Love and Adoption

Now that I've got my "day after getting home" madness out of the way and have had some quiet moments to reflect on the last week's events, I'm finding a lot to ponder.

I spent the best part of the week with my 2nd grandchild who is even at her very tender age an amazing child on so many levels.  And I fell in love again.  I fell in with her older cousin a year ago at her birth and it's just got worse at every visit since.  Last week I fell in love with EJ.  I can't say enough about how sweet and squishy and adorable this big eyed little bundle of energy is.

It was different with EJ.  She came to us by adoption and was several months old when she arrived at her permanent home.  We knew for several years that "some day" there would be an adoptive child. And we loved and prayed for this child, knowing he/she may not even be born yet.  So getting to know EJ wasn't exactly at ground zero. This little person had to get used to me and come to trust me before she would laugh at my fish lip kisses or raspberries on the tummy.  We were just getting to be good friends when I had to leave.  It was hard.  Really, really hard.

All that being said, I have to confess to a new appreciation for the love of my God as well.  It makes so much more sense now about His great heart that He sacrificed so much so I could be adopted into His family.  Like EJ, my original situation was most dangerous.  Like EJ, I was sick.  And I was different than Him.  None of that mattered.  He accepted me and just like EJ will always be a Horton, I will always be a child of God.

It's doubtful our new granddaughter will ever look like either of her new parents, but there's no doubt she will take on many of their fine qualities and mannerisms.  They will raise her to be the respectful, responsible, resourceful and creative person God intends her to be.

I take comfort that God is doing the same with me, that in His love and kindness, even in this stage of life He's still leading me to be the person I'm supposed to be.  He remains the best Parent ever.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

Well, when I first saw the guy I was assigned to sit by on the plane I thought "terrorist".  Middle Eastern, skull cap, beard, black robes. Turns out he even had an accent.  Other  people were trying to avoid looking at him -  I could tell they were uncomfortable.  So I smiled real big and pointed to the seat between him and the window.  He jumped up,  helped me wrestle my bags into place and let me in.

During all this I saw the ornate wooden cross around his neck so I knew something else was up.  After struggling internally a few minutes I jumped in with both feet - "So you're obviously a  man of the cloth -  tell me about yourself."

And he did. This soft spoken gentle man and I had a nice chat about church history, persecution of believers in the Middle East, life, faith, cultural bubbles, scripture, seminaries and teaching tools.  I even recommended a place he may consider as a retreat for the seminary students he teaches.

So that was part of my very interesting day coming home.  I have my doubts  whether an hour beside a crazy Baptist lady will have any impact for him and in the long run, probably not for me either.  But I did see him soften when I told him about "our people" praying for "his people" and I now have a face to go with my brothers and sisters in the Middle East who know better than I what it is to suffer for the Cross.

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Side note added  later.  For the record, six months after this event in February 2015, 21 of "his people", Egyptian Coptic Christians, were captured by Isis in Lybia and beheaded. 

Onward, Forward

For many years, for reasons of my own, I didn't go around advertising my college affiliation. It's only been in the last few years I listed it on Facebook.  Like including my maiden name, it's so people from my past can find me. (Not that anyone has exactly beat down the door to find me, let alone connect.)  One look at our family photo and the opinion pendulum swings from "Thank God they survived that college" to "Poor things fell from grace."

I have no reason to address either concern.  When it comes to opinions, I take to Kipling's advice, "If all men count with you, but none too much."

That being said, there are many things I'm very thankful for from my college experience, the one which I want to praise today being teacher training.  Guess what?  We weren't taught to use standardized curriculum.  I have marveled in the years since graduation at all the nicely packaged curriculums that have been developed, many for both classroom and home school use - all organized and laid out and ready to use so that most of the teacher's work is to implement lesson plans right out of the box.

We didn't get that.  Many of the teachers I studied under WROTE their own curriculum and our lessons as future teachers were to WRITE our own lessons. While textbooks were used as a starting point for many disciplines, it was fitted to the students, not vice versa.   Even classic Zaner-Bloser handwriting material was supplemented with exercises and practice of our own writing and choosing. We learned to research, to be resourceful and creative. This mindset extended into student teaching where we had to be innovative while nailing the study material.

I left college equipped to teach, but didn't.  By the time I graduated I had a husband and a family which took priority. That's not to say the education was wasted -  it most certainly equipped me to be a better parent and later on to teach adults believe it or not.  In the beginning it was in a career capacity, then ministry, then public service and now  . . . . children.  The same age group I taught back then no less.  All these years I've been practicing by writing lessons and power point presentations for grown ups and now its the real deal - teaching children about God.

And true to the way Mr. Smith, Mrs. Barbier, and my other wonderful instructors taught, the "textbooks" turned out to be a springboard, a starting point to get me headed in the direction God is leading this thing.

I had the blessing of meeting someone I had admired as a youth a few years ago. Jessie Rice Sandberg wrote for a nationwide publication for many years and turned out to be as warm and engaging and down to earth as I had imagined her to be forty years before.  One comment she made during that meeting was that God's (main) purpose for our lives might very well be during these late afternoon and sunset days of our lives. With my own kids all grown and managing their lives without my help now, that gives me hope.  It is a challenge to rise to.

And I thank Hyles Anderson College, First Baptist Church of Hammond and Hammond Baptist Grade School for their part in helping me meet that challenge.