Seeing a Beautiful Picture and a Harsh Reality

One of the social workers involved in our adoption process presented both a beautiful picture and a harsh reality to us at the same time during our last meeting. The beautiful picture was actually her life story. She was adopted from Korea when she was about a year old. She is now a strong believer in Christ and works with families here to adopt children internationally. What a picture of a life transformed by the power of the Gospel to make His glory known in all nations. My hope and prayer is that our little girls will have a similar story to tell 20 years from now! 

After hearing her story, she then told us of a harsh reality that is going on every day around the world. She recently went to China to see some orphanages her group works with and do some studies. She told us about some thing she saw, that is actually one of the things we learned about in our preparation for this adoption. It is very common that the children from orphanages may have scars around their wrists, ankles, or waists. These scars are nor from abuse, but from being tied to the bed all day. They are restrained all day because the care giver to child ratio can be as much as 1 worker to 40 children. They see the only way to keep the children from getting hurt or lost is to keep them tied to the bed. She said she saw children as old as 5 years old still being tied to the bed. HOW HEART BREAKING! I cannot even imagine my little David being tied to a bed all day every day! My mind cannot even imagine my boys having missed out on all they have done up to their 5th birthday because they were tied to a bed all the time! An even deeper reality in this story, is that all they need is someone to spend time loving on them, playing with them, meeting their most basic needs of attention and affection, something everyone is perfectly capable of doing, and for the most part, God's church who He has commanded to look after these children (James 1:27), is sitting around enjoying our comfortable lifestyles, having fun in our church activities, and live our lives as if these children don't even exist. Many get a little offended when I say things like that, but when we honestly put our lives on the table, the reality is only validated.

May God forgive me of my lack of action and lack of obedience and ultimately my sinful heart that indulges in the pleasures we have here in Birmingham, AL, and change my heart to only be satisfied in answering His command to "look after [these] orphans".

Humbly In Christ and Saved by His Grace
Andrew
Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching." John 14:23

What do our boys think about all this?

One thought in the back of every parent's mind when it comes to big decisions we make is, "how will this affect my children?" When it comes to this adoption, I would say the biggest area we struggled with is assessing what impacts this decision will have on our boys. Specifically, we realize that the adopted children will require a large amount of focused attention, even more so than a new born child, and therefore, a lot of our time. We obviously do not want this change in our availability to take away from our boys' growth and development. Ultimately this drives me to ask REAL questions like, "what is best for their growth and development?".

So what do our boys say about this? David our 4 year old: "They don't have a Mom and Dad and they need a Mom and Dad. And I will share my toys with them, but they probably won't be big enough to play with my remote control Mustang though (his biggest and favorite which we tell him he is now big enough to play with ;-))." Joseph our 7 year old says, "So Dad, that means they will come and live here right? They can sleep in my room (he & David are in bunk beds in one room and his old room is still full of his stuff, including his bed) and they can have bunk beds like us."

They get it! In their mind, God wants us to do this, so OK let's go! They look at the situation and immediately see and connect to the need! I look and immediately see all the obstacles to overcome in order to meet the need! Why can't I have that simple "child-like" faith!?! Way too often, when I see the need and God's call to do something, I think about all the "How's", meaning how are we going to do this or that, or how is this going to impact our family, my time with my boys, etc.

One favorite verse related to parenting is Pv 22:19, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it." The word for "train up" is the same word for "disciple". It is abundantly clear to me in the case of this adoption that we must train our boys to see God's will and respond in FAITH and not see the obstacles we will face in order to address the need(s) at hand. The only way we can train them to do this is for them to see this mind set and heart attitude in action. We cannot simply tell them about living life this way and hope they do. They must SEE it in us! What a great lesson I hope and pray these boys will get out of this process as it will change the rest of their lives if they grasp it.

Following in faith,

Andrew