To my dearest friend, If there’s a symphony I can play to saturate your mind in, it would be an endless “you are loved–you are loved” on a forever repeated loop. Perhaps your current circumstances are telling you: ‘that’s a lie’. Thoughts that started small and faint stating how forgotten, unseen, or neglected you are, […]
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.- Proverbs 27: 17 I can recall many painful days when this was true in our home. It was hard to see the sharp, serrated corners of my heart, until they encounter another. It was easier to point out and see the barbed, hardened heart of my […]
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love”- Mother Teresa From the beginning of our adoption process, I was so fearful of the idea of having to “share” my child, that an open adoption -of any sort- terrified me. Whether it […]
Coming home after spending four unexpected months in Uganda was a lot like plunging into freezing water. I anticipated it to go one way, and as you might have guessed, it went another. None of those underlying things that needed to be worked on and dealt with in my heart and my children’s went away […]
Four weeks of living in Uganda, we found ourselves still awaiting our verbal ruling for legal guardianship. We were certain it would only be a matter of time, as Igor and I (legally) had a best-case scenario, (more like a dream!) in which we should technically be back home as a family, from start to […]
It took me a really long time to get the courage to write this post. I’ve been staring at my empty computer screen for hours. You see, the relationship I have with my children today, (especially with my daughter), is incomparable to the bleak beginning we shared. Our days together are filled with lots of […]
When faithfulness looks and feels like brokenness and failure it is hard to talk about it. Especially when there is nothing glamorous or exciting to share. Showing up and loving your children should be nothing extraordinary; yet for me, it was. When people ask what Uganda was like, I usually draw a blank. How much […]
{“When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind […]
Fear is a funny thing. It doesn’t have to be rational. It can come virtually out of nowhere, for any reason with all intensities. It has no prejudice towards age, accepting both men and women equally. For some of us, it is our master. Unknowingly, or willingly, we let it control the course of our […]

Zarie Orest
Hey! Thanks for stopping in.
I’m Zarie. I am a wife, mother, nature lover, coffee drinker, friendship seeker, first generation immigrant striving to be a woman after God’s own heart and I know that with Gods grace and strength I can live a full and meaningful life right where I am at.