fun give-away!

i'm a big fan of give-aways. head on over here to win a super-cute headband and a pair of earrings. seriously, i've been dreaming about that headband ever since i saw it, and i don't normally wear headbands!

and if you didn't catch yesterday's post about adoption and advent, check it out. it's one of my favorite posts i've written in awhile.

advent & adoption

last week, i shared a few words at our church about advent from the perspective of adoption.

i have gained a new appreciation for israel and how God's people waited centuries for the promised messiah. in many ways, i know what it must have felt like to have little affirmations throughout history that God would one day redeem his people, and yet, at the same time, still anxiously have to await the day when the promised messiah would be revealed.

for us, we have had those same little affirmations along the way in our adoption process. we celebrated each time a new piece of paperwork came back, when we had the money to pay for one more fee, when we finally got on the waitlist. with each little step, we have known that we are closer to the day our children will be revealed.

and the waiting, at times, has been laborious. it has brought tears and anxiety and heavy hearts. i imagine this was true for God's people as they awaited the messiah. despite all the prophecies -- that the messiah would be born in bethlehem, out of the tribe of judah, out of david's line, to a virgin, etc. -- the people of israel had no clue when the messiah would come or what he would look like or even how the world would be changed when he arrived. all they really knew was that he was coming to rescue them from their sins and sorrows -- to restore them to God's perfect shalom.

i don't know yet what it feels like to receive a referral -- to experience the moment of having our children revealed. but i do know that the essence of christmas is the celebration of promises being fulfilled. we celebrate christmas because the messiah has come -- the promised hope of the world was revealed to us. and for those of us on this side of christ's birth, we now know him and all he has done.

on christmas, i often feel in the depths of my heart, that i have inadequately celebrated christ's birth. and this year, like so many, i have felt that. there may be little i can do to fix that because i am human, prone to allowing other things to overshadow the great miracle of christmas. but i want to foster a deeper sense of celebration in my heart not only for my sake, but also for my children's, because i want them to understand that christmas is the celebration of christ's birth, his coming, his revealing -- and not a celebration of presents, santa claus, memories, or even family. and as i have imagined over and over in my mind what it will be like to receive a referral, i have now seen that that moment may be a litmus test of sorts for my heart each christmas. because i know that my heart will overflow with such celebration, joy, peace, and contentment when my children are finally known to me.

and if that is true, how much more should my heart overflow with celebration, joy, peace, and contentment not only at christmas, but everyday, knowing that jesus -- the long-awaited, promised messiah -- was revealed to the world more than 2000 years ago!

come, thou long-expected jesus, born to set thy people free. from our fears and sins, release us. let us find our rest in thee. israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art. dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.

*oh, and if you haven't heard, we are very close to a referral. we will receive the next referral for unrelated children. our agency is currently waiting on paperwork for children they know is being completed. please pray the paperwork comes in this week so that we will receive our referral next week when our agency re-opens january 3rd.

the most humble gift

i have been humbled by the generosity of a woman i barely know.

rachel has been attending our church for the past 6 months or so. i remember the first sunday she visited. she came clunking down the steps of our sanctuary (it's an old school auditorium with stairs leading from front to back) in a wheelchair, apologizing with every thud her wheels made as they hit the next step. she was completely different than the rest of our congregation -- older, a little more rough around the edges. as time went on, i found out rachel lives mostly on food stamps and disability payments. she once struggled with addiction. she uses a motorized wheelchair to get around town. i also learned she loves art and playing the flute.

she is one of the kindest souls i've ever met.

last night, she approached us at church with a gift haphazardly covered in bright red wrapping paper. "i picked a gift for you that i thought you would think was pretty, and that jamie could feel the texture," she told me. when i unwrapped the present, i found three small wooden pieces -- a teapot, tea kettle, and frying pan -- that can hang on the wall. my heart was crushed in a million pieces as i thought about rachel's generosity to us. she said, "i had been praying God would help me buy christmas presents, and then someone left a box of gently used stuff on my porch one day. so i prayed over the things and asked God to show me what i should give each of my friends."

thank you, rachel, for reminding me that generosity is not about how much you give someone but rather the heart from which you give.

for our dog...

we know a girl who came back to faith because of dogs.

sounds funny, right? but the more i know our dog, hudson, the more i understand how a dog could've played such a pivotal role in her life.

we rescued hudson 2 years ago today. and since then, he has caused us a lot of trouble. in the first month we had him, we visited the emergency vet twice and spent $1200. i can't even count the number of things hudson has destroyed since he's been in our family. our life revolves around his separation anxiety and the simple fact that he needs his humans all the time. he has inconvenienced us, frustrated us, angered us...we have had moments where we've wished we'd never seen his cute picture on the rescue page.

but we love this dog. i mean, love him. one day, he accidentally got himself locked in our laundry room, and we couldn't find him. i seriously thought he was dead somewhere and bawled before i even thought to look in the laundry room.

i think God is like that with us. he loves us unconditionally. no matter how many stupid things we do, no matter how many terrible messes we make, no matter how inconvenient or frustrating we are to him...he loves us unfailingly and unwaveringly. and it has nothing to do with how good we are, but rather all to do with how good he is. so that no man can boast.

so thank you, hudson henley dean, our 4-year-old labradane. you have shown me God's heart for me. i can't wait for some little ones to be riding on your back.



*please note that while i love my dog, i do not want this post to seem like i view him like i do my children. children and animals do not have equal value, and the adoption of a pet is not the same as the adoption of a child.

tukula giveaway!

this is just a friendly reminder that it's christmas shopping season and tukula is open for business! i'm a little obsessed with this wonderful organization based out of uganda because they have designed some beautiful (and brilliant) products that support three female tailors AND a community water project.

if you happen to be a little tight on cash this year but still want to give your bff a present (or if you keep hinting to your husband or brother or friend or whomever that you'd like a new purse for christmas and they're just not getting the hint), you should enter tukula's giveaway that ends TOMORROW. all you have to do is get the word out about tukula over facebook, twitter, and your blog. and if you buy a tukula product, you can get more entries towards the THREE beautiful products you are eligible to win. go here to read more.

10 months

today marks 10 months that we've been on the waitlist for a referral. i'm beginning to feel hopeful that we will get our referral in the next couple of months. last year about this time, we were rushing around getting things notarized for our dossier and saving the last chunk of money we needed to send everything. it's hard not to look back and think that if i'd only gotten a certain paper signed earlier or if we'd been able to save the money just a little quicker, maybe we'd have a referral by now. but it's frivolous thinking, because i really believe God chose two specific children for us at the beginning of time and everything that has happened (or not happened) is leading us to those children.

i think that [our children being chosen for us since the beginning] is the concept most difficult to explain to others about adoption. and yet, it's the concept that really holds this whole thing together. my mom called me yesterday to ask if i'd watched a video that's circulating in blogland. she said, "i really think it explains to people why you are adopting." so i watched the video and was blown away. literally, i was doing those heaving cries that made jamie worry i was going to stop breathing. one particular part pierced my heart, because it's exactly what i'm trying to explain.

eric ludy, the preacher in the video, said he encountered a 4-year-old boy on the streets of liberia. the boy was orphaned, starving, and probably homeless. ludy said he was awakened in the middle of the night by the voice of God asking him, "what if that boy was hudson [ludy's son]?" and ludy realized that if that little boy was his son, nothing could get in the way of him getting to him. and as i was watching the video, i could only think to myself "that is my son." my son has been orphaned and is physically without a family. my son might be malnourished. my son doesn't have a home yet. my son might be sick. my son is probably lonely, scared, and sad.

my children are not just some random orphans in africa. they aren't a charity case, a nice project, or a humanitarian endeavor. they are my children. and when you see it from that vantage point, it should make sense why i would do any number of seemingly crazy, unsafe, and inconvenient things for them. so often i bemoan when people act like i'm not a mom, but i think it's even more frustrating when people don't act like our kids are really our kids, and prefer, instead, to keep treating them as perpetual orphans. it's like people assume just because our kids will have spent time in an orphange, it must be OK for them to stay there longer than they have to because it might be unsafe for me to be in ethiopia. when people question my decisions regarding our kids in this way, i always want to ask them what they would do in my position if it were their kid.

please watch the video.

the ladybug cake, part 2

if you saw this post, you know my friend, erin, and i did a trial run a couple of months ago for her daughter, sophie's, first birthday cake. i suggested to erin awhile back that we should do a fondant cake for sophie since you can take more artistic license with fondant because it can be molded, cut into shapes, etc.

well, friday was the big day, and we had our dear friend, leigh, to help create the finished product. here's what we came up with:

now, here's the backstory and how-to. erin and i got together thursday night and made the cakes so they could chill in the refrigerator overnight to make icing and then applying the fondant easier. apparently, i threw a fit the last time we did this and insisted that sophie should have a homemade cake on her birthday (instead of box mix), so we tried 2 different cake recipes for the tiers (the bottom tier was chocolate, the 2 smaller tiers were vanilla). but some unfortunate things happened, including me doing something weird with the butter in the middle cake tier, and we were forced back to box mix. that actually ended up better because we found the last time that adding an extra egg and a box of pudding mix to the box mix helps make a denser cake.

we cooked the bottom cake in a wok, the middle cake in a mixing bowl, and the little cake in a small dish. we frosted all the cakes with homemade buttercream frosting. erin had the vision to contrast the colors of the three ladybugs, so she increased the amount of red food coloring in each cake, adding a little black to the last one. you can't see much different between the bottom and middle tiers in the pictures, but the big cake was more raspberry red while the middle cake was more hot pink. and, as a side note, if you ever try this, use food coloring dye instead of gel. everybody thought the black gel made the fondant extremely bitter.

in all, we were pleased with how the final product came out. the cake is a bit more lumpier than the second cake from last time, but we were working with a substantially larger cake. plus, we were in a bit of a time crunch, so we had to throw perfection out the window. besides, this little girl was happy, so i think we did our job right!

i couldn't agree more

biological family is too small of a vision. patriotism is far too myopic. a love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border. -- shane claiborne

the real deal

i'm becoming a mom for the first time. through adoption.

sometimes i just want to be real about what that feels like.

for more than 18 months, i have had two children growing in my heart. normally, i hate alluding to pregnancy when i'm talking about our adoption because i don't think adoption needs to be metaphorized. but this allusion works for me because i have experienced it. i remember the small beginnings of deciding to follow God's calling to adopt a child. i remember how God enlarged that calling to include another child. i remember how we toiled and prayed and worried about how we'd get the money. i remember how, in all of that, our love for our children increased.

i know how it feels like my love for them is literally going to bust out of my heart. i miss them every.single.day of my life. and adoptive parents can tell you that no matter how weird it sounds, this is possible. you can miss people you've never even met. and you can love them intensely.

so imagine what it's like to be told you're not a mom. no, nobody said this to me directly -- as in, nobody just walked up to me today and said, "hey lauren, did you know you're not a mom?" it was more like "when you're not a mom, it's hard to understand ______________." i'm sure the person speaking didn't think much about the statement, but i did. because i do think i'm a mom. at least as much of a mom as a pregnant woman is. there are two children out there who are mine. right now, they are in my heart and not my belly or my home. i've prepared for them. i've sacrificed for them. i love them. i long for them. no, i haven't experienced the sleepless nights or poopy diapers yet. but i am the mother of two children in ethiopia. really.

a new pair of shoes

i have to put in a shameless plug for toms shoes.

apparently, it was cool and trendy to wear toms like 2 years ago. but i just got on the bandwagon back in the spring, so i'm a little late. when it came time to buy a new pair of shoes for winter (because the new balance tennis shoes i normally wear when it gets cold -- because, when it gets cold, i quit really caring about fashion -- are officially out of commission thanks to some heavy duty yard work), i decided that i really couldn't go wrong with buying a new pair of toms.

boy, did i underestimate how much i really couldn't go wrong with another pair of toms. i own 2 pairs of classic toms. if you have no idea what classic toms are, you basically just slip them on your bare feet and go. i've seen people with a funky (and, in my opinion, enviable) fashion sense wear socks with classic toms, but i didn't think i could pull that look. so i decided to purchase a pair of toms with laces so that i could get the functionality of a tennis shoe (ie, so my whole foot would be covered up in the chilly weather). here's what i got (laces not pictured):





now i'm going to encourage you to buy a pair of toms. any pair. why? well, my assumption is that, like me, it might be time for you to buy a new pair of shoes for winter. and toms has quite possibly the best business model aside from just simply giving stuff away for free to everybody. when you buy a pair of toms, toms will give a pair of shoes to a child in need. i just recently read the first annual toms giving report, and it's incredible how much thought toms has put into how they distribute shoes around the world. they not only work with non-profits (like world vision!) on the ground in places like ethiopia(!) to determine where the most need exists, but they also continue to supply children with shoes knowing that most children outgrow a pair of shoes every 6 months. and because toms serves children in different types of climate and terrain, toms has been intentional about designing particular shoes for particular locations.

since most of us have never lived in a place where shoes are a luxury, it might also be helpful to point out that something as simple as not having a pair of shoes can be a huge barrier to a child's upward mobility. many schools require children to wear shoes, so not having shoes can prevent many children from getting an education. not having shoes can also be fatal. children who walk barefoot in many third world countries are susceptible to parasites and infections that can kill them if not treated. and if these parasites are not fatal, they are often very painful. many children suffer daily from itching and burning caused by jiggers, small mites that dig into the feet.

if you are planning to invest in a pair of shoes this winter, please consider buying a pair of toms. i know of no other company or brand name or designer that has a "one for one" business model. and quite honestly, it just seems silly to invest in any other pair of shoes knowing that you could literally be sparing the life of a child just by being intentional about the shoes you purchase. you can check out the many different varieties of toms shoes here.

orphan sunday

i've had a couple of awkward adoption conversations lately with co-workers. a couple of weeks ago, someone asked me if i have kids.

"no," i said, "not yet. but my husband and i are adopting, so we hopefully will soon."
"adopting?" he said. "so you mean, you can't have kids."
"well, we have never tried to have biological children. we have always wanted to adopt."
"you haven't even tried the old-fashioned way??" he chuckled. "you know, you're going to pay a lot to adopt a kid when you could've just had one yourself."
"um, actually there are are a lot of children around the world who don't have moms and dads."

at that point, i wanted to ask him what he hoped would happen if one day he and his wife died and there was no one in their family to care for their two children. maybe he wouldn't have laughed off adoption so quickly if he actually had pictured his kids desperately in need of a family. but i didn't. instead, i nicely fielded a few more questions about adoption and let him have the last word when he ended our conversation by saying: "well, i'm going to keep having kids the old-fashioned way. it's much more fun."

then, yesterday, one of my co-workers was telling a story about going on lunch outings when there were just 4 employees on our team. they used to joke around about how people must have thought they were a family with one biological child and one adopted child (since one guy on the team is african american). but the guy who they said was the adopted child always complained and asked why he had to be the "adopted child"...and, of course, the tone used to say "adopted child" was extremely negative. my heart pinged. i wanted to shout that there is nothing wrong with being adopted. i wanted to demand that someone tell me why being adopted is such an insult. but i didn't. i just stood there being sad.

i hope and pray that churches across the country are breaking down these stereotypes today. there are still so many believers who think adoption is a last resort or a second choice to have biological children. and because of this, most people think being adopted is undesirable. the truth is, adoption was in the heart of God before the beginning of time. it was not a second choice or last resort idea for our salvation. it was the way he planned it all along. God wanted so much to be our mom and dad (because God isn't male or female) that he was willing to make a costly sacrifice for that to happen. if any believer thinks it is undesirable to be adopted or that the only children who are really "your own" are kids who look like you and share your DNA or that adoption is the option left when all other options are exhausted, let them reconsider the gospel in light of ephesians 1 and romans 8 and hear that adoption is all of our stories.

this is why adoption is more than just charity, humanitarian work, or philanthropy. it is the gospel being fleshed out in a very practical way. and the thing is, we serve a God who delights in justice for the orphan. scripture is so clear about God's relationship to orphans, not only in light of how he saves us but also in how he is grieved by the plight of orphans in this world. he commands his followers to care for orphans, to provide monetarily for them, to give them justice. scripture says God sets the lonely in families, he comforts them, he defends them. while our adoption into the family of God informs our decision to adopt, so also does the reality that as christians, we are called to be like God. if i'm to be like God, then i must be actively participating in justice for orphans because that's what he does.

what i don't want people to hear today is that adoption is the only way or the best way or the most important way to care for orphans. there are many ways to participate in orphan care...adoption is just one of them. as an adoption advocate, i believe that adoption is still very much needed in this world. there are 15 million children who have lost both parents. there is nothing preventative we can do for them. they need families now. i would tell any family on the precipice of starting a family or expanding their family to sincerely have an open heart to God about how he wants to add a child to their family. i truly believe God is calling more people to adoption.

on the flip side of being an adoption advocate, i'm also a birth family advocate. i want children who can stay with their birth families to be able to. that's where things like child sponsorship, volunteering in your community, and even foster care come in. if you can commit $30 a month to a child, you can provide food and medical resources that prevent birth parents from having to place their child for adoption because of poverty or illness. by volunteering as a guardian ad litem, you can be a child's voice in court to ensure they don't go back to an abusive or neglectful family situation. by volunteering with non-profits that seek to prevent child abuse and neglect, you can mentor a troubled parent and help them learn how to responsibly parent their child. by doing foster care, you can ensure a child has a safe and loving home until their birth parents are able to resume caring for them (or until they are placed for adoption).

and, in general, we all should be praying and being generous with our resources. the thing is, everyone will be called in different ways to do orphan care. but i do think everyone is called in some way (and if scripture isn't compelling about this, john piper will back me up). no one should feel inferior if their calling is prayer and another's calling is adoption. if you are doing what God has called you to, then you are doing enough.

provision & practicality

God provides. i believe this.

i believe that when God calls you to do something -- when he asks you to obey him -- he will give you what you need to accomplish the task.

but somewhere in our little brains, i think we often assume this means that God provides all that we think we need. and all that we think we need is really a nice way of saying what we want.

throughout our adoption, i have wished that God would provide a generous donor who would magically write a check for our expenses. i still hold out hope for this because we're looking at spending another $12-15,000 before this is over and done. in my mind, what we need is a huge fundraiser or a really nice rich person. we need God to compel people to pity us.

and then it hit me last night. all this waiting we are doing, the waiting i complain a lot about because it is hard...well, what if that is God providing us with money through the waiting? if the process speeds up a lot (which, certainly would be awesome and we would be fine because our credit cards are a last resort), i have to quit working. and the moment i quit working, we are down to one income. and none of that income is budgeted to go towards our adoption. you get the picture.

when i started thinking about waiting from this perspective, i felt more at peace. i didn't have a huge knot in my stomach at work today. i didn't compulsively check blogs to see if any referrals had gone out. i could rest in knowing that even in the waiting -- something i would rather not be doing -- God is providing for us. it is not the way i would've done things, nor is it the way i want (or think i need) things to be done. nonetheless, it is his provision, and he is being faithful to us as he promised.

i wanted to mention for practical purposes the next few steps of the adoption process. we've had several people ask us what the future will hold, so here's a summary:

1. get a referral. this is where we are matched with our kids and receive pictures and medical information. it is possible that we could be matched with one child first and then a few weeks later be matched with our second child, but i haven't seen that happen before.
2. after we accept the referral (and there are few if any reasons why we wouldn't accept), our children will undergo a second round of medical testing that can take several weeks. i know a family recently got theirs back in 3 weeks, so we would hope for quickness like that.
3. after the medical tests are completed and all the documents are in place, our cases would be submitted to court (i say cases because we will likely get unrelated kids and they are considered separate cases as opposed to siblings being considered one case).
4. receive a court date. ethiopia just made some significant (and very positive changes) to the court dates. i won't go into those changes, but the court date will involve a biological relative (or other witness) appearing in court in the morning to consent to the adoption, and us appearing in the afternoon. if everything goes well, we would be granted legal custody of our children at this hearing.
5. after a successful court date, most families come back home and wait for an embassy date (where our children will get passports and visas). the wait for an embassay date is about 4-8 weeks right now. since i'm not planning to work after our kids come home, my current plan is to remain in ethiopia during the time between passing court and appearing at the embassy. we have friends who did this recently, and it is actually cheaper to stay than to fly back and forth twice.
6. embassy appointment. once our kids have their visas (they will also get birth certificates with "dean" as their last name!), we will be able to come home.

timeline for all of this? i have no clue. but i'm really, really hoping our kids are home by my sister's wedding on july 2. keep praying, people!

a lot

i've sat down to blog several times in the last week and couldn't actually finish a post. so here are bits and pieces of what i've been wanting to say about various subjects:

- adoption. it's hard. last week, i sat at my desk everyday at work with a knot in my stomach for no apparent reason other than that the waiting is starting to wear on me. literally, we are in this phase where we've been waiting almost 9 months, and it's possible that my phone could ring any minute with our referral. on the flip side, it's also possible that my phone might not ring for another 2-3 months (or longer). i think what has exacerbated the uncertainty of the whole situation is that our case manager doesn't give us any information. we don't know much more about our case now than we did back in february when we first got on the waitlist. it's frustrating in a lot of ways because (a) we feel like, after 9 months, we deserve to know a little more (b) we pay our adoption agency a nice sum of money to advocate for us and keep us informed and (c) we aren't dumb enough to think that everything they say to us is written in stone. in fact, we understand that adoption is a rollercoaster as my friend, leigh, said on her blog today (if you want to read a story about perseverence through a difficult adoption, you need to go to leigh's blog now). it can change at any minute and really isn't set in stone until your children are home with you. honestly, we just want to see our kids' faces, know how old they are, know what genders they are. we want to be able to buy them clothes, paint their rooms, and call them by name. we realize the waiting will intensify after we actually have faces, but we are just ready to know them.

-being in debt. so this sounds random, i know. i just hate hearing people imply that all people who are in debt must be irresponsible and frivolous. jamie and i have debt. we have a load of student debt from graduate school. we also have a bit of credit card debt from when we were living solely on student loans and small work study salaries. honestly, both of us felt God call us to our respective degrees, so we don't spend a lot of time regretting the debt. sure, we need to make responsible decisions to manage our debt, but it's not something we should be made to feel ashamed of. i also don't feel like debt is always a good excuse to not do something radical you feel like God is asking you to do. on paper, we look like the last people on earth who should spend $30,000+ on an adoption. it would've been great to put all the money we paid out in adoption fees towards our student debt. that probably would have been the responsible thing to do. but it wasn't what we were being asked to do. i'm not trying to pat us on the back, i just feel a little passionate about speaking against the popular ideology among christians today that says you shouldn't do anything really radical until you've got all your debt paid off and your savings account fully loaded. where is our reliance on the son of man who didn't even have a place to lay his head?? oh, and one more thing. we would love to be free of our debt. there is no doubt that being in debt sucks. it is constraining. but i don't think God encourages us to be free of debt for our own pleasures. rather, i think he wants us to be free of debt so we can help others. we crave to be in a place where we can freely give to anyone we know who is in need without thinking how that money could've have been "better" spent on reducing debt.

--materialism. can i just say that i struggle with materialism? whenever i think i've got it under control, it rears its ugly head in the form of a $30 carolina tshirt that i "just had to have." honestly, i just really care what other people think about me when it comes to stuff. i often think other women will accept me and want to be friends with me if i look a certain way or wear certain clothes. or i feel self-conscious when people walk in my house and see that i literally have nothing on the walls in my living room. all of that self-consciousness typically drives me to materialism. there's nothing wrong with buying stuff. i've purchased new clothes recently because a lot of my old fall/winter clothes were too small or had yucky pit stains because i've worn them the last 3-5 (even 8) years. but when my buying is driven more by what other people think about me than what i think of other people (ie, the poor, who i believe need my money more than i do), then i'm falling into materialism. and, in general, i fall into materialism every time i think stuff and others' approval is more important than God. i often think that it would be easier to escape materialism if i just picked up and moved to africa. i should say that moving to africa is not some far-off fantasy that i've dreamed up. we'd like to someday if the doors were to open. and when i think about it, i feel relieved that if i can get over my fear of bugs and rodents, i'd do OK over there because i'd be free of social pressures and materialism. forget that i am romanticizing africa in a big way and underestimating the difficulty of living there long-term...i am also forgetting that part of being radical is making a decision that is counter to the consesus. sure, moving to africa would be radical but once i got there, it wouldn't be radical for me to live simply because nobody there has much of anything so everyone has to live simply. wouldn't it actually be more radical to live simply in a culture where everyone has everything they need plus a lot more? wouldn't it be more radical to say no to social pressures in a culture where those pressures are so pervasive and strong? jesus, empower me with your spirit...

-glee. i still stand by what i wrote in my last post about glee. but i was extremely disappointed to have given the show so much credit only to have the following week's episode (2 weeks ago) deal very irresponsibly with sex issues. i was even more disappointed at the GQ photo shoot 3 actors from the show appeared in. i'm beginning to question whether people who care about women's issues (seriously, if you didn't see the GQ photo shoot, google it and be disturbed if you are a woman), teenage sex issues, and even gay issues (i say this even though the show tries to deal thoughtfully with kurt's sexuality. i take issue with how the show consistently portrays britney and santana using each other for sexual gratification. i think it's offensive to anyone who may actually struggle with homosexuality to see it portrayed so flippantly) can continue to watch the show in good conscious. i don't mean to offend anyone or seem judgmental. i'm honestly just starting to feel genuninely concerned. thoughts?

what christians can learn from glee

OK, so i admit it. i watch glee.




most weeks, i'm horrified at the show's glorification of sexuality and am basically scared to ever raise teenagers. but i like the songs and think the show actually has some musical talent and artistry going for it. suffice it to say, though, i never would have coined the show to do an episode that was even remotely thoughtful about religion.

and then, last week's episode surprised me.

were there some sacreligious parts? sure. when you have a teenager praying to a grilled cheese sandwich that resembles jesus, it's bound to offend any great number of religious folk, including catholics who are infamous for spotting images of the virgin mary in all sorts of weird places.

but when you put religious questions -- hard religious questions -- at the front and center of a show, and you have the characters deal with those questions in real and honest ways, i have to applaud you. surprisingly, the show did an excellent job of balancing the religious characters with the non-religious characters, especially considering that our culture has increasingly portrayed religious people in a negative light.

now, some of you may have seen this episode and be wondering why i say christians can learn from this show. i think there is value in paying attention to the media -- to "secular" television, music, art, etc. because it helps us know what our culture thinks about things, including religion. last week's glee focused overwhelmingly on questions concerning prayer -- why God doesn't answer prayers, especially when the prayer seems to be in line with something God would want -- and also on whether we can have a personal relationship with God -- a "direct line" as one character called it.

i wept as one character had to deal with her doubts about God's existence after facing years of unanswered prayers that people would stop teasing her sister with down syndrome. i wept as another character rejected God even in the face of terrible tragedy because he couldn't understand why God had allowed his followers to hate him [the character] for being gay.

honestly, i wept because i saw myself in those characters. i struggle all the time with questions about my faith. i don't understand a lot about God. and i really hate that so many christians are dismissive of people with faith struggles. so many times in my life, i have feared being honest about my thoughts or feelings about God because i thought someone wouldn't like me anymore or wouldn't think i was a good christian if they knew just how deep my struggles run or how many questions i ask.

i've been in a presbyterian church long enough to be convinced that belief has little to do with man's will or choice and more to do with God's pursuit of man. i think God infuses us with the holy spirit and empowers us to believe. it is only by his grace that any of us believe at all, which is certainly the crux of the often-quoted ephesians 2:8-9. so that no man can boast. certainly, this brings up a whole host of questions about God that i will probably deal with the rest of my life (like why God can't just empower everyone to believe), but i prefer this way of thinking because it should humble those of us who are believers and call us to prayer and action of behalf of others.

i'm hopeful that christians can take a lesson from this [often ridiculous] television show and realize that there are real human beings with hearts and souls that struggle every day of their lives with questions about God. and what they don't need from us is an attitude of "well, can't you just get it together and believe?" because for, many people, believing just isn't that easy. what they do need from us is compassion, love, and the gospel (and please note, this is where i differ from the show because the show's answer is tolerance which, in my opinion, still leaves people hopeless). they need people who will sincerely bear the burdens of their questions with them [without judgment] and not just give them pat answers simply because they sound like the right thing to say. they need people who will tell them that the gospel will not answer every, single question...but who will assure them that it is enough.

a day in chapel hill

jamie and i spent saturday in chapel hill with our friends, the littletons.

(for those out-of-staters, chapel hill is the town where i went to college.)

chapel hill is such a magical place for me. i've written before that going back always challenges me to think about who i am and who i used to be. and honestly, i just love the sensation of nostalgia. i love how it feels to be in a place and remember something special that happened there. i also love getting to share chapel hill with jamie because we get to make new memories there, which is exactly what we did yesterday.

we had lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, elmo's diner, with my friend (and old college housemate), april, and her new boyfriend. every time i go to elmo's, i order the same thing: a greek grilled cheese -- chicken, a slice of american cheese, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and feta cheese on a pita with that delicious greek sauce (that starts with a t) for dipping. after that, we met back up with the littletons and walked around carrboro (which is chapel hill's sister town and literally the hippiest place on earth). i was pumped to get a cs lewis biography, a book of poetry by shel silverstein, and 2 other kids book at the used book store. i used to have this weird objection to used books, but now i'm a used bookstore fiend.

unfortunately, we chose a game day to make our chapel hill trip. so we spent the next hour searching for a parking space. if you know nothing about chapel hill, i should tell you that parking there is one of the most hellish experiences because the campus was never designed with traffic in mind. when it's a game day, they reserve every.single.lot.on.campus. and shut down every.single.meter. so that it is basically impossible to park. luckily, one of the pay lots on franklin street opened up, and we got a spot in there.

at that point, we decided we'd better go ahead and eat so we could beat the football crowd. so we headed to the carolina brewery for pizza and brats. when we finished eating, we had lost most of our daylight, so even though we couldn't take pictures on campus like we had planned, we still decided to walk up on campus to see the sights. honestly, one of my favorite parts of the day was just sitting in the pit (for those non-unc people, the pit is a large sunken area in the heart of campus where students gather. it's bordered by the dining hall, student union, library, and student store) and watching the kids play.

i was pretty bummed that we couldn't buy our kids any unc clothes, but i'm hopeful that they'll be home when we take this trip again next year. seriously, can't you picture 2 more kids with this crowd of goobs?

8 months

yesterday marked 8 months that we've been waiting for a referral.

in many ways, time seems to be flying. jamie said the other day that it didn't feel like 8 months had passed. in other ways, though, things seem to be slow. painfully slow. i think it's because we don't know how close we have gotten to our referral in these last 8 months. based on the families i have been following, i don't know of anyone who has waited for a referral (for one child or two) longer than 12 months. so, in my mind, i think that if we can just hold out for half the time that we've already waited, we may finally know who our children are.

i must confess that i sometimes feel a little defensive when i tell people we've been waiting 8 months. i'm always afraid they won't understand the gravity of this situation because, you know, women carry babies in their wombs for 9 months, so who am i to act like 8 months is a long time? the truth is, it took us 9 months just to get on the waitlist, so we've been in the process of adopting for almost 18 months. certainly, if we had been planning for this, it wouldn't have taken us that long to raise money and do paperwork. but we had no idea God would call us to adoption first, so planning and saving weren't on our radar.

i say all of that to say that if you feel like God is moving in your heart about adoption, plan now and start saving. and seriously, don't let the money or waiting discourage you even if you've done no planning or saving and you feel like God is calling you now. i guess i just want to be up front about how difficult this process really is, but also to encourage people in knowing that there are many families just like us who are a testimony of God's grace and sustenance even in the midst of a lengthy and uncertain adoption process.

on a related note, i've been wanting to write a little feature about foster care. and it seems like this is an appropriate time because maybe someone out there is wondering how they can be involved in caring for orphans even when they know adoption is not for them.

i recently became more aware of all the ins and outs of foster care because our friends, brian and sarah, just became foster parents for the first time to a 9-year-old girl. after walking with them through their process, i have realized that on society's hierarchy of "real" parents, foster parents fall even below adoptive parents. society so often discounts adoptive parents because we have no biological connection to our children. but we at least get some credibility back because, once an adoption is finalized, it is permanent.

but foster care is often not a permanent situation (though, it can lead to adoption in some cases). a child is placed in foster care by the department of social services when the child has been neglected and/or abused by his/her birth parent(s) (or other guardian). the purpose of foster care is to ensure a child has a safe and stable home where his/her needs (both physical and emotional) are being met in appropriate ways by foster parents until a permanent home is established for the child. often, the assumption in foster care is that the birth parent(s) might be able to get themselves together enough to actually parent their child.

so because foster care isn't typically viewed as a permanent situation, most foster parents get the shaft when it comes to receiving the recognition of being a parent. but the truth is, they are parents in every sense of the word. about a week after their foster daughter came to live with them, sarah told us that she overheard her tell a friend that she needed to go show her mom whatever it was they were playing with. and it hit sarah that yes, she was as close to a mom as this little 9-year-old girl had.

and while they have no clue how this situation will play out, brian and sarah will keep taking her to school each day, encouraging her burgeoning interest in karate, teaching her good manners, providing her with nutritious meals, loving her unconditionally, and giving her a safe home because that's what parents do. love. empower. provide. correct. teach.

if you are interested in foster care, i'd encourage you to contact your local DSS for more information. or you can leave a comment, and i can put you in contact with brian and sarah if you have questions about what day-to-day life as a foster parent looks like.

the ladybug cake, part 1

last night, my friend, erin, and i made our first attempt at making a cake with fondant. we've been talking about doing this awhile because erin's daughter, sophie, is turning one in november. since neither of us have ever worked with fondant before (seriously, this was the most domestically-challenging thing i've ever done), we thought it'd be good if we had at least one trial run before the big day.

we used this fondant recipe and substituted the small marshmellows with about 2.5 jars of marshmellow fluff. we refrigerated the fluff beforehand, but not overnight like the recipe says. after we made the fondant, we stuck it in the fridge and baked our cakes. now, here was our first mistake. actually, my mistake. i forgot to bring my 9-inch cake pans, so we baked 2 cakes in 9x13-inch pans using regular funfetti cake mix. after the cakes came out of the oven, we put them in the freezer to cool them and added food coloring to the fondant. next time, we plan to wear gloves so our hands don't look like this after kneading food coloring into fondant:



unfortunately, the cakes did not come out of the pans very well, so they were already crumbly when we attempted to cut 3 circles out of them. this was a huge disaster when we iced the cake (using regular vanilla frosting) because the cake was literally falling apart (you ice the cake to help the fondant stick):




at this point, we thought we had failed. but then erin rolled out the fondant and basically threw it onto the cake really quickly. and while there were still many aesthetic issues to take care of such as the lumpiness of the cake (due to how crumbly it was) and the downhill slope of the top layer, we still felt proud that we had managed to get fondant on a cake. so we finished our decorating by cutting out lots of circles from fondant we had colored black to make spots and two more circles out of white fondant to make eyes. can you guess what this turned into??




a ladybug! once we covered up some of the lumps, we were really impressed with our workmanship and decided, for our first try, it wasn't half bad :)

at that point, it was about 10:30. miss ladybug herself had already fallen asleep.

we had a bunch of fondant leftover, our husbands needed to go to walmart, so i said to erin, "let's try again." we found a recipe for a denser cake (all you do is add an additional egg and a pack of instant pudding mix to the regular cakebox recipe) and bought 9-inch circle pans and parchment paper to ensure the cakes wouldn't stick (at this point, i'd like to note that while we were at walmart, erin went upstairs to put sophie in her crib, and our crazy dog, hudson, jumped on the table and ate almost an entire 9x13 cake because that's about what we had leftover in scraps after we cut out three circles).

the cakes came out of the pans beautifully and iced up really well. we had a few problems getting the fondant off the table and onto the cake (at one point, erin had finally succeeded in getting the fondant off the table, but i wasn't paying attention, so she dropped the fondant before i could get the cake in front of her. then she threw a ball of fondant at me.) BUT, we FINALLY at around midnight had successfully completed another cake. and i'm not trying to brag, but we are awesome:

we cut into the first cake just to make sure it actually tasted good. i've heard before that fondant isn't very tasty, and we were worried about the food coloring. i think we all agreed that it was delicious and that while we could taste a little bit of bitterness from the food coloring, the cake would totally pass at a birthday party. i'm not sure what flavor of cake we'll go with for the real thing, but we'll probably ice the cake pre-fondant using my mother-in-law's delicious recipe for buttercream icing.

and now that we've gotten our confidence up, i think erin and i will try to expand our repetoire outside of ladybugs. and maybe one day, we'll start a little business and help people raise money for adoptions :)

does God really understand?

i've been listening to this song by the david crowder band lately. it's pretty simple lyrically, but the words "from wherever you are, wherever you've been, he's been there" have been speaking to me lately.

on one particular occasion, i was sitting at a stoplight with the song blaring in the background and wondered to myself, "does God know what it's like to wait on an adoption? has he really been here too?"

and immediately, this verse popped into my head:

"o jerusalem, jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! how often would i have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!"

random verse, i know. but i imagine jesus overlooking jerusalem and desperately wishing that his people would not reject him, wanting them to repent and believe and return to him. and i imagine that he still looks at us -- all of us -- in this way now as we go our own ways completely ignorant of him. oh, how he waits patiently for us. oh, how he wants to gather us under his wings.

so yes, i think God understands what it's like to wait on an adoption. i realize all the metaphors don't completely add up (nor are all the theological intricacies accounted for). God pursues us, but he also waits for us to choose him, not only at the first moment of conversion, but every time we sin and have need for confession, repentence, and forgiveness. so as we wait for our children and experience the pain and frustration of waiting, i believe we can take solace in knowing that our God knows this pain and this frustration of so desperately wanting to gather our children to us.

and the winner is...

thank you all for entering the tukula giveaway! i hope you'll still consider buying whatever product you liked simply because tukula is an organization worth supporting. just so yall know -- i had hoped my husband, jamie, could draw the name for me because he can't see. i figured that would make this drawing completely legit because nobody could accuse me of cheating. but alas, jamie was at work (lawyer hours), so here are a couple of pictures so you know i didn't sabotage anything:

oh, and just so you don't feel too bad about losing to becca -- becca goes to church with me, and she's awesome. she's an adoption social worker and mom to 3 kids (one adopted from ethiopia)! she and her husband are rockstar singers. you should go read some of her writing at either the albertson debrief or the goddess mission (both linked on the sidebar). congrats becca! (can you confirm you wanted the greyish-blueish messenger bag so i can order tonight?)

there is no way...

...i could take you seriously as a person if you let your kid wear this:


this not-so-subtle-reference-to-poop shirt can be found here.

how you can pray

i had a moment at work today where i felt utterly hopeless about our adoption. i was thinking about how the boy clock hasn't moved since may -- 4 months ago -- and how even though time seems to be flying, i don't feel any closer to our kids.

in my despair, i sent an email to our case manager. i told her i was feeling hopeless and asked her to give me some idea of where we are in all of this. she told me that things are slower in ethiopia because more documents are now required to validate a child's orphan status before they become adoptable. she told me the wait for an infant is now one year. but she also told me she'd get back with me tomorrow about where our case is specifically. (i'll post if there's anything significant to share)

you can imagine i didn't feel much better after emailing with her. i could only think that it would take a miracle to get this process expedited and to work out all the details that need to happen for this adoption to be finished. and then my phone vibrated, and i got this tweet:

a miracle is when God does something that wouldn't happen if he didn't do it. -- cs lewis

oh, cs lewis. how i love him. but seriously, i had to thank God for the blessing and truth of this quote and how timely it was for me. you see, i struggle very much with prayer. it's not something that comes easily for me, namely because i'm a doubter and an overthinker. i often find myself in theological quandries about why God intervenes for some people and not others or whether prayer actually can change God's mind about a situation. and most of the time, i use my questions about prayer and how it works as excuses not to do it.

what i forget is that prayer is about God. it is not about whatever i'm praying for. that's what lewis is saying. by definition, a miracle is only a miracle by God's work in it. i think we get so caught up in the results of our prayers (which is why we all stress out when we feel our prayers go unanswered) that we forget prayer is much more than just results. prayer is acknowledging by faith that our God is powerful and good enough to grant our requests if he chooses. and because prayer requires faith, prayer is a refining process for us because it is constantly requiring us to ask ourselves if we truly believe that God is who he says he is.

and so when james says that the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective, i don't know that he means it will change a situation or that our prayers will be answered as we wish. but i do think he means that our prayers are powerful and effective for our own good and for God's glory. so i'm asking you to commit with me to praying for some miracles for our adoption. i'm asking you to stand in faith with me and believe that God is powerful enough to override governments and timelines and paperwork and money. and to believe that God is good and gracious to enough to unite our family sooner rather than later.

here are some specific ways you can pray:

1. pray our referral comes by thanksgiving if not before. keep in mind that we have requested 2 children 0-42 months. this means both of our children could be over 24 months and thus not considered infants (which could mean less waiting since a lot of people want infants). we are open to that if those are the children God has for us.

2. pray that i would keep my job at least until we receive our referral. we are currently putting all of my earnings in savings to pay the last of our adoption fees and travel.

3. pray that we are disciplined with our money and that no major, unexpected expenses would arise. i have set up a strict budget for us to follow that should allow us to put away more money for travel. if we can keep up this budget for 3-4 months, we should be able to pay for all of our travel without using credit cards. (yay for no more debt)

4. pray for peace. i am already experiencing a bit of anxiety about flying. though i have flown overseas before, flying still freaks me out.

5. pray for our kids -- that they are having their physical and emotional needs met as best as can be expected while they wait in an orphanage.

i hope to continue posting prayer requests from here on out because i realize how much we need your prayers. but as i said, we don't need your prayers because we need this miracle. certainly we want a miracle and want our kids home. but we do need to know God more. we do need to be refined by the process of prayer.

(ps -- don't forget about the tukula giveaway! you still have a few days to enter! and later this week, i'm writing a post about foster care inspired by some great friends of ours. don't miss it.)

GIVEAWAY!

alright, ladies and gents! i'm hosting my very first giveaway.

want to know how much it's going to cost you to enter??



nothing! (so you really have no reason not to enter!)

here's what you need to know. i have been blown away by the mission of tukula. i first learned about tukula from my friend, leigh. leigh started doing weekly prayer updates about joe and melissa terranova, the founders of tukula, as they moved back to uganda and setup shop. the terranovas got a vision for tukula a couple of years ago when they lived in uganda. they came back to the us to process and to figure out how God was leading them.


they prayed. fundraised. moved back. hired 3 female tailors. decided to begin a water project to bring clean water to their community. and started selling some beautiful bags and clutches like this messenger bag (that i'm obsessed with):





their products are amazing, but the love they have for the people they are serving is incredible. i think what i like most about tukula is that the terranovas are literally fleshing out concepts like fair trade and social justice. those aren't just trendy buzz words but rather a way of life for them. oh, and they actually believe in fair trade and social justice because they believe jesus and the gospel. jesus and the gospel is really what tukula is all about. and because i've been blessed by their products (i own an awesome green carry-all bag!) and challenged by their vision, i want other people to be too.

SO, here's the deal:

i want to buy one lucky person a tukula product of their choice. all you have to do is go to the tukula website and a pick your favorite product. leave a comment on this blog post saying which product you like (make sure you include your name!) to get extra entries you can:

1. write a facebook status about this giveaway. include link to this blog post.

2. become a fan of tukula on facebook. if you're already a fan, let me know and you'll still get an extra entry.

3. blog about this giveaway. make sure you put a link to your blog post in your comment.

please leave a separate comment for each entry (so if you do all 4 things, you should have 4 comments). i will choose the winner one week from today! so get to spreading the word!

oh, and even if you don't win, i hope you'll still consider supporting tukula by buying a bag or making a donation :)

girl or boy

one reason why i want a little girl:




two reasons why getting two boys will totally "rock":





(and yes, i own both of these shirts).

(and also, i get in a bit of a conundrum about whether little boy clothes should be manly or cute. i think these shirts are trendy and manly, but then i have some other things that are more little boy cute. i think a variety of styles is good, but i really don't want to be that mom that dresses her little kids like teenagers. thoughts??)

all clothes courtesy of babygap. which actually has decent prices if you buy on sale.

7 months

today we have officially been waiting 7 months for a referral.

we are hoping we only have a couple (a few?) more months to go.

i don't have much else to say, but i did want to share this link to powerful words of truth.

baby dolls

i was talking to my dad last night on the phone when he asked:

"why didn't you play with baby dolls?"

"what?" i said, a bit confused because this question seemed to come out of nowhere.

"when you were little -- why didn't you play with baby dolls? you liked to play with barbies, but not baby dolls. where did you get all these motherly instincts?"

then it made sense. we had been in the middle of another conversation about our kids. and as i spoke with tenacity about attachment and brain development and how i refuse to leave my kids between our court date and embassy date, my dad was thinking back to all those times i sat on the couch while my sister got down in the floor and played with the newest baby cousin.

now, let me clear one thing up: never in my growing up years did i express any hatred or apathy towards children. my parents won't like reading this, but when my younger sister expressed a more natural affinity to kids than i did, my family suddenly decided that she liked kids more than me. so when the new baby cousins came along, everyone would say, "so-and-so just loves megan, doesn't he?" or "come on, megan, get down and play with so-and-so." it would kind of be like i wasn't even there.

so i understand why my dad is a little surprised to hear me be so motherly even though my personal opinion is that all women have these instincts even though some express them more comfortably than others (and for some, the object of those instincts isn't always a child).

but i want to share my answer to his question because i think it will help people who aren't really familiar with the unique issues facing children from "hard places" and their families. you see, my maternal instincts, i think, have become heightened throughout this adoption process because i am continually broken by the plight of the orphan. i feel fiercely protective of my children (and really all 147 million orphans in the world) because i've come to understand where they will come from and how that will affect them.

people often ask me how an infant really understands abandonment and trauma. i think the assumption is that an infant is too young to make sense of anything going on in his world. however, the truth is that while infants cannot verbally express their understanding of trauma, they experience it deeply. this is because the infant brain is the primative brain, meaning that what an infant experiences is immediately coded into the lowest part of the brain stem and becomes like the "script" that little human being comes to live by.

what is quite amazing about God's design of attachment between mother and child is that it's built into our bodies and our senses. when a baby is inside its mother's womb, it comes to know its mother's scent and the sound of its mother's heartbeat. when the baby is born, things like breastfeeding (breastmilk carries the mother's scent) and holding the baby close re-inforce the attachment that has already occurred in utero. it's even amazing to note that baby's have limited eyesight for the first few weeks of life and can only see enough to identify the face of the person holding them -- most often their mother.

so imagine what the script would say if a baby was born to a mother too poor or too sick to care for him. imagine what would code into the brain of that child when his mother had to leave him on the side of a road (with a prayer that someone would find him and take him to an orphanage).

abandonment. unmet needs. hunger. thirst. fear.

and then imagine what would continue to be written in the script if that child was taken to an orphanage where there were likely several different caregivers, too many children for each child to have significant one-on-one contact with a caregiver, and not enough resources for each child to have physical needs met.

abandonment. unmet needs. hunger. thirst. fear.

now, a lot of people assume that adoption fixes everything, that adoptive families "save" children from all that terrible stuff, and, in essence, reverse the abandonment, unmet needs, hunger, thirst, and fear. and the reality is, while adoptive families certainly make a new way for their children and want to help them heal, things don't change overnight simply because a child is getting hugs and hamburgers. the point i'm getting at is that these things (abandonment, etc) are so deeply written into the soul of some children that it may take awhile for their brains to catch up with what's actually happening in reality.

a child could be in the most stable and loving of homes and yet still not believe his parents aren't going to abandon him tomorrow. a child could actually do bad things to make sure that no matter how terrible he is, his parents won't decide they don't want him. a child could present as being ADHD when he is really just overcome with anxiety about a new situation and expressing it as nervous energy. a child might offer to give you his food at the dinner table when he perceives you don't have enough to eat because he knows what it's like to starve.

i think this is why God commands us over 200 times in the bible to care for the poor. i don't think God wants us to believe that possessions and money fix everything. rather, i think God knows that when a man is worried about how he will eat or where he will live or if his bills will get paid, it is truly his soul that suffers.

and so when i told my dad where all my maternal instincts were coming from, i told him that it pains me to think that millions of children have endured more in their first few years of life than some people do in an entire lifetime. it's not fair that some children have to worry about if their parents are going to abandon them or if they'll have enough to eat or if they're even going to survive until tomorrow.

and when it comes to my children specifically, they deserve to have their mother with them ASAP even if some people consider it unsafe or inconvenient or "against the rules" for me to stay in ethiopia. i have never understood why it's OK for my kids to be in a place some people consider unsafe, but not for me to be there. when it comes to my children, they deserve to have their mother make a personal choice to take medicine in order to produce and pump breastmilk (yes, this is possible and i'm considering it) so they have a chance at a better immune system even if some people consider it a danger to my body. (i mention these things because people have tried to talk me out of them without considering what the needs of my children might be. i don't mean to say that all adoptive mothers must stay in ethiopia or pump breastmilk).

maternal instincts are fierce. and, for me, they grow fiercer everyday as i confront the greatest orphan crisis in human history and the needs of so many children around the globe. every child deserves the love, protection, and provision of a family. i pray God will allow us to give that to many children who scripts did not begin that way.

the gospel according to peter pan

whether he meant to or not, jm barrie captures some major truths of the human condition and the gospel in peter pan.

here is barrie's very striking description of the children who flew away from their parents to enjoy neverland with peter, believing all the while that their parents had left the window open for them to return home whenever they liked. i couldn't help but see human sin and God's love in this:

"off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked. so great indeed was their faith in a mother's love that they felt they could afford to be callous for a bit longer."

what struck me over and over again in this book is that while the movies portray peter pan as the hero of the story and the most likeable character, he is actually the most unlikeable character, perhaps even more unlikeable than the villianous captain hook. barrie goes to great lengths to emphasize that peter is cocky (his cockiness is actually the reason why hook wants to kill him), forgetful of others, and fearful of responsibility (which is why he never wants to grow up). and while we are led to believe that peter's flaws are rooted in his terrible experience with a mother who didn't leave the window open for him, barrie causes us to doubt peter's experience (and thus his belief about mothers) by stating: "i'm not sure that this (peter's story about his mother) was true, but peter thought it was true..." i see in peter pan the darkness that is in all of us -- how we care mostly about ourselves, how we reject the responsibilities that come with following jesus, how we lie to ourselves about who jesus is so we can excuse ourselves from truly following him. like peter, we are rather unlikeable people.

but there is the mother's love. God's love. when we are awakened to the true reality of who God is and how he loves us, we are like wendy declaring that her mother must surely be mourning the loss of her children who flew away from her to enjoy neverland. wendy decides to go home, and she declares to all the lost boys that her parents will adopt them. the window is open for them too! there is enough love to go around!

so they go home, and the window is open. as the children are reunited with their parents, barrie writes poignantly about the cost of peter's rejection of the mother's love:

"there could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a little boy who was staring in at the window. he had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be for ever barred."

peter had many adventures. he dictated the course of his own life. he didn't have responsibilities. he didn't have to endure real suffering. but he missed out on the one and only real joy -- the joy of the mother's love.

barrie goes on to write that the other children grew up. they had responsibilities like going to school, getting jobs, having children. at times, they missed neverland and wished they had never left it. but, in the end, they realized that growing up was really best for them. and so it is with following jesus.

if you ask me, peter pan is actually a pretty tragic story. in the end, i pity peter. and while the allegory breaks down in a lot of places (like when mrs. darling lets wendy visit peter in neverland once a year), i found this story to be a reminder of how we reject God and his good purposes for us over and over again for what we perceive to be better adventures. even the most well-meaning christians (me included) believe that God loves us and wants us to follow him with wreckless abandon, yet we spend most of our lives frolicking around neverland, running our own lives, refusing to "grow up" and take responsibility for what it really means to follow jesus.

but the window is always open. thank goodness for that.

book review: radical

when i first heard about radical by david platt, i was beyond excited. i was smitten with the subtitle: taking back your faith from the american dream. finally, i thought, an evangelical has written a book that seriously engages social justice and the gospel. i was ready to have my life turned upside down.

and then i read the book. and got really pissed off.

now, to his credit, platt makes some great points throughout the book. his chapter entitled "how much is enough: american wealth and a world of poverty" is compelling, and i am thankful that an evangelical delved so deeply into the issues of american consumerism versus the $1-a-day lifestyle many in our world have. i appreciate that he challenges us to think about what it would mean to sell everything we have and give to the poor. and i love that he writes, "give. give generously, abundantly, sacrificially. give not because your stuff is bad. give because christ is in you." beautiful words.

where i take issue with platt is in his assertion that the most important question facing our world today is where people will go when they die. i don't think the crux of following jesus is a question of heaven or hell. in fact, i think twittling the gospel down to a choice between heaven or hell is quite possibly the most selfish of all explanations of what the gospel is. which is ironic since the whole point of platt's book is to reveal how the american dream has become deeply entrenched in christianity, causing us to relentlessly pursue the "what's in it for me" of christianity.

but i would argue that the american dream is really to blame for this question of "where are you going when you die" aspect of evangelical christianity that is so pervasive in our culture, and it honestly bothers me a lot that platt is so oblivious to how self-serving heaven-or-hell christianity really is. you see, when someone obsesses over where someone else is going when they die, i think they are really obsessing over that person's eternal comfort. hell is a terrible place, very hot with lots of fire. you wouldn't want to go there. but heaven is nice. you would like it there. and so when someone shares the gospel with an unbeliever and attempts to lead them to christ by asking them, "on a scale of one to ten, how sure are you that you will go to heaven when you die?" they, of course, would like to get into some kind of discussion where the unbeliever expresses a desire to go to heaven to which the evangelizer will share how jesus died on the cross so we can.

what is always tragic to me in these kinds of conversations is that jesus only enters the picture after both parties have agreed that heaven is a desirable place where we would like to go. jesus is only useful after we have decided what we want. even more unfortunate is that many people make decisions to follow christ based on heaven-or-hell christianity without even knowing much about who they are following. no wonder american christianity looks so unradical: once people get the heaven-or-hell question out of the way, they can go back to living however they want. jesus doesn't really matter.

i grew up in a church that preached heaven-or-hell christianity. when i got to college, i had the quinessential crisis of faith. and what got me through that crisis and over to another (and, in my opinion, better) side of faith was reading through the gospels. i read them over and over again. i wanted to know jesus. and what i found was a man and a God worth infinitely more than going to heaven or not going to hell. what i found was someone who was angered by injustice, compassionate to the lost, unafraid of touching lepers, generous to the poor, devastated by sin and its effects on our world...someone perfect in every way that i am not. someone who left everything because he believes we are worth risking everything for. someone who knows my mistakes and carried them while he hung -- cursed -- on a tree. someone who does not hold those mistakes against me but invites me to join him in his mission to redeem the world and gives me the privilege of becoming like him.

you see, jesus is the crux of the gospel. the most important question facing us today is not where people are going when they die. rather, it is whether they know jesus. while people reject christianity for a host of reasons, i believe many of them reject it because they are not compelled by a religion that is so obsessed with eternal destiny that it has no power to effect any real change in life right now. the truth of the gospel is that while we have rejected God, jesus redeems us from our rebellion and re-awakens the image of God in us. he gives us the power to be who God created us to be in the beginning. he gives us purpose when once we were just aimless wanderers. and he gives us a mission when once we were living for ourselves.

when i tell my kids about the gospel, i want them to make a decision to follow christ because they are so compelled by who jesus is, not because they like the idea of going to heaven over hell. if we make christianity a question of heaven or hell, then we commit the great sin that got us all here in the first place: thinking that we (and what we want) are more important than God. only when we truly realize we are the least important players in this great story God is writing will we begin to see what being radical is all about.

ps -- i actually think heaven is an important part of the christian faith. heaven is where redemption is finally complete, so christianity doesn't make sense apart from heaven. but heaven does not make sense apart from jesus, so my point is that heaven is not the purpose for being (or becoming) a christian.

a job to be passionate about

ever since i can remember, i've dreamed of having a job i am passionate about.

when i was younger, i wanted to be an astronomer. or an astronaut. i had no clue if those jobs made much money, but i was intrigued by planets and stars (and still am). unfortunately, around the fifth grade, i realized that i was horrible at math and got motion sick on about any moving apparatus other than a car.

in high school and early in college, i aspired to be a star journalist. i worked at my hometown newspaper off and on for 4 years. during my senior year of high school, i did a huge project on broadcast journalism and shadowed a few news anchors. i suddenly had dreams of becoming the "conservative couric" -- a katie couric for the evangelical, politically-right-leaning crowd. but then i realized that while i was skilled at writing (and talking), i had no desire to always jump up and go when a story broke (and i couldn't pass beginner's economics which was required to get into journalism school at unc. see, i really am bad at math).

through all of this, my dad reminded me that being passionate about your career was a bit overrated. think about retirement and what you'll need when you get old, he would say. he would also gently remind me that he wasn't peeing-in-his-pants excited every morning to get to work, but he went because it provided for our family and ensured the he and my mom wouldn't be inextricably dependent on the government from age 65 and onward.

so i thought on these things and did what any idealist would do: i took the "little miss sunshine" approach to life (i love that movie) and i decided to "do what you love and f*** the rest" (my favorite quote from the move. see, i am an idealist). i hitched the first ride to wake forest divinity school and decided to pay a bunch of money to become a minister. i had no clue how everything would work out, but i knew i had to do it.

fast forward 3.5 years, and i'm currently filing claims at a mortgage insurance company as a temporary job until i actually do i have a job that i'm passionate about -- motherhood. being a stay-at-home mom is not ever what i dreamed would be my full-time, i'm-so-excited-to-go-to-work-today job (and, trust me, i don't really think it will always be an i'm-so-excited-to-go-to-work-today kind of job), but it's a personal decision that we have made because we think it's best for our family.

in the meantime, i am thankful that the pastoral staff at our church has allowed me the opportunity to do the welcome and announcements for our congregation at least once a month. it doesn't seem like a big deal -- welcome guests, tell everybody what's in the bulletin, mention that we like to pray, and explain why we take up an offering. but, as someone who gets a serious rush of adrenaline (some might call it the holy spirit) when talking about the gospel and how christ has redeemed us to be compassionate, generous, and merciful to our very broken world, this opportunity is such a privilege for me (maybe there's a blog post in my future about my thoughts on women and church leadership).

the truth is, none of this may prepare me for retirement or old age or terrible calamity. and while i think prudence and practicality are important (because God doesn't give us a brain for nothing), i think we worship those attributes just as much as we idolize adventure and passion. we live in a hypocritical culture that is married to the "carpe diem" attitude while having an illicit affair with security. my hope is that my idealist self won't get caught up in being passionate about being passionate, but rather in being passionate about what God wants me to do. i have a lot of dreams for our family -- dreams involving africa and changing the world and throwing security to the wind. but God may never open those doors (and sometimes, i secretly hope he won't because even though i'm an idealist, i'm also a scaredy-cat).

for now, i am thankful that God has been abudantly gracious to give me things to be passionate about and to allow me to live out those things in my daily life. what is left for me to do is be obedient in those things and continue to trust, listen, and wait.

currently

here are current stats on the dean family.

jamie: employed by womble, carlyle, sandridge & rice. working long hours until october (and by long, i mean 12 hour days and some on the weekends). enjoying sleep, relaxation, guitar, and online gaming when he is not working.

lauren: employed (by the temp agency) at rmic (a mortgage insurance company) as of last week. working normal hours. loving free parking, free beverages, and my picture ID badge (none of which i had at the last place i worked). hoping this job will last until we travel to ethiopia the first time (or at least until we have a referral). trying to get the hang of couponing so i can buy mass amounts of shampoo and cheerios cheaply. reading a lot. just finished the problem of pain by cs lewis and this is a soul: the mission of rick hodes by marilyn berger (about a doctor in ethiopia). currently reading radical by david platt and peter pan by jm barrie. humored when reading tinker bell call peter pan a "silly ass." that wasn't in the movie.

dean babies: still unknown to us at this point. no word on when we can expect our referral. owners of a crib, a high chair and bunches of clothes courtesy of our church friends, the albertsons. prayed for and hoped for everyday by lots of special people.

an attempt at honesty

i had my first real cry in months about our adoption the other night. i had a lot of emotions welling up in me, and they weren't necessarily about the long wait. they were about adoption and how i feel about doing it and how i feel about how other people feel about us doing it. i try to be honest on here about how i feel, and yet i think i end up sharing more of my opinions than my feelings. my friend, leigh, inspires me because she really is honest about how she feels. she'll tell you straight up when she's hurt or when she's missing her kids or when she's feeling misunderstood (and i think my motivation for writing tonight is her blog post from today).

i often fear that when i try to articulate what it's like to be a first-time parent through adoption in a preggo-centered universe, people go away thinking i hate pregnancy and bio kids or that i secretly wish i were pregnant and am manifesting that desire by being bitter towards pregnant women or that i think all people who have bio kids must not care about orphans. i want to clearly articulate that none of these things are true. the truth is, i am just so, so, so tired of having my experience of becoming a parent be discounted because it is not "normal" (apologies now that this post sounds like i have regressed since writing a post about affirming adoptive families. but i'm realizing that no matter how much i tell people what all this feels like and what we need to feel supported, people aren't going to listen and really understand until something clicks in their brain). i'm so tired of having our adoption have to somehow revolve back around the experience of pregnancy when people observe that we're in our third trimester because we've been waiting 6 months or basically just whenever someone says, "oh, so i guess it's a lot like when you're pregnant and..." i often want to scream that i have never been pregnant, and while i understand the general concept because i understand the basic premise of being pregnant, i have never experienced pregnancy and thus all of those metaphors are really lost on me. i just for once wish that our adoption could be seen for what it truly is -- an adoption -- and not be compared to something else or seen through the lens of something else or assimilated to some other more typical experience.

i have asked jamie whether these kinds of things bother him, and based on his thoughts, i think a woman just experiences this (and by this, i mean becoming a parent through adoption before pregnancy) differently than her husband. what is at stake here, in some sense, is the female body and what it was apparently intended for. as much as we have chosen adoption and feel as though we have answered a calling on our life, i so often look at myself and feel inadequate and embarrassed because i'm not using my body for what everyone is telling me it's meant for. i read all these christian mom blogs where these women talk incessantly about how pregnancy and giving birth are the most feminine things a woman can do. and suddenly, i am alienated and feel like a total freak show because my desire is not really for a child of my womb but a child from outside of it -- a child who grew in someone else's womb and, because of many painful circumstances, will become my child because we are cosmically tied in this great story of love and loss. and because of all these things, i grieve everytime i have to hear someone talk about their "own" kids as opposed to "adopted" kids because my entire being believes that those two children who are slowly but surely coming into our family even as we speak are my own in every sense of what that means. and i fear so much for those two little lives because i know that so many people will always see them as "adopted" kids, orphans-- these two pitiable bastard children who were taken in by us, the very nice christian couple. i don't really know why i give a crap if the rest of the world sees my children as my children. i just don't want them living the rest of their lives believing that they are somehow "less than" because they aren't somebody's "own kids." (and just to throw it out there, what i have written above describes what i think are the feelings a woman struggling with infertility probably faces to a much greater extent. i do not in any way want to take away from that experience and act as though i know what that feels like because i do not).

in general, i worry so much about my kids and how they will be perceived and how those perceptions will shape their understandings of who they are. when people comment on how great and sacrificing we are for adopting or how adoption is such an "act of kindness," i often fear my kids will only believe they are objects of our mercy and "great kindness" and not simply our children who we would love even if they did not come to us in this way. i suppose that when people only see adoption as a kind act, it becomes easier to dismiss it as something "we hope to do one day" as if it's just like saying "i hope to visit paris one day" or "i'd like to eat a hamburger tomorrow" -- something that would be nice if things worked out for it to happen, but something not extremely urgent and not necessarily devastating if it doesn't get done. but i digress from my main point that when people don't have a right view about adoption, they will never have a right view of adoptive parents, but, more importantly, of children who come into families by adoption. and i get it, people have to have time to journey towards that understanding. it doesn't come right away for some people. but honestly, it hurts a lot for people to consistently discount our experience and thus our children. not for a second do i want people to see our adoption as the same as pregnancy. i've said that before. it's not the same. when people act as though adopted children and biological children are the same, it is offensive to the adopted child who brings a past and a history and many painful scars to his or her new family. you cannot pretend that history does not exist and treat your adopted child just like your bio kids. you will love them in different ways and parent them in different ways. but the quantity and quality of your love will be the same, and their standing in your family -- as your own kids -- will be the same.