Category: Current Adoption

I’ve Arrived

My pastor was preaching. 

His text and his sermon title I’ve already forgotten. But it will be a long time before I forget this. 

His words were about buy-in and the Great Kingdom and meaning and God. About sacrifice and worship. About  purpose and dying to self and wanting more of Him, less of me… 

Well, at least some of those things were in there. It maddens me how quickly the mind blurs specifics sometimes. I’m sure he was clear in the moment. All the words going somewhere and making excellent points. I’m confident that whatever he said, he was organized and we were all tracking along. But I would soon go on to miss whatever would be said next because of this: 

“I’ve arrived!” 

What on earth kind of absurd deduction is THAT, mister?”

It was not my pastor speaking. Far from it. For he doesn’t in the least live, act, or act like he thinks that. C’mon, who are we kidding? No one––not the haughty, not the grossly self-unaware, not even my long, long ago pastor who very much acted like he believed he’d “arrived” somewhere important––would dare commit the social suicide of saying “I’ve arrived” out loud. 

It’s clearly against our rules. So no, I hadn’t heard it. 

I’d thought it. 

In my own head. About myself.

Somewhere along the dividing line between my pastor’s words and my thought train about giving up my own life and being willing to hang on to the adventure that is life with God, it came to me. I had: the thought. 

“I’ve arrived.” 

“I have that life.”

Believe me, had you been there to hear me think it, your jaw would have dropped, but it would not have dropped faster than mine. I was more aghast than you would have been.

Oh, my, Dann.

How could you?

You can’t think that! It’s forbidden. It doesn’t matter what “good” deeds you think you may have done, you know as well as everybody. WE NEVER ARRIVE. You will never “arrive.” 

OK, Ok, I know, I know! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t actually intend to think it.

Like excuses can ever stand in for truly satisfactory analyzation of mortifying mental no-nos.

I knew exactly the roots of where the thought had come from. It was coming out of our last three years. I had laid down my life. I had learned to be content in whatever circumstance. I had placed free time, my career, my finances, sanity, my spouse, and my other children at the foot of the cross. I’d let Him determine the course of my life and I’d held on for every subsequent by-product since, pleasant or not. 

And I’d come out on the other side of wilderness, while not unscathed, more committed than ever to submission.

And before my eyes I saw that wilderness path in a Kingdom way with 20/20 hindsight. He’d accomplished so much. In me. In our family. I was living a type of life that in years prior I could easily remember only longing for. My very existence now was different than it had been.

I’d “arrived.” But that was too far.  

How to deal with the embarrassment of consciously thinking it? Everyone knows you can’t say THAT. “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24 NASB). I figured I’d just gotten in line for some of the same kind of sinful-nature wrestling I’d engaged, like Paul, a thousand times over. 

What came instead was unexpected. 

The mental tape of self-flagellation had barely started spinning up in my head before it got stopped abruptly. (I know, some of you have digital files that play in your head. Others maybe vinyl. Mine plays tapes.)

Instead…

“What if, my son, you thought of it as arriving in some place? Instead of to some place?” 

Wait, what! 

God?

“If you’ve arrived in a place, rather than to a place, might it not actually be okay to think what you just thought?”

Whoa.

Like into a river. A stream. A place where I was knowing and understanding and experiencing both Him and a way of living that previously I had not known. 

That’s not what I’d expected. And wow, maybe there really hadn’t been any pride in my heart. I’d had the thought and God wasn’t in the least taken aback by it. It just was. 

OK, God!

I bought it immediately. And saw that my greatest transgression was probably the knee-jerk reaction. That was my flesh. The old nature. He never fails to tithe on his mint and, doggonit, he was going to call a spade a spade: 

“That phrase is evil. Thou shalt not ‘arrive.’ Thou shalt not say it, nor think it, nor permit it within thy hearing if spoken by thy neighbor.”

I myself was so aghast at its outward appearance (weren’t you when you first read it?) that it never even crossed my mind to look any further into my heart. 

I’m so glad God does. 

I have arrived. I’ve been walking in places where my spirit hadn’t come previously. And there are more places, still, where he wants to take us all. Let’s let him decide. It’s weird to think that when I do arrive in those places, I might be saying so. 

The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, “Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?” has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.

I Corinthians 2:14-16 MSG

My Future Favorite Holiday

You know adoption is hard when your day’s held a couple hours of human excrement clean-up and it’s not even in the running for the worst part of your day. 

The poop had nothing to do with our family, by the way. Goodness, all parents have had plenty of experience with that stuff, so it’s hardly news. But this cleanup was outside our home at one of our refugee complexes, brought on by someone upstream flushing something so egregious that total pipe blockage downstream was the result. 

The problem came to our attention only after raw sewage had gurgled for days right up out of our tubs, sinks, and toilets. The toilets were the grossest, as bowls would jam to the brim with solids then keep slow-flowin’ right out to the four walls and beyond. 

Today we cleaned it up. 

Cheerfully, much of it had dried so completely that a plastic hand scraper did the worst of the job just swimmingly. Unfortunately, one tub had a dripping faucet keeping its stool pie moist. Whereas the dry cleanup was like scraping at a cow patty, this tub was more like scooping out a layer of not-yet-set Jello-O.

But the very most nauseating part of my day was encountering the few turds that were not just turd in substance, but turd in shape. I must say that the sight of them (the perpetual sinus trouble that keeps me from smelling much most days was an especial blessing today) just about sent my stomach over the edge. 

But how funny to take note my mental self-talk: “Hang in there, guy. Steady now…I’ve got it: just imagine it’s child’s poop. That’ll be better. Some kid upstairs. Hey, what if it was even a kid you’ve just adopted—you’d be able to ‘love’ and ‘embrace’ this for them…”

Indeed I would. 

Embracing the stinky feet, poopy messes, greasy hair, or poor hygiene of a child of your own is a normal part of parenthood. Whether or not you can stomach the like from a friend’s kid or teen is another matter. What about a total stranger? Sometimes it might be revolting and we can’t help it. Even after that stranger is your adopted child. I’ve been surprised at how long into our relationship with our own adopted teenager these reactions can rise up in me. Yet I move to embrace him all the same, because he, too, truly is our own. It’s nobody’s fault we all missed the cute years together. It just leaves big holes.   

Anyway, neither scraping the dry nor scooping the wet excrement of multitudinous strangers was the hardest part of my day. That was reserved for the hour and a half before bed with my adopted son. Yet another tantrum. Oddly enough, it was his tantrum the night before that had sent me out the door for the poop cleanup escapade in the first place, distractedly searching for some kind of pick-me-up from my weary morning-after discouragement. And, I will have to say, it pretty much worked. Amazing the value that self-sacrifice can sometimes bring us, touching spots within that aren’t so easily reached by other methods, perhaps. 

But tonight: more violence. More screaming. More punching. More “I don’t care!s” and “Hurt me! Break my arm! You don’t care about me!” All over something practically meaningless. Refusal to give way. To simply obey. And all kinds of breakage, as usual. He guards and organizes so carefully for weeks, only to throw and smash and destroy so much so quickly. 

And this particular requirement of self-sacrifice the past three years I’ve often grown sick of offering, frankly. I’ve processed it and blogged it and prayed it and shared it and gotten up to move forward again…more times than I could possibly tally. This being the third tantrum this week, and that not being his normal any more, it hit me, suddenly…

Of course. It’s Christmas. 

What with his great and many improvements all the rest of this year, I’d almost forgotten how much I’d grown to hate Christmas the last two. Well, not hate Christmas, but hate missing it. Hate that what was always the most nostalgic, truly wonderful time of the year for me had become a season to dread. At one point or another we dreaded any and every holiday, even weekends, but Christmas was easily the the hardest to kiss good-bye. 

But Christmas remains just too hard for him. Too exciting. Too much anticipation. Too many days of waiting. Countdowns are brutal for him, and we cannot shield him from all of them. Christmas is part of the culture and part of our family. And so counting down the 12 days of Christmas became mainly nostalgia for the years when that was actually fun. 

But my point in writing today is not to complain, but rather encourage. Many have brought home a kid(s) from a difficult place. You are not alone. Up ahead…our valleys widen. Others fight on near you, even if most of us never hear of one another. 

Together, this Christmas season especially, let us embrace Hope. And push away the wishing. “I wish my life were different. I wish people knew how hard this was. I wish folks would pity us for all we continue to lose all these weeks/months/years later. I wish people would stop commiserating with stories of their normal children. I wish people would stop lobbing ridiculous solutions at our misery.” 

Christmas celebrates the coming of the Baby. A coming which grants us far greater and far more than wishes. His coming gives us hope. And only hope will carry us through pain, suffering, or loss. Pain, suffering, and loss all lay in store for the Baby, too, yet His birth announcement was an announcement of hope. Hope for us. “For unto you has been born this day, a Savior”!

Hope is possible in my valleys because of the Baby who came to die for me willingly. And He causes me to reconsider my burdens and lay them aside, also willingly, one more time, shouting, “Yes! I’ll follow. I’ll do what you ask. I’ll sacrifice anything.” 

I’ll even lay down the joys of my formerly favorite holiday filled with childhood nostalgia and wonder. 

Because of Him, my adoption became reality. I’m safe and sound in my Forever Family, and the Baby paid the price. Shall I not be willing to pay whatever price necessary to ensure my son’s place in his earthly forever family? 

Christmas will be good again, I know. 

[Update: while my quickly-thought-of original title, “My Formerly Favorite Holiday,” is not horrible, it struck me a day or so later that it conveyed a bit of that “wishful thinking” I was trying to move away from. This current one far better conveys hope.]

The Good Kind

“Did God say anything to you, today?”

My question—phrased something like that—was a bit out of the blue, I suppose, but I didn’t expect the blank reactions I got around our dinner table that night.

One of our younger ones, after a couple of false starts, concluded, “I don’t know what you mean, Dad.”

“Like…”  a chewing teen deadpanned, “a voice? Nope.”

Yikes! Who’s raising these kids? 

I feel like every day is me craning forward, desirous of hearing God’s voice. 

Maybe I haven’t talked about it out loud enough with these guys? 

Only to have another teen chime in and relieve me that I’d at least been doing some child-raising all these years. 

“Guys, listen!” he said. “God speaking is like something inside you, not something in your ears, necessarily. He puts things in your mind when you’re reading the Bible, or listening to a song, or in church…” 

“Exactly,” I went on. “Guys, I’m just meaning to ask if he put something on your heart, led you to do something, say something, filled your mind with a thought from a verse, anything like that.”

“Oh…!” came the chorus. “Why didn’t you say so?” Our time took an upswing as I asked one kid after another, with clearer wording, I guess, and we all got to listen to some very sweet answers. 

I think the only kid that didn’t get asked was Everett. Not that I did it on purpose. I wasn’t sulking from having had a particularly hard day with him, nothing beyond the normal surviving him. He wasn’t behaving “badly.” The day had held no tantrums or sabotage or big lying. 

I chalked up my inadvertent exclusion as legitimate byproduct of his maturity level.

Only to get twinged by the reminder that our faith is a faith for children. It calls me to be like a child. 

But it was no big deal, right? What was he going to say? He didn’t even seem to notice, and I was sure the whole thing would be forgotten before we left the room. However, I could identify some regret in the fact that, in that moment (and I know there are others), Everett hadn’t gotten from me the grace that our Heavenly Dad always extends to us. 

We went up for bedtime. A half hour later I was lying on the floor guarding his door because now there had been problems. An ugly fight with Hope. Blatant defiance of Tammy. Yelling, stomping, and what looked like another tantrum brewing. 

I just let him be.

Time helps him these days. It never did in the beginning. Past a certain emotional point, it was always going to go all the way over the edge into violence. But we’ve moved beyond those days, and sometimes, now, he can stop himself.

I gave him time. Didn’t even say anything when he got out his headphones and music, though he often needs to be kept from playing or goofing if he’s in the middle of defying us or acting like there isn’t broken relationship in need of mending… But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he might actually be trying to calm himself down. 

5 minutes. 10. Not long after that, he takes off his headphones. 

“Dad, I’m ready.” 

Our signal that an episode is over. He’s ready to make things right. Wow.

“OK, Everett, good words. I’m glad. Ready for what?” 

“To say ‘sorry’ to Hope.”

“That’s wonderful, son, but I think Hope’s about asleep. We’re probably going to have to do that part tomorrow. You could make things right with mom. And me.”

“Could I just call to Hope from the hall?”

“That’s really good asking bud. OK, let me see if she’s still awake.”

“She is!” Eden (who lies awake for hours every. single. night of her life) yelled over, saving me from getting up.

And Everett went out in the hall and did just lovely. 

Coming back to where I was lying on his floor, praying through some silly stresses about money, my conundrum of a son knelt down and whispered in my ear.

“Jesus talked to me.” 

Eyes popped. I cocked my head to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“In my music. A song came on. John 13:thirty…something. It said ‘love each other,’ So I had to talk to Hope.”

 

The tears Tammy and I shared as I told the story before we fell asleep that night were not the usual tears we’ve cried over this son. This time, for a change, we got to cry the good kind.