November is National Adoption Awareness Month, and I am writing frantically right now to try to get this posted before today becomes tomorrow. I have every excuse in the World for being as behind as I am on my goals right now, but at this point all I can do is try to make up for lost time.
I posted a picture of Vaughn with my last entry, as an introduction to the who and the why; this post is going to be more about the how.
I believe that every child deserves a chance. Every. Child.
I don't think that this is an unreasonable expectation, some people might, and I can understand that.
Before my own experience with adoption, I would have told you that I didn't believe God would act directly in my life. Oh, sure, I would have said I believed he could act in my life in a direct way, but in my heart, I never would have believed he would. But by the time Claudia was home, there was no possible way for me to believe God hadn't acted directly in my life.
I am as cynical and pragmatic as the next person (probably more so) but there was no way for so many coincidences to actually be coincidences. The coin was landing on heads, every time. The dice kept landing on double sixes. Maybe the most accurate representation I can give - we kept hitting the lottery, every single day. Statistically possible? Sure, in an astronomical numbers kind of way. But especially after comparing our adoption experience to many, many other similar ones, I believe a much more likely answer to be that there was a deft hand catching the coin, magnets in the dice, and the lottery was rigged in our favor.
Why do I mention all of this, on the first day of Adoption Awareness Month? Because for all of you who have never given adoption a single thought, who think that you don't want kids, who are scared at the thought of having a child with or without a disability, and who see just how many kids are out there, without a family - there is Hope.
The goal of this post is not to make you think you are Mother Theresa, deep down, and you just needed to read a blog post by a weird engineer to see it. The goal is to show you that you can be a miracle for someone else. You can be an answer to prayer. You can catch someone who is falling.
You can have a lifelong impact on a child's life, on their family, on the community around that family, and subsequently, the World. Don't believe me? You should - because I've been on the other side of it. I've been the one receiving the sacrificial gifts from complete strangers - and it changes you. It changes the way you see the World. It re-energizes you, keeps your faith up, gets you back in the fight.
I can only imagine what it feels like for a child who has gone their entire life without anyone ever telling them "I love you" or "You are wanted" or "This is your family, forever" to hear that they have someone coming to bring them home. How much extra joy it would bring to the World for every orphan to find their family. And you can be a part of that.
Please consider donating to Vaughn, so that nothing stands in the way of his family coming to get him.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Why The Scholar's Parrot?
As the Ruin Falls by C.S. Lewis
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
This is one of my favorite poems. The first time I read it I thought that it could have been written about me. When I talk about God’s Love, or His Grace, or His Will for us, I feel like the only thing people are going to hear is the squawking of a parrot. I use words that everyone recognizes, but I’m just a dumb animal repeating them without any understanding.
Moreover, the people who really, truly know me, who know who and what I am, must be disgusted and annoyed at my lecturing. Selfish, self-seeking mercenary, looking only for pleasure, reassurance and peace – I’m not sure that I could describe myself better (without using the words stubborn and impulsive anyway).
But something Pastor Dave said on a Sunday a while back has been stuck in my mind since I heard it (and I’m going to paraphrase it poorly here): Make sure you’re reading off the right script. When I believe that I am too far gone, too damaged and way too screwed up for God to be able to change me, I’m reading off the wrong script. Call it the World’s script if you’re pragmatic, or call it Satan’s script if you’re Churchy, just know that God’s script says that we can change. To shamelessly steal from Pastor Dave’s message again, God used Saul – THE guy trying to eradicate the early Christians – to reach more people for God than probably anyone before or since. And to use an example from my own life – I hated kids. HATED them. Wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. And people with Special Needs used to freak me out. Made me so uncomfortable that I would go out of my way to avoid them.
Now? Now I'm still all of the horrible things I was before. Still selfish, arrogant and conceited. But I am also doing my best to do what God wants me to do. I have found the space in my heart for people other than myself, for people who may never be able to repay a kindness or say "Thanks." But I am finally seeing these individuals, and especially these children, and the most worthy people in the World.
So why The Scholar's Parrot? This is going to be my base of operations for raising money for a little boy in Colombia known as "Vaughn" as part of the Reece's Rainbow Christmas fundraising drive - Angel Tree. Angle Tree has a very special place in my heart - but that's another post.
Vaughn turns seven years old shortly after Christmas this year, and I would love to see enough money in his account so that nothing stands between him and his family. Vaughn does have Down Syndrome, but if you've caught any of my recent Facebook posts, you know that this is a Blessing, not a curse.
I have (what I think are) some pretty interesting ideas for how to raise money for Vaughn. In fact, they're so interesting that I need to get Angie's (my wife's) permission before I can commit to them. I'm also going to use this as a forum for some of my long-form ideas - I understand that not everyone wants to read the equivalent of six pages of writing in a tiny little Facebook post on their phone. I intend to keep the political stuff to a minimum, or banish it to yet another blog, so that people with zero interest aren't forced to read it.
Stay tuned.
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
This is one of my favorite poems. The first time I read it I thought that it could have been written about me. When I talk about God’s Love, or His Grace, or His Will for us, I feel like the only thing people are going to hear is the squawking of a parrot. I use words that everyone recognizes, but I’m just a dumb animal repeating them without any understanding.
Moreover, the people who really, truly know me, who know who and what I am, must be disgusted and annoyed at my lecturing. Selfish, self-seeking mercenary, looking only for pleasure, reassurance and peace – I’m not sure that I could describe myself better (without using the words stubborn and impulsive anyway).
But something Pastor Dave said on a Sunday a while back has been stuck in my mind since I heard it (and I’m going to paraphrase it poorly here): Make sure you’re reading off the right script. When I believe that I am too far gone, too damaged and way too screwed up for God to be able to change me, I’m reading off the wrong script. Call it the World’s script if you’re pragmatic, or call it Satan’s script if you’re Churchy, just know that God’s script says that we can change. To shamelessly steal from Pastor Dave’s message again, God used Saul – THE guy trying to eradicate the early Christians – to reach more people for God than probably anyone before or since. And to use an example from my own life – I hated kids. HATED them. Wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. And people with Special Needs used to freak me out. Made me so uncomfortable that I would go out of my way to avoid them.
Now? Now I'm still all of the horrible things I was before. Still selfish, arrogant and conceited. But I am also doing my best to do what God wants me to do. I have found the space in my heart for people other than myself, for people who may never be able to repay a kindness or say "Thanks." But I am finally seeing these individuals, and especially these children, and the most worthy people in the World.
So why The Scholar's Parrot? This is going to be my base of operations for raising money for a little boy in Colombia known as "Vaughn" as part of the Reece's Rainbow Christmas fundraising drive - Angel Tree. Angle Tree has a very special place in my heart - but that's another post.
Vaughn turns seven years old shortly after Christmas this year, and I would love to see enough money in his account so that nothing stands between him and his family. Vaughn does have Down Syndrome, but if you've caught any of my recent Facebook posts, you know that this is a Blessing, not a curse.
I have (what I think are) some pretty interesting ideas for how to raise money for Vaughn. In fact, they're so interesting that I need to get Angie's (my wife's) permission before I can commit to them. I'm also going to use this as a forum for some of my long-form ideas - I understand that not everyone wants to read the equivalent of six pages of writing in a tiny little Facebook post on their phone. I intend to keep the political stuff to a minimum, or banish it to yet another blog, so that people with zero interest aren't forced to read it.
Stay tuned.
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