Foster Care & Adoption Blog #5: The End of the Beginning Part II of III

Dear 11 followers:

Writing has given me a much needed outlet for stress relief and it has meant so much to me that all of you are reading this! When you're busy preparing to be a foster parent, you get tired from jumping through the government's hoops all day long.

We just had what we thought was to be our final inspection last week, and we were basically told that our house is unsafe for children. Let me tell you a few of the reasons why they came to this conclusion:

1. Our garden hose was not rolled up.
2. We have a small gate that leads to the courtyard and they said this is a choking hazard.
3. We have too many cords in our home studio (we do music, video, photography). They told us our option is to install a door to that room which I have no problem with, but they said in addition to the door with the lock we also need to install an interior doorbell. That way just in case anyone gets into the room, we'll know.

I totally get that the Department of Social Services needs to watch their backs and ours; no one wants a lawsuit or a tragedy. The thing that is just killing me though is that these Social Workers have such a tainted outlook on life that they can no longer distinguish between good and bad people-we're all bad to them. It is also becoming painfully obvious to me why more decent people in the world don't become foster parents: because the government makes it too damned hard. Sorry but there's just no other way to say it.

That is enough for my morning rant. Now, onto the the final chapters of the story...



The End of the Beginning:

Casey Townsend started to think he might be falling for Casey Townsend.

He kept the wax-sealed letter in his nightstand drawer for safe-keeping and I kept his letter to me (though it was very short and just explained what the check was for).

We continued to write over Myspace. There was never even a mention of talking over the phone. Somehow we both knew that that would ruin it. Here's a sample of our very lighthearted correspondence:

From Me to Him:

Date: Oct 5, 2006 3:09 PM
SUBJECT: Metamorphic Rocks


Okay, I tried to send you a message AGAIN from home, but myspace was being silly, so I'm attempting again to write to you....

I'm at school, a dreadful place, in the computer lab where I should be working on a paper that is due tomorrow that I have yet to begin. Oh well.

Pressing questions that I must ask again, as I've been anxiously awaiting your answers (in vain):

Would you rather (this is actually a book)...

Be really good with computers but have an incredibly moist wet foot?

OR

Be known as the greatest diorama maker of all time, but have a friendly midget permanently attached to you, papoose style (I assume this means on your hip??)?

My other questions were:

1. Do you drink coffee (as in real coffee, not frappuccinos or cappuccinos that you can get from the automated machines at the gas stations:)?

2. Do you like onions?

and, most importantly:

3. Do you have a southern accent? I was thinking about this the other day, and if you do, that would be sooo awesome! If you don't, it doesn't affect how cool I think you are:)

I don't know what all I wrote about in the other long email, but I do think that I remember writing that it was the quite possibly the LONGEST email that I'd ever written, but I'm not mad (I guess I meant not mad that I'd lost the previous email?).

I think that I was telling you about my crazy weekend "barrelin'", and also confirming that your mental image of riding down Niagra Falls while eating at Cracker Barrel is a very accurate description of what it's actually like working there.

I worked a lot this weekend, 4-cl on Friday and 9am-10pm on Saturday, and then woke up at 5am on Sunday to help my manager with some hair-brained idea that he had of volunteering in the canoe-event of a triathalon. I was more sore after that than I have ever been in my whole life! No exaggerations! It was fun though:)


From Him to Me:
RE: Metaphoric Rocks

When I first read the subject line, for some weird reason, I thought it said "Metophoric Rocks" and that your letter was going to be about poetry or something. But that's because I can't read. :) MetoMORPHic rocks makes more sense anyway.
Okay, so let's see. Even though I think Dioramas are really cool and I've always wanted my very own midget to carry around, I think I'd rather be good at computers because that can make you a lot of money and I think I'd be okay with having to dry out my foot every now and then. :) Plus, a moist foot would be no problem at a water park or the beach!
Coffee: I absolutely LOVE the smell, but I've tried to drink it many times (I don't know why, but I feel like drinking coffee makes you special or something and I wanted to drink it too) but I just don't really care for it. I'm more of a soda guy. Or do you say 'pop' in Ohio? ;) But I have been known to drink a sweet coffee drink like a capucino every now and then. How about you? Do you grace the lines of Starbucks every day? (there is more but I shortened it)

CT


***

As you can see if you've read the other blogs, we had started writing in April or May and this letter you read above is from October, so we had been writing for a good while...

I was still at Wright State and was getting ready to go back to Kenya to find an orphan boy that I had been supporting, Moses is his name. Please stay tuned for next week's blog for a video clip of him that I took the first time I was there and also for some exclusive footage from my days at Cracker Barrel (you DON'T want to miss it)


He wasn't affiliated with any organization which is why I had to "find" him. With no internet and extremely unpredictable mail, you never know where a Kenyan can be at any given time.


Mbita is the village that I fell in love with, seated on Lake Victoria...



Teaching Worship Songs @ a local school 2004-05



The Lake Flies 2004-05



Crazy Boat Trips from 2004-05


Mbita is the bush-bush. It's a 10-hour drive from Nairobi that must be broken up into a two-day period because of the terrible road system (potholes galore). The second day also includes a 1 or 2 hour ride on a ferry.

Sending money for school was such a risk that I wanted to be able to do it in person. I was helping him get his high school education.

I think I wanted to go back also because I felt like something was there for me, which it actually wasn't. I think though that God had to show me that there was nothing there for me so that I would know that there was nothing there for me...you know?

I used the "Independent Study" excuse to get myself back there. It would earn me my LAST credit needed to get my Bachelor's Degree, which later proved useless to me as I had previously suspected. Not that the degree itself is useless, just to me it is useless.


Meanwhile, time went on and we did not pursue romance. I, in fact, had my eyes on a couple of other "candidates". I had even come to the conclusion that the dancing with gardenias thing was a lost cause and decided that, in an effort to prove to myself that I was over it, told the story to a guy who I was convinced wasn't the right one anyway.

The other guy I was interested in, I must admit to you, was already in a relationship. I knew he was thinking of breaking up with her and this made me very hopeful that I would have a chance. He had confided in me that he was interested in me too but couldn't bring himself to leave his girlfriend. I definitely did not want to be a "home-wrecker" so we decided it was territory we didn't want to enter and never talked about it again. It was true that it would have been "tainted" if we would have ended up together. The whole situation crushed me despite sound judgment and that made me want to run off to Kenya even more.

I was still consumed with the eating disorder. Whenever stressful situations like this hit, it was in full-swing: binging and purging. Blood sugars sky-rocketing, making me too out-of-it to go to class so my grades were suffering. I had totally isolated myself from any friends I had left. I guess I should mention also that I have Juvenile Type 1 Diabetes and have since I was 13, to explain the blood sugar comment.

This was the lull that was the next couple of months until I left for Kenya in the beginning of December. It was only a 3-week trip, and I was already dreading the reality that I'd have to go back to Ohio and was hoping desperately that maybe I wouldn't have to.

But one day the tides turned...


I got a Myspace message from Casey Samuel (not Stephen) Townsend giving me some very important news...

To preface, I would call his family "tight-knit". I'm going to go ahead and stereotype and say that it's because his mom, Cindy, is from Virgina. It could just be that a southern accent makes someone sound nicer than they really are, or Southern people actually are more friendly and have somehow maintained a stronger family value than the majority of "Yankee's". There's probably a study out there or something but that's for another time.

Anyway, Casey Samuel's mom, Cindy, has two sisters named Janet & Allison. Allison just to happens to live in Ohio, which I think we had discussed but never discussed the location of where she lived. By September, she had heard Casey Samuel talk of my emails and she had even read a few and later told me that she was very impressed with my grammar skills. :)

It was in September that Cindy decided to meddle in our platonic Myspace relationship. She did a googlemaps search for my house to see how close it was to her sister, Allison's house...

My address was in Fairborn at the time, which not many people have heard of, and Beavercreek is right next to that. It turned out that Allison lived in Beavercreek, and her children (CS' cousins)went to the same high school as me and graduated just a few years after I had!

She lived only 8 miles from my apartment.

This news gave us the excuse to meet in person without causing any awkwardness, or at least it gave us a shot at trying to avoid it...

Which we didn't, but instead we made it more awkward than ever which will be explained in just a moment. :)

Casey Samuel made plans to come to Ohio to "visit his cousins" after Christmas in 2006. We made a "fail-safe" plan to meet at El Toro (my regular Mexican eatery) on December 28th and decided the best thing to do would be to bring our families too. This included his Aunt, Uncle, Mom, 3 cousins, my Mom, Nanny, and Paw-Paw. We figured (though neither of us said this at the time) that having our families there would decrease awkwardness so if either one of us was really creepy to the other, we could bail out more easily.

I will explain later why this was a big mistake.

...


Sidenote:

At this point I find that it's very important for me to mention who I'm calling, "The Background Guy". You know what I'm talking about. When you're young (which I still am but humor me) you date around (at least most of us), and for a lot of us ladies while we are dating around there is one complicated relationship, be it from your early teen years, your "first love" whatever, and he is looming in the background. You always go back to him in your thoughts, wondering if maybe he'll show his face again and if things will work out. Since all of my other love attempts had failed miserably, he was coming to mind and I was wondering if he would confess his undying love to me soon...

But we will come back to him later as well.

September, October, and November flew by as I finished up Fall Quarter and prepared for my trip. I think I even worked on Thanksgiving because the tips were are always so bountiful. People flock to Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving to order a "true" Thanksgiving meal which includes all the trimmings of a typical Thanksgiving meal plus your choice of a few different pies.



It was the beginning of December, and I had prayed that God would make it snow before I left because I just love snow. It wasn't like a "sign" sort of thing, I just wanted to see the snow before I left.

And surely enough, the night before I left, He really did make it snow, and it was beautiful! In my state of pure happiness over this simple pleasure, I decided to call "The Background Guy".

I dialed. His phone rang. He answered. I squealed with delight as I told him about the snow and how I was leaving in the morning. He humored me and acted happy for me, but I could tell that he didn't really care and he was wondering why I was calling him. He did his obligatory, churchy, pray-for-me thing and then we hung up. I was disappointed as usual but not surprised by his demeanor and decided I wouldn't call him when I got back.

He was the master of fickle, the master of the elusive and non-committal text messaging. He was the kind of guy that would text a girl to tell her that a certain movie reminded him of her, and then if she responded, he would act like she was reading into it all wrong.

I went to sleep feeling really stupid for calling him. The next morning, I left for the airport and pretended like I was leaving everything behind even though it was only for 3 weeks.

...

Strawberry Pickin'

Aaaahhhh....it's that time of year again. The first year we were married we decided that we wanted to have an Anniversary tradition of going to Holden Brothers Farmer's Market to pick fresh strawberries. This is our 4th outing-being that it's our 4-year Anniversary this year. :)





When you go to the Farmer's Market, and if you have a decent camera, it's very difficult to resist a little photo shoot. I mean, you've got all the fixins for pretty pitchers...




I finally have some reading/computer glasses that go along with Casey Samuel's Damon Lindelof glasses and now feel incredibly hip.



Casey Samuel has received his first big promotion:





This has by far been the been the best year of our marriage-I love you Casey Samuel.

Foster Care & Adoption Blog #4-The End of the Beginning: Part 1

Blog #4

Dancing with gardenias?

Firstly, I had never even seen a gardenia. Secondly, the thought of a man who pranced up to me with a bouquet of gardenias made me grimace just a little.

You know how the human mind works, though. You second guess yourself. You think, "Was that me conjuring that thought from wishful thinking, or did God put it there?" And then you start thinking, "Does God even work like that? Is there a God? Is He Jesus Christ? Did I piece those two things together from vague memories? Am I in a cult? Am I insane?"

My answers to the above are: "Yes, yes, yes, yes, maybe, maybe, and maybe." :)

But despite the maybe's, if the answer to "Is there a God" and "Is He Jesus Christ" is "yes", then the rest doesn't matter.

*Sidenote*:

I've been reading The Case for Christ with my husband over the past month and now I am more convinced than ever. There are still issues in the Bible that I'm trying to reconcile though, don't get me wrong, but if you haven't read this book, you should give it a try-written by Lee Strobel. Get the study version. It's over 10 years old now but still worth it.

Anyway, I was insane and think I still am. We're all insane.

I took three things away from the Women's Conference which I've listed in order of how much I thought about them:

1. Dancing with Gardenias
2. The Journal
3. When you find the right one, you'll know without a doubt in your mind

I drove the 7 hours back to my little apartment in Fairborn, Ohio. My roommate was there waiting for me with an "I Missed You!" card, even though I'd only been gone about 4 or 5 days. I was very delighted though with her warm greeting.

I found myself trying to explain the whirlwind of what had happened over the past week, and I could see it in her eyes, "Wow, she is in deep. I'll humor her with absent eyes and head nods." I gave up trying to convince anyone of the things that I knew God had said to me and kept it to myself. I was honestly still trying to believe it for myself. "At least I have this journal as material evidence" I thought, even though the journal had nothing about gardenias on it.

I went back to work at Cracker Barrel and back to school at Wright State. You know what I did next: I scanned every guy that came across my path, wondering, "Does he have access to gardenias somehow?" I couldn't help but wonder. The journal sat on my desk untouched for about a month. There were a lot of cool little phrases on it, but I came to the conclusion that they could all apply in a relative way to pretty much any situation I found myself in.

Until....

One night I was sitting at my desk which I'd purchased from Salvation Army for I think $10, staring at the Myspace page on my laptop. I had just discovered Myspace a few months prior and thought it was the coolest thing ever. This was when it actually was cool, before it became a trash haven.

My journal was lying there next to the computer and I looked at it. One of the phrases jumped out at me all of a sudden: "Just like you." You know the thought that came to my mind next....



"I wonder if there are any other 'Casey Townsend's' in the world?"

The keyboard went "click, click, click" as I navigated to the search engine of Myspace and typed in 'Casey Townsend'.

The first picture I saw was this one:




Yes, I know, "TOO EASY", right? Exactly. Of course I thought he was adorable, but I kept thinking, "Okay, it can't be this easy!"

I mulled over in my mind what my next "move" should be. I think I had already decided immediately that this alleged "Casey Townsend" that I was beholding couldn't be a possibility. He was probably some kind of insecure short guy on here to build up his profile a couple of inches in hopes that someone would agree to meet him in person and be able to overlook it. He also probably wasn't a "real" Christian. He probably just wrote it on his profile to compensate for the shortness and other qualities that he was probably lacking (as in personality people, don't get perverted).

I waited until the next day, and then went on to check him out again. He looks fairly normal, I thought. I noticed that in addition to having the same first and last name, we also shared December birthdays. I noticed also, strangely, that he lived in North Carolina. Wow, what are the odds?

So, in an effort to not be a complete internet creepster, I decided to write him but only to let him know that I shared the same name as him, and to see if he lived anywhere near the church I had gone to for the conference. I was admittedly testing the waters to see if he was at least a normal human being, but still to my amazement I didn't have ulterior motives. I already had plans to move to NC after graduation, so I thought if he was already there maybe we could meet sometime and that it wouldn't be so creepy since I'd actually be living there of my own accord and not just to visit him. But the likelihood of us ever becoming an item was too far-fetched for me.

Well, somehow in the process of writing the first letter (I have no idea HOW) I forgot to mention that my last name was also Townsend. I must have totally spaced and only mentioned that I was a "fellow Casey".

The correspondence went as follows (taken from the original messages):

April 3rd 3:09pm
No Subject

Fellow Casey who loves Jesus! Yay:) I have a lot of friends in N.C. and S.C. with Morning Star and The Cause U.S.A., have you heard of either? Maybe you're even a part of it. God Bless you brother and take care~Casey
***
I can't believe I actually wrote "brother" in there! What a weirdo. I'm sure my old self did that in a desperate attempt to say without saying, "This is a friendly email, and that's all!

It took him a few days to write back, and when he did I believe it was a short message to humor me and say, "No, I'm not familiar with Morning Star, but sounds cool! Take Care-Casey"

I wasn't surprised that he was seemingly hollow, and I didn't write for 2 months and actually began to forget about him. We were Myspace friends and I was pretty sure that that would be the extent of our relationship and I was sure in about a year I would end up deleting him in a "friend cleansing".

Then, one day, he posted a blog announcing that his 19-year old sister had just gotten married. This event had revealed to him his own displeasure with the seeming reality that his life hadn't taken him anywhere noteworthy yet. He was 22, wasn't married, lived at home, and worked at a toner company which he loathed. His band hadn't taken off either and he was wondering if it ever would.

It was in this blog that I could see that he was a genuine human being (you can never be too careful) with many spiritual elements about him, and this made me feel free to write to him and give him some encouragement. I felt it was my duty as a fellow Casey Townsend. 

As I was writing my words of wisdom, I decided to multi-task and do some Myspace stalking. I checked out all of his pictures-most I noticed were him with his band and his beloved guitar. He had one photo of himself with his guitar that had his full name (Casey Townsend-so I guess minus his middle) photo-shopped on it. I had a similar photo of myself on my Myspace page with my green dress on that I had photo-shopped my name onto as well. I decided to mention this to him in a photo comment in which I said: “Hey, I have a photo of me that is just like this one!”




This baffled him greatly so he went to my page to check out the picture that I was talking about. As he pondered it with his eyes, he thought, “Why did she put my last name on her picture???” And then it hit him and he scrunched his brows and said quietly but intensely: “Her last name is Townsend too?!”

After finding out this piece of information he saw why I went to all the trouble to write him the first letter to make myself known to him.

He must have liked my advice and my picture, because he wrote me back a very long message thanking me for taking the time to encourage him and spent some of the page explaining himself a little bit better, that he was not typically a whiner.

This started a marathon of emails. In the beginning, there was maybe one email back and forth per week, then there were two, then three, then it was an almost daily occurrence. I would hurry down to the computer lab at Wright State University in- between my classes to see if this mysterious music man had written me another letter. The lab was always full, so there would be people crammed into the computer chairs next to me, hearing me squeal with laughter at the things that Casey Townsend had written.

In all of that time though, the most amazing thing happened, and that is that it never got romantic. There was not even a hint of romance uttered in typed words by either one of us and that still amazes me to this day. My normal self would have made quick moves to see if this thing was ever going to go anywhere. I had suspicions that he had never had a girlfriend before just from some of the things he had said, but I couldn't wrap my mind around that and I wondered if he would ever bring it up.

He didn't though, and this kind of relieved me.





In one of our emails, he said something about us writing a real letter to each other someday and how cool that would be. He said he wished we could go back to the days of wax sealed letters on parchment, and this gave me an idea...

My roommate had just so happened to have recently ordered a personalized wax seal for herself (she liked random things like that). I think she was at work or something, but I decided that I was going to use it! The seal was her initials: 'J.S.', but when you melted the ink you couldn't really tell-it just looked like a cool design and I hoped he wouldn't notice it. :)

I soaked some paper in coffee and crinkled it up to make a modern-day parchment.
The coolest thing happened next. All of my mail went to my dad's house because I didn't want to go through the hassle of an address change while at school, so I went by to pick up my mail which I usually did once a week. When I got there, there was a letter waiting for me. You can guess who it was from! Mr. Casey Townsend had beaten me to the punch and already sent me a hand-written letter, though it was not wax-sealed. I was preparing to go back to Kenya that December, and I had told him briefly about it. He sent me a check for $60 to help with my trip! Something about seeing his real-life handwriting made me get butterflies in my stomach...

So, that day, I sent off my wax-sealed letter in hopes that it wouldn't seem like a romantic advance and scare him off.



When he got his letter, he wrote me via Myspace to tell me how much he loved it, and of course this made me happy. :) Much later he told me a back story to the wax-sealed-letter that must be shared:



Casey Samuel Townsend has a dear friend named Joel Winstead. Joel is hilarious-most of his comments have sarcasm interlaced and when he and Casey get together its like this ball of creative humor that's so fun to watch.

Mr. Casey decided to confide in Joel that this "other" Casey Townsend had written him a wax-sealed letter. Joel being who he is and knowing that Mr. Casey had not had a girlfriend yet, began a bantering back and forth that went like this:

Joel: "Dude, she totally wants you."
Mr. Casey: "No! No, no, no..."
Joel: "Did she put perfume on it?"
Mr. Casey: "No."
Joel: "Wait, you actually sniffed it!?!?"
Mr. Casey: "Yes."
Joel: "Dude! You want her!"

He didn't admit it that day, but Casey Townsend was starting to think that he might be falling for Casey Townsend.

Foster Care & Adoption Blog #3-The Journal

Aaaaahhhh....back to the sweet scripted escape of blogging. It has been too long since my last post and I do apologize for the delay in finishing up the story!

It continues...




I know what you're thinking, that that picture looks exactly like me! I know! It's so hard to keep myself from bragging.

Welcome to Blog #3! I am so glad that you are taking the time out of your day to read this-it means so much to me and hopefully it will be a blessing to you in some way today.


Let's jump right back in where we left off yesterday, shall we?

Since the trip to Colorado was very obviously *cancelled* I knew that I was supposed to go to the Women's Conference. I didn't know anything about it-only that Rita Springer was going to be there and that was pretty much it. I went expecting to hear some great truth from God, but before I went, I knew I needed some new perfume! That's what every girl needs before a road trip, right? Actually the real reason I was buying it was because I just to happened to have a gift card and felt the need to treat myself to something as a reward for my pain. There were probably a few other scattered rewards to myself such as sodas and snacks of all kinds, but I can't remember.

I walked into the store. They had some new smells which I'm sure now are discontinued. The one displayed at the front was "Gardenia". "Hmmm, that sounds familiar, what is that?" I thought to myself. I gave it a spray. "Mmmmm! That smells so familiar!" I couldn't place it and figured it would hit me later. Then I bought it. Little did I know that this was my first "clue" and it hit me hard.


***
Important Sidenote: I have to mention that I was supposed to have been in North Carolina long before this point. When I did all of my missions work, it was based out of Colorado through YWAM. I was originally signed up to be stationed in North Carolina, but the only reason I changed my mind to go to Colorado was to be near my boyfriend, military guy. God went to all that trouble to let me go to the opposite end of the country and around the world, to bring me right back to where He had originally told me to go. It took me 3 years to get back there. I don't really believe in mistakes though, at least not when God's involved.

***

I packed the necessities for the trip, most importantly the Gardenia perfume, and drove the 7 hours through the hills to Fort Mill, NC. I was met there by my dear, dear friend, Therese, who, strangely enough, had just bought the same perfume as me! Strange, huh? Or, maybe not so much?

The first meeting at the conference was the night I arrived. I was feeling disoriented when I got there-lost without knowing that military guy was just a phone-call away. The excitement of taking my life back by going on an awesome road trip to fill the void was already wearing off.

The Worship started. I swear there was something like a Holy Wind that literally blew Rita Springer's hair in it's breeze when she started playing the piano. It may have also been the stage fans, but who really knows for sure? :)

After the worship, a woman made an announcement that now they would be handing out hand-crafted, what they believed to be "prophetic journals" that the conference leaders had made themselves from random newspapers and magazine clippings. There had to have been hundreds of these journals, and they were all different. They had prayed over all of them, praying that each journal would fall into the hands of the right woman, as they were handing them out completely at random throughout the audience.

I got mine. Just look at it for a second.




I looked at my journal, and because this is where the mind of most young, single girls goes, my first thought was, "Is there anything on here that might mean anything about my future husband???" Let's get real, that's what we were thinking about. Even when we were trying to be so religious and not think about it, we still were. I actually tried to avoid looking at for a few days. That was the last thing that I need to be thinking about in my current situation, and I knew it. There were things on there that definitely sparked my interest. I mean, who isn't interested in a mysterious, prophetic journal that a stranger gives you with a promise that it will reveal the secrets of God for your life? Even if you don't believe in signs, you're interested.

But what I was more interested in honestly was the journal revealing that there in fact was a shot at me and military guy getting back together. He wasn't married yet, maybe it would work out?


Not a chance.

Later that day, it finally came to me-the perfume, where I recognized it from. This is the part of the story that I never tell because it seems so incredibly far-fetched and cliche, but yes, this actually happened.

I had bought some kind of oil from the same store that I remembered had gardenia extract in it. I even remembered exactly when I had bought it and when I had worn it. I was wearing it before I met military guy, when I was planning to go North Carolina (which, I must mention, gardenias only grow in the south. I had never even seen one before since I'm from Ohio). I wore it every single day, but never considered the gardenia element because at the time it meant nothing to me.

And then I thought, "Why did I stop wearing it?" I thought that maybe I even still had a little bit left in the bottle and then was wondering where it was. I realized why, and I think I actually gasped. Because I had bought a new perfume when I met military guy. Not to please him, but it so happened that I grew tired of the oil around the time we had met. It was called, "Love Spell".

"Whoa. Weird", I thought. And no, I'm not saying that the perfume had a magical spell over me; it was the symbolism of it all that shook me so much. There was something about Gardenias that God was telling me was so important. It was the buying of the "Gardenia" perfume to replace the "Love Spell" perfume I'd been wearing all of that time that told me a new thing was about to transpire...

Another Sidenote:

I know that there are people from all walks of life reading this blog. Some Catholic, Agnostic, simply non-Christian, Charismatic Christian, some non-Charismatics who believe that "the gifts" or whatever you'd like to call them, don't exist today. Well obviously you've already figured out that I believe that they do exist, but I'd also like to give the disclaimer that I don't think it's supposed to be this way for everyone. God works with us all in such a different way, and at this point in my life, this was how He saw fit to do things. At the current stage of my life, He's much more subtle and less mysterious, and something about that makes it all much more wonderful.

Conference Day #2:

This was the big day for everyone-the prophetic day. I know what you're thinking, "This has C-U-L-T written all over it." Ha! Maybe so, (I guess we can never be sure) but a darn good one.

Therese and I were going in to prophesied over together, and we were feeling in an especially rebellious state that day which was not out-of-the-ordinary. See, we believed in it, but also mocked it. Strange how that works but that's how the cookies crumbled back then.

I won't give every detail, but when we went in there was a group of 3 people to give us a word from the Lord. Now, this isn't fortune-telling, but merely words of encouragement-which is really what the word prophesy means to begin with. It is overspiritualized today but really it is a very simple and useful tool for church edification, it just is unfortunately abused by many.

There was a middle-aged woman in the group with long and straggly brown hair. She studied me for a moment. We were encouraged to bring pens and a pad of paper to write down what they told us, but I actually took in my video camera! Hence the air of rebellion about us that day, I guess. She studied me, and mind you, these people know nothing about us. They don't even know our names. She told me, without knowing what I had just gone through in the past couple of days with much seriousness, "I want you to know, when you meet the right one, you'll know without a doubt in your mind that he's the right one."

I tried to not let on that my interest was peaked so just nodded and wrote it down in my new journal. She then rattled on about how she saw my friend Therese and I going into some kind of business together, selling our art. I don't think this will ever come to fruition but she may have been partly right as I did end up becoming a photographer and Therese and her future husband run an amazing T-Shirt printing business along with being musicians. You have to pick and choose from those things sometimes, what's true and what's false.

So, I would know without a doubt in my mind? How would I know? How could there possibly be no doubt in my always questioning mind? In my last effort to find out, I simply asked God, and His answer truly surprised me!

It was the second night during worship. I asked Him, "How will I know when I've found him?" It was spoken SO clearly, God said, "He will come to you dancing with gardenias."

....

Foster Care & Adoption Blog #2-Ah The Redemption

Good Morning to all!

Thank you for reading Blog #2.

It's a rainy morning in Brunswick County, creating the perfect atmosphere for snuggling up with espresso in front of the computer to do some good ol' fashioned bloggin'.

A few weeks ago I was at church looking around and thinking, "Who will I make conversation with to not let my awkward social skills be obvious to all? Ah, there's someone." A girl there that I know who was going through a truly trying time walked over to me. I asked her how she was and she said with a smile and a hint of revelation, "I'm here. We're all just here." I can't stop thinking about that. "We're all just here." I say it to myself and it causes me to exhale-we're all just here. We're all in it together.

Romans 8:22

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."



Mother Theresa-one of my favorite people, has been a refuge for me in my times of doubt. Her words have often helped me to go on. She knew we were all just here too.

A story from Brennan Manning:

When he (a man named John Kavanaugh) met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: “Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.”

“No,” Mother Teresa answered, “I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”

When Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for, Mother Teresa laughed and said:

“I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”


There's a scripture that talks about how God is not a God of confusion. The unknown and confusion are not the same I've realized; Confusion is only present when trust is absent. I wouldn't necessarily label my trust status as "absent", but let's just say, "tardy".

You know when you are in the midst of a downward spiral and you find yourself in the dark pit? You're there for a few weeks, months, or years, and then something wonderful happens and God picks you up, takes your hand, and leads you around the corner to something brighter. You look back at the way you came and almost always, you say, "Aaaahhhh! That's why that happened; that's why I had to take that road to get here!" It all of a sudden becomes so clear and what was ugly to you before then becomes exceedingly beautiful.

Well, that's been the story of my life anyway.





What gives me faith when I doubt is what's in this journal. Only a few people know the full story of how I met my husband (I call this the "Holy Spirit" version). We have gotten into the bad habit of only telling the worldly details: how we were both 'Casey Townsend' when we met on myspace, how we made the discovery of his family living in my hometown hundreds of miles away to give him the excuse to come to meet me for the first time, how we only saw each other in person 4 times before we were married, and how we were engaged for a grand total of 17 days. You can gag yourself with a spoon after you finish reading.

The God stuff is absolutely the best part. If and when I sink into the blackness, I remember our story and I believe.

I know, I know, "Get to the hilarious foster care stories!!!" For you to appreciate it in its fullness I have to fill in these few gaps first.

I have to tell you all that I had more than a few relationships before I met Mr. Casey. On the flip-side, he had had NONE. 23-years old, and he'd never so much as held someone's hand. Ah, the Redemption. I know many of you out there know what I mean.

I was in what I'd call a "serious" relationship before I met him. A military guy who I tried to make myself believe I'd marry someday, "when I was ready". Sidenote: if you're not ready now, if you can't picture yourself with them now, it's probably not going to happen. Think about it.

The short version of this story is that we were together, me and military guy, for 2 and a 1/2 years. He was overseas in Iraq, and was finally coming back for me, or so I thought. God, in His always infinite wisdom, knew that I had been planning a little "Welcome Back" trip to Colorado for him. There was a women's conference taking place in Fort Mill, NC during the same dates I was planning my trip to Colorado. My favorite worship singer, Rita Springer, was going to be there and it was killing me that I wasn't going to be there because I'd never seen her live before.

I firmly believe that if God wants to lead you somewhere, He'll step in to redirect your path. This seemingly conflicts with free will, but somehow I think it's all reconciled but I'm simply not smart enough to explain how.

I had plans to drive military guy's truck out to Colorado with one of my friends (probably Jenna, I can't remember) and meet him there. These plans were quickly squashed with one epic break-up phone call.

He called one night, and I was gushing with excitement over seeing him, asking how we were going to meet up, making our plans. I could tell he was uneasy. His initial reply was, "I don't think you're going to be coming to Colorado." You know that sinking feeling you get? Yep, that's what I felt.

He informed me that he had been having a second relationship with someone in the military with him. It had been going on for almost a year. His exact words were, "I've got a baby on the way." He shared all of this with me in one epic break-up phone call right before he was coming home for his leave of absence from the field, during which I thought we would be reuniting and planning my move to Colorado and our eventual marriage.

WRONG.

He married her just a month or two later.

Needless to say, after the "epic break-up phone call", North Carolina was in luck. :)



Please come back for Part II of the story in Blog #3 tomorrow and I will reveal the secrets of the journal!
Thank you for reading.

Foster Care & Adoption Blog #1

Above: Kenya 2005

To start off: I really should have done this from the beginning. This colorful journey over the past 7 years that has led my husband and me to what seems like the edge of a sky-dive has been so amazing, God-Directed, and heart-breaking at times. I want to share the journey (though partly in retrospect) with all of you! This is a collection of blogs that illustrate our journey to become Foster and Adoptive Parents. Stay tuned for unadulterated racism from outsiders and the hilarious stories from Foster Care Classes-you won't regret it!

Disclaimer: Has it been easy to lay aside my own desire to have "our own" children and take in someone else's, hoping to graft them into our family? NO. Do I think I'm some kind of superhero because I am laying aside that desire? YES. LOL-NO! Of course not. Honestly, the true reason for this Blog Collection is this: to remind myself of what God has done and what He has said. This is my healing.
I will be posting a daily, or at the least weekly blog to journal the class experience-YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS IT-TRUST ME. If you've been having a hard time laughing lately, just click on the link to my blog and you won't regret it.
Many of you know the story in part, but to the unsuspecting person who stumbled upon this blog on in a state of depression and despair, this one's for you.

***

How it began: God's Crazy Ideas

Before I met my husband in 2006, I had the heart of a missionary. I had the amazing opportunity to travel and saw things that changed me forever, and I remember solemnly swearing that I would never forget the desperation I witnessed; I promised God that I would be one to help to meet the world's needs. I even wrote myself a letter before I left the mission field and had my team leader send it to me 6 months later so that I could be reminded of my heart's desire, lest I'd already forgotten. Through these experiences, specifically in my travels to Kenya, I heard God calling me to adoption.

This picture paints me as some kind of spiritual giant, but I assure you, I AM NOT. I didn't run off into a field with fluffy white flowers and kittens and cuddle all of the parentless children in the world. I left the mission field and went to back to school, which I loathed with my whole being. For about 2 years it seemed like any kind of spiritually that had mustered itself up in me was sucked out by the Institution of "Higher Education". I didn't spend my days day-dreaming of adopting my ideal child. Instead though I did daydream seemingly hopelessly of having a chance meeting with my future husband(whom, by the way, I didn't know yet) and also indulged myself deep into an eating disorder which consumed my life for the majority of my college years. Sound like adoptive mom material?
***

I was never a "baby-loving" woman. I didn't spend a lot of time with children, was not the kind of girl that just loved being around them. Frankly, I didn't understand them and I don't think most of them really liked me, so I just steered clear of the whole thing. When I was in the mission field I would often laugh to myself at how every place I ended up in, I'd be working with orphans. God has a funny way of planting His seeds-and oh, how I mean that.

***
It was like a faint whisper that I couldn't certainly distinguish-like in those moments on Lake Victoria I could feel the seed being planted in me, deep, deep down. It was the strangest thing-to be very certain of what's to come, but to not yet have the desire, but to desire the desire...

***
Not being a "baby-loving" woman, I didn't think that I would ever become pregnant. I didn't spend much time thinking about the subject since I wasn't even married yet or finished with school, but I always had a sneaking suspicion that God wanted me to adopt so badly, that He would go so far as to shut my womb to make it happen. It was just a little subconscious instinct that I had, but no Doctor's had ever confirmed anything of the sort. I tried to explain this to my family, that I planned to adopt my children someday, and they very obviously brushed it off as a mere whim.
Actually, here's a great story for you:
Recently my Grandmother asked me what I'd been up to lately. I hesitated at first, but then decided to respond with:
"Well, we're doing great! We're getting things ready for our final home visit tomorrow and then we'll be getting licensed to have children in the house!"
Her response: "Oh."
"Well, do you have any new recipes?"

This is what we've been dealing with lately. Your thoughts are most likely, "Well, they're just old school." Yes, this is true, but they're not your typical 85-year olds; they're with it-very with it. I want to excuse their behavior just as badly as you do, but let's face it, some people just suck.


But, you know what?
I'll tell you more in the next post! Thank you for reading Blog # 1.

European Travel