zach n kali

Worship is a wonderful thing.  To live your whole life as such is something to strive for. I heard a story about a man who would set his alarm throughout the day to remind himself to stop and pray, with the goal being that he would train himself to always be in the Spirit.  But some days worship is the last thing on our minds.  Sometimes your environment - sometimes the very thing that makes you want to worship - tries to keep you from doing just that.  The nature that usually brings you closer to the Lord is suddenly hailing giant pellets on you as you run across the parking lot or blowing your lawn chairs across the pool.  The music that usually transports you to another place screeches in your ears as the microphones give off nasty feedback.  And sometimes "Mama!" is the last thing you want to be called.  The sound of your name being called for the umpteenth time as you are trying to have a conversation with another adult is grating to your ears. ...

Over the past few months I've been in somewhat of a drought. A dark night of my soul, if you will. I haven't felt fulfilled. I haven't felt productive. I haven't felt like myself. I've wondered whether or not I should re-enter the workforce, whether we should take another foster placement, whether I can get away with spending the day in bed because I just feel so blah.   When I went to the dentist the other day, she asked how in the world I could possibly stay home with two little ones. She never would have the patience. Considering what I look like at the end of most days, I don't really have an answer.  Trust me, I do not have super-natural patience.  I've tried reading self-help books with campy titles such as The Stay At Home Mom Survival Guide and Stay Home, Stay Happy, hoping to find some validation, some joy, some peace.  And yet I still feel like I'm paying $300 a month to wipe bottoms (thanks, student loans!).   I've been struggling late...

 Spring has sprung here in southern California, and the gorgeous photogenic days mean one thing in the Hocking household - dirt.  I saw this adorable wall decal once that defined "Boys" as "noun.  Noise with dirt on it". Truer words may have never been spoken.  But let's not count out little girls.  Sweet P might be sugar and spice and everything nice, but earlier today she looked like she had a beard.  I'm sure the dirt offers some sort of protein.  I think I've already swept up an inch of dirt off my living room floor today.  Dirt has always been my enemy.  I'm not fond of camping because of dirt.  I don't like gardening because of dirt, and sometimes I don't like the beach because of dirt.  And then I had toddlers, and Dirt became a supervillian that you could make a movie out of.  When I look at my dirt-speckled children, all I can think about is how all that dirt will soon be in my house.  I'm just done.  Over it...

I love Anniversaries!  Be they wedding anniversaries, birthdays, celebrating the first day you bought a car, I love taking time out of the mundane to celebrate special moments.  Our wedding anniversary is one of my favorite times of year.  We are really bad at having regular date nights (unless zoning out while watching The Good Wife counts, because we're really good at that!), so it's really important for us that we take time to just be together, distractionless, reliving our highs, talking through our lows, and recharging.  For our fifth anniversary last year we went to the Bahamas for a week.  Other years we've gone back to our favorite spots in Cambria and St. George. This year we managed to swing a private viewing of the Aquarium of the Pacific with a romantic dinner for two from one of our favorite restaurants.  We had a babysitter, a romantic table, and a piano nearby with someone ready to serenade us as we ate and watched the sharks swim lazily by...

Philip Yancy.   Torn .  Rachel Held Evans.  Thomas Keller.   What's So Amazing About Grace?  God Will Use This For Good.   John McArthur.   The Wounded Healer.   Joni Eareckson   Tada.   In The Name Of Jesus.  These books and authors have helped me work through countless questions, fears, and heartache.  They have encouraged me in my darkest times and helped me heal through the pains of life.  My Goodreads "To Read" shelf is full of books like Max Lucado's It's Not About Me and The Missional Mom by Helen Lee.  I have wept through them, journaled quotes that stood out, and been lifted up as God shows up time and time again.  These authors, and countless others, have put my own struggles into beautiful words, and have found answers to things I thought were hopeless. But do you see something missing?  Where's the Bible on this list?  Why is it that when my heart hurts I Google some of my favorit...

Dear Lord, With Thanksgiving soon approaching, I wanted to stop and just say "thanks!"  You have blessed us so richly this year - thank you for Peyton and this amazing first year we've had with her.  Thank you for the incredible ways that Matt is growing and developing.  Thank you for their health, and their humor - thank you that they sleep through the night!  And thank you for Zach's new job - you have shown yourself faithful over and over again.  Thank you for our home and our families...      You're welcome.  What are you going to do now? What Lord?      I have blessed you.  So what are you going to do with that? Well... I thought we might just sit and enjoy it for a little while. We've been working really hard.  And we've spent so much time  in prayer lately, trusting you, and everything!  And I mean, Christmas is coming, and vacation...      Why do I bless you?   ...

I woke up this morning with a bad case of The Mondays.  I mean bad.  Monday is usually a reset day for us after busy weekends.  But this morning I was just over it.  I didn't want to unload the dishwasher.  I didn't want to change Matt's sheets (potty training is great, but exhausting).  I kind of just wanted to sit in a corner with my coffee and pout.  But if I decide to be Mrs. Crankypants, then the kids become Crankypants Jrs, and that just makes everything worse.  I just felt like life was on this 'lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat' cycle of monotony. Pick up the toys just so the kids can dump them out again.  Unload the dishwasher just to load it up again.  Read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs again.  Again again again. But then by my second cup of coffee, I remembered what someone at church said a few weeks ago.  A Stay-At-Home-Mom herself, she felt caught up in the same monotony.  But she shared that ...

It's time to be updated!  It's time to move on from "The Five Year Plan - Revised" because Zach and I are now on the other side of our first 5 years!  This also means that I am only two years away from being thirty... but more on my own aging issues later. I cannot tell you how many couples I have met who tell me that they plan on having kids "probably in about five years".  Why is 5 the magic number?  Please do not take this condescendingly - I was one of them.  What do we think would happen in these five years that would make us ready for children?  What do we hope to accomplish?  Where do we want to travel?  How many bucket list items do we hope to cross off?  I had it so nicely planned out.  Married at 22, career at 23, kids at 27, house by 30...  With these numbers I'd probably be telling my kids that I would be a grandma at 60 - no arguing!  Who did I think I was?  God?  Thankfully he is patient and didn't s...

M and I are having one of those days.  He's acting like a 1 year old and I want him to understand me like a 5 year old.  Every time I turn around, something has been pulled off a shelf.  Every time I try to do something like empty the dishwasher, M needs me with sudden clinginess.  Instead of saying please, I constantly am reminding him not to whine.  His room is covered in books, clothes that he's pulled out of his drawer, and diapers (thankfully clean!).  I'm exhausted and ready to close my bedroom door and cry.  But instead I bend to pick up the books and realize that his daily flip calendar is still on March.  So I change it to today's date, and here was the verse: 1 Samuel 1:27 (NCV) "I prayed for this child, and the Lord answered my prayer and gave him to me." Then the tears came.  I have been praying for this sweet little boy since before I knew him.  It has always been my  heart's desire to be a mother, and he has heard ...

Somehow November disappeared.  As I look at our beautiful Christmas tree and the rain falling outside (our California version of snow) I don't know when we got here.  Where did the month of Thanksgiving go?  In light of the fact that I dropped of the radar for a month, I would like to post the top 3 things I am most thankful for. 1.  The daily saving grace given to me by my Heavenly Father Being a mom is hard.  Having fibromyalgia is hard.  Being human is hard!  But thankfully I'm not going through my day alone, and I have someone fighting in my corner, giving me strength when I need it, peace amidst turmoil, and wisdom when I lack it.  I have a tendency to worry about the future, but thankfully I often hear my very wise mother's voice in my head: "One day at a time".  We are given exactly what we need for the moment;  why try to make things harder by adding the burdens of tomorrow?  God's mercies are new every morning (Lam. 3:2...

Luke 12: 48 (NIV) From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. We have recently moved!  Our small space living has expanded to a sweet little house in Bellflower.  What an incredible gift this has been!  We have loved decorating, painting, and unpacking the boxes and boxes of books that have become a fixture in our home.  It has been so much fun setting up a real nursery and taking advantage of our backyard.  One of the things that we were hoping to be able to do with more space was to continue providing a safe home for children in need.  But it's easy to get comfortable!  It's easy to say, "when we're more settled", or "when we know more about M's future" or "when I'm healthier".  The great thing about asking God to lead you is that he will - even when you're "not ready".  Our hearts have wanted to do more, but our action...

I love baby dedications; I think I cry every single time.  We were incredible blessed yesterday to dedicate our sweet Baby M to God before our church family.  Our family joined us at church and we were more than excited.  But in the true spirit of unpredictability, M decided that he didn't like being on stage, and he screamed the entire time.  Who would have thought that my sweet mellow child would be the one to absolutely freak out during his dedication?  Not me.  I was flustered, embarrassed, and pretty upset.  You have an idea of how something will go and you want to remember the day a certain way, and it's upsetting when things don't go as you imagine. After the service, our pastor came up to us and said the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth.  I was waiting for the inevitable, "Well... that was something else..."  But instead, with a huge smile on his face, he said "That was cool".  I'm sorry, what?  Cool?  H...

It's not that I didn't before the other night. But I have now had a first-hand experience with them. My brother was flying out to China for three months, so I was taking him to LAX to catch his 1am flight. I have major anxiety about missing flights, so even though I knew I needed to get gas, I figured I could make it to the airport. The drop-off was successful, Toby made his flight and is now in Beijing. My gas gauge was way below the E at this point, but anyone who know the area around LAX knows that Watts, Compton, and Inglewood are probably not the best places for a girl to get gas by herself at 11:30 at night. So I said a prayer and hoped that I would make it to the end of the freeway where I knew I'd be safe and there were gas stations. Well... the prayer was answered. Literally seconds after I got off the freeway my car sputtered and slowly began to die. The gas station was probably a hundred yards away and I was loping along on borrowed time. The left turn ...

Most of the time I find myself so thankful to be where I'm at. I love being a stay-at-home foster mom and feel so blessed that God has called us to minister in this way. I catch myself watching my little boy when I'm supposed to be doing something else and finding myself so deeply in love. He's not doing anything particularly amazing or meeting any new milestones. He may be looking at his books or lying on his back talking to himself. But I cannot believe how much I love him and how blessed I am to have him in my life. And then there are days like today when I am very aware of how my life turned down this road. Days when I feel trapped in my own home because I lack to strength to go down a flight of stairs. Days when I pray that Baby M won't drop his bottle because bending over hurts so much. Days when I wonder why in the world God decided to use the pain of fibromyalgia to turn my face towards him. His ways are not our ways, that's for sure! Lord, coul...

For those of you who don't know me and for the of you who have always wondered how tall I actually am, I am 5'10". Growing up I used to have these horrible aches in my legs and my mom always told me they were "just growing pains". Well, they were "just excruciating". The good thing was that that they never lasted for too long and eventually the pain went away. Lately I have been experiencing a lot of emotional growing pains and they too can be excruciating. As a stay-at-home-mom, I am blessed beyond belief to be living in my sweet spot, that place where my God-given passions and gifts meet my successes. But I am also grieving the loss of what I thought was my sweet spot; I am grieving my "Five Year Plan for a Successful Life". When I decided to write this blog, I decided that I would write with complete candor and transparency. Today I am feeling more heartache than laughter. I am missing "what could have been". A year ago I ...

Dear Lord, Is this it? Poopy diapers? A laundry basket that seems as though it comes from the Harry Potter stories - I empty it and then look again and it's full? And the spit up, it just keeps coming! He's so unhappy right now, and I just don't know how to fix it! Really Lord? Did he have to stick his hand in the dirty diaper? Oh Lord, this isn't what I had planned! I have a college degree! I was going to have letters after my name! I got to wear heels and clack down the hall importantly! I had "work clothes"! Now I just have clothes... sometimes four outfits a day! And do you know how much energy it takes to get the stroller in and out of the car!? My friends don't want to hear my stories about poop and spit up, but they're the only stories I have! Lord, is this really it? Oh Lord, he's smiling! He's reaching for me. Oh Lord that little contented sigh is so sweet! Oh Lord, is this really it? Do I really get to be the ...

At 11:30 this morning, approximately 45 minutes after I posted my previous note, I received a call from our Foster Family Specialist at Olive Crest - we're certified! I almost made her repeat it while I pinched myself to make sure I hadn't dozed off in the California heat. But it's true - the fingerprints are cleared, the paperwork has been signed, and we now anxiously await what God has for us next. Thank you for being on this journey with us! I'm sure we will have many stories - funny and heartbreaking - to tell in the future. We wouldn't have it any other way! Isn't it amazing how God works!? He is so good.

I wish with all my heart that I were sitting here writing to you with a baby in my arms. About a week ago, we asked you to pray – pray that our fingerprints would clear, pray for patience, pray for these precious little ones. And yet I sit here without news, without fingerprint clearance, and without ears perked for a phone call asking us to come pick up a child. Does that mean that God hasn't heard or answered our prayers? Absolutely not. I have come to have a deep sense of peace that his ways are not my ways, and that his timing is perfect, not mine. I have realized that what hurts me hurts him infinitely more, and he weeps for these broken children. He has not forgotten them. He is tending to them in ways I cannot imagine, and when the time is right, he will let me join him in this work. Our prayers have intensified for these children. And we are continuing to learn the voice of our good shepherd. Our pastor has been preaching through a series titled “You Were Mad...

We serve a big God. I believe in his perfect timing. But I also believe that he calls us to prayer. And today I am asking you to pray. There are currently an estimated 463,000 children in foster care in the United States (www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/foster.cfm). Every 10 seconds a child abuse report is filed in the United States. Every day in America, five children die as a result of child abuse. Over 3.5 million cases of child abuse are reported in the United States each year (http://www.olivecrest.org/site/PageServer?pagename=gen_abt_history_mission_values). It kills me that there are children out there who are hungry, dirty, abused, and neglected, and I am tied up in an inefficient system waiting for a single set of fingerprints to clear. Thanks to the wonderful support of family and friends, our home is ready for a child. I know that we will be certified at the right time, the time when God deems us physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally ready to serv...

Many of you will laugh and scoff at me, but I did not want to turn 25. I had teachers when I was in high school who turned 25. At 25, you are no longer in your "early 20s". When you get carded at a restaurant, you want to roll your eyes because 21 seemed so long ago. Plus it's the first one where you get called a part of a century. No one tells you that you are a 5th of a century on your 20th birthday or a 10th of a century when you turn 10. But now I am a quarter of a century. The gloomy weather seems to emphasize this. 24 was an interesting year to say the least. Diagnosis of Celiac disease and fibromyalgia, starting the process of foster parent certification, job stress... But it was also an amazing year of learning who I am and who God is calling me to be. To be cliche, diamonds are not made simply by wishing coal to be valuable and gold is refined through fire. Am I done being refined? Absolutely not. But I enter this next year with a greater sense of ...