Shelton Shenanigans

It took me until I was thirty to realize that I am an encourager by nature.  I'm not sure why that came as a surprise to me; I just thought everyone made random phone calls, sent impromptu texts and emails, and took great delight in surprising someone unexpectedly with an uplifting thought or word.  I now realize encouragement is one of my spiritual gifts  - along with sarcasm and over-complicating things, which I am sure you will find in one of Paul's lists of the gifts of the Spirit, probably in Romans! Anyway, I have unintentionally created a pattern for myself of sending my "just because" thank you notes  on Thursdays.  I'm sure I am extra inclined to be grateful on Thursdays since that is my last workday each week, but what I have discovered is that those little impulses to tell someone they're doing a great job, or I noticed the little things they are doing well, actually matter to the people on the receiving end of the notes.  Again, who knew?  ...

We have now reached a point in our "Finish the Race" fundraiser that is similar to where we are in the adoption journey.  We are a little more than halfway through, pushing toward an an eventual conclusion, but without a clue what the end result will be!  To further complicate matters, my creative brain is shutting down and I'm running out of ideas as to how to keep the campaign fresh and interesting, despite my great passion for it.  There is a very fine line between keeping people up-to-date and informed and badgering them to death to buy a tee-shirt.  The cheerleader/business woman in me says,  "promote, promote, promote," and the tired suburban mom in the middle of soccer season says "enough  is enough!"    Conveniently, this shirt by its very existence pushes me forward, as it is, after all, intended to encourage me, and people like me, to finish what we've started, even if its hard!  All kinds of sports analogies and parallels can be d...

On January 2, 2015, Steve and I were on course for what was shaping up to be a great year.  We had just dropped off our dossier paperwork in the mail and were heading to North Carolina for a family get-away.  Steve had been nominated, and all but guaranteed a promotion, we had pre-approval to build a new house, and we were anticipating a referral by late summer or early fall.  We would meet out daughter before Christmas, and everything was coming together for her expected homecoming in early 2016. Within days, all of that crumbled as Steve’s position was canceled, which led us to cancel the contract for the house, and Haiti changed the number of applications they would accept.   The new trajectory of our journey is for our paperwork to begin being considered sometime this fall,  a nine-month or so wait for a referral (summer of 2016),, a two-week bonding trip shortly thereafter, and then several months of waiting before we return to Haiti to finally br...