The Most Beautiful Feet in all the World: Dancing to the High Places

I never want to forget those most perfect tiny ballerina feet. So, I took a gazillion captures of them before her casts went on. The doctors reminded us that they will look drastically different by the end of this casting road. They will be changed forever, and that makes me both happy and sad.

From day one, We have called them her ballerina feet because they are the prettiest and most graceful feet in all the world and we know those feet shall dance one day! Today, was the first step in what will be a long and hard journey to the high places!

One of the things Eviemira likes to talk about is how she will walk one day and how she will dance like her big sissy, Tahlia!

And, we respond with an “AMEN! Yes, You will!!” And right there we claim those big miracles over her life!

Though, some would look at her limitations and doubt such lofty ambitions, however we know our God is absolutely able and so we will pray in this hope and faith!

These precious feet are so special to us, as the are part of the sacred story that led us to her.

Our Eviemira was born with Clubbed feet and Arthrogryposis also called AMC. She has many joints that are locked and she is lacking muscles and strength in certain limbs! Therefore, she does not have full use of her arms, or legs…. and though she has muscle and some range of movement in her legs, her clubbed feet and locked knees make her unable to stand or walk as they currently are.

It is no doubt that the daily tasks that we all can take for granted are very hard for her. But, after getting the glorious honor to parent this amazing tiny person over the past 7 months, we are convinced, and have absolutely no doubt that she will amaze the world as she has already amazed us every day since the moment we she danced into our hearts!! She finds her way to do what needs to be done! She is a literal genius! Her brain is the most creative and her ingenuity is astounding! She never gives up. She does not do many things our way, yet, somehow, she finds a NEW way!

See, I am doing a new thing!

    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

    and streams in the wasteland.

(Is. 43:19)

Today was a NEW day for our warrior and we have been talking about this adventure for many months! On January 22, 2020 We started day one of her serial casting adventure. She will be undergoing the Ponsetti method in hopes to correct her feet! This is a method of uncomfortable stretching, manipulation and 5-8 weeks of serial casting extending from the toes to the upper thigh with the knee at a right angle to achieve correction so she can one day walk!

There will also be a small surgery before her last series of casts. The Achilles tendon will be cut to complete the correction of the foot. We are praying she will be done by the beginning of March and then they will fit her for braces that go up to her hip (at first) and get her standing right away!

From the mouth of her doctor, “2020 will be a hard road filled with many miracles”

Hard and miracle seem to always go together, don’t they?

We will be the first to tell you that since answering YES to the invitation to adopt almost 10 years ago, it has been the hardest hard, and we have needed HIM more than we ever have.

But, oh the JOY… it is simply immeasurable!

TO think of the many joyous miracles and GOD encounters we miss in life because we say NO to the hard invitations.

IT will be hard journey to walking for our baby girl, but it IS SO EXCITING, … and we have ALL the emotions. We are going to miss those dainty turned in feet that are so very much a part of her. She is so beautiful just the way she is, but this girl WANTS TO DANCE so we will do everything in our power to help her!! Though, it will not be easy….It is an honor to hold her hand in this journey of hard HOPE!

Eviemira is no stranger to casts, as she broke her femur this past summer and had to go into a body cast (aka: Spica cast) and she was terrified and traumatized! It was an awful ordeal and truly broke our hearts to see her go through that!

So, we delayed this casting journey so she could have time for her fragile heart to heal from all the trauma. Before we went in today for her procedure, I asked her team of prayer warriors to please pray a supernatural peace over her! THANK YOU!!!

Let me tell you!! God truly poured His peace out on us all and Eviemira was amazing, brave and SO CALM!! It truly blew us away and we felt God’s presence come so close!

Also, this day has all kinds of layers of sorrow and joy that run parallel. This day marks 21 months that our Gianna Lilyfaith, her big sissy, has been in heaven. It’s been too long and it is only by the grace of God that we have been able to endure. It is only by HIS strength that one can live without their baby on earth.

God brought our baby close and opened Eviemira’s eyes first to the little Gia-sign. At one point, Eviemira looked up to the ceiling and said “GIA!” and, sure enough, there was a big blue butterfly on the ceiling! Right there above all the action was a sure love note from her big sissy straight from heaven…. a love note that SHE saw first! Somehow Jesus and Gia made sure we would be in the one (out of a dozen or so) casting rooms that had a blue butterfly on the ceiling. God hugged our hearts.

JunJun is the most adored little 4 year old in all the world and she has a whole fan club, right in her own family!

She was up most of the night whimpering and crying. A hard night for sure. But, this morning she was rolling around on the family room floor playing with her siblings and having all her needs met. Her Tribe is the best distraction from all her hard.

What a blessing to see children blessing children.

I still cannot believe she is our baby girl! There was this feeling that came over me as we were driving home from the hospital with our girl, sporting her new casts, and also getting very sad (as she realized that they had to stay on!). She was ready to be “ALL DONE!”

But, this feeling of complete awe washed over me and I could barely catch my breath. I just can not believe (all over again) that I get the unbelievable honor to be the mama to such an amazing person…. that God would choose me, in all my mess…from all the mamas in the world, in all our brokenness ….to be hers…..it just blows me away!!!

I will be the first to share the honest truth that I was scared when God showed us our daughter. I knew she was ours and I loved her. But, I was so fearful of the unknowns…because I had no idea what life would look like with a different- abled child! When God invited us out to the deep to adopt again in blind/ bruised faith, after our Gianna went to heaven, I thought God was going to give us a heart baby (we knew hearts… hearts was our road )…and, not that the heart road is easier, not by far …. but, it was “my plans” … I thought that I knew the story ahead. However, then God chased us down with this new goodness, this new hard… that blew us away! We had to release what we thought the story was going to be. I had no idea the first thing about parenting these special needs. But, this is exactly where God wants us. So completely UNABLE, that He is able to be ABLE through us and get all the glory!

So, I just look at her and I get so humbled that I could have missed her. My fears could have won! My earthly rationalization could have won. I am so grateful fear did not win. Oh how we would have missed out on SO MUCH GOODNESS in the land of the living if we let our “rational brains” take over. God does not ask for ability, He only asks for a “willingness.”

She is such a gift, straight from heaven and it is such an honor to get to be the family who walks her through these mountains to get to the high places!

The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights

(Hab 3:19)

We have no idea what the future will hold, and we know it will be NOT easy….but we know SHE will continually amaze us as God goes before us and levels the mountains and raises her up to dance on the high places! It makes me sad to imagine how close we came to missing this treasure and choosing the “shore life”….. and almost letting the intimidation of the hard and uncomfortable path steal all that is HOLY and wonderful and LIT up!

When, really, it is in the HARD places where all the HOLY treasures are unearthed and revealed.

It is our precious Gianna who solidified this truth in us. She makes us brave, she makes our lives ever more beautiful because of the gift that SHE is! We miss her physical presence more with each day. It does not get easier. But, her life continues to overflow into more goodness and grace and beauty and LIFE! She grows us forever as we await the day that we will embrace her again!

She teaches us that true life is lived out in the deep!

It is in the hard journeys that we see God work His sacred power in our lives! He is so good to invite us into these anointed stories of His redemption and glory. God comes near when we NEED him most! To think of all we miss in this vapor of a life, because we only take on what we think “we” can handle.

‘I will go before you And make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bronze And cut the bars of iron.

(Is. 45:2)

Maybe this message is for you today?

Maybe you are standing on the edge of a overwhelming and impossible mountain with a sacred invitation to jump into the unknown. To walk a crooked and unpredictable story that makes you feel nervous, anxious, out of control and absolutely shaking in your knees! I so get it!!! But, I also feel a burden to tell you to just go.... surrender all you thought it would look like. Let God give you new eyes to see HIS glory.

Let Him break you of all you thought your life would look like. No matter how old or young you are, it is never too late to surrender your plans at the altar and seek His invitation to the MORE. Let Him make it all into more.

To embrace a BIGGER story.

If God is calling you and nudging you and asking YOU to be a part of something so much bigger than YOURSELF and what you thought YOUR life would look like…. LET GO…. Let HIM lead.

Let Him break your ideas.

Let Him break your plans.

Let Him break your heart for what breaks HIS!

Walk into the deep.

Embrace the mountainous life!

Let Him break and re-make all that YOU thought your life would be.

He is the only ONE who is able to make something so new and so beautiful and more incredible than we could ever imagine, but we have to RELEASE.

Let HIM lead you where you thought you would NEVER go. Let HIM be realer to you than He ever was, because you will be placing yourself in a position that you will need HIM more than you ever thought you could!

He is faithful.

You will not regret releasing your life fully to HIS heart and abandoning your plans for HIS invitation.

Yes, you will store up less treasures here, and it will not be easy and you will lose….

You will lose comfort, security, ease and predictability and a sense of control……

but it will be a holy exchange… an exchange for an ever multiplying investment into the KINGDOM that lasts forever! An invitation to gain more of what matters, to make it all matter more. This earth is passing away…. eternity is our home.

You will find treasures hidden in the secret places that can NOT hold a candle to in this temporal life of comfort.

And, maybe you are thinking… “He could not be inviting me, because I do not have my act together!”

Well, meet our family!

We are an absolute mess and broken and bruised and hardly have it together. But, time and time again, we have seen Him use the most broken to do the most beautiful work!

Because it is ALL HIM, not us. Not our strength, All HIS GRACE

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

(2 Cor. 12:19)

It is a biblical truth.

The only way to see HIS power and experience HIS presence is to put ourselves in positions, for HIS SAKE, that we SO desperately need HIm to come through!

You can not witness the miracle of the sunrise until you pivot and face the darkness.

And Now ….for the big reveal!!! Eviemira said it was ok if I Show the world her LIT up “miracle socks!”

LOOK AT THIS SUNSHINE miracle taking place right here!!!!

Our God is doing something NEW!

We chose sunrise/ pink lemonade colors to honor the HOPE of God’s sunrise promises and her LEMON-loving big sissy, Gianna Lilyfaith!

And, the doctors took the liberty to paint the cast with all kinds of sparkle! I mean really, can there be any more love notes from heaven!

Gianna’s legacy is all over this little ray of sunshine! She is so proud of her little sissy!

With every hard step forward in this vapor of a life, it is more and more clear that we have been ruined forever for “playing it safe’ and “predictable” … because we now know that choosing the safe road, though it may be more comfortable, means saying “no” to God’s invitation for MORE.

We are more afraid of missing HIS glory then for what we can not handle.

We do not want to miss the more.

More mess

More chaos

More unknowns

More risk

More broken

More mountains

…yet, More miracles

More LOVE

More LIGHT

More Beauty

More of His presence

More of HIS strength

and MORE LIFE to the Fullest!

More treasures that moths can not destroy!

I will go before you and will level the mountains

(Is. 45:2)

Eviemira is our gift and goodness of new life and we are just so astounded that we were invited into her story of redemption and restoration!

We are dancing with her right into the sunrise and believing, in HOPE, for many miracles!

It is not an easy road….

But, it is in the scared running forward into the hard mountainous road …the place that God is real, He is close, HE is near.

He makes the crooked places straight.

He is lifting her up to the high places and we get the honor to witness Him leveling the mountains before her, one brave miracle sunrise/lemon/ sparkly cast at a time!

SHE SHALL DANCE, and We will champion her on every step or stumble along the way!