I'm just back from North Carolina, attending my grandmother's funeral.

I got the news that my Grandma passed on Thursday morning. I needed to make it up to North Carolina to be with my family -- but with Dan in Africa I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Purchasing $800 plane tickets for myself and all five kids was clearly out of the question. In fact, flying alone with all five kids was clearly out of the question.

I considered loading everyone up in the Yukon and making the long drive by myself. And I thought about looking for babysitters for the weekend.

In the end, I was able to purchase a plane ticket with skymiles and several precious friends and family members offered to help out so I could travel alone to the funeral. Well, almost alone. This was my travel companion getting herself all buckled in on the airplane:



Baby Charlotte was the obvious candidate to join me on the trip. Mostly because she flies for free, still being under the age of two. But also because she is a little, delicious ball of pure delight and being around her makes people happy.

A number of family members thanked me for bringing Baby C along this weekend. In the way that only a 21 month old can do, she lightened the very heavy mood and the sadness of the day.



During the funeral, she sang and danced and paraded up and down the aisle of the church until I finally had to take her outside. She could be joyful and carefree while the rest of us were sad because, truly, she had no idea what was going on. As they say, ignorance is bliss.

It actually sounds pretty nice, doesn't it?

There are matters over which I wish I could claim this same blissful ignorance in my own life. In this world, there's such hurt and suffering. There's poverty and sickness and injustice -- and sometimes I wish I could just close my eyes and pretend none of it exists.

Sometimes I'd like to be like Baby Charlotte -- to sing and dance and parade my way through life without a care for all this heavy orphan care, third world stuff that we do with SixtyFeet. Sometimes I want to spend my money irresponsibly and spend my time wastefully. And sometimes I do. But I'm not proud of it.

The emails Dan has sent me from Uganda, just this week, have cut me to my core. The things that he's seen and experienced on this one, single trip -- some of them are just plain shocking.

Sometimes I wish I didn't know so much about this stuff. But I do. And if you regularly read this blog or read anything on the internet or watch the news or read a newspaper... you know too. You don't have to run an orphan ministry to know these things.

Today, over 20,000 children died of preventable diseases, such as malaria. Today, more than one billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. Today, over half the people who live in Uganda live in extreme poverty, on less than $1.00 a day.

And because we know about it, we are obligated to help.

"Don't excuse yourself by saying, "Look, we didn't know." For God understands all hearts, and he sees you. He who guards your soul knows you knew. He will repay all people as their actions deserve." Proverbs 24:12, NLT

We can't claim blissful ignorance without any care for the world's poor. As God's people, we are responsible to act. Exactly what you do and how you respond is between you and the Lord. But we're all responsible for doing something.

And anyways, as someone once told me... ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is just ignorance.

Whoever said it doesn't take a village to raise a child clearly is not living my life. That person does not have five children, a husband in Africa and an unexpected out-of-state funeral to attend.

That person does not have incomplete homeschool lessons all over the kitchen, piles of dirty laundry and almost no food in the fridge.

And obviously, that person also does not have have my friends or enjoy the blessed sense of community that I'm privileged to be a part of.


To the countless friends who jumped in and stepped up to share my burdens this week, I cannot thank you enough. You're my "village" and I cannot imagine how I'd ever live this crazy life without you.


It definitely takes a village. And by the way, that quote wasn't invented by Hillary Clinton. It's a centuries-old African proverb. My African peeps know what they're talking about here.


Thank you, dear, selfless, loving friends. I won't name names, but you know who you are.

Yes, indeedy… Dan’s traveling companion is none other than the amazingly talented:

We went apple picking this weekend for the Annual Owens-Harty Apple Picking Extravaganza. Since 2008 we’ve been piling our families into two SUVs and driving an hour and a half north of Atlanta for the best apple picking in Georgia.

Here’s a picture of the junior apple pickers in 2008 (minus 2 year old Davis who had gone somewhere with Dan to escape all the girliness):



And here’s the crew from yesterday:


As you can see, we’ve grown quite a bit over the years. Joy and I have 9 children between us. That’s a lot of kids, y’all.

I have five children and Joy has four, with an adoption in progress. Even with the multi-racial thing aside, that’s enough kids to turn heads in stores, to raise eyebrows at the park and to constantly trigger that well-meaning but rather irritating comment “wow! You sure have your hands full!”

And I often find myself wondering why. I mean, what is the big deal with big families? Who cares if I have four small children and a baby on my hip and two of my children are black and we take up an entire aisle in the grocery store?

Big families are counter-cultural. Having lots of kids and then adopting more is just plain weird. Because it smacks in the face of everything our American culture says we should embrace:


Dan and I have decided that we’ll live for more than those things. Because those are not God’s values. In fact, His are the opposite.


Tomorrow, Dan leaves, again, for Africa. SixtyFeet business calls. We’ll miss him and he’ll miss us. He’ll miss the boys’ soccer game, my 35^th birthday, and all week with his beloved girls.

But our family is weird different and we try not to value what the world values. We’ll kiss Dan good-bye tomorrow morning and, as always, we’ll just be proud of him for going. After all, there's more to life than soccer games and birthday parties.

Even better – this week, his traveling companion is a guy whose value system lines up with Dan’s exactly. I’ll save the details for a post later this week but you should know this: Dan is traveling to Uganda this week with a seriously cool dude.

He’s a crazy talented musician (who y’all might know) who just released a new album. In fact, his album is currently ranked in the top ten on the itunes chart. But he’s not out promoting his new album or doing concerts this week… instead, he’s going to Africa to serve with SixtyFeet.

How’s that for not valuing what the world values? I love it.

By the way, I have an extra CD of the musician traveling with Dan this week. I’ll give it away to the first person who can correctly guess who it is. Just comment below... More later!

Down here in Georgia, the summer heat is dwindling away and the signs of fall are everywhere. I always look forward to the changing of the seasons… by the time a new season rolls around I’ve gotten sick of the heat, the cold, the pollen, the dead leaves and whatever else has gotten on my nerves over the last three months.

I tend to spend the last few weeks of most seasons wishing it away and looking forward to greener pastures. Then the season ends and, oddly, I’m sad and I miss the old one. So it is with my children. In parenting, I go through seasons. I get tired and frustrated and bored and I wish for greener pastures…And then once they’re gone, I just want them back.

When we adopted Hannah and Joseph, it became an entirely new season around here. We all had to make a lot of changes and, with each change, I grieved a little bit. Delighted as I was to have our new ones home, there were times that I mourned for the way things used to be. (Side note: I do not feel guilty or like a bad adoptive parent for admitting these things on my blog. I experienced the same kind of feelings every time a new child entered my home – whether by adoption or the regular old way. It just takes time to adjust to having a new person(s) join your family).

One change that particularly bothered me was the new bedroom set-up. Last December, both Madeline and Davis had to give up their own rooms, their space, their clothes, their toys and their own everything in order to make space for their new siblings. Hannah moved in with Madeline and Joseph moved in with Davis. So we had a “boy room,” a “girl room” and baby Charlotte had a tiny nursery down the hall, next to the master bedroom.

Neither Madeline nor Davis ever complained about this arrangement, not for a minute. They shared their rooms, they shared their things and they delighted in this. I know these are valuable lessons for my children to learn. And I want them to learn to share, to sacrifice and to understand that they are not the center of the world and they never will be. But I still admit, I had a really hard time with this one.


I mostly struggled because this new “roommate arrangement” changed our family dynamic and our routines so drastically. I missed the way things used to be…especially with Madeline. Madeline is my oldest and anyone who knows her will tell you -- she’s something pretty special. I used to sit on Madeline’s bed and talk with her at night, just the two of us. After the adoption, we still sat and talked – but it wasn’t quite the same.

I tried to cuddle with both girls under the covers and read to them at night, just as I'd done with Madeline. But, at first, this was hard and um, rather unpleasant. Not only was reading and listening an entirely new skill to Hannah and Joseph, but they both came to us not speaking a single word of English. Neither of them were particularly interested in sitting still and quiet at all – but definitely not for long chapter books, with no pictures, being read in a foreign language. It was a struggle and it was a bummer and I really took it hard… because this was my special time with Madeline. I was entitled to this. This bedtime routine was my God-given parental right. Or so I thought.

So I responded in the way that any reasonable, mature, Christian adult would: I pouted for a while. Sometimes I cried and stomped my feet. I complained to my husband and my friends and sometimes I complained to God. But ultimately, I knew I had to ask Him to soften and change my heart on this matter. And little by little, He did.


Bit by bit, we fell into a new normal -- it wasn’t the old way, but it was a sweet new routine. Over time, Hannah and Joseph learned English. They both learned to sit still, to listen and to even enjoy books. I learned to choose a better variety of books at different reading levels.

But, most importantly, I learned to make extra room in my lap, my heart and my life for whatever God was calling me to do. After all, as a "wise woman" once taught her children, you're not the center of the world and you never will be.

It's not about us. And the more tightly we cling to our stuff, our plans and our ways, the less likely we'll be to fulfill His purpose for our lives.