A letter from Ashebir

Ashebir is now 4 ½ years old - Most days we feel like we’re making progress, some days we don’t.  It'll be a year next week (2/23) that he's been home with us and even though he understands MOST of what you ask of him, there are still things he doesn't quite get yet.  That said, he's been through a lot in his young life and even though his whole self is weaving intricately and intimately into our lives - his confusions, fears and inhibitions still surface.  They manifest in hits, bullying, shrieks, random flying objects, screams,  etc.   The truth is that inappropriate behavior... is inappropriate behavior... but it's not easy some days to balance patience, grace responsibility and genuine love.  I (Amy and I) NEVER want to discipline out of frustration or just give in to an important “battle” that I (We) shouldn’t because it feels easier in the moment… but to be honest, he’s exhausting sometimes.  Further more, this doesn’t feel as valiant as some make it out to be sometimes.

We have to choose to love him… to pursue him.  To chase after his heart and to embrace ALL of him… his entire mess.  He didn’t cause it but he’s responding to it… I often wish it would manifest as a practical, and thoughtful discussion.. and just maybe it would go something like this: 

“Dad, do you have a minute?” … Sure Ash, what is it? 

Well Dad, I just feel like life is out of control for me… I’m scared, I’m anxious, I’m frustrated, I don’t always understand what you and Mommy expect of me or how to explain what I want sometimes.  I feel like there’ s this big hole inside and it hurts… I notice the pain some days more than others, but it still makes me feel bad.  I think I’m still afraid that my family will disappear some day when I least expect it… or that I’ll have to move somewhere else for some reason.  I don’t know how to explain it really… I know you and Mom love me, but some days I’m not sure I FEEL the same way about our family that Kenni Sasha and TK do.    

I’m angry.  I’m angry because I don’t really understand why I’ve lived in so many homes with different people who tell me what to do.  Who do I trust?! 

I feel like I just started to get to know the kids in the other house before I came to live here with our family.  I was just beginning to understand the talk around me when I lived with all the other kids - but even that was different than where I lived before that… and now there are even more new things – I’m just beginning to get the hang of this.

Small things that are out of place bother me.  I like things to be in their place, but I don’t like anyone else to tell me to tell me where to put the things I have.   

I don’t like animals that I can’t step on, or that aren’t behind thick glass.  Maybe it’s because an animal scared me before, I don’t really remember.   

I hate sharing too.  Ok, so I’m getting better at it, but… I don’t want to give up something I have control of.  It’s getting a little easier for me, but I don’t like it when I have to leave home to go somewhere else and when I’m somewhere else, I don’t like to leave there either.

I’m jealous of TK sometimes too… especially when he comes up with some random game to play – When I am finally convinced to play, I don’t want him to play… HIS own game! (Yeah, I don’t get it either.)  Or.. when he picks up a toy I haven’t played with for a while and he starts playing with it - I want it and it makes me mad when I can’t have it.  I think I’m beginning to understand that I can play with it later but I still have a hard time with it. 

Sometimes I feel left out.  

Sometimes I just get so mad that I scream as loud as I can and try to kick, bite and even spit.  But those times… even though I don’t mean to hurt you or Mommy or my teachers -I’ve just reached a point that I don’t know what else to do.  Maybe it’s that I don’t understand that you and Mommy are trying to help me the best way you know how… and I just don’t get it yet. 

I love my Teachers and my classmates a lot, but seriously…  sometimes I don’t really care what number comes after 6… 7… or 8!  It doesn’t matter to me if “the car” is “blue or red,” or if “the chair” is “green or brown,” or if the picture is of a “bird” or a “tiger.” 

And speaking of school days! - When I come home from school, I think the difference in routine disrupts me.   Don’t get me wrong, I love my school, we have so much fun there and my teacher there has helped me maybe even more than she knows … but It’s still hard changing from being at school to returning home where I don’t have the same structured environment.  So when I get home, sometimes all I want to do is beat up TK, eat bread and butter or watch Remember the Titans. 

The other night when I was screaming and yelling because I wanted all six saltines left in the cracker sleeve, and you said I could only have two at a time – I just get really frustrated with things like that… When I can’t explain exactly what I want or when I don’t understand why I can’t have what I want.

But Daddy... I want to trust you, I just need your help to do that.

I know you love me Daddy… Is it hard to love me sometimes?

I want to be loved by you so desperately Daddy…  I want Mommy to love me too!  I just don’t know how to always act lovingly.  But… I like to pray with you and TK at night and thank God for our Family.  I love my warm bed and my special blanket from Great Gramma Zipf.  I wouldn’t know what to do without it. 

I like trucks and reading books.  I like building things with legos, I like coloring, scissors and glue and I like to show you and Mommy what I make at school or how tall I can build the Lego tower.  I like sitting in your lap when we read books.  I love Mommy a lot.  She takes care of me and let’s me make big messes that I don’t have to clean up right away.  She makes great food and she makes sure that I’m safe and gives me lots of kisses… I just pull away after a few of them because I don’t like to sit still very long unless I’m watching a movie I like.

Daddy, Thank you for not giving up on me.  Thank you for bringing me home.  Please be patient with me… it’ll be worth it.  I love you and Mommy very much.

Ashebir 

Highlights from Amy, Sasha and their team in Haiti

Friday morning Jan 15:  

To put it in perspective, the 11 member team left Thurs morning in two waves from JFK and all arrived in Haiti about 1500 Thursday afternoon.

Amy writes:  

 “The internet is sporadic at best but we're having a great time.  Sasha loves it here!  It’s so much like Ethiopia it took my breath away at the airport. 

We did a Med clinic yesterday [Thur. 1/14].   

We helped diagnose high blood pressure, malaria, congestive heart failure, diabetes, viral infections, etc.  We went to the orphanage on Thursday as well and held a beautiful little baby boy. Breaks your heart.  We took pictures of the kids eating their porridge for dinner.   I was crying so hard I could barely take pictures.  So hard to believe we are so very close to home and the need is so great.  Off to work at the clinic again this morning.  We have tons of pictures, will try to send some soon."      

TK and his trust in God

Tariku: "Dad, it's raining outside!!"

Me:"I know."

TK:"Why?!"

me: "God thought it was a good time to send rain."

TK: Why?!"

me: "What happens to the grass and flowers when God makes it rain?"

TK: "Wet!"

-------------

I wonder if God has some kind of exasperated feeling when we question things that should be rather obvious to us?

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thank you veterans

"paulsteinbrueck: Thank You Veterans for Living Intentionally! http://bit.ly/coG7cF"
--http://twitter.com/paulsteinbrueck/status/2724556858986496

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daddy breakfast

On a breakfast date with the girls after dropping off the boys at school.

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Love for Orphans Transforms, by Jedd Medefind

Love for Orphans Transforms

By Jedd Medefind | President, Christian Alliance for Orphans

Unwanted infants in ancient Rome were often disposed of via the practice of “exposing.”  Whether undesirable because it was malformed, female or simply inconvenient, the child would be left alone, outside the city walls, without defense before glaring sun, icy winds or roving animals.

In 374 AD, the Christian emperor Valentinian banned the practice.  But for centuries prior, a marginalized group gained a reputation for rescuing these children:  Christians.  The early church was known, even among many who despised it, as a people who defended the orphan.  Believers went outside the city to find infants abandoned there, taking them in, and often raising them as their own.  This witness was one powerful factor in the vibrant life and growth of Christianity in its first 300 years, and at other high points in history as well.  It can be that way again.

Last month, 1,200 Christian orphan advocates from across America and beyond gathered in Minneapolis.  At moments, the ethos and interactions felt almost electric.  As one band leader expressed, “It felt like that was the first time I’d been worshipping and every person in the room was really a Christian.”   I understood what he meant.  From families with adopted HIV+ children, to foster parents, to individuals serving the fatherless around the globe, the spirit of that community carried the feel of the early days after Pentecost.  As best I can discern, here are four key reasons why:

Caring for orphans reflects the heart of God.  From Isaiah’s call to “defend the cause of the fatherless” (1:17) to James’ placement of orphan care at the heart of “pure and undefiled religion” (1:27), the biblical mandate is clear.   But this is not merely God’s expectation of us; it is a mirroring of His own character.  “He defends the fatherless,” declares Deuteronomy 10:18.  Describes the Psalmist, “He places the lonely in families.”  To be like our heavenly Father, we’re invited to do the same.

Caring for orphans makes the Gospel visible.  At the heart of the Christian story is the God who pursued us when we were destitute and alone.  He adopted us as His children, and invites us to live as His sons and daughters.  Perhaps nothing makes this truth more tangible than when Christians follow in their Father’s footsteps, opening heart and home in unconditional affection to the child that has no claim upon them but love.

Caring for orphans defies the gods of our age.  Darwinism’s sole ethical imperative is to ensure one’s own genetic material carries forward.  So like Gideon tearing down his father’s idols (Judges 6), we assault this dictate when we seek to ensure the survival, and thriving, of a child that does not share our genes.  Meanwhile, the purposeful sacrifices required to love this child flout the demands of other gods also, from materialism to self-actualization to comfort.  The cost must be counted.  But—compared to the depth and richness found along the path of caring for orphans—these false gods are shown to be as lifeless and unsatisfying as statues of bronze or wood.

Caring for orphans invites a journey of discipleship.  “I see these kids changed,” explained a woman who helps Christians get involved with foster care, “But I think the parents are changed even more.”  It’s true.  Every family I know that’s opened themselves to parentless children has not gone unaltered.  And though the road can be hard, even painful, virtually always it leads closer to Jesus.  Expressed one adoptive mom recently, “People have said, ‘Oh, aren’t they lucky, you rescued them from whatever.’  And I think, Are you kidding?  I’m the lucky one.  I get to be their mom.  And I get to be daily rescued from my selfishness, and my impatience, and things that are just as disease-ridden in my soul.”
Ultimately, here’s the result I see again and again:  love for orphans transforms.   It transforms children as they experience love and nurture they’ve come to live without.  It transforms individual Christians, as we encounter Jesus deeply and personally in a destitute child.  It transforms the broader community of believers as well, pulling us corporately beyond a religion of self-development to a costly-but-muscular faith.  Finally, love for orphans transforms a watching world, as it sees—perhaps for the first time—the Gospel embodied.

Close friends from Washington, DC, Tom and Leah, adopted a little boy from an African nation two years ago.  He’d been found, abandoned, at the edge of a forest, umbilical cord still attached.  “He was left for the hyena,” described the old woman who discovered him when the newborn’s cry startled her milk cow.

When I heard that story, I couldn’t help thinking of the early Christians, going outside the city walls to take in abandoned infants.  I feel the same about what’s going on in Colorado, where so many Christians have adopted from the foster system that the number of children waiting for adoption has been cut from nearly 800 in 2008 to just 365 today.  The same goes for countless partnerships between U.S. Christians and churches abroad to care for orphans within their home countries as well.

Christians are again becoming known as a people who defend the cause of the fatherless.  As we do, the world won’t be left unchanged.  Neither will we.

Jedd Medefind serves as the President of the Christian Alliance for Orphans

Christianity Today Weighs in on International Adoption and the Orphan Crisis

 

Christianity Today Weighs in on International Adoption and the Orphan Crisis 

 

April’s edition of Christian Today contains an important editorial on international adoption and orphans worldwide.  Significantly, the editorial holds together two elements that are sometimes falsely presented as being at odds with each other:  support of in-country orphan care efforts, while also affirming inter-country adoption for children that otherwise would grow up on the streets or in institutions. 

 

The article pulls no punches in condemning unnecessary barriers to adoption:

The political and cultural barriers [erected by governments to make adoptions very difficult] stem from warped ideas about what is in a poor child's best interest. It isn't in the best interest of abandoned children to grow up destitute and barely literate, regardless of the imagined cultural benefit of remaining in their home country. Haiti itself is a vivid example of injustice. The government tolerates a modern form of child slavery by allowing 225,000 children ages 6-14 to work as restavecs (unpaid, indentured domestics).  Adoption, domestic or inter-country, should not be looked down upon as inferior at best or as a last resort.

If the article were to be extended, two small additions would be helpful.  First, given the natural inclination many people have towards orphanages as the solution for kids that can’t be adopted, it’d be helpful to make clear that orphanages should be viewed most of the time as temporary, last-resort solutions.  Children need consistent, personal love and nurture that rarely can be provided in an institutional setting.   So, most of the time, settings that are as close to a home environment as possible are preferable to an orphanage. 

 

Second, given the confusion over orphan statistics, it’d be helpful to clarify that current estimates of the number of orphans in the world (whether the numbers the U.N. provides or the 210 million referenced by the article) include children that have lost only one parent.   Thus, the vast majority of these orphans—while often facing great difficulties and in need of help—are mostly not in need of adoption.   Adoption, both in-country and inter-country, is vitally important in situations where children have no parent or relatives that can care for them.   But that portion of the overall orphan statistics is relatively small.

 

Coming from a voice with the gravitas of Christianity Today, this article represents a very important affirmation of the Biblical call to “care for orphans in their distress”—via adoption as well as other means.