enough.

“For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”

--Henri Nouwen

truth telling

I’m trying to tell myself the truth, but the minute I seize to do so, the lies start infiltrating again.

Exactly one week ago we got a call from our adoption agency case worker, Tiffany, telling us that we got our log-in date (LID).  This is a big deal for us, as it means that our eight months worth of paperwork has officially been accepted by the Chinese government.  Tiffany will now have access to all the orphans in the databank to look for our Ren.  Up until this point, her access has been limited, only able to view older children or those with more serious needs.

After she gave me the good news, I asked her how long she thinks it might be before we get our referral--before we find out who our boy is.  She said that the biggest hinderance at this point is Lucy’s age, as Ren must be at least ten months younger than her.  Lu is 20 months now, which means Ren must be no older than 10 months, and Tiffany said that most of the boys with more minor needs are at least 12-18 months at the time of referral.  She said we may just need to wait for Lucy to get a bit older.

Some days I’m okay with the waiting, such as last week, when Lucy dropped a load in the hallway during the brief two minutes I had her out of a diaper, and as I cleaned up the mess, I wondered what it will be like to add another child to this already chaotic equation. Some days I’m okay with the waiting because I trust that God knows what is at stake for our family this coming year.  He knows about the cross-country move ten months from now, the house we need to put on the market or find renters for, and the community we will lose and have to rebuild, yet again.  He knows the physics of all the aspects of life currently in motion.  He knows the precise, perfect moment when our hearts will collide with the boy we haven’t yet found.

And then there are days when I loathe the waiting and sink into a deep, dark funk because I’m tired of watching this process go so much faster for everyone else.  Some days I loathe the waiting because I don’t have anything to tell people when they ask, “So, how’s the adoption going...have you heard anything yet?”  Some days I loathe the waiting because, like Eve in the garden, I butt up against my compulsive need to know.

This conundrum of conflicting emotions is ever present.  I’ve had thoughts like,

What if we weren’t supposed to do this?  What if this is all a big mistake?  What if we didn’t really hear God’s voice at all?  What if I’m deluded?  What if this timing is all wrong?  What were we thinking?

And then I resurface from the darkness for a few moments and a stream of light shines through the clouds, reminding me that this is the sanest thing we’ve ever done, and that any endeavor that requires supernatural patience and the full embrace of mystery is typically straight from God.  

And sometimes, in the weak moments when I need it most, He sends me merciful little whispers that coax me along despite my self pity and doubt.  One of these came a few months ago, just about a week before we received our long-sought-after immigration approval letter, in the form of a phone call from a woman I’ve never met in person.  

Her name is Esty, and we have a mutual friend, Tiff, who put us in touch last winter, when we were both praying about beginning the adoption process.  Esty has an incredible story, starting out adopting from China, only to be drastically redirected to Uganda, where their little girl was waiting for them all along.  Esty had called to tell me this miraculous story, which yields tears and goosebumps every time. Hearing it gave my sullen spirit a major jumpstart and refreshed my belief that God’s timing REALLY is PERFECT (it’s not just some trite Christian cliche)! Before we hung up the phone that night, Esty said, "Libby, yes, there are a lot of other families waiting...but no one else is waiting for Ren.  He is your son."  

I am still hanging on her words, even now, as I continue to struggle with the waiting.  Our case worker said last week that it may take up to six months from now to find Ren (because of Lucy’s age) and that it will most likely take another six months after the referral before we can travel to get him, which means it could be a whole year from now before we are bringing him home.  We are already nine months into this process, and her forecast does not fit into the 12-15 month timeline we were originally told.  I’m desperately trying to re-gauge my expectations. And in reality, we could find Ren next week, so there really isn’t a whole lot to go on.  Only faith.  Only Him.  At the end of the day, what else is there?

This morning I read,

Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God's will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.  --Hebrews 10:36

And then there's this,

May He give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do.  2 Thes 1:11

And this one too...

You do not belong to yourself, for God bough you with a high price.  1 Cor 6:19-20

These verses keep my waiting in perspective.  

This is the truth I’m telling myself today.

Me Vs. Myself

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind...the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.  --Mary Schmich 

I was talking with my mom on the phone last week and she asked me how my writing was coming.  I told her that I’d been researching literary journals over the past month, trying to familiarize myself with the writing market, hoping to submit some of my poetry to journals this autumn after being coaxed by my poetry professor to “send off my babies.”  

I’ve been polishing up a few poems, getting them ready to send off, and as I continue to revise them, I keep thinking how they will be received by others, whether they’ll be accepted or rejected, and what that all will mean, if anything.  This is part of an artist’s life--creating work that means something to you personally, then putting it out there for the world to see, vulnerable to rejection, and not letting the feedback get you down if it’s bad, or not getting too cocky about it if it’s spectacular.  

My mom listened and then told me this story about a professional speed skater (not sure about his name) who recently spoke at my dad's company. This speed skater has won all sorts of national and world championships, but each time he went to the Olympics, he fell and did not win a medal. The painful, takeaway lesson of his story is that when he was competing at the Olympics, he would look around at all the other skaters and get psyched out about whether or not he was better than they were.  He said he lost hold of the belief that the only important thing was performing the very best he could--regardless of all the other skaters around him.

Such a simple lesson.

One that we all too often forget, constantly caught up in a sea of comparison.

I recently ordered a book from Amazon called The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo.  We read excerpts from it in my poetry class this summer, and I liked Hugo so much that I ordered the whole book.  As I was reading on the flight to Vegas, the following paragraph struck me--something that’s closely connected to the story my mom shared with me...

Oh, and to offer a little context first, Hugo is talking about a guy named Roethke, who was his first and most influential poetry teacher.  He writes,

“Roethke’s love of prizes, rave reviews, and applause would sometimes prevent him from emphasizing to the student the real reward of writing--that special private way you feel about your poems, the way you feel when you are finishing a poem you like.  Yet he knew it, and in rare moments it showed.  Once he said to me, that nervous undergrad who wanted the love of the world to roar out every time he put a word down, “Don’t worry about publishing.  That’s not important.”  He might have added, only the act of writing is.  It’s flattering to be told you are better than someone else, but victories like that do not endure.  What endures are your feelings about your work.  You wouldn’t trade your poems for anybody’s.  To do that you would also have to trade your life for his, which means living a whole new complex of pain and joy.  One of those per lifetime is enough.”

Hugo also writes,

“Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand.  When you are writing, glance over your shoulder, and you’ll find there is no reader.  Just you and the page.  Feel lonely?  Good.  Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication.  If you want to communicate, use the telephone.”

What I love about Hugo’s points is that we all--whether we are writers or painters or speed skaters--need to stop worrying about other people--whether we are better or worse than them--whether they’ll “get” us or not--whether what we have to offer is good or bad.  

God made us in the unique way He did for a reason, meaning that you and I have something to offer the world that no one else can.

We need to keep offering it regardless of what people do with it.

(I am preaching to the choir here).

As my professor, Frank, says about rejection:

“Everyone gets rejected! You are not alone!  I get rejected all the time. Poets with award winning books get rejected all the time. Shakespeare, if alive today, would probably get rejected now and again. Success in publishing in poetry ranges from unpredictable to completely erratic. You may have a dry spell of months, even years, and then find that everyone wants your work. You may find instant success and keep it. Nobody may ever appreciate your work in this lifetime and then in the year 2070 you will be a superstar.”

It seems to me that the more we look to outside sources to define us, to give us our worth, to tell us what we need to do or how to do it, to tell us whether or not we have what it takes, we are in trouble and we've missed the point.  

Bill Cosby once said, 

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

And as Steven Pressfield says in his book The War of Art--

"We’re not born with unlimited choices.

We can’t be anything we want to be.

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny.  We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become.  We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

If we were born to paint, it’s our job to become a painter.

If we were born to raise and nurture children, it’s our job to become a mother.

If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business."

So...all of this is to say that in the end, I know the race is long, and I know it’s with myself.  The race is marked by this long, baffling process of becoming myself, and of learning to be comfortable with who I am and what I have to offer, regardless of how the world receives it.

***Oh...and if/when I receive piles of rejection letters this winter/spring, remind me to come back to this post for encouragement, will you?

viva las vegas!

They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I'm about to disclose all the insanity that went down last weekend, when four, innocent, Christian girls took Sin City by storm.  

Brace yourselves!  This post is gonna be as juicy as an episode of "Jersey Shore."  Nah...not really.  But here are a few pictures and an account of my trip anyways...

It all started a few months ago, when my friend Kelly sent me a text..."Do you want to go to Vegas?"  As you can probably guess...I said, "Heck Yeah!"

Kell and I met ten years ago, in 2001.  We sat next to each other during the very first class on the very first day of nursing school.  She was my roommate during our senior year of college, and the maid of honor in my wedding.  Our friendship has a lot of history, and it's been wonderful to live close to one another again.  We both started out in NC, and we both wound up in Nor Cal.  Kell is a nurse at Stanford now.

Two of Kelly's friends came along too, Heather and Keeley.  

All three of them grew up in Kenya together.  Their parents were missionaries in Africa and they all went to the same school.  They share a rich history, and I enjoyed hearing some of their crazy boarding school stories.  Their hearts and interests are global because of the stories they've lived, and I loved listening to them tell of the journeys they've been on since leaving Africa.

So...introductions aside...here are some highlights and reflections on Sin City...

I can see why people consider Vegas the perfect getaway.  It is such a drastic departure from normal life, that it feels like you've left planet earth altogether.  It's eerie the way it sits out there in the middle of nowhere, as far away from normalcy as it is from water or trees.  It felt more like a lego town or an indoor/outdoor amusement park for adults than an actual city, a place where you can order alcohol almost anywhere and carry it around the entire city, where people never go to sleep, and where the opportunities for numbing out of reality are superfluous.

We stayed at the MGM and I was the first of the four of us to arrive.  I ended up at the pool, waiting it out until the other girls arrived, surrounded by dudes drinking buckets of beer and playing water volleyball.  I felt like I was back in college. It was the first of many times that I uttered the words,

What is this place? 

On Friday night we wandered over to the Bellagio for dinner.  We ooh-ed and ahh-ed as we walked into the resort and saw the indoor gardens, the chandelier, the mosaic tile floor, a work of art in itself.  Not all of Vegas is tacky!

One of my favorite things was the fountain at the Bellagio.  I could have watched it for hours.  I was mesmerized.  

I didn't know that water could dance...but it can!

After dinner, we walked the strip.  Pure entertainment.  Vegas offers the most engrossing medium for people-watching I've ever experienced.

These petite, male, acrobatic twins were pretty entertaining.

Never mind the incredible stunts.  Check out their costumes!

I was also astounded by how many people take their babies and toddlers to Vegas, pushing them down the strip in strollers at midnight.  Turns out, a lot of the casinos offer childcare so parents can drop their kids off while they gamble all day.  Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

We went to bed early on Saturday morning and slept in late...10:30 am, which is some kind of new record for me.  I meandered down to Starbucks around 11am, met by an assault of cigarette smoke, the loud ringing of slot machines, and a sea of blood shot eyes.  If you want to go anywhere in Vegas, you have to walk through a casino to get there...clever how they designed it that way...but unfortunate for me, especially in my pre-coffee state.  It looked as though most of the people had never gone to sleep, still in clothes from the night before, still drinking and gambling.  Once again, I said, what is this place?

By late Saturday afternoon, we started feeling claustrophobic, as if the stimulus overload of the casinos might swallow us whole, so we took a cab down to The Venetian,

where we hit up the Bouchon Bakery, one of my favorite places in the world.  We soothed our stunned psyches with smooth coffee and pastries.  My vanilla macaron was a little circle of heaven.

Then we planted it on the floor right by the world's largest indoor canal, a replica of the canals in Venice, Italy.  The ceiling was painted just like the sky, and we could feel the calm wash over us as soon as we walked into this stretch of The Venetian.  I've been to the real Venice, and on some days, this imitation is almost better than the real thing (or maybe I was just that desperate for a peaceful atmosphere).  It's air conditioned, the water isn't smelly, polluted, or a suspect shade of fluorescent green, the ground isn't sinking into the ocean, and the gondola drivers have voices like angels.  

Gentle, free-spirited Heather with her pastry.

Crazy-fun, creative Keeley and her almond-chocolate croissant.

And the Vegas version of Venice.

Later that night we got all dolled up and went out to a Cirque de Soleil show -- "Ka" -- 

and then went out to dinner on the strip.  We didn't even sit down for dinner until 10pm...partying like rockstars!

At dinner we were approached by a variety of characters, including this cool guy in his white vest and his yardstick drink, and, of course, Wolverine there to the right.

A Transformer joined us for a little while, and we also saw Spiderman walking down the street with a fanny pack. 

Viva Las Vegas!  Where nothing is out of the ordinary!

Night caps.  These drinks were so ridiculously large, we decided to get a couple just for the photo opportunity.

When in Rome...

On the way back to our hotel room, we walked by this room service cart.  An accurate portrayal of Las Vegas, with the empty case of Bud Light, the scraps of food.  

We also saw a countless number of brides walking around casinos in their long white gowns, carrying 24 oz cans of Coors Light.  

It's just wrong.

As we settled into bed at 2am on Sunday morning, we watched a little "Talk Soup" on E!  I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, the kind of laughter you can't stop, the kind that makes your stomach contract so hard you can barely breathe.  

As I've reflected on my Vegas getaway, I've been thinking about how priceless our girlfriends are.  Marriage and raising small children has made me realize how much I need female companionship, how much I need to sometimes get away, how much I need to laugh, to let loose, and take life a little less seriously, to get a break from my over-active, overly self-aware mind.

I'm so grateful for this experience, this true getaway, this momentary break from motherhood and the responsibilities of daily life.  I'm thankful for all of my girl friends, even the ones not on this trip, and for how much fun it is to talk and laugh and get pretty together!  I never thought that Vegas would be a place I'd find refreshment for my soul...but as they say...it's not where you are, but who you're with, and it was such a blessing to be with these three women this past weekend, even if we found ourselves in such a wild venue.  Thanks, Kells, Heather, and Keeley for such a wonderful time. And last but certainly not least, I'm thankful for my dear husband, who supported this whole thing and played single dad for a couple days without me.  

Have you been to Vegas before?  What were your impressions?