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Earlier this year, we finally decided it was time to move forward with the process of adopting a child.  Just like every time my wife looked at me with watery eyes, excitedly announcing we were expecting – this decision freaked me about a bit.  More than a little bit.  But I countered that “freaked out” feeling by rationalizing every detail, one at a time.  Lots of people had babies, I’d reassure myself.  Plenty of people had large families, much larger than ours, and survived alright.  After all, look at _________ (insert any family with more kids than ours)….and they’re doing well, right?

What followed were mental checklists of finances, carseats, hand-me-downs, and remembering what things were like growing up in a family with many kids and not a ton of money.  Eventually it would feel like a more rational thing for us to be doing, and the excitement would grow.  The waves of my thoughts have progressed in a similar fashion with our adoption process.  The excitement tinged with just a bit of “being freaked out” by it all, and checking off the boxes of rational decision making that assured me we were still sane.

But God hasn’t called us to adopt because it’s the rational thing to do.  He didn’t move our hearts toward the list of reasons it makes sense on the scale of what the world considers “feasible family planning”.  Sometimes it takes a giant smack in the face for me to remember all of this.  Recently, we got one. 🙂

It was a simple question, but how we answered would have the potential to change our life dramatically.  “Would you be willing to consider sisters?”  My knee-jerk response?  Ha…..riiiight….sisters.  But right away, God tugged on my heart with the question – Why are you adopting?

After some time of thinking and prayer, we surprised even ourselves by responding – Yes…we would be open to considering sisters.  Then came the information…information that made this adoption journey much more real, scary, and heart-tugging that ever before.  I can’t share much…but I can share – we were moved in big ways.  God was reminding us – and me, specifically – that this wasn’t something we were doing because it was going to bring rational balance to our lives.  This was about responding to the heart and call of God to Love His children, and live sacrificially as He sacrificed His all for us.

Long story short, we are back to pursuing one daughter again.  It was a humbling decision to make, but one that was right for our family and we believe a good decision for the future of those sisters as well.  There were others who were open to adopting sisters, and as we faced a long wait time without a guarantee of approval to adopt 2…we felt at peace changing back once again.  God’s purposes in this exercise had definitely made an impact.  To re-align my heart with His, and carry a Love for His daughter we will be bringing home…as opposed to relying on false pretenses that I can accomplish all of this by my own wisdom and talents as a father/man.

And so we wait for our referral still.  Wait to bring home our daughter from Africa.  Not because it’s going to “fill a void” in our lives, nor because it’s trendy, or because it’s the rational decision with all of the elements in the equation.  But because God loves His children, and this is how He’s calling our family to act on that Love that has filled our hearts as well. 🙂

Praying for the safety, health, and peace of Baby Anderson…and as we pray with our girls lately, “that the grown-ups in her country would stop fighting”.  Amen.

How about you?  Has God ever asked you to do something that required faith, and you ended up distracted by rationalizations? 🙂

Thursday, talks are scheduled for the UN General Assembly meeting in New York on the conflict happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  We are praying, and calling on others to be in prayer as well.  Somewhere in the midst of all of this, our daughter waits for us.  But she is only one of so many children in need of our prayers and actions.  Please pass the link to this on to as many as you know who might join us in prayer Thursday!!  Here’s a link if you’d want to watch/hear any of the U.N. talks happening this week.  Here is a recent news article on what is happening in the DRC:

NAIROBI, 25 September 2012 (IRIN) – Children in the Kivu provinces of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are not only getting caught in the crossfire of the area’s ongoing violence, but also facing health risks, threats of forced recruitment by local and foreign militias, and interrupted educations, say officials.

“Children are swept up in the mass population movements that are currently ongoing in eastern DRC, with entire families fleeing multiple conflicts. Our hospitals have operated on children with bullet wounds who have been caught in the crossfire. Some children present late with life-threatening malaria, malnutrition or respiratory tract infections,” Jan-Peter Stellema, operations manager at Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), told IRIN.

“Many [of the displaced] are hiding in the malarial forests of the interior for days or weeks at a time, cut off from medical care and difficult to reach. Others are living with Congolese host families, often strangers who share their food and living quarters with those on the run,” Stellema said.

The insecurity has disrupted MSF’s healthcare provision, with some of the organization’s mobile clinics being suspended, added Stellema. “Some of our national staff feel unsafe and have also fled, leaving us functioning with skeleton teams in some project locations.”

Children are also under threat of forced recruitment by insurgent groups in North Kivu, including M23 – a group of former DRC national army (FARDC) soldiers who mutinied in April – and both foreign and Congolese militias including the Mai Mai groups and the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR).

In a 19 September statement, a coalition of NGOs in the DRC said, “Children are not only directly exposed to the real risk of recruitment and re-recruitment; their vulnerability is also aggravated by the reduced activity of child protection organizations that are affected by the security situation.”

The statement noted that the redeployment of the FARDC to contain M23 has “given free rein” to self-defence militias and armed groups that use children.

Renewed insecurity in South Kivu

Education in South Kivu Province has been disrupted by the destruction of dozens of classrooms, class sizes overwhelmed by displaced children and the fact that some schools have become temporary dormitories for IDPs, according to an OCHA report.

In the Hauts Plateaux area in Kalehe, in northern South Kivu, conflict between armed groups who are burning and pillaging houses is common, adds OCHA. In late August, at least 500 households fled the area of Kitopo following fighting between the FDLR and the Raïya Mutomboki militia.

“Civilians are facing an unprecedented, high level of armed violence due to the renewed activism of armed groups in the province,” said Florent Mehaule, the acting head of the OCHA office in South Kivu Province.

“This volatile security situation leads to shrinking humanitarian space, preventing humanitarian workers [from] assisting more than 150,000 people in need.”

In South Kivu alone, more than 374,000 people were displaced between January and August, creating growing needs for food assistance, non-food items, water and sanitation, said Mehaule.

Commenting on the situation in eastern DRC, MSF’s Stellema said, “Despite the conflict, life goes on in the region and the regular health needs remain – there are still pregnant women who require antenatal care, or assistance with a complicated delivery, children who are susceptible to measles and need vaccinating… But many of the most vulnerable in the region are now unable to access the assistance they need.”

There’s an aspect to the whole “growing up” thing that I believe we can embrace in an important way.

It may just be me, but it seems like as I was going through my teen/college years, I viewed marriage and family as a way of moving up a life-ladder of some sort.  “Achieving”, and adding more weight to the bucket of my identity or importance in some ways.  Some of that is true.  When my wife and I were married almost 10 years ago, I became half of an inter-dependent relationship.  The children we’ve brought into the world since then, depend on us for their livelihood.

Especially as we move toward an international adoption, there’s an opportunity and temptation to further inflate my sense of self-importance and pride.

Or, there’s another aspect to all of this.  The increased ability to be humiliated. 🙂

It’s a bit of Christianity we don’t talk about a ton, but it’s there all the time if we’re willing to let ourselves acknowledge it.  God calls us to be humble.  Not only to “be” humble, but to perform the action of “humbling ourselves”.  As in James 4:10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.”  But what we don’t like to realize, is that often the path to increased humility is traveling the road of humiliation.  Our pastor reminds us often, and I like it…even if I’m not always a fan of humiliation in the moment.

Opening ourselves up to a marriage relationship can be a rewardingly humiliating experience.  No other place in life do we enjoy the amount of vulnerability and openness a covenant relationship of marriage can offer.  I’m not simply talking about the obvious areas, like growing old and seeing each other at our worst.  My wife has seen me snotty/stuffy, she’s seen me miserably recovering from a tonsillectomy, and endured me passing out on the ER floor.  (and those are quite clean compared to the stuff I won’t share here)  But there’s more.  She knows my heart.  Admittedly, I can be a reserved person emotionally.  But if there’s one person I can share my most humiliating bits with…the times I feel down, or like a failure…it’s my wife who I can turn to, and be held by.  And so, building our relationship and strengthening my marriage – continues to lead me deeper down this path of humility.  Even if it means I’m humiliated in front of the woman who has committed to loving me no matter how humble I may get. 🙂

Now on top of that incredible and humiliating existence, add the aspect of parenting.  Bringing forth tiny versions of ourselves, who end up becoming living breathing reflections of who we are.  Tiny little mirrors walking around, pointing out to us and amplifying anything we may do imperfectly.  Pointing out to us where we may fall short, even from their innocence of figuring out the world around them.  Testing our patience, and revealing the cracks where we may not be as strong as we thought.  Helping us realize we may not be 100% yielded to Christ, and forcing us to our knees in prayer when life isn’t easy to fake our way through anymore.  Even more so when these events happen at 80 decibels in the cereal aisle of Kroger.  Parenting can be a humiliating endeavor…and as Christians – we embrace that as a positive thing.  Why?  Again…because humiliation leads us to a life that bears the fruit of humility.

So it’s with a bit of irony, and not always a helpful nod that so many Christian parenting books are about helping parents navigate these roads with less difficulty, more smooth sailing, and with control over their lives.  Instead of feeling pressure this week to “have it all figured out”, or “knowing the best way to do ______ with your children”….embrace the moments that make you feel humiliated as a parent.  Smile when your spouse shares a moment with you that you wouldn’t dare share with anyone else.  May God continue to be faithful as we turn to Him from where we are…:)