Thick Skin. Tender Heart.

Over the past decade, I've been learning how to live in the tension and beauty of those two realities. I'm a really tough woman: stubborn, hard headed, opinionated, strong, determined. Yet I'm also fully tender: I cry a lot, feel other's pain deeply, am stung by other's harsh or critical words, and very emotional.

How do you have thick skin - the ability to let unimportant and damaging emotional hits bounce off of me,
yet have a tender heart - the ability to feel deeply and remain emotionally connected?

Our infertility and adoption has taken that tension to a whole new place! In some ways they are 2 ends of the spectrum - tough and tender. Because the intensity of the 2 emotional dichotomies is difficult to fully, always live in, I've also discovered another mode: numbness.

I don't often go there, but I think it's one of God's gifts to us. I don't think it's possible to constantly feel all that there is to feel is such deep pain intermingled with joy. It's just not humanly possible. So, I think God gifts us with that 3rd option of numbness. I'm grateful for it. It's restful, recalibrating, gracious, and refilling for the next dip on the roller coaster.

At the end of the day, I want to be a woman, wife, leader, AND mom who is both incredibly tough and tender. I see that all over the pages of Scripture in Jesus, and so I will continue to learn and grow in my strength and vulnerability, while occasionally opting for the reprieve of numbness.

How about you? How do you develop thick skin and a tender heart?

Adoption Videos that Make Me Cry

...let's be honest: they all make me cry. But they are beautiful and a reminder to me of truth and hope.



We Love Our Lucy Lane Blog :: A couple amazing videos of Lucy Lane's Gotchya Day and her 1st year in her forever family.

...once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do.
God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls,
knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act.
[Proverbs 24:12]

"Sing, barren woman, who has never had a baby.
Fill the air with song, you who've never experienced childbirth!
You're ending up with far more children
than all those childbearing women." God says so!
"Clear lots of ground for your tents!
Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big!
Use plenty of rope,
drive the tent pegs deep.
You're going to need lots of elbow room
for your growing family.
You're going to take over whole nations;
you're going to resettle abandoned cities.
[Isaiah 54:1-3, The Message]

8 Months and Still Waiting

Yesterday, Father's Day, marked 8 months on the wait list. My mom sent me this Scripture last week - framed! - because she knows that my soul is weary...

Psalm 62:5 [I chose a couple versions because the English language can't contain it all in one translation]
God, the one and only—
I'll wait as long as he says.
Everything I hope for comes from him,
so why not?
He's solid rock under my feet,
breathing room for my soul,
An impregnable castle:
I'm set for life. [The Message]

Let all that I am wait quietly before God,
for my hope is in him. [NLT]

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
my hope comes from him. [NIV]