Ethiopia

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That’s What She Said

A few bloggers I follow always have a “That’s what she said” series and I LOVE them. It’s always a great place to find new articles that often resonate with me. More often than not I want to share them but they are kind of random so they never have a real place to fit in on my blog.

Thus, I’m creating my own “That’s what she said” series.

“How I lost Faith in the ‘Pro-Life’ Movement.” As someone who once considered herself pro-life this spoke to me in so many ways. In order to truly be pro life it means WAY more than anti-abortion.

Obamacare stands to cut abortion rates by 75%. And yet, the pro-life movement has been leveraged in opposition to Obamacare, and most especially in opposition to the birth control mandate. They don’t believe women should be guaranteed access to free contraception even though this access is the number one proven best way to decrease the number of abortions. That access would, to use the rhetoric of the pro-life movement, prevent the murders of 900,000 unborn babies every year.

Heather’s guest post on Momastery. I loved what she had to say, especially the excerpt below. Can’t wait to read her book.

The greatest shock of my life was to discover that the exposure of the very secret that I thought would kill me brought me the greatest relief. It turns out that when you give up on looking good, no one can make you feel bad.

Adoption. Ethics in adoption. It’s all Big Business. The more I know the less I wish I knew (not really, but-yikes). I have been following the discussion for as long as I can remember. Oh how I wish my eyes had been opened before I started. If you are starting out on adoption, or if you have friends/family who are you owe it to them and their possible future children to send them to some of the below links. The conversation has to be had. We can no longer bury our collective heads in the sand.

Jen Hatmaker is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. After this, she shot to the top of my girl crush list (right after Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, obviously).

What would happen if we reallocated a percentage of the millions we spend on adoption toward community development? What if we prioritized first families and supported initiatives that train, empower, and equip them to parent? This would absolutely be Orphan Prevention, not to mention grief prevention, loss prevention, abandonment prevention, trauma prevention, broken family prevention. What if we asked important questions about supply and demand here, and broadened our definition of orphan care to include prevention and First Family empowerment?

My friend Amanda (she’s my real-life friend y’all, I’ve met her. I’ve talked with her. She’s amazing. Zach makes me distinguish between blogger friends-ones I’ve only “met” online and real-life ones. I have pictures with her, it’s legit.) is brave, strong, beautiful and amazing. You know those moments when you feel like you’re in the presence of greatness? I get that feeling from her right now. Read this. Read about her adoption. Read about the painful choices her family has made to ensure they’ve done everything they can to look their precious son in the eyes and know they did the right thing. She needs our help. Let’s rally around her.

We hope that, after reading our story, you will support us for this simple reason: we will not sign a gag order to protect our former adoption “agency” and their facilitator in return for the easy release of our documents.

Tara Livesay is a blogger you have to follow. I won’t take no as an answer to this. Go to her blog and follow her now. She has written about missions (more on that later) and adoption. She is intimately aware of both. One of my favorite posts she’s done has been this one.

It occurs to me that our western culture of capitalistim, materialism, and consumerism all play a large role in our attitude toward and approach to international adoption. Due to our wealth and ability to provide, sometimes without even realizing it we begin to believe that our material wealth makes us better suited to parent the child of a poor mother. What began as noble and pure and loving can farily easily begin to look a lot more like ethnocentrism and entitlement. 

I have family in missions, I have friends who have went on short term mission trips. I have never went on one because I just felt, for lack of better term, “icky” about them. Jamie has done an awesome job (as has Tara Livesay above) with the issues that can come from missions-both long and short term.

I’m telling you all of this because there is blatant fraud going on in the world of missions and in the name of Jesus. And that bothers me. If you support a missionary, if you’re a church that supports missionaries, if you’re interested in becoming a missionary, you should be pushing for clarity and transparency from the Missions world. Most missionaries will be able to answer your questions without resorting to evasive language and obscure ideas. But if they can’t? That should be a serious red flag and you should feel emboldened to push back until you clearly understand what they’re doing with their time.

Any other links you guys have loved lately?

 

 

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5 years

I can hardly believe 5 years ago we landed in the Quad Cities for the first time with Tariku as our son.

This picture was captured the moment after we met Tariku for the first time.

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As much time as I had spent staring at his picture the months leading up to us flying to Ethiopia, I was shocked by him in the flesh. I couldn’t get over how bright his eyes were-even more than in his pictures-or how small he was. I had no idea that his smell would smell familiar even though I had never been to Ethiopia before, never held a strange 3-year-old and called him son.

When I look at that picture I see so much innocence in all of our faces. As well as the troubling realization that I overplucked my eyebrows. We had no idea how much work was ahead of us to actually feel like a family. It felt so real so immediately I think it blindsided us all when it took a little longer to find our footing. 

But mostly when I think of this day 5 years ago I think of how much I have changed because of Tariku. I knew that I could be an advocate for my child but I had no idea the strength I possessed before him. I knew I had a remarkable capacity to love, but I had no idea that sometimes wasn’t enough for my babe who felt so much loss. I knew from the moment I saw his sweet picture on my computer screen that I would love him for the rest of my life but I had no idea how that very love would open my eyes and tear off my skin in a way that had never been done before.

That day 5 years ago was a new stage of vulnerability for me that I was ill prepared for but has reaped in me a newer, better human. If it weren’t for Tariku, I genuinely don’t think I’d be who I am today. Despite all my flaws, the me now is so much better than the me then.

Today as I meditated I fought back tears the whole time. The feeling of gratitude is so alive on days like today-days that I recognize the magnitude of what happened 5 years ago.

So thankful for that day, and for this day. Because then and now Tariku is my son. My amazing, beautiful son.

*I blogged about our first trip to Ethiopia starting here if you’re interested.

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The Table

Confession: I am really bad about making Ethiopian food. For as much as my beloved Ethiopian sons love the food, it is positively sinful I don’t make the effort more.

That said, a friend of mine brought us some injera last week and Tomas-daily-would open the basket and take a big whiff exclaiming, “The best!” I knew it was time.

At church a few weeks ago one of my pastors was talking about the significance of the table in the early days of Christianity. He was talking about how Jesus would invite “the outliers” to eat with him because they weren’t allowed to go to temple. If I remember correctly my pastor even said the Hebrew word for table roughly translates to “little temple” or something like that (I seriously might be making that up, my memory is a little fuzzy). The point being, Jesus knew sitting around a table and talking was just as good-sometimes better-as going to temple. And Jesus knew everyone was invited to sit at the table.

I love that. Mostly because I love food and I love talking over food. I found myself nodding in agreement a lot as the pastor spoke about the significance of breaking bread together.

Then Zach, Tomas, Tariku and I made Doro Wat and Shiro Wat together.

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When it was done we all sat together, toasted our families in Ethiopia and ate.

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And sure enough, God showed up. He showed up in the way Tariku belly laughed his way through dinner, He showed up in the way Tomas legit shoveled the food into his mouth. He showed up when Trysten and Dailah-usually not game for anything resembling spicy-ate a few bites and gave their brothers the thumbs up.

I think sometimes we think God’s only in the really spectacular places and we risk missing Him in the smaller ones. The table, for instance.

I know if you’re anything like we are, dinners often resemble the trading floor on Wall Street. But sometimes? Sometimes they can feel like going to church.