christmas surprise

we spent christmas with jamie's family in ohio. on christmas morning, after all the presents had been opened, our brother-in-law, steve, informed us that there was one last present for us to open. here's what is was:

the popcorn tin was full of rolls of quarters. 54 rolls to be exact. worth $10 each. i doubt i need to say that's $540 to our adoption account. my sister-in-law, janelle is a singer. she did a bunch of performances over the holidays at churches and other various places and gave us the money she made. she did all that without ever mentioning that she was performing, which is a huge feat because janelle and jamie talk on the phone at least every other day. plus, our nephews (ages 3 and 5) knew about the surprise and also managed to keep it a secret. and yes, tears were shed.

both of our families blessed us tremendously this christmas with money for our adoption. my parents wrote a sweet card to their grandsons with money, and my little sister and her boyfriend gave us a check. we are beyond grateful. and all of this happened after we received a few unexpected medical bills, 2 related to our adoption and one related to some stomach problems jamie has been having (according to all the tests, he's OK). it's funny -- i have complained a lot since we started the adoption process that we haven't had one of those amazing stories happen to us. you know, the ones where people say they needed a certain amount of money and they had faith and then they opened their mailbox and found a random check for the exact amount of money they needed. but i've realized that has happened to us, perhaps not in the form of a $10,000 donation, but in smaller increments.

friends, family, and strangers have given us money, bought our coffee, donated to our yard sale, came to our chick-fil-a night, and prayed for us. we even got a random check from social security that we thought we'd have to give back, but when jamie called to inquire about it, they told him the money was ours to keep. when we get our check from the IRS, guess how much more money we'll need to send our dossier?

$0.

yep, i think we've finally made it to $15,500. so this week i'm going to get the rest of our papers together for our dossier, send them to our case manager to check, and then we'll send them to raleigh and then DC for authentication. our prayer is that by the time they make it back to CWA, we'll have our check from the IRS so that the only step left is to send the rest of our money to CWA. then they'll send our completed dossier to ethiopia, and we'll officially be on the waitlist. from all of this, i have truly been convinced that, in his grace, God provides, though not in the ways we expect or think we need.

so here are possibly the last christmas pictures we'll take without our 2 sweet babies.

update

here's what is going on in dean world other than possibly deciding not to teach our kids about santa :)

1. i FINISHED school! i still have a few things to fix on my senior project (aka, master's thesis even though it really isn't technically a master's thesis), but everything is done. i ended up writing a 70-page thesis even though i had only intended 40 pages, so i was pleased with myself. i don't think i can express how glad i am to finally be done with divinity school. i had considered writing an open letter to wake forest divinity school on here about how many "liberal" people who claim to be open-minded are often just as close-minded as the "conservative" people they hate so much, but i didn't think y'all would really want to read that. on a more positive note, i will say that as many times as i have been angry and annoyed over the last three years, i would probably make the decision to attend wake forest all over again if i could go back in time knowing what it would be like. honestly, i'm a big fan of having your beliefs challenged and not just having someone pat you on the back and tell you that you're right all the time. i think that's how you really figure out what you believe and why you believe it is true. and i think we extend grace to others when we are at least willing to hear them out on what they believe, even knowing that we will inevitably disagree.
2. we finally got some furniture! we've been sitting on the floor in our house for the past 4 months, but after seeing some decent furniture sales recently, we decided it was finally time to break down and buy. so thank you, jesus, for in-store financing because it helped us buy a couch and a loveseat for our living room. our goal isn't to be done furnishing our home until our kids come home, which gives us at least another 9-12 months, but it's still nice to be able to sit on a couch and watch tv instead of the hardwood floor.
3. speaking of our adoption, we found out that the IRS just started reviewing our amended tax return for the homebuyer's tax credit (side note: they have had our return since august 18th and initially said we would have our $8000 in 8-12 weeks). well, it's looking like we won't have our credit until at least next month, so our adoption is on hold until further notice. stupid IRS.

santa claus?

warning: i'm about to blaspheme christmas.

we're considering not letting our kids believe in santa claus.

did i just say that? yes, mom, i did. (she is going to kill us!)

i've been thinking about how it bothers me that santa claus is really just one more way to affirm the disparity between the rich and the poor. think about it -- do poor kids wake up on christmas morning to a bunch of christmas presents? i really started feeling heartbroken for all those children who hear about santa claus from their teachers at school and their friends only to have their hopes dashed on christmas morning.

jamie thinks santa claus steals all the attention away from jesus at christmas. he didn't even want me to buy a stocking with santa claus on it. the more i think about it, that's really true. there are few times in my life where i woke up on christmas morning more excited about jesus' birth than the presents santa had brought for me. when i think about my children, i don't want the excitement of santa claus to overshadow the joy of our savior's birth. i want my children to wake up on christmas knowing that before any present is opened, we will open our bible and read the story of jesus' birth.

i know some people think that families who don't let their kids believe in santa claus are weird. and if we end up giving santa claus the boot, it won't be because we don't want to lie to our kids. the real kicker is this: saint nicholas, who is the "historical santa claus," became famous for the gifts he gave to the poor. the most famous story about him is that he gave money to a father who could not afford a dowry for his three daughters. without a dowry, the daughters would have been sold into slavery or prostitution. so saint nicholas, not wanting to be seen, went at night and delivered three purses (stockings) of money to the daughters. something tells me that saint nicholas would not like that his image has been totally commercialized and used to promote gross consumerism, nor would he like that the poor are forgotten on christmas, nor would he like that jesus is the most forgotten on christmas.

calling all people of prayer!

we are so, so close to having the money we need for our dossier. it still doesn't look like we'll be able to send it sooner than january (WHICH IS NEXT MONTH!!!!) simply because we're relying on jamie's paychecks. but let me tell you where we are and how you can pray for us.

a few weeks ago, i outlined all the costs for sending our dossier. i forgot to add $500 for our second child's post-adoption placement fees. so our need is $15,500 (plus an extra $200 or so to have our dossier authenticated). we have been incredibly blessed by donations to our adoption account and by people buying our coffee:

$411 in coffee sales
$875 in donations (this doesn't count donations given to us before our first agency fee)

we currently have $2335 in savings, which includes $450 from our yard sale. we also have our chickfila check for $271.

SO, here's what you can pray for:

1. we need the IRS to send us our $8000 homebuyer's tax credit. seriously, without that money, we won't be sending our dossier anytime soon. please pray that it comes soon and that it hasn't gotten lost in the mail.
2. including the $8000 tax credit, we can account for all but $3590 of what we need. we are about 99% sure we can pay that $3590 with jamie's paychecks and with some money jamie is receiving from social security, so please pray that we are able to do so.
3. related to #2, i received a medical bill last week that we had not anticipated having to pay. it's a $300 bill, which isn't that much if you're not paying for an adoption. we're still not sure why insurance didn't cover it. i'm calling our doctor and our insurance this week about it, so please pray God might work something out in that situation so that we don't have to pay this bill.
4. pray we can sell the furniture we've been trying to sell. anything that we don't have to take out of jamie's paychecks is money we can save for travel expenses. seriously, the funds chase doesn't stop after the dossier is sent.
5. i applied for a job this week, and i'm hoping to hear about an interview soon. if i could start working soon after i'm done with school, that would also help us raise that $3590 quickly.

and so as not to forget about praises...we are thrilled for our friends the umlaufs who received a referral yesterday for their 3-month-old son moses. they waited 6 months to finally meet their little boy, and we praise jesus that they now have his picture and his story to carry them through the last part of the journey.

world AIDS day

tuesday is world AIDS day and since i probably won't have a chance to blog then, i wanted to share a few thoughts now.

one year ago, i wouldn't have had a clue there even was a world AIDS day. if you had asked me then about AIDS, i probably would have told you i understood it to be a terrible disease that had killed many people. what i wouldn't have been able to tell you is that it is now a survivable disease that can be managed much like any other chronic illness if it's treated with the proper medication. i probably also wouldn't have been able to tell you that almost nobody in africa has access to that medication. OR that almost 12 million children had been orphaned in africa because of AIDS in 2007.

to me, one of the most tragic aspects about the AIDS crisis is that we talk about it so flippantly. how many times have we heard someone say, "oh, it's not like i can solve AIDS in africa." it's like we use the AIDS crisis as some kind of universal metaphor for being unable to do the impossible. perhaps that's really the tragedy...that we think solving AIDS is impossible so we don't think or do much about it. these days, it's become quite offensive to me to hear AIDS talked about in such flippant ways. not many days go by where i don't wonder if today is the day one or both of my children will lose their mother to AIDS. it is a real possibility.

it is difficult to imagine one of my sons sitting by his mother's bedside watching her slowly die of a disease that could have easily been treated. and when i hear people say things like, "AIDS in africa isn't my responsibility," i become indignant. angry. downright pissed. part of being a human is that we co-exist with other humans. we are part of a system, meaning that my actions inevitably affect someone else. none of us live in isolation from other people. we are ALL part of this interdependent community of humans. nobody gets to opt out. thus, AIDS in africa is everyone's responsibility.

we are all responsible for those millions of children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS. we are all responsible for each man and woman who has died of AIDS.
we are all responsible for figuring out where to go from here.

i can't even describe how much it bothers me to hear people talk about how much they cried after killing a squirrel that ran across them on the road. i just read something like this on facebook -- the lady said she "cried and cried" after running over a squirrel. or how people, and i'm definitely in this group, sit and boo-hoo over reality tv shows or cheesy movies. most of that stuff is made-up and not even close to reality. i'm not saying people should feel guilty about being a sensitive person, but i am wondering why such sensitive people, as myself, can't grieve humanity in this way. why don't we "cry and cry" over those millions of lost lives? i'm not saying we have to cry 24/7 about victims of the AIDS crisis, but why does it always have to be out of sight, out of mind?

so on world AIDS day, i hope you will join me in confronting the numbers...in remembering each and every child who has been orphaned by AIDS and each and every person who has died of AIDS. may we grieve them, weep over them, and confess that we have not done enough to help. i think part of the battle is fought when we stop believing the lie that we have nothing to do with this. because, honestly, when we begin to see that this truly is our responsiblity, i believe that we will be compelled to act -- to pray, to tell, to give, to serve, to adopt...to love our fellow human beings as we love ourselves.

i confess...

...we went shopping on black friday.

trust me, we were not those crazy people who buy a bunch of stuff they don't need simply because things are on sale. nor were we those jerky people who step on everybody just to get what they want. honestly, we just wanted to get a few good deals on board games at target. jamie signed us up to support 17-year-old twins through the angel tree program. he felt really drawn to them, because, well, older kids sometimes get forgotten. i can't help but think these teenagers have never had a meaningful christmas or just a chance to be kids. to throw a football in their backyard or to beat their friends at a game of monopoly. and so we tried to redeem black friday a little bit...and we had a darn good time with my little sister (who got the last easy bake oven for her angel tree child).

on an unrelated note, i've been listening to christmas music for a couple of weeks already. it just makes writing papers more bearable. but i always wonder why we can't listen to christmas hymns all year round. they are literally the most beautiful and worshipful songs EVER. i get a little weepy every time i hear o holy night, especially the second verse:

truly he taught us to love one another
his law is love and his gospel is peace
chains will he break for the slave is our brother
and in his name, all oppression shall cease

sweet hymns of joy, in grateful chorus raise we
let all within us praise his holy name
christ is the Lord

the blind side

we went to see the blind side on friday night to celebrate my thesis presentation being done. it was an incredible movie, and definitely not as "cheesy" as the critics say. seriously, GO SEE IT. i could write a lot of things about this movie, but i'm not going to. really, all i want to say is that if people leave the movie feeling "warm inside" or "inspired," that's great. but i hope those feelings translate into real consideration of the issues the movie presents. quite honestly, i hope people start to feel unsettled and uncomfortable about having not considered the lives of people -- namely children -- on the other side of town from them AND on the other side of the world from them. the storyline of that movie can potentially happen MILLIONS of times. there are 147 million children just like michael oher in the world. sure, not all of them will become pro-football players and have a movie made about them. but they all have the potential to succeed in their own ways IF families are willing to open their hearts and their homes to them.