The Power of Naming

Recently, a good friend of mine was reflecting on the power of naming things in our lives. It came up as she was thinking about giving a name to the past year and the present one.

So, I thought I would give that a try.

In fact, it took me quite a while to come up with something, but I'm pleased with what I ultimately decided on. These names are an attempt to capture my sense of what God's been trying to teach me and do in my heart and life of late.

Without further ado...

2005 was "The Year of Grace"

It was one of the hardest years yet for me, with the return of depression and the new challenge of panic attacks and anxiety, lots of work to do for my Masters degree, struggles to grow in friendship being far away from my "home" community, dealing with my fears and insecurities as a developing teacher... However, God met me in a powerful way last year and taught me very concretely about grace. What a lesson!

One image, shared by a friend who was praying for me one day during a very hard time, will always stick with me about 2005: My friend envisioned me floating in a little row boat in the middle of the ocean, rowing and rowing to get back to a shore I couldn't even see. The word of grace, "Stop rowing! Rest in the boat. God is sending a ship of grace your way."

2006 feels like it will be "The Year of Releasing"

I'm not exactly sure what that means yet or what it will look like, but I sense that God is releasing me "from" and "to" many things. Some concrete ideas... freedom from inordinate attachment to things and routines, release from the stress and pressure I've felt the last few years of working and being in school at the same time, freedom from resentment toward others (the power of forgiveness!), freedom to fully step into the role of mom (something I've been longing for), freedom to trust God fully and not have to make things happen myself, freedom to share my faith and the lessons God's teaching me even more in relationships with people here in Prague...

I feel blessed by God and it's with a grateful heart that I want to proclaim these names--ready for God to teach me even more in the coming years!

What about you???

Nesting

In the last few months, we've been preparing for becoming new parents in lots of ways:

• praying together every night for our baby
• taking adoptiong training courses online
• reading lots of books Raising Adopted Children,
• Talking with Young Children About Adoption,
• Attaching in Adoption,
• Your Baby's First Year and more.
• spending more time with kids at our church (we've been volunteering in the nursery once a month)

In addition to all this, we've been gradually collecting all the "stuff" that is needed to take care of a little one. All of this comes together, to me, under the umbrella term "nesting." It's that loving, home-making, emotional and physical and spiritual process of preparing to nurture a tiny life who will soon be 100% in our care.

Nesting is an important concept in the adoption literature because it can be hard for some adoptive parents to nest, for fear that the baby they're hoping for might never come. We're fortunate in that respect because, the way the Czech system works, there isn't really any chance at this point that we won't be given a child. Since we're not linked up with a specific birth mother in advance, we don't have to worry about getting our hopes up. So nesting is free to be a joyful and anticipatory process through which we slowly but surely build towards this monumental event.

It helps to have a job to do while we're waiting!

One of the most fun things lately has been searching (over several weeks) for the perfect stroller. We've gone to at least 5 different baby stores around Prague on several occasions, searching and searching for the right one--and we finally found it! Our conditions:

• lightweight and easy to pick up (to get on and off of trams!)
• sturdy (these things aren't cheap, so it's important that it last)
• needed to have one of those little aprons for keeping the baby warm in cold winters, these are called "cosytoes" :-)
• needed to include a rain cover
• not a "baby hummer" (as our friend, Matt Smith, calls the giant, unwieldy prams that some moms lug around Prague)
• affordable

The one we ultimately settled on (there really wasn't any contest, actually) is by Chicco, the Ponee XS. We decided to go ahead and get it now largely because we really like it and you never know when things will go out of stock (in actuality, this is more my philosophy than Matt's, but he got on board after we talked it through), and we also don't know when the baby might show up (we don't want to have to scramble at the last minute and be rushed to pull everything together). So, we've been having fun for the last 24 hours trying out all its different configurations and pushing it around the flat.

Lamby, our stuffed lamb and stand-in baby for the time being, seems to approve.

On completing one of life's major milestones and not feeling much different...

Yesterday I received a special email letting me know that my final paper for my Masters degree has been passed with flying colors.

You would think that finishing something like this--the Masters degree I've been sweating and stressing over for two and a half years--would feel like a great release and a huge accomplishment. Yet, I don't feel much different.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my class walked together in our graduation ceremony last summer, about 6 months before our final paper was due. I think I actually felt more celebratory then than now, which makes sense because the whole experience of wearing cap and gown, being hooded, walking across the stage, hearing speeches from fellow students and much-loved professors, and simply being together as a cohort in that special moment all works together to send my mind and heart and spirit the message that something momentus has indeed occured.

Lately, I feel a more subtle sense of change. I'm finished with my masters degree and Matt has all but finished his PhD (he sent off all the revisions today and now just waits for the degree itself.) In a sense, we've arrived at something, but it's really more like we've come to a place where God's giving us new directions toward a new destination.

Why is it that every ending, like these, seems to be more about change than about finishing?

I'm not upset about this. It's come to be normal to me. I grieve a bit about the changes (no more winter weeks in Thailand with my APU classmates, I'm even a bit nostalgic for paper-writing and sitting in class having stimulating discussions--I was always a school nerd!). But overall, I've just come to accept that life is always a series of lessons and we don't get to stay in any one season past the fullness of its time.

So, now we head into a new time of our lives. Matt will be more fully involved in the vocation to which he sensed God's call so many years ago and toward which he's been working all this time through his studies. I'll be taking a little break from teaching (though I'm sure I'll be back!) to explore the joys of motherhood. We'll be moving, hopefully, into a new community at the Baptist Seminary and our lives will be more closely intertwined with other believers in a setting in which we're all pursuing God together.

But before we rush into something new, I want to take a moment to pause and say, "Go me! I did something really big and it's worth acknowledging before I move on."

Where are you, Baby?

Ever since we had our surprisingly pleasant and encouraging pscyhological evaluation (http://www.thomasfamilyweb.net/AdoptionJournal.htm) on March 7th, I have been wondering if this whole adoption thing is going to happen a lot faster than we had been exepcting!

It's wild and wonderful to know that there is a little person out there, probably already born, who will be joining our family forever in a matter of months.

Lots of questions are floating around in my head right now:
*what does she look like?
*what name has she been given?
*will she think we're strange at first because we smell and talk and look and act like foreigners?
*what will it be like to meet her for the first time? will she be afraid of us or will she sense our love and good intentions toward her?
*how long will it take to really bond and feel like a family?

The weird thing about adoption is that you are every bit as expectant as someone who is pregnant, but you can't pinpoint exactly where you are in the journey toward knowing this little one who's coming. Of course, even when you're pregnant you sometimes don't have that certainty, as I'm discovering walking alongside my friend Amy through her pregnancy here in the Czech Republic. Surprisingly, the doctors still aren't exactly sure how far along she is, and she's somewhere in the second trimester!

So, I guess there are really no certainties in the process of becoming a parent, and maybe it's better that way. As it is, we have no choice but to lean fully on our Heavenly Parent who delights in walking this road with us and watching us become more the people he knows we can be.

Do all humans have value?

Today I had a major breakthrough with the students in my literature class over, of all things, a book about an Orthodox Jewish boy who discovers he has a gift for art, something which his family and community can never fully accept or even understand.

My Name is Asher Lev has been one of my favorite books since my college advisor and mentor, Dr. Shirley Mullen, invited us to read it in a World History course. In the story, the young Asher wrestles with the darkness and evil he sees in the world (embodied in his youth in the character of Stalin.)

For the first time this year, I was amazed to hear that my students were *entralled* with the book. A few minutes into our discussion, Jaroslav (or "Ruben" as we call him...don't ask), gets a serious look on his face.

"I'd like to ask you a question which I asked our teacher last year."

"OK. Shoot."

"Do you think all people are valuable? For example, do you think a good person has the same value as someone like Stalin or Hilter, or can you compare a hardworking man with a homeless man?"

Six pairs of eyes are intent on me. What will this strange Christian foreign answer to that one? They wait, these budding individuals raised in a society where homelessness is a joke and a loving God a myth...

I smile softly, my heart racing a little, aware of the magnitude of the question.

"Yes."

A barely perceptible collective intake of breath. Did she really say that? How could she say that?

I continue... "I do. I believe that every life one of us is precious and valuable, just because of who we are, not because of what we do or don't do."

Jara, "Really???"

"Yes. Certainly there are some people who make very poor choices and, in the process, harm themselves and others. Of course that is very serious and I do think there are consequences for our actions. People like Hitler and Stalin may deserve severe punishment for the ways that they've hurt people, but in their core, they are still valuable. We all are because we are loved by God."

Some mumbling, some discussion, some disagreement. Then...

Petra..."I agree with you. It's beautiful what you said. Because there is something valuable in each of us."

It's not the time yet to tell you all the intricacies of why I believe this, but this is a tangible sign of the door opening...just a crack. We're headed toward some interesting territory later in this book. Asher, the Jewish prodigy, will wrestle with the image of the crucifixion, explaining to his parents that he is drawn to it because it is the only image in the art museum that captures "that expression." A God who suffers and dies for love of the ones he values more than life itself.

God, help me communicate the depth of their value to You in words that they can hear on a heart level.

The Joy of Polish Pottery

On my recent spring break (mid-Feb. 2006), I discovered the joy of Polish pottery.

Evidently, Polish pottery is one of Poland's best kept secrets--at least from the Polish people who seem to be completely oblivious to its existence and wild popularity outside of Polish borders.

I only became aware of the stuff here in the Czech Republic after expressing my profound admiration of a church friend's hand-decorated ceramic deviled-egg plate, which I had tried in vain to locate somewhere in Prague. Alas, she informed me, it would be necessary to make the journey to Poland to have such a thing for myself.

So, off to Poland we went. Well, it wasn't quite that simple, but ultimately Matt and I ended up in the Polish town of Wraclaw, sitting in an internet cafe copying down train times and directions to the tiny village of Boleslawiec--the Mecca of Polish pottery. By noon the following day, with a combination of Polish, Czech, English, German, and good old body language, we had managed to buy two round trip train tickets to Bolelawiec, find and board the train, buy ourselves a map of the town, and make our way by foot to four different Polish pottery outlets spread across town.

Evidently, this means of visiting Boleslawiec is fairly unusual. Following on the heels of a tour bus full of American army wives based in Germany, we finally reached the check out counter at the Manufaktura store. The woman selling us our pottery was literally dumbfounded to learn that we had *walked* to the factory from the train station and were asking for directions to the nearest bus stop to make our way back. "Well, you know..." we thought to ourselves, "a few years braving public transportation in Europe and we can handle just about anything. No cars or tour buses for us, no sir!"

In actuality, I would have loved to have a car, had it been possible and affordable, because our purchases were limited to the amount that we could carry between us on the several mile long trek back to the train station and on the train itself. However, in the end, we came home with:

*a squatty tea pot with a warming base (you can put a tea candle inside to keep the tea warm)

*two delived-egg plates

*a tiny ceramic bell (which I'll use as a Christmas ornament)

*and a child's tea set in the same pattern as the big pot (after all, we have asked for a little girl...)

Though I am a relatively recent "convert" to Polish pottery, I have to say I have fallen and fallen hard. So, in case anybody else feels like getting some of this fabulous stuff for themselves, here are a few good links I have found to get you started. Of course, if I head back to Boleslawiec some time, I just might be able to pick you up something in person!

A most helpful site if you actually want to *go* to Poland to buy the pottery. Also a lot of useful and interesting information about how it is made, quality etc. : http://slowtrav.com/eastern_europe/poland_pottery.htm

History of the town of Boleslawiec http://www.panorama-miast.com.pl/34/html/boleslawiec.htm

Info about the annual Polish Pottery festival in Boleslawiec http://www.polishpottery-online.com/andy_ceramics/en/whats.htm

Read more about Polish Pottery, especially from the Manufaktura company (the place where we bought most of our pieces): http://www.polish-goods.pl/aboutpottery.php

Polish pottery factory tour: http://munnwerks.com/pottery/facttour.htm

I love Russian art!

I know it's a rather strange way to start my first blog entry ever, but I happened yesterday to find the website of a very cool Russian art musuem that my grandma (pictured left with my aunts, Jody and Lisa, and my uncle, Bruce) took me to visit in Minnesota.

My favorite thing in the exhibition was a fantastic painting called "Milkmaids." Since it would be illegal to copy it here, I'll simply encourage you to follow this link for a moment (come back, though!) To me, the painting captures the joy in the midst of mundane things that human beings are capable of, especially when we're in community together.

There were lots of other great paintings at the museum, so I'm including the link so that you can check out the rest of them too.

http://www.tmora.org/ (The Russian Museum of Art)

Aren't you feeling more cultured already?