Where did their names come from?

NOTE: A few months after this post, we found out that Patricia's name is pronounced just like our pronunciation of Patricia. I'm leaving this post up because we still share the sentiment that we want to keep their names and heritage intact as much as possible, but her name is PATRICIA not Patreesa. 

~+~

I don't know.

Sorry! We can't post unaltered pictures yet.

Maybe we'll learn that detail, the same way we learned who gave Zoe Amanda's original first name to her. We kept ChiehHsi as a middle name, and I'm thankful our contacts in her country could tell us where the name came from.

Maybe we'll never know who gifted Patience, Philip, and Patreesa with their names. 

Either way, we're keeping them.

Some people opt to rename their children who arrive via adoption. Given Zoe's name and the difficulty pronouncing ChiehHsi with an American tongue, we made that choice last time.

We always planned to keep the given names of older adopted kiddos, though. And we are. 

{So thankful that we really do like each of their names!}

Well, we're keeping the names with one change: the spelling of Patricia. 

In Uganda, the pronunciation is different from what we're accustomed to here. Instead of sounding like -isha, it rhymes with Lisa. From now on, we'll be spelling it to match that pronunciation: Patreesa.

If you write a note or have something else with "Patricia" on it - now or in the future - don't feel bad. The blankie I sent to her in Uganda has that spelling in my script, written with a Sharpie in the corner.

The official spelling of her name will be Patreesa once the court paperwork is said and done, but an accepted spelling will always be Patricia. 

We just won't use it as the official spelling, because no one here will pronounce Patricia in

the way her first parents did. 

the way her siblings do. 

the way everyone in her native culture does. 

the way she learned to.

Patreesa.

I can't take away the losses in her life. 

But I can keep her from the loss of the name she's always known.

My name is Shannon, but I want to tell you about Christian.

I shared this as part of the opening worship at Bifrost Arts' Cry of the Poor conference on April 22, 2013. I'll be sharing more later this week from the notes used in my April 23 session, but this? This demands a post of its own. 


My name is Shannon, but I want to tell you about Christian. 

Christian was seven years old, had autism, and was diagnosed in the fall of 2012 with an aggressive brain tumor. On April 16, 2013, God brought Christian’s earthly life to an end.

I miss him.

While I have comfort in knowing that Christian’s bodily function is no longer being choked by his tumor and he is no longer limited by an inability to communicate in a typical way or by any of those other things about autism that made him a visitor and stranger in this world, I loved him and, selfishly, I miss him.

Christian was so much more than his diagnoses. Christian exuded joy. He loved music, and he shared gifts of authenticity and love and laughter and lack of pretense and so much more. He was as whole and complete and beautiful as I am, and now by God’s glory he is more whole and complete and beautiful than any of us. 

How I long for the day when I will worship with Christian before the King!

You see, I love Christian and my other friends with and without disabilities who I've met through my church’s inclusive ministry because I, too, am a visitor here. I may not have autism or a brain tumor, but I am handicapped daily by my sin. As God calls me not to conform to this world, He sets me apart as a stranger and sojourner in this land. Since my husband and I began leading our church’s inclusive special needs ministry, our youngest daughter Zoe joined our family via special needs adoption from Taiwan due to cerebral palsy; then our son Robbie was diagnosed with epilepsy; and now we’re in the process of adopting again.

I love being a part of a church that welcomes Christians and Shannons and Zoes and Robbies and Philips and all the hard questions our lives pose, especially in the face of trite or cliché theology. I cherish the church that includes all its parts, as laid out in 1 Corinthians 12, and allows, in the words of John 9:3, the works of God to be displayed in disability. I am thankful for the community God has created in my midst, a community that – along with me – loves God and misses Christian.

overexposed in public, underdeveloped in private

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

{Matthew 23:27}

In ministry, we can look great on the outside. Sometimes we have the faith inside to back that up.

Sometimes? Well, we don't.

That's why this blog has been quiet. 

In our family, we've had a lot of change in the past year and a half (which, not coincidentally, is the same period of time that the blog has been neglected): the start of an unexpected adoption of a baby girl with cerebral palsy, the sale of one house, the purchase of another house, the move to the new house, the trip to Taiwan to bring Zoe home, her celebrated arrival, the start of kindergarten for our oldest, the surprise seizure the night before Thanksgiving and subsequent diagnosis of epilepsy for our middle child, my own struggles with depression, and now?

Yes, we're adopting again, this time a sibling group of three from Uganda, one of whom is HIV+.

Through all of our lives' recent transitions, we've been blessed to continue leading our church's special needs ministry. 

In order to keep myself accountable to the commitments I have in our family and home church, something had to give in the midst of it all. 

Thus, the quiet here.

I needed to decrease my exposure publicly to allow God to develop places in my heart privately.

I needed bones and uncleanliness swept away by Him, lest this blog be nothing more than the beautiful whitewashed tomb appearances put on by the Pharisees and called out by Christ in Matthew 23.

I've missed it, though. As I've been immersed in the Christian adoption community, I've become more and more convicted that churches can do a better job including people with disabilities, both those who arrive via adoption and those who make their entrance in other ways.

So regular posts begin again today, my friends. 

Oh, I forgot to mention... the other kids are coming to Uganda too.

As in, the kids we already have.

Uganda’s courts move at their own pace. Court dates get scheduled, travel booked, plane taken… and then court dates might be postponed or rescheduled. We’ll have an estimate of how long our in-country trip will be, but it may change.

In fact, some families opt to buy a one-way ticket to get to Uganda and wait until everything is final to buy their one-way tickets back.

Leaving Jocelyn, Robbie, and Zoe for an indefinite amount of time? That would be hard on us, hard on them, and hard on the friends or family who would care for them while we’re gone.

Because of that, we’re all going.

(Side note: We're footing the bill for the current kids' travel, because we don't feel comfortable including that in our fundraising... a.k.a. asking others to pay for that optional portion of our expenses.)

After all, it's not just me and Lee adopting our Ugandan three. The entire family will be affected.

So the entire family will go.

In addition to the logistics of care for our current three if they stay here, we have other reasons for wanting to bring them. For starters, Jocelyn and Robbie will be able to understand their siblings better after seeing the context they've come from. Right now, they think their Ugandan siblings are living in a house just like ours in another part of the world. In order to wrap their minds around the challenges their new siblings are facing as they adjust to life in the US, Jocelyn and Robbie need to experience life in Africa.

Generally speaking, kids tend to connect with other kids more readily than they bond with adults, so Patience and Jocelyn might become fast friends before Patience trusts me or Lee. (We’re okay with that.)  They also might not get along so well, with any of the new three bonding to us first. (We’re okay with that too.)  Finally, we’ll get time to live as a family in Uganda before we all move back to our home in the US together.

We do have a friend who will be traveling with us, so we’ll have three adults to our six children, at least for part of the trip.

It'll be hard, like so many other aspects of adoption.

It will also be worth it, like so many other aspects of adoption.

the faces of children

Yesterday Jocelyn brought home a black-and-white xeroxed page with all her classmates' school pictures.

As I looked at the squinty eyes and uninhibited grins of her fellow six- and seven-year olds - Liam, Kaleb, Maddy, Dixon, Ebie, Columba, and more - something made me think of other pictures I've seen this year...

Similar school pictures of young ones from Sandy Hook who never made it to the end of the year.

Unsmiling pictures of orphans who watch friends leave the orphanage with new mommies and daddies but who don't have anyone coming for them yet.

Faces peering out from behind hajibs, which cover the girls' heads but not their courage as they pursue education despite the physical and cultural ramifications.

Dirt-smudged faces of girls who have been freed after being bought and sold and trafficked by people with plenty of resources but little integrity.

Pictures I've seen of the 10 youngsters who died in the recent Moore tornado, including some whose lives ended when the storm hit their school.

Pictures I haven't seen but can almost imagine of another 10 schoolchildren who died recently, these children at the hands of a suicide bomber in Afghanistan earlier this week.

I don't know what it was about the black-and-white pictures of Jocelyn's classmates, but they stirred in me a mix of despair and hope for the children who aren't able to go to such an excellent school. Are they worth less than my daughter and her friends?

Certainly not.

So why do I have hope too and not just despair? Because I know three of those orphans I mentioned earlier. They will go to Jocelyn's school, but they won't be orphans anymore; they'll simply be following in their big sister's footsteps (along with another former orphan and a silly little man who has never been without parents).

Because I see other glimmers of God's promises, spurring me to consider beauty in the midst of brokenness.

I weep for the broken places and people. I cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus." I ache for the parents who don't have their children to hold and the children who don't have parents to love them.

And I persevere, knowing I can't mend all the torn places (nor am I called to do so), but I can be faithful to obey where God leads. In doing so, I accept His invitation to join in the sort of fast described in Isaiah 58:

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the straps of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily;

your righteousness shall go before you;

the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;

you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

If you take away the yoke from your midst,

the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

if you pour yourself out for the hungry

and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

then shall your light rise in the darkness

and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the Lord will guide you continually

and satisfy your desire in scorched places

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to dwell in.