home.

We set up our tree this week on #မိသားစုmonday.
[Read: Me-tha-zu Monday; or Family Monday.]

It was of course fun to pull out the tree, add the lights and find ornaments saved over the years from so many adventures. But the day also meant so much more to me, and gave me much to think about Oak’s adoption into our family.

It’s pretty incredible to have a child’s first {Western-style} Christmas be at age three. I’m not sure it gets much better than that. He was so truly able to enjoy it, to pull out ornaments. He asks to open the Advent each day with joy and anticipation! He’s repeating words, singing Little Drummer Boy every day, and capturing just enough of the idea to inspire wonder.

And more than that, it reminds me that I have a choice: I can see the things we missed with him, or I can see the unique experiences we get! Most people don’t get their first Christmas with a three year old, and that’s a unique opportunity of wonder that we get to cherish.

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We were puling out ornament after ornament of our adventures: ornaments for each ten years married; nine years of ornaments from Thailand. Piles of handmade ornaments from our refugee friends in Oklahoma, then more from the little jewelry studio currently in our home. Collections from our adventures: our fifth anniversary in Phuket, the trip to visit my sister in England, our unexpected visit to France last year. Or even the tent ornament to commemorate our first anniversary spent camping in Arkansas, which now feels like an adventure so out of our reach. Ornaments from all the bits of America we know and love: Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma.

We even have a watering can ornament from our first year in the community, when we started our community garden. We laugh at it every year, as it shows us how far we’ve come. We now have enough experience to say “community garden” in Burmese and follow it with “Heck no!” 😂 Instead, the kids are currently playing in our green-ish space, and the neighbors are chopping down things off the trees that, while not considered a garden, is edible!

The ways God has brought respite in the midst of challenges through trips and people; the ways He’s brought incredible people into our lives and brought us places we never thought we’d go: it’s documented all over a tree.

And in many ways, that is Advent to me: a testimony of all we’ve waited for and all we are waiting for. A testimony of the things God has been faithful in and the things He will be faithful in.

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Then there are the ornaments waiting for Oak, affectionately called Baby Bunny. We faithfully purchased all the bunnies we found while we waited, so we have quite a few. And now we have him. And this:

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He’s ours. {Relatively} Officially.

Our friends recently sent us this shirt as a gift for Oak.
Wanted | Chosen | Loved | Adopted
It was the perfect thing for him to wear this day, as I watched his dad lift him toward the tree. It was perfect as we took photos. It was perfect in light of Christmas, in light of our adoption as sons.

I need a shirt of my own: Wanted | Chosen | Loved | Adopted.

Gosh, I was just lost in this all day, and I still am. I’m not even sure I can have him wear the shirt too often, because it just breaks me and shakes me: for how indescribably much he is wanted. For how we both chose to adopt and how he was chosen for us. For the extravagant, crazy love we have for him. For the miracle that he is in our family!

Waiting leaves a mark on your heart.

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And so I was struck repeatedly through the day, that this is home.

As my friend so wisely once wrote: “Home is an illusion we all chase.” It’s true, we’re chasing it–to provide it for Oak, to find it in Christ, to create it amongst a myriad of cultures. But right now, it feels closer than it has in a long, long while.