A congregational minister, I’ve encountered families created by love, necessity, and surprise.

A congregational minister, I’ve encountered families created by love, necessity, and surprise.  When conducting weddings and funerals, I thank God for placing people in families, an uncanny, miraculous, and coincidental life event.   It’s also true that my family was crafted by a mysterious combination of human choices and capacities to love and adapt. It’s uncanny that a single minister like me can have kids; adoption made it possible.  Though delayed for weeks and weeks, miraculously, the right combination of official documents traversed through Russian bureaucracy, permitting my new 8 year old daughter and me to arrive home on December 24.  Coincidentally, my older daughter’s given name, Anastasia, means “resurrection” in Greek—literally, to cause to stand, as we do now, a family (though we lean against each other, sometimes.) After that, I adopted Marina, because I could.  And only in the past year, I married Will, a local bachelor farmer, because we realized that becoming a family of four would be a loving, needed, and surprisingly good choice for all of us.  Sure, I work on interesting professional gigs that stimulate me.  But what I do is mother two daughters and enjoy a marriage partnership, because I can.