Hi, Kathleen here, filling in for Audrey who is vacationing!

August is winding down. It’s one of my favorite months. Summer lingers with high temps in the middle of the day and cooler nights perfect for county fairs and out door concerts, campfires and family reunions by the Cherry River. We buy school supplies in bulk and ‘bouquets of sharpened pencils’. The leaves, ever so slightly, change into autumn hues. And ….it’s my birthday month!

Yep, August 26, tomorrow is my birthday! I’d love you to celebrate it with me! I’d love to give you a present!  On my birthday (August 26th), the kindle edition of Positive Adoption A Memoir is FREE!  If you are totally broke from buying school supplies, accept the free gift and please share! And if you are totally broken from the world, from rejection or choked by your past. If you are broken from infertility or loss read on…

If you are thinking about adopting, this is for you.

If you have adopted, this is for you.

If you foster children, this is for you.

If you have been rejected or abandoned, this is for you.

If you had a troubled beginning, this is for you.

If you wonder why you exist and if God has a plan to put all the pieces of your broken past together, this is for you.

“Then one day, my father burst out of the house like an angry hornet.  He jumped in the teal Suburban and sped down the lane. I sat on the back porch , staring at my new red sneakers. My brother ran after him yelling, “Dad, don’t leave!” Tears dripped down his dusty, sweaty cheeks.

My father was gone.

This was my first exposure to the reality of the great divorce of heaven and earth. I was banished from the only Eden I had ever known, flawed as it was.  I was a hurt child, reaping the consequences of someone else’s life choices just as children all over the world– children who are  victims of circumstances, hunger, rejection, alcohol addiction, depression, rage, fear, punishments, loss of temper, war, famine, prostitution, and drugs.  The pit is the same in any language: Deep, dark, and putrid. No matter what the cause of the rejection or abandonment, the feelings are the same. The devastation parallels Adam and Eve’s separation from the Heavenly Father.”

My troubled beginnings gave me a heart for hurt children. Many of us believe our beginnings ARE us. They are not. They are circumstances that happened TO us. If we voluntarily hand our pain and suffering to God the Father, He will shape it into the future He intended. A future of hope. A future of purpose. He loved you before the foundation of the world and only He can take a hurt and turn it into a healing that spreads like the ripples of a pebble tossed in a lake.

We are assured and know that [^[a]God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.- Romans 8:28

God had a plan for my life and He has one for yours. When things seem impossible. When you ask why. He will weave your story together. Wait. Trust.

This is my memoir weaved together with the adoption of my children. It is a life restored. It is a new beginning for all. It is a hard beginning turned into great love story.

I had read so many negative articles on adoption/foster care when we began the process. It was disheartening. So, when I began to write my story, on journal entry at a time, I knew it had to be Positive Adoption. It began with my spiritual adoption which led to a physical adoption of a sibling group of four half a world away.