The delights of the physical world were carefully crafted to point to the One who alone is able to give your heart eternal delight. Paul Tripp

Sneak A Peak

Sneak A Peak
Sneak a Peak at the Stern Family

13.10.11

Life goes on

Yes, we are learning how to deal with a defect that brings added challenges to life and overwhelmed me a few times in the last few weeks. Yes, we are living ten thousand miles apart and most of our communique happens in texts and twitter-sized bits. Yes, the kids are still sad about leaving China and not sure whether they should be excited or nervous about starting all over in Singapore...knowing so recently how that felt. Yes, we just adopted a new child who is not a baby and who is learning with us what our family is like, and we are learning with her what she is like in our family and kids don't really have that objective of a view of it all some days (okay, to be honest neither do I)Yes, one of our family members only speaks one of our languages, and we're all having to brush up on that pretty quick, and sometimes it's hard to learn Chinese fast enough to yell at your little sister (thank God!) Yes, we sometimes just give into the strangeness and rebel, but really it's become normal pretty quick and considering how much Amelia has had to adjust to our family and all the nuances she has to learn everyday to keep from clamming up and shutting down I'd say we're getting right up there close to the normal bar. And if I was me and my kids were talking to me about how they are so weird and our family is so abnormal I would lecture them about how we don't try to be normal and no one is normal and blah, blah, blah, 'cause they don't believe a word of it anyway. So, I remind myself through this post that actually, normal isn't what we're after, so I can quit trying to define my life by that and start defining it by the creativity of a Creator who is anything but normal! Below, our family and their cousins, and grandma...yeah, maybe Drew's right, maybe they aren't that normal:)

11.7.11

Packing for a Stranger

Yuan Yuan 2009
Yuan Yuan 2007
Yuan Yuan 2010













Pictured are three precious pictures from an amazing orphanage who has documented the years we missed!

Just two weeks until we get to pick up Amelia. I'm beginning to worry about the plane ride already. So I spend my nerves packing. What do I pack for a child I do not know? Does she like dresses or pants? Does she like dolls or Legos? Will she want to wear her own familiar clothes? Will she let me help her bathe, and dress, or will she have been expected to do this on her own? How do I best express my motherhood through these choices? When all my children are so well-known by me I know how to pack. We've been doing lots of packing; living in Denver on our way to and from everywhere else, which will continue--thanks Rendy and Andy for always mopping for us:)  I knew to pack swim stuff as it is a sport all three children agree on. Passionately. Always. Swimming works. But Drew doesn't feel great without his squishy goggles and a shirt to swim in. If I forget to pack pajamas no one cares, but if I left out an abundance of socks for Drew or a pair of flip-flops for Cora, life would not be quite as full.
Spoiled. I guess Drew would call it that. But actually, it's my right and my love to know my children. A right and a love I think God could say a lot about. And so I wonder in the dark as I pack and repack a suitcase for our fourth child, who will be 5 so soon, and has had so many others packing for her for so long, but never me.

23.5.11

Amelia's newest pictures
My Boys...wow!
A picture from her orphanage, along with an explanation of her name which means a complete circle. The director wrote and said that she was named this because when she came to the orphanage she was in such a bad condition physically and that her health was so precarious that their wish for her was that she would be able to make it physically and hopefully even find a loving family. What a beautiful, caring orphanage she was blessed to be in. They also said that her surgeries have been done by China's best surgeons in the field in Shanghai's Children's Hospital. What an amazing story...Doctors here who reviewed her file said that if they didn't have video they would not have believed that the girl on paper could be the girl in the pictures. Someone is taking special care of her. Thank you! 

19.5.11

New Picture of Yuan Yuan!

A wonderful lady who had the chance to visit Yuan Yuan's orphanage in April shared this pic--and a heart-warming smile which is a wonderful addition to our little collection of pictures and forms that define our little girl for now! Doesn't she look comfortable in that smile. So glad she's had enough experience at joy that she knows how to do that! Praying for your child's safety when you've never met them and you've never seen where they are is so, so hard!

7.5.11

Craziness and Chaos

Alex, Andrew, Colin, Drew & Sky

Chaos brings cousins, or was it the other way around?

Either way, and yes it went both ways the last month was different to say the least. The tragedy of Japan brought this family a special gift: The Dyer family, Michael excluded got to come visit, as refugees, but still it felt like a vacation to us:) And so we packed in as many fun things as we could, the Dunns were even gracious enough to adopt two new children in celebration of the event and it has been fun getting to know them. I'm going to share some pics of Kate and William's Wedding tea with all of the girl cousins, a welcoming party for Burtukin and Almaz, and an Easter photo session in the park...Enjoy.
Princess Reagan
 

Andrew & Cora
Kristine and her friend from University
Amy and Kristine
Princess Party
Grandma Sell at the tea party
Almaz and Reagan
Princesses
Olivia
Almaz and Burtukin
Colin & Sky
And that's how we spent April!

26.4.11

Happy Easter!
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15.3.11

Perspectives

You know those days when you seem to be floating between reality and unreality? When the spinning in your head outweigh the reality of gravity and the day's events?
I had one of those days recently. I turned on to a one way street the wrong way, and my children didn't even notice, nor did I. And then the cars coming at me kept moving over into the other lane and it felt all wrong. In China we always drive on the side of the road that is convenient so it took me a minute to realize my gross misjudgment.

In the middle of this day, I looked up at the mountain. It's close, I can see it out my window, it's 3,000 feet higher than my 5,000 and  it is almost always covered with snow. But it doesn't seem 3,000 feet high. It just barely skims the top of my 6 ft. fence, and in my defense, I do understand perspective. This mountain is barely a couple of miles away...and yet it is snowing up there, and not down here, it is covered with snow, and here the snow comes and goes, melts or is blown away.

My life is full of these little perspective anomalies, my oldest child is almost as tall as me, and without any of the maturity it takes to be that tall. He is still so young and naive and did I mention young.

I am in my home town and desperately home sick for my not-home-towns, all of them, any of them, except for Laramie, Wyoming or Columbia, S. Carolina (Can anyone be home sick for Columbia, S. Carolina?) But Moscow, Seoul, Taiyuan...and even Yangqu (pronounce it like it looks and you'll get an idea of the kind of place it is).

And then suddenly the never-ending Winter, which to me always feels never-ending suddenly became Spring and the kids played outside all day, and even reminded me they should use sunscreen.

And before anyone was awake I turned on the computer, waiting for some personal joy and instead I'm smacked in the face by cars floating into airports and bridges and buildings collapsing and burning, and not all that far from where my sister lives in Japan. And there is more of that sadness and chaos that only comes with disaster. Disaster in the biggest, Universal sense of the word. And death and burning and so much clean up that it boggles the mind to imagine.

And then another overwhelmingly emotional letter: We have a new family member, she is four years old and as cute as a button, and from the most beautiful province in China, or so they say! We hope to be able to travel to get her sometime around the beginning of summer, but we shall see! We don't have much to say about her, but that she looks loved and well-cared for which is such a relief and she looks tall--I could be wrong, but she was not a little petite Southern Chinese baby, at least from her two year old measurements. That's okay, she'll fit right in! Our name for her right now is Amelia Rain...but it's still in the negotiation process:)


And that's my upside down day. (I think Amelia might have righted it!)

25.2.11

"Ordinary Miracle"

We've had a tumultuous several days. Mike had a bicycle accident and messed up his mouth, and thankfully nothing worse although I have wondered if his brain was detached a couple of times since then...but then I wondered that before too!
Andy, my sister Rendy's husband, has been in the hospital with a very serious case of pneumonia along with several complications, he has now made a turn for the better and we hope will be on the mend quickly.
We also have discovered, thanks to some amazing friends that A little girl we have been trying to adopt has been neglected due to paperwork and is still not available for international adoption although the paperwork was begun a year ago. How many more children wait for families who in turn wait for these children because a pencil-pusher has no passion?
I was touched this morning by a cup of rooibos tea and a Sarah McClachlan song, Ordinary Miracle. And inspired to Hope. And inspired to Give. And I was reminded of a few words that could add passion to my day, and maybe yours: 

"I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 
He has made everything beautiful in His time. 
Also, He has put eternity into man's heart
yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end. 
I perceived that there is nothing better for them 
than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 
also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--
this is God's gift to man." Ecclesiastes 3:10-13

So we listen and we learn and we love and we take joy in each moment God gives. The snow in winter (even though it's cold and I am weary of the many layers wrapping the kids each morning and the mud on my kitchen floor) the sun in summer (and I can't for the life of me think why I wouldn't enjoy this one) and each human passing through our lives, the unlovable even more than the lovable one. And I learn to listen to the ache in my gut, that I think might be that nugget of eternity He planted there.And I must listen for the world is shouting for so much of me that I cannot possibly stop and enjoy if I do not stop to listen. The Chinese character for listen is beautiful and oh, so descriptive: 
The character for ear is written over a character for king, you can guess what that means. The character for eye is placed over the character for heart. We must listen first, and then watch with all our heart if we are going to hear beauty, eternity. 

Hoping you find beauty and something eternal in your moments today!