A Life Uncommon

Common. The same. Normal.

 My life, my family, my everything is common. In my life, I have a husband who is a teacher, and I am a teacher. We have two little girls, two dogs, two cats, a mini van and to top it off, a pink house in the suburbs.  Does it get more common?

I have been blessed by God, He has given me everything listed above and so much more. And our life is the impiety of a common life. A safe, comfortable, easy life. Where we love our friends and our family but do not reach out to neighbors in our neighborhood. Where we go to church and praise God on Sunday and live our life the rest of the week. Where we spend our money on frivolous things but do not have a dollar or a snack to provide the man standing on the corner next to the Walmart shopping center.

I love my life, I love my husband, I love my kids and I love God. I love God. I want to live for God. I want to live a life uncommon. So uncommon. Doing more for Him than just working in the nursery at church once a month. It is a leap of faith, it is a terrifying but yet thrilling leap of faith. This blog was started today because our two huge leaps of faith are coming to stay at our home in 5 short days. This will be my journal, our journey, of how we made our common life into a life uncommon, a life for the Lord. I know it may not be pretty, or well written, but it will be our primary source for our family. To show my sweet little girls that loving your friends and family is easy, but loving people you do not know, people who are not perfect is what we need to do. To love everyone, especially those who do not have love. The forgotten ones. The least of these.

Why? Everyone keeps asking me why? Why are you guys doing this? Honestly, I don’t have an answer, but we feel called to do this. A month and half ago, I had no idea where  Ukraine was even located. But now I am learning phases in Ukrainian and Russian. “Good morning?” “How are you?” “Do you understand?” “Are you hungry?” 

This all started about 6 months back. My daughter’s Pre K teacher was having a shoe fundraiser and we brought in a couple of pairs of old shoes last December. What were they fundraising for, adoption. Adoption of a super cool 15 year old kid that they hosted last summer from the Ukraine. We would pray for him and her family and had them on our prayer wall. We would talk to her teacher briefly about it in the morning while dropping off our then 4 year old, but then we’d go on with our own life. 

 I have to admit, I am not a blogger, obviously since this is my first post, but I will sometimes read a distance friend (an acquaintance really)’s blog. She is a girl my husband was in the credential program with a few years back. Her blog was always intriguing to me, she and her husband adopted a 9 year old girl and 10 month old boy from Russia three years back and it was mostly about that. But, around January one of her blogs popped up on my husband’s Facebook page. "Kimmy look at this, isn’t that....?” “Ya! That’s Lily”s teacher.” 

The blog was all about their adoption and their need to fundraise.
It is funny how God puts people in your life, then He takes them and hits you over the head with them a couple times. Got it God, thanks! We became better friends with Lily’s teacher, and then about a month ago she asked if we wanted to host. We said that sounds nice. We had no idea (still don’t) what we were in for. She called some people, helped us fill out the application, set up our donation account, wrote a few letters of recommendations and BAM, just like that, we are hosting. 

Who are we hosting? A 12 year old girl named Yana and her 16 year old brother named Sanya, both Ukrainian orphans. 

What is hosting? Not sure yet. I will let you know if 5 days when our common life gets twisted ally-ooped into this awesome adventure. Into a life uncommon, but a life for God. His hands, his feet. His strength, His love pouring through us. 

Please pray for our host kids, pray that they feel safe and that healing can begin to happen in them.