Adoption is Not the Gospel

There. I said it.   It has been  gnawing at my heart, mind and spirit for nearly a decade and I was never brave enough to put it in type and own it.  Now I am. And I will say it again.

Adoption is NOT the gospel.   The gospel is the gospel.

I am a four-time adoptive mother. I am an orphanage director. I love and support adoption and find it a beautiful picture of the growing of a family through an avenue not dictated by biology. It's an act of obedience for the families called to it. It's an adventure in "dying to self" that we might never experience any other way.

For many families, adoption is the will of God. It yields blessings too many to number. Yes! God does set the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6) and He calls us to look after orphans and widows (James 1:27)


But it is not the gospel.


Countless books, posts, summits and quotes tout "adoption is the gospel" or is as close to the gospel as a picture we could paint with our flesh here on earth. And I disagree. And I realize I'm nobody and I am disagreeing with the likes of John Piper, Russell Moore and numerous   learned scholars who could bury me in any argument any day of the week with all but one brain cell tied behind their backs.

But, folks, I don't see it. And I have adopted. I love my adopted children to the ends of the Earth.

The gospel, my friends, is the sacrificial death of a holy, perfect God on the cross for sinful, undeserving man.  The gospel is the ONLY hope for hell-bound sinners (that's all of us, by the way) to find life outside of the condemnation we all deserve. 

So where, in this list of descriptors of the gospel of Christ, does the Earthly picture of adoption show up?  Are we, the adoptive parents, the representatives of Christ? Are we saving our adopted children from a literal or theoretical "hell" when we adopt them? Are we laying down our very lives for the purpose of bringing children into our families?  It might feel like it some days but, I assure you, the act of adopting a child will not cost you your literal life. In most cases, anyway. 

And if it did, your death wouldn't pay for a single sin. Neither would mine. 

Wouldn't a more accurate picture of the gospel be we, as adoptive parents, changing places with our adopted children?  We would go live in orphanages as the fatherless and they would be ushered into our homes, no qualifiers needed. We would give up everything in our own lives and just simply hand it over to children who hate us ? Isn't that more in the range of the gospel than us bringing a beautiful child into our homes where we inadvertently get a host of benefits, not the least of which is being able to parent precious children who had no family. 

Adoption is GOOD.  Adoption is BEAUTIFUL and Adoption is HARD.  But when it is equated to the gospel, when it reduces the gospel to something even remotely reproducible by the very recipients of the pure love of God the Father, who had no sin in Him, it falls agonizingly short.  

The same scripture that calls us as Believers to "care for orphans" also calls us to "care for widows". But how many fund raisers have your friends held, how many Go Fund Me pages for the care of widows?  How many of us as Believers are rushing to bring widows into our homes? I never have. It never even crossed my mind to do that.  I wanted more children. That was at the heart of our adoption. Maybe that isn't the case for every adoptive family. But I wanted a bunch of kids. And I got them through adoption. 

Adopting my sons never felt like the gospel. It felt like what it was. Adopting sons. It was exhilarating and awesome.  It was obedience to the call on our family. But the analogy that adopting them was somehow a type of "salvation" for them or for us just felt awkward. And wrong. It's not like what Jesus did. It's what people do. We take care of each other in whatever way God tells us to. 

And where does  "adoption is the gospel" or "adoption is God's heart" leave our fellow Believers who aren't called to adopt children? Do they feel "less than"?  Do they somehow miss the full illustration of the gospel in their lives because they haven't adopted a fatherless child?  I pray they never feel that way.  I pray they understand adoption is a calling on specific families while CARING for the fatherless is a mandate for all of us who claim to belong to the great big family of God. 

Please hear my heart on this. I LOVE ADOPTION!!! I LOVE MY ADOPTED SONS and my biological children with all that I am. 

It is beautiful when the children in my orphanage are united with their forever families through adoption.  It's my heart's desire for the ones who also desire it.

But no human analogy - not adoption, not marriage, not organ donation, not soldiers dying in combat, not people selling all their worldly goods to move to the third world to open an orphanage, not any single act we can engage in can hold a candle to what Jesus did on the cross those 2,000 years ago to reconcile us to God.

That singular act of love, which needed no repeating for a new batch of sinners (unlike adoption which presents a continuous need for new families to reach out to new orphans)  and which could only be satisfactorily completed by God Himself, is final. And incomparable. 

Adoption is adoption. Worthy in it's own way.

The gospel is the gospel. Beauty beyond comprehension, sacrifice beyond replication , good news with no parallel.  

Perfect for the imperfect.  Holy for the sinful. 

Life giving and soul saving in  the only way a human soul can be. 

Adoption is not the gospel. The gospel is the gospel. 

 

 

Remade: A Woman's Perspective on Mission Life

It has been six years since my family moved to The Philippines in service of street children. It has been an entire year since I've touched this blog and, to be honest, I had to reset the password because I had forgotten it. 

Please don't mistake the year of blog silence for "life has fallen into a predictable routine".  The only thing that is predictable here on the mission field is that nothing is.

And being a woman on the mission field, I have found, brings a unique type of challenge. We are so relational. Plus, they don't sell tampons here but that is a whole other blog post.

Looking back over my older blog posts, I see that I am nothing like her anymore. She was so optimistic. She believed that she could reach even the most distant child's heart.  Her faith was stronger than it is at this moment and she wasn't as tired. But she is so much wiser now.

 Kids have come and gone. More than 85 children have been served in some capacity in Mercy House's live-in, residential care program. The coming in is wonderful. The "going" part can be brutal.  We have said "goodbye" for happy reasons like family reunifications or adoptions. And we have said "goodbye" for devastating reasons like running away or  the need to  transfer to another place more equipped to serve a particular boy.   Every "goodbye" does something to my heart.   And, even as a four-time adoptive mother, these six years have changed my view of adoption radically. Adoption truly is NOT for every child nor is it for every family.  Some of my boys who have been adopted are struggling in the most painful ways. Some are laying waste to their adoptive families with their trauma. And we have done all we can to prepare them. Those who are thriving are the youngest and most resilient. The brokenness of the world  takes no prisoners. Everyone in it's path feels the burn to one degree or another.

In the last year, my precious mother has been diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer, my stateside children have had struggles that are unreachable here and we have undertaken a building project that has added a lot of weight to the load we carry.

But I suspect this life isn't so different to what it would have been had we not come 8,000 miles from our home land to serve. There would still be family sicknesses, struggles and people we lose physically and emotionally as life moves forward.

The distance magnifies the helplessness but the loneliness compounds everything.  The loneliness has always been and will probably always be the strangling part.   There have been countless times of feeling like I wanted to implode from having no one to talk through the hurts with.
 And as a Follower of Christ, He should always be the One. But there are times when a girl friend with a listening ear, no judgement  and lots of  "that must be hard" is what my heart wants most.  And can not have.  A friend guaranteed to spur me on and believe in my crazy ideas. The plans that others would say are too big or too silly to walk in.   The things I want to try that are too fragile to share in case they are crushed.

So I suppose when Paul said in Philippians that everything he once held dear he now counts as loss compared to the greatness of knowing HIM, he might have   meant things would be like this. 

But the OVERWHELMING peace and joy that follow us over here are the warm blanket over the hard days.  And now that we have been at this for six years, we have literally raised several of our boys from small street children to amazing young men who, although not given a family by adoption for various reasons, have found a PLACE that is their own.  Parents who will walk with them into adulthood, however flawed we are, and pour into them what was missing for those years the street stole. 

And God has drawn our oldest son, Aaron, into the work with us and that has been a great source of joy for me.  He has kept our immediate family here healthy, an illness here beyond the norm is a great fear as we just don't have the access (or insurance) we once did. 

If you asked me "if you knew then what you know now, would you still have come?" the answer would be, I would have come SOONER.  I would have RACED headlong into the distance and loneliness and other trials I have walked here.  I would not trade a moment of this life for the comfort of my old one.  I would not miss a second of holding broken boys while they grieve in exchange for an ounce of additional "me time".   Because THIS IS LIVING for me. It is not the calling on everyone's life (and I am thankful for that because so many of you are needed to stay where you are, serve in your workplace and family and be our champions from afar).  

So, to my precious friend who is on her way over here, family in tow, ready to tackle the crisis of fatherlessness with wide-eyed optimism. . .  hurry!!  

This life will not be easy. But I expect you know this. The enemy will come at your both guns blazing in a firestorm of discouragement in hopes of sending you away defeated.  So cling to the cross! 

The pain of the mission field brings the goodness of God into clarity.  The successes in ministry remind you that it is all HIM because we are more frail and less competent than we care to admit. 

"Superwoman" is a myth.   On the field and off.  

The Reflections of a Battered Missionary

I am sharing this post today as we near the five-year mark of serving orphaned and abandoned children here in The Philippines.  It feels like a lifetime and yet also seems were were just landing
in the Manila airport, six kids in tow, wide-eyed and idealistic and with no idea what we were actually doing.

These five years have been fraught  with  highs and lows that I do not believe  are accidents.  God has used every joy and every pain to shape me into the image of  His son and I have come so far. And yet, still have so very far to go.

The joys:

Our first Muslim child (without the hat) is an amazing, strong young man

Three boys from very different and very hard places forging a brotherly bond 

A 'family' birthday party to honor one of our faithful caregivers

By far, with no exception, the JOYS of serving street children outside my first culture are the kids themselves.  I have witnessed startling transformations, seen children come to salvation in Christ, reunited some with long, lost relatives who thought they were dead and have handed others over to nervous and excited adoptive parents who prayed for them before they even knew their names.
And those are just a few of the indescribable joys of life serving the fatherless.

The Pains:
I have become more cynical and jaded about people, their motives, their honesty and integrity since moving to this place. "We are NOT in Kansas anymore, Toto" .  For Reals.


And to avoid using this blog as a place of vengence, I will refrain from calling names but, when we were new here, a woman who is older than I and has been in child welfare for much longer than I reached out to mentor me.  I was grateful. She was a sister in the Lord and someone I respected immensely.  I called her with questions about everything from paperwork to how to register our newly-admitted children to public school here. Everything was so new and different.

One day, she called me to meet for coffee. I was relieved. It had been a particularly hard ministry week and I needed that time away.  When I got to the coffee shop,  she looked right into my eyes and asked me  not to "step into her sphere of influence".   I had no idea what she meant and she would not elaborate.   I did not know if she was asking me not to be friends with her staff, not to have contact with her financial supporters, not to go near her husband . . . WHAT??? What had I done? What was she afraid of?   I still do not know. We haven't spoken except via email since then and nothing has been resolved.  She only responded that whatever I had done was "confidential". That's a big fat cop out.
Just a few weeks after that confusing meeting, I received a very strong letter from someone here who is a government official in charge of the work we do. That letter accused me of kicking one of my own adopted sons out of our home and not allowing him to come near us.  The information was UNTRUE and the situation was nothing like it was presented in the note.  But then I remembered. The mentor "friend" who asked me not to step  in her "sphere" (what even IS a "sphere"?) questioned me previously about the struggles we were having with that particular adopted child.
And  I realized what a naive, trusting, wide-eyed ding bat I had been.   And vowed not to let that happen again.

If that experience had been one-of-a-kind, I would probably still be  giving more grace and less suspicion of  folks. 

BUT . . . 

And staff has stolen from us (in small amounts) and had to be fired.  Kids have told lies about us to deflect from their own misdeeds and we have had to defend ourselves unnecessarily.  But none of that holds a candle to the CALLING we have to stay here and serve street boys.

If the enemy wants us out of this country, he's going to have to do better than that.

And in these nearly five years, I have not only been wounded, I'm sure I have been the one doing the wounding.  I am no better than the "friend" with the "sphere" .  I'm wretched in my own ways.

Aren't we all?  

If you said "no, not me", you probably have a "sphere". 

I know. I need to get over that. 

Five years of living outside the USA has given me a more global perspective than I ever had. I realize that the world outside my home country is huge and different. Better in some ways and worse in others.   And that people inside and outside the States all need the same things:  Forgiveness and a relationship with their Creator, a place to  be loved and belong, the security that someone is FOR them, even when they make poor choices and mess up and just to be respected and treated with dignity - whether rich or poor, brilliant or not, productive members of society or dependent ones.

So, five years has been challenging and a blessing with overflow so rich I can not contain it all.  I would not trade it, nor change it.

Even the pains. They have a place.    

I look forward with great expectation to the next five years, lessons to learn, children to bring off the streets, new families forming and, more than all of that, a deeper walk with my Savior as He uses all the joys and all the pains. 

That is Him. 

The Fire

In our little shelter for street children, I try very hard to be open to any child referred to us. I absolutely despise having to say "no" to admitting a child in need. They are there. We are here.  It seems an easy thing to open our home to the boys who have no place to go. It is what we do.

The last three children referred to our center were small boys. They were 9, 7 and 4 years old. I felt confused by this as younger children are rarely referred to us.  I assumed that this was the Lord's way of guiding our center to serve younger clientele and we welcomes the 9 and 7 year old willingly. (The 4 year old comes to us next week). These little boys are so extremely cute! They are all affectionate, cheerful little people who want to sit in your lap, be kissed goodnight, play with Legos, watch cartoons and do "little boy things".  

I saw my staff enjoying these children and, in a move that needs to happen more often than it does, reminded myself that Mercy House is NOT ABOUT ME.  The little dudes are happy here and my staff is happy.  They  bring a lot of joy and laughter to our shelter. They light up the place.

Their "issues" are nothing like the issues of the older boys we serve. They are easily managed. We haven't broken up a single fist fight or had to restrain  even one of these little ones in the heat of their anger. I was weighing the benefits of younger kids vs. older kids in my mind and finding a thousand reasons that younger street boys are the perfect kids for Mercy House.

But then, last week, I went into the street to spend time with a former client of ours who decided to go back to the "old life".  And I met his friends.  Actually, I woke his friends up to serve  them and see how they are doing in the unstable world of street life.

Our former client as we woke him up to eat lunch  

Good friend of our client 

His "tropa" - the best friends and literal "partners in crime"

And just like "that", the fire in my heart began to ROAR.  And as my eyes met theirs, I saw what true hopelessness looks like. Again.  And I felt ashamed at the same time.  I had spent too much time convincing myself that these boys are too old, too hardened and too difficult to serve.

That Mercy House should become a place for little kids.

I was prepared to do what has already been done to these young men time and time again- to turn my back because the work is daunting and the success rate is LOW once boys pass the age of 14 or so. They miss the street, and girls, and smoking, and having money. Being under authority gets tiresome to them sometimes. 

If I were not standing in the street, looking at these children, I could have justified it all. But God put a FIRE in me for these older boys.  He has given me a love for them that ONLY comes from him. It is not something anyone could manufacture.  It is as pure and true as any genuine love can be. It causes me to overlook the smell (oh, there IS a smell), and the curse words and the "tough guy" act they like to put on.  This supernatural love causes me to pray for these kids and to always remember their names, even after meeting only one time.  It makes me able to tell them apart from far away when I see them in the street and to remember what they like to eat or the small details of their lives they told me the last time we met.  It allows me to understand more Tagalog in the street than I can ever understand in a meeting. 

AND DO NOT BE DECEIVED. I AM NOT AWESOME. I AM NOT. APART FROM HIM, I AM ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. 

This fire in my bones for these budding young men was placed in me just the same way my faith in Christ was. By HIM, for HIM , through HIM.   I could no more extinguish this flame than I could snuff out my love for my own husband and children, it is there for good, I suppose. 

And they know. These boys know that I love them. They know they matter to me and, most importantly, that they matter to their Creator God. One of the first phrases I learned in Tagalog was "Jesus loves you so much".  I wanted to be sure that as I handed them their meal or their medication, they understood it came, not from some white foreigner, but from their father in Heaven who thinks they are worth feeding and loving and dying for. 

The time has come! We have a gorgeous piece of land that is free and clear. It's ours and it's waiting for a building. And INDEPENDENT LIVING CENTER for older street boys to be built on it. I have to do it. I have to do it for the boys in the photos.  I have to do it for the scores of older boys who are walking the line between street child and career criminal. I have to do it, more than anything, for the God who called us here and who put a fire in me that just will not die!   So please, please pray for Mercy House.  We don't have the staff for an independent living center. We don't have the funds to build. We aren't trained in the finer points of investing in the lives of these boys over age for adoption. All we have is a fire.

  But with the God of "two loaves and five fish", it is enough. 

    

Former client asleep on my lap as we wait for my staff

Mercy House

Formula Worship

This is a post I have wanted to craft for many years now.  It leaps into my thoughts at unwelcome times and I try to chase it away.

I tell this post that it will offend many of my dear friends.

I claim that it is the enemy trying to encourage me to stir up controversies and I shoo it away.

I insist that there is no useful reason to share these thoughts but the thoughts persist and I am going to share them.  If for no other reason than maybe they will quiet down once they are out of my head and resting in the blogosphere.

Because I was guilty and nobody shared this hard truth with me as a younger mother.  I wish I had known.

THERE IS NO FORMULA FOR RAISING GODLY CHILDREN.

NONE.

NADA.

ZILCH.

ZERO.

WALAT.

There.  I said it.  You can stop reading now or you can continue and hear me out.  

 My husband and I raised our children in the very best way we knew how.  We used a formula from our favorite authors and inspired by other families who appeared to have Godly children.  And here is how it looked:

We took "Growing Kids God's Way".
We read "Shepherding a Child's Heart". Often.

We homeschooled. (The Biggie)

 I stayed home from the time our second child was born.

We did not allow our children to watch shows we deemed inappropriate.

We prayed with and for our children daily. 

We had family devotions.  

We were quiverfull and trusted God with the size of our family - which resulted in two biological and four internationally-adopted children.

We allowed only "courting" and no "dating".  

We worked hard to make sure our children were one another's best friends and kept outside relationships as secondary. 

We ate dinner together almost every night.  

We made our children use the "interrupt rule" (hand on a parent when they needed to interrupt our talking to someone else). 

We made sure they asked forgiveness when they wronged another person instead of just tossing out "I"m sorry" halfheartedly. . .

I'll stop there but you know me or others like me. You either ARE like me or you tried to be and felt you fell so very short because of mitigating factors like your husband not allowing you to homeschool or not being open to adoption or . . . 

I worshiped that formula.  There were MANY times I judged other families who did not follow one or more aspects of that formula. Most of the time, I trusted the formula more than I trusted my Heavenly Father, who gave me my children and loves them more than I ever could. 

When my children were 4 and 6, I was fairly certain I knew everything about Godly parenting and was doing a bang-up job - even with one hand tied behind my back.

But something happened that shattered any notion of my beloved formula being foolproof. Something so shocking and heart rending that I was left, mouth agape, holding my tattered copy of "Shepherding" and wondering what on Earth had just happened.

They grew up.

My little treasures who hung onto my every word began to question things I said.  They began to meet people outside our homeschool bubble.  People with opinions and beliefs that were different from ours.  They began to ask me hard questions that "because the Bible says so" was not a satisfactory answer to.  Questions with "why" and "prove it" sandwiched in.  They began to put their pinky toes into waters that has always been forbidden.  They wanted to separate "real" from "imagined" and although I know and knew in the deepest parts of my being that the God they grew up knowing and loving IS ultimate truth, I could not FORCE them to  know this.

And I was heartbroken and terrified. 

 I began to curse the formula. I undertook the arduous task of rethinking every parenting decision ever made by my husband and I and trying to figure out where we went "wrong". . . where we diverged from the REAL, TRUE, TRULY, REALLY, SUPER TRUE formula.  And I made the wanderings and questioning of my children all about me, forgetting one tiny detail that was a game changer. 

We are all sinners.  Me. My children. The "perfect" friends with their "perfect" families.

All.

All of our righteousness is like filthy rags.

No one seeks after God. All have turned away.
He is God. I am not.

He is jealous for the hearts and affections of my children.

Total Depravity of man trumped by the

Irresistible Grace of a loving God
Once saved/ Always Saved

So I share this in hopes of encouraging you, striving mothers.  You who have a formula that you truly believe will result in your children following HARD after God all the days of their lives.  I don't know if the phrase "the formula doesn't work" will encourage you but I pray it FREES you. 

Yes, point your children to Jesus.

Yes, guard their hearts.

Yes, monitor their friendships and the things they set before their eyes.

But know in your inner most being that their walk with the Lord is NOT about you and does NOT depend on you.

Some of the most Godly women I know were raised in homes without a single Believer. 

Some of the most unGodly people I know were raised in Christian homes.

If I could go back . . . well, that's another post for another time. And I would make a lot of the same choices as a mother. But those choices would be filtered through the knowledge that they are not an insurance policy, guaranteeing Godly children.  They are choices made by the desire to be a good steward of the time I had with my kids before they grew up and began sifting through their beliefs and trying to separate the precious stones from fool's gold.   

And then I remember that I wandered and questioned, too. I took a Philosophy course at my secular college and studied Kant and Descartes and existentialism and relative truth and I began to question the faith of my childhood.  

And I came back stronger.

Because He is TRUTH.

And lies, over time, erode, exposing paper bones.

The Holy Spirit in me spoke a quiet truth into the noise of my doubt.

So, if you, mothers, are willing to learn from the life of another, please listen up.  The word of God is a solid foundation.   Do not fear for the hearts of your children. Do not trust the formula.  Trust the one who created and entrusted those children to you.  Trust HIS word.

Before They Are Yours

 Yesterday I woke up with a nagging sense of dread coupled with a little tinge of excitement.  The major task we were to undertake yesterday was "roaming".   Roaming is the act of taking an older child out into the community to trying and locate his birth family.  In this case, our newest resident, J (far left in this photo) along with me, my awesome social worker, my husband and our youngest son set out to  roam.  
Before we ever set foot in the car or set a destination into our GPS, I started the day with prayer, always asking the Lord to help us find the birth parents and discern HIS will for the future of this child.  Since our resident is already 11 years old, has been on the streets for two years and only remembers a very old address, we had little to go on but "go", we did.
What we encountered was not in the script but was clearly the hand of God guiding us in His sovereign goodness.
First stop was McDonald's.  Roaming can be hard on the children in our center and we want to make it a little bit of a treat so, we pulled into the McDonald's not far from where this young man used to be on the street.  Immediately, three street boys who were there directing traffic for money recognized him. They ran to him and started hugging him and asking him where he had been. We invited these three inside to have lunch with us and when they understood that we were from a ministry, they started to open up and talk about their own lives.

These boys shared their struggles and the brutal crimes they have witnessed on the street. They told us where they sleep and where they spend their days. They broke my heart but they also gave us hope. Despite the hardships they face, they are still very much children with an inexplicable innocence that you can see in their eyes.
My husband prayed with these boys and talked to them about Jesus.  He shared with them that God has a purpose and a plan for every life.  The oldest boy, age 18, was visibly clinging on to every word.
As we were finishing our visit, a lady of about 70 years came to our table. She pointed her finger at our resident, "J" and poked him on the shoulder.  She began to say LOUDLY (I suspect she is hard of hearing) that J is a thief and a drug addict.  She went on to tell us that he sniffs glue and that he is not a good boy.   We all just watched her in disbelief.   J slunk down a little in his chair and stared at the ground.
I simply said "Okay, thank you" and waited for her to leave.  She did. 
As we rose to leave, she came back repeating the same story with a little less volume.  My husband told her that this child has a new life now and those things that he did before do not matter to us.

THAT shut her up.     And J heard  Daddy Anthony say this and the relief was clear.   

We will not define this child or any of our Mercy House children by the mistakes of their pasts.  Ever.

No Exceptions.

Then it was on to J's last remembered address!  When we pulled up to the area, he did not want to get out of the car.  He was clearly not interested in any reunion!  We assumed it might be because neighbors would recognize him and come out and tell us bad things about him. This has happened to us more than once when roaming with other children.  But this was not the reason.
We convinced him to come and show us the" house".  A woman came out and DID recognize him. But she did not tell us anything bad that he had done.  Instead, she started recounting to us the beatings she witnessed this little boy getting on a regular basis.  She kept saying "your step mother would beat you with a wooden stick" or "your step mother didn't give you food" - things that broke our hearts to hear but, at the same time, we need the true history of this child to make the best plan and deliver the best counseling to him.  The neighbor told us she  herself used to give him food and clothing but his "step mother" would not allow him to have any of it.   She would cut up the clothing and make rags to sell. She must have eaten the food herself based on her physical description. She was NOT starving. He was.
And then our little resident spoke up in a quiet voice and said "hindi step mother. Mama ko."  (not my step mother.  My real mother).
The neighbor was stunned.  She thought this child was being rejected by a step parent, which is all-too-common here, but he was being systematically abused by his biological mother. 
And now we understood more fully why he did not want to exit the car.  And why he flinched when Daddy Anthony went to touch him in a joking way. And why he flipped out and yelled when being verbally corrected for a misbehavior. And "why" a lot of things. . .
This helpful neighbor informed us that the family had moved more than a year ago to another barangay - a huge squatter area spanning more than 5 acres that is a maze of narrow dirt paths and homes on top of shacks.   The neighbors wanted to report the abuse many times but, out of fear of J's family, she did not.  We can not fault them for this.  We wish they had reported it but they are poor and voiceless.  Who would protect THEM afterward?
So we went to the huge squatter area.  J pleaded with us not to ask him to roam and we didn't. He stayed behind with Daddy Anthony while my amazing social worker, Love, and I walked hours' worth of hot, smelly streets asking for J's mother at every vendor stand and posting his picture and information on walls and posts with scotch tape and a prayer.
So far, no mother.  So we wait and we keep praying.
But what we gained from this day made every second worthwhile.  We gathered some history. We put pieces in a jumbled, messy frame and helped a very precious boy to have some background where there was so little.  We found some answers that will help us approach this beautiful child with extra caution and understanding.  We communicated to him how important his life is.  He is worth the driving and asking and hot, hot walking.  

He is accepted.  And acceptable. 

Our prayer for him is the same as for every child in our care.  We ask the Lord to take these hard beginnings and build a beautiful testimony that says to all who hear it:

OUR GOD REDEEMS 

He does. 

And He will.

The master puzzle maker, the ultimate worth-giver, the lover of His own.

Precious Girl

Precious girl . . . I see you every single day.  I hear your loud laughter and I watch you being so sweet and mothering to the three youngest children in our center.

And I am proud of you.

I know how hard you struggle in school to learn and keep up with the other kids.  I know sometimes they tease you because some of them think you are too dark and not pretty.

But I think you are beautiful. Most people would agree with me.

And not them. Promise.

Precious girl, I have seen all those scars on your arms.  I hear your English getting better every day and I remember the day it became good enough for you to tell me who put those scars there. And how. And my Tagalog was just good enough to help you understand that it would be best to forgive. 

But if you do forgive, you are more amazing than I could ever hope to be.

I'm thankful. I get to be the one to hug you while you cry for that Grandmother and Uncle who used to visit you but asked not to anymore because it's too hard on them to see you and not be able to keep you forever.  There is no way for you to understand how they feel.  Or for them to understand how you feel about having family but not.  I am glad it's me.  For now.

I hope you can grow up and forgive me, precious girl, for not being able to take away

the pain of you not growing up with your brother. His disabilities are so big.

And we are so small. 

We just can not give him what he needs. 

Maybe someday, precious girl, I will be able to tell you how angry I am at the people who hurt you. You were just a tiny child and you did not deserve the things that were done to you. You were a baby and nobody protected you.  Instead, she watched while you were hurt.  Not every woman who has babies is really a "mother", sweet girl.  But when you grow up, if you want to be one, I know you will be.  You are already such a loving, caring big sister.  You had such poor role models and yet, inside you, you already know how to put younger children's needs ahead of your own.  

You are going to be someone great.

You already are.

So, precious girl, I want to end with telling you a secret. When I pray for you, my prayer always goes something like this:

 "Lord, redeem this life. Let her shine brightly for YOU. Let every hurt and every pain

be another layer of her testimony to how YOU heal and restore.

And, please, surround her with people from today onward who will love and protect her, even

at their own expense.  Bring her a "forever family" who sees the priceless treasure she is. Even on the hard days.   Amen"

On extra, extra tough days, when I want to pack that suitcase and go back to where I came from, I think about you. And the others.  I think "I don't want to miss the rest of her story".   I know it's going to be good.  So good.  

I am learning  a lot from you, precious girl. . . about the human spirit, about the resiliency of children, about how to CHOOSE JOY when it would be so easy to dwell on the pain of the past. 

One more secret, sweet one?  I want to be more like you. If you can choose joy, so can I.

Deal?  Deal.

 

A Bad Word

I remember back in junior high school, having a then-deep and philosophical conversation with one of my equally-deep 12 year old friends about what makes a bad word "bad".

We surmised that we should be allowed to freely use the F-word or the Sh-word or ANY word as long as we didn't deem it "a swear".   We decided, between the two of us, to use these words and see if we could erase their "badness" by insisting they were just sounds and syllables with no inherently evil meanings.    We substituted mundane words with swear words and the sting began to fade.  We laughed long and hard at some of the creative ways we wove our new-found verbal freedom into colorful tapestries.

We ran into problems with this "logic", however, when overhead by our drama teacher during a break between classes.  Apparently, she hadn't self-actualized enough to appreciate the fact that those words were just sounds from our throats. To her, they had definite and unpleasant meaning.    Oh, the shallowness of the adult world!

I have run into many discussions that seem to be about semantics but are about so much more in this life in The Philippines.

Many people here speak English and speak it well. Some of the words here are used based on their meaning, though, with no regard to or even awareness of how the words can be perceived. Connotation matters. A lot.

Case in point:  More than one educated adult here has asked me if Ezekiel is "a mongoloid"?  The first time it happened, my jaw hit the floor. We haven't used that word in the US for at least 30 years. It's considered derogatory.  They are not much on "people first" language here.  Thankfully, I hid my knee-jerk reaction and answered "Yes. He has Down Syndrome".   I understand the language is simply a label and not INTENDED to shoot any hurtful arrows at our family.  The askers always go on to tell us about some precious family member or friend whom they cherish who is also "mongoloid".

Another word that is used often here as a simple descriptor is "retarded".  In test results given by professionals, children are often referred to as "mildly retarded, moderately retarded or severely/profoundly retarded".   I suppose it would be easy to get all riled up but, the core meaning of the word is "delayed in development" or "arrested in development".  And I've never once heard it used as a put-down here. It's just a fact.  A person with a low IQ who is not meeting his milestones on the bell-shaped curve will be labeled "retarded".  So what?  It just lets us know, as workers and as parents that we should adjust some expectations for timelines and give a child some extra grace and guidance. 

My ethnocentric thinking has to die a little each day here. And that's a good thing.

But the REAL reason for this post on words and their impact and who decides what we can and can not say is THIS word:

ORPHANAGE 

If a "parsonage" is where a pastor lives, isn't an "orphanage" where orphans live?  Many cringe at this word.  It's archaic.  It's harsh.  It summons images of little girls in rags singing "It's a hard-knock life for us . . . "    The term "Child Caring Agency" or "CCA" is used here often to describe the place where we live with a slew of unrelated children who have no capable or living parents to raise them. 

I don't mind the word "orphanage".  It leaves no questions.  On the other hand, not all of the children in our care are TRUE orphans. Some are in mid-steam of eventual abandonment.  Some have loving mothers who just have no means to care for them and are trying to improve their lives and receive their children back. One set of siblings here even has TWO biological living parents who are together and working to bring their children home. 

But most don't. 

Most have a story that goes like this: " Mom and dad split up. Mom found a new man. He doesn't want to raise anyone else's children SOOO . . . . I became a street child. I begged and scavenged and eventually got rescued or referred to Mercy House.  I'm an orphan because the adult meant to love me decided having a boyfriend/girlfriend was more important than keeping me safe."  

The second most common story we hear is:  "My dad left us when I was a baby. My mom is in jail (or left us to work far away) and the neighbor/relative she left us with couldn't feed us so she took us to the local police to relinquish us. Mom is never coming back."

It's not the glamorous "both parents died in a small-engine plane crash off the coast to Tibet" story that makes orphans in the movies.  It's just bad adult choices trickling down to injure children.

So, they live in an orphanage, or a child caring agency or a care facility or whatever term suits you best.

The facts are the same. 

We look in the eyes of children every single day who do not have a single somebody in the world saying to them "I will be here forever. You are MINE always. You belong with ME.  We are your final and only FAMILY.  My last name is your last name.  When we go on vacation, you go. When we cry over the loss of a family pet, you'll be right here in the circle.  When the hostess at the restaurant says 'Jones party of 8' - that means YOU, too.   When we pick up that gray-haired lady from Minnesota at the airport and she starts handing out $5 bills, get in line because she is YOUR grandma, also. "

We, at Mercy House, can not, in all fairness, say those things to the children in our care. And Oh, how we love them! We tell them that all the time. We hug and kiss them and tuck them in and tell them about Jesus.  We nurse them when they are sick and teach them the rules of fair play. But we can't say THOSE things unless we want to break trust and be liars.  Or adopt them all.  And I've thought of that, believe me.

I think you get the idea.   Adoption is the cure for the ailing hearts of children who have never been told those things and do not even know, for the most part, that it is what they need to hear. 

How blessed you are to be on THAT side of the equation. I was there.  It was glorious.  Now I'm here. It's both heartbreaking and precious.  I know what these children need most and it is not a better orphanage.  Mercy House is wonderful. It's family-style.  We are proud of the work we do and stand clean before the Lord knowing we are doing the best we can.

But we aren't YOU.

We are no longer an adoptive family with the power to change the world for that child on Special Homefinding.  

We need YOU to say "forever". . . and to mean it.

Will you?  

"FAMILY" . . . now that's a good word. 

 English Standard Version
"So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."  James 4:17

Not Like Us, Older Child Adoption Part 2

Most of you readers are aware of the fact that, back in 2006, our family welcomed a child into our home from a disrupted adoption.    I detailed the events surrounding that decision and the hardships that came as a result of it in a blog post that went  viral here.
Although this particular son has had struggles common to kids from hard places even since that time, I firmly believe he has been healed of the worst of the damage and God has done a miracle for him.
We are still in awe of that healing, eight years after placement.

But I share with you today, not so much as a four-time Philippine adoptive parent but as the director of a Child Caring Agency that is in the throes of preparing our first group of children for their "forever families".

I share because TWO disrupted adoptions further broke the heart of my broken son and it is my deepest desire that the children from our orphanage should never suffer that same pain.

I write because TWO American families had to cope with the hard decision to find a new family for a child and those families walked into adoption with, I'm sure, the best of intentions and the highest of hopes. They spent countless dollars and offered many prayers for the child that would be theirs but they could not stay the course.

And I write for a little boy who currently lives in our center but could so easily follow the path of my own broken son if not for an adoptive family who understands . . . who is patient . . . who sees hidden treasure underneath the damaged earth.

This is a child who spent years on the streets.  He begged. He parked cars. He scavanged in the trash to make a few pesos from recyclable items.  He took the money back to a very poor mother and she used it to provide for their family.  He was abused both on the streets and at home.  He's 12 and small for his age with a HUGE personality.

This is a child who could easily grow up to be a pastor, a politician...  or a disrupted adoption story.

He already has some innate strikes against him in terms of a successful placement.
He's older.
He's a boy.
He's very very behind academically, although he's smart.
That HUGE personality may look like RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) to some well-read but inexperienced adoptive family.
And THAT is where my fear and heartbreak meet and THAT is why I want to speak out on behalf of this child and so many others like him who wait in this country for a fresh start and a forever family.

Because I am American, I can really only speak to my own adoptive culture and community although I suspect in places like Australia and France - places with plenty of access to adoption literature, professionals who will analyze your child into oblivion and  to internet horror stories - might follow a similar pattern.

This little boy is NOT like a typical American child.  Because he is neither typical nor American.
He's a Filipino former street child who spent much more time on the streets and  in inadequate shelters than he has spent in a solid, safe family setting.  He, and others like him, have some coping strategies that might make a new family hesitant to receive him but I pray that someone will because as we see those survival mechanisms fade away, a beautiful boy is emerging.  This child is going to make some family happier and more alive than they have ever been. In time.

Some of the behaviors you MIGHT see in an older adopted child are:

1. "Over Loving"- for an infant, crying physical closeness and lots of eye contact help get those basic needs met. For an older child, sometimes the words "I love you" will come out too soon in an effort to communicate to his new family that he has needs and wants you to meet them.  An older adopted child might scare his parents who have read in countless adoption books that when a child is too loving, too soon, he is being "superficially charming" and probably has an attachment disorder.
In some children, that is true.  But I submit to you that the children we have worked with do not even understand what real parental love looks like, for the most part.  They mimic what they hear those happy TV families say and it yields positive results so they continue to do that.  As time goes on, we see the kids in our center start to say "I love you" less and less as they begin to receive love from us and our staff. They start to prefer us to strangers in public and they begin to make eye contact when they say "I love you".  And I am not naive, I feel the change in this child.  I can see it.  His forever family will, too.  If they are willing to wait for it.

2. "Over Asking" - kids who have had to fend for themselves will often ask for everything under the sun.  It is annoying. It feels like they are "using" you.  It is worrisome and embarrassing, especially when the child asks a family friend or a casual acquaintance for food, money, etc.  If your new son or daughter spent time begging, this is a behavior that has granted them lots of goodies and it takes time to extinguish.   A child needs a LONG time of having his needs met consistently by other people before he stops "looking out for number one".   He will get it eventually.  Three months into care with two of our boys and they already get it.  The asking for things has diminished.  The thankfulness has increased. Again, it takes time and it takes reminders that it's not nice to ask people for things all the time.

3. "Over Helping" - your older adopted child may believe he has to work to stay in your family. The children in our center have chores and work hard but most of them came in and tried to do EVERY chore ALL THE TIME.  If a child saw a staff member sweeping, he would try to take the broom and finish.  He would offer to change dirty diapers, do ALL the dishes for this HUGE group of people and even cook the food.  Kids who have been on the street are used to working for what they get.  Even begging is work. It is hard work, actually.  The kids spend hours in the hot son approaching strangers and dealing with a lot of rejection, harsh remarks and being ignored. Very hard on the spirit of a child but "work", just the same.  Families must reassure their new child that no matter how much - or how little- they do by way of chores, they are wanted, loved and will always be a part of the family.

4. "Over Touching" - The children in our center crave physical attention almost all the time. They want to hold hands, sit on our laps (even the "tough" street kids), kiss our cheeks and just be close. They are getting their needs met, parents.  They may smother you a little, at least for the first few months.  You have to do what is comfortable for you but here, we let them.  We feel such a privilege in getting to meet those unmet needs.  We are preparing them for you in hopes that the behaviors that will scare you into a counselor's office might be a little lessened by the time you meet them.  But they won't be gone. They may even start over because you are somebody new.  Please, I beg you, hug those kids.  Let that 12 year old sit on your lap at home.  Cradle him while you watch a movie. Do it. Don't chastise him for acting younger than his age.  He is putting his heart on the line and asking you to go back in time  with him a little.  The phase won't last forever but the strong bond and healing that come out of it will.

5. "Over Hurting" - the smallest physical injury, a small scratch or a mild bump, might cause your new son/daughter to over react.  They are asking for your undivided attention. They are checking to see if you will come to their aid when they get hurt. They are finding out how much you care about even the small things. On the street, there was no one to kiss those boo boos and put on a band aid. We go through a box a week when a child is new to our center. They can not get enough having those tears dried - even if they had to squeeze them out themselves.  Just like the other "overs", it will fade with time.

I am working hard to be professional and controlled as I type this post but my insides want to splash out onto the screen and BEG you adoptive families not to disrupt the adoptions of the precious kids in my center.  I KNOW them. I ADORE them. I dissolve into tears when I think of them having to endure this kind of pain after the lives they have lived. I know it happens.  I know it could possibly happen to my precious boy in the photo.   Or our others. 

But I also believe there are things WE can do on this side of water and things YOU can do as you wait that will help improve the chances of a great, long-lasting placement for even the children who are older and from hard places.

We'll take care of our side the best we know how but can I just ask THREE small, simple things of you hopeful adoptive parents?  Just THREE . . .

FIRST:  Bury the fantasy!  Falling in love with a photo and a write up is natural in adoption. I have done it four times.  I was "in love" with my kids the moment I received that referral photo and learned the details of their lives.  I built an image in my mind of what my sons would be like and when they were not, it was hard.  I realized they are NOT like "us".  Their voices, their preferences, their personalities- were nothing like the grateful Tiny Tims in my mind who fell into my arms and said "thank you for rescuing me".  Not even close.  Please do not build a mental fantasy around your new child before you meet him. He won't live up to it. He will disappoint. And so will you.  You waited SO long and prayed SO hard for this child  but don't let the "wanting" be better than the "having".
Together, you will find your groove and be the family that God intended.

SECOND: READ LESS, PRAY MORE. There are wonderful books about adoption, attachment, bonding and disorders of such.  I encourage you not to delve too deeply into those.  I know that RAD is real but I also know a lot of money is made from the psycho-analysis and medication of children from hard places. That money might be better spent on family activities and that time better spent in prayer.  With our twice-disrupted son, we opted for counseling, out-of-home respite and lots of other interventions and, for us, there was no "miracle" in those things. The miracle came when we began to accept our boy for who he is and change our own expectations and hearts toward him and his past.  Beauty really IS in the eye of the beholder. Cliche as that is, there is so much truth there. If only I had known .  .  .

THIRD: Give it a full year.  I would venture to say that the changes adoption causes in a family are so drastic that life is upside down for a long time.  Even with a child you adore at first sight, your lives are nothing like they were before "gotcha day" and you all need to step back and find your new normal. In all four of our adoptions, our family was happy but stressed for several months after placement. By the one-year mark, for most of our adoptive placements, we were feeling pretty "normal" and even considering another child.  Remember that at one-month post placement, your family looks nothing like it will at one-year post placement.  Please, just give him a year.  I think you'll be glad you did.


I know this post is general and that every child and every family are different. Each sending country has cultural issues that will not be in line with Filipino culture but, at the heart of all of this, is the common thread. Adoption is hard and if God calls, He equips.

Trust Him. Enjoy your child. Journal the hard and the good. Somebody, somewhere, someday, will need to draw from your life and find the hope to keep, and not disrupt, their adopted child.

For HIS Fame,
Nikki Esquivel
Co-Founder
Middleman Community Support Center, Inc.
"Mercy House"

The Privilege of Sacrifice

2 Corinthians 8
"8 And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. ² In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. ³ For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, ⁴ they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people. ⁵ And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us."

I love this passage.  I hate how misused and taken-out-of-context it can be.  This is a narrative about the generosity of the people of Macedonia toward the ministry of Paul.  He was proud of them. He was commending them for giving despite their own trials.  It was simply a compliment.

It is not a command.

And yet, time and time again I have seen and heard missionaries, pastors and other full-time servants of the gospel lift up this passage and implore their hearers to "give beyond their abilities".   I cringe.

I love reading about the hearts of the Macedonians. We have "Macedonians" in our lives who support our ministry with generosity and we know, for some of our donors, giving to Mercy House is a huge sacrifice.  We have even had friends "urgently plead with us" for the privilege of giving. People have contacted us and asked how to give to our work and had to email me several times to ask -but persevered- because of out sheer busyness, I was lax in replying and out of sheer desire to give, they were compelled not to give up on us. 

When it comes to money and the mission field, there is an innate awkwardness that just IS. We subsist on the giving of our friends, family and those who have a heart for the things God has given us a heart for.  And we pray it doesn't change those relationships and make them "weird". 

But I will never be that missionary who makes my loved ones feel guilty for drinking "five dollar lattes", or taking a beautiful vacation.  NEVER!

 I lived a long and fairly prosperous pre-mission field life.  We worked hard and became debt-free except for our mortgage (Thanks, Dave Ramsey). We took family trips. We entertained in our home a lot.  We had a motorcycle, three cars and I had the privilege of being an at-home mother and homeschooling my beautiful kids.   And we gave to the work of the gospel in The Philippines because, even back then, this country had our hearts.

BUT . . .

I've also  been on the receiving end of pleas from ministries, church building programs and special projects from my brothers and sisters in The Faith that were simply guilt-inducing.  I watched videos of fly-encrusted babies with distended bellies.  I was told repeatedly that most of the world lives for a year on what I spend on one trip to Wal Mart.   I was reminded that mothers around the world watch their babies die of illnesses that I can just whip out my amoxicillin and ibuprofen and take care of easily in my own kids in three days or less.  Often, the idea of giving up my over-priced coffee to save children was mentioned because I could provide clean water to a whole village for the price of said beverage.

And all of those things are real and true.  They are happening.  I have seen them or their victims first hand since moving to this country.   

The plight of orphans and street children is awful here.  The challenge for those of us on the front lines is to balance the sharing of their stories with faith that the Lord moves hearts to give and we only need present the opportunity.  

And at the risk of patting ourselves on the back, we want to be very transparent about how we got here and how we remain here.  I mean, in "money talk". . .

We sold all our "stuff".   We allocated $50,000 of our own money to start Mercy House.  We've been given donations - big and small - by friends and strangers.   God has moved hearts and endeared our ministry to them. It's all HIM.  ALL.  HIM. He could have called any family and used any carbon-based life form to come over here, meet and touch these beautiful abandoned kids. We're thankful He's using us. Just thankful.

But that's OUR story.  

It's not meant to be a prototype for anyone else's story.  The selling-it-all-and-going  Christians are nothing without the staying-and-working-and-giving  Christians.  Period.  We're all pieces of the same puzzle.  Equal.  Vital.  Privileged.   I sometimes think the staying-and-working Believers have a more challenging call than those of us who are the sell-and-go types.  Sometimes.

So, we want to use this little space on the blogosphere to thank our staying-and-working partners, our coming-for-a-short-visit friends,  our praying-for-you-daily partners and our I-sent-you-a-box donors.  Those boxes are like water in the desert to our hearts. Pieces of home. 

 Thank you for your sacrifice.  Thank you for enjoying the privilege with us.  

FOR HIS FAME.

2 Corinthians 9:7 says:

" Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."