What is love? (Baby don't hurt me no more)

As a family “project” we are working together to memorize these verses.  (I know, because we’re bored and just sitting around collectively eating bon-bons whilst twiddling our thumbs.)  It came to me one night when I was praying.  I was repenting of losing my temper yet again.  Repenting of overreacting to disobedience, causing one child in particular to dig in her heels, thus, I was really creating the problem through my own lack of self-control.  I said to God, “Lord, I only know anger.  I don’t know love.  (Then in my mind I channeled Helen Reddy and sang “I don’t know how to love him, what to do, how to move him…  Yes, I digress in my prayer life too.  Jesus is okay with it.  In fact, He works with it.)  I confess that I seem to always be at the end of the rope.  In fact, the rope may be gone.  But I don’t know how to love my children well.  I don’t even know what love looks like.”  And then I may or may not have sung “I want to know what love is, I want you to show me.” 

And then I heard Him.  This tiny voice that had been quieted for so long by my efforts to suck it up and just try harder.  He said, “You do know what love is.  I love you.  I am love.”  And so my heart just said, “Ummm, thanks God, but how is that going to help me when my child is losing their shit because I’ve told them they have to cover their nipples at the table.”  He said, “I have shown you my love.  And I’ve written it down for you.” 

And then I rolled my eyes.  Cause that’s the appropriate response for when the Holy Spirit reminds you of what is true.  I thought, Really God?  You’re pointing me to the cheesiest scripture of all time? 

And then I read it again with new eyes and repented my way through it.

Love is PATIENT.  So maybe I should give my son more than three seconds to buckle himself in before I snap at him “Why aren’t you buckling in?  Do you want the cops to take me to jail?”  Maybe I should stop everything long enough to dress the child who asks for help even though I know she is capable of dressing herself independently.

Love is KIND.  Wow.  Can I even be kind?  Do I even have a soft voice?  I think I’ve been kind before.  Maybe.  Certainly I’ve never been kind to my family on a Sunday morning when trying to get everyone dressed, fed, and out the door.  Love sees how many Legos were put away and doesn’t mention the one Love just stepped on.

Love DOES NOT ENVY OR BOAST.  Apparently, love doesn’t have a facebook account. 

Love is NOT ARROGANT OR RUDE.  So love probably doesn’t judge other people for the way they parent.   Or mouth off to its parents.   Or talk about people behind their back. 

Love does NOT INSIST ON ITS OWN WAY. Really?  So maybe “Because I told you so” isn’t a loving parenting response.  You mean loving my kids means focusing my parenting style on their needs and not just on what is easiest for me?  Gah.  But what if I really don’t want to read Danny the Dinosaur again?  What if that means waking up earlier so we can take the time together to pick out a school outfit?  Augh.  What if that means waking up earlier so the child who is pokey in the morning can take his time getting dressed without having to be yelled at to hurry up.  Surely love doesn’t mean waking up earlier.  God can’t be saying that.  Please Lord tell me that at least sometimes Love means just yelling “Why can’t you just do what I ask the first time at least once?”  What if I just yell that at my husband?  Is that cool.  No?  Augh. 

Love is NOT IRRATABLE OR RESENTFUL.  So I take this to mean that love isn’t in a permanent state of hanger.  Love doesn’t wax nostalgically at pictures from when it had no children and could afford to go to places like Chicago to see the Rolling Stones.  Love doesn’t snap at its husband for travelling for work, acting all pouty, holding his loving provision for us against him. 

Love  DOES NOT REJOICE AT WRONGDOING, BUT REJOICES WITH THE TRUTH.  Love doesn’t tattle.  Love doesn’t seek out opportunities to correct.  Love isn’t hyper-sensitive.  Love isn’t bitter.  Love isn’t over critical, but paints with a wide brush of grace.  Love seeks out opportunities to lavish praise.  Love gives high fives.  And stickers.  Love doesn’t slam doors.  Love doesn’t shame or use sarcasm.  Love doesn’t bring up fights long ago resolved.  Love looks for change and progress, even tiny slivers of change, and celebrates them.  Love’s wall are plastered with artwork. 

Love BEARS ALL THINGS.  It goes to the time in couch again and again.  Even when it hurts.  Especially when it hurts and especially when it means being late.

Love BELIEVES ALL THINGS.  Redemption is real.  God is for me and my children.  He is near.  He has overcome the world. 

Love HOPES ALL THINGS.  This is not as good as it gets.  Jesus is making all things new.  He will walk amongst us and wipe every tear from our eyes.  

Love ENDURES ALL THINGS.  It’d have to to love me.   Love, in fact, endured death.  For me.  So I could have life.

So this is why were are memorizing these verses.  I want them to wallpaper our hearts and minds.  I want God’s love to be ever before me, changing the way I parent and love my kids.  I want to be at that point of almost losing and remember, “Love is patient and kind” and then be able to approach my children proactively and gently, not just mad.  I want less me and more love. 

Our family needs MORE LOVE. 

How to love the crazy adoption people...

My dear friend Lisa, along with her family, is in Lithuania.  They have adopted the adorable Asher and Annalise, 4 year old twins.  Asher and Annalise join sibling Adeline and Alden.  These friends are precious to us.  We met them only a year ago through a mutual friend but it was an instant love connection.  Our husbands get along; our kids want to marry one another.  And we all love Jesus and adoption and pizza from Costco.  (You, know, the trinity of important things…)

Anywhoozie, Lisa is about to come home and I’m just reupping my blog and I thought I’d reflect on our first few weeks home in order to help her.  Most friends, though well meaning, have zero idea what it is like to bring an older child into your family through adoption.  It is foreign and so those well meaning friends often do harm when they mean to help, or worse yet, do nothing at all.  So here is my version of how to love an adoptive family.

First of all, read Jen Hatmaker’s How to Be the Village.  Jen does an excellent job of setting the stage of what adoptive family’s go through after the big hoopla of the airport moment. 

Many people will say “Oh, you went from 2 to 4!  It’s like you brought home twins from the hospital!”  Um, yes, but a bajillion times harder.  It’s similar because your expenses doubled and you are sleeping approximately 2 hours a night, but that is really where the similarity ends.  Babies are pretty easy.  You have a baby and people expect you to be tired and bring you stuffed animals and meals and the world’s cutest socks but really all you are doing is wiping poop, producing milk, and watching Netflix whilst the smooshy balls of flesh sit still where you put them.  I mean, a baby doesn’t crawl under the bed in defiance right before your in-laws show up to meet their grandchild for the first time.  A baby can’t lob the remote at your head or stand on the kitchen table or forget that you said to not eat the soap.  You bring home two preschool children and despite the fact that you are getting no sleep and these kids don’t know what you are saying nor what it means to be in a family, everyone asks you to meet them at a park and to touch them like they’re the newest addition to the petting zoo… “Ooooh, their hair is so soft, I never expected that!” 

Ouch, Elizabeth, now it sounds like I will just screw it all up, when I want to love my friends.  What can I do????

Make meals.  We were blessed with meals three times a week for close to two months.  There were so very many days that I’d been up for so long and spent so much time in “come to Jesus” meetings on the time in couch that I couldn’t form sentences, much less a meal. (And did I mention that while I was in those time-ins with one child, the other children were unfolding the five loads of laundry I’d just folded while we watched Cars two times in a row.) A couple of weeks ago, I was so proud because I’d planned this yummy crock pot meal.  I’d set the table!  We were using real (not paper) plates!  I’d even managed to sweep up the cereal from breakfast, so our kitchen was neat.  And then it was around 5pm that my darling husband noticed I’d forgotten to actually turn on the crock pot.  Y’all, I would’ve cried, but by this point, I was so used to dropping all the ball all the time that I realized from now on my role as Mom was to just roll the ball.  I could no longer juggle. So we went out for pizza. 

So cook.  And make something normal, please.  No lentil salad or tofu lasagna.  It does the family no good if you bring over some wackadoo meal and they still have to order pizza to feed the family.  Because chances are they’ve already had pizza three times already this week.

Do the grocery shopping.  If you live near the family, whenever you go to the grocery store, text your friend.  Sometimes you picking up a gallon of milk or another 8 pack of yogurt will save the day, and really, how hard is that?  Things that would be a blessing to a just home from the airport family:

-milk
-cereal
-frozen pizzas (are you recognizing a theme here?)
-eggs
-kid friendly yogurt
-oreos
-goldfish (and other “pack in lunch” items especially if they have school aged kids too)
-bread
-rice
-deli meat
-spaghetti sauce
­­­-bag of salad
-paper plates
-small plastic cups (not giant 16 oz solos, but ones for kids)
-paper towels (seriously!!!!)
-kids’ band-aids
-fruit: bananas, apples, grapes, clementines, strawberries (things that are healthy that can be offered to a child that has known starvation at anytime without a parent having to feel guilty)
-ice cream
-beer
-wine (lots!)

Fold laundry.  Come over one night after the kids’ bedtime and offer to watch TV and fold laundry. Most likely, your friend will first refuse this offer.  Offer again.  Say, “How about I just fold the kids’ laundry and linens?  You won’t even have to say words or think or even help, you can just tell me how you like your shirts folded and stare off into the mid-distance.”  A friend did this for me and I still cry when I think about it.  In fact, I hired a friend to come for a couple of hours every week just to fold my laundry and vacuum.  Adopted kids often regress in the potty department so it is not abnormal for the addition of adopted kids to multiply the laundry exponentially. Maybe your friend thought they were potty trained but they aren’t.  Or maybe they don’t know how to wipe and so even though the kid is going in the potty, they still have to change clothes 47 times a day.  Or perhaps the kid is so ecstatic about having their own clothes that they don’t have to share with anyone and drawers to call his own that the child changes clothes every 5 minutes.  Your friend knows she should probably say something but a)how can you blame a kid who has had so little for so long, and b) that would probably require moving and/or dodging a shoe.  Or *cough, cough* maybe a child who has been in the home since birth with the addition of two new siblings has suddenly lost the ability to go pee and poo in the potty but also refuses to wear pull ups because she’s been in panties for over a year. 

Check in.  Send texts.  Most likely your friend is lonely and starved for adult conversation.  And possibly homicidal because of all the pee and poo everywhere.  That said, don’t assume that because things are hard they regret their decision.  Or maybe they momentarily regret it.  With a lower case “r”.  Which then makes them feel guilty and horrible.  So don’t say things like, “What?  Is it harder than you thought it would be?”  Because more than likely your friend has spent hours researching and training, but when the time comes, no one really knows what to do when your child screams and thrashes and throws whatever loose object they can find at your head for 45 minutes because you dared to strap them into the car seat. And don’t say things like, “Well at least you are now together!”  Because that completely negates your friend’s feelings.  It’s like telling a woman with severe morning sickness she should be thankful for the puke on her shirt. 

Your friend has done things she never thought she’d do in these trying times—let the TV stay on 24 hours (hey—it’s teaching them English!), gone to the pharmacy in pajamas, yelled at the kids so loudly her throat was raw, seriously pondered nudism as a means to reduce the laundry, driven around aimlessly for two hours because all of the kids fell asleep in their carseats, cussed out her spouse, given the kids bubble wands then locked them outside, and locked herself in the bathroom with her phone (that candy isn’t going to crush itself). 

Whatever you do, DO NOT GIVE PARENTING ADVICE unless you yourself have parented an adopted child.  It’s so very different.  And it’ll make your friend want to punch you in the face.  You know how it’ll take ten minutes to get out the door with your kids, so you just say, “Fine then! We are leaving without you.  Goodbye.”  You can’t say that to a kid who has actually been abandoned.  To a kid who has been abandoned or orphaned through death, you can’t send them to their room when they misbehave.  They’ve already been sent an ocean away from everything they know.  Every parenting decision, every consequence given,  must be done through the lens of trust-building, relationship affirming.  So when you see your friend offer a do- over to a kid who just hit her because he’s mad, don’t say, “Oh, in my house that would get a whoopin’.”  Because more than likely, your friend’s adopted kid has already had more than his fair share of whoopins’ and your friend is trying to both earn her kids’ trust and also teach him the appropriate way to deal with his anger and disappointment.  Kids who come from hard places have this intense internal struggle.  How do I grab on to this new family while grieving the loss of my first family?  How do I suddenly accept help from a parent when I’ve done it all on my own for so long?  How do I accept that these people are telling me I’m precious and adored when the circumstances of my life tell me differently?  These are very difficult and adult and complex emotions being sorted out by teensy tiny immature people.  It's no wonder there is crap everywhere.  (Gosh, why won't she stop talking about poop?)

Send your friend money, gift cards, jewelry.  No really.  Money because adoption is expensive and more than likely, your friend has at least 10k in debt.  And the need to pay it off isn’t helping your friend relax in the 2 hours a day she gets alone.  Gift cards because your friend needs a million things from Target and WalMart.  She needs pants because their newly home child has gained 7 pounds in two months.  Baby wipes because one of the children put two bins of wipes down the toilet.  A plunger (see previous sentence).  More Doritos, because, well, just because.    And getting to go shopping without having to price out every little thing is such a joy and Target has baskets that three kids can be strapped in so it’s the closest to normal your friend has seen in awhile.  And jewelry, because, y’all, she needs it.  A dear new friend gave me the cutest Stella and Dot studs yesterday at church.  Just because she loved me and wanted me to feel special and loved.  Oh my goodness.  I may not have bathed today but on my ears are the loveliest pair of sparkling earrings reminding me that Jesus sees me and is for me and so is my buddy Nicole.  Even if I can smell myself, especially when I can smell myself.  

We’ve been home almost 4 months.  And this crap is still happening.  (Though, honestly, a lot less.  Or at least the kids have gotten used to the car seats and now all sleep in their own beds.  Most of the time…)

Ok, so now you are thinking, holy heck!  What did my friend sign on for?  Why on earth would anyone adopt?  Go into debt and get shoes thrown at me? No, thank you.  Because while it is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done/am doing in my life, it is also the most joyful.  There are days it feels like death.  But even those days bring me closer to my Jesus than ever.  I know what my adoption cost him.  It was bloody and precious.  And well, this holy calling of adoption puts our family in this raw place of genuine living that it’s almost a high.  A joyful intensity that can only be accurately described as bordering lunacy.  Unbeknownst to him, I think adoptive families are the ones Keroac wrote about:

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

Thankful for the "Not Knowing"

As we’ve been treading water these past few weeks, a few things have risen to the surface.  Mainly, some questions and then (thankfully) some Scripture.   

The questions have been:

1.      If I knew at the beginning all that I know now, would I do it anyway? 

2.      Is this worth it?

3.      If I had to do it all over again, would I?

And the simple answers are: 

1.       Probably not. I would’ve been too afraid to obey. 

2.      Yes.  Heck yes.

3.      Over and over and over again. 

Psalm 119: 105 says “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”  (Drink if you grew up in the 80s in a Christian home and totally just sung that in your brain a la Amy Grant.)

This tells me that God’s promise is to lead me.  Step by step.  That I will safely see the next step, but not the whole landscape.   

Folks, this is hard.  And on the one hand, I hate this.  I would have much preferred God to have shown up two years ago in a burning bush and said, “Okay, so here is what I’m going to do.  You’re going to go here and do this and then this will happen and then we will party. The end.”   

But on the other hand?  God knows me.  He knows that I’d hear “Okay so this is what I’m….” and then I’d go running off all willy-nilly forgetting that it was Him I was following.  If God had told me that he was going to bring three children into my heart that wouldn’t be my kids but I’d ache for them for forever but He was doing it for them and not for me, I’d have politely said “No thank you.”  If I’d know that the immigration steps would change and a two week process would become a six month process and that instead of a week in country we’d be staring down 3 plus weeks in country, I would’ve let His call go to voicemail.  So knowing my feeble heart and scattered brain, He graciously left me in the dark.  He said, “Sweet baby girl, you can’t handle to walk by sight.  Not yet, anyway.  So take my hand and walk by faith.  Okay?  All you can manage is to hold my pinkie?  Fine.  I get it.  This is scary terrain and you’re going to trip and bloody your knees.  But you’re not alone.  I’ve given you Sloan.  And I’m going to give you new friends and old friends to help you find My Hand again when you drop it.  And I'll be here beside you and I'm going before you.”    

But has this treacherous journey been worth it?  Oh my goodness, yes!  I have been blown away time and time again by God’s mercy, provision, grace, patience, tenderness, and sovereignty.  I’ve grown apart from some friends during this journey because adoption is just hard to understand.  I mean who runs headlong into a wall with their heart and pocketbook?  Fools, really.  But God has strengthened other relationships long dormant and even given Sloan and I new friends whose friendship is so dear it takes my breath away.  Because most certainly after Himself, God’s greatest gift to us is His people.  

And if I had to do it all over again, would I?  That’s the million dollar question.  Because if we hadn’t taken a detour in China we would’ve thought we only had a son and our timeline would’ve been different and Charlie and Mollie wouldn’t have been our Charlie and Mollie.  Sure, we would’ve made a few different choices, but I’m thankful for all the lessons learned.  As we did during our infertility, there have been rocky moments between Sloan and me.  Moments where we forgot we were on the same team.  Moments when our grief made us stabby and angry.  But we’ve learned to forgive with greater ease.  We’ve carried one another to the Cross time and time again.  We’ve come to that strangely lovely place where all we have to give one another is Jesus.  

So Lord, thanks.  Please continue to remind me that You’ve lit the path for my next step.  Help me not to run ahead of your leading.  Thanks for pushing me out of my comfort zone.  The folks You’ve got out here living on the fringe are amazing.  As are You.

The Lord is not Slow...

Wow.  It’s been almost two months since I last posted.  And these months have been insane.  Pretty sure we’ve experienced every human emotion, sometimes simultaneously.  Why?

Well remember in June how I told you that there was a teens tiny chance that we might not have to wait until the end of the summer for investigations to be completed?   That if they were completed sooner that maybe we’d get to travel this summer?  To be honest, I only half-heartedly prayed this would be the case.  But, 48 hours after our living relative interview at the embassy, we received an email that our investigation was complete!  We had visa appointments in July, which meant we would be traveling in July to pick up our children!  Wahoo!

We booked a hotel room.  We booked plane flights.  We furiously packed.  And packed.  And weighed bags and repacked.  We scurried around finding perfect money newer than 2006 with no creases, marks, or tears.  (Because few places accept credit cards and apparently, they only like perfect US money.)  We hosted missionaries to the Congo who helped us pack and prepare for life in Kinshasa.  We gathered groupons and gift cards for Henry and Grace to take with them to our friends who were keeping them.  

And then about 48 hours from the time we were supposed to leave we heard devastating news:  Charlie’s passport application had been lost by the passport issuing office and so, obviously, the kids had missed their visa appointment.  We were suddenly forced to decide to push back our tickets and pay change fees and the difference in fares or cancel them all together, pay fines and get partial refunds. We tried to push back our hotel reservations, but always knowing there was no real way to know when exactly his passport would be issued.  Or if the embassy would be able to reschedule our appointment in a timely manner.  We were one of the first appointments scheduled for our agency under the new immigration policies, so to some degree, all of us were swimming in unchartered waters.  And the water was deep, dark, and churning.  

To say we were sad and angry would be an understatement.  There was a sense of us reliving every miscarriage and the loss of Emma Sloan all over again.  Because you should just know that waiting adoptive Mommas are so very much like pregnant women in their emotional (in)stability. But not only are we wrecks,  we are loony while also under intense financial strain.  So much fun for everyone!  (Bonus points are that you can drink while waiting during adoption.  And you should.)  

Henry and Grace even buckled under the weight of our grief.  I oscillated between snapping at everyone and crying out of sadness and shame.  We tried to find someone to blame: each other, our agency, the system, the embassy, the Congo, God.  At one point, Sloan awoke to the sound of me crying and cussing while in the shower.  He asked, “Ummm…is there someone in there with you?”  I replied, “I’m yelling at God.  Sure, there are bureaucratic delays, but ultimately He is in charge.”  Sloan said, “Okay, well maybe lay off the f-bombs when praying.  You’re a grocery cart and a pint of booze away from being a hobo.”  

But in the end, we knew the truth:  there was no one culprit behind our delay—this was just life in a fallen world, bureaucracy was slow and orphans got the short end of the stick.  

But this was God’s plan for our family, and He would derive glory in our delay.  I delved into the Psalms.  Ever grateful for David’s words which were f-bomb free but still spoke my heart.  Psalm 22 was ever on the tip of my tongue:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest…Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help… I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.  My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.

And in the midst of David’s distress, David ends the psalm in the future tense, knowing that one day God’s people will proclaim He has done it!  So while I was upset with God’s tarrying, I knew He would bring my kids home.  

But when?

After much delay, we FINALLY got Charlie’s passport.  So then it was time to re-appproach the embassy and ask for another appointment.  During this time, we continued to beg God for patience.  If there was a verse on patience in the Bible, I was clinging to it, thinking if I just prayed the right prayer, God would make me okay with these delays.  That if I just trusted Him enough I’d be all zen and peaceful and could return to business as usual, complaining about my first world problems like too much rain and forgetting my grocery bags as opposed to yearning for my children languishing in an orphanage.    That if I could just learn the lesson that God was trying to teach me, all would be well and we could proceed.

But then God gave me 2 Peter 3:9.  At first glance, I kinda dismissed it.  Perhaps God was not trying to teach me about myself.  (Wait?  You mean it isn’t about me?)  Perhaps it was not my own impatience God was trying to reveal, but rather, His own patience with me.  That I can and should continue to pray Come quickly, Lord Jesus!  Hasten the day when my faith becomes sight and there is no more death or mourning or tears or orphans!  However, I should also realize that He tarries not because He is forgetful or distracted or angry with me or stuck on Candy Crush level 208 (for the love, people!), but because He is patient and He is not done.  He is waiting so that more of us can experience forever in His fullness.  His love is so great, it empowers Him to wait for us.  

Y’all I can’t even comprehend that.  Love so big it is pleased to wait? 

So we wait.  Not because we are pleased to do so, but because we really have no other choice.  We have new visa appointments for next week.  We hope to travel mid-September.  About 2 months after we first thought.  But I do get to be here for Henry’s first day of Kindergarten

.

How can you be praying?

-For no more hiccups in our process.  For the embassy appointments to go well and for our visas to be issued quickly.

-For the next steps in country to happen quickly. 

-For our new travel plans to be able to happen:  I am planning on travelling solo and then Sloan will follow up about 12 days later and then we will all fly home together, thereby maximizing Sloan’s PTO stateside.

-For me to figure out how to divvy up our supplies.  Before I had everything split evenly between 5 bags.  Now I have to basically put every necessity in 3 or pay loads in extra baggage fees.  So that’s 100 lbs less!

-For Charlie and Mollie’s health.  Charlie has lost some weight and has begun to ask for us.  Our boy misses us and is ready to come home to us! 

-For us to continue to trust God to provide for us.  Each delay has had both emotional and financial cost.  The changing of the plane tickets cost $1600.  So basically the entire amount raised during our CFA fundraiser. 

Perspective: Get a New One

One of the benefits of orphan care is the new perspective it gives you on so many things.  The tentacles of caring for the orphaned reach into many arenas—oppression, poverty, social justice, greed, and just all around selfishness.  It taps into the brokenness of this world at its core: relationships.   As God has changed the physical make-up of my family, He has changed my heart as well.  He is tearing down the barriers between us and them.  He is opening up our eyes to the truth.  “Those” people are beloved by God.  So am I.  Which means “those” people are mine and I am theirs.  There is, in fact, no them.                

                      

Despite having lost our referral of J, a boy with Cerebral Palsy, my heart changed.  I am appalled at the flippant way I used jokingly use the R word or crack jokes about men being like handicapped parking spots.  Sure, I wasn’t mean to people out right, but in the dark, I felt better than THEM.  But when I loved a THEM, THEM became MINE.  So I suspect that when Jesus told us to love and serve the least of them, he wasn’t just issuing a mandate of missional living, but showing us our hearts.  We are them.  

We live in a disposable culture.  We have disposable silverware, plates, clothes, food.  I’m not sure if half of my kids will get more than one meal today.  So I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste the food in my refrigerator.  It’s offensive, really.  Those starving kids in Africa that your mom told you to clear your plate for?  Those are my kids.  Meanwhile, I throw out a half eaten banana left in the playroom or an unopened bag of salad that has liquefied in my crisper drawer. 

 The other night I saw an ad for something called the Wraptastic.  For just shy of $11, you can buy a plastic box to help you cut your foil and saran wrap.  You know, just in case you don’t like the way the box that they come in does it for you.  People, get some perspective.  Donate that $11 to a clean water initiative.  Use it to buy food to put in your local food bank.  Because to pay money to neatly wrap your leftovers that you’ll most likely toss in two days is just freaking ridiculous.  I mean, there are kids who die from diseases because they have no shoes and you pay money to decorate your saran wrap that is stored in a drawer?  Puh-lease.  

I don’t mean to sound all bitter and angry.  

 I’m just as bad.  We get segregated.  We hang out with people who look and act and work and shop and vote and educate only like us.  We have no perspective of the them.   We don’t love them because we don’t even know them.  But Jesus was intentional.  He walked different routes than the usual just to connect and intersect and relate to and love them.  (And this isn’t even counting the whole, you know, leaving heaven to come to earth trek.)

It took maybe three weeks of living in our new neighborhood until I said to Sloan, “How did we ever survive in a house with such a small yard?”  And if you’d heard my tone of voice you would’ve understood was that I was really saying “We used to live in a dump, can you even imagine?”  Three weeks in an older golf course neighborhood and I equated our former subdivision with a hovel.  So while I don’t live in poverty, my heart is distended from the way I’ve fed only my selfishness and not my self-denial.  Father, forgive me.

This is why we serve.  This is why segregation of race, class, political leaning, ethnicity, educational level is so harmful.  We navel gaze and get stuck on only our vantage point.   We get stuck in some #firstworldproblem loop.  We lose our grasp on the difference between wants and needs.  In the past week I’ve convinced myself I need the following—a new Ipad mini {because my first gen Ipad is sooooo big and soooo slow}, a remote control for my bedroom light {because I have to actually get out of bed at night and walk three feet to turn it off, I mean I might as well live in a prison!},  a fancy cheese cutting board {because I have to use an actual knife and cutting board like some sort of backwoods hobo}, and of course, I’m always convinced I need a new minivan because the Suburban is eleven years old, a gas guzzler, and (gasp!) you have to actually open the doors with your hands!  Father, forgive me.

Here is what I actually need:  Jesus.  

That is all.  

I don’t need Him to give me better eyesight but to actually give me new eyes.  I don’t need him just to adjust the way I love, but to completely replace my old shriveled heart with his resurrected one.  I don’t need him to just tend and prune my wants, but to outright burn and til under my old wants and then plant new ones.  C.S Lewis describes this complete overhaul of self and perspective this way: 

“Christ says . . . I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.  No half measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down . . .the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as

the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.”

So you see, there is no us and them.  There is only Us and Him.