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That’s What She Said

A few bloggers I follow always have a “That’s what she said” series and I LOVE them. It’s always a great place to find new articles that often resonate with me. More often than not I want to share them but they are kind of random so they never have a real place to fit in on my blog.

Thus, I’m creating my own “That’s what she said” series.

“How I lost Faith in the ‘Pro-Life’ Movement.” As someone who once considered herself pro-life this spoke to me in so many ways. In order to truly be pro life it means WAY more than anti-abortion.

Obamacare stands to cut abortion rates by 75%. And yet, the pro-life movement has been leveraged in opposition to Obamacare, and most especially in opposition to the birth control mandate. They don’t believe women should be guaranteed access to free contraception even though this access is the number one proven best way to decrease the number of abortions. That access would, to use the rhetoric of the pro-life movement, prevent the murders of 900,000 unborn babies every year.

Heather’s guest post on Momastery. I loved what she had to say, especially the excerpt below. Can’t wait to read her book.

The greatest shock of my life was to discover that the exposure of the very secret that I thought would kill me brought me the greatest relief. It turns out that when you give up on looking good, no one can make you feel bad.

Adoption. Ethics in adoption. It’s all Big Business. The more I know the less I wish I knew (not really, but-yikes). I have been following the discussion for as long as I can remember. Oh how I wish my eyes had been opened before I started. If you are starting out on adoption, or if you have friends/family who are you owe it to them and their possible future children to send them to some of the below links. The conversation has to be had. We can no longer bury our collective heads in the sand.

Jen Hatmaker is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. After this, she shot to the top of my girl crush list (right after Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, obviously).

What would happen if we reallocated a percentage of the millions we spend on adoption toward community development? What if we prioritized first families and supported initiatives that train, empower, and equip them to parent? This would absolutely be Orphan Prevention, not to mention grief prevention, loss prevention, abandonment prevention, trauma prevention, broken family prevention. What if we asked important questions about supply and demand here, and broadened our definition of orphan care to include prevention and First Family empowerment?

My friend Amanda (she’s my real-life friend y’all, I’ve met her. I’ve talked with her. She’s amazing. Zach makes me distinguish between blogger friends-ones I’ve only “met” online and real-life ones. I have pictures with her, it’s legit.) is brave, strong, beautiful and amazing. You know those moments when you feel like you’re in the presence of greatness? I get that feeling from her right now. Read this. Read about her adoption. Read about the painful choices her family has made to ensure they’ve done everything they can to look their precious son in the eyes and know they did the right thing. She needs our help. Let’s rally around her.

We hope that, after reading our story, you will support us for this simple reason: we will not sign a gag order to protect our former adoption “agency” and their facilitator in return for the easy release of our documents.

Tara Livesay is a blogger you have to follow. I won’t take no as an answer to this. Go to her blog and follow her now. She has written about missions (more on that later) and adoption. She is intimately aware of both. One of my favorite posts she’s done has been this one.

It occurs to me that our western culture of capitalistim, materialism, and consumerism all play a large role in our attitude toward and approach to international adoption. Due to our wealth and ability to provide, sometimes without even realizing it we begin to believe that our material wealth makes us better suited to parent the child of a poor mother. What began as noble and pure and loving can farily easily begin to look a lot more like ethnocentrism and entitlement. 

I have family in missions, I have friends who have went on short term mission trips. I have never went on one because I just felt, for lack of better term, “icky” about them. Jamie has done an awesome job (as has Tara Livesay above) with the issues that can come from missions-both long and short term.

I’m telling you all of this because there is blatant fraud going on in the world of missions and in the name of Jesus. And that bothers me. If you support a missionary, if you’re a church that supports missionaries, if you’re interested in becoming a missionary, you should be pushing for clarity and transparency from the Missions world. Most missionaries will be able to answer your questions without resorting to evasive language and obscure ideas. But if they can’t? That should be a serious red flag and you should feel emboldened to push back until you clearly understand what they’re doing with their time.

Any other links you guys have loved lately?

 

 

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Mother’s Day

I love Mother’s Day. As much as I hate other Hallmark holidays, I just really love this one. I have no idea what it is exactly. Probably equal parts homemade cards from the kids and a day that I get to do no “typical” mom activities. My family is so good at spoiling me on every day but this day in particular they get just as excited to show me the love.

When we ask Binyam to write a thank you to someone it is indecipherable. This card? Can almost read every word. He claims he had no help from his teacher but I’ve never actually heard him use the words, “lovely” or “fabulous”. Regardless, I accepted with the most humblest of exclamations.

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Dailah’s…I mean it’s too much. The sleepy (beautiful) picture. Love it.

 

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Tariku gave me the standard one about growing from school but then he created this. Interestingly, we have never even referenced “saving” him so I had a little talk about that but otherwise the message (and art) is simply breathtaking.

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Tomas. “Mom, you are awesome because you have done almost everything to get Ethiopia water that is way awesome. You are sweet and cute and I thank you for doing stuff you are the best mom in the world.” I mean, really.

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And Trysten. My personal favorites, “My mom loves me and she loves to exercise and burn calories.” and “The best thing about my mom is everything.” Oh of course, “My mom loves me and she loves to eat veggies.” All true, of course.

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My friend Jody posted a status update that has gone positively viral. I was so thrilled to see many friends reposting it and knowing it came from a genuine, true place from Jody. The reason it was shared so much is because every mama of a child born unto another feels this way-or at least they should.

“Children born to another woman call me ‘Mom’… the magnitude of that tragedy and the depth of that privilege is not lost on me this weekend.”

Makes me teary just re-reading it.

Even though I love Mother’s Day I am acutely aware of how hard it must be for women who have lost children, who have made the decision to make an adoption plan. For women who want children but who haven’t known that pleasure yet. And for those two beautiful women whose sons I am humbly raising.

Sunday morning I woke up to my kids singing, “Happy mother’s day to you” and all I could think to do was offer up a prayer to Tariku and Tomas/Binyam’s mom.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

To all you mamas out there. Whether it be children you’re currently raising, have raised or will someday raise. To mamas of fur babies. To mamas who will never have children but choose instead to birth art or books or music that moves the next generation into beautiful action. To you aunties who help raise your nieces and nephews, to you besties who love your friends’s children more than they will possibly ever know.

I love you and am so honored to be amongst you.

Happy Mother’s Day

 

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Girls Girls

Remember this post about Dailah not getting a familial sister? I mentioned that building a sisterhood with friendships will be important for her but what I didn’t mention is that it’s been a lifesaver for me too. Even though I have ridiculously amazing sisters (3 of whom I got to spend time with yesterday, which would explain my overall jovial mood!) I also happen to have friends who have become like sisters to me.

My brother-in-law went out of town to kill innocent turkeys hunt so my sister thought she could pass the time by having us over for a spa night complete with wine and other girly drinks.

One of my greatest friends is a literal beauty school drop out which bodes well for spa night. First, the drinks.

Ashley (“Hot Pocket” as we call her or just “HP”) came up with a Pinterest creation that was waaaay too delicious.

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I can’t actually think of any situation that isn’t made better with these 3 and an alcoholic drink.

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Of course we did “normal” spa stuff like pedicures and manicures.

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But we also did things like bleach my hair (going back to blonde, what can I say? It just feels right.) and this:

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Waxing. facial hair. Ladies, when did this happen? I’m completely aware that I have more testosterone than your average lady. I mean, literally, my blood contains more than the average female. This explains lots of things namely my strong jaw line 😉 and all of the facial hair. Thank God I have a bestie who doesn’t judge, just gets her wax out and takes care of binness.

I’ve been really lucky to have close girlfriends my whole life. I’m a lobster (Friends, anyone?) with anyone I’ve once called friend. I’ll be praying for them and hoping for their happiness all the days of my life. But at this stage in my life my friends/sisters feel more like a lifeline than any other time in my life. Marriage, parenthood and life are made all the better with friends. The really rough times are a bit easier with these people too.

So thankful for these people I’m not even going to worry about the fact that I just posted a picture of me getting my mooostache waxed on the interwebs.

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On Teacher Appreciation

When Trysten first went to Kindergarten I didn’t think a whole lot about his teacher or school. I know, I know, shocking. But he was a smart kid with 2 parents who weren’t going to let him fall behind on anything so there wasn’t a huge concern.

Then we brought Tariku home and we started to think more about education. We moved Trysten from his school that, year after year, gets the highest test scores in the district and some of the highest test scores in the state. We moved him because most of his school looked like him, which is fine, but the school didn’t look like us. Our new family now contained a little precious boy of color so an almost all white school wasn’t going to do.

We moved Trysten to quite possibly the most underperforming school in the district. Worried grandparents and community members chided us for the bold move but we knew it was right because Trysten would be fine. Regardless of how the school overall did on standardized tests, Trysten positively excelled.

And then we brought home Tomas and Binyam. There was only one school in our district with full time ESL people on staff and we knew bringing home a first grader we would rely heavily on ESL the first few years, so we switched again. This time to a school that usually ranked towards the bottom on standardized tests. We knew it would be a perfect fit, however, when we first saw there was a large minority population at the school and then that a really great family friend-Mrs.Meinert- would be Tariku’s Kindergarten teacher.

Pretty soon after bringing Tomas and Binyam home we could tell they might need a little more attention in school. Tomas’s phenomenal teacher proactively worked with Mrs. Meinert to have Tomas come down with her class during reading and math. At the end of the first year Tomas’s teacher, Mrs. Dunlap, showed me his first words he had written and I cried during the whole conference. Watching how much he had grown from August-May was nothing short of a miracle and I knew, though Zach and I encouraged him at home, it had everything to do with the two teachers who loved and nurtured him in his first year.

Binyam started out in preschool with Dailah but we could tell he too needed a little more work. His YMCA preschool teacher arranged a meeting for us at our local AEA. They tested Binyam and agreed he needed an all day preschool the following year at-you guessed it-one of the worst performing schools in the district (but which boasted Binyam’s Uncle Jake as the principal) 🙂 . When Binyam began his (second) year of preschool he had no idea how to spell his name, his speech was very poor and he had 0 fine motor skills. At his first conference his teacher showed us little scraps of paper that Binyam had written, “Binyam” and “Mom”. With tears running down my face I grabbed her hand, “Thank you, thank you so much.”

The last few years for Tomas and Binyam have carried on much the same. A tribe of advocates have surrounded them and fought for them, working alongside us. And though my other 3 don’t need the same degree of help, their teachers have kept them challenged and loved just the same. Watching these teachers (my kids usually have the same teachers as the sibling who went before them) love, nurture and cherish my babes finding their footing as well as my higher level learners has been an enormous blessing.

I have gotten emails from these teachers at 10:00 pm, “Hey what do you think about trying this for x?” I’ve gotten more phone calls during the day than you can possibly imagine (I quite literally just got off of one) from teachers and administrators, “Hey wanted to let you know x is having a great day today! Make sure you praise him/her for doing their best during reading!” Notes in planners talking about the progress on a letter or a sound or a journal entry. I’ve seen these teachers have to switch from this kind of technique to another, back to the first and then-no wait, let’s do it this way-within just a few months.

And always, when I’ve cried asking, “Are they going to be ok? What more can I do?” They’ve looked at me, usually with tears in their eyes and said, “Of course they’ll be ok, your kid is amazing and we’re going to do everything we can because they are worth it.” And I believed them.

One of my best girl friends was talking about one of her babes that struggles in her class. As Ashley talked about the little girl I just started crying. I can’t get over how much our kids are loved by their teachers. These teachers who work so much, get paid so little love. our. kids. Incredible.

I know not all teachers are like this, I know that. But we’ve been so incredibly grateful for the teachers we’ve had.

I think on days like today when I get a completely unprompted call from the kids’s school, “Hey, Binyam’s teacher was thinking about him…” I am humbled beyond anything else that there is so much love surrounding my kids. I am so thankful I never have to go through this parenting thing alone. So thankful for our community who has trained and support teachers, imperfectly I’m sure, that are as amazing as they are.

So to all the teachers. The ones I’m related to, the ones I am friends with and the ones who have prayed and thought about my kids every day for a year-thank you so much. My words fail me at a time like this but I am forever indebted to you!

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Meet Barbara Streisand

Easter weekend Zach surprised the kids and me with the news that he had bought us a new puppy. Ever since our other great dane passed, we knew we needed another one so this announcement was met with much excitement!

We had to wait a few weeks to see her as she was just a few weeks old when Zach told us about her, but then we finally got to bring her home!

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Around Thanksgiving Zach turned to me and said, “I’ve always wanted a female great dane so I could name her Barbara Streisand. I would, of course, call her ‘Babs’ but how hilarious would that be?”

Thus, our new dog’s name is Barbara Streisand. We call her “Babs” or “Babalonya” or-my personal favorite-“Babadoodle doo”. When she does the great dane singing (dane’s don’t really bark, they sing) then we, of course, call her Barbara Streisand. Interestingly she is quite vocal, always doing a dog version of purring when she’s on a lap which, is often. Chicken or the egg, amiright?

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I love living things. I mean, love them. Animals make me happy. In fact, I don’t trust people who don’t like animals. 😉 Only partially kidding.

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Babs has been to many a baseball and soccer game-basically doing this through all of them.

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Even the cold ones, where she and I insisted on staying in the car the whole game.

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All of our other animals have taken a liking to her. Hagrid especially has been very patient in his brotherly love with all of her shenanigans.

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Super excited to see this little songstress prance around Camp Abe Lincoln as she grows. Love her.

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Heavy

Weeks like this one just make me feel heavy. I am a feeler. As much as I have tried in the past to stop being a feeler I just can’t, it’s an impossible task. I’ve really grown to love how much I feel everything and have even begun to allow those feelings to propel me into action the last few years.

But sometimes being a feeler sucks.

The events of this week caught up to me today because I hadn’t allowed myself to fully process it all week. So I chose to take my morning away from stuff and spent some time in meditation and am now spending some time here.

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I know the world reacts to weeks like this in different ways, right? I think as Americans we are even “encouraged” to react a certain way-with tremendous amounts of fear. And so on days like today I tend to feel really lonely.

Because I don’t feel afraid, I feel sad. I feel sad for the people of Boston-not just the families that have had people killed or severely injured-but for everyone. I feel sad for the people of Texas. I feel sad for the people in Congress who can’t grow a pair and do what’s right are so crippled by their need for re-election money that they no longer remember why they tried for office in the first place. And, as scary as this is to admit, I feel sad for the Boston bombers. I feel sad for their families, for their uncle who had to go on national television and call his family “losers” just so other Americans didn’t retaliate on his family.

I just feel sad.

And that’s ok. I’m thankful I have slowly reprogrammed my body away from what my society wants it to do (fear) and towards what God intended it to do (love, hope, sympathize).

It’s kind of a scary place to be. There are days when it hurts a lot to be this vulnerable, but feeling tremendous amounts of sadness also means that I’m better able to feel tremendous amounts of happiness too. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

So if you’re out there and you’re like me, if this week has just left you feeling sad. If it’s left you feeling a bit lonely because you don’t want retaliation, you don’t want retribution, you just want things to be ok. You want the country and the world to start healing. If that’s you, then I just wanted you to know I’m with you. I think there’s a small pocket of us that grows every day. So even when people call us “soft” or “out of touch” or whatever, just know you’re not alone.

Much love to you,

Tesi

P.S. After I published this, I read this. Go read it, please. Really good stuff.

Trail Run
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Trail Run

Living in Iowa I am used to the varying temperatures daily-especially certain times of the year. Saturday was bitter cold (and yay! each kid had soccer games!) hovering somewhere around 35 when you factored in wind but Sunday was beautiful-closer to 70s.

Though I’ve never been a long distance runner (my collegiate track coach tried so hard, bless his heart, to push me into the 400-800 meter range but I was most comfortable in the 100-200 meter range) I do enjoy a good trail run from time to time. It just brings out the kid in me when I have to jump over puddles or logs.

After lunch on Sunday I asked the kids if anyone wanted to join me on my run and all 5 jumped at the chance. Admittedly I was kind of looking forward to a solo jog to find that meditative quality that can sometimes come but I’ve never been able to resist some QT with the kids and so off we went.

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At church that morning our pastor talked to us about how God is in every moment, yes, but that in particular he’s in this moment.  That our past is often clouded in shame and our future is often draped in fear but in this moment, the one right. now. we can decide to be in it. To invest fully in this breath, and then the next one and then the next. Not remaining imprisoned by the past or captive of the future just here and now.

I don’t know what it was about that run but I was doing it. And it was awesome.

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Watching the big 3 take off at a pretty quick pace and hold it the whole time reminded me how youth is wasted on the young (;)) what I wouldn’t give to hold that clip for 30 full minutes!

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Dailah enjoyed running with her arms open wide, lifted to the sun. It looked like 30 minutes of gratitude, it was beautiful.

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When I was talking to Bean’s Kindergarten teacher she said, “Bean exemplifies perseverance. No one perseveres like Bean does.” For kids like Bean who couldn’t walk before he was 3-years-old, perseverance is the only way they know how to live. I’ve found people go one of two ways when they’ve been dealt a hand like Bean has-they either give up or they fight like hell. My Bean is a fighter. I’ll never know what it’s like to run for 30 minutes on feet that have been operated on 3 times and still give me pain daily but I’ll know what it’s like to witness perseverance because I get to see it in my youngest every day.

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Days like today-post 9/11, Newtown and Boston I am infinitely aware of how lucky I am to hold my 5 babes in my arms. To be able to run! And laugh! And see the first signs of spring! I’m able to really breathe in the now because the now just feels so. damn. good.

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5 years

I can hardly believe 5 years ago we landed in the Quad Cities for the first time with Tariku as our son.

This picture was captured the moment after we met Tariku for the first time.

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As much time as I had spent staring at his picture the months leading up to us flying to Ethiopia, I was shocked by him in the flesh. I couldn’t get over how bright his eyes were-even more than in his pictures-or how small he was. I had no idea that his smell would smell familiar even though I had never been to Ethiopia before, never held a strange 3-year-old and called him son.

When I look at that picture I see so much innocence in all of our faces. As well as the troubling realization that I overplucked my eyebrows. We had no idea how much work was ahead of us to actually feel like a family. It felt so real so immediately I think it blindsided us all when it took a little longer to find our footing. 

But mostly when I think of this day 5 years ago I think of how much I have changed because of Tariku. I knew that I could be an advocate for my child but I had no idea the strength I possessed before him. I knew I had a remarkable capacity to love, but I had no idea that sometimes wasn’t enough for my babe who felt so much loss. I knew from the moment I saw his sweet picture on my computer screen that I would love him for the rest of my life but I had no idea how that very love would open my eyes and tear off my skin in a way that had never been done before.

That day 5 years ago was a new stage of vulnerability for me that I was ill prepared for but has reaped in me a newer, better human. If it weren’t for Tariku, I genuinely don’t think I’d be who I am today. Despite all my flaws, the me now is so much better than the me then.

Today as I meditated I fought back tears the whole time. The feeling of gratitude is so alive on days like today-days that I recognize the magnitude of what happened 5 years ago.

So thankful for that day, and for this day. Because then and now Tariku is my son. My amazing, beautiful son.

*I blogged about our first trip to Ethiopia starting here if you’re interested.

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couch on the corner

I wrote on Facebook tonight, “I have the weirdest compulsion to pick up every curbside ‘free to a good home’ couch I see, regardless of it’s state of disrepair. I never do, but without fail I think, ‘I could find a good home for that feces-laden couch.'” And it’s true, I think that every time.

I think it’s because I’ve felt like that couch before. I’ve felt like garbage, like I’ve messed up enough I deserve no better than the trash heap. I’ve been there. And even though it’s a couch and, as such, incapable of feelings I just get this crazy notion that I need to let the couch know it’s worth something. No matter what (visible feces, completely fractured structure) there’s a home out there for that couch.

Welcome to my psychosis.

The hardest thing about Miss A was that I needed to see redemption in her story. Her story was such that there was no obvious place of redemption if she returned back with her birth family. And so I put it on me (much like the couch) to find that redemption for her, or to be that redemption for her.

Sometimes I forget that I’m not responsible for anyone’s redemption. Sometimes I forget that price has been paid so many years ago on a cross.

Thank God it’s not on me, because I’m human and I make real shitty mistakes. If redemption were up to me there would literally be no hope, it feels good just admitting that.

That said, I can’t seem to find that line between being the hands and feet of God and trying to be God. The latter I can do on my very best days, the former I fail every. single. time.

Perhaps that’s what foster care was for me. (I should mention we are taking a break for an undetermined amount of time. The kids have asked us to, we know it’s best not to enter into that again for everyone’s sanity.) And when I take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror I know it was wrong to assume I could take on that too.

But I don’t know, it keeps me up at night the beautiful and terrible of the world (as Jody would say).

I am a constant work in progress, as you can easily see. My latest “thing to work on” is believing in the redemption even when it’s not clearly visible. Because I know even in my very lowest times, when I saw no hope and no peace-redemption found me. And it had so little to do with my actions.

But a work in progress means taking one step forward and two steps back. And so-if you live in the Quad City area and are in need of a couch, I have a few in mind for you.

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Hoops

The 3 bigs had their final basketball games this weekend, culminating in a single elimination tournament on Saturday. It has been so incredibly fun watching them fall in love with a sport both Zach and I played throughout our entire lives. It’s been so much fun going to the court at camp or at some of our local Y’s as a family and playing a quick game. Teaching them some of the basics has been a real pleasure when they learn the “tricks” to being a good defender (my specialty) and offender (Zach’s specialty).

I’ve said it before, but I love everything sports teaches kids. I love that it teaches time management (you need to figure out how to get homework done before practice!), teamwork, loyalty and that exercise can be fun. I also know from experience that some of their lifelong friends will come from their athletic teams (or band/choir, etc).

A bit surreal to be a mom to kids big enough to actually make plays, dribble between their legs and chest bump their brothers when one scores. Such joy all around.

Though Tariku is the youngest on every team he plays (he always plays up to Trysten’s age-2 years his senior) it makes sense because he is so incredibly athletically gifted. And he flippin’ loves every minute.

Tomas we call our “offensive lineman”. Not a lot of finesse but what he lacks in grace he makes up for in sheer determined effort. If Tomas is on the court no one else will get the rebound.

Trysten is hot and cold depending on the day and time. This was the first season I saw real potential in him as before he’s gone the more laid back approach. Perhaps there is a little of us in that one after all. 😉

I really don’t care if they are good or bad, sit the bench or play. I don’t care if they end up playing sports or get involved in acting or music, I’m always going to be the woman yelling a little too loud and getting a bit choked up when they look at me in a moment of triumph.

Oh, and they took home 1st place, which was just the cherry on top. 🙂

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