My Blog Is Moving Too

Because I just can't get enough of moving, I'm moving my blog too. "Born at the Right Time" no longer quite captures where I want my blog to go and where my focus is now that our adoption process is done but the story of our family goes on. So please join me over at:

http://LivingTheEpilogue.com

Please update your bookmarks and RSS readers, and feel free to put me on your blogroll or share the link with others. And I'd love for you to comment over there so I know you found me.

One note: You'll notice over there that just for the sake of privacy/safety, I'll be a bit more vague about some things. In particular, I'm not sharing as many details of Anna's life—and I'll be referring to her as AJ or the Joygirl, so please try to use those nicknames. And I won't be linking from that blog back to this one, although I will leave this one active for some time to make sure all my readers find my new place.

Thank you for following this blog over the last three years, whether the news and posts were interesting or I was in a slump. I hope we can have even greater conversations over at Living the Epilogue.

—Wendy

A Letter to My Church

To our brother and sisters, our friends and our family in Waldport:

The time has come to remember, to celebrate, and to part ways. Our time here has come to an end so that you may walk into a new beginning. Our epilogue is the new beginning of what God is doing next here in this place, through you and in you.

We are grieving our separation from you as deeply as you are grieving us. But we must turn to the next thing, becoming single-minded as we stretch and begin the next leg of our race, and so must you. Yes, this is difficult. It was not for no reason that the apostle Paul called it “straining” toward the goal. It is a strain. It is difficult. Yet we press on.

We are grateful to you for countless moments shared talking, laughing, crying, praying, eating, playing, working, and singing. We are grateful for your help and hospitality, your patience and forgiveness, your love and affection for us and our daughter. Truly we could not have asked more of a congregation. But as we prepare to step away, I ask one thing:

If you love us, feed these sheep.

Feed the children and teens and young adults who come to church, and the ones who don’t. Feed the Frontline kids, the Young Life kids, the graduates, and the younger siblings. Feed their parents and their unplanned babies. Feed the hungry and the stuffed with overconfidence; the talented and the awkward; the go-getters and the do-nothings; the thinkers, dreamers, in-betweeners. Feed their leaders all the support, resources, and encouragement they can hold.

Feed them with Oreos and soda and pizza and chips. Feed them Mondays before Club and Sundays at Frontline. Feed them a sandwich at the game, lunch out just to talk, or a holiday feast in your home. Feed them the next day with the leftovers you sent home.

Feed them the Word, with Scripture that never changes in language they can understand. Feed them words of recognition and encouragement in the grocery store, at the car wash, on the street. Feed them the Living Word by being the Christ who gives rides to town, who helps with financial aid forms, who simply knows their name. Be Christ with your presence where they are competing or performing or just plain being.

You can do this. You can make a difference. You are ready.

We have taken many steps together, but you can go on in this work without us. God is with you. He will make a way. “He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber” (Psalm 121:3).

And so, as the time draws near, I am finding rest in remembering that Jehovah Jireh, the God Who Provides, is also the Prince of Peace. He will make the way, and He will be present to comfort us when the road seems long and the distance great. And so, dear friends,

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

(Ephesians 3:14–21)

He is able, and I know you are willing. I can’t wait to see what He does with you next.

Blessings—

Wendy

Let's See How Far We've Come

2003

2004
2005

2006

2007
2008

2009

Wordless Wednesday

Like the One You're With

I love that I really like my husband. Twelve years of marriage, and we're still havin' fun.

This year we even got to be together and have fun on our anniversary. Happy #12 to us!

P.S.: Obviously we were only about twelve when we got married—or I was, anyway—because I got carded today. Ha ha!

Friday Face

Warning: Nostalgia on the Loose

I have to warn you: I'm having a lot of nostalgia issues lately, and pretty soon they're going to leak into this blog.

I'm also turning into our friend Bob, voted Most Likely to Cry During a Young Life Function twelve years running. I'm at graduation—getting misty. I'm in church—teary. I'm interviewing a pastor candidate—blinking a lot and losing the battle anyway. I'm telling my daughter we have to say goodbye to everyone for a long time and it will be sad, and I'm the one who needs a hug. You can imagine the disaster that was me reading Aaron's final church newsletter column.

We're three weeks away, and I still don't know how to say goodbye.

Wordless Wednesday

All That You Can Leave Behind

There goes about a third of our belongings.

I'm gonna miss that stuff so glad it's gone.

And to the people who took the remaining free junk we left at the end of the drive: God bless you most of all.

One Car and One Metric Ton of Junk

Okay, I admit, I have no idea what a metric ton is, but I'm sure we've got one--and on Friday we'll be spreading it all over our yard. We will create a cozy living room scene out front, since almost all the furniture is for sale. And because we're classy like that.

We are selling about half our furniture, or so it feels. The goal is to leave Oregon with an equal or lesser amount of stuff than we brought. The size of our rental truck demands it. We are alternating between feeling good calculating what clunky things we've gotten rid of and freaking out as we consider the (lack of) size of our truck. I think we'll be okay. We need to be okay. (Tell me it's okay?)

Monday night Aaron put the For Sale sign on our Suzuki, "the buggy." Tuesday he ran some errands and a woman practically begged him to sell it to her right then and there in the Staples parking lot. She drove it, she went to the bank, she came over and bought it. Voila! That was easy. And perhaps it was a tad too cheap, because we got two more calls about it after that. But we're glad to have it done and cash in hand.

We might as well start getting used to being a one-car family again. I haven't gone anywhere this week, but who wants to wager how long until we run into a driving dilemma . . . OH CRAP, THE ANSWER IS SUNDAY. D'oh!

Would anyone like to loan my husband a scooter? I think he'd look cute on it.

Wordless Wednesday

Graduation Matters

Saturday in early June: graduation day in Smallport.

Funny hats. Crepe paper. Lame metaphors. Overfrosted cake. It seems like a lot of hype for something everyone’s supposed to do, doesn’t it? Most people these days do get their high school diploma. Where I grew up, most kids were heading to four-year colleges. High school graduation wasn’t the achievement; it was just a step along the way.

Then there’s all the clichés. A whole new beginning—really? The most significant day of your life—really? If these graduates are going to go out and change the world, how come after all these years it hasn’t really changed much?

Yeah, I’m trained to be cynical about graduation. But I also remember: for some kids, graduating really is a major achievement. It really is the end of their education, and it may be the point after which they’re on their own—and in this world of postmodern adolescence and this town of poverty and drugs, a lot of them have already been on their own in too many ways for too long.

I graduated with over four hundred others, and families were not supposed to cheer when our names were called, because the band members’ fingers were already cramped from playing “Pomp and Circumstance” twenty times. Only those who were trying to be funny or thought the rules shouldn’t apply to them dare violate this edict. Everyone just wants to move on. We took it for granted.

In a small town and a small school, graduation is different. Here there are about fifty graduates, and the ceremony is open to all. Every graduate’s name is on the wall. Every one appears in the senior video, their cute baby photos and awkward middle school days and greatest sports achievements fading into each other over John Cougar Mellencamp and Green Day. And every one gets their moment of applause and whoops from the crowd when their name is called. We pause. We let each one have their moment. We join in, because even if we are not family, when we come together in the old, echoey gym, we are community.

When these community members—not your parents—were the only ones cheering for you at your game, at your play, at your poetry reading, their cheers for you now matter.

When you are first in your family to earn a diploma, graduation is a big deal. It matters.

When you walk with a baby in your arms, commencement is a victory. It matters.

When you have difficulty learning, a diploma is a prize. It matters.

So today, we cheered. We cheered for them all: for Chatterbox and The Playmaker; for the cheerleader and the guitar guy and the computer geek; for the valedictorian and the one who almost didn’t pass; for the one everyone in town knows and the one who wonders if anyone would miss him if he were gone.

They deserve it.

They matter.

Congratulations, class of 2009.

She Speaketh

Anna has been having Early Intervention sessions for her speech for three months now, so I thought I'd give an update.

Judy comes every other week and plays for about 45 minutes. Obviously Anna loves her! She brings puzzles, books, blocks, crayons, and other toys that are very interactive so she can encourage Anna to use words to indicate what she wants and so on. Mostly I think she's training me to interact this way.

Anna has made a lot of progress. When she was first tested I made a list of words she said consistently without prompting and it was maybe 50. About a month ago I listed a bunch more. This time before Judy came I made another list, and I was amazed how long it was. I didn't count, but it might have been 50 more, and she's putting together more phrases.

In the last couple weeks she has really gotten into using people's names. She can identify and say several colors, a bunch of letters, and of course her favorite condiments. She can count to ten.

It's amazing what you can learn when you start talking, eh?

Next visit Judy is going to do a mini re-evaluation of Anna's language development to see how her scores now compare to her first test. Normally they wouldn't do this until a couple months before she turns three, at which point she enters a different phase of the EI program, but since we're moving, this will give us some sense of her progress.

I plan to contact the Michigan program, and I'm sure they'll want to do their own evaluation. Their system appears to be similar, so if she still needs help when she turns three, she might be able to go into a group learning situation, like a focused preschool program, which I think would be good for her since she's not getting that social aspect much now. We'll see.

Wordless Wednesday

The First Day of What?

My calendar has got to be broken. Tell me it's broken.

It says this is the first day of Holy Crap! month, more commonly known as June. Its exclamatory nickname is favored in our house, though, because we can see the end (or the next beginning) from here.

Thirty days. Four weekends: graduation, garage sale, Beachcomber Days, our good-bye party.

Then my parents will be here, and we'll close on our house sale and drive away. We have a truck reserved and plane tickets purchased. (My mom and I are taking the red-eye with a toddler and a carry-on cat and a cargo-checked dog. Lord, have mercy.)

Aaron's work is winding down. We are selling his car. Closer to the move we'll get rid of my van.

We are having a garage moving sale on June 12 and 13, 9:00 to 3:00. We are accepting volunteer labor if you'd like to help out!

We are downsizing as much as possible to get everything into a reasonably-sized moving truck. It's amazing how much we can get rid of without missing it, even though we had a huge sale less than three years ago. Aaron recently found some crusty spices of midwest origin in the cupboard, and we decided that no food that moved here with us should move back. The same rule should probably apply to my wardrobe.

But hands off my books!

Back to work . . . sorting duty calls.

Birthdate Reversion

Or: Why Adoptive Parenting Is Weird Sometimes

Remember our daughter's January birthday? No, you don't. You can't. You mustn't. Forget anyone ever said anything about January. This is not the birth date you're looking for.

Once upon a time at the end of our pre-child days, we received that most remarkable of phone calls, the one telling us we had a daughter waiting a world away. It was April, and she'd been born in December. On the very day we had delivered our completed dossier to the agency, in fact. What a story!

Oh, but there was more to story. Well, actually, less. That birth date was just an estimate and the orphanage doctor didn't think she could be that old when they took her in. We were told to consider her a month younger, January birthday. Okay, Ethiopian Christmas baby, that's cool.

Ah, funny story . . . (not really). There's this little thing in adoption called paperwork. Actually it's such a big thing that it consumes your life almost as much as an actual child, but I digress. The important thing to know about this paperwork is that the parts of it that come from another country may well be full of typos and translation errors and contradictory facts like, oh, say, two different birth dates. So while Anna's medical records show a January 2007 birth date, everything else says December 2006: adoption decree, Ethiopian birth certificate, visa, and so on. We've been observing the January date, but anytime I have to be able to actually prove it I have to remember to say December because that's what's on paper. Confusing and occasionally embarrassing (you don't know your kid's birthday, lady?).

So to make a short story boring (too late), I thought I could get these reconciled when we did the Oregon readoption process. A lawyer is now working on our readoption papers, and he says that there is no clear-cut process for changing a birth date, so while we have a shot based on the existing medical records, the court might refuse. We could try again with perhaps a new doctor's affidavit, but there's no guarantee on that either and, well, do you know how much lawyers charge for this kind of thing?

At this point we need it done--so there's no confusion as we get new insurance, doctors, etc.--more than we need to spend all kinds of time and money on the chance we can get the date moved one month. It just seems a bit silly to fight for now that we're measuring her age in years. And really, isn't it more fun to celebrate before all the Christmas hoopla makes you feel like if you have to deal with one more present or social gathering or baked good, your New Year's weight loss will start off with gagging on the birthday cake?

Still, it's weird. We're deciding our daughter's birthday? After we've celebrated it twice? Obviously she doesn't understand time well enough to realize this is a change, but someday she'll find out. The really difficult question to answer is why no one really knows her birthday. . . . Having no story of her to go with that day is one of the harder things for me to accept and figure out how to explain. But it's the reality that we will just have to grapple with one year at a time.

All that to say . . . hey, did you know our daughter's birthday is the exact day we dropped off our dossier? Cool story, huh?

Mark it down: DECEMBER. There is no January. If you send cards in January, we will tell her you are tardy and senile.

Born at the right time . . . whenever the heck it was.

Wordless Wednesday

Book Review: The Unlikely Disciple

Full disclosure: I got this book for free from the publisher by offering to review it here, which I did because I wanted to read it. My first foray into blogger whoredom, some might say. Will shill for books! But I will always state clearly if I received something for blogging about something.

I did a crazy thing recently: I read a book. I mean read it, for fun, at my leisure, in places other than in front of my computer, with no red pencil or tracked changes in sight. Hey, for a person who edits books all day and often doesn’t want to see another printed word by the end of the day, unless the alternative is dealing with a fit-throwing toddler, finishing a book is a major accomplishment. Happily, Kevin Roose gave me a story that made me want to keep reading: The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America’s Holiest University.

Kevin Roose was a student at Brown University in Rhode Island, which is the academic and philosophical opposite of Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp,” Liberty University, or by conservative Christian standards, “a notch or two above Sodom and Gomorrah.” But after visiting Falwell’s church in the course of a job, Roose was frustrated that the “God Divide” between himself and the evangelical students he met seemed so great. Were they really so different? Or just living in separate worlds?

Roose noted a study showing that 51 percent of Americans don’t know any evangelical Christians, even casually. And neither did he. (But before you rush to judgment on that, churchy folk, how many liberal non-Christians hang out in your bubble? Most of us are guilty of sticking with those most like us.)

So what did he do? He crammed on Christian literature and music, B.S.’d Liberty’s application essays with Christian lingo, and registered for classes at Liberty as his “semester abroad.” Undercover, of course. (Cue suspenseful music and situational hilarity.)

Let’s just say that his experience gave new meaning to baptism by immersion. Roose lived in a dorm, joined the Thomas Road church choir, learned acceptable substitutes for colorful language, and started spending Friday nights at Bible study instead of at parties or watching R-rated movies. He visited a group for guys struggling with, um, certain temptations, and he even landed a face-to-face interview with Jerry Falwell, which turned out to be Falwell’s last.

As you might imagine, plopping a secular liberal into a lot of these situations is a recipe for tension and humor, and Roose writes with plenty of snap and wit as well as honesty, charity, and thoughtfulness. I really enjoyed the sharp humor and storytelling and would recommend this book for those qualities alone.

But The Unlikely Disciple is more than just a fun book with a clever premise. I think there is real value here for the Christian who is willing to consider, “If that’s how outsiders see Liberty, how do they see me?” If someone went undercover to your church, how would they experience it? Are we making our faith into a bubble, and if so, how can we let outsiders in—or better yet, step out of it ourselves? After all, if there really is a “God Divide” in America, God’s people should be the ones trying to bridge it. Kevin Roose showed that it can be done, because on a personal level, the divide is not so great after all.

The one criticism I might have of the book is that it purports to reveal evangelical culture without clearly defining what an evangelical is. If it's the broad standard of someone who believes the Bible and calls themselves “born again,” evangelical includes me, but by Liberty's strict standards I'd flunk out. I mean, I’m a Presbyterian—a conservative one who takes the Bible seriously, sure, but not one to take it all literally as they do at Liberty. I’d consider myself evangelical but not a Liberty fundamentalist—and I’m guilty of looking askance at Falwell and his style of fundamentalism and politics from the outside almost as much as Roose.

So a little more nuanced definition of terms would probably make the broad spectrum of Christianity clearer for Roose and his readers, but then again, that’s the point—at Liberty there are only two kinds of people, saved and unsaved, and they’re not likely to consider you saved unless you meet all the criteria of conservative evangelical (really fundamentalist) theology. But what Roose says of Liberty is just as true for all Christianity: “Once you dig under the surface, Liberty is every bit as messy and diverse as any secular college, and lumping everyone on this campus into a single category seems irrational and simplistic.” Indeed the same goes for any group—secular college students, those of a different political party, those of any certain age or generation. Roose’s peek into life at Liberty gets its wallop from his outsider-gone-underground perspective, but his best contribution to the cultural conversation is illustrating how the same we all are at the basic level.

And if Roose can convince at least a few secular liberals and a few conservative fundies to give each other a chance, at least one of Jerry Falwell’s prayers will be answered: that Kevin Roose would enter journalism “in key places where he can make a difference in the culture.” He’s certainly on his way, and I’ll be watching to see what he does next.

Kevin Roose’s blog: http://www.kevinroose.com/blog/

Kevin Roose on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kevinroose

Liberty in the news last week: LU pulls the plug on campus Democrats

Memorial Day

Today I:

• wrote--for me, not work.
• called my grandfather and thanked him for serving on a Navy PT boat in WWII. He downplayed it as just something millions of us did but I think was happy to remember it. Only 4 of the 15 guys from his group remain to share memories.
• took a two-hour nap. Oh, glorious day!

If anyone would like to declare tomorrow a holiday as well, I would totally be up for a repeat.

I Fight Authority

Authority always wins.