No more pearls before swine

I'm having a hard time lately dealing with people. Specifically, people who are not like minded when it comes to what I think is close to God's heart. I'm having a hard time feeling 'proud' to be an American. Because more and more, I am finding that the two problems above are intertwined. I'm starting to think that the American way, is not thinking about God's heart.

Since I was young, I had heard the stories about foreigners not liking Americans. I never understood why...until recently. I have encountered some people that are what I am starting think of as American Snobs since we started our adoption of a little boy in Africa. These are the ones that even after a little thought want to know why Africa, and if they are really bold, why NOT the US. I'm not Talking about simple curiosity, I'm talking about offended that we would go all the way over there to get a child when there are plenty of them here....according to them.

Really? Where are all of these starving children in the US? Where are all these children dying of preventable diseases? I'll tell you...they aren't here. They don't exist. There are orphans here. And I am not negating the fact that some of them have a very bad situation. I'm not denying that they would love to be adopted, to have a forever family, a mom and a dad. (Heck, we will probably also adopt from the US one day!)

What I am saying is that these children do not have a death sentence if someone doesn't act. I'm saying that our gov't system is so screwed up in certain states that it's darn near impossible to adopt a foster child.

I'm saying that in a country in Africa the size of Texas, over 25,000 children have died...

in just 3 months.


And when I say something about that on Facebook, I'm blasted because I don't know how many will die today in the US.

I'll tell you how many....

5 children will die today in the US from abuse or neglect.

These children will die because a parent or the adult in charge of them will beat them or not care for them properly.

Pure evil.


 Not because there is no food in the 4 grocery stores within 10 miles of our homes, I was just at two of them....there is still plenty of food.

300 children will die today in the Horn of Africa, because their parent or adult in charge of them can't feed them. How does that invoke a reaction of "well, we need to take care of our own country first"? How does that not bring out compassion? How does that not break your heart?  They are saying that 800,000 children will die before ethos is over....how can we go on without action?

Um, and quite frankly, it's not the point, is it?

The point is, that this child is dying right now.

And we are not doing anything.  We are not even talking about it in the news!

My thoughts, I once heard that compassion was like a muscle, it needs to be exercised. I think that we are not using this muscle.  We rarely exercise compassion, for our own people and very rarely for other nations.

I'm starting to not even want to share this broken heart of God's with others....seems like so many people just don't care.

I'm starting to understand when it says in the Bible to not throw your pearls to the swine...seems like so many people just. don't. care.

So, if the picture makes you uncomfortable, go ahead and close the blog, but if in you, you can hear your heart echoing God's heart, if you can feel it start to break, go here and do something, anything....

It's finally top news

Africa is finally making the top news. It doesn't make me happy though, it means it's bad, very bad. Wishing I could head over and scoop up and handful of children tonight and save them from a certain death...of starvation.

I've come to realize that I am NOT Normal

So, I have just about decided that it's time to admit something to myself....are you ready for it?

I am not normal.

Most of my life, I have never really been bothered by what others have thought of me.

As a child, if someone believed something differently as far as the Bible went, I would (very confidently) correct them (based on my knowledge) and move on with life, not really worried of their opinion of me. Mind you, I may or may not have always been correct.

In college, I had no problem going about a daily task in my sweats or comfy pajama pants. If someone thought I was a slob, oh well...hey I was in college and didn't really care.

As a young mom, I was doing good to get a shower and brush my teeth.... good for you if you had a matching, stylish outfit and make-up on, I didn't have the time or the energy.

The thing is, most of this time, I have felt pretty normal.  I felt like I was the same as most people. Maybe more passionate about somethings, but still within the normal range.

But here lately, I have been making choices that have put me out of the ordinary. They all don't necessarily go together, some have nothing to do with each other, and maybe one of the choices by itself, I would still be considered normal.

The problem is, you put all the decisions together and someone finds out about all of them at the same time (like when you are having dinner with your dh's work people and you are casually chatting about life) you realize, when it's all said out loud, wow, we are really NOT normal.

So here is it, all of the reasons that I am not normal (yikes, the list seems to be growing the older I get!)

We are adopting (even though we can have biological children). This is my favorite reason that we are not normal. Something that I have come to realize that as a Christian, God calls our lives to really look different and to stand out.  This is one way that my family wants to look different. We want to adopt because God adopted us, His heart is for adoption, and there are plenty of orphans all over the world. So we will answer His call to care for the orphan by bringing one or two or three....if my hubby is reading this, he is smiling and shaking his head, his blood pressure is rising and he is wondering about all the dollar signs ;-) ....orphans into our home and call them our own.

We are homeschooling our children. Now, in some circles, this is a big one. But, since I am so surrounded in our town and in our church by homeschooling families, I forget how different this is....until I get the "Wow! Really! I bet that's really hard" or "You must have a lot of patience, or energy, or insert whatever misconception people have about homeschooling moms." Really people, some days I have very little patience, probably less than you do if you send your kids to school because you had a break from them :-)

And yes, it's really hard, but I am doing it anyway. I believe, as I do with adoption, that God has called me to this. It didn't start out because of my beliefs, but it it has defiantly evolved into one of my main reasons. God just used the initial reasons to convict me and help me to see that this was the best option for my children.  Again, God calls us to look differently. Without sounding like I am trying to condemn those who send their children off to school (that is completely not what I want to do! This is just how God has shown me we need to look different), I feel like we as a family cannot look different from the world if my children spend the majority of their time being influenced by someone other than me (i.e. teachers, classmates, people whose beliefs might be very different than mine).  I feel like if I put them out in the world before they have a good foundation, I am setting them up to fail.  As a young man that has been homeschooled said, "A little sheltering is good.  Why stand out in the rain if you don't have to?"

We had (well, my hubby had...) a vasectomy reversal and will probably have more children (biological). I went a little more into this subject here, but in a nutshell...we are trusting that God will provide for our family.  I'm not sure how I will handle it, but I can see us with a large family.  Not Duggar large, but hey, with the American average family size at 4, we are already bigger than some.

The above things are big decisions, here are some smaller things that I do that really add to my abnormality ;-)


We had a homebirth.  Love, love, love this new decision that I made with Baby Sis, it turned out awesome and you can read about it here.

We are cloth diapering with this new little one.  Yes, I have gotten some serious reactions to this one.  Some are entertaining, some are a little hurtful, but hey, I love it so far.  I am even currently using the diapers that your great grandmother used....flats!  EEK!  You actually have to fold them!  Now, we have cool velcro tabbed covers to go over them, and really...folding them is a novelty, so it's fun.  By the time the novelty wears off, she will be big enough to fit in our cool, 21st century cloth diapers...

like these.....




Some things that are soon to come in our life of not being normal, but are not in effect yet....

I am leaning towards courting for my children.  I am starting to believe that dating and breaking up is just practice for divorce.  With Christian divorce rates almost exactly the same as secular rates...something has to change.

I would love to go live in Africa for a time period and help or run an orphanage.  Not sure this will ever happen, but I bring it up to hubby all the time....we'll see :)

So there you have it, I said it!  I am not really normal.  I'm okay with that, I still really don't care what others think.  I mean, sometimes I catch myself wondering, but I am striving to only please God.  I do want people to "like" me, so I need to work on that a bit more.  But, more and more I am trying to live radically for Christ, with my family and as an individual. 

Why Ethiopia?

I stumbled on a blog this morning that has renewed my heartache for Caleb....a little boy that I haven't seen yet, even though he is my son.  God has a plan for him to be in our family.

I knew all this info already, but I thought I'd share this video with you.  Just take a minute to turn off the music at the very bottom and then watch this as another family explains, "Why adopt from Ethiopia?"

Why not adopt from here (the US)? Why Africa?

Well, I didn't actually think we would be answering this question as much as we have, but this seems to be the number one question. Naturally, with some people I smile and give them my reasons and I chuckle afterwards because I fully expected it. Then others ask it and I get a little rubbed wrong under the skin. Well, I'm in a pretty good mood this morning so I thought I'd tackle this question in a mature tone ;)

First, let me tackle the why not adopt an American? Well, for us... we know that there are orphans here is the US in the foster care system. Sadly these children are not necessarily in the foster care system because both of their parents are gone or their parents are too poor to take care of them, but for a host of all kinds of other reasons. Though foster care is not perfect and broken in many places, these children know what it's like to live in a nuclear family setting. They have plenty of clothes and food and will receive an education if they stay in school. The second part to my decision to not adopt a child from foster care, many of the children are older and have a host of problems (many of which are not of their making). This said, I want to protect my children and not bring in an older child that might disrupt the birth order of my kids and make for a very hard family adjustment. The NOT part is only very small in our decision. The main reasons are the WHY AFRICA?

Why Africa? Even more than the why not the US, we feel like it's the reasons that we SHOULD adopt from Africa. If you look at my statistics page at the top, you will see the staggering numbers. Some are worldwide, but many of the numbers are for Africa and they will break your heart if you think on it enough. As I typed this last sentence, 2 children became orphans in Africa because of AIDS. In Ethiopia alone, which is about twice the size of Texas, there are 4.3 million orphans. These children grow up in crowded orphanages never knowing the love of sole providers. The babies won't get the constant holding, cuddling, and playing that my girls alone would provide and baby sibling, not to mention the mommy and daddy cuddling and playing. In most countries, when children turn 16 (sometimes as early as 14), they are handed a couple hundred dollars and they are sent on their way..... no family, no support. As I write this, I want to yell, WHY NOT? Don't tell me we don't have enough money or enough room. Americans with their $40,000 cars (an adoption - $25,000) and our 2000 square foot homes. Come on! Families used to (and still do) raise children and make them share a bedroom, gasp!

Okay, okay, I seem to have lost some of my cool that I had a the beginning of my post....deep breath. We as Americans are just so removed that we can easily go on with our days and then actually ask, why. Amazing and so, so sad. We are not all called to adopt, I understand that. But I do wish that we were more compassionate as a nation. The reactions that we have had over the past week show me that we are not quite as compassionate as we "think" we are.

Simply know this, Kelly and I have been called to help in some small way, this is the way we feel God is leading us. :) We hope you find your way to help.

Choices

I never knew there were so many choices in adoption. First, there are the choices of domestic, foster care, and international adoption. Then you decide if you want a newborn, older baby, or older child. Not to mention, once you've decided as we have:

International,

any age baby, hmm, maybe under 15 mos,

now you have to decide where (we've narrowed down to Africa, now we have to decide on a country), what age, gender and the health of a child.

It all seems like so many choices, yet what is so comforting and I keep reminding my kids of this, God has already chosen our child for our family!

Psalm 139:16 tells us:

"You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed."

Now, we have been looking at an agency that we've been drawn to, AWAA, we've been reading about their Africa programs and only seem to qualify for Ethiopia. :) These things are so wonderful because I can see God's hand guiding us thru the decisions. The girls have had some input here, Big Sis would like a Chinese orphan and Little Sis an African orphan. They have different reasons, but one of the better ones was when Little Sis said that she didn't want a baby from China because the baby would grow up to speak Chinese (she's quite worried we wouldn't be able to communicate as a family). Oh, to have an innocent mind!

Naturally, the girls have also been weighing in on gender also, they both want a brother. Now again, Little Sis would like an older brother, but I'm not sure we are going that way this time ;) So, Kelly and I have been talking about boys and girls and running it around in our heads. I've told everyone to remember that we don't get to pick gender in a pregnancy, so why now? But God seems to be putting little boys in my mind thru little things because I tend to lean toward a girl (hey, I already know what to do with girls!). Yesterday I was just reading about how most families waiting for adoption want girls, it's sad to me to think people will somehow be easier attached or love will come easier to a girl. I know a couple little boys from my friends that are so squeezable and I love them and their not even mine! What worries me is the wild, loud little boys that love to knock down blocks immediately after the tower is built. (This describes those squeezable boys to a T) I just don't see myself dealing well with he destruction of my house for fun ;)

Did I mention my girlfriend of 3 boys is trying to pray a boy into my family?!

Who knows what we will actually put on the application, maybe we'll put both and leave it entirely up to God. Before bed last night, Kelly told me to pick heads or tails and we flipped for it, he says God already decided with that, so there you go! LOL! Decisions, decisions!