For Good Reason

We're on vacation :) We took the boys and Little Sis M away for a week before the girls moved in. It's been a time of rest, fun and reflection.

It was a year ago that God made it very clear to us that He was moving us away from the youth ministry. After five years, it was a time to grieve because it was (and still is) one of our deep passions. But God began to show us that the ways our home had been a safe place for these youth, He was now calling us to do the same for orphans. We had no idea a year ago how that would look.

The answer now...It's beautiful.

Jamie and I had a very turbulent first few years of our marriage. If my sisters are reading this, they're thinking...Yep. We are both passionate people. We love passionately, and we fight passionately. There's little in between. You wonder where my passion child, Benj, comes from.

We passionately planned the ways we would be most successful, and prayed God would bless our decisions. His answer was three wonderfully unexpected surprises in four years.

It was three months after we found out we were expected Daniel that God broke us completely. We gave up planning, on every front (ironically, we've had no bambino since then:) But seriously, we said from this point on God, whatever.

I have to be honest; in the back of my head I had visions of sacrifice and missional living. His answer to us was a lifestyle of loving and letting go. A lifestyle of showing families who met hopelessness, hope.

Jamie and I were talking through what our next season of life will look like. I won't lie; Satan keeps wanting us to be terrified. We're going into something that has very little plans. We've been told the timing is long. How long? Long.

But, we prayed whatever, and when you ask God for things, you need to expect He's gonna make you part of His answer. Would I miss being part of His answer in this case?

There's a Sara Groves song I love, and it goes, "For good reason hope is in our hearts. Alleluia, Christ our joy and strength."

How can I enter into something that I know will change our family's comfortable future? How can I hope when I have no idea what the next day or week or month or year looks like for us (even though none of us really do)?

Alleluia, Christ our joy and strength.

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.

Lifeline Women's Event

Hi all! I promised to share our testimony from Lifeline's Annual Women's Event. It was the most beautiful evening, and I believe God was so glorified. It was an honor to sit among other faithful adoptive mothers and courageous birthmothers, who vulnerably shared their stories of grace and hope. Here is what I shared...

I’m so grateful Krisha invited me to share our hearts with you this evening. I’m Catie Lumpkin, and Jamie and I are foster parents, and we're addicted to it, which is something I never thought I would say. And, we're also madly in love with Lifeline.

Jamie and I both went to Briarwood Christian School. We’ve been married for 10 years, and God graciously blessed us with three little superheroes in his timing: Caleb is 7, Benjamin is 5, and Daniel is 3. Our boys currently attend the homeschool co-op here, where I also teach.

Some of our most consistent friends and mentors throughout the years have been Fran and Jill Sciacca, who many of you know. When we were in Fran’s class at Briarwood, he drove into our heads the concept of: whatever God was calling you to, you must consider where and whom He was calling you to serve…

If the Father was leading you to be a doctor, where will you be a doctor? If you’re being called to serve as a teacher or lawyer or whatever, who is He calling you to be the incarnation of Christ to? He was constantly reminding us that none of this is really about us.

When we had been married for five years, we suddenly looked up and realized the world would completely understand if we were to settle down at that point. We had three little guys running around, a comfortable home, and jobs. But the Father began using what Fran had shared with us many years before to challenge our lives, but His question became…If you’re going to be a father or a mother, whom will you be a father or mother to?

And as we studied His word, we began to discover that if He called himself a Father to the fatherless, and if He called us the Bride of his Son, a member of the triune God, then we had been given a precious, intimate invitation to also be a father to the fatherless, a mother to the motherless, so when Daniel was still very young, we began to pursue an adoption through Lifeline.

Adoption was never a plan b for us. We always knew we would adopt, and honestly prayed for the birthfamilies of our children long before we prayed for our biological children. So it was a natural progression for our own sons, but soon after we started the adoption process, Caleb came to us with a map he had drawn of 10 beds in our home. He very confidently said, “We won’t have one orphan; we’ll have at least 10.”

We laughed at him, but I kept his map. And shortly after the Father called us to walk through a dark season where we realized we could do hard, and we could do messy because of His grace, and Jamie came to me and said he believed the father wasn’t going to bring an orphan to himself through us, but he was calling us to a lifelong lifestyle of messy, hard commitment to the mothers and the fathers everyone else had given up on, to the children who were stuck in the middle. He took me to Isaiah 58, which many of us are familiar with, concerning the true fast of pouring ourselves for the oppressed, but he took me to verse 12, where it says that if you commit yourselves to this lifestyle of fasting you will,” rebuild the ancient ruins, raise up the foundations of generations, and be the repairer of the breech.” So as we moved forward in faith, we believed God had/has given us this promise for the families we’re involved in.

A fellow fostering friend remarked to me recently that the call to foster is a call to be a damaged, broken family, but are we not all called to be damaged and broken? Our passionate obedience to the call to be broken is not amazing; it’s obedient…it points to the amazing savior we’re obedient to. It allows our county workers, the mothers and fathers who have given up on themselves, and these children who believe all the blame is theirs to see the hope for their own brokenness in light of our GREAT savior.

It is hard. We have no magic formula for loving and letting go. Nothing is tidy, and loose ends is the name of the game. We are not superhuman because we are doing this. We have one tool that enables us to survive the goodbyes that have been and that we know are coming soon, we have the gospel. Our own children are not our own; they are not for our happiness; we are stewards of them for such a short season, and so with these children we are blessed to parent and these parents we are honored to labor in prayer for such a short time, we are grateful with grief. The gift to parent is not a right, but an honor and gift, and so we take each moment as it comes, believing God will provide all we need for life and godliness.

We’ve been in this such a short while, but Jamie, me, and the boys have never been more confident that we are called to this. Caleb ran in the other day and said, “I love that you’re my mom, but I love more what God has called us to.”

But we are even more confident that we are not called to this alone. This intimate invitation to mother and father the fatherless is a covenant calling, with so many different roles. It is a calling we are challenged to as the body of Christ. I’m so humbled to be a part of it, and I hope that you will join me.