"Happy tears" is what Troy and I call it when the kids catch us crying over something like a good movie or a celebration of an anniversary.
We have cried many happy tears this summer, mostly because of our happy children...
Happy Camper #1=Cate
Cate loved her Disney Camp (sponsored by CYT of Atlanta); she spent 6 hours a day for five days learning some of the in's and out's of drama (ha, as if she needed any help!), and then got to sing a SOLO as "Rapunzel" in the final performance.
Happy Tears=Mommy and Daddy, as we watched her with amazement, that God used us to make this child, and that she has more courage than we ever imagined, getting up in front of 200 folks to sing a solo that contained big words like "candle-making" and "ventriloquy". She was just a doll.
Happy Camper #2...Will
Will, bless him, needs something of his own, since he has to share everything else in his life with two older, bigger, bossier sisters. Enter "Soccer Camp". Last week he spent his mornings at a soccer camp at Bridgeway Church, and i was so happy to see him enjoy running, kicking, jumping, and most of all, getting to do something that Cate and Ri did not get to do!
Happy Tears.... We know that Will is still feeling the repurcussions of our adoptions last year, because (even thought he can't verbalize it) he still misses having his best friend Cate Burwell all to himself...and he probably misses having his room all to himself too! Someone recently called it a feeling of "displacement"...his place in the family, at least in his eyes, is different than what it used to be. We are still navigating these waters with him. But itt does seems like the privilege of playing soccer last week helped him to know how much we love him and are proud of him, as we stood on the sidelines to cheer him on and then took him to a "fancy" lunch at Mickey D's!
Happy Camper #3...Rihanna
While Cate was at Disney Camp, Ri went to VeggieTales camp, also a drama camp sponsored by CYT. She spent every morning for a week in a group of 12 preschoolers, learning how to sing and dance to 5 Veggie Tales songs, with some reading and playing and crafts thrown in. She too got to perform for a crowd of proud parents and friends on the last day of camp.
Happy Tears...I mean, honestly, we were just glad that she did not get scared and run off the stage! but she did GREAT...sang, smiled, motioned...not all the time, but most of it. I can remember us sitting there last year watching Cate do the same performance, with Ri between us (so that she did not run off in the middle of it or start to pitch a fit...this was when she had only been with us for 2 months!)...i don't know that i would have thought she would have come this far yet. Ah, to see her up on that stage was an amazing moment for me, of worshiping the Lord who has done these things in her, for her, and for us!
Happy Camper #4..Alana! Well, "camper" may be stretching it a bit, but she and Ri did have a huge thing happen for them in May: they were given the sign and seal of the Covenant of Grace (as we Presbyterians say) by being baptized. Actually she had no idea what that water was all about...but isn't that just like us?....We are so clueless and are not asking for the Lord at all, and then he just comes along and takes us to be his own. Really, it is just like adoption. The girls were baptized in our church's chapel, and every time we have walked past it this summer, Ri whispers to me, "That is the room where we got adopted!" Now, what she means is, the room where they got baptized. But i love it that she sees that event as her adoption. As Cate told her a few weeks ago, "Rihanna, you are ALWAYS going to be a Burwell, because we adopted you AND baptized you!"
happy tears...one HUGE highlight of the baptisms was that they were done by one of our favorite pastors in the world, David McNeely. We admire David and his awesome wife Judith soooo much because they have adopted 6 little boys over the past 10 years. They too have an "ebony and ivory" family. We have watched them and been inspired. Anyways, because David is newly ordained, our girls got to be the first babies that he ever baptized! Now really, how cool is that, that his first baptism to perform was on two African-American adopted little girls?!