a hotel or a prison?

the following is an excerpt from cs lewis' God in the dock. i had hoped to comment on this, but i can't even find the right words. i think this is, as is everything lewis writes, rich commentary on the christian life. some will criticize lewis for focusing too much on heaven, which i think is an unwarranted criticism. for me, the point here is that viewing our life as a hotel actually discourages any good done in this life and thus leaves us unprepared to fully understand or appreciate what is to come.

"the christian view is that men were created to be in a certain relationship to God. if we are in that relation to him, the right relation to one another will follow inevitably. christ said it was difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, referring no doubt to riches in the ordinary sense. but i think it really covers riches in every sense - good fortune, health, popularity, and all the things one wants to have. all these things tend, just as money tends, to make you feel independent of God because, if you have them, you are happy already and contented in this life. you don't want to turn away to anything more and so you try to rest in a shadowy happiness as if it could last forever.

but God wants to give you a real and eternal happiness. consequently, he may have take all these riches away from you. if he doesn't, you will go on relying on them. it sounds cruel, doesn't it? but i am beginning to find out that what people call the cruel doctrines are really the kindest ones in the long run. i used to think it was a cruel doctrine to say that troubles and sorrows were punishments. but i find it practice that when you are in trouble, the moment you regard it as a punishment, it becomes easier to bear. if you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable. think of it as a place of training and correction, and it's not so bad.

imagine a set of people all living in the same building. half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable. and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. so that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. the people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world will become pessimists. the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimists."

did you know?

here's a break from regularly scheduled adoption talk. a little post about our other passion: disability advocacy...

one morning last week, jamie and i were listening to npr. they were doing a story about the olympics and mentioned that the united states had never won a medal in one of the skiing events (i can't remember which one). i doubt the story would have caught our attention had jamie not realized that the united states had indeed medaled in that event...in the paralympics.

the paralympics? you might be wondering.

the paralympics are the sister games of the olympics. they are held in the same location as the olympics, and the athletes use the same venues as olympic athletes. the only difference between the olympics and the paralympics is that the paralympic athletes all have physical disabilities. now, i'm sure some people completely discount the paralympics on that one difference. and i'm sure others would say, "well, isn't it inspiring that those athletes can overcome their disability and compete in athletic events." both of these ways of thought reveal our society's attitudes about people with disabilities.

you see, the paralympics get no media coverage in the united states. paralympic athletes get little or no financial support. it is not like this in other countries around the world. for example, many european countries gave almost equal air time to the 2008 olympic and paralympic games. similarly, britain's rowing crews (both olympic and paralympic) live together, train together, and receive equal funding. how do i know this? well, jamie is a paralympian. he won a silver medal in rowing at the 2008 paralympic games in beijing (and yes, his medal looks exactly like the medals michael phelps won). his boat edged out britain for second place. the triumph of this win had nothing to do with jamie overcoming his blindness. what he and his teammates overcame was their country's lack of support and funding. they won on pure athletic prowess and nothing else -- not money, or endorsements, or media coverage...but on ability alone.

in a lot of the reading i did about disabilities for my master's thesis, i came across one major theme: people with disabilities only become disabled when society fails to be accessible. while it may be true that a person in a wheelchair can't walk, they are only disabled to the extent that buildings and streets are difficult to maneuver. and this is the glory of the paralympics. these athletes may not be able to walk or see or have the endurance that olympic athletes have, but they continue to compete despite the disabling attitudes and practices of a society that refuses to take them seriously.

i hope things will be different in the future. i hope nbc will decide to air coverage from the paralympics. i hope paralympians will begin to receive the financial support they deserve. and i hope that whatever paralympian medaled in that skiing event will get the credit he/she deserves.

adoption pangs

i have an angry, worried, sad little heart tonight (be forewarned, this could get ugly).

last night, i stumbled upon a news story, run by cbs, that accuses our adoption agency, christian world adoption, of "recruiting" families to give up their children for adoption. in some cases, cwa has been accused of paying families for their children (which falls under the definition of child trafficking). unfortunately, this is not the first time cwa has been at the center of such allegations. a few months ago, an australian news outlet ran a similar story.

obviously, we are very concerned about these allegations, though we are not jumping to any conclusions. cbs would like you to believe there is clear evidence to support the allegations against cwa. however, cbs ran a very misleading, one-sided story (read on). i guess one could say there's a lot for us to be worried about right now: all the money we've invested, whether we can trust that our children won't have been taken from their parents unethically, etc. if i told you i wasn't worried about all that, i'd be lying.

but can i tell you something else?

i'm not just worried about my kids. and our adoption.

there are 6 million orphans in ethiopia.

6 million.

you see, as much as i'm worried about our adoption, i'm infinitely more worried and upset about all the children in ethiopia who need families. those children's futures are affected by cbs' irresponsible reporting. i can only imagine the number of people who saw this news story and were affirmed in whatever negative opinions they hold about adoption. and i can only imagine all the people who vowed never to adopt after seeing this story. i've heard a lot of BS excuses about why people don't consider adoption: "it's too expensive" or "i can't wait that long for a baby" or "the process is too complicated." and now, with the odds already stacked against them, those 6 million children have to contend with the fallout from this news story.

i think i just get outraged when the focus of adoption is on anything but the children. sure, we need to hold agencies accountable. but to run a news story like cbs did is to compromise the credibility of adoption and thus to endanger the chances of these children ever finding forever families. honestly, i think there's a good chance this news story and these allegations are just the enemy attempting to triumph over good. don't get me wrong, i'm not naive. these are serious allegations that should be investigated, not just "spiritualized." but, in my opinion, adoption is one of the big guns in the cosmic battle between good and evil we are in right now. adoption is a picture of the gospel in every way possible, and i'm sure the enemy is not happy when people adopt. if evil had its way, children would continue to live a loveless, hopeless existence. i'm grieved to say that evil has its way more often than not. and right now i want to tell the enemy that he didn't even need a stupid news story to convince people not to adopt. people make that decision everyday by looking at their checkbooks and dreaming about the stuff they want...and basically not taking into consideration the precious life of a child.

if, by chance, anybody who reads this blog saw the news story, i want to quickly address 2 glaring mistakes cbs made:

1. claiming cwa lied about the ages of children.

anybody who has responsibly researched adoption knows that NO agency can guarantee a child's age. in ethiopia, birth records are not kept because they do not value birthdays and age the same way we do. thus, an agency can only estimate the age of a child.

2. claiming cwa charges $15000 per adopted child

um, this makes everybody who adopts sound like child traffickers. i do not like people who talk about adoption like a business deal. i'm not buying my children. it is true, most adoptions cost $15000 to $25000 (excluding travel costs). however, at least half of those costs are paid directly to the country, not the agency. we only paid cwa a flat agency fee of $5000 which covers the cost of caring for our children while they are in cwa's orphanage, and the costs of processing our documents and paying their staff. cwa's fees are comparable to every other agency i researched. people should know that the high cost of adoption allows for every necessary protection to be taken to avoid child trafficking.

please pray with us as we seek peace and a resolution to this chaos. we are planning to wait this out with cwa, namely because we do not have enough money to switch agencies. please also pray that people would continue to heed God's call to adoption and that people would continue to know God's heart for the orphan. maybe God is asking you to consider adoption from the perspective of a child who needs a family instead of from the perspective of everything that freaks you out about adoption. let us not let evil triumph.

convicting

i believe it was saint vincent de paul who used to say to those who wanted to join his congregation: "never forget, my children, that the poor are our masters. that is why we should love them and serve them, with utter respect, and do what they bid us." do you not believe that it can happen, on the other hand, that we treat the poor like they are a garbage bag in which we throw everything we have no use for? food we do not like or that is going bad -- we throw it there. perishable goods past their expiration date, and which might harm us, go in the garbage bag: in other words, go to the poor. an article of clothing that is not in style anymore, that we do not want to wear again, goes to the poor. this does not show any respect for the dignity of the poor; this is not to consider them our masters, like saint vincent de paul taught his religious, but to consider them less than our equals. -- mother teresa

i ask you one thing: do not tire of giving, but do not give your leftovers. give until it hurts, until you feel the pain. -- mother teresa

open your hearts to the love God instills in them. God loves you tenderly. what he gives you is not to be kept under lock and key, but to be shared. the more you save, the less you will be able to give. the less you have, the more you will know how to share. let us ask God, when it comes time to ask him for something, to help us be generous. -- mother teresa

to see more challenging words, check out this post from my friend leigh. (and if you're wondering, i just got an anthology of mother teresa quotations for $5 at the bookstore. that might be a bit of a paradox...$5 for a book about giving to the poor...but it's already challenging my heart, so i think that's $5 well spent...)

books for babies

i've gone in babies-r-us twice in the last week.

the first time, i was buying a gift. the second time, i convinced jamie to go back with me so i could show him everything. they make a lot of stuff for babies these days. i kind of got tripped up by the exersaucers, walkers, and jump seats. are you supposed to buy all 3? we will not be buying all 3. and, of course, i fell in love with a stroller even though we already have a stroller that was given to us free. the one we have is cute, but the other one has elephants on it. there's no way i can justify buying a new stroller just for elephants. also, they're now making baby cribs big enough for a full size adult human to sleep in. seriously, the cribs at babies-r-us are nicer than our bed. and despite the signs saying the cribs had passed all safety standards, jamie convinced himself that our child could still fall between the mattress and the side of the crib. he kept going around to each crib, reaching his hand down and saying, "i just don't think this is safe."

for now, most of those kinds of purchases are a long way off. there are too many uncertainties about age [and gender] that we don't feel comfortable buying anything...not even a crib. i guess some people would find that disappointing because the natural thing to do when you're expecting a baby is to nest. but we aren't disappointed because we've found one thing we can buy now for our kids that won't be a waste later: books.

reading daily to our kids is a huge priority for us, so books are a great investment. we buy a few each paycheck and put them away on a huge built-in bookshelf upstairs. a lot of the books we have bought [and hope to buy] are books we read when we were kids. others are books that have been recommended to us or that we have seen in the store. here are some of the ones we've purchased so far:

























i think curious george and harold and the very hungry caterpillar are familiar characters to most people. but i'd really recommend mama miti to anybody who has [or will have] children from africa. i like the story a lot, but it's the pictures that are most captivating. i've also got to give a shout out to it's OK to be different. i know some people might freak out because being "different" is sometimes not really OK in this society...or in the church for that matter. but the author covers a lot of ground in the book from "it's OK to have help" [with a picture of a person with a seeing eye dog] to "it's OK to be adopted" [with a picture of a puppy in the pouch of a kangaroo] to "it's OK to eat macaroni in the bathtub, which is probably not really OK, but it's still cute. and lastly, we are obsessed with the jesus storybook bible. it's so good, jamie and i are reading through it [instead of the "real" bible] for our nightly devotion. what's great about it is that every story ends pointing towards jesus. it's a great way for a young child to understand how everything fits together rather than hearing a bunch of discombobulated stories that don't really seem to fit together. the clarity with which this bible tells the story of redemption is really unparalled. the other great strength of this bible is that the illustrations don't make you think jesus was a pale white guy.

so now, i'm looking for more recommendations. what's your favorite children's book you had as a child or that you read to your children now?

the things people say

last night, i went to my first training session to become a guardian ad litem. gal is a volunteer program that seeks to ensure that children have a voice in court when allegations of abuse and neglect are brought against their parents. in many of these cases, the court is trying to make a judgment about whether the child can be placed back with their parents, placed with a relative, or placed in foster care [and perhaps eventually adopted]. as a gal, my job will be to get to know the child and his/her situation well enough that i can represent the child's best interest before a judge. i will actually write a report where i make recommendations to the judge about what i think is the best course of action for the child.

so at the meeting last night, we did an activity where the gal director asked us to agree or disagree with various "value statements" she presented. she wanted us to see that we all possess different views and are biased towards our own opinions [duh]. many of the statements were controversial:

"i think the judicial system system is unfair to people of color." [i agree]
"i think people on welfare are generally lazy." [i disagree]
"i think homosexual couples should be able to adopt." [i agree]

the statement that caused the biggest stir was the last one. i'm not going to give you my whole story about why i agree with that statement, except to say that i have a cousin, madelyn, who was adopted from china by two moms who love her very much. i think it's a real problem, particularly among christians, that people are more anti-gay than they are pro-life.

the woman who strongly disagreed with homosexuals adopting didn't take issue with the gay lifestyle from a moral standpoint. instead, she took issue with the lifestyle because it is "alternative" and "just one more thing" an already "troubled" child would have to deal with. her point was that a child who has been abused or neglected by his parents and then passed around in foster care and eventually adopted should not have to deal with having "different" parents. her worry was that since society's perception of homosexuals is still mostly negative, the child would suffer unnecessarily for his parents' differences.

as she was saying these things, my heart was literally about to beat out of my chest. i kind of wanted to punch that lady out. i understood what she was saying, but i couldn't help but think that by following the logic she was using, we would have to come to the conclusion that a lot of other people shouldn't be able to adopt. so i raised my hand and told the group that as the mother-to-be of 2 children who will be a different race than me and as the wife of a person with a disability, i'm troubled that this woman would imply that these "differences" jamie and i possess will be "just one more thing" our children will have to deal with and thus we shouldn't be able to adopt.

society still holds a lot of negative opinions about multi-racial families and interracial couples[need i bring up the justice of the peace who refused to marry the interracial couple because he feared for their future children?] i know my black children are going to be picked on for having white parents, but that does mean we should not adopt them. society also still holds a lot of negative opinions about people with disabilities. people assume that because jamie can't see, he must be stupid or incapable or an invalid. yes, my kids are probably going to endure some teasing from other kids because their dad is blind and needs a dog to guide him, but at the end of the day, my kids will know that their dad loves them even if he can't see them.

we should be realistic about how our "differences" will affect our children. but we shouldn't bow down to society's ignorance and intolerance and let that keep us from rescuing children from the hells of poverty, abuse, disease, and death. jamie and i are going to be freakin' good parents. even when society teases our children for having white parents and a blind dad, our kids are going to know that they are loved, provided for, and safe. and, to me, if you can provide a child with a stable, loving home, what "differences" you have shouldn't really matter.

a few official things...

we are on the waitlist! i obsessively tracked our authenticated dossier on the fedex website from DC to CWA's office in north carolina only to get really mad at our case manager for not emailing us the minute it got there...at 11:29 yesterday morning. but he's a busy man, so i'm over it. he emailed us this afternoon to say that it's on its way to ethiopia. if you're wondering what's next, we have now entered the big waiting period. the next step is receiving a referral, which means CWA will send us the medical histories and pictures of 2 children that they have matched to us.

i'm not even going to attempt to make a prediction about how long it will be until we receive a referral. we would hope to hear by the summer, but it's really impossible to know what will happen. the fact that we have requested 2 children -- siblings or unrelated -- could make our wait shorter or longer. in all likelihood, CWA will wait until we reach the top of the infant list and then match us with a toddler. we have said we'd take twins up to 24 months, but twins of any age are rare. basically, we just expect to be referred a child under 12 months and a child over 24 months, and both will probably be boys (though, one girl is still a possibility).


OK, so now that the big news is out...check out what came in the mail yesterday:









i officially have the most arrogant degree ever. master of divinity. in your face.