Gotcha Day

When you've walked through the many milestones of the adoption process it seems there are many days that hold significance and are worthy of celebration in comparison to our biological kid's birthdays.  The day you turned in your paperwork, the day you received your referral, the day you met your child for the first time, the day you passed court and they became officially your child, the day you picked them up and they were with you forever, the day you brought them home and your family was all together for the first time....  It gets a little out of control!  So, I've been confused over what day is considered "gotcha day" - a popular celebration in the adoption community.  Is it the day you met, the day you passed court, the day you picked them up?  I've discovered it's different for everyone.  But today I know that, for our family, this is our gotcha day.  Meeting Selah for the first time was so special and passing court was so necessary but carrying our baby girl out of that orphanage and driving away with her in our arms was the first time that it really felt she was ours forever.   Taking her back to our guest house and bathing her, putting her in clean clothes, feeding her, and laying her down to sleep under our care - for me that was the "gotcha" moment.  Duane laughed at me because he knew the very first thing I would do was bathe her and slather her with lotion to get her all snuggly :).  I will never forget that first bath and how happy she was.

But I'll also never forget how difficult it was to watch the wonderful women who had been caring for her so well tell her goodbye.

In adoption it's easy to become so excited about "gaining" this child into your family that you forget what an enormous loss they experience in that moment that you drive away with them.  Yes, they are gaining a family and that is the most valuable thing we can give them.  But they are losing all that is familiar to them and in many ways they are losing a connection to their people and their country.  Selah is still so young, but I hope as she grows older we can celebrate Gotcha day in a way that will honor what we all gained that day, but also what she lost that day.  Only time will tell what will feel appropriate.  Today I will celebrate by hugging and kissing her as much as I did one year ago today - and I might even give her a bath and slather her with an obnoxious amount of lotion.  

Adoption is a beautiful thing.  Adoption is a hard thing.  It's rewarding and it's messy - like so many things God calls us to.  One year ago today our lives were forever changed.  God gave us our 4th strong willed child!  She is spunky and sweet and funny and brilliant and stubborn - a typical Dixon kid! 

 Happy Gotcha Day to our sweet Selah!

one life to die

This is one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies as a teenager:

Henry David Thoreau said it this way -

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately,
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die
Discover that I had not lived."

Thoreau feared it in the 1800's.  Isn't it still our deepest fear?  That we will come to the end of this life only to discover that we've never really lived?  Isn't that why we make bucket lists and we sign our kids up for every activity under the sun and we travel long distances to experience new and exciting things?  Isn't it often why mothers leave their families and daddies cheat on mothers?  Because they're afraid they're missing something life might be able to offer them?  Doesn't our fear of not really living drive us to fill our houses to overflowing with stuff that we believe will assist us in our quest to "suck out all the marrow of life"?  Isn't that why we diligently plan for our retirement?  So that in the final years of our life we'll have the resources to really "live".  It's the driving thought behind the mid-life crisis.  It's probably the most commonly used tactic in advertising - convincing people that they really haven't lived until they've eaten this or driven that or seen this place or had that experience.

We are SO afraid that we're going to miss out on something that life may have to offer us.  The truth that we only have one life to live has us living in a constant state of panic and we don't even realize it.
Doesn't it seem a little bit crazy that we're killing ourselves so that we can suck the most out of life?

And isn't this quest the source of most of our anger and frustration?  For me the answer to that question is a resounding YES.  I get frustrated when little people interrupt my quest to "really live" by complaining about what I served them for breakfast or by leaving their wet towels in their swim bag to sour or by getting out of bed 5 times before they finally go to sleep.  Or when babies poop on sheets and throw food in the floor and scream while I'm attempting to have a conversation.  Or when people mistreat my husband.  Or when a friend asks me to help feed a homeless man one day a week (and I reluctantly say yes because I know it's gonna be really inconvenient at times).  Or when the air conditioner goes out in my car and the tax return doesn't show up when the IRS said it would.  Or when it's dinner time and everyone expects me to deliver.  I even recently found myself frustrated with God that he asked me to live in the city instead of on a farm.  For some reason I think living on a farm would be really living.  I allowed myself to be convinced that I was missing out on something life had to offer because I don't have 20 acres, a huge garden to hoe and livestock!  All of these things really start to mess with my ability to"sieze the day".  Most of the time, rather than feeling like I'm sucking the marrow out of life, I'm left feeling like life is just sucking.  The result is an unholy anger.  A nasty, harmful cycle of frustration and anger.

I never stop being amazed by how we can completely miss it.  By how easily we are deceived.  By how easily I am deceived.

It is true.  We do only have one life on earth.  And I do, as Thoreau said, want to live this one life deliberately.  But as a follower of Christ, I don't think I'm called to suck out all the marrow of life.  As hard as it is to live it, I'm asked to open myself up to having the life sucked out of me.  I'm called to deliberately live in such a way that I can gladly come to the end of my life only to discover that I had not really lived - but rather that I had been dead for years and that Christ had been living through me.

In the Kingdom of God the interruptions should be cause for gladness.  The pooped on sheets and the sour towels and the hundred other daily messes should be seen as opportunities to die.  The reluctantly embraced inconveniences of following Christ should be celebrated as evidence of death.  Panic should be the response invoked when we realize that we're not dying.

Even though it goes against all that my flesh cries out for, the Spirit reminded me today that I only have one life to die... and I don't want to waste it in a constant state of "living".  

what a difference a year makes

One year ago today Selah officially became a Dixon!  We had to leave Ethiopia for Tanzania having not passed court.  The people on the plane with us as we were taking off surely had to wonder what in the world was wrong with the lady who couldn't stop sobbing.  But while in Tanzania visiting our friends we got news that we had passed court!  Holly made this cheesecake in celebration :) !

I don't think I've shared this before, but here is the raw, unedited footage (because who around here has time for editing?) of our first time meeting Selah - commonly referred to in the adoption community as "meetcha day". (you'll need to turn off the music at the bottom if you want to hear the sound)

In just one year God has turned this abandoned, scared, bald little girl into a spunky, opinionated, spoiled, hilarious little dancer with an awesome head of hair :).  So thankful to be a part of His plan for this little girl's life!