Seventeen years ago, I brought my son home from the hospital. He was seventeen hours old. I set him, in his car seat, on his father’s desk. I had never seen that man grin so widely before and I’m pretty sure I never saw it again. It was love at first sight.

When I first saw the boy I wept. But it was love at first sight for me, too.

I took him home on a bitter, windy, Alaskan day. The storm had blown all the snow off the lake and plastered it into our driveway. Our garage door was blocked in. I couldn’t even get my car out, so a friend drove me to Anchorage to pick Shane up.

I got him home, got out of my friend’s car up on the road, walked on top of the hard-packed four-foot high snow pile that covered the driveway and into the house, which was heated at that time by a small oil stove in the corner of the dining room, and set him in his bucket car seat, before his dad, like a treasure I’d traveled far to get.

And there we were, the three of us, with the oil stove running on fumes and no way for the oil truck to get down into the snowed-in driveway to fill our tank. But we were happy.

And that day, with the oil running out and wind howling off the lake and slamming into us so the whole house shuddered, pretty much set the tone for my son’s life.

It’s been a hard life, but a happy life, I think. Because sometimes the best things aren’t the easy things.

A very dear friend suggested at the time that it probably wasn’t God’s will for us to adopt a child. We were so broke—our business partner wasn’t paying us what he owed, our income was not enough to even cover the mortgage and the heat, let alone enough to provide all the things a baby needs. And we had no hope for future income. With a baby I wouldn’t be going back to work and my husband, being paralyzed, wasn’t able to bring in any money. So, how could God possibly want us to adopt a child, my friend wanted to know.

I told her I’d been praying for this baby for six years. I’d never gone to an adoption agency because I knew that my husband and I wouldn’t be the best parents. We didn’t have the ideal home. We were abnormal and I understood that. But I prayed asking God if he had a child that would thrive in our house and if so, would he bring the child to us.

So when a gal who worked as an aid for my husband asked one day if we wanted a baby, how could I not see that as an answer to prayer? We didn’t search for the baby—he came to us. His mother was eight months pregnant when we heard about him. A month later he was home with us. What kind of adoptions work like that? People spend months and years working on adoptions, often to have them fall through at the end. We had our first baby literally handed to us in one month (the second came in the same manner. Four months after Shane was born we got a phone call from a young woman, ‘I just had a sonogram. I”m having a baby girl in four months. I heard you might want her. Do you?”). How could I doubt that this baby was God’s gift to us and we to him?

My friend thought that maybe God was testing us to see if we’d do the right thing and turn the baby down. She’d been raised in a large Catholic family with a father that worked three jobs and she never got Christmas presents when she was little. She was one of the finest Christians I’ve ever met so apparently the lack of money didn’t do any long-term damage to her. But she didn’t want that for other children.

It’s true that my son has lived without some things that money can buy. He’s lived without school and dentists and sports and music lessons. He’s suffered for having been put into our family, there’s no doubt. But since when is suffering bad for you? Since when is suffering to be avoided at all costs? He learned to pray when he was a very small boy and he’s been relying on God for every need all along the way.

Sometimes the best things are not the easy things.

And that works both ways. He’s not been an easy child to raise. When he was two I often said it would be a miracle if he lived to be three. Either he would kill himself by one of his crazy stunts, or I would kill him because he was so full of energy and stubborn will that he wore me down until I was hardly sane.

But the best things are not the easy things, and I wouldn’t trade him for ten easy sons.

And here he is seventeen years later. Alive not only physically but spiritually.

Life has been hard, but we’ve been happy.

I do remember some of the posts I made over the last year here. So I’m going to be looking some of them up on Google’s cached pages and reposting them. Ah, the Internet. Sometimes it’s a curse that nothing you say will ever really be erased. But other times it’s a blessing.

One of the best things about starting afresh is that you can re-evaluate your vision. You can reassess your choice of destinations and set a new course, if you like, without being hindered by old baggage from the trip you just quit. 

It may be God’s grace that caused me to wipe out my database.

I’d been thinking for a while about what I’m posting here. I’ve been thinking about my public persona ever since Neil Gaiman skated into my children’s book blog and left a comment after I’d asked people what on earth any sane person could possible see in his books.

OK, it wasn’t really that bad, and, the truth is that I’d actually been thinking about it before that, but Neil shook me, I’ll admit. Because I’ve been in the habit of writing as if I’m speaking to friends in my living room, and it surprised me find the man that wrote The Problem Of Susan reading over my shoulder.

As much as I’d like to think that I’m having an intimate chat with a few close friends, here, that’s just not the case. There have been people surfing in who hold beliefs that are far different from mine and I think I need to conduct myself here the way I would conduct myself in any public place.

I do not make a habit of debating politics and religion in public. I don’t walk up to sinners and tell them that their particular type of sin is forbidden. I don’t discuss with my friends my thoughts on hot-button issues like homosexuality and abortion when there are people I don’t know in the room.

When I review books at Whispers of Dawn, I have to pretend the author isn’t crying or cursing over in the corner.  If I’m to have any credibility, I have to be honest. But here, on my Observation of Mercy blog, I don’t have to critique the world or different segments of Christendom. I can focus on what God has done for me. How he’s saved me, how he’s kept me, how he’s led me over the years.

So this is what you’ll find here in the future. A kinder, gentler Sally.

Maybe.  We’ll see if I can pull it off.

Tweaking the blog always gets me in trouble.

I’ve lost everything.

I think I have the database still on the server. It says it’s there. But I can’t export it. I have tried and tried. It may be that I’ve actually deleted all the files and I’m just looking at an old picture. Or it may be (I’m hoping) that the content is still all there and someone a little smarter than I am will be able to get the posts and comments off for me.

We shall see.

For now…

I guess we get a fresh start.

And that’s fine. This is as good a time as any to start again.

You came screaming into this world–round cheeks; beaver fur hair sticking straight up; eyes,shiny black and wondering what this new abuse was all about.

New abuse.

You’d been abused pretty shockingly in the womb–addicted to alcohol before you were born.

And you were an unhappy baby–crying a lot, with a piercing wail that grated on my nerves at 3:00 in the morning. But God laid you in my arms and I fell in love with your button nose and so-soft hair and shining eyes. I couldn’t pass you by without scooping you up and kissing those chubby cheeks.

Do you remember?

We named you Nicole–victorious one. And Evon–God is gracious. And you’ve already been victorious in life and God has been gracious every day. Gracious to me, because he gave you to me, and gracious to you, because you’ve been loved and cared for in a way your younger sisters have missed.

You have brought me joy every day of your life, Nikki. You are the stasher of goods, and I’ve been the one to break-a your heart. You’ve been the wearer of the hot shoes and I’ve been the one who could give you nothing in the way of fashion sense. But at least I taught you to pray–remember? You had to pray before school, begging God to keep me from yelling. There is that.

You are the compassionate one, the caring nurse, the fixer of lost and injured animals, the one who laughs at anticipated tickling, the one who loves and gives and gives and gives. You are the finisher of sentences–the one who stands back and watches and figures out who needs what and when. You always know where we are once we’re on the road, though you rarely know where we’re going before we set out. And there’s something to be said for that. For that living in the moment and not worrying about what lies ahead. You are the carrier of coats, the playmate to the animals, the one who can’t spank a dog with any kind of convincing force. You are the lover, Nikki, and that is a wonderful gift, a wonderful thing to be good at.

And today you are sixteen. I see that it won’t be long before you are giving your love away to a husband and children. You will be raising the next generation.

I have three things to remind you of. Three important things.

• Marry a rich man who can afford private school for your kids.
• Don’t wear the hot shoes in summer no matter how much you like-a them. You’re beautiful without chasing all those silly fashions.
• Don’t forgot that you promised to change my diapers when I’m old. You promised and I’m holding you to it, girly. 

OK enough nonsense.

Walk with God and praise him daily. He will never steer you wrong. Meet with him every morning, set your plans before him, and ask him to guide you according to his will. Meet with him every night to lay before him your failures and to bask in his love and forgiveness. Obey him quickly throughout the day so he can bless you with a sense of  his presence. He is the one who loves you and he wants to pour blessings into your lap. Your father and I have failed you often. Grievously. But God will never fail you.

Psalm 68

⁴ Sing to God, sing praise to his name,
       extol him who rides on the clouds—
       his name is the LORD—
       and rejoice before him. ⁵ A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
       is God in his holy dwelling.

 ⁶ God sets the lonely in families, 
       he leads forth the prisoners with singing;
       but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

….

³² Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth,
       sing praise to the Lord,                  selah
33  to him who rides the ancient skies above,
       who thunders with mighty voice.

 ³⁴ Proclaim the power of God,
       whose majesty is over Israel,
       whose power is in the skies.

 ³⁵ You are awesome, O God, in your sanctuary;
       the God of Israel gives power and strength to his people.
       Praise be to God!