Instagram story viewer> @liz.mannchen> Posts

Liz Mannchen

@liz.mannchen

10.8K

followers

1159

following

Artist. Author. Advocate. Adoption
Living Wild & Free with my
International family of dreamers
👩🏻🇺🇸🧔🏻🇩🇪👧🏻 🇨🇳🧒🏾🇮🇳👶🏻🇰🇷🇵🇭
@liveaslions
ORDER MY BOOK 👇🏼

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

✨ The Becoming a Lion launch party was beyond magical—truly exceeding every expectation! ✨

We were blown away by the incredible turnout, with families and friends coming dressed as all the characters—Lion, Bat, Moth, Wolf, Tortoise and even a possum—and filling the night with so much joy and celebration.

I had the honor of reading excerpts from the book, and acompo it with a song with a full band that brought the story to life. Afterwards, the celebration continued with book signings, photo shoots, and exploring my art prints and other merchandise from our Live As Lions shop—all designed to inspire you to live wild and free.

If you haven’t grabbed your copy yet, don’t wait—order it now (available on all major book platforms) And if you’d love to bring a Becoming a Lion event to your venue, bookstore, or church, we’d be thrilled to make it happen.

STAY WILD
.
Photos by: @raym.jones & @ulrich.mannchen

#BecomingALion #LiveAsLions #BookLaunch #AuthorLife #WildAndFree #BookEvent #LizAndTheLions #lizMannchen by @liz.mannchen

65

4

a year ago

Across nations.�Through adoption.�Through loss and miracles.
And now… another beginning.
We’re growing our family through embryo adoption. 💛
.
.
.
#themannchens #growingfamily #embryoadoption #embryo #adoptionjourney by @liz.mannchen

478

82

7 months ago

When God weaves decades of calling into a new assignment ✌🏼
.
Grateful to step into this role with @christianadoptionconsultants as their International Adoption Consultant.
.
If adoption is on your heart, I’d be honored to walk this journey with you- DM me!
.
.
#christianadoptionconsultants #cac #internationaladoption #internationaladoptionconsultant #adoptionconsultant by @liz.mannchen

238

33

9 months ago

5 o’clock on our farm.

It’s my favorite time of the day.

Work is done, school is over, and somehow we all find our way outside together.

There are animals to feed, stalls to clean, water buckets to fill, and always something that needs fixing. The girls have their little jobs, the animals are impatiently waiting for dinner, and we’re all working alongside one another.

It’s not glamorous. It’s often muddy, loud, and a little chaotic. But I love it.

I love that our girls are growing up knowing what it means to care for something beyond themselves. That animals aren’t just here for our enjoyment, but are lives entrusted to our care. That responsibility can be a joy, and that some of the sweetest family moments happen while doing ordinary things together.

And I love that for this little window of the day, we’re all in the same place, doing the same thing, with nowhere else we need to be.

Five o’clock on our farm. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 🤎
.
.
#lifeonafarm #raisethemwild #farmlifebestlife #themannchens by @liz.mannchen

41

0

5 days ago

One hundred days ago, we were fighting for your life.

Calling upon the Lord for His mercy. Asking for His favor. Praying that we would get to keep you here.

And so there is something especially sacred about celebrating 100 days of you.

Baek-il is a Korean tradition born from a time when reaching 100 days of life was not something every baby was promised. Families gathered when a child reached this milestone to celebrate life—to give thanks, to bless, and to hope for a long and beautiful future.

That history is not lost on us.

Because 100 days ago, we didn’t know what your story would hold.

And now, after 100 days of our sweet Aro Rei, somehow this already-beautiful family holds more love and more joy than we knew it had room for.

We gathered with a few close friends, family and our pastors who had not yet met her—to celebrate her, welcome her, pray over her, speak blessing over her, and thank the Lord for the extraordinary gift of her life. We blessed her with the traditional hope of 100 years of goodness ahead.

And as her parents, we offered her back to the Lord.

Because as fiercely as we love her, she was His first.

He is the Author of her life. We are simply the ones entrusted with the breathtaking privilege of loving her through it.

We ate rice cake, dressed her in her traditional Korean Baek-il hanbok, alongside her name sign adorned with the Filipino sampaguita flower—a small weaving together of the cultures and people whose stories live within hers.

One hundred days of Aro Rei.

One hundred days of watching a life we once pleaded for unfold before us.

What an honor it is to be your parents, sweet girl.

May your path be long and beautiful. May your life be full of goodness. And may you always know just how deeply you were prayed for, fought for, celebrated, and loved.
.
.
#100days #100dayscelebration #themannchens #koreanbaekil by @liz.mannchen

264

32

10 days ago

When one of your besties—who lives on the other side of the country—shows up at your door to meet your new baby, on the very week her new book is being born into the world. 🤍

I have watched this woman BECOME as our Maker wrote the stories of her life—the beautiful ones, the brutal ones, the ones she never would have chosen but somehow became holy ground.

And then I watched her UNRAVEL them.

Thread by thread. Memory by memory. Putting pen to paper and making something beautiful from all the places life had once come undone.

And now, somehow, it is a book.

It’s all there—the messy waltz between hope and heartache, faith and fear, breaking and becoming. The strange and sacred truth that sometimes suffering doesn’t steal the hallelujah—it teaches us how to sing it in the dark.

So, so proud of you @ebiehepworth . Of the life you’ve lived, the words you’ve wrestled onto these pages, and the courage it takes to hand your story to the world.

Go get your copy of Midnight Hallelujah. 🤍
.
#midnighthallelujah by @liz.mannchen

27

1

15 days ago

We celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival and Chuseok over the weekend 🌕🏮🥮

We love making mooncakes and songpyeon together, hiding the feast somewhere in our woods for our girls to find, and howling at the moon as loud as we can 🌚

And then, beneath that big full moon, thanking the Lord for the season behind us and asking Him to prepare our hearts for the one ahead.

I love these traditions. I love celebrating pieces of our girls’ cultures with them, filling their childhoods with foods and stories and rhythms that remind them where they come from—and making some traditions uniquely ours along the way. ❤️
.
.
#midautumn #chuseok #themannchens #秋夕 by @liz.mannchen

104

10

18 days ago

Probably one of the sweetest photos I’ve ever taken, and definitely one that deserves a place on my wall. 🤍

For those of you who know Fritz, you know he’s our oldest baby. We adopted him when he was just a few months old—a little rescue from Hungary who had been smuggled across the border into Germany. It was a traumatic journey, and I’ve always thought it made him an old soul very quickly. It also gave him this incredible sensitivity.

Anyone who has ever been to our home knows what I mean. Fritz has this way of quietly sitting at your feet as if to say, You’re welcome here. You’re loved. You’re safe.

But there’s another side to him. Whenever we bring a new animal—or a new child—into our pack, Fritz is always the last to accept them. It’s almost as if he needs time to decide for himself: Are you safe? Do you belong to us?

Because Fritz is my guardian.

Every night, he sleeps at the foot of our bed, usually right on my feet, keeping watch over me.

When we brought Aro home, he was curious, but mostly kept his distance. He wasn’t quite ready to claim her as one of his own.

And then, over the past couple of weeks, something changed.

Now, when Aro cries in the night, Fritz sits straight up on the bed and turns toward the door. Watching. Guarding.

And I realized—he’s guarding her now, too.

This morning, while I was feeding Aro in bed, Fritz came over, looked at her, and gave her the sweetest little kiss. The first time he’s really done that.

And somehow, I caught it on camera. 😭

I think she’s officially part of his pack now.

Fritz will always be my best friend. There will simply never be another Fritz. 🤍
.
#puglove by @liz.mannchen

138

4

22 days ago

3 MONTHS OLD! 🥹🤍

Aro, we “did it”! Three whole months! Three months of round-the-clock feeds, middle-of-the-night snuggles, learning each other, figuring out what every little cry means, celebrating every ounce gained, and somehow keeping this tiny little human happy, growing and very, very loved. So actually, you know what? We DID do it. 😂 And you know me—LET’S CELEBRATE!

They say you’re officially no longer a newborn, but at a whopping 9.3 lbs, I’m not entirely convinced. 😂

Either way, your little personality is absolutely radiating through now, and honestly, you’re exactly who we thought you’d be—pure joy. You give us endless coos and giggles, you are wildly confident and consistently let me know exactly how you think things should go. 😂

And apparently you’re also the most precious thing to break the internet, because I get messages every single day telling me how ridiculously cute you are. Couldn’t agree more. 🥹

Oh, my little bunny. Three months of you. Three months of getting to know the little person we waited and prayed so long for.

You are so, so loved. 🤍🐰
.
#3monthsold #cutestbabyever #embryoadoption #adoptionislove #themannchens by @liz.mannchen

357

24

25 days ago

It started with a dream of a little bit of land… and turned into an entire forest.

A few animals… and now there are more than 30.

An international family… and somehow we have six nations represented under one roof.

Apparently, I have never once asked God for anything in moderation. 😂

But I wouldn’t want this life any other way. God knew exactly who He was entrusting this chaos to. 😂

The maniac who somehow thrives in the wild.

But the truth is, I need it. It grounds me. This land, these animals, these babies—they’ve saved my life in more ways than I can explain. I’ve fought relentlessly for this life because, in so many ways, it’s what keeps me fighting.

Goodness, I tended this farm right up until 30 minutes before we left for the hospital to have Aro. There was something incredibly grounding during my pregnancy about keeping that rhythm—getting up every day, going outside, and caring for our ridiculous little herd.

And now, a couple months postpartum and recovering from a C-section, I’m slowly finding my way back to myself.

Strap the baby to my chest. Halter the boys. Head into the woods.

And there she is.

A woman coming back to her own. Centering. Reconnecting. Remembering herself.

…until, of course, she has another phenomenal idea about what else should join the pack.

Because apparently 30 animals is just a gateway drug. 😂

#feralwoman #llamaparty #feralfarmgirl #postpartum by @liz.mannchen

106

4

a month ago

We’ve just finished our very last post-adoption report for India 🇮🇳🎉🥳🙌🏻

Two years of post-adoption meetings, paperwork, and reports—and we can finally call this adoption completely finalized.

I’ve been thinking about the beautiful story of Aima Lein and how God was weaving her into our family long before we ever knew her name.

Years ago, I dreamt of a little child with dark skin and curly hair, and felt the Lord show me so clearly: this will be your child.

And then, through years of failed adoptions, I chased that child.

I searched waiting lists looking for someone who matched the image I had seen. Time after time, I hunted for that vision, only to be disappointed and broken by another loss.

Then we received the first photos of Aima Lein—a light-skinned-looking little Indian girl with short, straight hair.

And everything in us knew:

That’s our daughter.

She didn’t match the picture I had carried for years, but suddenly it didn’t matter. I knew her. I loved her.

So I laid the vision down. I gave it back to the Lord. I didn’t need to make Aima fit some picture in my head. I didn’t need to turn a promise into an idol.

Then came the day we finally met her.

They walked out carrying a dark-skinned little girl with a head full of curls.

I could barely process it.

There was our daughter—the child we had waited so long to hold—and somehow she looked EXACTLY like the child I had seen all those years before.

We later learned the photos simply hadn’t represented her coloring accurately, and her hair had been kept very short and straight for easier upkeep.

I’ll never forget holding her that first night, running my fingers through those curls and weeping at the goodness of God.

Sometimes we get so focused on the treasure maps God gives us that we forget they’re meant to lead us somewhere.

The map was never the treasure.

Aima Lein was.

I spent years searching for a picture when God already knew the name, the face, the laugh, the fire, the wildness, the curls.

Those curls will forever remind me:

God’s word was never late.

I simply hadn’t reached the destination yet. 🤎
.
#indiaadoption🇮🇳 #internationaladoption #wildlikemycurls #themannchens by @liz.mannchen

356

15

a month ago

Envy is a trap that makes us desire someone else’s blessings while being blind to the answered prayers we are already in the middle of living.

I once believed in “manifesting” things into your life. That if I focused on it hard enough, spoke over it long enough, postured myself well enough, I could somehow will myself into the life I wanted. More like someone else’s life I wanted.

Turns out, I’m not God.

Thank God.

Because the life I would have manifested for myself would never be as sweet as the one I was broken down to pray for.

My life, only a few years ago, looked much like a desert. After years of serving overseas, we were chewed up and spit out—crawling home with broken hearts and dried-out bones, only to find ourselves living in a basement with little hope or perspective for the future. Followed by years of many deaths all around us, failed adoptions, financial hardship and immense health issues… we were helpless and unable to dream.

Good. That’s where the Master creates His best masterpieces.

Once I relentlessly stop comparing and trying to manifest—or dare I say, manipulate—us out of this desert and into the life I wanted for us, we finally were able to surrender to the one God had for us.

And there I learned to pray for my future, in partnership with Him.

Today I’m surrounded by that rhythm. There is not a goat on this farm, a child in my arms, a pug at my feet or a tree above my head that was not birthed out of the beautiful surrender to Jesus’ plan for our lives.

And maybe that’s the invitation when envy starts creeping in: to look around.

To remember what we once prayed for. To notice what grew in places we thought would always be desert. To recognize the ordinary things surrounding us today that once felt impossible.

Someone else’s beautiful life does not make ours any less beautiful. Their answered prayer does not mean God has forgotten ours.

Has He not enough goodness to go around?

And sometimes the quickest way out of envy is simply to realize—

we’re already standing in the middle of so much we once prayed for.
.
.
#prayernotmanifestation #themannchens #nigeriandwarfgoats #pugs #breastfeedingmom by @liz.mannchen

105

3

a month ago