Cooperation

For Pete's sake, I am bound and determined to cooperate with God on whatever He's wanting to do in this whole adoption thing.

[As an aside, I have been so blessed this summer to have my husband let me go to each Tuesday LT service. I can't ever go on Thursdays because he's leading worship; but he could totally say he needed to go on Tuesdays for work. But he doesn't. :) and man, each service has been just like a great bath in the Word and Spirit. I come out feeling like my spiritual skin has had a good scrubbing, and my head full of ponderings.]

Anyway, this very nice guy (and the Collegiate pastor at Ohio State), Jon Shah, was teaching last night out of Hebrews 12, and it was a very loving and gentle kick in the pants. I know God is using our adoption to grow me and mold me and refine me, but I don't know how, and I'm certain I've been fighting him on it.

But beyond just not fighting him tooth and nail (which is the only way I know how to fight), how do I actually cooperate with what he's wanting to do? The thing about LT is that it brings up a host of character flaws and lies and things that need sharpening. I sat down last night and listed a dozen things that have been brought up in my heart over the past four weeks.

So, if you'd like to pray, please pray that I'll hear clearly from the Lord what he actually wants to work on right now, and to stuff deep down lay aside the things he doesn't want to deal with right now.

kthanxbai

I will NOT call it "No 'Poo"

But I've ditched my shampoo in favor of a more "crunchy" (and cheap) method of washing my hair. Seriously, I don't understand how people can say "no 'poo" with a straight face. And also, people not initiated into the crunchy lifestyle are going to get very wild ideas in their heads before you explain yourself. Perhaps people just like to be a little shocking? I don't know.

Basically, I'm trying this new method because I have very dry hair (or a very dry scalp), and I've kind of given up on finding a shampoo that I love and my scalp loves too. My scalp is always itchy and flaking, regardless of what shampoo and conditioner I use, how often I wash my hair, what time of year it is, etc. And I'm not quite ready to go to a dermatologist about it. I'm an American; I only get help when I absolutely cannot fix it myself.

So I'm washing my hair every few days with a watered down baking soda mixture (1 tablespoon soda per cup of water), and conditioning it with watered down apple cider vinegar (3 tablespoons per 2 cups water). You can easily google many pro no 'poo sites that will tell you how and why and blahblah. I mainly referenced this blog.

I've only washed it twice, and so far no problems. My roots are definitely more oily-feeling than I'm used to right out of the shower, but not to where I can see any difference. My ends haven't (yet) been dry or frizzled, so who knows? My hair pretty much looks like my hair (with some frizz control product in it). Maybe I'll keep doing this. It sure is cheaper than the really nice stuff I've been using (my curl control stuff is $40! But it's lasted 3 years. I probably shouldn't still be using it, right?). I'll give you another report in a couple of weeks. Most people who seem to try this have oily hair, so I felt it incumbent upon me to put my experiment out there, having very dry and sensitive skin in general.

Who knows, if this works out, maybe I'll try making my own deodorant, or washing my face with honey, or some other crazy, pseudo-embarrassing-but-possibly-wonderful nonsense.

Dreams

I don't remember many of my dreams, but usually the ones I do remember are the stress dreams. I had so many when Ezra started walking quickly: he'd be right next to me, and I'd look up to answer someone's question, and look right back to see him jumping off a cliff or into a swimming pool (filled with jellyfish!).

Last night (early this morning, rather) I had a different sort of dream. So, my mom, my brother (Matt), and I were digging in the ground (for some logical reason I've forgotten) kind of near a bank (not the river kind, the fiduciary kind). All of a sudden, we start digging up people's wallets, I mean twenty or thirty wallets. In one wallet, we found a $20,000 bill. Incredulous, we brought the wallets into the bank to turn them in. The teller and the manager went through and discovered that the owners of the wallets were dead, which somehow meant that the cash (it was all bills, no checks or anything) belonged to us now: a total of a little over $30,000. My mom looked at me with a smile and said, "Well, what do you want to do with it?"

And, in the dream, I started crying, because it meant we could adopt now, the way we wanted, and not have to worry about fundraising, or scrimping to save, or getting to a point in the process and not having enough money to go forward, or having to stop because expenses were higher than projected. I felt unburdened, free! We could commit to a specific child, our child, the very next day.

It was a good dream. But not real. But it was a good reminder that I can trust God, even though the money aspect of our adoption is not working the way I'd want it to. I let God control the outcome of my efforts in many other areas, but I haven't surrendered my children enough to be unburdened by the process of bringing one of them home.

I suppose I'll work on that.