We were literally climbing up into our big commercial rental van to drive away at the end of the Together Called 2016 retreat on Sunday when I got an email from someone who had attended a different adoption event recently. Discovering that she lived not far from us, she reached out.

My husband __ and I are adoptive parents to two girls aged 9 years and 3 years old. I just participated in ___. Such great information! But, now I feel lost as to how to parent.

Those were her words. She feels lost as to how to parent her children. And, I really get that actually. There are so many great training opportunities that provide volumes worth of how-tos that some parents grab hold of as if it’s their life rope. They come home fired up to make changes and and put those good tools right into practice. Others, however, can take it all in and find themselves walking out feeling overwhelmed, shamed at their “failure” to get it right, seeing their child’s behavior or self-regulation skills or whatever as the measuring stick of parenting success.

We’ve been collecting some feedback from TC2016 attendees already. There has been a theme of response throughout—hope.

We have a long road to travel, but our hope was renewed. We are so grateful to feel refreshed in picking up our packs again to start walking alongside our daughter as she continues to grow and so do we.

He CAN save our marriage. We came in fighting for our 25 year marriage, without a lot of hope, on the verge of losing a family we adore because we have struggled before adoption but after adoption we felt like an F5 tornado ripped through the heart of our family…us. Things in adoption have settled a bit and now we are assessing and looking at the damage and after many traumatic years with our first adoption, we just had no fight left in us. This weekend restored that for us. We were hopeless; we are going to make it; and He is going to help us do it.

I wondered if we were wasting our time coming. I think we just felt alone. I’m blown away by the God who waited in the PA mountains for us to come home.

We were alone. We are together. He is our hope.

It’s hard to put into words my post-Together Called heart. I have sheer exhaustion from months of preparations and being stretched all weekend long. But, I also have a deep-rooted joy knowing that there is fruit from all that effort and that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re where we are supposed to be. I want to do cartwheels (if my body could still do them) for the team who worked in perfect unity of purpose and heart, locking arms with us to serve. And, despite the exhaustion, I am supernaturally energized to press on in my own marriage and my own family and to encourage every adoptive parent around me with a “You can do this.”

As Mark and I have been reflecting on the “success” of the weekend, which may be impossible to even assess, we simply are smiling at each other in recognition of how a lot of people came either weary or unsure, some with seemingly nothing left, some wondering what God might be doing in their family. Regardless of what they came with, we truly believe they left with hope because we pointed them to the Hope Giver. And, that, friends, is pretty awesome.