Ablaze With Light

Back in high school, I was in show choir.  Evidently, while gearing up for a major competition, I was overwhelmed and stressed out because I went to bed early not feeling well, and my brother informed me the next day that I dropped into a deep sleep and started singing, "This is the Moment," at the top of my lungs.  I would never have believed him except that my parents verified his story.  Now that's embarrassing!  :)

I'm pretty sure that has never happened again since then, seems like something Steve would never let me live down, but if there were a time in my life where I might start belting out power ballods in my sleep, it would be now.  I am literally bursting with anticipation as the Sheltons are finally ready to fill you in on a journey we are taking - all five of us!

 When we were choosing our second son's name, my dad told me it really didn't matter what we named him because in a few years, he and his big brother would just be known as "the ornery Shelton boys" anyway, and boy is that ever true!  We gave them all T names, and we hardly ever get them right ourselves, although I promise you, we really do know who they are - Tyler, age eight, Trevor, turning six in just four days, and Trenton, thirteen months.  I like to refer to them (and they don't object) as Ornery, Rotten, and Pilikia (which means trouble).  The other day Tyler and Trevor were actually debating which one of them was Ornery, and which one was Rotten, and Pilikie has taken his nickname so much to heart that Steve told me I need to change it before he destroys our entire house!  Trenton is always Pilikia!
Raising these three is nothing short of an adventure.  There is always something going on with one of them, and I am astounded as I watch them grow and try to keep up!
The title of this blog actually came from an email subject line I used when telling friends and coworkers about the boys' first attempt at a lemonade stand this summer, which may or may not have been hazardous to my neighbors' health.  They used dirty hose water to fill a pitcher they found in the garage, dumped twice the amount of required sugar in, stirred with a short spoon and grubby hands, and then sold it to my unsuspecting neighbors for fifty cents a cup.  Sorry, neighbors, I'm glad none of you were actually harmed by the making of that Kool Aid!

Since then, Trevor scraped his knee and ended up at Children's Hospital a few days later with a really scary infection, Tyler went to his first church camp, Trenton turned one, the big boys started school, and I agreed to teach a church history class which reminds me every week what an awesome responsibility God has given me by entrusting to me these children.  And evidently my responsibilities don't end there because God has called us together to something more, something big,and something we never saw coming!
We are now officially on an adoption journey.  That may not surprise those of you who know us well and have watched us support friends and family in their adoptions for the last few years, but it is not something we were anticipating.  We were finished having kids after three, and we told everyone as much.  And yet, here we are.  Simply getting to this point has been quite a journey already.  Perhaps I'll tell you about it some other time.

I can honestly tell you at this point, we have more questions than answers.  We don't know, for example, which agency we'll use, where our little girl we'll come from (we're pretty sure we'll bring home a daughter), how long this will take, or how it will all come about.
Here are a few things we do know.  There are 143,000,000 orphans in the world.  143,000,000!  For many of them, there is no education,insufficient nutrition, and career options limited to forced child military service, or life in the sex trade.  We also know that God cares about these children, all of them, wherever they are, and that we, as Christians, are called to care about them too.
A little over three years ago, my brother and his wife announced that they were going to adopt from Ethiopia.  They have since brought home two beautiful children, a son and a daughter.  A few months after their announcement, dear friends of ours made the same commitment.  Steve and I have spent a lot of time helping with fundraising for both of these families, not thinking the call would ever be ours.  But as God would have it, a flame was kindled in our hearts during those months to bring one more of these children to a forever home.
Here's one more thing we know.  The estimated cost of adopting a child is $38,000.  Yep, you read that right.  $38,000.  We don't have the ability to write a check for $38,000.00, but our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and although that number seems almost insurmountable to me, it is nothing for him.  We are trusting him to provide and working hard to spend responsibly, save diligently, and follow whole-heartedly.
We are starting our fundraising project by offering for sale a children's book that I wrote, kind of by accident, as part of my fundraising for my brother and his wife.  Every year for several years now, I have given a Christmas concert at a local church, which runs between twenty and thirty members.  It's one of my favorite places to sing.  It's a tiny little building that is on the National Historic Registry, and the acoustics are just phenomenal for a vocalist!  I had decided, three years ago, to give the love offering from that service and a couple others to my brother as part of a secret fundraising campaign we were doing for them for Christmas.  One night I couldn't go to sleep because a poem started forming itself in my mind.  It was the story of the shepherds from Luke chapter 2, except that it was coming together in rhyme.  I used the poem in my concert and later decided that it should become a children's book.  A friend introduced me to a talented young artist who illustrated it for me, now, amazingly, I am officially a published author!
Steve and I decided to self-publish the book, titled Ablaze with Light, so that we could ensure proceeds from it will always go to fund adoptions, whether ours or someone else's.  The book is available through Lulu.com.  Just enter the word "Ablaze" in the search field at the top, and it will pop right up.  You can download it as an E-book, or order a paperback version.  We will post a link to it on Facebook, and it has been suggested that we even create a fan page for it.  We are asking and praying that all our friends and family will repost it to their own pages in hopes that it will sell to a more widespread audience than we could create on our own.
We covet your prayers and support as we embark on this journey.  It is, without a doubt, the scariest thing we've ever done, but we serve a God of miracles and we believe that he is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine in the name of Christ Jesus.