beautiful {she grows}

Do you see this face?

This sweet, intent concentration.  

We work.  Together each day we plow the ground of her fertile mind, learning.

Black dirt.  Verdant and lush.  Iowa ground ripe for growing.

Today I watched flowers unfold right before my eyes.
Blossom upward.  Cupped, curled to sky and sun.

Our Emma Kate, home a mere and only four months...is reading.


The gasp, cry and song you heard pulsing yesterday morn...that was me.  Quiet on the outside.  A symphony inside.  My heart soaring upward in wonder.

Sight words.  Rote memorization.  And she's doing it!  Not only by flashcard, but in context! Outside of that, she is looking at books alongside me as I read, and she is pointing out words!  When we play games, she is reading the words she knows from the gameboard.  Marilee, sing with me!


Her little mind must, must be filled with connecting, vibrating, joyful worker-synapses.  A veritable Eden of activity.  

That is how I picture it.  These are the tulip fields of Holland. Multi-hued and exuberant.  Just as my daughter's mind is drinking in knowledge, information, and even more, love.

Older child adoption isn't only hard.  It is many things, and my list of adjectives is long and beautiful.  Emma, at her "older" age, has been a blessing we could not have imagined.  This is the more we didn't predict.  This birthing has been so sweet, incredibly miraculous, and wholly beautiful.  A gift.  All of it. All of her, a gift.


Six years old.  And so lovely, so bright, cheerful, loving, diligent and persevering, so long-suffering and patient, dear and darling, tender and sweet, strong and courageous.


This is not the story we expected.  And had it been what we anticipated, we would have loved her all the more.  Hard doesn't mean less adored, and easy doesn't equate abundant.  That is not at all what I mean.  Love has a different economy.  Thankfully.


What I mean to articulate and partly capture is the idea that fear so often holds us back {strike that, ME back} from doing the right thing, the thing we want to do, going to the place God calls us.  And the fear is of all the what ifs.  The hardship and hardness.  The ways it might hurt.


Sometimes doing what is right is plain old hard.  And filled with hurt.  And fear.   


And sometimes...sometimes it isn't.  


We don't know until we've done it, do we?  Not truly.


I've learned that God doesn't usually wait for me to NOT be scared, he works it out in the doing.  And so we do it scared.


When the plunge turns easy, it is a rejoicing heart that delights in, "go".  Sometimes the mercy is that it is the not.  Not as hard.  Not as scary.  Not as lonely, difficult or fearsome.


The paradox is that, when it is: when it is that hard road of adjectives that turn the stomach and fall dry off the lips, there is still a field.  And it is no less lovely. God makes beauty from ashes and works our completion in affliction.  We will never truly bloom well without it.  Hard truth, but truth nonetheless.  


I've cultivated other ground.  We've plowed long with many tears and much angst.  And the blossoms that bloomed there had a sweetness that only comes from suffering.  There is nothing more beautiful than a child learning to unfold into light and trust.  A flower finding roots, Son and a solitary bloom.  Buds unfurling to love.

This isn't comparison, so much as simply a savoring.  A revel?  A springtime frolic of sorts?  It is a rejoicing, most certainly, at God's amazing mercy and incredible work.  




The road we walk, this unexpected path of easy joy, is a bringing in of sheaves.  It is our Psalm 126.  In all God's good glory.



Psalm 126


A song of ascents.
 1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, 
   we were like those who dreamed 
2 Our mouths were filled with laughter, 
   our tongues with songs of joy. 
Then it was said among the nations, 
   “The LORD has done great things for them.” 
3 The LORD has done great things for us, 
   and we are filled with joy.


 4 Restore our fortunes, LORD, 
   like streams in the Negev. 
5 Those who sow with tears 
   will reap with songs of joy. 
6 Those who go out weeping, 
   carrying seed to sow, 
will return with songs of joy, 
   carrying sheaves with them.

Sing with me now.
Love,
Sara

{images found here and here}

Give me an "s"

Having completed and passed with flying colors, IN ENGLISH no less, the entrance exam for Kindergarten, Emma Kate has happily moved on to advancing her skills in anticipation of fall.

In English?  Of course.  At two and a half months home, with no translator at all to help her navigate the test or evaluate her knowledge in Chinese, Emma breezed through the test.  In this case, I see it as a dual test: one in the concepts and skills the test evaluates, and another for her second language acquisition.

Amazing.  She was incredible.  Strike that.  She IS incredible.

Yesterday at Home School (we have to call it something) we worked on writing the letters in our last name.  With a family of seven, she will have all the letters down by the time we write all our complete names!

She can identify all the letters and tell you their sounds already.  Now we are working on writing them all (with the correct strokes, etc.).  She's doing great!  There is a reason I don't teach for a living.  Mercy! Trying to get that "S" out on paper about ground a tooth or two down.

Emma still hasn't crossed midline, so she doesn't have a hand preference yet.  She readily switches back and forth between her left and right hand as she gets to the middle of the paper.  And her strokes on the letters show me we are still working on connecting some synapses in regards to midline, too.  She works so diligently.

Being left-handed, I have to restrain myself from leading her down the path of hand righteousness.  But I know that even if she ends up in boring-land of right handedness...

We conquered the "s" and completed the rest of the name, all of the letters she already knew how to write.  All those beautifully formed letters.  By her beautifully formed hands.

Her reward?  Besides the satisfaction of a job well done, Emma chose to relax with an hour splashing mermaid style in the tub!  Her favorite way to spend part of her day.  Followed by a blow-dry at her personal salon, Mommy's House of Curl.  I'm amazing with the blowdryer.  Just ask me.  Actually, ask Emma.  She l.o.v.e.s to have her hair blow dried.  The end result is very pleasing to her!

As soon as each family member returned home at the end of the day, they were proudly shown the labor of Emma's day.  "Emma Silburn" emblazoned across each line.

How wonderful to have such a large cheering section.  Three older brothers and an older sister to celebrate with her.  Emma drinks in the adoration and we love showering her with our love.

She's a joy bucket, for sure!