Psalm 8.2: "Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger."
Jesus also quoted this passage towards the end of Matthew's gospel, though he changes "strength" to "praise."
This morning Clara worked so I was pulling double duty getting Owen and Eleanor ready for the day. I had them both dressed and went downstairs to start the car to let it heat up a bit before I took them to their friends' house to play for the day. I asked Owen to watch his sister. I came back upstairs and he had not heard me. This is what I overheard:
[Owen, reading from a Valentine's Day card from Papa and Granma]: "Jesus is so good. And he's here. And he's always happy. Amen. Now, let's sing a song."
[Owen, grabbing my old racquetball racket that doubles as a guitar and standing on the bench we use in the bathroom to help him brush his teeth which he had dragged into the bedroom. Elie, staring at him fixedly.] (Singing) "God is so good. God is so good. God is so good." [Pause] (Normal voice): Amen. Now let's pray.
[Owen descends from the bench, begins prayer. Elie, still fixated, one leg of a stuffed giraffe in her mouth.] "God, we love you. Thank you that you are here." [Pause] "Thank you that you are here." [Taking a Nietzchean turn] "Thank you that you are dead." [Returning to orthodoxy] "Thank you that you are alive again. Thank you for your smation (ed. note, "creation"). Amen."
[Authorial figure enters the room] "Son, that was beautiful."
Owen: "Daddy, I was singing to Elie. Sit down. I sing you a song."
[Remounts red bench, holds guitar flat.] "I'm playing slide guitar. Now let's sing." (Singing) "He loves us, oh he loves us. He loves us. He is good. And happy." (Normal voice) "Amen. Let's pray."
[This same process, and nearly same prayer repeats three times. The car is excessively hot and the author is late for work.]
13 March 2014
Miracles and Adoption
Last weekend we drove to Kansas City to see a boy that Clara took care of when she first became a nurse. She fell absolutely and entirely head-over-heels, over-the-moon in love with this boy. His parents were deadbeats, lazing about the hospital room, refusing to change the boy's diapers because the nurses were paid to do it, leaving the room to smoke pot and do God knows what else. So Clara was his mom for the first seven months he spent on earth.
We had been married about six months when she asked me if we could adopt him. I did not know what to do with that request. We had always talked about adoption down the road, but certainly not within our first year of marriage when we were still paying off school debt and enjoying the coveted freedom of the newlywed. Moreover, his parents still had legal custody and CPS was dragging their feet. But I did think about it. I even went to the hospital to meet him, which I am quite sure is not legal.
The cynical part of me thought that this was just Clara's mother instinct kicking in, like some girl who sees a Sarah McLachlan commercial and wants to adopt every dog at the pound. But her love for this boy has been unmatched by any of her patients since then. It should go without saying that we did not adopt this boy. But the state did rescind his parent's rights and he was adopted by a military family in El Paso.
After his last deployment, the dad was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, just outside of Kansas City. Clara had met the boy's adopted mother before and she reached out to us through Facebook and we set up a time to come see him.
We went to a place called the Trex Cafe, which is a place you scoff at until you have kids, in a mall/sporting complex structure on the periphery of Kansas City that looks like a place where capitalism threw up. We walked in and a gigantic T-rex animatronic dipped down as if to eat my toddler son. The bottom lip started to quiver. I assured him that the dinosaur was not real. Every time he saw him the rest of our time there he would say to himself as much as anyone else, "He's not real. He's just a machine."
And then Clara got to see her first little boy, so to speak, for the first time in four years. She got to watch him hold Owen's hand and play with him in the archaeological dig area of this restaurant and lead Owen through a cave and just play quietly side by side. She got to talk with his mom, an incredible woman who with her husband has adopted two other children, including one of Clara's boy's half-sisters. She got to hear about his teeball and his guitar lessons and his cousins. She got to see the miracle of redemption lived out.
If this boy had stayed with his birth parents he might well be dead. He was highly special needs for his first few years and they had neither the intelligence nor the resolve to care for him. Instead he gets to be a normal kid and eat at places with animatronic dinosaurs and take karate lessons and play teeball and be raised by parents who love him and discipline him with kindness. He gets to have a sister and a brother. He gets to pray before meals.
His parents bought him back from the grave, just like my Father did for me. That is the glory of adoption. We all, as believers in Christ, have been adopted. And as much of a mess as this boy was when he was adopted by his parents, I was far more of a mess when God adopted me. In moments like this, the beauty of this world becomes almost too much for me. And the only thing I can feel is gratitude. We have all been given so much.
"The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me." Psalm 50:23
We had been married about six months when she asked me if we could adopt him. I did not know what to do with that request. We had always talked about adoption down the road, but certainly not within our first year of marriage when we were still paying off school debt and enjoying the coveted freedom of the newlywed. Moreover, his parents still had legal custody and CPS was dragging their feet. But I did think about it. I even went to the hospital to meet him, which I am quite sure is not legal.
The cynical part of me thought that this was just Clara's mother instinct kicking in, like some girl who sees a Sarah McLachlan commercial and wants to adopt every dog at the pound. But her love for this boy has been unmatched by any of her patients since then. It should go without saying that we did not adopt this boy. But the state did rescind his parent's rights and he was adopted by a military family in El Paso.
After his last deployment, the dad was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, just outside of Kansas City. Clara had met the boy's adopted mother before and she reached out to us through Facebook and we set up a time to come see him.
We went to a place called the Trex Cafe, which is a place you scoff at until you have kids, in a mall/sporting complex structure on the periphery of Kansas City that looks like a place where capitalism threw up. We walked in and a gigantic T-rex animatronic dipped down as if to eat my toddler son. The bottom lip started to quiver. I assured him that the dinosaur was not real. Every time he saw him the rest of our time there he would say to himself as much as anyone else, "He's not real. He's just a machine."
And then Clara got to see her first little boy, so to speak, for the first time in four years. She got to watch him hold Owen's hand and play with him in the archaeological dig area of this restaurant and lead Owen through a cave and just play quietly side by side. She got to talk with his mom, an incredible woman who with her husband has adopted two other children, including one of Clara's boy's half-sisters. She got to hear about his teeball and his guitar lessons and his cousins. She got to see the miracle of redemption lived out.
If this boy had stayed with his birth parents he might well be dead. He was highly special needs for his first few years and they had neither the intelligence nor the resolve to care for him. Instead he gets to be a normal kid and eat at places with animatronic dinosaurs and take karate lessons and play teeball and be raised by parents who love him and discipline him with kindness. He gets to have a sister and a brother. He gets to pray before meals.
His parents bought him back from the grave, just like my Father did for me. That is the glory of adoption. We all, as believers in Christ, have been adopted. And as much of a mess as this boy was when he was adopted by his parents, I was far more of a mess when God adopted me. In moments like this, the beauty of this world becomes almost too much for me. And the only thing I can feel is gratitude. We have all been given so much.
"The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me." Psalm 50:23
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