Look for me on page 11 with the cute pancakes!
nashville christian family july issue released
Happy to be included in another issue of Nashville Christian Family. I'm on page 24.
table for 4
With great hope that God’s loving plan for our son's life is unfolding exactly as He’d always been planning, we share with you that our family of 5 will return to being a family of 4 one week from today. Foster parenting is a unique journey, and ours has been remarkable. We have loved and parented Lil Man for 1,206 days. 3 years, 3 months, and 18 days. What a blessing he has been!
To address quickly three questions that many have asked us.
It would be atypical for us to have future contact with him, but we would love that if it is offered.
Yes, if he would come back into care, we would be called. But my friends, please, oh please, do not hope for this. Please do not hope for our son’s family to fail.
Yes, we still feel God’s call to be foster parents in the future, but we do not know what that will look like.
Our requests:
Please pray for all three of our beloved boys to be resilient. Our hearts are absolutely breaking for our older two sons.
Please pray for Lil Man and his family. This will be a difficult transition for everyone. Pray for his safety and emotional adjustment.
Above all, please pray for Lil Man's eternal future. Reminder: Lil Man does not need the Waller family to “save” him. Like all of us, all he will ever need is Jesus.
Finally, we want to remind you that the four of us are at the center of this circle. We promise anything you feel and want to “vent” about – we feel MORE intensely. Instead of making us grimace through your expressions of frustration, please join WITH us in rejoicing in God’s plan.
We are so honored that you have chosen to be active foster grandparents, foster aunts and uncles, foster cousins, and FRIENDS for this precious boy. We will never be able to thank you enough for your prayers, babysitting, random acts of kindness, and sacrificial acceptance of this calling. We have no doubt of our Father’s merciful plan for Lil Man.
Great is His faithfulness.
With love and anticipation for the future,
Matt and Kelley
P.S. If you wish to write him a letter or send a picture, feel free (some of you did this last May) – we will put it into his Life Book.
Read "station eleven" right now
Got a book recommendation from a friend phrased something like this: "Kelley, we read a book in my book club recently that everyone hated and I thought you would love it." Obviously, I went to the library ASAP to get the book.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel was.... riveting. I will state up front that post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction featuring a powerful, non-sexualized female protagonist MAY be a bit of a niche. But oh I am that niche! People sometimes read these books about an ugly future and get depressed, but I see them as the opposite of depressing. Uplifting! It's the triumph of humanity in a situation where everything is hopeless. To me, science fiction is often no different than any other disaster (or in this case, post-disaster) story: whether the heroes are fighting Nazis or Cylons doesn't bother me. I'm here for the story.
And the story here is SOOOOO good. One of the curses of wishing to be an author, I've learned, is the constant struggle to love a book without dying of jealousy as you experience the author's talent. That was definitely a balance for me here. I just loved everything about the way Ms. Mandel wrote. She wafted between tenses, points of view, perspectives. She jumped chronologically, geographically, even philosophically. And she wove a story that I was alive inside. I am not usually big on sequels but I find myself wanting to go back to the vivid world she created because I became so engrossed in it in those 350 pages.
I loved one of the main characters, Kirsten. I may have pictured myself as Katniss when I read THG, but I kind of had to fade out and just be a reader again when Katniss is killing or kissing people. I felt like I could hang in there with Kirsten, living the story vicariously in her character, even when she has to make really hard decisions.
(Also, she isn't always fresh & clean in the post-disaster apocalypse, and she's self-conscious because she's missing two teeth. This is critically believable to me.) It will never NOT disappoint me to read a story with a strong female protagonist who also happens to be the most effortlessly beautiful woman any person has ever seen. Boooooo on those writers.
Instead of a movie feel where you focus on primarily one character, Station Eleven definitely has a TV mini-series feel where the reader meets different people, unsure of how they will intersect. Once they serve their collective purpose, the individual characters continue on their own journeys, and you check in with many of them to see where they landed.
My husband teases me that instead of reading an hour a night 'like a normal person,' I don't read for 10 days and then spent the eleventh day unmoving on the couch with my nose in a novel, cover to cover. And he's right--when I get into a book, I'm usually going to power straight through. And then I'm sad if it was a great story.
I was very sad when Station Eleven ended. I would go back there.
nashville christian family june issue released
Nashville Christian Family has run another piece by yours truly. Woo! I'm on page 22.
the final frontier
My sister and I listened as our oldest four children played Space Station the other day. This make-believe included specific ranks (Commander, we need more oxygen in the science bay! Ok, Lieutenant), math for strategic rationing (We only have one box of food left until we get back to base, and there's four of us, so we each get one-quarter food.), and pretend names: Michael, Charlie, Mae, and Neil.
I've been thinking about space a lot lately since my husband and I started rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation. ("Encounter at Farpoint" is so much longer than I remembered. But Q is just as weird.)
In case you aren't familiar, our kids were playing Neil Armstrong, Mae Jemison, Michael Collins, and Charlie Duke. All American astronauts. Total #mompride and #auntpride moment. We've bred pint-sized nerds. Little learners -- hooray!
My son is doing a second-grade biography project, and--of course--he chose Neil Armstrong. One of the pieces he has to include in his essay is stories of his chosen "hero" as a child. I loved seeing what he picked:
- Neil Armstrong was a Boy Scout.
- Neil Armstrong baked donuts to pay for his flying lessons.
- Neil Armstrong's first flight was in a plane called the Tin Goose when he was 6.
Lessons learned from this: Neil Armstrong was 6 once. He really liked planes. He worked hard. He chose a path that aimed at his goal.
A Facebook mom's group I'm a part of recently posed a question, "What would your child's future career be based on their current obsession?" People gave answers like firefighter, veterinarian, mommy, and police officer. Others said paleontologist, archaeologist, dolphin trainer, and--yes--astronaut. Everyone gave thumbs-up with comments like "awww reach for the stars khaleesi." The tone of the conversation made me feel like they all believed we were raising assistant-to-the-regional-managers.
Don't get me wrong -- if my kids love and honor Jesus, I don't care if they find a way to support their family as professional elbow models or salesmen for pocket lint. But my point is that somebody, somewhere IS raising a future president. Somebody IS raising a future astronaut. Somebody IS raising a future head of the UN. Somebody IS raising a future five-star general. Somebody IS raising an Olympian. Somebody somewhere IS raising the inventor of the whatchamacallit that changes the world.
Odds are, it isn't me. But you better believe I'm gonna live my life like it might be. I'm gonna answer every question they ask, nurture every dream they imagine, and check out books until my library card is declined.
I'm gonna help them shoot for the moon even if they miss.
Speaking of missing the moon, my favorite line in one of my favorite movies (Apollo 13) is delivered by astronaut Jim Lovell's mother (the actress, sidebar, is actually the mother of Ron Howard, the director of the movie). In a movie full of "Houston, we have a problem," and "Failure is not an option," my favorite line is probably less memorable.
The family is holding back tears because Jim's ship is basically drifting in space after an explosion. Jim's mom turns to her granddaughter and says, "Are you scared? Well, don't you worry, honey. If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it."
There's a mom who never told her son he wouldn't be an Eagle Scout. Who never told her son he wouldn't get into the Naval Academy. Who never told her son he wouldn't graduate first in his class. Who never told her son he wouldn't be a test pilot. Who never told her son he wouldn't be an astronaut.
Something tells me that when he got home after Apollo 13 finally landed, when those parachutes thawed and the carrier brought him home... something tells me she still told him he could go get the moon.
I'm gonna be poetic here, but The Final Frontier isn't space. The Final Frontier is my kid's future, stretching endlessly before him.