We decided early on that we wanted to find out the gender of this baby, but we also wanted to take advantage of the fun developments that have occurred in the last six years since we had our last child. (And by “We,” I assume you all I know I mean “Me.” Lee is, graciously, along for this crazy ride).
There weren’t gender reveal parties when we had babies earlier. This is a new development, and a fun one to boot!
Last Thursday, I had an ultrasound, and I kept my head turned and my eyes squeezed shut while the technician pushed and moved the baby around looking for the right shot. She got a clear view, and handed me a sealed envelope with the results, and thus began the most stressful 24 hours of my pregnancy.
I held the results in my hand, but we had determined to find out together as a family.
Do you know how many times I considered opening them, then resealing them in another envelope?!
Roughly 168 times…
But I resisted, and I handed off the envelope to my friend Jenni, who was tasked with pulling the surprise together. And I spent the second 24 hours talking myself out of texting her to see if I could get her to slip up and offer me some clue as to the results. I’m glad I waited, though, because the surprise?
Oh it was sweet.
I had my mouth open for most of the pictures. Good grief, I have a huge mouth…
Truthfully, I’ve felt for most of this pregnancy that I was carrying a girl, but there was a part of me that feared I was wrong. Of course I would have been equally as thrilled to have another little boy, but here’s the thing:
I feel like this little girl is just a whisper of God’s sweetness to me.
It’s no secret that the termination of our adoption was one of the most difficult and heart-wrenching experiences I’ve ever walked through. While I mourned the loss of a child I had prayed for, dreamed of, and envisioned for so many years, I lost something else, too.
I lost the guarantee of a sister for my Katya.
These past 18 months have been some of the hardest of my life. Not only did I say goodbye to my dream of adoption, and to the child that we had already prayed for and loved, but I also experienced personal heartache within my own family, and it all became a lot to process.
I longed for a sister in the last year. I see the relationships that so many others have with their sisters, and I wished I had the same.
Adoption had been a way for me to answer that dream for my daughter. I dreamed of giving her a sister, and by adopting a little girl, I felt like I could at least give her that gift.
See the thing is – Stuart men are not known for producing little girls. Our Tia broke a long history of strong male lineage, and I feared that we had already struck the X-Chromosome gold, so to speak, and it seemed fairly far-fetched to think we might be able to have another girl on our own.
So I had prepared myself to bring another (amazing) little boy into this world, and to pray that Tia would be blessed with sister-friends instead.
This is my very favorite of all the photos.
But God is so good to hear my deepest heart’s cry. He knows that I still ache a bit over the failed adoption, and perhaps I always will. Perhaps that experience will always sting just a little.
But He provided a balm by answering the smallest of prayers.
Please give my girl a sister.
What a joy it was to experience this moment with our families, both near and far. Thank you modern technology. Yet another advance from the last time we did this whole baby thing.
Having a baby in 2014 is F-U-N!
Thank you to everyone who celebrated this day with us virtually.We opted not to have an in person gender reveal, because I just felt like it would be too much, but the online virtual party we had was even more fun, because all of my worlds, past and present, collided in that one moment, and it felt like the most special day in all the world.
Social media, man. It’s pretty awesome.
And, of course, a big, huge, GIGANTIC shout out to Jenni of Avodah Images for keeping the secret, bringing the balloons, and taking the photos. I’m so grateful that she and her family were there with us for this day. What a blessing.
In 2003, I packed a small bag with a few changes of clothes, and my mom and I (and my 5-months pregnant belly) boarded a plane for a month-long adventure in Ukraine.
I had this dream, you see.I dreamed of writing a book – of telling the stories of the men and women whose history captivated me when I was sixteen years old. I wanted the world to hear their words, to glean the wisdom for living that these people could offer, from a perspective that was completely unique.
We landed on March 16, 2003, and for the next month, we toured through Central, Southern, and Western Ukraine. Each city we stayed in offered a new group of World War II veterans, of former partisans, and of survivors who happily met with us. I soaked in the fascinating stories of survival that these men and women offered.
For reasons that are too numerous to list, I was not able to compile all of these stories into one book like I wanted, but they became the backbone of my novel. They are the voices that I hear when I read my book, and they form the current that drives the novel from beginning to end.As I continue to push forward toward publication, I feel like it’s time to share some of these stories with you all.
These stories are more than just interesting recollections. They are ripe with wisdom for life. They dance with the bravery of a people that refused to give up, refused to be steam-rolled. Most of the people I spoke with were children when the war began. They were teenagers dreaming of the future.
I hope you can feel the power of their words, and appreciate the beauty of the human spirit. Sometimes I sit back in wonder at these first hand accounts I was given. These men and women, most of whom have since passed away, trusted me with their stories so that I would tell the people in the coming generations to come that life is truly a gift. It is to be treasured.
For the next four Mondays, I will be giving some of these stories to you. Today I share with you the courage, bravery, and spunk of a woman named Elizabeta Yepifanova:
The war began in 1941. Here in Ukraine, we were raised with a definite air of patriotism, much like Americans. There was a national hatred of those who wanted, and were trying, to occupy our Motherland.
When the Germans occupied our city (Vinnitsya), they took away all forms of communication from us. We had no radio, no newspapers, no way of receiving news from the front. But there existed many secret organizations, and those who smuggled radios listened and wrote out newsletters by hand and distributed them.
There was a library in Vinnitsya at that time named “Krupskaya Nadezda” after Lenin’s wife. A secret organization formed at this library under the leadership of Ivan Bevza. Because the organization worked undercover in the library, those of us involved had to make sure that we always walked in and out with a book in our hands. But instead of going in there to read or study, we were talking to Ivan Bevza and he would tell us the times and places where operations would take place. So the library was our partisan meeting center.
The Germans were very afraid of the partisans. We were unpredictable and well protected. They never knew where we would strike next…
I remember a certain episode in my many years as a partisan when my friend, Sophia, and I met two German soldiers who thought we were quite pretty. We worked out a plan that seemed so simple at the time, but now I realize that it was quite dangerous.
We invited the two Germans to our apartment and they readily accepted. We prepared some food for them and when they came, we immediately had them take off their coats and get comfortable. I guess they naively believed that women weren’t a threat to them because they left their guns in the foyer with their coats.
Not long into our evening together, I excused myself to go to the neighbors to borrow something. Instead, I grabbed one of the officers’ guns and left, quickly racing across town to the meeting place.
After a few moments, Sophia excused herself saying she was going to get me. She grabbed the other gun and also left, but she was afraid she wouldn’t make it across town fast enough so she went to the top of the building and hid.
A few moments later, the Germans came running out of the building – frantic. This incident earned us positions of leadership in the partisan camp. We participated in numerous operations such as that one, where we played on the foolishness of innocent young German boys. It was great fun.
What I want young people today to know and understand is that this life is a gift. It can change in an instant. You must know what you believe, and why you believe it, and when the time comes to defend the ones you love, it’s okay to be afraid. Courage is always victorious over fear, and it comes in the moment you least expect. This is what I want young people to know.
Last October, I wrote a 31 Day series on becoming an author. Writing those posts unlocked something inside me – something that I’d rolled up and tucked away in the corner of my heart a long time ago.
I remembered that I wanted to be a writer.
I was a freshman in college in 1996. Yes, I’m publicly admitting my age right now. I’m feeling brave.
I got my first email address that year, and it took me the entire first semester of college to figure out how to use the blasted thing. I would walk to The Sub in the middle of Baylor Campus and click on that little ‘e’ button, and then wonder what the heck I was supposed to do next on this odd little contraption called the internet.
By 1998, my junior year, I’d learned relatively little about using the internet. Nice, huh? Outside of finally figuring out my Baylor issued email address, I could not for my life manage to search the web without going in circles and ending up frustrated. As I headed to Kiev, Ukraine for a fall study abroad, I finally had someone help me set up my very first email address that wasn’t linked to the school.
I got my little hotmail address up and running, then jetted off to the other side of the world with big promises of staying in touch with everyone. I quickly found an internet cafe located not too far from my school in the heart of Kiev, and once a week I paid for an hour of time on the computer. 45 minutes of that time was spent trying to find Hotmail, just so I could sign into my account.
I had no idea that I could just type in the web address on the top of the page. Instead, I would go to Google (or Yahoo – I can’t remember which one was popular then) and I would type in the word “hotmail.” Then I would follow link after link until I somehow, mercifully, found my way to the hotmail home page.
For two months, I used this roundabout method to check my email before I finally figured out the easy way to search the web and my life was revolutionized completely.
I tell you this to help you understand that I never, ever dreamed that I would one day write on the internet. This was not on my radar. I left college with dreams of writing books.
Then I had a baby, and another one, and another one, and I came to the realization that writing books is hard to do when you only have ten minutes of alone time each day (and those ten minutes were usually spent locked in my closet with my eyes closed tight, praying that God would make me a bird so I could fly far. Far, far away…).
So I took to writing on the internet, and I found that I loved it. I got to enjoy utilizing my craft, release a little pent up frustration (in the form of humorous stories), and make so many friends along the way.
But deep down inside I knew that I was meant to do more with this thing called writing.
It can be wildly discouraging and frustrating to be online these days when it seems every third person is releasing their book while I wait and wonder if mine will ever be picked up. It’s a timing thing, a finding the right person thing, a patience thing – I know all these “things,” and yet I find myself so impatient for that next step.
Passion is a funny beast. Passionate living points you in a direction and requires much more than a simple obsession. It takes more than hard work, more than bravery, more than talent. Passion requires belief.
Passion requires you to direct your energy with purpose toward the thing you want to pursue.
Living a life of purpose means living a life in pursuit of those things that make you feel alive, and we are all jolted alive by different things. Have you found your passion? Have you found the one thing (or several things!) that gets your heart pumping, your pulse racing, and pushes you purposefully forward each day?
Don’t be afraid to chase after your passions, and for those of you who, like me, are pursuing them but feel like you’re slogging through the mire of discouragement, keep pressing forward. Pursue because you love what you do, not because you love the rewards. Yes, the rewards are icing on the cake, but here’s the thing:
“Okay, Tia,” the teacher said. “I want you to close your eyes right now. We’re going to play a game.”
I looked on as my daughter compliantly squeezed her eyes shut. We were sitting in the kitchen with a retired second grade teacher who is giving Tia a few tips and tricks to strengthen her reading comprehension. One of the things she noticed right away was that my daughter (a realist, and about as literal a child as they come) was not connecting the the text she was reading.
“Now,” the teacher said gently. “The characters in this story are named Bob, Tom and Jack. Tell me, Tia. What does Jack look like?”
Tia opened her eyes and looked at the teacher in surprise.
“Close your eyes,” the teacher reminded her with a smile. “I want you to use your imagination and tell me what you think Jack looks like. What is he wearing?”
“Uuuummmm…shorts and a t-shirt?” Tia asked.
“Okay,” the teacher said with a smile. “What about Tom?”
“Uh…jeans and a long sleeve shirt?”
“And Bob?”
Tia squeezed her eyes tight and I could see her trying very hard to figure out this obscure exercise in imagination. “Um…a long sleeve shirt and shorts?”
That was the best she could do. This is my child who is not imaginative. She is not one to get lost in story, or to play make believe. She never has been that way – it is simply not the way she was wired. All of her play is centered around real life, or around stories she has heard before. She’s not one to make up her own stories, but rather will regurgitate that which has already been told.
I’m okay with this, though I confess that for a dreamer/imaginer like myself, it is sometimes baffling to watch her process the world. How did I end up with a child who can’t find a shape in a cloud, or close her eyes and imagine a world where the sky isn’t blue?
I’ll tell you how – I married a literalist, and she is just like her daddy.
I had to bite my lip from laughing at her that day with the teacher. She seemed entirely befuddled by this little game, and as I explained the nature of her personality to the teacher later, both of us agreed that she will likely struggle less with nonfiction books that fiction.
It’s hard to connect with a text when you can’t really see the pictures in your mind.
That’s not to say we won’t keep trying. It’s a necessary skill that I want her to develop, but it won’t ever come naturally to her.
Yesterday, she and I sat down to work on her reading. She pulled out The Magic Treehouse and slowly began to read. I stopped her after the first paragraph.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s practice what Miss Eileen taught you. After reading this paragraph what picture do you have in your mind of Jack and Annie?”
Tia looking at me pointedly. “Yeah…that doesn’t work for me,” she said. “When I closed my eyes I could only see black. How am I supposed to know what Jack looks like with my eyes closed?!”
I love that child. I love the fact that she holds nothing back. It can be infuriating and baffling at times, but also a breath of fresh air. We always know exactly where she stands on an issue. If she doesn’t like something, she will tell you. She doesn’t have time to pretend to like it.
And please don’t ask her to waste time on fantasies. She has too many real dreams to pursue. Like this list of goals she wrote down yesterday.
She’s still a dreamer, you see. Her dreams are simply steeped in the actual world around her.
Wherever we are, there is always something of beauty that bursts and begs notice – landmarks on our expedition of redemptive return.” Mo Leverett
There is a unique joy in watching someone living in passionate pursuit of life, fully embracing the joys and trials that come with traversing this earth. Beauty takes on so many different forms based on the intricacies of each personality, each gift and talent dispersed, developed, and shared with the world.
Art is not only a painting. It isn’t confined to the space of a page or a canvas. It’s not always wrapped in a stanza, or a lyric, or a ringing dissonant chord.
Art is found everywhere, in all of life. It’s a sunset, a crying baby, the mother humming gently into tender ears. It’s in the sweat of a laborer, fighting for his daily bread. It’s in the dusty feet of the mother who walks miles for water, the father who combs the fields for food.
Art is life. Breathing, circulating, moving in tendrils, in swirls throughout the ebb and flow of daily living. Art is alive and tangible, though you cannot always see it or touch it. You feel it, and you know it, and you recognize it when you’re in its presence.
He’s a musician “striving for poetic beauty and force, for authenticity and passion.” An artist who sways toward the folk and blues genre continuum, Mo seeks to embrace lament as an ordinary part of life, and his music reflects this. In his words, “The thread of compassion is woven through, born of living most of my life among the poor or being materially poor myself these last years.”
Currently, Mo is busy putting together his 12th album. Life, redemption, poverty, family, love, grace, suffering and justice are themes that commonly appear in many of Mo’s original songs, and his current album, These are the Days, continues to draw inspiration from his life in urban ministry, the repercussions of Hurricane Katrina, divorce, personal hardship, recovery, healing and remarriage.
I could keep talking about the album, but I think it would be best for you to hear from someone who knows him well. His producer, Scotty Alderman, shared these thoughts:
Mo is an original – part prophet, part preacher, part troubadour. His gruff voice is powerful and full of soul, while his lyrics paint vivid pictures and evoke strong emotions from the listener. Always affective and potent, Mo can say very hard things in tender ways, and tender things in easliy relatable ways.
Mo writes about pain, loss, injustice, love, and gratitude from a very deep place. His hard-won, hard-earned wisdom is matched with a voice suited to express it. Mo’s music is distinctly American, rugged and pioneering, more specifically steeped in the South, in the soulfulness of Louisiana. Mo’s lyrics are genuine, sincere, ernest, vulnerable, and laced with poetic prose. I think everyone should have the opportunity to hear him – he’s that sort of singer-songwriter. Mo could be one of the greats – I actually believe he already is.”
Dream chasing is rarely achieved on your own. All of us need a team to back us up, to support us as we push toward the actualization of our dreams. Dream chasing requires courage, confidence, and sometimes the asking for a little help.
If you are interested in hearing more music from Mo Leverett’s upcoming album, would you consider visiting his Kickstarter page and offering a pledge to help cover the costs of the album? Every dollar helps, and your pledge will be greatly and deeply appreciated. He is currently only $2,700 dollars shy of his goal with 9 days to go.
This is a small gap to fill!
For more insight into Mo’s heart, and to gain a better understanding of his skill as a writer, I urge you to read his post, The Joy of One Thing. It’s an honor to be a part of Mo’s journey as he strives to create art that is an honest depiction of the life he’s lived and seen. In his words: “The greatest joy that I receive from doing records is the opportunity to play with serious musicians and for them to enter the inspiration sector in one of my little songs. But I am also genuinely encouraged that my music is in any way a source of help and comfort to others.”
Fanciful daydreams of a life of grandeur are the things that make childhood so magical. Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies to strike the fatherless is the stripping of innocence – a building block of dreams.
My daughter and I had a few moments alone in the car last week, and she reminded me yet again of the power of a good dream. We were on our way to her gymnastics practice, and she didn’t really want to go. She was tired, she wanted to stay home and fight with play with her brothers, and she just wasn’t in the mood for a four hour workout.
After a few tense moments of whining and pouting, she quieted down and took a deep breath.
“Mom?” she asked.
I glanced at her through the rearview mirror and reminded myself that she’s still so young. Big eyes hover over soft, full cheeks and a nose dotted with fine freckles. I waited for her to speak. She is the child who needs space to prepare her thoughts, slowly and deliberately choosing each word.
“I don’t want to play soccer next year.”
I was surprised by this comment. It was random and didn’t fit the context of our previous conversation. “Okay,” I answered. “You don’t have to.”
“I just don’t see myself as a soccer player,” she said, and I bit back a smile.
“Okay.”
“And I really don’t want to play softball,” she continued, her voice strong and adamant.
I turned onto the street where her gym was located and tried to follow along with her train of thought, to connect the dots from the anger about having to leave for gymnastics and the present conversation. I had a moment of panic, wondering if she was leading up to telling me she didn’t want to do gymnastics anymore. It’s a decision I would support, but it would break my heart, because she has so much talent.
“Well what do you see yourself doing?” I asked, guiding the car into a parking place in front of the gym. I put it in park and shifted so I could look her in the eye. She glanced out the window and a small smile spread across her face.
“I see myself at the Olympics,” she said. Her voice was wistful and dreamy and I couldn’t help but grin. I know that look, and I know what she’s feeling. When I was eight, I saw myself as an Olympic gymnast, too. I remember imagining the podium, and what it would feel like to watch the flag raised with my anthem playing. I envisioned this with the images of Mary Lou Retton shimmering in my mind.
“I’m ready now,” she said. “If I’m going to go to the Olympics, I guess I have to practice, huh?”
There’s something about childhood that makes dreaming so enviable. Right now, there is no doubt in her mind that her dream of going to the Olympics will come true, and there’s no part of me that plans to altar that dream with anything resembling a dose of reality. I know that with time and age, her dreams will shift, and they will mature, and they will change.
But I don’t ever want her to stop dreaming.
Too often as adults we let reality bury our dreams in a pile of salt. We become so practical that we forget the power of a healthy dream. We don’t let our dreams grow and mature with us, and we abandon the act of dreaming altogether.
My childhood dream of making the Olympic team is no longer a reality (though I think I could still have a shot at Curling. I mean, seriously…how hard could it be?!).
But there are realistic dreams that fit my life now, and I’m tired of pushing them aside. I dream of publishing books, of working more with organizations that support orphan care, of not settling and growing comfortable with a life of ease.
I dream of keeping a clean home.
Wait…never mind. That one is about as likely as me becoming the gold medal All Around gymnast in 2016.
The fact is, I don’t have to stop dreaming any more than my eight year old does. And what’s more – I need to chase my dreams as hard as she is chasing hers. I need to push for them, even when I don’t feel like it.
