It has been 7 years since our last trip to Alabama, and a long paper chain in shades of the sea winds its way around our dining room, strips torn off daily in anticipation of the trip planned for this summer. The soft white sands of the Gulf Shore beckoned. It was finally going to happen.
And then, tragedy. Eleven men killed, their families bereft, and a hole in the ocean floor gushing oil into the salty water like a ruptured appendix, throwing the whole system into shock.
Soon the white sands will be covered in balls of oil. The slick, spreading mass will invade the estuaries and wreak havoc. Nesting turtles and birds will die along with countless sea life, fishermen’s livelihoods will falter, and no one is sure just when we can expect resolution.
How can something be so harmless when it dwells beneath the surface, so much a part of the elemental earth, and yet so toxic when extracted from its home within the layers? Like bile within our bodies, it serves our purposes but we don’t want it leaking where it doesn’t belong.
Human bodies have recovered from ruptured appendices, with enough help and time and intervention. I hope the same is true for my beloved, poisoned Gulf.
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as children by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” Romans 8:15
It’s a special Metaphor Monday here at One Thing. Today adoption is on my heart, specifically the impending adoption of two sweet girls from the Ukraine by my friends Kate and Charley.
What could be more exciting than the fact that two little girls are getting a whole new future? What could be more amazing than that a family a whole world away could open their hearts to two children whose lives were considered as good as dead upon birth? What staggers the imagination more than the thought that these girls will be welcomed as family members, encouraged to rise above their “limitations”, nurtured to health, and loved beyond all human reason?
Their own country doesn’t consider them special, but a burden. Their parents did not have the means to help them. They were facing institutionalization, which means something quite a bit more disturbing in most countries than we in America could fathom.
I firmly believe that adoption is near and dear to God’s heart. He is the Author of new beginnings, the Changer of destinies, and the Seeker of the lost. He delights in taking what the world calls useless…burdensome…abandoned and changing its name to beloved…favored…and Mine.
Kate and Charley have committed to their new daughters, Bethany Danielle and Laura Christine. The paperwork is underway. Travel plans are being made. You can visit their adoption blog and read about their progress towards the anticipated homecoming.
The organization that led Kate and Charley to their girls is Reece’s Rainbow. This is not an adoption agency, but a nonprofit organization that finds Down Syndrome orphans and spotlights their cases all on one website. They have, in the last two years, found adoptive families for over 200 children from 32 countries.
Here is the page that makes me cry. So many precious faces. So many whose futures are hopeless unless someone intervenes. I want to gather them all up, every single one. Obviously I can’t. But I can do something.
On the blog there is a quote that blows me away every time I read it. It convicts me to rise up out of my apathetic daze and motivates me to act. It’s proverbs 24:12:
Once our eyes are opened, we can’t pretend we don’t know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts & keeps our souls, knows that we know and holds us accountable to act.
Not everyone is called to adopt (although it is my personal opinion that more would be called if they only had the courage to ask the Lord honestly, lol). But we are all called to help the case of the widow and orphan (James 1:27), in whatever way we can. This week I hope to present a couple of ways that just about anyone can participate in.
(For instance, if you love coffee, or know someone who does, how about buying a bag here, where $5 of every purchase will go towards Kate and Charley’s adoption expenses?)
Bethany and Laura may never completely understand what Kate and Charley have saved them from, what it cost, nor just how drastically their futures were altered all because of courage, and faith, and LOVE.
In the same way, we as Christians cannot fully comprehend just what we have been saved from or for until the day we meet our Abba God face to face and we enter into the future forever with Him. Nor can we fathom the price He paid to lift us from our hopeless state.
For now, we have a chance to work hand in hand with Him in setting the lonely in families (ps. 68:6), and help bring Bethany and Laura home. I am honored and humbled to be a part of that process.
Everybody’s met him. He’s irresistable. Beautiful. Tantalizing. Riveting. Compelling. Mysterious. Desireable. You want more of him. You think you need him. You put your arms around him.
And then he eats you.
Years ago I read Frank Peretti’s The Oath, a book in which sin is portrayed as a dragon, and the image stuck. The way Peretti described the hero’s feeling towards the beast was inspired. From a distance, the dragon was easily seen as a sinister monster that must be killed in order to be free of it. It was obvious that it was up to no good.
Yet, as the stalwart hero approached to drive the spear in, the perception changed. The closer he got, the more beautiful the dragon appeared. The hero’s heart grew tender towards it, wavering in his determination to be done with it. Closer still, and he began to really like it, even love it, to the point of feeling a fierce protectiveness towards it, absolutely certain that it would not do him harm after all.
It comes back to me over and over again…do I hate my sin? Do I really want to be done with it? Do I really believe that it will destroy me? Or do I think I can play with it, coddle it…tame it, clean it up, make it okay?
Is there sin lurking in the corners of your heart? Are you defending it because you have been defined by it for so long that you are afraid you won’t recognize yourself without it? Maybe you think it makes you an interesting, well-rounded person. It makes you feel alive when you feed it.
The trouble is, it’s never satisfied. The cute little lizard you brought home is growing. It cries out to be fed, and when you do, it grows healthy and strong. It tells you all kinds of lies that make you feel beautiful, powerful, exciting…fill in the blank. You think you control it, but all the while its claws are piercing your soul, until you believe that if you pull it out you will suffer a fatal hemorrhage.
It’s killing you. Sure as you are reading these words, it will be the death of you. Stop coddling it. Confess it, and let Jesus remove the talons and staunch the flow. He is the original Dragonslayer, no matter how big and ugly the serpent is.
Got a metaphor for me? Leave me a comment, or a link!
Chocolate. In its purest form, it’s nothing but a harsh, bitter bean. Once, when I was a child, I licked my finger and dipped it into the cocoa my mother was using to bake with, thinking it was chocolate powder.
It was an experience I would never repeat.
But you add a little sugar to it, and everything changes. You have something wonderful. Tongue-tingling. Addictive, even.
It’s a process, like everything else. It takes work. It takes time. It requires harvesting and fermenting and crushing and melting and transforming.
Bitter to sweet. Harsh to smooth. Energy, effort, struggle, triumph. The cacao bean ain’t gonna transform itself, after all. It needs some help to get there. It needs somebody who wants the finished product badly enough to follow all the steps through to the end.
I’m glad the Mayans discovered how to turn the humble cacao bean into something delectible. I’m glad they didn’t sneer at the weird pods that hung all about them and dismiss them as completely useless.
I’m glad I have a Creator who knows I can be more than meets the eye, too. He knows exactly what I need in order to become what I was meant to be.
*pause to reflect upon the monumental truth I’ve just laid out, as violins play a soft and gentle melody*
*massive belch*
*snicker*
I’m also glad to know that too much sweet is just plain sickening.
On that note, let’s give away some chocolate, shall we?
The great and powerful Random.org speaks, and spews out a number…and that number issssss….
TWENTY-ONE
Melanie!! Who said:
Mel, your wish is my command. I’m so happy you won! I’ll get your chocolates to you just as soon as I get your info!
And thank you to EVERYBODY who entered my contest. The chocolates can be purchased here if you still want to try them on for size; I promise they are worth it!
ps. if you have a metaphor for me, just leave it, or a link to your post, in my comments!
I suppose everyone has their own idea of when adulthood is reached. For some it is as simple as passing a particular year, like sixteen (driving), eighteen (enlistment), or twenty-one (alchohol).
For myself, it was not an age but a checklist of mental milestones begun in 5th grade that I perceived would sweep me beyond the simple meandering trail of childhood and through the Great Golden Gates of Maturity. I was certain that the realm of Adulthood was staggeringly superior to the world of submission, school, and simplicity that formed the days of my youth.
The Checklist began simply enough:
- Begin Menstruation
- Wear a bra
- Shave legs
- Get boyfriend
These items were triumphantly checked off in due time, and I congratulated myself on navigating the trail with relative ease. The gates glimmered on the horizon. I would have stepped through in record time, but for one problem: I kept revising and lengthening the list. Items I had not considered in 5th grade became essential additions. Soon it read:
- Graduate High School
- Go to College
- Get Job
Suddenly things became complicated. I graduated and went to college. I got a job (I was the Godfather’s Pizza salad-bar-nazi. Important work, that.) But somewhere in my junior year of high school, A Young Man had appeared. A Young Man who turned my simple list on its head with one crooked smile. He was a mess; a college drop out, unsure about what he wanted and who he was. He had no prospects, but me-oh-my, could he swagger.
When The Young Man appeared, all reason took flight, and my list took on a curiously new and urgent direction:
- Kiss Frequently, and Well
- Get Engaged
- Get Married
The sooner the better, preferably. I wanted to be his wife. I wanted to wake up every morning to those soft green eyes, to cook his meals and fold his undies. It became the embodiment of adulthood, this setting up house with the object of my every hormonally-charged dream.
The Young Man gave me an engagement ring halfway through my senior year in high school. He proposed under the Christmas tree in suitably romantic style. Our parents called it a “promise ring” in the vain hope that the magic would wear thin and we’d come to our senses.
Vain, indeed.
By the end of the next year, I had his name. I was eighteen, and he was twenty-one. We lived in a tiny apartment with a waterbed and a small black cat named Buster Ninja Crabb. He went to school and I cooked grilled cheese sandwiches and cookies, reveling in the “Mrs.” on every envelope and medical form. The sparkly ring danced on my finger with its plainer gold partner and reminded me with every load of laundry that I was a Real Lady now. The gates were securely shut behind me.
Or were they?
Sometimes I felt that I was only playing house, a little girl in grown-up clothes with a grown-up name. No one expected us to make it; fully half the people at our wedding were probably unconvinced we’d last a year. My own parents didn’t make the trip from Norway to Texas for the ceremony, so determined they were to convey their lack of approval and preponderance of doubts.
I wanted desperately to be taken seriously. And so I added another item to the list, the One Thing I was sure would seal the maturity deal:
But when I brought my firstborn home from the hospital, I didn’t feel like a grownup. If anything, I felt less adult than I ever had in my life. None of my play-acting and daydreaming had prepared me for the responsibility of a new life. Even over the next few weeks, it stubbornly refused to sink in. I would find myself wondering if I should call this child’s parents to come and pick her up, because I was fed up with babysitting.
Instead, adulthood was calling me. In the middle of the night when she would wake and need me…adulthood was calling. Struggling with breastfeeding, and changing poopy diapers that required four hands and fifty wipes…adulthood was calling. Wondering how to love this being who only ever demanded more from me than I had ever given…adulthood was calling. Persistently. Urgently. Adulthood called, and knocked, and rang the doorbell, and eventually broke the door down to get to me.
As our child grew, she was as reluctant to pass common adolescent milestones as I was eager to meet them head-on. I called her a late bloomer, a tomboy…a mystery. Sometimes I wondered if she would ever be content in her femaleness, so vehemently she disdained the trappings of the gender. Encouraging her down the trail to maturity frequently felt like herding a flock of gelatin sheep.
Yet, a year and a half ago, I watched as that baby girl pledged her life to a Young Man who possesses a smile and a swagger all his own. If she felt like a pretender at any point, as I had, her serene demeanor never betrayed it. And when she announced (just a month later) that she was making me a grandmother, her contentment only deepened.
Watching her struggle to bring my first grandchild into the world, I wept with frustration that I couldn’t make it easier for her. She, on the other hand, wasted no energy on tears, but poured herself out with a determination and courage that left me breathless with awe. When her pelvis’s ability to get a baby through was called into question, she summoned a strength I didn’t know she had and pushed him out with sheer indignation.
As I watch her parent my (brilliant, sublime) grandson, I stand amazed anew at her maturity and natural, effusive affection. She has a confidence and joy that it took me years to grasp. My own Young Man and I can only smile and shrug when asked to share how she became such a natural…we are wondering as much ourselves.
The process of growth is unquantifiable. It steals softly over your consciousness, incrementally creeping, like the dawning of a new day. Who can tell when the light finally breaks over the horizon? In spite of my best efforts, my daughter arrived through the gate in her own good time. And I find that, instead of being miles ahead, I’m content to walk alongside her and share the journey.
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(originally written for this contest last fall. I didn’t win. Anyone want to give me $3K anyway?)
(When did YOU feel like you had reached adulthood?)
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