I often hear bravado about what this person or that person would do if their family or children were in trouble. Women on Facebook post e-cards saying they'd become she-wolves if someone messed with their kids or dads saying they'd take justice into their own hands. Let's say the threat/choice were not as dangerous. What if the threat was actually something you wanted to happen. What would you be willing to do?
A couple of nights ago we were supposed to Skype with our future son. Somewhere down the line the message was lost and we ended up chatting with a social worker instead. We found out the process would take a couple of months longer than we'd been previously told and potentially cost an extra thousand dollars or so.
So we asked a question: Is there anything that can be done to speed this up? (in the most innocent sense, mind you)
We all know people doing foreign adoptions who needed "gifts" to get things done. Donations of computers, copiers, "stationery" with portraits of dead Presidents and statesmen on them attached to the back of paperwork...
We waited for a tense moment to get the response, "No. This is just how it works over here." Whew! What a relief! But what if they had answered differently? Would we be willing, in the words of Machiavelli, to let our conscience sleep for the sake of shaving a few months off of this process?
The adoption process has been ridiculously long and frustrating for us.
After GPS classes, we spent 3 years paying, training, paying, jumping through hoops, paying, and waiting on DHR and never got a single phone call. Just an email one year on "National Adoption Day".
We
tried private adoptions. We paid, trained, paid, did paperwork for
which we paid, and finally got a call. A newborn. Then, the door was
closed. So we mourned, paid more, trained more, waited more...
We decided to go international. BINGO! We applied for a wonderful boy and paperwork began in earnest. Now we just received word
that the adoption we've been pursuing for over a year will take at least
an extra month or two past original projections and we'll probably have
to pay another thousand to renew paperwork. They had a year to read a
file and act on it. Nope, too much too ask. We'll watch our documents
expire and we'll have to pay to change the dates on them. Yet again.
Here's the discussion portion: What if you had the chance
to end the journey with a quick and simple method? What if all this
could be over in a month if you offered a "gift" to a key official or
judge? Would
you lay your integrity aside to end your family's sacrifices? I know
several who have done this. Not judging them. They acted in the interest
of their family. But what about the other families that come next?
I
think of Job and his wife. "Stop hanging on to your integrity. Curse
your God and die." If Job lost his integrity, he would have lost
himself and the very thing that kept him safe. How do you explain to a
child that you laid all that you believe (or do you believe it?)
aside for an easier path? Is it justified by the ends?
What
if you could end this half decade journey by simply choosing another kid? A kid's a kid,
right? I mean, you didn't pick yours based on race or health or any
other factor, right? Abraham was willing to let his kid go for the sake
of a promised family to come and he waited WAY longer than we have.
What
if everything points toward God not really calling you to adopt to
begin with? People more learned that I, and certainly more spiritual
than I, have suggested this. After all, everyone else we've done GPS
classes or other group trainings with seem to have either already gotten
their child or have court dates.
Would you challenge
what appears to some to be God Himself to pursue your child? Are you as
bold as Jacob, willing to wrestle with an angel until he got his
blessing? Is a child worth being crippled for life like Jacob and his
hip? Look what Jacob got in return.
What if you
you could pull it all off, after all this effort, but you'll have to ask
for help. You'll have to, despite all your planning and saving and acts
of chivalric manhood, ask for money. Is a child worth your
pride? Your awkwardness? Your manly independence? Simply because you
refuse to end your transactions with less than full integrity?
All this could be over if we just quit. Then we could focus on our 3 current children and move on with life.
But
there's this boy. This awesome 9 year old boy. We've been jockeying to
get him for a really long time. For years we've been scratching and
clawing and working and saving and sacrificing for the chance to meet him
and bring him home to us.
So
here we are with choices. Pursuing until we get Tai is a
non-negotiable. It will happen. But do you a) Take the slow, painful,
legal, expensive way to get a child and hang on to the full measure of
your integrity, b) Sacrifice just a little integrity and shave off a
little time (Proverbs recommends bribing officials. 17:8, 21:14), or c)
do whatever it takes to get him as fast as possible and live with the
consequences, justified by having eased all your people's pains and
having saved a child from extra months in an institution?
Is
the goal to make it to the end physically unscathed, egotistically
unscathed, financially unharmed, or with integrity intact at all costs?
Is
the goal to get your family there fast, with minimal pain, or with
godly character and wisdom to last for generations from the experience?
Is hanging on to your integrity at someone else's discomfort or expense justified or greedy?
So what would you do for your child? Will you allow your
children to hurt to get stronger? You'd proudly take a bullet or a
beating for them, but would you wait, submit, and plead? Would you grow and
stretch and learn? Would you stay sober, abstain, step down, or concede
for your child?
See? It's not that easy, is it? This
household has made their choice. And so, having done that, we wait. Waiting for those "wings
like eagles". A very slow eagle.
