Why and How We Celebrate "Gotcha Day"

(Side note: Wow, it has been two months since my last post.  This is not for lack of inspiration, but really, I don’t know how people with multiple children and full-time jobs manage to do anything but work, take care of their families, and possibly squeeze in a trip to the gym.  Hence the absence of blogging for several weeks.  I know you’ve been missing me.)

Just like all other issues surrounding adoption, everyone seems to have an opinion about “Gotcha Day.”  Y’all, I tell you, the opinions WEAR. ME. OUT.  “Here’s why you shouldn’t adopt a baby of another race.”  “Let me give you this book of a million reasons why open adoptions are the answer to everyone’s problems everywhere.”  “This is exactly how you should tell your child about his adoption, or why you should never tell him about it at all.”  The stuff people say can be quite appalling, even when well-intended, and I know that the last thing anyone needs is yet another post aimed at lambasting people whose opinions differ from theirs.  When raising a family, there are rarely ever black-and-white answers that apply to all people.  All of that said, my husband and I have put a lot of thought into why we want to celebrate “Gotcha Day” with our daughter, and this post isn’t meant to be critical but helpful.  There are legitimate reasons for deciding either way.  Your family, your choice.

A little background information on “Gotcha Day” and our family’s history:  

“Gotcha Day” is traditionally a day set aside for adoptive families to celebrate the time when an adopted child officially became a member of their family.  It is most commonly celebrated with international adoptions and adoptions from foster care, since the child is typically older in those cases and most likely did not live with the adoptive family from birth.  “Gotcha Day” can, however, be celebrated by anyone (like us) who has adopted a child.  

After years of infertility, my husband and I adopted a newborn through an agency in Oklahoma City and were able to be present for our daughter’s delivery.  She came home with us from the hospital, but she was technically under custody of the adoption agency for six months, at which time we appeared before a judge to finalize the adoption.  This is the day that we now celebrate as “Gotcha Day” because it is when she took our last name and was declared to be in our custody.  Piper’s birthday is in June, but we celebrate her “Gotcha Day” on December 30.  We also have a biological child, Caroline, who was born earlier this year.  Now that you know all of that…

1. Yes, we call it “Gotcha Day”.  Some families find this term offensive (I suppose because it can sound as though one acquired a child in the same way that a car or a house would be obtained) and elect to name the day something else, such as “Family Day”, “Forever Family Day”, or “Adoption Day”.  We like “Gotcha Day” because it is the day that we officially “got” custody of our daughter.  Though Caroline wasn’t born yet, she “got” a sister that day.  “Adoption Day” is also fine, but we weren’t fans of “Family Day” or “Forever Family Day” because Piper’s birth mother is also her family, and we felt like those names minimized her role in Piper’s life.  In my opinion, whatever you call the day is just semantics.  Words mean different things to different people. 

2.  We don’t do big gifts.  We have a special dinner at Zio’s (where we went after her finalization) with a dessert of her choosing.  We look at pictures of her birth and finalization day and retell her the whole story of her adoption, as she has heard many times before.  Birthdays are reserved for big gifts.

3.  Caroline won’t have a “Gotcha Day”, but we still plan to celebrate Piper’s.  Some people say that this is unfair to the biological child, but just because something isn’t “fair” (meaning that both people have it) doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth a celebration.  My brother isn’t married, but we celebrated my wedding.  I’m not a National Merit Scholar, but we celebrated his accomplishment.  We both graduated high school and college, and everybody celebrated.  Big life events deserve a party.

4.  We use “Gotcha Day” as a day to celebrate our daughter’s birth mother.  Though Piper is very important to our family, Anna is, too.  “Gotcha Day” is about more than just Piper, and we always want her to know that.  There is a bigger story behind “Gotcha Day” than taking an oath before a judge and signing some papers; there is the story of a brave 17-year-old whose life is forever valuable to us.  As my mom says, “A person can never have too much love.”  Piper gets to have our love and her birth mother’s.  That’s worth celebrating.

5.  We need to be reminded of God’s goodness.  I am forgetful.  I have the best life, full of countless blessings, and I daily forget what He has done for me.  There are times when I sit back and ponder the wonder of adoption, but I need a tangible reminder of it sometimes, too.  “Gotcha Day” is a day specifically set aside so that I can remember.    

6.  We want our girls to know how special they are to us.  “Well, shouldn’t they know that every day of the year?” you say.  Yes, they should.  But, see #5.  I am forgetful.  Furthermore, there are days when I’m tired, busy, lazy, and (embarrassingly) not intentional.  “Gotcha Day” is an opportunity to seize by reminding Piper that she is special and that we are thrilled to have her as a part of our family.  It’s something tangible for my distracted soul, sort of like Christmas.  I should celebrate the birth of Christ every day of the year, but I am forgetful, tired, busy, lazy, and not intentional, and I need to set aside purposeful time to make much of my Savior. 

7.  Like all other aspects of adoption and many other aspects of life, “Gotcha Day” is simultaneously full of joy and loss.  Just because something isn’t purely joy doesn’t mean that we must remember only the loss.  Though I don’t fully understand the hurt, I realize that Anna went through horrible pain and loss so that we could have Piper.  We went through years of sadness and loss in dealing with infertility, too.  The day after Piper was born was the most wonderful and terrible day at the same time.  My heart hurt for Anna and her boyfriend, yet I was so thankful for their gift that came home in our arms.  Celebrating “Gotcha Day” doesn’t minimize the pain.  It helps us recount the whole story of how God started building our family- joy, loss, and all.  It’s the same reason that we celebrate September 12^th in our family- the day that our marriage was shattered and also it was saved.  It’s also the reason why we celebrate baptisms.  Our adoption into God’s family came at a great price to Himself.  Loss and joy.  Celebrating the whole story.     

8.  “Gotcha Day” didn’t rid Piper of her identity.  She will always be spunky, stubborn, Mexican, hilarious, and beautiful.  She got a new last name, but it didn’t change who she was.  I changed my last name when I got married, but I was still the same person.  I, like Piper, gained a new name and another family to add to the one I already had.

9.  Celebrating “Gotcha Day” will be Piper’s choice as she gets older.  There may come a day when it is too painful for Piper to think about her adoption.  I pray she doesn’t, but she may be tempted with thoughts that Anna didn’t love or want her and had to “get rid of” her (quite the opposite is true!).  If that year ever comes, I’m willing to let Piper skip the celebration, and to hopefully open up a conversation with her about her adoption.

 

10.  Sometimes we’ll hit a home run, and sometimes we’ll strike out, and either way, the sun will rise tomorrow.  We don’t claim to parent the “right way” (as if there was one), and we may be failing miserably in the “Gotcha Day” celebrations, as well.  But we’ll all live to tell about it.  Anyway, it’s one day.  We have 364 more, just this year(!), to get something right. 

We’re all on the same team.  There is not a wide network of families who have adopted.  We need each other.  Let’s get our panties out of a wad and be kind to others whose opinions may differ from our own.  No adoption story is exactly the same, so our celebrations (or lack thereof) don’t have to be, either.    

Happy Gotcha Day, Piper Anna!

“Born not from our flesh but born in our hearts, you were wanted and longed for and loved from the start.”

Finalization Day 2013

Finalization Day 2013

Gotcha Day 2015 with her friend at dinner

Early morning hugs on Gotcha Day 2015

Piper and Dad at the Bagel Shop, Gotcha Day 2015

And this one, because I'm obsessed with our family, and it's the first picture we've had together in 2+ years.

Grow Where You Are Planted

I remember when I first moved to Norman for college in the summer of 2006.  I despised everything about the town except for the university.  I hated that I would walk by a beautiful house on one street and find a dump within 50 feet of it (what zoning?), thought it was weird that there were bus stops and people actually waited at them to catch the city bus (where is your new BMW?), and lamented the loss of my Lifetime Fitness membership because most gyms in Norman are not big, corporate establishments.  Growing up in suburban Dallas with a bunch of rich, white folks left me with little tolerance for much that was different from the people and lifestyle I had grown accustomed to over the past 18 years.

During my years at the University of Oklahoma, I met my husband, who, much to my dismay at the time, is from Oklahoma.  We married and settled down in Norman, a place I swore I would leave as soon as I graduated.  I’m still here, almost 10 years after I arrived.  And, by God’s grace, I’ve grown to love this place.  Continue reading here.

On Productivity and Perspective

After a whole summer plus almost seven glorious weeks at home enjoying my little ones, I'm headed back to work tomorrow.  I have mixed emotions, naturally.  I feel so much purpose in my job as a Pre-K teacher.  And I love my own children.  I told Piper this morning that we were all just going to go to Momma's work together tomorrow.  She seemed to think that would be fine.

I am productive at my job.  If there is one thing I can do well, it is cranking out lesson plans.  I can efficiently gather materials for centers, execute small group instruction, and write individual behavior and education plans.  I have my "off" days, like everyone else, and I am not under any delusion that I am the best teacher ever to exist.  But I know how to get things done.

Home is a different story.  My two-year-old was just getting pretty good at entertaining herself for a short time when I gave birth to Caroline.  Y'all, it took me three hours to make dinner on Friday.  Three hours!  This is about how long it takes to do anything anymore.  Get out the onions to chop.  Toddler wakes up from nap.  "I want a snack."  Start chopping onions.  "I need to go potty."  Finish chopping onions, get out meat to brown.  Toddler begins coloring on the table with chalk.  Baby wakes up (girl can scream when she's hungry).  Start feeding baby.  She spits up in my hair, for the third time today.  Finish feeding baby.  Blowout!  All over my jeans that just came out of the laundry (which is forever overflowing)!  Toddler is playing in the cleaning supplies.  Finish browning meat.  "Piper, you can't put your hand on Sissy's tummy when you're trying to stand up!"  Calm two crying children... You get it.  This is normal life.  Days full of nonstop activity, yet I rarely have anything to show for them when my husband walks in the door at 6:00 p.m.  I write things on my daily to-do list, and they may or may not be done three days later.  A prime example is the fact that, so far, it has taken me 53 minutes and approximately seven interruptions to write this blog post.

I have had to completely change my perspective on how I view this season of my life.  My children cause interruptions, but they themselves are not interruptions.  They are gifts.  I have found that, 95 percent of the time when I get frustrated with the way my day is going, it is because my plans (which usually are self-centered) have gone awry.  Andrew was getting ready to go for a run a few nights ago when both girls woke up screaming.  His response was, "Well, I'm basically not going to get to do things when I want to do them anymore, ever, right now."  We're both coming around to accepting that.

This time is a season.  These girls are a blessing.  This work is good.  I might not have anything tangible to show for all I've done with my kids at the end of the day, but I get to mold young hearts and minds, teach them about the world around them, and hope that God will use my filthy hands to point them to Christ.  There could be nothing more productive or important than that.  And one day, I'm sure I'll miss these little people needing me so much.           

  

Enough.

Confession: I am a worrier.

In our culture today, worrying has become a relatively minor sin, or, as Jerry Bridges would call it, a "respectable sin".  Saying, "I am a worrier" sounds less offensive than, "I am a cheater" or, "I am a liar."  "Everyone worries" is a common argument.  In fact, many people (Christians or otherwise) would not consider worrying to be a sin at all.  The truth is that worrying belittles God.  Essentially, it is saying to God that we do not trust Him to take care of our future and that we do not believe him to be enough for our present.  (Continue reading here.)

"The days are long, but the years are short."

I might add that the nights are long, too, when you have a newborn and a two-year-old.  Otherwise, the above quote from my mom couldn't be more accurate.  Yesterday was the first time in 22 years that I haven't been to a first day of school.  That was weird.  I'll go back in October, but for now, I'm staying home with my girls and trying to figure out life with a new little person in it.  Piper goes to school part-time, but Caroline and I hang out at the house.  She's a very easy baby (as far as babies go), but I'm exhausted.  When Piper is home, she's a challenge.  I know that our sweet little girl is hidden somewhere behind all of the defiance, tantrums, and accidents, but there are certainly days when I feel my body physically release all kinds of tension after she is finally in bed (following nearly an hour-long bedtime routine) and Caroline is bathed, changed, and fed.  The days do seem long.

Then I look at this precious family of mine, and I realize that God knows exactly how much I can handle.  They're not perfect, I'm not perfect, and being a mom is plain hard sometimes.  The years will be short.  But there can be joy in each moment, if I choose to look for it.

 

Caroline

After having one baby, you wonder how in the world you could possibly love another as much as the first.  And then you do.  This is the story of Caroline Grace.

On Monday, August 3rd, at 2:23 a.m., I woke up out of a dead sleep, flipped on the bedside lamp, and told Andrew, "Uh, I'm pretty sure my water just broke."  Sure enough, it had.  The prompt little lady decided that she was ready to come into the world on her exact due date.  Oddly, my body was not ready and did not go into active labor on its own.  We waited to go up to the hospital until 9:30 because I had a doctor's appointment then anyway, and he sent me across the street to Labor and Delivery.  After a couple of doses of a medication to speed up the process and working through contractions for nearly 11 hours, I still hadn't made any progress.  Eventually, I got an epidural and Pitocin and was ready to push just three hours later.  After about seven minutes of pushing, Caroline was here.  (I'll spare you the rest of the details.)  According to the nurses, I should have about seven more babies.  Right.

Most things about Caroline's birth were not at all like the movies, but the moment she came out was every bit the same.  Andrew and I burst into tears immediately, and our hearts were so full of love that we thought they would explode.  Suddenly, all of the annoyances of pregnancy and the pains of childbirth were worth everything.

Piper was a miracle because she made me a mother for the first time, and this child is a miracle because she beat the odds.  Doctors said she wouldn't be here.  I remember staring at Piper in disbelief during her first days home because I couldn't believe that she was mine.  The feelings are identical with Caroline.

Being home has been hard, honestly.  Caroline is an unbelievably easy, sweet baby, and I couldn't be more thankful.  Piper has had a hard time adjusting, which I should have expected more than I did.  Every day gets a little less difficult, which gives me hope that our well-mannered, thoughtful two-year-old will soon make her return.  For now, though, our "new normal" is tough.  One of the best parts of this experience has been having Andrew by my side the whole time.  I'm dreading when he has to go back to work next week.  During labor and delivery, he was my rock, and he continues to be steady and patient during the trials of parenting and my flip-flopping hormones.  He reminds me that I'm beautiful when all I feel lately is swollen and sore.  I've been more attracted to him in the past few days than I have been since we've known each other.  Things will get easier, I'm sure.

We found out about Caroline just a few weeks following the hardest moments we have ever endured as a couple.  There was never any debate about her name; it literally took us about five minutes to decide what she would be called if she was a girl.  Caroline: "joyful song".  It is based on Psalm 126, and one of my favorite hymns that we sing at church:

"Our mouths, they were filled, filled with laughter

Our tongues they were loosed, loosed with joy

Restore us, O Lord,

Restore us, O Lord,

Although we are weeping, 

Lord, help us keep sowing the seeds of your kingdom

For the day you will reap them

Your sheaves we will carry, 

Lord, please do not tarry, 

All those who sow weeping will go out with songs of joy."

Truly, He has filled us with joy a hundred times over through this precious child, the perfect addition to our little family.

He has done great things.

We renewed our vows last weekend.

I'm not exactly sure what I had envisioned for this celebration, but whatever I wanted was exactly what happened.  It was the perfect day.  When Andrew and I got married six years ago, I was convinced that our wedding day would be the best day of our lives, and it probably was up until that point.  But I'm really happy to think, now, that that wonderful day was just the beginning of several "best days" to come.  The day that Piper was born was a "best day", and this sixth anniversary celebration was another one.

There were many times in the last couple of years when I didn't think that we would make it to our fifth anniversary, much less to our sixth.  Though six years isn't necessarily one of the "big" or "special" anniversaries, it is the biggest and most special one to us.  This July 11th, we got to celebrate, not just the fact that we made it to year six, but that we made it to year six more in love and more grateful than we've ever been before- not in spite of the hard times, but because of them.

I complain a lot (at least in my head) about how huge and unattractive I feel because I'm nine months pregnant, but I think that when I look back at the pictures from our vow renewal ceremony years from now, I will realize that I was glowing and possibly more beautiful than I've ever been before.  There is something so precious about another life growing inside of a human being, and this life in particular is a marker or healing for us.  Our entire little family of four got to be a part of us recommitting our lives to each other and to God.

If I had to do our wedding over again, I'd most likely do a lot of things differently.  I was all about having a grand, fancy wedding at the time, but now I tend to think that the most important thing can easily get lost in the pursuit of perfect flowers, an expensive dress, and the most exquisite food.  My dress for this past weekend cost less than a tenth of my wedding dress, we had no flowers, and everyone ate sandwiches from Wal-Mart afterward (which were pretty tasty and economical, by the way).  We had no obligation to invite my mom's Great-Uncle Charlie (who doesn't actually exist, but you get my point), but we got to be with the people who have walked through our lives and our marriage with us, which happened to be about 60 people instead of 225.  We chose a lovely church for our wedding, but for renewing our vows, we got to be at this church, City Pres, that has loved us and become our home over the past four years.  And everything about all of that was perfect.  In the words of the song that we all sang together at our ceremony, truly, "He has done great things."

"We will feast in the house of Zion,

We will sing with our hearts restored,

'He has done great things,' we will say together

We will feast and weep no more!"

My greatest love on this earth

Our sweet Piper

Family.  Missed you, brother.

Two families are one.

My people.

Before "walking down the aisle" as a family

Forever, again.

Probably more pictures to come...

Minimizing the Miraculous

I remember sitting in a park in Alaska around this time last year, staring off at Denali in the distance while listening to the rush of a nearby stream that cut through the mountains and thinking simply, “This is nice.”  Not, “This is spectacular,” “What an amazing view,” or, “I’ve never seen such beautiful scenery anywhere.”  “This is nice” was all I felt.  Even in that moment, I knew that I should have been more aware of my surroundings and more appreciative of the Creator’s handiwork.  But I wasn’t.  

Continue reading here. 

I have a two-year-old.

This hardly seems possible.  Just a few days ago, I feel, we were driving to Edmond to meet Piper in the hospital.  As my mom always says about toddlerhood, "The days are long, but the years are short."   I couldn't be more thankful for this spunky, stubborn, intelligent, perceptive, kind, and beautiful gift.  Piper Anna, I love you and am so blessed to get to be your momma.

Here are a few pictures from her safari birthday party.

I made these!  Took a cake decorating class and crossed one off of my list of 30 things to do before turning 30. :)

Lots of presents to open...

"Wow this new kitchen is amazing!"

"Thank you, Papa, for building my cool new kitchen."

The girl loves her daddy (and cupcakes).

Bubbles.

A Good Life

Last week, I worked at Youth Leadership Forum, a leadership camp for high school juniors and seniors with disabilities that I've been a part of for the past six summers.  As always, camp was inspiring, fun, and exhausting.  One of the questions we helped campers ponder this summer was, "What is a good life to you?"  We, as counselors, prompted campers to think of their life after high school and to begin making decisions about housing, schooling, jobs, and other important aspects of "adult life".  While helping campers make plans for their futures, I found myself re-evaluating some of my life goals, as well.

I've been offered an opportunity to teach a blended full-day Pre-K class at a public elementary school here in Norman next year (although I technically won't be starting until October because I'll be on maternity leave).  "Blended" means that I will be teaching ten typically developing kiddos and five students with special needs in the same class.  Also, this is the first time that Norman Public Schools has offered full-day Pre-K.  (Normally, classes are split into a morning and an afternoon class.  I'll actually have the same students all day next year.)  And, for the first time in four years, I'll be at one school with the same job all day.  No more eating lunch in the car, no more switching gears and grade levels completely at noon, and only one set of lesson plans.  Y'all.  I'm sure that these are all things which most people take for granted, but for me, they're huge.  I'm also looking forward to teaching at this particular school because of the high-needs clientele of it.  I used to romanticize the idea of teaching in a school with 90+ percentage of its students qualifying for free or reduced lunch prices, and although I now better understand the many challenges that come with teaching students in poverty, I really can't wait to serve this often-overlooked population in an otherwise middle-class city and district.

Lately, I have been swinging on the pendulum between the ideas of staying home and continuing to work full-time.  For next year, I'm committed to my job.  But as Piper has gotten older, I've started to feel like I'm missing out somewhat on her life as she is at school and I am at work all day.  Admittedly, I'm not much of a newborn person, but the more interactive she has become in the past few months, the more I have wished I was around to see her developments and milestones.  We will continue to take one year at a time as far as work goes, but one thing I have decided for sure is that I am not going to continue pursuing my master's degree at this time.

This was a tough decision, and I really hate having to swallow my pride.  As I continued to think about my reasons for doing grad school, though, I realized that most of them didn't make a whole lot of sense.  Part of me wanted to get my degree because, according to Andrew's family, "the Fenricks marry up."  His brother and sister both married people who are more educated than they are, and I felt that I needed to "continue the tradition," even though it's not really a tradition and no one in his family is putting any pressure on me to do that.  Part of me wanted to get my degree because people in my profession will think I'm awesome and intelligent.  Truth be told, there are fantastic public school Pre-K teachers who have a master's degree, and there are equally good ones who do not.  Finally, I think a small part of me wanted to recreate the college experience, which, as I quickly discovered, cannot be recreated as a graduate student.  The four years of college undergraduate life truly are one-of-a-kind.  Oh, and I'm not completely sure that I want to be a reading specialist, which is what my degree would help me achieve.  Grad school is too much time and money to not be sure about something like that.  Aside from everything else, higher education is no longer an individual commitment; it is a decision that involves the whole family.  Perhaps there will be time, years down the road, when my whole family can more easily commit to this decision.  

When I think about my "good life," it is right now, watching my little girl "mow the yard" in her panties (because hey, she's potty-trained now!) with her dad.  It's having time to make supper for my family instead of popping a frozen pizza in the oven.  It's possessing energy at the end of the day to smile at Piper when she does something silly instead of getting frustrated with her because I'm out of steam.  It's saying "no" to being a stellar student so I can say "yes" to being a good teacher, wife, and mom.  And yes, sometimes it is watching Netflix instead of working on an end-of-semester presentation.  No shame in stating the obvious. :)

I'm giving birth in less than six weeks.  NBD.

Choosing to Believe

"Never mind that you are pregnant; you are just fat."

This is the voice that I hear when I first wake up in the mornings, and I struggle to turn it off all day long.  I know that the voice which I often hear the loudest speaks lies, and yet I find myself frequently believing that these lies are true, that I'm not good enough, that my worth is based on my appearance, and that beauty is a pant size or a number on a scale.  I always knew that if I were to ever get pregnant, these body image issues would be a struggle for me, but I never knew just how much I would struggle or the extent to which I would care about the perception others have of me.  I am fully aware that this pregnancy is a miracle, and I know that I should be far more grateful for it than I am, especially considering where we have been over the last few years.  I promised myself years ago that if God did choose to bless us with a baby one day, I would never complain about pregnancy.  But at times, I already find myself resenting my changing body and the good and precious gift that is growing inside of me.  Understanding that I'm not supposed to feel this way about the miraculous unfortunately ushers in a whole new realm of guilt and shame.

If I am being honest with myself, there is no number or size that would ever be "good enough."  When I was my skinniest, running marathons at a size two, I hated the way I looked.  I wanted to be thinner.  Now, I fight every day to quit comparing myself to other pregnant women, scrutinizing my belly, and trying to determine whether or not I am appropriately large or small for the number of gestational weeks that I am.  Some days, I feel as though the lack of control that I have over gaining weight and the worry that I have about losing it after baby girl comes will consume me.

My cousin had an eating disorder in high school and college.  At her thinnest, she weighed 98 pounds.  In family counseling, the therapist told her parents that this disorder couldn't be beat- that my cousin would continue to fight against negative thoughts and feelings about her body every day, nearly every hour, for the rest of her life.  She anticipated that my cousin would have to learn how to deal with it.  Forever.  "We just chose not to believe that," my aunt said.  "We chose to believe that God is bigger, and that he could heal our daughter of anything.  And He did."

We chose to believe that He is bigger.  What if I chose to believe that, too?  What if I chose to believe that perhaps I'm the one with cloudy vision, and not the people around me (particularly my husband) who tell me that I'm perfect?  What if I chose to believe, as the Dove commercial I've watched half a hundred times says, that perhaps I'm more beautiful than I think?  Or, as Eli the woodcarver tells wooden Punchinello in Max Lucado's children's book, You Are Special, that I'm infinitely valuable simply because He knows my name?

Pregnancy is a complicated thing.  It's amazing and nauseating (literally), scary, and joyful all at the same time.  What if I chose to start over tomorrow, or even tonight, and believe something different?  Change takes time, but for now, I'm working on straining to hear that still, small voice that speaks truth to me instead of believing the lies that are forever screaming in my ears.  He is bigger, and that is enough.

The trash in their backyard

We've had a whirlwind of a few months.  In the midst of preparing for a new baby, continuing to heal emotionally from some tough things in our marriage, going to grad school, raising our daughter, and working our full-time jobs, we decided to sell the first home that we bought five years ago.  There is never a good time to buy or sell a home, but I still think we were crazy!  On January 22, we put our house on the market.  Three days later, we had four offers on the house and sold it for over our asking price.  Four days after that, we made an offer on a new (to us), bigger house in Norman.  It got accepted.  We closed on that house on February 20 and moved the same weekend.  Then we closed on our old house on February 24.  We aren't exactly "settled" yet, but we are managing, and I'm learning more every day that I don't have to have the best decorations on the walls, the perfect paint colors, or the latest Pinterest project in Piper's room to have a happy home.

Before we even moved in, I was already complaining about our new neighbors to the south.  They have three yappy dogs, chickens, random boxes and wood scraps all over their backyard, and a citation from the city in their front yard.  They also have no less than four cars in their driveway and on the street at any given time.  "These are trashy people," I thought.  Though our pastor had posted a challenge on our church's website about loving our literal neighbors not even a week before we moved, I was determined to have as little to do with these people as possible.  "Maybe we could be friends with them," suggested my husband one day.  Or...maybe not.    

A couple of nights ago, we were in the backyard, enjoying the first sign of nice weather that we've had in awhile, when our neighbors came outside.  First, there was a girl about my age.  Then her fiance came out.  After that, her mother came out, eating an avocado straight out of the peel with a knife.  Next was a middle-school-aged boy.  Then his sister.  People just kept coming out of the house.  All in all, I think seven people live in a house that is much smaller than ours.  They introduced themselves, asked about us, wondered if we knew what happened to the lady who lived in the house before we moved in, and offered to help Andrew with the boxes that he was breaking down on the patio.  As the girl was talking, I began to feel smaller and smaller, embarrassed and ashamed that I had jumped to such quick conclusions about these people who now wave to us all the time and have been nothing but kind since we moved here.  The avocado lady had open heart surgery several weeks ago and had less than a 30 percent chance of living.  The rest of the family is just trying to help her out and make ends meet for themselves.  Yet, all I could see when we bought the house was the trash in their yard.

Last weekend, I shared one of my life's stories at our church's women's retreat.  It's not a pretty story, and I had been nervous about my talk for several weeks.  When I came up to the microphone and looked out at the audience of 60+ women, the two things that I wanted more than anything were for people to hear God in my words, and for them to love me in spite of my messiness.  I wanted them to extend the grace to me that I was so unwilling to extend to my neighbors.  And they did.  Beyond what I could have envisioned.

Don't all of us want that- acceptance regardless of what we've done?  Perhaps the more grace we receive, the more we understand how to give it to others.  Maybe, too, our neighbors' messes are not so ugly when we consider our own.  We might not have literal trash in our front yards or chickens in the back, but we all have garbage that we want people to overlook and simply see us.  I hope that we can become friends with our new neighbors- partly because they're nice people and deserve a chance, but mostly because people have seen past my junk and loved me anyway.