Justice's Testimony 2017

Today marks 7 years since Justice was adopted into our family and arrived home on U.S. soil from Ghana, Africa. We have been studying the book of Acts together as a family and recently got to Acts 22. In that chapter the apostle Paul has just been arrested, but before he's taken off to the barracks he receives the opportunity to address the crowd who has gathered. We saw how this was a holy set up because Paul then proceeded to use this platform to share his testimony of how the Lord intersected and changed his life. As we took in Paul's example, Jake's challenge to us as a family was for each of us to prepare our own personal testimonies, and we've been sharing them one at a time with each other. I thought it would be fitting to share Justice's testimony today as we celebrate all that this day means for him and for our family.
 

Upside down

I won't ever get sick of telling it. Of how God interrupted our lives that day in September seven years ago. "I want you to adopt." Of how I feared we'd be losing - losing our picture perfect American family, losing our close relationships with our biological kids, losing opportunities of what we could give our 'own' kids if we were taking care of someone else's. And what if this adopted child hurt us? Hurt our kids? Was mean and had issues and ruined our family? Every thought I had about this coming adoption was that of loss. Loss, loss, loss. But I didn't yet know it - the upside down way of God's kingdom. "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it (Matthew 16:25)." I didn't yet know that when you lose for His sake, you actually gain so much more. It doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense that this adoption that I thought would mess up our biological kids has instead shaped them in ways that we want them to be shaped. That they've learned to lay down their lives and give until it hurts because that is what Jesus did for us. And they won't just read it in their Bible. They will know it because they've lived and breathed the surrender and the sacrifice every day in our home. Through Justice's adoption we've gained the uncovering of our calling, our spiritual gifts and how they are to be used for His kingdom. And when you are fulfilling your calling and operating in your God-given gifts, you feel ALIVE. We've come alive. We've gained a wild testimony of God's justice, His sovereignty, His grace. Who picks out an orange-haired African to match the same exact orange-haired children in a white family in Huxley, Iowa? God does. And through it He whispers to us all that He sees, He is not a distant God, He is closer than we ever dared to have thought. And more than all this, through Justice's adoption, we have gained an intimacy - a closeness with God, that we never would have experienced had we continued on living the comfortable, status quo path of a life we were headed down. You grow closer to God when you need Him. And oh how we have needed Him. It is worth our very lives if all we do this side of heaven is gain that.

So yeah when you look at it all on paper, it doesn't make sense. But I never really liked Math anyways. I thought we were adopting to help change the life of a needy child, but through it the Lord ended up changing us so much more. Today we praise God for this interruption, and celebrate 5 years of Justice being home and in our family. And today we know it better: He means to bless us. It just comes in unexpected, upside down ways.

Gotcha! ~ 3 Years!

Today marks 3 years since Justice’s adoption was officially completed, and he stepped foot onto U.S. soil as a Sullivan! On the left was Justice’s referral picture – the first picture we ever received of him. It was off this picture and about 3 sentences of information that we were asked whether or not we would pursue him in adoption. I remember looking at the size of his shoes and thinking – “There is no way that child is 6 years old!” :) Justice’s adoption has been the gateway in which God has most clearly revealed to me His definition of love - which is NOT a warm, fuzzy feeling. It is a lay down your life action and submission to God’s will. 1 John 3:16 ~ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ~ I didn’t learn this through studious hours of bible study. I didn’t learn this through a well-given church sermon. I learned this from a little orange-haired African boy, living clear on the other side of the world, who was out of my preferred age range to adopt, who I feared had the potential to ‘ruin’ our family, and who would interrupt my ideal American family portrait sitting on the fireplace. Yet it was in these very circumstances that God taught me to lay down my desires, my plans, my feelings, my comfort, my grasp on convenience and control, our financial security, even my most treasured possession - our biological children - surrendering it all into His hands, for His Kingdom purposes. When Jake and I were married I had a picture in my head of what our family was going to look like. But God had a different one. And His plan trumped mine. Going with His plan hasn’t been easy. Oftentimes adoption hasn’t felt natural and has indeed felt sacrificial. Yet in the process I have been given a new picture: A HUMAN LIFE IS WORTH IT. With adoption you get to offer someone the chance to have God re-write their story. It cost Jesus His very life to do this for me…to give me the right to call myself a child of God. Yes, God’s kind of love entails sacrifice – yet it will not return void. With this kind of love, when you lose yourSELF, you gain real life…that’s because its very nature imparts eternal value. Thank you, Justice, for my first real-life lesson in God’s definition of love. And Happy Gotcha Day! I will never stop recounting what God has done in my life through yours! ♥

I made the following video of Justice's adoption journey back in 2011.  It was during my novice days of video making so no music or bells and whistles. :)  Yet, it's still vital for me to look back on how God brought us through the adoption process and that first year of him home. Rejoicing in how far he (and we) have come since then!

Back 2 School

This week was a big week for us as it was back-to-school in our neck of the woods! First order of business leading up to the week was hair - believe it or not! Justice has been growing his hair out to get cornrows for a looooong time, but it was still too short for my novice hands to attempt it. Through our foster care/adoption network at church I found out about an ISU student who does cornrows for only $15! She does hair out of her apartment as a side-job so it was pretty simple to get in for an appointment and to get them done!

You can imagine that it takes some pretty skillful hands to braid that short of hair! But what you probably can’t imagine is that this only took her an hour and 15 minutes!!!!! I know Justice was thankful for that, as these ended up being quite painful to get put in since his hair was so short and she had to get each row real tight. He loved the outcome though and especially loves how low maintenance these are to care for day to day.

Jennifer wanted to go back to her long hair for school, so we set aside a day to put in extensions. This time however, I decided to use synthetic hair that you can get at Sally’s Beauty Supply as I had heard that it helps the style to last much longer than the yarn that we used previously. We used 100% Kanekalon hair…

I really, really want to do these extensions with beads on the ends some time, but when I practice putting the beads on the doll it just takes sooooo long. Doing the style already takes long enough! But I did want to give Jennifer a little color/spunk to the extensions…something different/special for back to school….so we added in some hot pink accents!  Here was the finished look!

These turned out SO FUN! The hot pink hair was also 100% Kanekalon however I picked it up at a hair supply store in the inner city…they don’t sell this at our Sally’s. I put these extensions in exactly as I did the yarn extensions, however, I had to knot and burn the ends (with a lighter) to seal them. With the yarn extensions I could just knot them, but the synthetic hair won’t stay with only a knot. Having to burn each end caused putting in this style to take longer than last time. For our next go-round I think we will need to spread out the styling over 2 days instead of our all day marathon. But seeing Jennifer swing her hair in the mirror full of giggles, and dance around the house in her excitement of having long hair makes all the hard work worth it!

And here were my babies on their first day of school which was Monday of this week! Jayla started Kindergarten (!!!!), Justice ~ 5th grade, Jennifer ~ 1st grade, and JJ ~ 1st grade.

I held it together in sending Jayla off for her first big day of school until she got on the bus, sat down, and waved from the bus window with her sweet little smile. I smiled and waved back, then turned toward the house and lost it while Kenny Chesney started singing in my mind as if on cue – “Don’t blink…”

Since then, it has helped tremendously that Jayla is SO EXCITED to go to school each day! She just can’t seem to get enough of it and is all bubbly and bouncing off the walls each morning while we get ready! Here are her first two pieces of school work that she came home with...

 

JJ is also pretty pumped about school right now, especially when it comes to reading! He is a memorizer, so reading has come rather easy to him which I am so thankful for. For 1st grade he has been given a reading log in which we record the amount of time each day that he reads to us, or us to him. For every 100 minutes logged in he gets to add a bead to his guitar necklace kept at school which their class will wear on special occasions. For whatever reason, this has just tripped his trigger and the kid cannot stop reading! Jake thinks it is his competitive nature and that JJ wants to beat every kid in his class and get the most beads. Well, I can tell you that he is definitely on track for that! He barely gets in the door from off the bus and he is asking if he can read to me. We set the stopwatch on the phone and he usually goes for 30 minutes straight. I have to laugh at his reading posture because he reminds me of a little old man reading a newspaper.
 

And did you notice what his choice of reading material is? That would be WWE character profiles and statistics. Every day this is what he reads to me. I should be able to spout off the biographies of every WWE character by the end of the month. :)

So with all the older rugrats in school now, that just leaves me and this little lady at home during the day!

Let me tell you, the girl is a HOOT! She has not missed a beat since the older ones have been gone! And having her one-on-one has helped me to appreciate her entertaining antics (and non-stop talking) much, much, more. :)

 

 

In Cape Coast

Today the team traveled to Cape Coast to deliver a donation to Hoops Care International which is a local youth outreach that uses the game of basketball as its platform. The donation will allow them to redo their basketball court, add bleachers, lights for night programs, new hoops, refinish the bordering cement walls, and develop an area next to the courts for educational outreach. This trip Jake has 3 of his Kingdom Hoops players along and today they got to team up with a few of our KH Ghana boys to play an informal game against the Hoops Care International team.
 

While in Cape Coast the team also took in some history and visited the slave castle. This is where slaves were imprisoned, and in reality – tortured, before they were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to North and South America as part of the slave trade. It’s a humbling place to experience to say the least.
 

Today is also Justice's 11th birthday!!!!  The last time he was in Ghana on his birthday we were oceans apart, longing for him and sinking in the treacherous waters of hopes delayed....wondering if he would ever get to come home.  Now, 3 years later, he is back in Ghana on his birthday by choice, and Jake is making good on his promise that Justice would always know his rich heritage and where he came from.  Each day I see the handprints of an amazing God all over Justice's life...using him to shout out the evidence of a Savior who hears our cries, lifts us out of the mud and mire, sets our feet on a rock, and gives us a firm place to stand. Justice's presence in our family has blessed us, refined us, humbled us, brought us the most genuine moments of joy and laughter, and given birth to life memories that will be etched in me forever.  I will never stop recounting what God has done in our lives through this son who God picked out for us all the way across the oceans....red hair and all.  Love you buddy!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Bracketology 101 according to JJ and Justice

....the boys breaking down my picks....I’m surrounded by basketball crazies! :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow Day!

Unexpected snow day today - whooop whooop!

 

 With no school on the horizon Chef Justice appeared and offered to whip up his traditional Ghanaian omelets for his sisters this morning...they licked their plates clean!

 

 And for the rest of the day, we've been having fun doing whatever we please!

:) 

If I had to guess my kids' future careers today...

Justice
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would guess that Justice is going to be a teacher or instructor of some sort. Perhaps he will be a teacher in the school system . Maybe he’ll be a coach of a sport. Or become a pastor and teach God’s word. In whatever way, shape, or form, I have noticed that Justice comes alive when he gets to teach someone how to do something. It energizes him to put in the effort to help someone - and in the examples above, he took the initiative to do so with no prompting from anyone.  When the 'lesson' comes full circle and the person he is helping finally ‘gets it’ he is just as excited as they are. Justice has also been wired to be a patient old soul. He doesn’t get flustered or agitated by his ‘pupils’ when they don’t catch on right away. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t roll his eyes. He doesn’t hurry them along. He’s an encourager, and knows how to feed the confidence of others. He takes cues regarding different personalities. For example, he knows that what will work to teach JJ ~ a perfectionist ~ will not necessarily be what works to teach Jayla ~ the light-hearted yet sensitive one.


   Jennifer

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time will tell if this is just a fascination with the texture of ‘white people hair’ or something more. Whatever the case, I most definitely could see Jennifer becoming a hair stylist! Jennifer is constantly commenting on her hair, Jayla’s hair, Jasara’s hair and my hair. “Oooooh mommy, I love Jayla’s hair!” That’s what I hear after I slick Jayla’s hair back into a ponytail for dance class. “My hair is coming and my face is changing!” That’s what she says after I pick out her hair in the morning and she takes note of her hair growth. She’s always constantly asking Jayla and I, “Can I do your head?” She loves to brush our hair, put in clips, and section it off into twists. She loves to wash Jayla and Jasara’s hair in the bathtub if they’ll let her. When we change things up a bit and I curl my hair or straighten out Jayla’s hair she is quite captured by the process and gets pretty zoned in. I cannot imagine how excited she is going to be when I get to put a style into her hair for the first time. I knew that I was feeling all that pressure to get my braiding and extension adding technique down for something! I can’t wait until we get to start and she sees the endless options and designs with her hair type as well!

Jayla

 

 

 

 

“Mommy, when you was little did you always know that you wanted to be a Mommy when you grew up?”

“Do white people grow up to be white mommies?”

“And brown people grow up to be brown mommies?”

“Mommy, where will you be when I am a mom?”

Jayla is in definite “mommy mode” right now! She’s always loved to tote her baby dolls around, but lately I have noticed her literally STUDYING the role of being a mom. All day long I seriously feel like I am at a job interview and she is taking notes on my every word, action, and duty! She’s been asking me all sorts of questions about being a mom like the ones I listed above and others: how do I decide which behaviors lead to disciplinary measures and which don’t?, do I like cooking?, do I like folding laundry?, etc. She has even been referring to her grandma (my mom) as “your mom” when she comes up in our conversations – this is something new where I feel like she wants to label all moms as moms! Since it is just me, Jayla, and Jasara at home now during the day, Jayla is practically memorizing my every move with Jasara and then imitates it all in pretend play later on. She’s got the mom-tone down. She’s tender and sweet when she's in play mode with her brothers and sisters, yet she’ll correct offenses and rehearse the family rules when one of them gets out of line. In addition to all this, when you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up she says ‘a mommy’. She doesn’t even hesitate. Whew! This lil gal is going to keep me humble and on my toes that’s for sure! What I see when I look at Jayla is a future as a caretaker. Jayla has been wired to be sensitive to the physical needs, hurts, and emotions of others. This wiring could most definitely take the form of a full-time mom, or even a nurse. [I would not be the least bit surprised if it also lead her down the path of caring for animals.] I can’t wait until she gets to go to Ghana with us for the first time. I wonder how her future experiences there might ignite her caretaker heart and maybe spark her interest in becoming a foster mother at orphanages some day.

JJ

 

Oh JJ. A future in sports is just in your blood. No doubt about it. :)  Yes, I could picture JJ playing at a high level in basketball or football someday. But what has me even more dumbfounded than his perfect shooting form, or his jab-step-pump-fake, is his knowledge of the game (NBA, NFL, NCAA hoops and football). JJ will spout off random stats about players, or will be able to tell you what play or defense or offense would work best for a particular game situation. He sounds like a 30 year old guy who could be sitting at the ESPN desk going round and round with the top sports analysts. “Bill Walker is a free agent. He was hurt all last year and nobody has resigned him.” That’s just one sentence that I wrote down yesterday out of his random, running log of sports conversations around the house. Who in the world is Bill Walker? Well, thanks to JJ I now know he used to play for the Knicks. JJ knows players and coaches and teams like he knows his ABC’s. He can guess what play the coach is going to call while watching a game, or get into a deep conversation with Jake that includes so much basketball lingo that I feel like they are speaking a different language. The other night we had to giggle because JJ informed Jake that Jake’s former college coach had a game on channel 613 at 8pm. We never would’ve known if it weren’t for JJ. Helping JJ’s cause is technology at his fingertips where he can look up scores and games and the top sports news on the iphone whenever his little heart desires. So JJ, I do believe your athletic skills and sportsminded brain will take you far. I imagine we will be seeing you on Sportscenter someday….either on the court, on the field, behind the telecaster booth, or all of the above!

Jasara

It’s a leeeeeetle to early for me to guess what Jasara might be up to someday. But, I can tell you this: she’s bound to be in charge. You don’t get a name that means “boldness” for nothin.

 

Lord,

I thank You for the gifts and talents You have placed in our children. I pray that You would develop them in our children and use them for Your glory. Make their gifts and talents apparent to Jake and I and to our children themselves. Show us specifically if there is any special nurturing, training, learning experience, or opportunity we should provide for them. May their gifts and talents be developed in Your way and Your time.

Your word says, "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them" (Romans 12:6). As our children recognize the talents and abilities You've given them, I pray that no feelings of inadequacy, fear, or uncertainty will keep them from using them according to Your will. May they hear the call You have on their life so that they don't spend a lifetime trying to figure out what it is or miss it altogether. Let their talents never be wasted, watered down by mediocrity, or used to glorify anything or anyone other than You, Lord.

I pray that You would reveal to our children what their life work is to be and help them to excel in it. Bless the work of their hands, and may they be able to earn a good living doing the work they love and do best.

Your word says that, "A man's gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men" (Proverbs 18:16) May whatever my children do find favor with others and be well received and respected. But most of all, I pray the gifts and talents You placed in them be released to find their fullest expression in glorifying You.

Amen.

(prayer from Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian)

 

Justice Hoopin'

Although Justice is adamant that he is going to play FOOTBALL in college and someday make it to the NFL, he’s actually turning out to be quite the basketball player as well! His team has improved so much from last year! I would say that just this year Justice has really started to enjoy competing and craves upcoming games. He shows a lot of fire and intensity when he steps on the court and is visibly upset and bothered when his team loses. He’s really starting to ‘catch on’ to the thrilling, challenging, and life applicable world of athletics!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Justice has started attempting and making a lot more 3 pointers this year, but probably his best skill is driving past defenders down the middle of the paint and going in for a lay up.

 

He averages about 8 points a game, and most of those come from drive-in layups, free throws, and grabbing rebounds for the lay in.

Of course every team has its rivalry and for Justice’s team the championship games of many tournaments often boil down to them and All Iowa Attack who also has a superb 4th grade team. This last weekend Justice’s team was able to capture the 4th grade AAU State Championship with the final match coming down to them and Attack. It was a heated battle, but Justice and his team prevailed and it was SOOOOO EXCITING when they sealed the victory!!!!

 

 

 

Prophecy Fulfilled.

"I have a dream...

 

that one day

 

little black boys

 

and black girls

 

will be able to join hands

 

with little white boys

 

and white girls

 

and walk together

 

as sisters and brothers."

~Martin Luther King Jr.~