Small town girl with big world vision
“If I drive all the way up there, they better damn well let me see my son, or I’ll get a gun.” These words might have been ripped from the headlines of the recent mass shooting that happened in Texas, where an abusive husband attacked the church congregation his ex-in-laws attended. At least 27 people…
Sometimes love doesn’t seem like enough. Sometimes there is so much broken that it seems impossible to meet the deluge with love. Sometimes things don’t magically fall into place. The pain doesn’t go away. The goodbye still happens and the choices others make seem completely wrong. None of it feels good. Or right. Or the…
Peter Pan has returned home. He left the way he came, with very little fanfare. He didn’t say that he would miss us. He just said goodbye and walked away. I still don’t know why he came in the first place. There has to be a reason. I just don’t know what it was. It’s…
I have a daughter who lives in Latvia. She is sassy and spunky and so much like me. I recently got to share the story of how we became a family at Listen to Your Mother: Pittsburgh. It was an amazing experience that was uplifting and encouraging in ways that I am unable to fully…
Look at these two pictures. It seems like a different child. In a way, it is. Both are Peter Pan, but one was taken when he was with our family in America, and the other was taken when he was with his friends in Latvia. The difference is part of the orphan mentality, a…
It has been two months since we got the news that Peter Pan did not want to come to America on a student visa. Two months since Little Man and I decided that we needed to go to Latvia anyway because love shows up. Our hearts may have been breaking, but the only thing that…
In the age of Instagram and Twitter and all things social, I feel like I’ve been falling behind lately. I’m a fairly social person, and I like to take pictures. I have been labeled as a “paparazzi” by a certain sassy Latvian, who claims I would take a picture of her on the toilet if…
Imagine you are coaching a Little League team. There’s a lot of things you need to track—the batter at the plate, the play in the field, the kids wriggling in the dugout. You look over to the bench and see Kid #1 spitting sunflower seeds at Kid #2. You explicitly told them not to spit…
It’s amazing how your whole world changes with a few words. “I’m pregnant. I need you.” “I’m not coming to America. I don’t need you.” Both these phrases have reframed my future and the future of the ones I love. It’s taken me a while to process what this means for all of us. The…
“Maybe I don’t come America.” The message took me off guard. I have been working so hard: raising funds, filling out papers, correcting and re-correcting forms. Every day, I think of having Peter Pan here. And I was excitedly sharing with him that I finally got the next set of papers and soon…so soon!!…I would…
