the golden rule

so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. -- matthew 7:12

do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself. -- confucius

i've been doing some reading lately that has caused me to ask which version of the "golden rule" the church is following: jesus' or confucius'? jamie and i just finished a long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier by ishmael beah. i don't really need to tell you what the book is about [i think the title is self-explanatory], but beah's story perfectly encompasses the human experience: sin, evil, suffering, redemption. please, read the book. then, just yesterday, i started reading not for sale: the return of the global slave trade -- and how we can fight it by david batstone. once again, read the book. it has opened my eyes to evil that i didn't even know existed in this world. i found these statistics particularly gut-wrenching:

"a research study conducted in mid-2006 reveals that close to 35 percent of the vietnamese families living in cambodia sell a daughter into the sex trade, and another 25 to 30 percent seriously consider the option but do not follow through with the sale."

"the lucrative market in virgins tempts parents to sell their pre-adolescent daughters to a brothel for a high premium. it's a bizarre business: a john may pay $750 for one night with a young girl, and one week later that same girl may be seeing ten clients a night for $2.50 a session."

sometimes i think that we have fallen captive to the delusion that just because we're not the ones perpetrating such evil or because that kind of evil doesn't happen in our country [and, for the record, that kind of evil DOES happen in our country. the US is a thriving center for human trafficking], we must be doing the right thing -- following the "golden rule." according to confucius, that way of thinking adds up. don't do something to someone else that you wouldn't want done to you and you're good to go. but what does jesus say? his way is different, his way is radical, his way says that it's not enough to not sin against your fellow human beings. jesus says that we should be actively pursuing good for our brothers and sisters, strangers, and enemies.

i like how gary haugen, founder of international justice mission, puts it: "if i were trapped in a brothel, what would i want? i would want someone to get me out! if i were enslaved in a brick factory, i would want someone to end my bondage! if i were being trafficked, i would want to be rescued. that's our work. to love our neighbors and set them free.

i'm pretty sure that if tomorrow, a group of rebels decided to overthrow obama, kill everyone who voted for obama, recruit young boys to serve in their rebel army, and take young girls as their sex slaves, we would want the rest of the world to notice and to help us. we would want people to step up and adopt our children, vulnerable and voiceless as they'd be, so that their childhoods would not be lost to violence and death. we would want people to give of their time and money to help prosecute those who had perpetrated such evil. we would want people to open their homes to those who had survived the coup, even if those refugees didn't know the language or culture of their new home. we would want others to think of us, pray for us, acknowledge our plight, and live their lives differently because we exist.

if all that is true, don't you think we desperately need to be figuring out how we're going to live out jesus' version of the "golden rule" to this hurting world? don't you think we need to figure out how to actively pursue good for others -- child soliders in uganda and sierra leone; orphans in the US, russia, china, ethiopia, guatemala; sex slaves in cambodia and vietnam; the homeless in downtown winston-salem -- because that's exactly what we would want them to do for us if the situation was reversed? i can't get over knowing that my life is supposed to look different because these people exist and they are my brothers and sisters. the hope of the gospel is as much for me as it is for them.

update!

i just found out that our draft dossier was approved, which means our dossier can now be authenticated! i am pumped out of my mind. a lot of it has to do with (obviously) the excitement of being SO CLOSE to the waitlist. but honestly, i'm also patting myself on the back for mastering the paper chase and getting everything done correctly. here's what the next steps look like:

1. our case manager sent us a letter of obligation from CWA that's the last piece of our dossier. i'm hopeful that we will get it in the mail on saturday
2. if we get the letter on saturday, i will drive to raleigh on monday to have it authenticated by the secretary of state
3. i'll put it in the mail monday (after it's been authenticated) to a courier in DC
4. she will take our dossier to the department of state and the ethiopian embassy to be authenticated
5. she will send it to CWA, and we will officially be on a waitlist (because, at that point, they will have all our money)

please pray with us that there are no bumps in authentication. i'm still holding out hope that we will make it on the waitlist by the end of the month, and i think we have a chance!

mailbox miracle and haiti

yesterday, i went to our mailbox and found this inside:

[if i wasn't so lazy, there would be a picture here of an envelope containing 2 100-dollar bills, a kind note from an anonymous person, and an awesome sticker of the ethiopian flag that is actually from ethiopia.]

can it really get better than that? God keeps blowing our socks off with the kindness of family, friends, and now even STRANGERS! well, perhaps this person isn't really a stranger, but we at least have no idea who sent us this little miracle. so anonymous person, if you read our blog, i want you to know that we are thankful for your kindness and generosity. your note and that awesome [it really is AWESOME] sticker from ethiopia are hanging on our refrigerator reminding us not only of our children, but also of you. we're going to use the money you gave us to pay the $190 fee we will owe the ethiopian embassy to authenticate our dossier.

i sent a draft of our dossier to our case manager on thursday. i will update whenever i hear whether or not the dossier is OK to send to raleigh [and then to DC] for authentication. we are praying to send it next week, as that will put us SO CLOSE to being on a waitlist.

also, i have a job! it's temporary, but i start tomorrow. more on that cool story later.

lastly, i haven't written anything haiti. i wish i could, but i don't think my blogging is ever as articulate as i intend [or wish] it to be. maybe you all could just climb in my brain for a day?? i know a lot of people wonder how to reconcile God with the earthquake, and, for the record, i don't think ANYBODY [john piper, tim keller, insert your own pastor/theologian...or even pat robertson] has all the right answers. personally, i don't think God MADE the earthquake happen. i think we live in a world that is broken by sin and EVERYTHING in creation is affected. simply put, creation doesn't function as it was intended to function. bad things happen because God allows our sinful world to run its course, not because God makes bad things happen. the difference between "making" and "allowing" is a very important nuance. i know a lot of people ask, "why can't God just stop all the bad stuff?" and to that i say, one day God will. i don't know why God continues to allow creation to groan and suffer under the weight of sin and brokenness. one reason is that i think God allows human free will [my reformed friends will disagree vehemently with me on this point]. i think God allows humans to make choices, even if those choices result in sin. and i'm pretty sure that God is quite grieved at the choices we have made. this is why i'm not a big fan of churches that only emphasize moral codes like "don't drink" or "don't dance" because they grossly underestimate the sins we have perpetrated against our fellow human beings. they fail to point out how the sins of pride and selfishness perpetrate the greatest of evil. i think God lets us make choices, even when they result in great evil, so that we are pushed further and further into seeing our need for redemption because redemption is the point of everything. personally, i think when we come to realize that our bad choices have created the world in which we live, we are forced to search for something that can get us out of the mess we have created. and, well, that's where jesus and the gospel come in.

but the gospel isn't just for the salvation of individual souls. the gospel is for creation, the whole of creation. it is for a creation that is full of injustice, poverty, disease, and pain. and when i look at haiti, i am reminded that while christians do not have the power to save souls, we do have the power to bring justice and hope to hurting people. we can be redemption in action. we can give to organizations like the red cross and world vision. we can petition our government on behalf of families like this one who are hoping to have humanitarian parole granted to their adopted children who are still in haiti waiting to come home. and, because i am an adoption advocate, we can consider adopting one of the many children who lost his/her parents to this terrible disaster. i read today that the number of orphans in haiti has tripled because of the earthquake.

i never wrote the post i had hoped to about the weird tension between appreciating blessings and hating possessions. there's a lot i wish i could say about that. but in general, when i think about haiti, i wish we all could evaluate our ability to ACT not based on our view as americans who are used to comfort and security, but rather as haitians who live on $1 a day. if you think your house isn't big enough to bring in one more child, consider that a house like yours in haiti would probably be a mansion. the questions about why this disaster happened will linger for quite some time, but this should not keep us from considering how we can join in God's redemptive intention for creation.

on the adoption front

sometimes my paranoid little self gets worried that people are out there wondering what in the world is taking us so long to get our papers sent off. it has been 9 months since we first announced we were starting the adoption process. i really don't need to say that if we had announced we were pregnant, we'd already have a kid by now. i'm not saying that as if i'm wishing that we hadn't decided to adopt first because i think we are now more sure of our decision to adopt first than we were 9 months ago. i'm just saying that it has been a long time, and we still aren't on a waiting list. maybe there are people who are thinking we should've just gotten pregnant first. maybe there are people who are thinking that since the money didn't come quickly, it must mean this wasn't the right time for us to adopt. well, i'd invite those people to consider that some of the most recent estimates put the number of global orphans at 153 million. and, well, despite how difficult it has been for us at times to procure funds or whatever the problems have been, i try not to think about all of that. if i get lost in how difficult this has been, then i lose sight of what we're really doing, which is making sure that 2 children know they are loved and protected by a mommy and a daddy. i just get really pissed when i hear anybody criticize people who are adopting.

"you haven't been married long enough." "you don't have enough money." "you aren't prepared for this." "white people can't raise black children." "you're too young to raise a child with that many special needs."

in the long run, NONE of these criticisms hold up against the beautiful reality of a child finding a forever family. if somebody thinks we don't have enough money to adopt and raise 2 children, let me tell them that money isn't everything. i pray to God that if my children learn one thing from me aside from the fact that christ is savior and lord, it is that money and possessions are rubbish. this comes from a person who lives in a nice house in a nice part of town with nice clothes and nice furniture. and, well, i've been living lately in this weird tension of appreciating my possessions and seeing them as God's blessings while simultaneously wanting to throw them out the windows of my nice house. i'll write more about this later in the week.

so i say all that to say that we aren't on a waiting list yet, and i hope people understand why even though i shouldn't really care what other people think. we've had some trouble with the IRS and getting our new homebuyer's tax credit back. without that $8000, we cannot send our dossier as we only have $9200 of the $15500 we need. thankfully, my parents have graciously agreed to loan us $3000 that we'll pay back to them whenever we do FINALLY get that check from the IRS. i'm crossing my fingers that we'll get the OK from our case mananger to send our dossier to raleigh and then DC for authentication by the end of this week or early next. but all of that depends on all our documents being perfectly notarized, so please pray there are no problems when our case manager reviews our dossier. i don't know how long authentication will take, but i'm praying that we might still make it on the waitlist by the end of january. if not, hello february.

our nephew, the breakdancer

meet t-dawg aka tyler, our 5-year-old nephew. his dopeness factor is enhanced by his backwards baseball cap, oversized white jacket, and yes, a cheerwine mustache.

i mentioned in my last post that jamie's sister and her family were visiting with us last week. one night, tyler and our other nephew, trevor, told me they wanted to break dance (side note: since neither my sister-in-law nor my brother-in-law really dance, we are pretty sure the boys learned their moves at daycare). so i turned on an old christian hip hop CD that my friends and i listened to in high school, and it was an instant hit. tyler was on the floor spinning (seriously, like a breakdancer) and jumping up and down and shaking his little kid booty. the kid has for real moves. i was in heaven because i love to dance and probably should be collecting christian hip hop CDs so i can breakdance with my kids.

a couple of nights later when our friends, the burkholders, came over to watch the rose bowl, tyler decided that he wanted to breakdance for them. but he apparently did not remember that he gets extremely shy around new people. when the music started, he ran and hid behind the couch. so jamie suggested that it might make him less nervous if he was actually wearing real break dancer clothing, which inspired the backwards baseball cap and oversized jacket (tyler also informed me that real break dancers wear a lot of rings on their fingers. um, where did he learn that??) he eventually did perform for all of us, and i was able to capture this quality action shot. ah, just another reason why i can't wait to have 2 little boys.

in no particular order

life has been a little fast-paced lately.

we were in ohio for christmas, came back, and then 2 days later had jamie's sister's family at our house for several days. things have slowed down substantially now that we don't have 2 little nephews shooting us with nerf guns.

i'm still looking for a job. i sent in a few applications right before christmas, so i'm assuming i still have a chance at those jobs since this is the first serious work week for most people since before christmas. we could really use the money for debt reduction, but i'd just like to have something to do each day. it's nice to have nothing to do, but it gets old really fast. especially considering that we're approaching the really big wait for our adoption -- the wait for a referral. personally, i don't really want to be sitting around my house everyday with nothing to do fretting about whether today is the day we'll hear something. i want to be busy.

i have a few books i'm planning to read while i wait for a job:

treasuring God in our traditions -- noel piper
the problem of pain -- cs lewis
the connected child -- karyn purvis
fields of the fatherless -- tom davis

also, i've seen 2 really good children's movies recently. up and horton hears a who. has anybody else seen these? up has a whimsical feel to it that draws kids in (and talking animals, which is always a plus), but i think the themes are really for adults. i don't mean that the themes are inappropriate. i just think there are deeper, more profound meanings to the movie that adults will appreciate. seriously, the movie made me sob. i used christmas money to buy it because i was so impressed. horton hears a who was also well done. it's based on the dr. seuss book of the same name. i don't want to spoil the movie, but it has a lot of great religious overtones. it would be a great movie to use with your kids to discuss how God exists even though we can't see him.

we want to be really intentional about the movies (and tv shows) we let our kids watch. i think we really hope to not let our kids be obssessed with tv, which means that my goal is to buy a lot of books, music CDs, learning activities, and craft supplies before our kids come home. but when we do watch movies (or tv), i hope we can teach our kids to be discerning about what they're watching. i read one blog where a family asks their children to name 2 distortions of truth in whatever movie they watched. i really like this idea because it teaches your children wisdom, truth, and discernment and also hones their thought processing skills (though, a younger child would need help from mom and dad). so i'm taking recommendations on good kids' movies and what activities you do with your kids in place of copious amounts of tv-watching.