Dare To Believe

It’s hard to describe the emotions that come over me when I think of these two.  It’s easy to look at them now and forget what they have been through, but, on occasion, I’m stopped in my tracks, overcome with awe and gratitude.

I had one of these moments recently, when we traveled to North Carolina for Jennifer’s baby shower.  Seeing her with her wonderful husband, Bill, and his family, surrounded by friends and co-workers, the beautiful relationship she now has with Casey, the way her nephews adore her, and, of course, seeing her with this new life growing inside her . . . I was just soaking it all in, praising God for letting me be a part of His great story.

   

 

God’s great story is played out in small ways every day.  We often look for His story on a grand stage, but instead, – in strange and beautiful and unexpected ways — He tells His story through the small stage our ordinary lives.  Now I’m far enough along in the story to look back and see how the puzzle pieces fit together, to see the beauty that God has created from brokenness.

I’m sure Jennifer and Casey would probably like to forget part of their past.  It’s still hard for them to talk about.  I have known them for 23 years and still feel like there are dark secrets from their childhood they have never exposed.  But I pray that these precious young women will be able to remember their past with heads held high.  No shame.  With forgiveness.  With pride.  Heartbroken for the little girls who endured so much, but confidently embracing the strong women they are today.

When I met Jennifer and Casey, I was a 20-year-old college student, Jennifer was 8-years-old and Casey was 6.  It was a chance meeting.  I never could have imagined how intertwined our lives would become.  I could not have predicted that one day Casey would be my daughter, that my husband and I would walk Jennifer down the aisle at her wedding, that their kids would call me Mimi.

My college and career Sunday school class was simply taking food to families in need at Thanksgiving.  We had “adopted” four families the year before and wanted to continue to serve these families.  But families in the abyss of poverty often move around to survive and we found that one of our families had moved.  The new family living there was a mom with two little girls.  We left the food and decided to go back to see them at Christmastime.  My boyfriend and I dropped by with some food and a gift for the girls on Christmas Eve.  Inside, they had a mattress on the floor and a tiny little tree in the corner with no gifts underneath.  The minute we walked out of there, we were on our way to the only store that was opened on Christmas Eve, and although the store was picked over, we managed to scrounge up enough gifts to take each of the girls a big bag full of gifts on Christmas day.  We asked if they wanted to come to church with us sometime, and that was the start of a long and beautiful friendship.

We soon found out how difficult things were for Jennifer and Casey – when I met them, their Father was in prison and their Mother was spending weekends in jail for drunk driving.  When we picked them up for church, they were usually staying with their Mom’s boyfriend.  I won’t go into anymore details about their family or what life was like for them because that’s their story to tell.  But I can tell you that it was unpredictable, insecure, and often frightening.  Their Mom loved them as best she knew how, but she had addictions and her own brokenness that kept her from giving her daughters what they needed and deserved.  Jennifer and Casey had to grow up fast.  They are survivors.

God doesn’t give us the whole picture.  He just calls us to love.  He calls us to be faithful.  And then we get to watch in awe as He takes our small effort, our small and imperfect love, and magnifies it.

I wasn’t thinking ahead to the future.  I was just a college kid who felt a connection to these sweet girls and wanted to help them.  And the help was so small – it was just picking them up for church, taking them shopping on occasion . . . stuff like that.  But as I got to know them, I loved them more and more, and they allowed me into their lives a little more.  They taught me far more than I taught them.

I am grateful that their Mother allowed us (not just me, but my family, especially my Mom, and our church family) to be a part of their lives.  My Mom was really involved in their lives early on because I was still in college, but after I graduated, I began working with the youth and this gave me a zillion excuses to pick them up and take them to do fun things.   Over the years we did big things like summer camps and weekend retreats and small things like bowling, skating, concerts . . . you name it.  I loved being with those kids – we had a blast!  I was young and stupid, so we did all kinds of things I’d never dream of doing as an “adult” (like the time we had a big sleepover at the church and watched scary movies and then played hide and seek in the dark. I just remember Casey getting a big goose egg on her head when she smacked into a column while running around in the dark.  Oh well, we all survived, and it was fun!).

After one really awful, scary, middle-of-the-night incident with their Mother, she disappeared with them for about six months (I think she was afraid we would call family services and she was also hiding out from her boyfriend).  But out of the blue, she called to ask us if we would start picking them up for church again.  Jennifer was in the 6^th grade and had developed an “attitude” and her Mom thought she needed to be back in church.  I have never been so grateful for “tween” hormones!  (Jennifer was the kind of kid who would “tackle hell with a water pistol” and I just love it that God used that fight in her to bring us all back together).  Once we reconnected with the girls, I made sure we never lost touch again – they always had calling cards and our contact information so that we no longer had to rely on their Mom to stay in touch.

When I moved away from North Carolina, I worried that we would lose touch, but we wrote, we called, I came home often, and the girls visited us. I’m grateful that Keith welcomed the girls with open arms and quickly grew to love them too (let me just say it again, he is such a good man!).

Fed up with the situation at home, Jennifer moved out when she was only 15 and stayed with relatives and friends, wherever she could find a safe place.  Casey stayed with her Mom through thick and thin, often blaming herself for circumstances that were out of her control.  One time, I picked her up at a shelter where she and her Mom were staying, and, as we were discussing the situation, she said, “I don’t know what I have I done to make Mom like this.”  It was heartbreaking.  She was always optimistic that things would change and so she stuck by her Mom.  But by the time she was 16, things deteriorated to the point that she needed somewhere to go.  She stayed with some wonderful friends until school was over, and then we invited her to come spend the summer with us in Missouri (things were stable with Jennifer at the time and she decided to stay in North Carolina).

Casey decided she wanted to stay with us and, with Jennifer’s help, we were able to get legal guardianship (their Mom’s future was very insecure at the time, so she agreed it was the best thing for Casey).  Over time, we became Mom and Dad and Casey was legally adopted at 18 (Jennifer was self-sufficient and had established a life for herself in NC, but, if circumstances had been different, we would have adopted her too, in a heartbeat.  She’s not legally our eldest child, but my heart doesn’t know that – she’s like our 5^th child.)  We have had some really wonderful and really difficult moments as we have navigated the years, but God is good and it has been a miraculous journey.

People might look at Jennifer and Casey today and just see happy young women.  But when I look at them, I see fierce survivors.  I see brave fighters.  I see overcomers.  People work hard at lots of things, but these girls have worked harder than anyone I know.  Having a “stable,” “normal” life is something many of us take for granted – it might even be gifted to us without any effort.  But for Jennifer and Casey, it’s an incredible achievement and they had to work and sacrifice and beat the odds to get there.  I look at them with admiration, and I wonder if I could have been that brave, if I had been born into the same circumstances.

In a recent phone conversation, as we talked about the excitement of being a new Mom and discussed her son’s future, I asked Jennifer, “Do you realize what you have overcome?  You guys have broken the cycle of poverty, of substance abuse, of physical and emotional abuse, of lack of education (they were the first in their family to graduate from high school).  It’s incredible, when you stop to think about it.”

Jennifer told me that just having someone care, and getting a chance to get to know people in the church, helped her and Casey understand that there was something different than the life they knew.  It gave them hope.

I am thrilled to call Jennifer and Casey my family – it will always astound me, the miraculous ways that God works.  But God can use every small moment, every season, to cultivate love, if we are wiling to take a risk.  He can use our small (seemingly insignificant) love to do big things that are beyond our understanding.

And I should be clear that Jennifer and Casey took a risk too.  They let us into their lives and risked trusting us (something difficult when you have learned as a small child that adults cannot be trusted).  Both trust and love (to love others and to allow yourself to be loved) require vulnerability.  You can’t really love without taking the risk of having your heart broken, but it’s worth the risk.

On the day of Casey’s beautiful wedding in Vermont (when she married the love of her life, Jason, and we gained a wonderful son-in-law), I went for an early morning walk and heard the song “Before the Morning” by Josh Wilson.  I listened to it several times, and cried happy tears, thinking about how Jennifer and Casey dared to believe, and kept fighting, and now were making such beautiful lives for themselves.

Would you dare, would you dare, to believe,

That you still have a reason to sing,

’cause the pain you’ve been feeling,

Can’t compare to the joy that’s coming

 So hold on, you got to wait for the light

Press on, just fight the good fight

Because the pain you’ve been feeling,

It’s just the dark before the morning

And now Jennifer and Bill are expecting a baby boy that they have named Caleb.  I think his name is so fitting because Caleb is a Biblical character who dared to believe.  When everyone else only saw the obstacles (the giants and the walls), Caleb and one other, Joshua, dared to believe God, and eventually they saw the promised land.  Now, like his namesake, little Caleb gets to carry on the legacy of his brave Mama, who (surrounded by “giants and walls”) kept the faith.

Sometimes I look at my kids, running around completely carefree, and I feel sad that Jennifer and Casey didn’t have a carefree childhood.  But now they can give that gift to their children.

And in God’s economy, when we give, we get much more in return.

“The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed; those who help others are helped.”  Proverbs 11:25 (MSG)

“Not all of us can do great things.  But we can do small things with great love.”  Mother Teresa

Dare to believe.