overexposed in public, underdeveloped in private

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

{Matthew 23:27}

In ministry, we can look great on the outside. Sometimes we have the faith inside to back that up.

Sometimes? Well, we don't.

That's why this blog has been quiet. 

In our family, we've had a lot of change in the past year and a half (which, not coincidentally, is the same period of time that the blog has been neglected): the start of an unexpected adoption of a baby girl with cerebral palsy, the sale of one house, the purchase of another house, the move to the new house, the trip to Taiwan to bring Zoe home, her celebrated arrival, the start of kindergarten for our oldest, the surprise seizure the night before Thanksgiving and subsequent diagnosis of epilepsy for our middle child, my own struggles with depression, and now?

Yes, we're adopting again, this time a sibling group of three from Uganda, one of whom is HIV+.

Through all of our lives' recent transitions, we've been blessed to continue leading our church's special needs ministry. 

In order to keep myself accountable to the commitments I have in our family and home church, something had to give in the midst of it all. 

Thus, the quiet here.

I needed to decrease my exposure publicly to allow God to develop places in my heart privately.

I needed bones and uncleanliness swept away by Him, lest this blog be nothing more than the beautiful whitewashed tomb appearances put on by the Pharisees and called out by Christ in Matthew 23.

I've missed it, though. As I've been immersed in the Christian adoption community, I've become more and more convicted that churches can do a better job including people with disabilities, both those who arrive via adoption and those who make their entrance in other ways.

So regular posts begin again today, my friends.