The Face of Fear

I’m having a hard time writing this article. First off I don’t want to come across as some sort of holier-than-thou internet spokesman. “Look at me! I HELP THE HOMELESS!” So allow me to remind you what started this whole chain of events: I caught myself judging a pan-handler; judging them to the extent that I cooked up an imaginative world where there was a sinister group of people with nothing better to do than stand on street corners in 95 degree heat in order to collect money… just because. I didn’t want to help a pan-handler because I wanted to believe they were debasing themselves as part of a game. THAT is what started this. So to reiterate: I’m really a jerk. [edit: for anyone new to the blog here is the posting that spawned this one.]

The next reason I’m having difficulty writing this article is because I’m trying to come up with good answers for some inevitable questions that people may have. And the bottom line is that I don’t have any really good answers. Questions like: Do you think this is really going to change anything or are you just doing this so you feel better as a Christian? I really don’t have a good answer to that one. I very well might be doing this in order to pay penance for being a jerk. I very well could be that shallow and this might be an elaborate spiritual bandage that I’ve cooked up.

I’m also afraid that writing this article might make me lose sight of the humanity at stake in this operation. I met a guy. He’s homeless. He’s trying hard to straighten out his life. He very well may have lied to me for an hour over lunch today and I very well could be the sucker of suckers. But at the end of the day there’s a homeless guy out there and judging by some of his stories there are a lot of people just happy to curse at him for that reason. Correction: There are hundreds of thousands (650,000 in 2009 numbers) of homeless people with a lot more folks happy to curse at them for it. I am afraid that this article could detract from the plight of these PEOPLE. Not numbers, people. Lots of them but today I want to focus on one: The one standing in the median of HWY 175 and Dobbin road who was very worried when he saw me walking down the middle of the street to the median on which he was standing.

I was coming back from ferrying around some of my children and decided that it was a good opportunity to swing by Target to see if anyone was pan-handling. Yesterday the 3 or 4 times I drove by there was no one there but today on the first shot I saw him. A skinny white kid with a black baseball hat on, a small sign that I didn’t get a chance to read as I pulled in. I was conflicted because a: I had been trying to do this for the last couple days and I finally had my chance – and – b: I had been trying to do this for the last couple days and I finally had no choice. I pulled into the parking lot with a million what-ifs going through my head. I got out of the car into the hellish heat (95F with really high humidity, not a cloud in the sky, just after noon, mid-July in Maryland) and started walking down the hill playing through any number of possible scenarios in my head. As I approached the kid I saw his backpack on the ground slumped up against a street sign as well as a couple empty water bottles. Surprisingly the kid walked away from his backpack to the other end of the median as I approached. When I called to him and asked him if he wanted to grab lunch he froze. I saw the look on his face go from fear to shock to gratitude in less time than it took you to read that sentence. And that change was amazing and I instantly remembered something my parents or some teacher had told me regarding dangerous animals. “They are more scared of you than you are of them.” The kid quickly agreed, asked if he could grab his bag and then guided me over to the crosswalk. I had planned on walking back up the hill. The smart homeless kid knew that there were more and better restaurants across the intersection – ones that did not involve walking up or down large hills in the sun. I asked him his name and he told me it was Sam.

I had been afraid that I would have to force myself to not talk and endure a bunch of awkward silences but that wasn’t the case. Sam was quick to start up chatting and immediately told me how he had been frightened that I was going to cuss him out or beat him up. He was animated, well-spoken, very polite, and a bit defensive. He had quite a bit to say about the people who judged him and even more to say about his history. We sat down in Chik-Fil-A and he explained how he got to where he was: Christian High School student, kind of a wallflower, started hanging out with some drug users, found out he really liked heroin, finished school and got kicked out of his parents’ house, just came off heroin last year and has been on methadone since, has a job, currently pan-handling to pay to get his car (in which he’s living) tagged and titled, and generally trying to get his life put back together. The longer we sat and ate the less defensive he got and the less he talked about people judging him. He got comfortable enough to confess that he was going to grab some cigarettes before he headed back out and that he really needed to kick that habit, too. He seemed genuinely shocked after lunch when I handed him a couple bucks and wished him well. I think I did pretty well with the whole “less talking more listening” thing but he did ask about my job so I did talk about the Army a little bit. So what?

And that’s the big question I’m trying to answer right now: So What? At the very root of all of this is my desire: that other people who call themselves Christians will do the same thing because I believe it will help make you a better Christian. I know it’s definitely restored my focus on the dignity and humanity of the people around me and caused me to look more at those around me as I think Jesus Christ would look at them. But what else? Do I have an endstate? Do I have an all-encompassing plan to start up a church ministry in my own community and spread the love of Christ on an industrial scale? No I do not. I will champion Social Justice. I will wholeheartedly support David Batstone’s “Not For Sale” campaign, I will volunteer in my church’s outreach and ministry programs. I will do all these things as part of a greater movement to spread Jesus’ love. But in this little aspect I’m going to do it alone. Call me selfish (Greg, you could do so much more GOOD if you applied yourself) if you must – and I very well might be – but this one is for me.

So maybe I’ve answered my own hard question with a bad answer: This might be an elaborate spiritual bandage that I’ve cooked up. However, for one kid out there that bandage came in the form of an air-conditioned lunch, a couple bucks for cigarettes and anything else he might need, and an hour of someone listening to him. My Jesus-shaped bandage will hopefully motivate others to make themselves feel better by helping others, loving the unlovable, showing kindness where it is unexpected, and maybe even providing wisdom. I’m strangely comfortable with that.

P.S. Dear Sora, remember when I told you to focus on acting like a good Christian instead of trying to be a good Christian? I said something along the lines of, “Just get out there and help the people around you, do kind things for them, love them, and be wise and try to answer their hard questions. If you do those things your heart will follow the same path.” I don’t just say these things.

Blame my daughter for this one

Last night as I do from time to time I sat down with Sora and just talked to her before she went to sleep. We were just chatting about stuff and for some reason I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up. She started to answer by talking about how she wanted to buy a house like the one in which we now live and some other things she wanted to buy. I interrupted (because I do that sometimes). She hadn’t answered my question about what she wanted to do or who even she wanted to be, she answered about things she wanted to buy. So I gently tried to correct her and convince her that it’s not about buying stuff but impacting the people around you. I talked about how it’s OK to want stuff but to not get too attached to those wants. I gave her the example of the Ferrari 458 Italia that I want but that I will never have – and that’s OK because I have 4 awesome kids instead.

And then we talked about what she was learning at church, it being Sunday night and all. After she told me she was learning to be a good person – a better Christian – I stopped her (a bad habit, I know) and told her how her father might be an idiot and COMPLETELY DISAGREES about going to church to be a better person. We then talked about who daddy believes that Jesus is and the people with whom Jesus would have hung out with if he was here today (the answer was he would most likely hang out with the kid that broke into our garage the other morning versus hanging out with the people at church). We talked about how it’s my thought that I go to church to learn about how better to help the people around me – how to show them love, how to help them, how to do nice things for them, and how to become wise in order to answer hard questions. Little did I know that I was setting myself up for a pretty massive test (spoiler alert: I failed). We chatted a little longer and then we all went to sleep.

So fast-forward to this afternoon. Since I have a little time off from work I’ve been playing the role of soccer-mom and errand runner. So at 12:30 in the afternoon with a sun-shiny 94F degree temperature and relative humidity well north of comfortable I was pulling in to the Target parking lot in order to pick up some cat food and cat litter. On the way in to Columbia Crossing I saw one of the pan-handlers in the center median with some sort of sign, obviously looking for cash. I see pan-handlers on that corner pretty regularly and I’ve come up with a completely asinine theory that there is a pan-handler cabal that actually collects all the profits from different corners here in Columbia and that the people I see out there aren’t actually homeless or destitute. And mid-thought I felt that warm and comforting embrace of Jesus’ love wrap itself around my heart and the Lord of Hosts softly whisper in my ear, “You’re an idiot. And a jerk. And you call yourself a Christian.”

I spent the next 30 minutes parking the car and shopping for pet products in a vicious spiritual battle with me on one side trying to explain that I really do love all of the people in the world and that I really do show them the love of God every day. On the other side was Jesus who really only said two words: Prove it. And so as I left Target I grabbed an extra $20 bill. I walked the cat litter and food out to the car and put them in the trunk. Then I walked across the parking lot, down the embankment and went up to the pan-handler and offered him $20 if he would come into Starbucks with me and have some iced coffee or water and tell me about himself. No judging, no ulterior motives. Just me acting like I think Jesus would and treating someone like a human being because they might like that. He could probably use some humanity.

No I didn’t. I got the pet products into my trunk and then remembered that my phone was at home and I was expecting an important phone call. I rationalized that as soon as I got home and got my phone, emptied the car, and checked my work email I would head back to Target. And I did exactly that. I also found that my phone was not at home, it was buried in my glove compartment. On the way to and from the house I tried to figure out what else I had to offer the pan-handler and what exactly I hoped to accomplish (I still am, actually) and I settled on “I’ll talk to the guy and trust that Jesus will help me figure out the next step.”

Unfortunately I suck (Captain Obvious Statement of the Day, right there). Yep, by the time I got back to the shopping center the pan-handler was gone. I even did a full casing of the complex and couldn’t find him. I was very disappointed with myself and now I have to tell my daughter that her well-spoken father with lots of good ideas can’t follow through.

But even though I sucked at being like Jesus today I don’t have to suck tomorrow. That’s the awesome thing about grace is that Jesus still forgives me and even better he knows that tomorrow I’ll have another spiritual battle and I’ll lose. I’ll head over to Columbia Crossing and see if there is someone else in need. I’ll even bring some contact numbers for the outreach ministry from our church as well as the $20 and good ideas.  And now I’m asking you to do the same thing.

You know where they are. You know how to find the pan-handlers. Take some time out of your schedule and go meet one. Talk to them and find out their names, if they are married, if they have kids, what are their dreams, where they are from, all the stuff you would ask a new coworker or… someone new at church. Just treat them like a person because that is what Jesus would do. I would ask that you don’t go on a full-court Jesus press. Just let them talk and end by asking if there is anything with which you can help. If they ask you why you’re doing this a simple, “It’s what Jesus would do,” will most likely suffice. Try to avoid talking. I’ll do the same and let you know how this works out on my end. I have no idea how this will turn out but at the very least there will be at least one person a little less hot and thirsty with a little more cash in their pocket to use for their needs. And perhaps I’ll have a little more humanity the next time I look at a pan-handler and start imagining that they are there because of any other reason than terrible circumstances.

Matthew Chapter 25

The Woman at the Well

I've been reviewing my blog and I noticed that I referenced this post in my initial adoption post. I dug into the facebook archives and found it, re-read it and have decided to post it here. I originally wrote this back in 2010 right before we left for Korea and if I hadn't happened to have watched "Talladega Nights" and seen Sacha Baron Cohen last night I wouldn't feel compelled to put it up. But this article still makes me laugh - and think - when I read it and maybe it will do the same for you. The story of the woman at the well is one of my favorites and this article still makes me proud.

Of all the stories of Jesus’ life the story of the woman at the well has always struck a chord in my soul. Over the past few years it has grown in importance to me and only recently did I ask myself why. The first reason I came up with was that it revealed the transforming nature of Christ’s perfect love. A woman’s life is turned around 180 degrees after a few short yet poignant words from my Savior. The second reason became clearly evident to me while I was watching, of all movies, Borat and how Jesus reaches out to those to whom no one else dares reach(At this point any good Bible-believing Christian may want to go ahead and close out this message. In a paragraph coming to your screen soon I will use scenes from a film that celebrates drunkenness, ethnic hate, debauchery, homosexuality, prostitution, and numerous other decidedly non-Christian ideals in order to not only illustrate but to reinforce the principles of Christ’s love. For the bold and those firmly grounded in their faith feel free to continue but you have been warned.) The straw that broke the camel’s back and now has me writing this little note is that I’ve realized that in my life I’ve met a few women at the well and frankly my heart still breaks for them. I still shed tears while praying for them and I still regret my inability to be like Christ enough to love them enough (ahem… in the right ‘agape’ way) and change their lives for the better. So now I have a few hours during which I will spell out how these three reasons make the story of the woman at the well so important to me. 

I didn’t come up with this first point on my own. Sometime in the last 2 years I heard a sermon about the woman at the well and the crux of the sermon was the transforming nature of Christ’s love. It may have been that sermon that started me thinking about this subject so I’m putting this down as my first reason. Crack open your bibles to John Chapter 4 - or if you’re lacking a bible but you’re online find one of the many online bibles and do a search for either John Chapter 4 or “Woman at the Well” – and start there. In the story Jesus has just finished up a rather famous conversation with a guy named Nicodemus. Sometime during that conversation there was some talk about being born again and in the middle of chapter three Jesus laid out the gospel in a nutshell for Nicodemus. You may have seen a sample of this text in the end zone of a football game once or twice. But I digress. 

Jesus’ disciples had been baptizing people as followers of Jesus and this had been irritating the religious leaders of the day. Apparently the leaders in the area of Judea were getting angry so Jesus decided to get out of town for awhile and was on his way to Galilee. I’m not a scholar nor do I have access to an atlas of 1st Century AD Israel so I have to take the author’s word that an area called Samaria lies between Judea and Galilee. The people of Samaria called Samaritans were not on really good terms with the Jews. You can do a Wikipedia search and find out the details (despite this being posted online I do not in fact have internet in my room. Normally I’d be happy to do the searching for you and give you some fantastic anthropologic data about the story but I cannot right now. Forgive me.) but the short summary is that the Jews and the Samaritans were not on speaking terms. Jesus’ disciples had gone on into town to buy food but the good teacher, “being as tired from the journey as he was,” stayed back at a well to rest. So it’s about 6 o’clock in the morning and a woman comes out to the well to get some water. (side note: this still goes on today in the middle east. Rural women still head out in the morning with their large buckets in order to draw water before it gets belligerently hot. Some are dressed in black Abayas and some, usually younger, are dressed up in bright-colored garb that contrasts brilliantly with the relatively barren landscape in which they walk.) Sitting at the well is a Jewish religious teacher who has the audacity to ask the woman to get him a drink. Now, the woman at the well is apparently quite assertive and maybe even a bit abrasive. I’m going to stop my narrative of the story and explain things as I see them. I could be wrong but John 4:9 has colored my entire reading of this story. Imagine for a minute that you’re in a downtown area sitting on a park bench and you drop your pen. Your pen rolls across the ground and lands between the feet of a younger woman sitting next to you. Thinking it improper to reach between a strange woman’s feet you politely ask her if she could pick up your pen for you. Instead of a simple, “no” you get read the riot act for daring to ask for assistance. What could have been covered in a one-syllable response or even mute refusal is instead turned into a 15 second tirade of vitriol and anger directed toward you. This is the Samaritan woman and, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan. How can you ask me for a drink?” was her reply. I have been there. I have asked a seemingly innocuous question only to be met with unwarranted anger. My typical response in that situation is to walk away muttering something about rude people under my breath. Clearly I am not Jesus.

But Jesus shrugged it off, saw it as an opportunity to touch a life, and decided to go toe to toe with this Samaritan woman. He sloughed off her rebuttal, ignored her question and did the unthinkable: He brought up religion. In the ensuing conversation Jesus equates himself with God, places himself above Jacob the patriarch, and continues to use the words of the woman only as a frame to make his point: Jesus has the keys to eternal life. And she bought it. In 3 short paragraphs the woman went from refusing to get Jesus water to nearly begging him to give her some of his water. But Jesus’ plan was not to win an argument it was to save a soul. This is where we see more of Jesus perfect love. Whereas I, a sinner with a huge ego, would have been stoked at turning the tables on this crabby tart and would have walked away smugly Jesus was looking into her heart and looking to do something spectacular. Somehow (probably something to do with the fact that He is God) Jesus was able to discern that this angry young woman was suffering from more than sore shoulders from carrying the water. Jesus knew that this woman suffered from a series of broken hearts and cut to the quick. He told her about her four ex-husbands and the guy she was shacking up with but he did so without angering her. Now, let’s go back to the park bench and the young lady. Imagine for a moment if you will, that you laid out all her dirty laundry for her right there on that bench. Imagine her response. So how did Jesus do the same thing without getting slapped. The answer is that he did it with the love of God.

Right here is the message of the gospel in one simple story. God loved this one woman so much that he offered her eternal life (John 4:13) with no preconditions. Jesus knew that this woman was by contemporary standards a slut, an adulterer, a skank, an impure woman, name your epithet – Jesus knew this. Yet he loved her so much that he looked past all of her sins and offered her eternal life. He even offered her eternal life BEFORE calling her out for her sins. The response was kind of stunning.

The young woman caught a clue sometime during Jesus’ talk about the coming kingdom. She put two and two together and hesitantly brought up the coming of the Messiah. Jesus confirmed her suspicions that this clairvoyant Jewish traveler was not a spy but the savior of the world. The woman who ten paragraphs earlier refused to draw a pitcher of water now dropped her pitcher, ran into the city and started telling her friends about the Messiah. Wow. Later in the chapter we find out that because of her witness many more in the town came to believe in Jesus. I prefer to think of it in terms such as, “because of Jesus’ perfect love for the woman at the well, many people came to believe in Him.” So this was the beginning of my fascination with this passage of scripture.

Borat. The time has come to either be BBQ’d as a sacrilegious heretic or lauded as a guy who can find the incredible love of Christ displayed in the most unlikely of places. Your call. For those unfamiliar with Borat here’s a brief synopsis. Sacha Baron Cohen cooked up an epic prank in the form of a movie. He pretended to be a native of Kazakhstan making a documentary of American culture and made his way across the country in this guise while keeping a video journal. However, his goal was to catch Americans in the act of exhibiting their natural prejudices and use it as a really ribald form of social commentary. It is crude, it is disgusting, it displays all that is amoral and wrong with the world and it is hilarious. It also is a bit sobering because it shows the decidedly un-Christlike nature of a few Christians. So what does it have to do with the woman at the well? Simple. She is in the movie.

Borat went to a tutor on manners with the culminating exercise with the tutor being a formal dinner. During the dinner Borat made every attempt to crack the genteel nature of the other attendees which include a pastor and his wife. During the dinner all of the attendees made slightly bigoted comments under the guise of social propriety but at the end Borat invited in the woman at the well to be his dinner guest. When she arrived the dinner was abruptly cut short on account of her arrival. In limited defense of the pastor and his wife I will say the woman at the well was in the guise of an extravagantly dressed prostitute. However I didn’t see any attempt by anyone at the table, all of whom called themselves Christians, try to exert any Christ-like love toward her. I don’t see Jesus walking away from that situation. In fact in a similar situation when Jesus was questioned about his choice of companions and their lifestyles he responded, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners.” (Matthew 9:12). The Jesus of the Bible that I read poured out love on the unlovable. The tax collectors, widows, the poor, the unclean, the lepers, the ‘sinners’, the… Samaritans. When presented with someone that was beyond the pale – someone so low on the social ladder that the religious would feel the need to leave the room when they entered – Jesus stepped up and offered forgiveness and love. In the movie the only person that treated the woman at the well as a human being was Borat. It’s a sad state of affairs that the man that inadvertently (in my mind) playing the role of Jesus is portrayed as one of the most amoral of all while the religious folks, the church leaders, the good Christians in the film slunk away from what could have been one of their most dynamic and Christian of their lives. Jesus passed no judgment on the woman at the well. He showed her love and offered her eternal life. He did not fear her because she was a woman or because she was a Samaritan, rather he entered the situation with his purpose set firmly in his mind: Win her with love. Love the unlovable.

The last reason I am writing this little note is very personal. In my life I have met quite a few women at the well and I have only done marginally well at being like Christ. After thoroughly roasting the Christians in the movie Borat for their lack of Christ-like love I cannot in good conscience continue without admitting my own failings in the same subject. I try to love the unlovable but my problem is that many times I fell in love with them. Rarely did I simply walk away but too often I found myself too close and in many cases my love of Christ turned into the love of the flesh. But once again I digress.

I’ve had a little more free time lately and in my devotions and prayers I continue to return to thoughts of the women at the well in my life. These are women with whom I have worked, attended school, and met in various organizations. Facebook has brought a few of them back into my life and reminded me of others that are long lost. It is for you, the women at the well in my life, that this letter is ultimately written. I will not put your names here. I will not tag you in this note. You know who you are. You are the confident ones; the smart ones; the pretty ones; the ones who know how to get what you want; the ones that have your whole life planned out and are moving forward towards those goals but… you are also the ones with the broken hearts. Somewhere along the way someone or someones have broken your heart and hardened you to others that love you. For many of you it’s a vicious cycle that repeats itself all too often and your hope for the future is dimmed by the fear of more heartbreak. You are the modern-day women at the well and I am telling you that Jesus is there, waiting for you.

So the last reason I’m writing this letter is to bring an arms-length offer of hope and the love of Christ to the women at the well in my life. Pick up the Bible. Read John chapter four – and John chapter three, also. Take a look at the offer that Jesus makes in those chapters and try to put aside your fears and accept it. Jesus knows your hurts; your histories; the stupid things you’ve done; the poor decisions you’ve made; the times your heart got broken; the times you gave your heart away only to not get it back; the times you’ve been used; the times you’ve been abused. He knows it all but if you look carefully at John chapter four you’ll see that he doesn’t care about those things. He cares about you. Let down your guard a bit. When he asks you to draw some water from the well feel free to question him and when he starts prying into your soul and peeling back the layers of hurt, let him. He is the great physician. He loves you and if you let him he can change your life. For God so loved the woman at the well…

To everyone that reads this note: Please do me a favor and pass this on to the women at the well in your life. If you are uncomfortable passing it directly to a woman at the well, then post it in the notes section of your facebook account. Maybe you will get a response or maybe you’ll touch a life without knowing it. 

Reasons not to Adopt - Thievery and Bullying

This may be the first installment of a series. Those looking for levity and humor should probably look elsewhere. While I may throw in some sort of sarcastic backhanded and self-deprecating humor this particular series is (at least this first one) written in the rawest of moments. In today’s case I just finished off explaining to my daughter Lena how daddy has given and given and given so that she might have lots of nice things and experiences. Daddy has given to the point that he cannot afford even the $5 to have one of his church shirts pressed and that he’s even gone so far as to cut down on the amount of lunch he eats. Why did I give this little lecture? Because my oldest daughter regularly bullies and connives her brother and sisters into giving up their most treasured toys. Call it what you will but I call that theft and it crushes my heart. It crushes my heart so much that I was a sobbing wreck of a man when it was time to go to church. I told Jenn to head to church without me. So if there is a distinct lack of mirth in this little article just remember that I wrote this after picking myself up off the couch, drying my tears, and sitting down in front of the computer to type out how I *really* feel.

October 26^th 2012 we brought Lena and Sujin home for the last time. That was our “Gotcha” day (as it’s called in adoption circles) and it was full of rejoicing. For those that aren’t familiar with our long journey into adoption it all started in early 2011 and there’s a post on that somewhere in this blog. Lena was 10 and Sujin was 7 at the time we brought them home. Both Jenn and I thought we knew what we were getting into but of course we were both completely wrong. Within a few days we were both completely overwhelmed. I was “lucky” because I was working as a commander at the time and was saved from turmoil in the house because I was working insane hours. Jenn took the full brunt of the post-adoption blues. I saw a lot of the same symptoms in her that doctors ascribe to post-partum depression. We worked through those first few months but our take-away lessons were these: Sujin has attachment issues and Lena has territorial issues. This particular post is about Lena’s territorial issues.

Back in the orphanage Lena was one of the only non-Korean kids. She was a blond Caucasian girl growing up in an almost-exclusively Korean orphanage. At a minimum most of the other kids were at least half-Korean. Additionally their orphanage was located in the Korea-equivalent of the flyover states (aka Redneck country). Like most homogenous cultures Koreans are prone to a little bit of xenophobia (the Collegian inside me calls this “identifying the ‘barbarian other’”). Now factor in location (redneck country) and society (orphanage aka Lord of the Flies) and you might correctly think that Lena was the target of quite a bit of bullying. Now, academically I know that she’s got a history of being the target of bullying. I also know that it is very much human nature to use those same bullying tactics when one comes to power. On an intellectual level it is completely understandable that Lena resorted to bullying and stealing once she came into our house. If only I could live in an intellectual and academic world. Too bad I live in the real world where I have a bully who is psychologically and physically terrorizing and stealing from the other three children in the house. Forgive me if I become a little emotional over these things.

I’ve spoken to Lena about these issues before. I’ve counseled her, corrected her, shown her object lessons, shown her love, poured out an unending flow of love, gifts, and concern. I’ve also yelled, threatened, confiscated, cried, and lost my temper on a number of occasions. As a result she has slowly started to give up her evil ways. However Jenn discovered last night that Lena is still collecting tribute from her brother and sisters. She’s just doing it a little more quietly and with more discretion – using the silent treatment, threats, and intimidation to keep the other kids quiet. It has gotten to the point that the other kids have started sneaking in to Lena’s room to gather back their things. Think of Lena’s room as a mythical dragon hoard. Lena is the dragon. She’s not spending her hoard, nor is she really doing anything with it but she JEALOUSLY guards it. My kids are literally making Bilbo Baggins-esque runs into the lair of Smaug in order to retrieve their own personal Arkenstones.

So when I heard about this last night I went in to Lena’s room and as calmly as I could (I showed some remarkable restraint. No yelling, even) let her know that the gig was up. I then spent 3 hours in bed tossing, turning, and desperately trying to come up with a way to fix the problem. At about 11:30 after 2 hours in bed I decided upon “The Nuclear Option.” I prayed for a bit, asked God to give me discernment while I slept and went to bed. When I woke up this morning, convinced that the metaphorical destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was in order I wrote the following terms to Jenn for her approval.

1. Lena is evicted. She gets her clothes – that is it.
2. Everything in Lena’s room will be redistributed to the other kids
3. Lena will NOT be allowed upstairs to play in the other kids’ rooms
4. Lena will sleep on an air mattress in the living room. She will put up and take down her “room” every night and morning.
5. Lena will not be allowed to play with the other kids while unsupervised. Homework is the alternative
6. This will last 1-2 months. 3 weeks is the BARE minimum

For those who attended Basic Training in the late 90’s and had a thief in their company you might remember that private going through something similar to this. I’m not going to lie and tell you that basic training wasn’t my inspiration for “The Nuclear Option”. This, of course, precipitated into a talk between me and Jenn. For anyone who has ever witnessed a “talk” between my wife and I you know that things can get loud, quickly, if one of us happens to be emotionally charged. See the first paragraph one more time real quick and you’ll see that I was the very definition of “emotionally charged”.

My wonderful wife reminded me that this is a long process – that Lena has almost 11 years of bad habits to work through and that the nuclear option was NOT an option. I reminded my wonderful wife that we had three other children to worry about and that while one child worked through her issues the other three were living in fear and that continuing along the path that we had been was NOT an option. Now, quickly I want you to replace the word “reminded” from the last two sentences with the words “screamed” “hollered” “loudly exclaimed” “raised my voice while pounding on the bathroom counter” or another more emotionally charged phrase, crank your argument volume-meter to the Spinal Tap setting on your internal amp and read it again. Welcome to the Galstad’s. We aren’t too good to not have a knock-down drag-out before church.

So after going downstairs and expressing my extreme frustration to Lena – I’m also not too great of a dad to not cry in front of my kids – I retreated to the basement and now I’m sitting in front of the computer, typing this out while trying to come up with a way to teach my daughter what I learned from Jesus.

You see the whole Genesis behind the adoption was Jesus. Anyone who has asked me what caused me to adopt has gotten the quiet explanation of “It’s a Jesus thing. He adopted me so I figured I’d do the same thing.” So now I somehow need to show my daughter that just as I have accepted Jesus’ love and shower that love on her that she can do the same thing. She can now take my kindness and be kind. She can now take my love and love others. She can now take all the help that I give her and help others. She can now take all the wisdom (or attempted wisdom) I give her and try to answer the hard questions of others. There is no more need for her to steal from her brother and sisters because all she has to do is ask for it from me and I’ll GLADLY give it to her. And so I sit here and wrestle with the best way to teach those things and unless I’m trying to teach the justice of Old Testament God (which I’m not) then “The Nuclear Option” is not an option.

So this is where I am right now. Still in the basement, still trying to come up with the best way to raise my children and correct a problem. It will take enormous amounts of patience and love – patience and love that I DO NOT possess. And this is why this post is entitled “Reasons not to Adopt.” You do not currently have the patience and love to do it. You don’t have the boundless reserves of grace, self-control, peace, or any of the other fruits of the Spirit to do it. Sure, you might think you do. You might think like I did that “God will provide what I need because I’m doing His will.” I am here to tell you that God just might not – even if it is His will that you adopt. Jesus loves me, this I know, but He very well might give me a hard row to hoe. So right now I am daily falling on my knees and asking for more wisdom, more grace, more humility, more love, more patience and more joy. Because right now I am completely overwhelmed and completely dependent upon the mercy of a loving God. So unless you want to suddenly find yourself out of your depth and on your face begging for mercy from God then I suggest you don’t adopt. It’s not the message you usually get from adoptive parents.