The Bamboo Tree

I love this story. Yet, all of this requires one thing – faith. The growers of the Chinese Bamboo Tree have faith that if they keep watering and fertilizing the ground, the tree will break through. Well, you must have the same kind of faith in your bamboo tree, whether it is to adopt children (me), win a Grammy, raise well-adjusted children, run a successful business, find a good man/woman or whatever it is. You must have faith that if you keep making the calls, honing your craft, reading to your children, reaching out to your spouse that you too will see rapid growth in the future. Now I’m in the midst of this and I know I will see growth. There has been too much blood, sweat and tears that has gone into this journey.

 This is the hard part for most of us and it’s the hardest part for me. We get so excited about the idea that’s been planted inside of us that we simply can’t wait for it to blossom. My biggest problem is I have to let go of what I think it should be. Therefore, within days or weeks of the initial planting, we become discouraged and begin to second guess ourselves, or worse, quit.

But sometimes, in our doubt, we dig up our seed and plant it elsewhere, in hopes that it will quickly rise in more fertile ground, in the pursuit of greener pastures. More often than not, we are greatly disappointed when their Chinese bamboo tree doesn’t grow any faster in the new location. Other times, people will water the ground for a time but then, quickly become discouraged like myself. They start to wonder if it’s worth all of the effort. This is particularly true when they see their neighbors having success with other trees. I have told the Lord on numerous occasions that I didn’t think my heart could take anymore. He always reminds me that I am worthy and He’s got this by putting in front of me encouraging loving people. So we keep watering and fertilizing our dream, it will come to fruition, just like the Chinese Bamboo Tree. It may take weeks. It may take months. It may even take years, but eventually, the roots will take hold and my Chinese bamboo tree will grow. And when it does, it will grow in remarkable ways.

 I truly believe that our dream will come true and will be more beautiful than we imagine. We all have seen this happen so many times. Look at Bill Gates. Gates didn’t seem very successful after dropping out of Harvard and starting a failed first business with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data. While this early idea didn’t work, Gates’ later work did, creating the global empire that is Microsoft. And what about, Harland David Sanders perhaps better known as Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. See Sanders had a hard time selling his chicken at first. In fact, his famous secret chicken recipe was rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted it. Well, I have to remember I have a Chinese Bamboo Tree inside of me and you have a Chinese Bamboo Tree inside of you just waiting to break through.


I have a prayer request. I will be undergoing surgery in St. Louis for issues regarding my Endometriosis. Please pray for a successful surgery and healing. Hopefully this will be one of the many breakthroughs for me and Tim. Tim's always by my side. What a blessing that is.

L-O-V-E

I asked my friend and sister in law Laura to guest post. I’m coming down with a bad case of writers block. I appreciate her willingness. She talks about my love for my dog, Louie Dog Pitcher. Did you ever notice that dog backwards is GOD? Louie has been a little piece of heaven for me and I feel God sent him to us while we wait for our human children to arrive. You can ask my mom I never was a dog person but I've always been amazed with animals. So a couple of years ago I really had a sense of wanting a dog maybe because I the children thing come easy. So there I was at one of Tim’s football games and someone came up to me with a lab puppy. I held him and I was in love instantly. I took him home. Put him in the bath tub ran to Walmart. I bought a kennel and all the dog necessaries and came home. There was a moment in that hour or so where I thought, what did I just do? But he really is a pretty good dog, we really lucked out.

 There are times I get frustrated with waiting and I will be sitting and crying and Lou comes and snuggles with me. Really. It’s the sweetest thing. He’s taught us a lot about how to take care of a living thing other than ourselves. Tim always jokes that when Lou passes away we are going to stuff him and put him by the fireplace. Don’t worry that won’t happen. First of all we don’t have a fireplace.:) Our love for our dog runs deep but I know it won't even compare to the deep love we will have for our future children. I can only imagine. I know Louie is just a dog but gosh he brightens even our darkness days!

Here's Laura's debut:

 Greta asked if I was willing to be a guest blogger this week. Honestly, I thought 'geez Gret, have you read anything I've written?It is the last week of school and Keith is on nights.' I don't have the gift of writing or expressing my thoughts in an eloquent manner. (Crazy-because I am a counselor-thoughts and feelings are my career!) I am going to set myself up for laughs and embarrassment. Sunday evening as I was in the shower, something came over me. For the last weeks in church my pastor has been speaking from the book of Colossians and emphasizing the"we over me" It hit me. I am putting my busy days and fear of embarrassment before we. By “we” I am referring to the community of Christ followers and above all. I then thought, really Laura, you are worried about how your poor writing will be perceived? Greta puts her heart and soul into expressing her journey with grace. Needless to say, she is a tough act to follow.

 So, it here goes...

Greta is one of my dearest and best friends. We share a lot of things in common, like; photography, importance of education, the value of a good nap, great memories and even boyfriends! (I am married to Gret's high school boyfriend) As a friend, I hope I am able to empathize with his or her struggles by listening and imagining myself in their shoes. Being a friend to someone with infertility struggles is a helpless feeling because I am not able to relate to her pain and mourning. My husband and I have two children and I had two healthy pregnancies without problems. I feel like I don't have the words to support when all I have to do is listen and validate. Once again, it isn't about me and what I feel comfortable or used to doing, but about we and above all Christ first.

At night, Ava and I pray for Aunt Greta and Uncle Tim's family. We pray the Almighty will be with their journey and have His light shine even during the darkest and toughest moments.One thing I am so excited about sharing with Greta is being a momma! I do this already! Louie dog and Ava are surprisingly on the same wave length-especially with their listening skills! We share with each other discipline techniques. I am not always able to use them because Ava can not go into a kennel! But we share laughs about being mommas, like when Louie Dog hides under the bed after chewing all of the toilet paper and when Ava may hide under her bed after chewing her books, or pulling all of the toilet paper off the roll. We also share the neat and new things we notice Louie D and Ava and Luca do. We talk about the transition our husbands go through when you anticipate an addition to the family. I don't have to be afraid to share with Greta anything about the world of motherhood because she is one!I can't wait to meet my niece or nephew. I am curious to see how much Louie dog is going to be pushed to the side to make room for the baby(babies). The love Tim and Greta have that dog is amazing, the love they have for their child(ren) is going to be outrageous and overflowing.

NO PUZZLE PIECES FUNDED THIS WEEK.

;(

325 puzzle pieces funded 675 more to go!

Thank you Harvey and Debbie Friedel!!!

Outside My Reach

Here's a story from Chick Soup for the Soul:

My friend Mandy fashioned her black hair into a lovely bun at the nape of her neck for the special day. After all, she’d been asked to present each mother of the congregation with a delicate rose. When she greeted the women entering the church, her cheeks flushed with pride — until she turned to me. The moment remains like a stubborn stain that cannot be removed. “Oh,” she said with a glance, “you don’t get a rose. You’re not a mom.” Being childless for many is a respite, a relief from worry and responsibility, but for me it was an aching emptiness that could not be filled with anything material or spiritual. Infertility was a psychological mind-bender, a riddle of fate, or chance, or providence.

At age thirty, after several years of marriage and infertile for no known reason, I never thought I’d be a mother. When children didn’t come into my marriage, I went back to finish my college degree. I threw myself into my studies and found a deep satisfaction in learning, but it was never a substitute for the ache of childlessness. I reasoned that with my husband in graduate school, me finishing a degree, and both of us working that it wasn’t convenient to have children. My community service in our neighborhood, however, threw cold water on my patience. The day I visited sixteen-year-old Gina, who was pregnant with her second child, I decided I’d had enough waiting and life was cruel like that. A summer internship for my husband in another state became available, so we welcomed a change of surroundings. After three short months in the small town, one domino fell on the next until it changed my heart forever. “I know an unwed mother who is willing to place her baby with you,” a friend confided one day. Hopes, prayers, and arrangements ensued for the next seven months.

She delivered early, so a blur of activity sent me on an airplane immediately, while my husband arranged to follow. I wept in the hospital elevator after seeing the pink bundle through the maternity window. I wrapped her tiny fingers around mine in the back seat of the car while my friend drove us to her home. And in the morning, even before my husband arrived, the birth mother changed her mind. To visit my older sister during a school break, I stepped over a bulging plastic lawn mower and nearly tripped on an array of balls, stuffed zoo animals, and a princess wand before tumbling into her sticky, cereal-laden kitchen. Kids. The footprints and fingerprints of her daily life was a cruel reminder that I was the sister who had none. When I unbolted my door each day to go out, I realized that the only way to keep my sanity was to wear blinders to all the unwed teens and abusive parents who mauled and killed their children and the women who conceived as easily as breathing. “You don’t make enough money,” the woman on the telephone at the adoption agency said. My mouth went dry and my brain numb, groping for a response. The list of adoption agencies that considered us worthy parents diminished with each phone call. Finally, at our two-seater kitchen table in a dilapidated duplex on the east side of Dallas, my husband and I held hands and set a serious goal to bring children into our lives. We calculated the exorbitant cost of an adoption in light of our meager income and changed our perspective. After all, we were young and able, in a time when jobs could be had. My husband worked from three in the morning to sun up delivering newspapers, attended graduate school in the daytime, built swimming pools until sundown and studied at night. In between those hours he washed windows on mansions at the far end of town. I added a secretarial job to my home-based calligraphy business while finishing my bachelor’s degree.

Within four weeks, the phone rang. “You’re invited to a baby shower for Jane!” the lady said. “Haven’t you heard? They adopted a baby girl this week!” I slammed down the phone and refused to talk to anyone for days. However, Jane’s speedy adoption turned out to be the answer to our quest for an agency. Her agency told us, “We care more about your character than your income.” I did a cartwheel in our cramped duplex. My husband and I continued to work hard and resisted spending our hard-earned money on new wardrobes and excursions. We ate beans and rice, watched PBS movies with homemade popcorn and dreamed about the fruit of our labors. By the end of the summer we had saved enough to cover adoption fees. The same phone that was wept over, slammed down, and cursed rang at the beginning of November. “It’s a boy,” Rhonda from the agency said. I repeated it over and over until I realized it wasn’t a dream or a bad joke or a miscarriage, but the birth of our son.

Mandy peeked through the screen door to see me rocking a squirmy newborn and smiled. She brought me an offering of flowers from her garden to celebrate my new life — motherhood. More than one well-meaning friend told me that as soon as we adopted, my womb would open and I would be pregnant. It was not to be. Instead, over the next ten years we were blessed with the adoption of another son and eventually twin daughters. Each adoption came to us through sacrifice and perseverance, the lessons I learned from wanting something outside my reach. ~Krisan Murphy

I Dream of You... literally.

Now we are in the process of just waiting, wishing and dreaming! I think this video captures a me eating ice cream and dreaming of kids with anticipation and a smile on my face. Funny because JJ's music found me at my darkest hour. Music always helps me and will continue I'm sure. I'm totally a fan of JJ Heller's. She just came out with a new album named I Dream of You.  This video features JJ's daughters, Lucy (5) and Nora (2). I Dream of You was created to be paired with JJ Heller's bedtime story, The Golden Feather (also available at www.jjheller.com). Check out her music, its good stuff you can listen with the whole family. 

Also today I received a package with  my favorite Starbucks caramel drink packets from Mrs. Lindsay! This made my week. Thanks for the encouraging words Lindsay, they mean a lot. Also, thank you for all that are encouraging Tim and I on this journey. It's challenging but I know God has placed people on our path to lighten the load and encourage us as we trek along this path. We continue to feel blessed for sure!

It's a short post since I just got home from church council meeting and well I have not really chilled all night. 

Have a wonderful week. 

Spread the love of Christ this week to someone,

Tim and Greta

320 puzzle pieces funded 680 more to go!

Thank you Buchanan family and Jeff, Maggie and Oliver Pitcher!!!