God sets the lonely in families....~Psalm 68:6

World Adoption Day. November 9, 2014. 

Today is the first ever worldwide celebration to honor adoption. 

If you are one of the fortunate few like I am, you have personally felt the culmination of how wonderful adoption is. If you haven't felt the effects of adoption, I would love to share a little of my personal story. 

To me, being adopted is like winning the lottery-- with your life. A wonderful person or couple take a chance on loving you, placing you in their home, with or without thinking of the risks or ramifications of the outcome. Especially being adopted as a school age child like I was. With statistics that show adopted children only make up about 2% of the total child population under the age of 18, the odds of being adopted as a child over 5 and winning the lottery are virtually about the same. When I was about 3 years old, my biological father died as a result of an overdose. Soon after that my biological mother tried to take her own life in a very tragic way. I was placed into foster care and for the next 6 years, I lived in various homes until my adoptive parents foster-adopted me by the age of 9.

My parents that adopted me have shared that they searched through reams and reams of binders with pictures of children in them, before they stopped at my picture and wanted to bring me into their lives. I've always thought about this and what caused them to stop on my picture and story? What pressed upon their hearts that I was the one for them? I firmly believe in divine providence and that God placed that longing for another child in their hearts, and rested it on me.

My adoptive father was an only child, and always wanted a large family. He has stated to me before that he many times felt lonely as a child, always wishing he had a brother or sister. My adoptive parents ended up having 3 biological children of their own; then going on to adopt me, my biological brother, and another from the foster system. I am so thankful for the life that they gave me by bringing me into their home. Loving me as their child.

I can't imagine how my life would be, if I had not been given the life that I have.

What can you do to place your mark on adoption? How can you contribute and be apart of the cause of adoption? Even if adoption doesn't personally affect you or has touched you? 

Everybody wants to be loved, to feel loved. To belong to something.

I want to share with you an incredible company that supports & helps create adoptive families through fashionable, affordable sunglasses: Subsidy Shades. The founder, Melissa Mugar, started the company as a way to fund her and her husbands first adoption. They were able to fund their entire adoption and have helped numerous others funding their adoptions. The company literally exploded and has had a gifting suite at the MTV Music Awards. Melissa and her husband are currently in the process of their second adoption, with the help of this wonderful company. 

Subsidy Shades is locally, nationally and internationally an advocate for children and families joining together for the cause adoption. All proceeds are donated to families in financial need, to help create their forever families through adoption. Each pair of sunglasses are about $12-$24 a pair, which is an unbelievable price for a stunning pair of sunnies. 

Subsidy Shades is changing the game of adoption fundraising. You can contribute to the future of a child. There is always free shipping and 100% proceeds are donated to adoptive families. 

Join me in supporting Subsidy Shades and the extraordinary work that this company does. Check out their website at subshades.com and buy a pair today of sunglasses to support a family in need for their adoption costs. 

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. LOOK GOOD.


*hashtag your support of Subsidy Shades and World Adoption Day on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: #adoptionislove

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
~Walt Disney

I had an interesting thing happen the other day. I was chatting with someone and enjoying some delicious food. We started to talk about various previous vocational jobs that I've had. Then I started to share with this particular person about my passion for writing and desire to take some screenwriting courses & my dreams about possibly pursing that someday. I really didn't know this person all to well and their reaction was very....interesting. I'm not sure if I just don't look the part, being a stay-at-home mother of two, pastor's wife and possibly just being a woman in general? The reaction was one of, "really? that surprises me." It really got me thinking about having dreams & pursing them. 

302 times. It's how many times Walt Disney was turned down for the financing of his dream to create a theme park for families. Disney had a dream to create a place that is "as clean as anything could ever be, and all the people in it are first-class citizens and are treated like guests". His desire was to have a "world of imagination, hopes, and dreams. In this timeless land of enchantment, the age of chivalry, magic and make-believe are reborn - and fairy tales come true". In spite of the numerous time he was turned down for financing for his dream, he never once let it stop him from achieving it. Instead of relying solely on traditional financing, he created new ways of advertising and marketing for his park, which at that point in history had never been used. He collaborated with an almost failing TV network, ABC, to promote his ideas. He only asked for simple payment in return and for ABC to invest in the future park. Along with this he used a marketing strategy & specific form of vision casting through a show he created called, "Disneyland" that was featured once a week to viewers, promoting his park. All of this started one year before the park even opened. On opening day, 60,000 people were in attendance. And by two months later, the 1 millionth person walked through the gates of this magical place. 

What can we do with our dreams that we have? I've been considering this and and here's a few things to think about:

Expect the Unexpected.
When we seek out our dreams and aspirations really great things could happen or really bad things could happen. You may have to try harder than you could even imagine, or your dream may come about very simply. What I've seen in some of my work is that the things that I really didn't even think was that great, reached the most people, many times years later. Sometimes the great stuff I enjoyed writing was good too. You never know. Always expect the unexpected and you will be wonderfully amazed every time.

Trust or Don't Trust.
First, trust in your dream. Trust it's a worthwhile hope or ambition. It's really the first step. Don't doubt it and fall fully into it. Run with it everyday and work hard at knowing you are meant to have this visionary dream. Second, trust the right people with your ideas & dreams. I'm really learning a lot about this lately. The wrong person can take it, put you down, discourage you even with the wrong advice or words. The right person can help you cultivate your dreams and nurture them to grow. 

Failure is Apart of the Process.
Ahhh failure. We all hate it. Yet we all have experienced it. EVERYONE ONE OF US. Remember this in the middle of your defeat, loss, discouragement, breakdown/spiritual awakening. You aren't alone. Looking back on some failures of mine, by causality it brought about some of my greatest ideas, writing and dreams. At our lowest point, when everything is cleared out of the way, dreams can pave way to what we should be doing. Failure could be the greatest source of inspiration for you. It has for me.   

Keep Moving Forward.
I love this quote from Mr. Walt Disney himself. The easy and most sensible thing to do with botched work or frustration is to give up. I've never been the kind to take the easy way out. Something tells me that you're the same way. In the past two days while I've been writing this piece, my computer shut down not once, but twice in the middle of my typing and I lost most of my work, our car's radiator blew and has to replaced, and I think I may have bronchitis. Life hits us all and it's never easy. Social media helps us believe that others have it all together, but we don't. We all have things that trip us up and knock us down, but what will we do when that happens? 

Listen to Walt's words and "keep moving forward." Push forward. It's crazy hard, you may not even want to do it. But don't stop. You owe it to yourself and your dreams to have this courage. 


"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." ~Walt Disney

There's something about the mid century that I absolutely love. I love the architecture. I love the sleek, streamlined design. I love the style. I love the simplicity of it all. It seems like everything back then was beautiful. They dressed beautiful. They drank cocktails beautiful. They smoked beautiful. I wish sometimes I could hop in a time machine and and fly back to that time.

There's this great show, Mad Men. You may have heard of it. It takes place during the mid century. In season 4, the lead protagonist & creative director of the ad agency of the show, Don Draper, wins accolades and many companies seek his expertise after creating an ad campaign for Glo-Coat, a floor wax. In the commercial, a little boy sitting caged in under a table surrounded with chairs yelling, "let me out of here! let me out of here!" to his mother who was disciplining him. What's interesting, later in the next episode, a psychologist that the ad firm hires hits the depth of the ad square between the eyes:
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​ "I saw that ad. It's all about somebody's childhood.".
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If you've seen any of the episodes of Mad Men, you know the title character, despite his flaws and womanizing: had this horrific, traumatic childhood that has contributed immensely to his wayward ways. Further more, it's contributed to who he is and the man he is in advertising and creativity.

A while back I read an inspiring article by Psychology Today titled, "Can Traumatic Experiences Make You More Creative?". In the article, the author describes the thought that traumatic experiences (job, life, childhood & adulthood trauma) can produce some of the greatest processes of creativity & the survivors state that they feel stronger due to the difficult times they had endured. The author continues on to say that creatives use their past traumatic experiences to source some of their greatest inspirations for their work, using it as a way of coping for their hardships.

Have you ever considered that these painful events you've gone through, may contribute to who you are as a person and define your creative process? That those difficult times make and create your identity as a writer, creative, designer, or artist in ways that are beyond what you thought was even possible?

Later in the Psychology Today piece, the author writes something powerful about negative childhood events & "the orphanhood effect":
"...... which suggests that highly accomplished people are more likely to have lost one or both parents at an early age. The orphanhood effect seems to be particularly strong for writers with rates as high as 55 percent being reported. Mihaly Csikszentmihaly has suggested that the "orphanhood effect" may be due to the need for children who have lost a parent at an early age to take on adult responsibilities and mature more rapidly than other children in their age group. Losing a parent or other traumatic early experiences can also lead to greater social isolation and a tendency to ignore social conventions - something seen in many intensely creative people."

When I read this I was thoroughly encouraged and in a strange way relieved. When I was about 3 years old, my biological father took his own life in the home I was living in with my biological parents. It was shortly after that, my birth mother revoked her parental rights of my brother & I to the foster care system. It's something that for a long time left a void in my life. I completely understand how someone can get to a point where they can't care for themselves, let alone two little human beings they've created. To me, it's a truly noble thing to realize and grasp you can't take care of your children, when you are at such low place without family, friends or resources to help you. Which was exactly where my biological mother was at the time What I really couldn't understand for quite sometime, was how a person like me who went through these events, could ever be.....something. Here's what I had seen in my life up until that point: the successful ones were the people with great histories. Families that they could trace back, pasts that they could remember and that patriarchs their family could attest to. I had none of this.

What I had was broken pieces of memories, pain of not feeling wanted or even fought for. You could know the reasons of your orphanhood, but the hurt and tragedy is still there. To tell the truth, I was ashamed for a long some time sharing my childhood & past with others. I mean, who really wants to hear a sad, heart-wrenching story? The happy stories were what I thought others truly wanted to hear. It was exceptionally wonderful to read that despite all of my past, despite trauma, I could completely be who I was. I could use what caused a void to fuel me creatively. I could use it to fuel what I crave to do:
write and influence others.

Now, what I went through may never create in me a Henry David Thoreau, Jane Austen, Hemingway. But, it can produce some of my most creative achievements.

Knowing this has given me courage.

I hope it has for you also.