Sweet Christmas Honey

I remember the day. Every year I take out my silver nativity scene from Mexico somewhere around black Friday. All I can think of is this mans face all soft and full of the sort of joy and wisdom one holds when they can’t be beaten by life but life tries it’s hardest. I try in the midst of this image to make my shopping list but fail to because his face just keeps flooding my visual memory. He becomes even more real to me then he was on that day.

So here’s the story. I was on my first ever trip to Mexico. I was excited to walk across the bridge and bust out my newly learned bartering skills. We went through the usual motions of finding a buddy and not straying too far from the group and off we went. We took pictures at the boarder plaque. We ate authentic Mexican food. We danced salsa. We shopped. We were tourist who had fun.

I was a young adult leader on this particular trip and not a student. I didn’t care about bootleg DVD’s and instead wandered off to find scarves, indigenous crafts, and silver. What I found was a nativity scene that I still cherish and some honey sold on the street by a local farmer. I did exactly what I thought I was supposed to do. I bartered for the best deal I could on this jar of honey. He stated the price and I showed him what I had in coins and offered them. He restated the price and I turned to walk away. He accepted my coins and I went home with some wonderful honey. To be fair I was showing him all of the pesos that I had. I wasn’t being dishonest about that. But I of course had a wad of US dollars in my pocket as well that I wasn’t offering.

There was nothing more to this exchange to tell about really. We ended our day in the line of elderly folks walking back across the bridge from having acquired cheap health care and prescriptions. We were shocked at how many people need to do this and genuinely surprised at how much more scrutiny there is to walking out of Mexico as there is to walking in. My honey and I along with 90 or so students piled into our caravan for home. We drove North to the land of milk and honey with my jar full of cheaply acquired honey. Somewhere around Oklahoma I was awakened from my Dramamine induced slumber to the sound of shattering glass and “oops, what was that” being shouted by the person trying to pull their bag from the open back doors of the van. So that was it. We spent the next 20 minutes cleaning honey as best we could from everyone’s bags at a gas pump and we finished our trip.

I never thought much more about my honey. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to live into my anticipation of sharing something authentically Mexican purchased at such an amazing price with my cup of tea and my friends. But, like the good American I am I drove to the nearest Wal-Mart and bought some more.

It’s been five years since that all but forgotten trip. The funny thing is that even though it was nothing more than a brief exchange it has played itself out in my heart deeply each and every year at Christmas. I pull out my tubs labeled “Christmas/Breakable” from the basement never remembering what I have in them. I open each and every piece and try to decide where I will put it even though we have a small house and the same things get placed nearly the same as the year before and the same cast offs get put back in the tub for another year. Each piece a gift, a hand-me-down, a special memory to be kept. I always pull the silver nativity piece from its wrap, give it a little polishing rub with my shirt sleeve, and smile as I think of my students. I place it on the same side table in almost exactly the same position as the year before and I move on with life. I don’t have any more thoughts.

But then sometimes a few hours or sometimes days after, the man’s sweet face comes to my mind again and I can’t shake my feelings of regret and sorrow. While I thought I was doing some “hot shot” albeit naïve thing at the time I now realize that all I did was keep a man who was trying to provide for his family from receiving a fair price for his goods. I walked away with all he had to offer and actually felt good about myself rather than shameful. I didn’t realize just how sick we really are.

So now as I flip through the stacks of Black Friday fliers I think of this man. I think of my trip and the honey that was never meant to be. I still shop. I still get a thrill out of getting the “best deal ever”. But I no longer make a mad dash on Thursday night instead thinking of the employee who needs the overtime pay to provide for the family they can’t spend time with because they already receive an unlivable wage. I honor them with my silence. I think of what it takes and who it really costs to make a TV so cheap that it will astound us. I pray for this man that I don’t know and I pray for us all. May we experience this Christmas how sweet the taste of honey is and truly appreciate it’s rendering.

Adoption Balloons

Jason and I are very excited to announce that we hope to adopt our family. This time next year our little family of four (Jason, myself, and our two dogs) could suddenly be a family of seven! There are so many things that go into this process but we are making a conscious decision and even though it's scary at times, it's really what we feel is right for us and we pray what is right for a sibling group of three that we don't yet know but who need a place to call home.

Our journey has placed us on track with the state of Iowa to become licensed to foster and adopt via a 10 week class called "PS-MAPP" (Permanence and Safety-Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting). At this class each week we learn at least a few things that other parents say "I wish there had been a class for me on that". And, we also always leave feeling a heavy sense of burden. We spend a lot of time talking about loss, grief, and the disruption of a child's development and coping through that. This is our current reality and it's just plain sad. We realize that we are the over-eager, bubbly, first-time parents that need to just tone it all down about 50 notches, but we also still hang onto hope that God really does have a plan and that there really is a family merger waiting for us. We must have been called to this for a reason.

At our last class session a discussion ensued mostly born from everyone's similar anxieties. They hope that what they are doing is right and that it will go well even though the odds don't seem to be in our favor. We've felt a gentle (or not so gentle) nudge from most of the people we've come into contact with thus far to open ourselves up to foster care and not to go the adoption only route. Jason and I really feel like that's a bit disingenuous because we know that we really want a permanent situation. But the people who are encouraging us really do know what they are doing. During the class discussion we learned that our current case-worker isn't really the person who helps us through the whole process as we had thought but is the person that will certify or license our home now and that's about it. After she writes our report it's up to us again to get to know social workers, people who do respite care, and people who place children who might come to know us (and hopefully like us). Not only were we unsure about who would be our advocate, we live an an area of the state placement lines that feels like a bit of a "dead zone". We are by one thing, but not very near another, and the counties closest to us aren't really in the same zone. We misunderstood parts of the process in the beginning and we really left from the conversation feeling a bit alone.

We drove home from our meeting and processed with each other how hard this is but how we both just have this sort of gut feeling that we are still "on the right track". Jason then stopped at a gas station and I checked my phone to see what I'd missed over the last four hours. There sitting in my inbox delivered at nearly exactly the moment of our heightened confusion an hour earlier was an email from a "post adoption support specialist" inviting us to an "adoptive/foster parent support group". Our area hadn't had one for a long time and a group of people are trying to get it going again. The first session will be held exactly three days after our last class. That felt to us like a direct beacon of hope from God at a moment when we needed to feel His direction, mercy, and care.

We have no idea who we will get to know and how God will use this story. But we do know that we are on the right uncertainty laden path. We are every bit the eager, expectant, excited, new parents that you might anticipate us to be. And though we won't barrage our potentially shocked children at the door with balloons and the zealous joy we feel in our hearts-- we will very, very slowly unfold a world that does include balloons to them.