A stranger bought Lily a wheelchair yesterday. Life has been a balancing act for us the past year. Adjusting to a kid in college, both kids being athletes with talents that they have both been given, to compete in extra ordinary circumstances. Full disclosure, we should have planned for college better when Bird was little. We did not plan on out of state tuition, and all the things. She has maintained her scholarships, but it is by no means a full ride. It has stretched us. All of us. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. We love our kids, but more than that we really LIKE our kids. That is why we chose to homeschool. It use to drive me crazy when people said, “I could never homeschool, I’d kill em.” Trust me, that’s part of it too, but I really like(d) being with my kids doing big things all the time, and just being a part of everyday life with them. I miss Bird. Everything about her I miss. On the other side of that, I am so incredibly proud of her I could burst. This little spitfire moved 17 hours from home (at 17), in a completely different world from what she was raised in and has not only survived, but thrived. I cannot imagine how this time will shape the grown up adult version of our Bird. But that also doesn’t mean that it has been easy. For us, or for her. Financially it has really stretched me and Brad. He has worked 10 hour days, long weekends, to give our kids the life they have. We have just, somehow, made it happened all these years. Owning a small family business, chasing kids around their big lives hasn’t been easy but…Jesus. Without Him we would be nothing. And none of us would have survived. Lily, ahhh Lily is thriving. I can remember not long after she was home, I found myself roped into some adoption groups. Those are great, and they help, but they can also have a time and a place. I somehow got introduced to this group of grown adopted children who grew up and now hate their adopted parents, because they didn’t have a choice in the adoption process. And then in return blamed their adoptive parents. Now, I am sure there was lots buried in those families stories that I know nothing about. But it terrified me, and for a while crippled me. It really messed with me mentally, and it controlled my parenting for a while, and not in good ways. If you go back and read my past blogs, you will see the struggles and hardships we all endured. Family and Lily. Adoption isn’t for the faint of heart. It isn’t easy on anyone. My baby girl struggled for years emotionally, physically, and spiritually. She will most likely have a lifetime of feelings and emotions she will have to deal with. One day about 3 years ago at a basketball tournament in Virginia, Lily and I were headed back to our hotel after dinner. I had the urge to ask her if she ever thinks about her birth mom. The conversation that followed was one of heart break and hope. I am sure it wasn’t as monumental for her, because she was so little, but it leveled me. It deepened our relationship in ways that forever changed us, her and me. It opened a door for real, raw conversation, and it was like years of hurt for me and her were left in Virginia with that trip. Fast forward to today, SHE IS THRIVING. She is the funniest person I have ever met. She is loud, and wild, and she is so talented in so many ways. She brings life and joy to every single setting. She attended The University of Alabama’s Basketball Camp last summer, and the coaches write out evaluation sheets after the camp. Now Lily is a baller, and she is pretty good, and her remarks validated all of that. But the one remark that I was most proud of was that Lily IS a team player, that when the team was together, she brought them all together. Her coaches exact words were, “Helped unify the team unintentionally.” He went on to say, “I encourage you to communicate and lead with Confidence. You got it between the ears.” (Shout out to Josh at Alabama-I saved this eval and you spoke life into our child that week). This little baby that I watched crawl over filth in Haiti, who worn torn t-shirts as diapers, ate one meal a day sometimes, experienced the highest level of neglect any human could, is built with so much integrity and love and joy and leadership. It radiates from her. Jesus radiates from her. She loves so well. And back to my point of how much she has grown. She is a big girl now. Her ball chair no longer fits her. She squeezes in it and by the end of a long tournament her hips are sore, and the effects of squeezing in that chair show. We had her measured back in April for a new chair…the cost $5,482.81. She needed one last year. Insurance only pays for one wheelchair every 5-7 years. If that. And insurance chairs are crap. We found a company in Texas we love who makes Lily’s chairs. Her day chair is about $4K, and full disclosure our “insurance” chair was going to be about $2800 out of pocket…for crap. So we chose to self-pay for her chairs because they are better made, and it cuts out the corporation/3rd party insurance vultures, and we support small business. Some families can’t do this, which is another reason we try to keep the Pumpkin Patch free…medical needs are high for our families. We get this first hand. College is expensive, and we are trying to go at it with no school loans. In other terms, we are college broke. Lily needs a new chair. I have had a fundraiser ready to go, but haven’t hit the button yet because I feel like we are always fundraising for the Patch or Rolling with Santa, and people get tired of that. It’s my pride. I am working on it. So last week we ordered her chair, which comes with a down payment. Little confusion on our part of how much we needed to put down to start the process. It takes 3-4 months to build, complete and ship. It is built to every specification to Lily. It really is miraculous how far things have evolved related to wheelchairs. It really is an amazing process. The confidence it gives your kid, to strap into their very own chair, that they helped to design, and is a reflection of them, and then to be able to go out and do something amazing and sometimes humanly impossible, is a beautiful thing to watch and be a part of. But again, it ain’t cheap. We drained a few accounts, and paid half yesterday morning. $2,741.41, which ironically was close the same college payment we made a few days before. This week =broke and trust. Last Thursday a new customer called wanting her logs checked for this weather we had coming in this weekend. Brad was already booked Friday, but I squeezed this one in on top of an already long day for him. Owning your own business together isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s often feast or famine, and surviving in between. That also takes a toll on your marriage. Back to Thursday customer, long story short she needed new logs. We typically try not to work weekends. Full disclosure, we haven’t seen each other much in the past few weeks. That doesn’t help the stress or the marriage. This sweet lady picked out logs on Friday after Brad left, and called back Friday afternoon to see if Brad would come install them on Saturday. We had a day planned of taking Lily to practice and maybe stealing a few minutes to ourselves, that honestly, we needed. But we also knew that we just drained some accounts. He said he would be there Saturday morning. He went to work. I did my usually carting Lily around for her grand life! We all finally made it back home around 3. He walked in, and I could tell he had been crying. He handed me an envelope. He is a talker, and more and more, he is sharing about the No Limit Lily Foundation. We have the best customers who often send him with “extra” to support what we believe in. I figured this was one of those envelopes. But as we opened this envelope, we realized this was not the normal donation. As Brad shared our story to this sweet customer, and shared about Lily, and probably talked his way through installing her logs, the Lord had given us all a divine appointment meeting together in the name of plumbing, in the name gas logs, to move a heart to write a check, to buy our Lily a wheelchair. Done. Check wrote. Need Meet. Weight Lifted. In one simple Saturday of work, that we really were dragging our feet on, the Lord used, ministered, met a need so great, I wasn’t sure how the rest was going to happen. My husband needed this miracle. He has been working long hours and this was confirmation; the Lord has it. Brad has been sober for almost 2 years. A struggle only our close friends and family knew. Those that have walked with us in the valleys and the mountaintops know the battles fought behind closed doors. Long years of struggles, but for the past few years it has been overwhelming times of healing and hope. Just like Lily. I have seen the Lord show up time and time again like this. I had someone in the church tell me once I was in sin because I was fundraising for our adoption and didn’t have enough faith that God would finance the whole thing. That was crap. That was misguided advice. And stupid. He provided, but it was never in the someone walked in and wrote the whole check. It was always after we had worked, and made connections, made contributions on our own and shared our story, Lily’s story, and our faith was strengthened and encouraged that the Lord moved, and provided, at just the right time. It was the, “if you aren’t faithful with little.” Kind of lessons for us. It wasn’t until we stepped out first, that He provided after. Just like yesterday, we drained them accounts, went about our normal. I am pretty sure Brad was crunching numbers for the next week, and panicking. I was trying to survive the stress on my end. And just like that, one chance encounter, one meeting, one very sweet lady, who’s heart was softened and moved, DONE! He provided. Brad needed the miracle. I needed this for my faith. I needed to know God is still nearby. He is still here. This is probably the most honest, raw, full disclosure of our lives I have ever written. My faith has been struggling. There is so much hate, and mess in our world right now. You do not know which way to fight or be the light, what hill to die on, who to attack and who to support, so much anger and fighting. And no one who really has any solutions. Just a bunch of loud noise in a world of anger, with no one really doing anything except sharing their opinions on social media. God where are you? He has been so silent. When you immerse yourself in an adoption journey, and you have 1,000 people in your front yard, some of the most beautiful experiences you see God move in changes you. You feel Him, in miraculous ways. In ways, you don’t see in everyday life sometimes. You should, but I have been looking for the big that the small has been silent for me. That is where my faith has been struggling. I know what to do. I have been a Christian long enough, and walked with Him long enough to know the steps to take to get back to that place. But with all the noise, sometimes it is hard to remember the God we worship. The same one who provided mana in the wilderness, the same one that was with John the Baptist on the chopping block, the same one that walked the woman to the well that day for a chance encounter with the only Jesus that would change her life. All the miracles, all the stories, He is still here. Still moving, still meeting needs. And still staying close to those whose miracle never comes, whose heart breaks and longs for the fixing of whatever situation they find themself in. I am learning more and more when to be loud and fight, and when to shut up and just love people. I am learning if I am going to be loud about something make sure, I am loving and “doing” and working to prevent the very same thing I am fighting about. Don’t just make the post but make sure action is behind it. God is still here. Still working. Still providing. Still meeting us where we are. I can’t help but think what if we wouldn’t have been willing to work Saturday. What if we just said no. In the name of family. What a blessing we would have missed. A chance encounter with someone that was able to change a life and circumstance for Lily. What if we would have said no to the adoption. I couldn’t think of my life, our life, without Lily. Just like the Rolling Pumpkin Patch. Man, what would we do with our front yard every October. Just like adding in Rolling with Santa this year. It was hard, and we didn’t have the finances, but the Lord provided through a last minute donor who gave 1K to make Christmas memories for a bunch of kids we love and adore. To the mom of the autistic son who loved all the sticks in my yard, and she got to have a day to just let him be himself and experience some Christmas magic. We both cried in my side yard at just doing hard together. Different kinds, yet the same. I would have missed that had we not said yes to Santa. And now because of this sacrifice of someone we had never met before Saturday, Lily is getting a new chair, and that opens doors for us to repurpose hers for someone else! Blessings upon Blessings. Lord, you are here. You haven’t left. You are still quietly loving, and patiently waiting for your children to just realize how amazing you really are. Hey Lil, pick out your wheelchair color and let’s get rolling! “I will not leave you nor will I forsake you” Hebrews 13:5