Journal

When I look back at the journey to get here, I am increasingly glad to anticipate the unknown future journey. God’s stories are good and so rich, though certainly not easy. What He has done in my and my family’s lives is nothing short of miraculous. We are humbled and grateful to live such a story.

1999 – I learn (the hard way, as usual) that one can only run so long and so hard from God. Many people have prayed for me for years, and through a series of difficult circumstances I am brought to a place of decision. Would I believe God or not? Was all of this Scripture I’d been raised on true, or not? We all have to choose what foundation we build our lives on. All I’ve pursued and chosen thus far is thoroughly shaken at this point, and I realize that if I can’t trust God, I can’t trust anything.

2000 – I fall more and more in love with Scripture. At a summer camp I feel compelled by this God who has so loved me to spend my life in ministry, sharing these Truths and revealing His love to others who’ve struggled with brokenheartededness, hopelessness, the drive for independence, and the need for a solid foundation as I have.

Early 2001 – During my first semester at Oakland City University, I find dear friends who know and love Jesus, who are globally-minded, and whom I travel and minister with. God begins to prepare my heart for motherhood, shockingly to me (I never thought I deserved or wanted children).

2001-2002 – I do a Discipleship Training School with YWAM, based in Arkansas. Jan-Feb of 2002 is a six-week outreach to the orphaned and the “untouchable” poor in rural India. I am completely taken with knowing Jesus and what it looks like to live life with HIm. Seeing Him and joining Him in loving the least-loved on earth becomes the passion of my heart. I never want to leave that place. During this time I also know I’m going to adopt to one day have a multi-ethnic family, and that I will be involved in responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa.

2002 – God brings me back to Oakland City to minister among children at my home church (Bethel Memorial) and campus, and back to school at OCU. So difficult for me to submit to, but I’m learning to walk by faith and trust until I see what He’s doing. I continue to build deep relationships with precious friends. My church takes me along on outreach to the Native American population in Oklahoma.

2003 – Increasingly God speaks to me through the unexpected encouragement of others in my life: have I considered medicine? Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville, KY, opens my eyes to the global move of God through medical missions. I shift my education goals, and God radically opens the way to the Physician Assistant program at Butler University.

2004 – I travel to Athens, Greece, on a pre-Olympic service trip with the Athens Evangelical Church. This is my last taste of international missions for a long time, though I don’t know it. I’m also introduced by good friends to Bob Fichtinger, just months before I move for PA school. My least-expected or desired method in getting to know a man: a blind date and a long-distance relationship. It works out! I learn of being loved and pursued amidst all of my inward and outward struggles and imperfections. He endures the grueling demands of PA school. He prays for me and entrusts me to God through some frightening and dangerous situations. (He’s still here, twelve years later.)

2005 – My year of clinical rotations. So many encounters and experiences. In August my grandmother passes away under hospice services in her home; I’m the most medically advanced person there, and this is my first observation of physical death. I am acutely attuned to the physical and the spiritual at this moment. As I watch for her last breath I realize this has the deep emotion of a wedding. She is emaciated and stunningly beautiful; she is escorted into the arms of the One who loves her, celebrated and released by her family. I am astounded, and I am changed. Death is inevitable for us all, but inside the ineffable peace of Christ, it is a beautiful beginning.

2006 – In March Bob and I are married. A great celebration and profound gift. We are so blessed to be surrounded by precious people from various chapters of our lives. Overwhelmed with goodness. I graduate, take board exams, and we move to Maryland/Pennsylvania border where I am given a profoundly formative job with Greencastle Family Practice. My office manager moves (back) to Zimbabwe before my two years there are completed. I ache to return to international missions, but it is time to build experience… And, time reveals, a family.

2007 – We visit home in Indiana in the context of a terrible family tragedy. We are split open in heart, but God has already given us the gift of hope and life, and he is named as such. We grow in Pennsylvania friendships and love our local family and church.

2008 – Samuel Jacob is born in April. Parenthood commences. Life is changed. His start is rough, but God is gracious (and Mom came to stay for a while)! God provides for a newbie mom like me. We move back to Indiana in September, and I begin to work in the ER in Vincennes. Stress management skills are forced, high efficiency is developed, clinical skills advance, and I discover a group of colleagues I will grow to deeply love.

2009 – We lose our second child, Michal Eden, before she is born. My perception of life and death is altered again as I am taught deep grace in the context of deep loss. My God is good to me, and to my children. We buy our first home, in Haubstadt, and deepen precious friendships that will walk very difficult roads beside us. Our Christmas surprise is another child beginning to grow inside me.

2010 – Elias James is born in late August. He is born a different type of child than Samuel was, and we learn to be at the top of our game every minute of every day (and night). He teaches us much about ourselves, and about giving of ourselves more fully.

2011 – January we are ready to file application papers for an international adoption. “We are called to parenting for this season – we are going to parent our hearts out.” We do. Compelled to seek out “waiting children” we are prayerfully led to social worker, to agency, to country program, and finally, miraculously, to our children. As we discovered who the true “waiting children” were, our idea of seeking one-or-two special needs children (aged 3-to-5) became brazen preparedness to receive the referral of three children aged 4 to 10. We have seen international adoption processes. We know this will not be easy trekking. It is heart-rending month after month.

2012 – We meet our children in January (Ethiopian Christmas). It is elation, followed by discoveries that threaten our entire adoption process. We are told we may never get to bring them to America. We go home shattered and resting fully on the confidence and conviction God has given us about our children. We learn to parent by prayer, across hemispheres. Even when we know we cannot physically protect them from life as it is for the most vulnerable. We are taught steadfastness this year through agonizing failures and hinderances. We are certain of our children and of God’s presence, when darkness falls in circumstance. In September we buy our plane tickets. Not until the morning we fly out, our last daughter clears for immigration. We bring them home.

2013 – Sanity, communication, food, sleep. We are all surviving, carried by the grace of God in the gifts (food and presence) of friends and family. Faithfulness radiates from the pure togetherness of our family, as broken as we all are. It is contradiction, this emptied-out fullness, this great hope in the face of great trauma, this pursuit of healing in a story of devastation. This is the story of God.

2014 – We struggle, we sink, and we are raised up again. We are all suffering in a multitude of ways. Our family is a multitude of gifts in a tattered package. We breathe by grace and cling fiercely to hope. We learn to let go of all personal desires and expectations and perceptions; we learn to receive back from the dead. We were well educated: we knew the risks and took them with confidence of their rightness. It is different, the hearing of what could happen to you and your family, and the sustained, suffocating happening of it. I am working necessarily full-time in the ER again. It seems counter-intuitive. It does keep me sane. I go to Haiti for a summer missions trip. It is brief; it is a gift. I see God face-to-face in the eyes of a most forsaken crippled orphan in a most forsaken corner of poverty. God dwells in a high and holy place… and with the broken in spirit. It is our identification with (and of our own) brokenness that invites us into the glory of God. It is heavy glory. Humble neediness welcomes His power and presence; it is so heavy it’s hard to breathe. We are invited to this. I go home to my place of deepest need, and I look. I am a trampled flower; God’s idea of beauty is redefined to me.

2015 – My family fights forward. We hurting and we are healing. My husband remarries me in a secretly-planned renewal of vows ceremony. I am still wanted, in all of this hurricane. Good thing; I am brought to my breaking point. Spent right dry. I continue full-time work. I incidentally find masses in my healthy mother’s heart and lungs. We think “rare cancer” until major thoracic surgery proves otherwise. My daughter develops acute appendicitis and goes to surgery. There is nothing of me left, to a world of demands still waking up each morning. God is gracious. He rescues me again; presses pause on all of these gifts of family, ministry, career, He’s given me over these years. He is not the God of past and future; He is the God of present. He is love, He is grace, He is faithful. And all His ways are good. I am now dust blown away, and He births me anew. My efforts burned away, He is free to be everything. He raises to life again and again. I know freedom, I practice gratitude, I am embraced by sisters the same sorts of mess as me. I learn a bit more of Sabbath, faith, contentment, humility; of a constance and faithfulness I cannot change, and that I can rest in and throw myself and my family on. I know the page is about to turn; that He is doing something even further beyond me, that I could never do if I continued to try. My marriage is alive and well. My family is together. My peace is restored, and my joy is full… And our circumstances are still largely the same. This is the stuff of miracles, and cannot come by the hand of man.

2016 – We have applied to a missions agency. I finally live without an agenda and keep my mouth shut, and wait for God to move us by leading Bob. He had joined me in Nov. 2015 at my 12th annual GMHC; he moved us forward. We prepare, we try to plan for all possible options, we wait, we respond. Suddenly pieces are falling precisely into place. We are invited to Australia. Our kids’ hearts all begin to change; they are individually being united and set ablaze in heart for this year of mission. The struggle is our story; nothing is too difficult for our God. He is jealous for them every bit He is jealous for us. These are still His children, and He is making moves in their lives. We are going to Perth, Western Australia, and on to outreach through a program training in midwifery and community health for the developing world. But here our whole family, the kids, will plug in. This is not their parents’ religion. This is their God who has made them with good works prepared in advance, and they can feel it. We have sold most of our belongings. We have given notice to our jobs, schools, and church that we deeply love. We have visas and plane tickets. We are well assured that to place any limitations on our God is inappropriate and will be disproven. Ours is to obey and see Him. Humility, faithfulness, praise, and prayer is our job. All the results are His.

I love the Toy Story Movies. I recently watched “Toy Story That Time Forgot”. It followed the same storyline as the first installment. The Toy Story gang run into toys that think they’re something they’re not. This causes unnecessary problems and peril. I found it packed with truth throughout the movie. Here are a couple that hit home.

1. We are created to have a relationship with the Creator. Reptillus Maximus didn’t realize the freedom he had until he let go and let his owner use him for whatever he wanted.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. – Galatians 2:20

2. God gives you favor to advance His kingdom. Trixie was highly regarded by Maximus… They were of the same kind and yet so different. This opened the door for her to speak the truth.

Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. – Proverbs 3:3-4

3. We get our identity from our owner (God) and not from our packaging or the world we live in. Trixie helped awaken Maximus to his true potential in surrendering to his owner.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. – Romans 12:2

Being a Christian for some time now, I still find it a challenge to shake things up and see things differently, knowing I don’t have “reality” figured out. The search for God and how He sees things is a lifelong journey. It’s far more adventurous if just let go…and let Him take control.

-Cheers