 3
but I was wrong. We were the Penland 3/5, incomplete, or as Google says, “not
having all the necessary or appropriate parts”.
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| Dec 2012 and Oct 2013 |
During that first month home, which is commonly referred to
as transition hell (or maybe it’s just me who calls it that) someone told Chip
we would never love our adopted kids as much as Eli. This is the fear-that-is-not-spoken,
and to hear it out loud made us realize what might be. I pass zero judgments on
families where this is the case, but I knew that was not God’s plan for us. Since
birth He has been preparing me to make a family out of blood tests and
paperwork, and through it show His glory.
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| Dec 2012 and Sep 2013 |
Evidence of his ridiculous glory showed up right after we got
home from China. I felt radioactive. I’d never had that feeling before, and assume
I won’t again, but during the early days His presence so consumed me that I literally
watched for light to leak from my fingers*. It was as if I was walking around
in a radiant glow that lifted me from one crying toddler to another. For sure
this wasn’t a result of anything I was doing, as it would be months before I
went to church and nearly as long before I cracked a Bible. But somehow the act
of adoption ushered me into a oneness with Christ I had never experienced
before.
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| Got this sign for the house during our anniversary trip in 2011. |
When I think about how different we’ve become, how new we all are, I realize that much of my faith has dissolved into fact, the conviction of things seen. In China Rosalee sat beside me in a cab and cried because she had to potty and couldn’t tell me, and I cried because I was tired in a way I had never been before, and because I had no idea where to find a potty. Fast forward a year… the other night Rosalee told me she wanted to go to the Z-O-O and listed in order all the animals she wanted to see, then she told me how much fun she had at the playground with Eli and Trey, and then she said the magic word, her most favorite word of late - family. And I told her what I always tell her - family is love.
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| Dec 2012 and Oct 2013 |
I am thankful for a God who completed the work he began in
us. On December 1, 2012, we came back to this country with two new citizens,
the Penland crew at last having all our necessary parts.
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