Archive for October, 2016

Grace Adventures Weekend

Monday, October 17th, 2016
Cherri's worship team and me

Cherri’s worship team and me

Teaching the life of Peter

Teaching the life of Peter

Chris on the dunes with Lake Michigan behind her

Chris on the dunes with Lake Michigan behind her

The desert-looking side - those little dots are people walking across it!

The desert-looking side – those little dots are people walking across it!

Last weekend I had the special joy of heading back up to Grace Adventures Camp in Michigan. This is my third time there, and their team is just a joy to work with! To make it even more interesting, I brought Chris Hogan up from Charlotte to help me that weekend. Chris started working as my new ministry assistant earlier in the summer, and we’ve had lots of phone calls and emails, but this was actually the first time I met her in person! So it was super fun to get to know her better.

I spoke on the life of Peter and on getting “Out of the Boat” with our faith. One thing I’ve always loved about being at this particular camp is the atmosphere the camp staff create. They are a wonderful combination of servant leadership, genuine faith, and fun! Cherri Bornman was leading worship with her group, and I worked with them last time. They are wonderful and also super humble and fun and approachable, so I was thrilled to be on the weekend with them again! And, as always, we had wonderful talks with so many women during meals and breaks during the weekend!

Chris and I also headed up to see the dunes, and they were just spectacular. I had seen them from below and I got that they are amazing and huge (think multiple stories high kind of dunes) but I guess I’ve never climbed to the top of them. We did this time and it was like entering another world! To the one side was Lake Michigan, and to the other it was so vast it really looked like the Sahara. You can’t really get a picture that does it justice! People are driving huge dune buggies all over it. It’s just a one-of-a-kind experience.

So happy to be back, and so happy to have the time with Chris!

Happy Birthday, Noah

Thursday, October 13th, 2016
Homemade birthday cake just for him - he picked chocolate!

Homemade birthday cake just for him – he picked chocolate!

Opening presents from his friends

Opening presents from his friends

Making a wish

Making a wish

Opening one of the first nine

Opening one of the first nine

Geronimo Stilton in Chinese - one of his favorites!

Geronimo Stilton in Chinese – one of his favorites!

Some days are meant to be happy, and this one was! But it was also a reminder of a lot of loss. So goes the weird mix of happy and sad that have become such a regular part of our lives with adoption.

We celebrated Noah’s first birthday with us, but it was his 10th birthday. We’re so happy he’s here, but you can’t help thinking that there were 9 birthdays when he wasn’t. Nine birthdays when he didn’t have a family. About a month ago I said something to him about what he wanted for his birthday, and he said, “I will have presents?” “Yes, of course.” And then, a statement from his mouth that he thought nothing of but it revealed worlds to me, “I never had presents on my birthday.”

Oh, baby boy. He would hate to know I felt such sorrow for that because he doesn’t want us to think he needs or wants pity. He is strong. He is fine. He has learned to be accepting of how things are because that is the best way to survive, and no presents on your birthday is just the way it is. Or just the way it was.

After that conversation about presents, Noah started getting really tense about his birthday. We are big into traditions in our family, so I had told him that on your birthday, you get to pick what’s for dinner. Everyone will make you a card, and you will get gifts. He wanted to know if he would have a party, and I said, yes, you can have a friend party on the weekend before or after, but we will do “family birthday dinner” on your actual birthday. Having your party on a different day was not weird, and it would still be fun – this was a big point for him. Would other people think it was okay if it wasn’t on the EXACT DAY?!

He asked me question after question, many times asking the same question over and over. “Will my siblings get me a present?” “Yes, everyone in the family will.” “Okay, will Rachel?” “Yes, everyone in the family will.” “Will Toby?” “Yes, everyone in the family will.” “Will you?”

As it went on, I realized that this was coming from both fear and hope. He had never had a birthday celebrated, and suddenly we were offering him the dream – a party, presents, people celebrating you, and he just couldn’t believe it, but he wanted it so badly! He was really keyed up over the whole thing. We had his friend party the weekend before with six boys from his class, and he had so much riding on it emotionally that I was getting nervous! It wasn’t even that it had to be that great, it just had to happen the way we said it would and not be a disaster. As I’ve noticed before, he has obviously had promises broken to him in the past, and he doesn’t always believe what we say will actually happen. Every time something happens the way we say it will, I watch him trust us more. The party was no exception, and the day after the party was so interesting to me – he was so much calmer and several times that day he just spontaneously hugged me which is not all that common. I could tell that we had not let him down, and suddenly he was much more hopeful that the family night would also be good, and would be what we said it would be.

We decided to give Noah 9 presents for the years he wasn’t with us. We wanted to acknowledge that time and that loss in a positive way. But here’s the tough part. We try so hard to teach our kids that it’s not about the presents and the “stuff.” Many kids coming home in the US are told that we are all rich and your family is good for buying you things. I didn’t want his birthday to send that message! But I also want him to know that he is a valued and equal member of our family, and that we love him, and show him with thoughtful gifts. We want him to know that it’s fun to have a birthday!

So for those nine presents I got things that I knew he would recognize as being thoughtful and for him in particular, but they weren’t expensive at all. He loves things that hang off his backpack and he loves Minecraft and Star Wars and Lego, so I got him a couple of Lego Minecraft and Star Wars figure keychains for his backpack. We got him a few Tom and Jerry books in Chinese because he thinks those are hilarious. We got him good winter gloves so he could make his first snowman (he’s so excited about that!). And for his “big” present for his 10th birthday, we got a family game to play together because he absolutely loves playing board games as a family.

All of his siblings made him handmade cards that had inside jokes and sweet things just about him. They got him things that he had mentioned wanting to do together. They were so thoughtful, and I was so proud of them. He had chosen to go to a Chinese restaurant for his dinner, and as we were walking out, he ran up between Rinnah and I and grabbed both our hands and leaned his head into my shoulder. He sighed and said, “Thanks, mom.”

It’s a big thing to send the message that you love someone, that they are valuable, and that you are trustworthy all in one day. I don’t think of myself as being particularly good at being thoughtful, but I realize with Noah it’s very important – he needs to know that we took time for him, and thought and effort. We need to make up for some lost time and the holes he has in his heart. I thank God for helping us do it, and I thank God for Noah.

Two Cultures and True Identity

Friday, October 7th, 2016
The sky we were all used to in China.

The sky we were all used to in China.

Our first dinner together.

Our first dinner together.

Apartment buildings.

Apartment buildings.

Our lunch at the orphanage - whole fish, rice, congee, shredded spicy potato, greens, and steamed buns.

Our lunch at the orphanage – whole fish, rice, congee, shredded spicy potato, greens, and steamed buns.

A shopping district.

A shopping district.

Getting more comfortable all the time at home.

Getting more comfortable all the time at home.

It’s a very interesting and thought-provoking thing to suddenly be raising a child who is from another culture. Until just a few months ago, Noah had never been outside of China, and with the exception of traveling to Beijing for his surgery as a toddler, outside of his home town. He’d never seen a Caucasian person in person except the adoption workers. He’d never eaten any food except Chinese food. He’d never heard any language but Chinese. Even when we traveled to other parts of China and he heard new dialects or accents for the first time, it was startling for him. So you can imagine how vast the change is for him here.

Here, he comments constantly on the sky (we can see clouds and the sun because it’s clean). He comments on the suburban houses (he’d only ever lived in a high-rise apartment building, and everyone he knew lived in one too). He thought our backyard was a park (he never knew people could own an outdoor space). He comments on the food (he wishes, wishes, WISHES I could make homemade dumplings!). Some of his observations are good and some are bad. There are things he loves about the U.S., and things that he misses about China. This could be the most amazing place in the world, but for a child who spent their first nine years somewhere else, it’s going to take a long time for this to really feel like home.

When Noah was first home, I told him we were going to send him to Chinese class. Having two languages is such an amazing blessing, and adopted kids lose their first language at an alarming rate. We don’t want that to happen to him, so I had been talking to him about it and getting him used to the idea.

I’d brought it up several times, but this day I told him he would definitely start the next week. “But why?” he asked me. “Why do I need Chinese school? I am good at Chinese!” I explained, “But here, Dad and I don’t speak Chinese. Your brother and sisters don’t speak Chinese. Many kids who are adopted forget their Chinese, and we don’t want you to. We want you to keep it. So you will go to Chinese school.” This was the fourth or fifth time I’d explained this.

He looked at me so strangely then and said, “I don’t understand when you say this. You say this a lot. I think you are making fun of me. I AM Chinese. How can I forget to be Chinese?”

While he had misunderstood what I was saying, he had a good point. In Chinese culture, the language is a huge part of your fundamental identity. Having “good Chinese” made you Chinese, gave you honor, and reflected your place in society. Noah was saying, “If I am fundamentally Chinese, how can I ever forget who I am? How can I forget my fundamental identity?”

And yet, we forget our fundamental identity all the time. As Christians, we are Christ-followers and citizens of Heaven. The Bible tells us that we are transplants here, just as Noah has been transplanted to the U.S. This is not our home.

Phil. 3:20 (NIV) “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

We are foreigners in a foreign place. Even if we’ve lived somewhere our entire lives, it isn’t home. Home is with God. Our home is where He is. And the longings we have, that sense that something just isn’t right is our reminder that this isn’t it. We are looking forward to something much better, something greater, something that is coming, and that is our hope!

Hebrews 13:14 (NLT) “For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.”

Or, as the Message puts it:

1 Peter 2:11 (MSG) “Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it.”

So often we get so comfortable in our culture that we can forget our fundamental identity. We get distracted or lulled into complacency. We can forget our first language, the language of God’s love and purpose for our lives.

As Noah’s mom, I pray that he will become more and more integrated into American culture, and that he will get comfortable and feel at home here. But I also pray that he will come to know the Lord and in that find his true identity, an identity that doesn’t depend on culture or status or location. An identity as a citizen of Heaven, a permanent and unshakable hope and belonging.

As we experience things here that are tough or counter to the Bible, I pray it makes us uncomfortable. I pray it makes us long for our true home, and that we always remember where that is. I pray that we will keep our true identity so forefront in our minds that our response will always be, “How could I forget who I am? I AM a Christ-follower!”