After more than 24 hours since our departure flight from Nashville, we have arrived safely in Kinshasa. Flying internationally can be fraught with mishaps, and this trip marks the farthest either of us has ever traveled from home. Our adventure began with the first of many “How Did We Get Here?” moments. Our good friend Mary dropped us off at the airport. When we went to weigh our luggage, three of the four suitcases were over the 50-pound weight limit, each by five or ten pounds a piece. This forced us to open our carefully packed suitcases, exposing all manner of undergarments, and re-evaluate the contents. We were able to move enough things around and only threw away a box of sidewalk chalk and a couple of cans of sunscreen and bug spray. (Don’t worry. We still have plenty.) At some point in the second half of the trip, the exhausted, ridiculous part of my brain staged a coup to take over all operations form the reasonable part of my brain. Let me explain: Three songs started playing in rotation in my head—“All About that Bass,” the theme song from the Bill Cosby show “Picture Pages,” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” There’s no rhyme or reason why these songs wouldn’t leave me alone. I tried to listen to music and watch movies on the tiny screens mounted on the back of the headrests, but nothing worked. I also started thinking every fellow passenger was a celebrity. There was singer/actor Lenny Kravitz just across the aisle. And is that master magician David Copperfield sitting in front of him? Of course not. I was just experiencing airplane cabin fever. It is now almost midnight on Monday in Kinshasa. In just a few hours, we’re supposed to meet our son at his orphanage. It feels like I’m getting ready for the most important blind date of my life. Will he like me? What will we talk about? What should I wear? My greatest source of comfort, other than my belief in a God who created the Sahara desert and jet streams strong enough to hold up an Airbus while you fly over the Sahara desert, is the people who have chosen to walk this journey with us. When we started unpacking at the hotel tonight, Brent showed me a package Mary secretly gave him before taking us to the airport. It’s from the beloved girls from my Bible study group. Inside was the most beautiful leather journal with Africa embossed on the front. I started to read the many letters also included in the package, but I had to stop. I’ll ration them out along with the letters my friend Amy had our kids write to us and another bundle of letters from friends who came to Betsy and Robert’s house to pray for us last Saturday. What a great cloud of witnesses! My cup overflows.

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. Psalm 5:3 On Monday morning, after the safe delivery of my kids to school and before I started my errands, I paused for a moment of prayer. I sat on the lonely end of the loveseat in our living room where no one usually sits because of the poor angle it affords to anyone trying to watch television. I closed my eyes, and spread out my hands—palms up—ready to catch any blessings that might fall from the heavens. I said, “Lord, today the parliament in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is set to return from their summer break. According to rumor, they’re supposed to approve the laws already written that will lift the suspension that has prevented us from bringing Ezra home. As you will no doubt remember, it has been just shy of twelve months since this suspension was put in place. We are ready for action. Brent and I have decided to pray boldly, to expect you to listen and act. We’re begging for your intervention. We need to see you in this. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” As soon as I had finished, the phone rang. My breath caught in my chest and my hands grew cold. As I walked to grab the cordless in the kitchen, I calculated the time in Congo. Could it be? Is this the embassy calling to tell me we can go and get him? Impressive turn-around time, Lord! Imagine my disappointment when I realized it was the dentist office, calling to confirm the kids’ appointments for their cleanings the next day. Now, I’m not one to tell the Lord how to do his job (For who can know the mind of God?), but that would’ve been pretty cool. Recently, a friend told me how much she admired our family’s waiting during these years of trying to rescue our African son. I mumbled some words of humble gratitude in reply, but what I really wanted to say was “what choice do we have?” Waiting is our only option. Later, I considered the truth of waiting. It seems like the most passive way to spend your time, but there’s more to it. When all the facts point to God’s dormancy, He’s still spinning the planets and granting favor to us in ways we don’t realize or acknowledge him for. Last Friday, a new friend poured out the story of her son’s drowning, coma, and resurrection just outside our workout gym. She didn’t know about our adoption struggle but God does and he sent her to tell me that God is listening. She told me that saying “if only…” limits my belief in his power. As soon as I got home, our neighbor called me to her backyard to tell me that she and her husband will soon celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. She told me, “God is faithful, through the good times and the bad. He’s always there.” The next day, a salesperson at the hardware store asked Brent if he knew Jesus. The elderly man told Brent he had tried to kill himself three times but God had miraculously prevented him from dying every time. He said God was real and powerful and he wants to bless us. Granted, we live in the South, and there are churches on every corner but the undiluted presentation of these testimonies had to be the result of God’s faithfulness. He knew we were worried and anxious for news. He sent us these three ambassadors of encouragement because he could read our thoughts and analyze our deepest emotions. Our modern, western culture works against us when it comes to waiting. There was a time, not so long ago, when a wife or mother would send her husband or son off on a voyage that would take months or even years to complete. Often, all of that time would be spent without knowing anything. No letters, no phone calls, not even a fax. Now we have no patience for having to wait. Our desire for immediate gratification has created a slew of problems but my biggest is what to do with this downtime. When was the last time you stood in a line? Try not looking at your phone and see how awkward you feel. What do I do with my hands? Careful with the people-watching, stalker! Okay, now I’m so bored, I’m getting sleepy. It’s ridiculous. So I’m challenging myself to spend this “waiting room time” praying expectantly. When I read James 1:6, 7: “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord,” I was kind of like “Shut up, James…” but then I started to see his point. If my faith is wholly dependent on favorably answered prayers, then it’s not faith at all. It’s a hypothesis being measured in columns of YES and NO. I don’t want a business relationship with the All-Mighty where I send in a grocery list and he sends it back with the requested goods. If that was my intention, I’d worship at Target. After so many ups and downs, I question why we are called to pray expectantly. Does God delight in watching us get our hopes up only to see them crash to the floor in a million pieces? Surely not. That isn’t the way he is depicted in the Scriptures. There I see a Father who wants good for his children. He’s just and firm, but he’s also compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness. This is the Lord I serve. He is the One who knows all and sees all. And I will pray expectantly (and humbly) for a 3-year old boy in an orphanage in the Congo to be allowed to come home.

In June of 2012, our family was matched with a beautiful African boy to be his forever family. Wait, let me back up… In July of 2011, my husband and I began the process to adopt internationally, choosing the Democratic Republic of the Congo as our future child’s birthplace. Nope. I’ve got to go back a little further… In August of 2010, our youngest child was preparing to head off to kindergarten. I asked my husband if he would consider adopting to add to our family. He wasn’t ready so I waited and prayed, and I did the thing I’m horrible at doing—nothing. I didn’t nag or scheme or guilt him into agreeing with my plan to adopt. I waited. And we continue to wait. Our son was 15 months old when we were matched to him. Now at 3 ½, we can’t point to any concrete prospects for his imminent release to us. We feel foolish at times. We play the “what if” game nearly every day. (What if we had started earlier? What if we had picked a different country?) We pound our fists on the floor when we cry out to God during the low times and we smile and sigh when we get new pictures of our boy. But, no mater what, we still wait. This week, I was reminded of Noah. You know the story: God looked around at the wickedness of His people and decided to start over. He told Noah to build a boat for his family and the animals because a flood was coming. He followed God’s instructions and made the ark. The rains came down and the floods came up (wrong Sunday school song but it works here), and they were saved. Cue rainbow. End scene. Then I got to thinking about how it took Noah 120 years to build the ark. That’s about 43,000 mornings of Noah waking up, dragging his 500-year old body out the bed, and starting another day of carpentry with his sons. And you know how difficult it can be to work with your children. I’m sure there were days when Shem gathered the wrong kind of wood. (I asked for gopher wood! Gopher wood! Is that so difficult?!) Ham was acting like a…well, a ham, trying to walk across the upper beams like a tightrope walker. And don’t get me started on Japheth! The baby of the family was always complaining about a splinter in his finger or his sandal was rubbing against his ankle or the male and female tigers had attacked him. Always something with that Japheth! Even though it took 120 years to build the ark, the Lord held off the rain until they were finished. He told Noah when to begin and then He watched Noah & Sons Building Co. as they were faithful to his word. He watched them measure every cubit and round up every animal. They continued to work without a definite sign the world would be destroyed by flood and God saw them. This Bible story I’ve heard countless times was a blessing to me, a boon to my sometimes flagging spirit. I believe God gave us a charge, not to build a boat but to save a child. He gave us a start time and I believe He’s watching us as we wait for the finish. It may not end the way we’re expecting (Could Noah have ever imagined he’d see something as glorious as a rainbow?) but I’m trusting God knows how it’s supposed to end. I’m praying we’ll get to bring our Ezra home soon, the same prayer we’ve said every day for two years. And I’ll keep on praying, even if this lasts 120 years. Cue rainbow. End scene.

Like anyone in her mid-thirties, our house has been undergoing a lot of changes. In the past five years since we moved in, we’ve converted a basement garage into five rooms: bathroom/laundry room/bedroom/craft room/storage space. We had new kitchen countertops installed and had all of the wood floors re-stained. Thanks to those consistent Middle Tennessee hailstorms, we traded out our green roof, white aluminum siding and white garage doors for sage green Hardie board, a brown roof, and faux wood garage doors. While we were at it, we had a year-round sunroom built, taking up part of our patio. In addition to all of this, figure in the extensive landscaping, front porch redo, and new carpet. And don’t even get me started on all of the interior painting we’ve done. (Paint chevron zigzags on a couple of walls and see if it doesn’t push you right up to—if not over—the edge. If chevron goes out of style—which of course it eventually will, just ask someone with a Jennifer Aniston haircut wearing stirrup pants—please, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.) Our latest adventure has been renovating two of our existing bathrooms: the hallway bath (a.k.a.- Knox’s bathroom) and the master bath. When you move into a house that needs some updating, you find yourself making lists with column titles like: Most Urgent, Next Summer, When The Kids Are Older. The column for the master bath redo was “No One Ever Sees It But Us So Who Cares.” But the unreliable, rusted toilet, the cabinets and drawers with the “weird smell” and the mildew stained tub/shower combo finally grossed us out one too many times. It was time to say good-bye (or tear down the entire house like the Book of Leviticus advises homeowners with mold problems). Just like the stages of grief, a homeowner experiences a series of emotions during the renovation process: Stage 1 – The “Wouldn’t it be nice?” phase. You lie in your bed at night and dream with your husband about how your lives would be different if you had a shower stall with cream subway tiles and quartz countertops. Hmmm…maybe, someday… Stage 2 – The Estimate. Your husband gives you the go-ahead to get a few estimates, because you have NO IDEA how much redoing your bathroom will cost. When you get the estimate, you use all of the poker face skills you can muster to make the contractor think this is exactly the price you were expecting. You fight the urge to say, “Are you sure that’s where the decimal point is supposed to go?” Stage 3 – The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. The work begins but its progress can be measured in fits and starts. Workers don’t always show up when they’re expected and when they do they don’t bring the right _______________ (tool/pipe/trim/wire/glue) because no one told them to. At some point every day, you stare at an empty room which only a month ago gave you the privacy—even if you were a little grossed out by it—to do your business and move on with your day, but now it’s dry wall dust and dirty foot prints. All you can do is curl up in the fetal position and sing Negro spirituals about the coming of the Lord. Stage 4 – You can see the finish line. It’s almost done. It’s been a solid month of wallpaper removal (should be a punishment for Al-Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay), scrambling for another box of tile so the shower can be finished before the tiler goes on to his next job, your kids writing their names in the dust on your dresser, and waiting for people to show up. It looks like the contents of your bathroom threw up in your bedroom and there’s a giant piece of sheetrock leaning against your wall, blocking all of the outlets. You’re itching to lay shelf paper in your drawers and start finding the perfect place for your toothpaste. Soon, little grasshopper, soon… Stage 5 – It was all worth it! It’s done and it’s the most luxurious bathroom you’ve ever seen! (Aw, who am I kidding? I’d just settle for a place to pee, poop, and shower at this point.) I’m not to stage five yet, but I have hope. I’m still waiting on mirrors to be hung and the gaping hole in the hall bath to be repaired so I can paint that wall. The sheetrock is still standing against my wall like it’s waiting for a bus and it has “all day, thank you very much.” The Wallpaper Removal Fiasco of 2014 has left a very literal mark on my bathroom and a metaphorical one on my psyche. After googling “wallpaper removal repair” I tried to patch the wall with drywall mud. After sanding and more mudding, it’s definitely not perfect and it makes me want to rip every hair out of my head when I run my hand along the bumpy surface but Brent tried to soothe away my frustrations last night. He said, “Who cares if it’s not perfect? No one is going to see it but us anyway.” No! I haven’t endured this month so that we can return to that column! Repeat after me: “This bathroom is beautiful and should be featured in Southern Living.Very good.” Denial is the only way to survive a renovation.

When we moved into our current home about five years ago, we got 4 ½ acres, three bedrooms and three bathrooms, a partially finished basement, and a pool. (For more inside information about our house-hunting experience and general illustrations of how easily I can embarrass myself, read this.) Since neither of us grew up having a pool (unless you count the plastic kind that is stacked outside of the Walmart garden center), we were skeptical if we could handle it. It didn’t help that when we saw it for the first time, it was a brilliant lime color with lovely, foam blobs floating freely in the deep end. This was way out of my expertise. Now that we’re starting our fifth summer as “pool people,” it’s become part of our family identity—for good and for not-so-good: It’s easy for an impromptu get-together but some mechanism breaks every year, costing at least $600 for a new whosie-whatsit that fits the whatsy-doodle and keeps the pool running perfectly (for about a month and a half). We inherit lots of left-behind swim goggles and diving toys but—despite our efforts to encourage toweling off before going inside to use the bathroom—the floors are always covered in wet footprints. Listening to the soothing sound of the pool fountain is a pleasant way to end the day but pulling dead frogs, moles, and mice from the skimmer basket is a depressing way to start a birthday party. Even when it’s over ninety degrees, our kids spend hours outside swimming with their friends and cousins but I have to buy sunscreen by the gross ton. Our kids’ friends enjoy hanging out at our house but sometimes those friends need instruction on how to use a tampon for the first time ever. (Side note: It didn’t bother me one bit to explain this technique. I love to teach things that I truly know how to do, probably due to the fact that I’m not an expert in many areas. It was just difficult to have to describe to a sweet tween friend the certain outcome when a maxi-pad is submerged in a swimming pool.) Swim noodles are cheap and fun pool toys. You can float on them, hit your sister with them, and even use them to blow a large amount of water at your friend like you’re a whale with an overactive blowhole. The downside, other than the fact that pool water quickly disintegrates them if they are left outside too long and you’ll find pieces of neon pink, green, and orange in the skimmer basket for weeks afterwards, is that they are too often used by boys to imitate the male anatomy. You can’t make it that easy for them, folks. Like everything else that has to do with owning and maintaining your home, we have learned a lot of things about the care of a pool, often from doing it the wrong way first. If I had a nickel for every time Brent or I ended a conversation with the phrase “Well, now we know…” I’d have enough nickels to buy a new whosie-whatsit or maybe even an entire whatsy-doodle. Okay, come to think of it, maybe this pool stuff is still way out of my expertise.

For the second year in a row, a couple of blackbirds have built their nest in the gutter just outside my bedroom. (Disclaimer: I don’t know if they are actually blackbirds. I just know they are black birds. I tried to look up what kind of big, aggressive nincompoops like to build nests in gutters but the search engine fairy failed me.) We built a sunroom onto our house a few years ago creating an L-shape with our bedroom. Apparently, the resulting corner gutter is prime real estate. As I sit in my room, I hear birds fighting for this property. I can imagine every awkward movement of their large wings in such a confined space. They squawk and snap at each other. It is in all respects ANNOYING. If it’s true what the naturalist John James Audubon said that “hopes are shy birds flying at a great distance seldom reached by the best of guns,” then these not-so-shy birds are the exact opposite of hope—misery maybe. And the gun thing is questionable. Being a pacifist and non-gun owner, I’m surprised by my growing desire to see their birdy bodies riddled with bullets, feathers floating slowly to the ground after the smoke clears…I digress. On days when I want to sit and write in this private sanctuary of my bedroom, I’m frustrated by the constant noise. “Cut it out, you morons!” I shout at them. “There are about forty trees within seconds of here! Why did you build your stupid nest in my gutter?!” For some reason, my yelling doesn’t make a difference. Perhaps they don’t know English. I’ve even resorted to sitting on the floor by the door to the patio with my laptop in front of me trying to get something done. Every time I hear them clattering around, I open and shut the door quickly to send them flying to the nearby pine trees only to hear them return in a few minutes. (Another disclaimer: Seeing as how this is the second year of this nesting, we would have been smart to place some sort of deterrent in the gutter during the off season. My husband Brent and I discussed this plan of action: What kind of material should we use? Who will stand on the ladder and who will hold a broom to swat away possible attack birds? Unfortunately we never got past the “planning” stage. I’m definitely regretting my laziness now since it’s illegal to remove bird nests that are being actively used unless they are home to an invasive species like house sparrows or European starlings. I’m not sure if these black birds are officially registered as invasive but they have certainly invaded my gutter.) If this year turns out to be like last year, another sound will soon be added to the thrashing and squawking. Soon I’ll hear the cheeping of baby birds and a new emotional conflict will plague my soul. Instead of just being annoyed by the pesky adult birds, I’ll succumb to my maternal feelings of cherishing anything newborn, even if it cries a lot. And this is all by design. The birds nest by design so that their eggs will have a safe place to hatch. No one teaches them what materials to gather or how to scout for possible locations but they do it every year. By design, mothers are compelled to love the fragile and tiny so that they will nurture and care for those too weak to care for themselves. I’m designed to see even the annoying aspects of nature around me so that I can be in awe of our Creator. Although I’d love for them to leave, I’m grateful for these stupid birds. I’m grateful to live in a place where I can witness wildlife—even if it’s just a squirrel drinking from a puddle in the middle of our pool cover or an over-sized groundhog pushing an imaginary friend in our porch swing (yes, that actually happened). Life and living things are a blessing and if I have to be reminded of them by squawking then that may be by design, too.

“My name is Abby and I am the mother of twins.” “Hello, Abby.” “Welcome to the mothers of twins support group…” It’s just in my mind, of course. I don’t go to any such meetings. Early on, I had plenty of opportunities to join groups when my girls were babies but I honestly couldn’t imagine using precious baby-free time to sit in a room with other moms every other week and eat light refreshments. There was so much I’d rather be doing, like sleeping. I got through their baby years the way our early pioneer foremothers did: I circled the wagons and held off the barrage of poop, pee, and spit up until the savages retreated to their naps. I’m just kidding. My daughters, now almost twelve, were never really that bad, although I’d have to be hypnotized to remember the majority of their first two years of life. It’s all a blur. I do remember feeding them with a special nursing pillow (“My Breast Friend,” Boppy’s odd cousin, with sharp angles and a fabric slipcover featuring psychedelic, dancing bears and giant, building blocks that spelled words like CAT and DOG) that allowed me to feed them at the same time. None of this nursing discreetly in a parking lot stuff for me, no sir. I had to be in bed and shirtless for everybody to be hooked up correctly. I also remember long walks pushing their stroller. We lived in an older neighborhood with wonderful, tree-lined sidewalks so we’d make the circuit around the block and head back. We had a double stroller but for the first several months the girls were too small to occupy a seat alone. Instead, they were tucked in together like they were still in the womb…but with straps. When they were a little older, their personalities began to emerge. Ella loved to sing and dance around in a dramatic fashion. A somber ballet was playing out in her head, no doubt. Lucy on the other hand was all about the facial expressions: Anything for a laugh. They were both bossy and very verbal, so there was nothing quiet about our home. They liked to debunk the stereotype that girls are dainty by wrestling each other at some point every day. I liked to debunk the stereotype that moms break up daughters who wrestle by sitting on the sofa and watching. They giggled and giggled until a pigtail was pulled or an arm got scratched then it was over. I would pull them into my lap and say, “That’s what happens when we wrestle,” as if I didn’t think it was a great form of pre-nap entertainment. They crawled then walked and their teeth came in but unlike better moms, I didn’t write anything down. I don’t know what their first words were but I do remember Ella saying “Maybe so, Baby Ho” so I knew their intake of Dr. Seuss books was more than adequate. They played together and were each other’s best friend/worst enemy. I stopped dressing them alike somewhere around kindergarten. For some reason, we’re expected to keep them identical (even if they’re obviously not) at all times. So if one poops out the back end of her striped onesie do I have to change the other one too so that both of them now have matching polka dot onesies? That sounds like too much laundry and maybe a level of hell. (An eternity of rolling a huge boulder up a hill with Sisyphus would be better than trying to remove breastfed baby poop stains.) I still got a few matching outfits out of them on Sundays but that eventually ended too. They wanted to be independent of each other, their own woman. Deep down, I suspect they felt comfortable loosening their reliance on each other because they knew the other sister was never going to be that far away. This year, we decided to put them in two different schools for 6th grade. It was a difficult decision but an attempt to preserve the fragile ecosystem of twin sisters. I get it. I understand being compared to a sister, only mine was two years older than me. Teachers met me with certain expectations, often unrealistic. Having a twin is even worse. As a parent, when I try to praise one, I end up dissing the other one. Everything is political when it comes to vying for pecking order with your siblings. So we’ve decided to do the only thing we know how to do, keep going. Keep making mistakes in spite of our best intentions and start saving for their future therapy sessions. The most I can hope for is that they will someday enjoy the benefits of having a sister. They will do as I do with my sisters, complain about their childhood and bemoan their parents’ parenting. They’ll be so grateful to have another person who completely understands their crazy family. At least, they’ll bond over something!

Like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with public restrooms. How many times have I heard one of my kids’ panicked screams break the calm reverie of a long car trip (thank you very much, inventor of the DVD) to tell me they “HAVE TO PEE NOW!!!”? We pull into whatever is the next available pee receptacle and do what needs to be done to save the car upholstery. It’s usually something that hasn’t been cleaned this millennia but it solves the problem and isn’t that why God created hand sanitizer? I’m grateful it was there but grossed out until I can shower. Recently, I went to a middle school swim meet at a very nice private school. The facilities were clean and mostly plentiful, but I had one issue with them: They were too quiet. After downing my large Coke Zero with vanilla from Sonic, I found the nearest restroom to the indoor pool complex. This particular restroom was only a two-seater, which meant several ladies waited in line behind me. The bathroom was as sound proof as a recording studio. Nothing from the hundreds of people just outside the restroom could be heard, only the tinkling from within. Talk about humiliation. I didn’t know anyone in line but I felt the need to small talk. Unfortunately, the sounds I couldn’t help but hear only made me need to go more. I couldn’t think of anything to say. “How about the weather? Looks like it might rain.” No good. All talk of precipitation was off limits if I wanted to get out of there without making a puddle. At that moment, I wished for two things: 1.) Some kind of music piped in to mask the bathroom noises. Macaroni Grill even plays “Learn to Speak Italian” CDs. Brilliant. (Dove posso trovare? Where is the bathroom?) 2.) To make as little sounds as possible when it was my turn. I was suddenly grateful I didn’t order any food from Sonic when I got my coke. Had I eaten a breakfast burrito there would have been sounds aplenty. There are so many examples of love/hate relationships. Usually, we prefer to say bittersweet. When our kids tackle the next hurdle towards adulthood, it’s a bittersweet moment. We want to see them grow and mature but we also want to keep them little and adorable and taking long naps. Some experiences are more bitter than sweet and vice versa, but I have realized most experiences have both. It may seem clichéd to look for the silver lining in every dark cloud but finding the love amidst the hate is the only way to persevere through some tough times. Finding things to be grateful for makes the low points seem more temporary. So I salute you, public restrooms! You have saved me countless times! Thank you or as my Italian friends would say: grazie molte!

I’m an excellent driver. Being a mom, I’ve perfected my ability to simultaneously drive the van, discipline the kids, and change the DVD—that’s multi-tasking, my friend. In spite of this amazing talent, my husband does the driving on long car trips. “It’s not because you’re a bad driver,” he tells me. “It’s because you can sleep in the car and I can’t.” Okay, valid point. I’m also an excellent sleeper. Due to my tendency towards motion sickness, I can’t read a book or check Facebook on my phone or crochet in the car. Turning around to pass out juice boxes even makes me want to puke. My husband will no longer humor me with car games (“Female actress from the 1980’s. You’ve got twenty questions…go!”), so I either sleep or daydream. When I’m not feeling very sleepy, I’ll recline my seat and just start thinking. Sometimes I fantasize about becoming a famous author. I’m being interviewed at the red carpet premiere of the movie version of my latest novel. Cameras are flashing as the paparazzi are yelling at me, “This way, Abby. Who are you wearing, Abby? You look amazing, Abby! How did you lose those thirty pesky pounds?” I would just smile and say, “Clean living, boys. I credit it all to clean living.” Sometimes I write a screenplay in my mind. For instance, I recently created an entire drama starring my husband and me. It was a “It’s a Wonderful Life”-type story where we broke up my freshman year (instead of dating all through college and getting married the day I graduated). He married a seemingly genuine, but–in my opinion–overly attractive girl. They moved away so he could enroll in medical school but she realized being married to a poor med student wasn’t what she had signed up for so she left him for a dermatology resident who was willing to help her finance a new Lexus. We met years later. I had never married and he still loved me. It was like that Dan Fogelberg song they play at Christmastime except we didn’t meet at a grocery store and I didn’t spill the contents of my purse while we laughed until we cried. And sometimes I just fantasize how I could organize my pantry better. With the current pace of our often-hectic lives, it’s a nice break to be able to just sit and daydream. A friend who is now cancer-free recently told me what a treat it is for her to go her oncologist every three months for a check-up to get a CT scan. She’s forced to sit very still under a warm blanket in a dark room. There’s definitely something appealing about that! We’re pulled in so many directions. We have calendars on our phones reminding us where we need to be in the next five minutes and yet we still feel like we’re a day behind. Even now, as I’m typing, I hear an annoying voice in my head telling me to go down to the laundry room and take the sheets out of the dryer so the towels can go in. It’s dizzying. So here are my New Year’s Resolutions: Slow Down. Pray More. Invite God into my Daydreams. I may not believe all of my daydreams, but I am a big believer in them. I’m going to make room for plain, old thinking and see where God takes me. *I’ve had the song “Daydream Believer” by The Monkees in my head for the entire time I’ve been typing. When I get to the part “You once thought of me as a white knight on a steed…” I always get stuck. I keep singing the end of the verse something like this: “But how much paper do they really need?” I looked it up and, believe it or not, that’s not how it goes. So disappointing.

A very sweet friend recently gave me a handmade necklace for Christmas. It had a pendant with a picture of a songbird, some lovely beads and a couple of tiny charms—one of a leaf and one that says HOPE. The accompanying card was chock full of scriptures and encouraging words about the successful completion of our son’s adoption from Africa. The main theme of the note was her charge for me not to lose hope. I wore it all of the next day as I ran errands and carpooled kids around town. Compliments were made by friends and strangers and my heart was cheered every time I looked at this thoughtful gift. It wasn’t until I was getting dressed for bed that I realized one of the charms was missing. That’s right—I lost HOPE. Even though I love a good bit of irony, it was a kick in the shins to my spirit. (That is, if spirits have shins.) You don’t realize how close to the edge of despair you are until you get a little shove sometimes. Some days it only takes a light breeze. Once I picked myself up off the floor, I began to ponder what hope really means. With the Christmas season in full swing, I can’t help but think about a night many years ago in Bethlehem and the hope that Christ’s birth brought to this world. When the angels told the shepherds, “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people,” it must have been a huge source of encouragement. These men smelled like sheep and were ruled by an occupying government. They needed a shot of hope. They went to the stable and saw that the angel’s words were fulfilled. And then what? They went home and slept and woke up to another day of sheep herding. Jesus didn’t start his ministry for thirty years. Chances are, He didn’t even begin healing and preaching during the shepherds’ lifetimes. So how was this hope? I can see now that I confused “hope” with “happiness.” Hope is a perpetually-filling reservoir and happiness is a fleeting rain shower. Hope is seeing God’s majesty to create anticipation for greater things and happiness is the majesty of one moment that doesn’t usually live up to the hype. Hope can be a long wait, but it will be worth it. Some part of the shepherds’ spirit must have known that night was unlike any other. (I’m guessing the chorus of heavenly beings probably tipped them off.) Even if they never saw the culmination of that miraculous birth, they were able to die with the taste of promising hope on their lips. That’s a gift…if you can hold on to it. A few days after I lost the charm on my necklace, I was sitting in the carline and talking to a friend on my phone. I was asking her if I could borrow some items for our church’s Christmas play. My list was full of props like gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (God works in mysterious ways…) As I was talking, I looked down in the floorboard in the narrow space by the console. I saw something glinting in the afternoon light. Yep, you guessed it…I found HOPE. I had to stop mid-sentence to collect myself. I hadn’t even tried to find the charm because I had assumed it was lost in one of the many places I had visited that day. But here it was, patiently waiting for me to pick it up and marvel at it. I carefully slipped it into the change part of my wallet so I could re-connect it to my necklace later. Now that I think about it, I may just leave it in my wallet. HOPE is that precious to me this year!

Ever since I discovered characters with names like Jessica Fletcher and Nancy Drew, I’ve enjoyed a good mystery. Maybe this fascination began because my mom was a huge fan of the PBS series, Mystery. As kids, we would often join her to watch the animated beginning of the show to see the sinister villains and damsels in distress, the dead body in the library and the ill-fated croquet game. We frequently commented on the woman on the roof. She was wailing, hand to forehead, while lying helplessly with her ankles loosely bound. “Just sit up and untie yourself!” we’d shout at the TV in utter disgust. Following that intro was an episode featuring professional detectives or problem-solving amateurs: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple to name a few. They all possessed an incomprehensible ability to solve a mystery. The hidden clues were glaringly obvious to them, both in existence and relevance to the current case. The suspect’s shoes were too clean or his overcoat too dirty. He wore his watch on his left wrist but wasn’t he left-handed? It must be an evil twin! These obscure details always became supremely important by the end of the program. In real life, we’re bombarded with millions of supremely unimportant details and events. How can we ever know which ones are worth noticing and which ones are just filler? It’s all part and parcel of this mystery called life. When a major weather event happens, we call it an Act of God. When a good thing occurs unexpectedly, usually after a chain of bad events, we say, “God sure works in mysterious ways.” We are quick to attribute these unexplainable phenomena to God but when we don’t get a quick answer to prayers, we get all Psalms-y—and not in a good way. “My God…Why are you so far from saving me so far from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1) In other words, “Hello, God, it’s me, Abby…Anyone? Can I at least leave a message?” Then, when the answer still isn’t coming through, we get up a prayer brigade. In some ways, it’s the prayer equivalent of the climax of the book Horton Hears a Who. The miniscule folks who live on the speck, which is precariously resting on a flower, carried around by an elephant named Horton are desperate to have their voices heard. They must prove they exist so that the angry mob of jungle animals won’t boil their entire planet in beezle-nut oil. All of the townspeople are shouting and tooting their instruments, but it’s just not enough. The mayor soon realizes one boy named JoJo who isn’t making a sound at all. When JoJo adds his mighty “Yopp” to the din, the collection of sounds pushes its way through a portion of the cloud cover just in time. They are heard and they are saved. That our prayers can be heard by God at all is a great mystery. Having a large group people unite to pray isn’t because God can’t hear the one tiny “Yopp” that floats up all alone. Maybe the mass prayers are there to encourage the downtrodden by the force of their volume. Maybe this large group of praying friends is a great cloud of witnesses and they’re there just for that purpose—to witness what God will do with the petition laid before Him. As a recipient of such prayers for an extended amount of time, I can attest to the encouragement they offer. To know you’re on someone’s prayer list—quiet time, dinnertime, bedtime, all the time—is a wonderful balm to a wounded spirit. But there are moments when even this encouragement doesn’t feel like enough. Moments when my “Yopp” seems ignored. That’s when an even greater mystery comes in to play: the mystery of trust. When I am told to trust in the Lord and lean not on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5, 6), it flies in the face of human reasoning. When I am told that God has made everything beautiful in its time and He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11), my head spins with the utter unfathomability of its enormousness. I want to take God’s will for me a make it into a “To Do” list or an excel spreadsheet. I want to list it and dissect it and tidy it up so that it makes sense to me. But I’m beginning to see the folly in that kind of exercise. Every day is an opportunity to seek Him, plead with Him, and praise Him. My new goal every morning is to drop my worries and doubts at the feet of my mighty Lord. I don’t know why He hasn’t given us the answers we’ve been begging for but I do know He says I don’t have to go this alone. I’m trying to trust Him and His plan. It won’t be easy but if I can make it through this, I will eventually get to see the big finale of my show. It may not be on this side of heaven, but I will trust God to explain all of the seemingly unimportant details and plot twists that have made my particular episode so mysterious. “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11)

I’m not a big fan of Halloween. Don’t get me wrong–I like carving pumpkins, making caramel apples, and coming up with fun costumes for me and the kids. And who doesn’t love to eat candy by the fist-full? My dislike stems from the fact that I don’t like to be scared. I don’t like scary movies or haunted houses. And with the deteriorating efficiency of my bladder, I don’t much care for anyone to crouch behind the sofa, waiting for me to pass by so he or she can jump out at me. Not my idea of fun. I’ve had very limited experiences with haunted houses, but the few times I have “got my scare on” they’ve been fairly well rounded. I’ve been the person being scared and also the person who scares others. I didn’t care for either role. When I was in high school, a bunch of people from our class went to a friend’s house for a bonfire or some other autumn-related activity. Once it got really dark, several boys arranged a haunted woods atmosphere for us to walk and scream through. The prelude to this uncomfortable adventure was a Jason-esque fellow who revved a chainsaw in our faces. I’m pretty sure I had classes with this doofus but his maniacal attempt to scare us was still unnerving. (If he had only put this much energy into learning geometry…) My friend and I ran through the haunted woods but I got not even a second of enjoyment from it. I realize now I’m just not the Haunted House type. I assume you have to be a girlfriend to a burly boyfriend you can hang on and hide behind or a Goth freak to truly enjoy the scariness of it. I was just too much of a nerd to get it. I remember coming out the other end of the woods and seeing a goat in a pen. Then my friend and I discussed the relevance of the goat to an episode of Quantum Leap we had just seen. Did I mention I was a nerd? My other memory associated with a haunted house was also in high school but in a different location—our church building. At the time, my family worshipped in a building downtown with several floors. The upper floors had previously been used as apartments but by the time we were there, the rooms were empty and dark and very creepy. A bunch of us staged a haunted house and kids from the inner city were bussed in to see it. Because these kids didn’t have it bad enough and what they really needed was some white people to scare their pants off at a church building. Being a team player, I volunteered to lie down in a makeshift coffin in one of the cobwebby corners of the stairwell. When a group of unsuspecting kids were ushered by, it was my job to rise up slowly and say something vaguely vampire-like. I got ready to do my shtick for one group as they stopped by my coffin. When I rose up, a upper elementary age girl took one look at me and punched me squarely in the face. Who could blame her? That was the end of my vampire phase. Personally speaking, it’s ludicrous to pay someone to scare you. I don’t need zombies or werewolves or vampires to get the willies. In real life, there’s plenty of stuff to scare us. Government shut downs, Ebola outbreaks, and killer bees to name a few. Why should we make up even more? So every year, I suffer through Halloween because I know what’s on the other side: Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are the only things that make the holiday gauntlet of Halloween worth getting through.