I wish that I could say that Josh and Amy Bottomly were my own very good friends. I’ve been following their blog for several months and we’ve exchanged a few e-mails about the Ethiopian orphanage sponsorship, but I have never met them. After reading their book, however, I feel like we could be good friends. We seem to have a lot in common, like Casey’s childhood infatuation with Michael Jordan and my time as a high school English teacher.

From Ashes to Africa is the story of Josh and Amy’s journey to adoption in Ethiopia. It is an incredible story of transformation and hope. Josh and Amy speak openly and honestly about struggles in their marriage and faith and also about God’s redemption of their “ashes.” And the beautiful treat at the end is the account of their first moments with their son, Silas.

Even though our journeys have been a bit different, I identified with so much of what Josh and Amy shared. I understood their path from a spark of interest in Ethiopia to a burning passion to reach out to the people there.

I also appreciated their struggle to communicate their excitement about their adoption with others. We have also had some interesting reactions to our adoption news. Like Amy, I have had people “encourage” me by telling me that maybe one day I will be pregnant again. It baffles me every time. When I was pregnant with Caleb, no one felt the need to encourage me that I would have other children. Right now, my heart is pregnant with my little Ethiopian boy, and, until he is in my arms, I want no other. He is not a second choice, consolation prize; he is the desire of my heart.

I am so thankful that Josh and Amy have shared their story, and I encourage everyone who is interested in adoption or Ethiopia, or just loves a good story to take the time to read it. At the very least, you should visit their blog so you can see pictures of their beautiful little Silas.

Just a quick update on our own adoption journey: This week marks the end of our third month of waiting, and last week I found out that we are #18 on the waiting list. We’re still hoping for a referral this summer.

Our day in Oxford was our favorite day of the whole trip. We met Mr. Ron Brind, of C.S. Lewis Tours, and he drove us through town showing us the places where C.S. Lewis taught and lived. I have been a fan of C.S. Lewis almost all my life. I remember when my parents gave me a copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for my seventh birthday. Later, when I was sixteen, my dad gave me a copy of Mere Christianity. From that point on, I have had the greatest respect for Lewis as a Christian thinker and writer. Sometime when I was a teenager, my dad read The Great Divorce aloud to our whole family; it provided us with a lot of opportunity to think and talk about our faith. When I was a junior in college, I took an English course on C.S. Lewis. I still think it was the best course I took throughout my college career. We read most of Lewis’s works during that semester, and I also reread all of the Chronicles of Narnia as I was taking the course, so for about four months my life was saturated with C.S. Lewis. It was a great semester.

Mr. Brind is a native of Oxford and was childhood pals with Douglas Gresham, after Douglas’s mother, Joy Gresham, married C.S. Lewis. Mr. Brind is devoting his life to raising “Lewis Awareness” in Britain. He confessed to us that Lewis is much more popular in America than he is in Great Britain. Mr. Brind hopes to correct that; he is also working to see that Lewis gets the acknowledgment in Oxford that he deserves.

We started our tour of Oxford at the Randolph Hotel. Mr. Brind told us that Lewis often met with friends at the bar in this hotel, and the “Tea Scene” from the Anthony Hopkins version of Shadowlands was filmed inside the hotel. We then drove by University College where Lewis attended as a student, Keble College where he was stationed for Army training, and Magdalen College where he taught for nearly thirty years. We also saw a house in Oxford where J.R.R. Tolkien lived and the hospital where Lewis and Joy Gresham’s marriage was blessed.

One of our favorite parts of the tour was visiting Holy Trinity Church where Lewis and his brother Warnie, and later his wife Joy, attended. Lewis and Warnie are buried in the church graveyard. We were able to sit in Lewis’s pew, where there is a plaque acknowledging him. It was truly a wonderful experience to visit the church where Lewis worshipped for so many years.

We then were taken to “The Kilns,” where Lewis lived. Most Americans refer to Lewis’s house as “The Kilns,” but our knowledgeable tour guide, Mr. Brind, informed us that it is actually the plot of land that Lewis’s house and the surrounding houses stand on that is called “The Kilns.” We got to wander around the woods and lake where Lewis walked and swam, and then we were able to tour the house. Currently the house is owned by the C.S. Lewis Foundation out of California; they allow students to live in the house during the school year and use it during the summer for conferences. While we were very thankful to be able to tour the house and to see the rooms that Lewis used, we were a little disappointed that the house is not more like a museum and less like a dormitory.

We ended our tour at The Eagle and Child Pub, where Lewis met weekly with the other Inklings, a discussion group which included J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. They met in what was then the back room of the pub, nicknamed “The Rabbit Room.” The pub has been extended since that time, but “The Rabbit Room” is still intact and there are pictures and signs commemorating its use by the Inklings. We ate a traditional English lunch in the pub, “bangers and mash,” and thoroughly enjoyed our time there. The pub was extremely crowded and there were rowdy college students surrounding us, but it felt completely appropriate that we were ending our C.S. Lewis tour in one of his favorite spots, where he was no doubt often jostled by riotous college students.

After lunch we explored Oxford a bit, before catching our train back to London. We spent the evening at St. Martin’s Theatre, where we saw the famous play by Agatha Christie, The Mousetrap. And yes, we know who did it, but we are sworn to secrecy.

See Pictures from Oxford

We started at the Roman Baths. It was really interesting to see the structures that the Romans built in the 1st century AD. We also saw the Pump Room, where many in Jane Austen’s day would go to “take the waters.” We decided not to partake of the waters. It didn’t smell too good, and I could only guess that it would taste even worse.

After wandering around a bit to find lunch, we listened to an audio tour of Bath on our iPods that I downloaded from the Bath Tourism website. It was great fun to listen to the commentary while we followed a map through the streets of Bath, and, because of the tour, we were able to find many sites we would never have found on our own. Our favorite spots in Bath include Pultney Bridge, the Royal Crescent, and the Circus. The town has changed very little since the 18th century, and the surrounding countryside is so beautiful that it ended up being a wonderful way to spend the day.

See Pictures of Bath

I’m reminded of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet X:

As our nephew said, “Don’t be sad Mommy; Granddad is in heaven.”

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’” Revelation 21:3-4

This is one of my favorite of Donne’s Holy Sonnets. I love the marriage imagery that Donne uses to describe his relationship with God. We are the bride of Christ, but too often we are unfaithful and find ourselves pledged to another. Donne notes that only intimacy with God makes us pure.

This sonnet reminds me of a verse that God placed on my heart last year. God answers Donne’s prayer in Ezekiel 36:26; He says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” I need to be constantly reminded that I am incapable of changing myself; I am dependent on God to change me and give me a new heart. I need God to overthrow and conquer me because otherwise I become captive to myself and to sin. I am always so amazed and grateful when I find that a part of my heart that used to be as hard as stone has been made soft and fleshy by God. I am immensely thankful that my God is committed to daily working and reworking His transformation in my life.