Love Big.

This past weekend I was blessed to  attend Created for Care with my dear friend Randee!

Since re-uniting with reality...
(for real, ya'll ...there was chocolate and coffee EVERYWHERE!)

I've tried to gather my thoughts.

Process some stuff.

Re-evaluate motives. actions. Opportunities.

And mostly I've tried to remind myself that I chose to walk this path of Intentional Parenting.

I chose not to depend on the 'norm' to correct, connect with and help my children heal.

I knowingly entered into this world of brokenness and beauty and loss and redemption and grief and restoration.

And His Grace has so abounded....
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As I think about all I gained this weekend, I truly don't know if it's possible to express how much my heart was filled as I sat listening to the Voice of the Adoptee as she walked through the " adoption process" from our children's view.
"Children from hard places often deal with immense shame related to the earliest rejections, abandonments, losses... Guilt is in direct relationship to actions...but Shame? Shame speaks to someone's very Goodness"   Oh. The power of those words as we walk next to our children on their road to healing...

Or how refreshed and renewed and released I was in my date with God....
I came feeling like I was in a good place. With adoption. With life. But, oh my...when given the chance to truly release the weight.. I was surprised by how much I needed the embrace of my Father. How much I desired to just be a child in the safety of her Father's arms again without the burdens of this life....

But I know that I needed it. And so did 899 other mommas who traveled to Created for Care for the January and March retreats.

Those amazing mommas who planned and organized and orchestrated all of this... what can be said in gratitude to the women who gave us the chance to sit in a room and look around and think "These are my people" and tell stories and discuss struggles that we so carefully protect in our everyday lives?

It seems so inadequate for all that was poured out on our behalf...

You see, I'm not necessarily the best at making friends...but at C4C I truly believed I was in a room with true friends.

We cried together. OMG. Did we cry together (have I mentioned yet my inability to cry pretty?).

We laughed and cheered and renewed our spirits together.

We worshiped together.

And together we left. Ready to go home. To get back to the very basics of all we know about parenting our kiddos from hard places. To be fully present in their needs and desires and sorrows.

To Love Big.