Nesting and Such...

This week has been blissful for me. Yes, everyone has run a fever, and yes, we haven't left home in three days, but I love home.

But more than anything, I'm nesting. I couldn't understand the restlessness I was feeling until this morning. I have been on non-stop go on the home front. Why?

May 31st we'll welcome our two new daughters for this new season. Yes, that will give us three supermen and three wonder women. Do the math, and it's six. I love walking by people in the grocery store now, knowing they're mentally counting, trying to think of the right way to comment, "Wow, you must have your hands full."

It's funny. When we only had Caleb, I craved alone time. I craved time for breaks. I craved my rights being made known.

Now, as we've had six in and out of our home during this transitional period, I crave the noise because I know our house is full. I crave the hysterically loud laughter because I know each of my children feels safe. I even slightly crave the midnight cries, because I know each child in my home has someone to cry out to.

What a precious compliment from my Father.

I'm learning more and more that I really have no clue what life looks like tomorrow for Jamie, me, or our children....our biological sons, as well as our foster daughters. My schedules are broken, my checkbook unbalanced, and routines nonexistent. I know life can't exist like that forever, but today, I'm using that old to-do time, to look into the face of a baby girl who can't remember what her mommy looks or sounds like. It's worth the unbalanced checkbook a thousand times over.

We recently attended a birthday party that consisted of only three foster families. There had to have been at least 20 kids between the three of us. It was the most outrageous thing hearing these kids be delightfully outlandish and wonderfully loud.

You see, I'm from the South. And when you're a momma in the South, it's hard not to dream of little girls in smocked dresses while that first is growing in your tummy.

But then we began orphan ministry, and we came face to face with the countless statistics, and we realized the truth that we're harboring the outcast. The child who has no place. At that birthday party, almost everyone of them would have been counted the outcast in our everyday society. But together, they were so perfectly at home....

I thought of our Messiah crying out to the poor, the beggar, the broken to come, eat, and rejoice...to sit in the place of honor. I've been invited to witness that.

I am witnessing that.

The body of Christ has been invited to witness it, and it's so beautiful.