totally worth it

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Last week I wrote a bit about the difficulties of adopting from the foster-care system.  It was mostly a vent about the judgments that people have for adopting internationally . . . but I worry that I sounded like I was discouraging people from adopting through foster care. Though I do believe that it is a difficult process that needs massive reform, I also believe it is totally worth the hardships and inconveniences.

I cannot sugar-coat it.  The process was very difficult for me personally.  I don’t know that I can ever adequately describe what it was like to raise Jafta as my own son for three years and wonder every night as I put him to sleep if he would stay in our family.  It was an extremely painful and stressful time in our lives.  As a new mom, that cloud of worry affected how I learned to parent, and caused me to detach in many ways. I am still working hard to overcome some of the parenting habits I developed during that season in order to cope with my fear of loss.  Adopting in this way not hard out of inconvenience.  It was so much more than annoying social workers and intrusive home inspections.  It was emotionally traumatizing.

But, as Rebecca commented:

“As for the process being "excruciating," yes, it is hard to love kids and then potentially lose them when a bio family member is found. I have lived through that! It is HARD, but you are told from the very beginning that is a possibility at any point up until finalization. One of the "costs" of fostering for me is being willing to suffer loss (on my part) in order to provide a loving home for a child in need, whether they stay a few weeks or forever.  If your primary concern is finding the easiest way to grow your own family, no, you probably shouldn't try to adopt through foster care. There is nothing easy about being a foster parent, and these kids need people who are willing to put aside their comfort and advocate for them.”

And as K said in this post:

“Personally, I just don’t believe that “because it is hard” is a good reason not to do something. I want to be honest about the foster care system – sometimes it will suck. Sometimes it will feel like it is not really working. Sometimes you will say goodbye to kids you are completely in love with.  But it is what we have to work with here in the United States and I really believe the best way to reform the system is good foster parents.  There are many but we need a lot more and abandoning the system does nothing.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:35-36 ESV)

If being treated poorly and dealing with incompetent people is what needs to be done to prevent a child from being one of the 19,000 who age out of the system every year, it is worth it.”

I believe this with all of my heart.  It IS worth it.  It sucked, and it left scars, and it was worth it.  Much like pregnancy and childbirth.  Building a family is never easy.

I stumbled upon this post on the evening of Thanksgiving, a day we had spent enjoying our family and counting our blessings.  It rocked me, and hearing similar stories had been the inspiration for us adopting through foster care in the first place.  I thought about this post all day on Friday as we spent the day celebrating Thanksgiving . . . as  I watched Jafta revel in the love of his family, as we cheered him on riding scooters and chanted his name as he got his dream of a pie in the face.  Campbell’s words haunt me, and break my heart:

“I spent every thanksgiving as an outsider.  I observed.  I sat quietly and watched families enjoy the time they had together and studied them.  I would watch my foster family interact with each other--every one grazing on appetizers, hanging out and enjoying each others company.  This is what family is, I thought.  I want this.  I want to be part of this.  Will I be here next year?  Will they be my family next year?  Do they remember my name? 
Thanksgiving is a day that reminds me that I've never had that kind of connection.  It reminds me of what I'm missing.  It reminds me that I don't have family.  It reminds me of all the Thanksgivings I cried myself to sleep overcome with desire for family, stability and tradition.  It reminds me of how different I am from the average American.  It reminds me of how undeserving I am of family.”

IT IS WORTH IT.  For me, to have the blessing of this amazing little boy in my life, and for Jafta.  Son. Grandson. Cousin.  Big Brother.  Howerton.  So worth all of it.

 

        

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Gifts that Give Back

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In a season marked by giving, I love the idea of giving back to our community and our planet. This year, my family decided to forego gifts for the adults, and give donations in each person’s name instead. It’s been so fun thinking of each family member and finding ways to honor each of them with a unique donation.

Here are some great ways you can do your Christmas shopping and give back at the same time.

Krochet Kids offers 3 year programs to women living in poverty. In this program, the women learn to krochet hats to earn an income and be able to fully support themselves for the first time in their lives. Based in Uganda, the hats are sold in the US, on their website and at most Nordstroms.



Rocks in the Sun is a gorgeous photography book filled with Haitian proverbs and photos of this beautiful but impoverished country. It’s compiled by Troy Livesay, who lives in Haiti and does great mission work there (and just happens to be a stellar photog). This would make a great coffee table book, and the proceeds go towards their missions work with Heartline Haiti and Worldwide Village to assist the people of Haiti.

31 Bits Jewelry is made out of 100% recycled paper, posters, and magazines by internally displaced women in Northern Uganda. Each piece of jewelry is unique and hand-crafted by a woman in the community of Gulu, Uganda.

Invisible Children is selling bracelets made in Uganda to benefit former child soldiers. Each bracelet is a different color, and each color represents an individual child. These colored bracelets are accompanied by an inspiring short film about a child that has been personally affected by this unrelenting war. Invisible Children is also selling ‘MEND’ bags that are made by former female rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army. They are made in Uganda and each bag has the name of the women sewn inside, and a video of each woman online so that you can ‘meet’ the women who made your bag.

World Vision has an amazing gift catalog where you can buy a number of innovative and sustaining gifts for people living in poverty. Their website even allows you to purchase and print a card letting a loved one know you have donated in their name. You can purchase medical attention for a pregnant woman, a goat that can provide milk to a child – even a grove of fruit trees!


Buying Christmas Cards this year?  Consider the fresh, modern designs at Paper Culture, all done in a beautiful recycled cardstock.  For every order, they plant a tree in your name, and if you enter the code ”CA10″ at check out 20%will go directly to the Somaly Mam Foundation to help end human trafficking and slavery worldwide.

Kauzbots is a line of 10 plush toy robots – each one with its own “kauze.” 10% of the retail price from each adorable bot is donated directly to the non-profit that is noted on the hang tag. With a wide variety of charities to choose from (including AIDS Walk, Arbor Day Foundation, Lifewater International, and 7 others), you’re sure to find one that touches your heart. Kauzbots are designed to inspire kids to change the world!


The bags and purses from Haitian Creations are handmade by women in Haiti, who are a part of a sewing program that is giving these impoverished women lifelong skills. The ability to earn money gives these women the ability to be self-sufficient, to support their families, and to have the independence they need in a society where this is often difficult.

isanctuary is an organization working to help victims of the sex trade recover and rebuild their lives. They work with young survivors – 12 to 19 year olds, making sure they receive all the elements necessary for restoration, including education, counseling, vocational training, and mental, emotional and spiritual healing. The girls create stunning jewelry that is sold online and in retail stores. You can shop at their retail site.

Punjammies are adorable sari-inspired pajamas. Each Punjammies are created in an after-care facility for women who have been rescued, released or escaped from a life of forced prostitution. Holistic aftercare involves quality medical care, emotional safety, education and the tools to create a new way of life for herself.

Nuru International – be apart of ending extreme poverty throughout the world. You can give a one time gift, or sponsor a family for a year.

The Hunger Site – If you go under Gifts that Give More on the sidebar, there are a lot of interesting things you can purchase in someone else’s name – things as different as a child’s education for a year or a microloan for a pig or goat.

Rising Tide Fair Trade sells beautiful bohemian style bags of various sizes (weekender bags to hand bags) that are hand made in a woman’s fair trade labor coop in West Bengal, India from re-purposed vintage kantha saris and cruelty-free black or brown suede. The female artisans earn a fair wage that allows them to provide for their families. These bags look like they belong in an anthropologie catalogue.

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the day Jafta's dreams came true

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On Thursday, I made a cheesecake.  I'm not sure that the kids have ever witnessed me making a dessert that resembles a pie.  When Jafta saw what I was doing, he begged me . . . I mean BEGGED ME . . . to throw it in someone's face.  He was sure that this would be the funniest and coolest thing that could ever happened.  He even volunteered to be the recipient of this pie-throwing.

I thought his idea was amusing - but this particular cheesecake was pretty tastey and I didn't really feel like wasting all that hard work.  Still, he talked about the pie-throwing idea all day long. 

On Friday we joined Mark's parents for another Thanksgiving feast.  There were several pies involved.  Again, Jafta pleaded for one of them to be thrown in someone's face.

After we had spent the evening gorging ourselves on various pies, there were several empty pie tins, and a couple cans of Redi-Whip.  I knew what I had to do.

I filled a pie tin with whipped cream and called Jafta into the room.

He took one look and without saying a word, he ripped his shirt off and started doing his little hopping dance that he does when he's really, really excited.

And the rest, my friends, was pure five-year-old magic.







Amidst the chanting of his family, Jafta got the pie in his face that he had always dreamed of.  It was a triumphant moment for him. I think it might just be a new Thanksgiving tradition.

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thankful parents, thankful kids

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I wrote this week’s column for the OC Register’s website about cultivating thankfulness in our kids:

Keeping a perspective of gratitude is a hard lesson in life – one that many adults have not even mastered. But instilling the practice of being thankful in our children is a habit that will benefit them throughout their life: people who hold a worldview of being thankful tend to report more contentment and also tend to cope better with life’s challenges.

There are several tips for teaching your children the art of being grateful, but the most influential (and perhaps most challenging) method for developing this habit in your children is by example. Cliché as it may sound, children are keen observers of their parents’ attitude and outlook. If they hear more grumbling and complaining than appreciation, they are likely to develop this pattern themselves.

Thanksgiving is a great time to introduce traditions around being thankful, but I would encourage you to look at this season as a jumping-off point. Think about incorporating some of these ideas into the rest of the year. A child will not learn about being thankful by a couple rituals that they take part in once a year. It will need to become a part of their daily practice in order to really take root in their way of thinking.

You can read the rest here.

How do you teach your children gratitude?  And what are you thankful for this year?

We are looking forward to a day of reflecting on life’s blessings.  I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

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if you like free stuff . . .

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We have several givesaways going on at Mama Manifesto right now.  All you have to do to enter is comment.  Click below to check out:

Weebles Toy Set and $100 Gift Card Giveaway

Just Dance Kids Game for Wii

Smarty Ants Subscription, Phonics Puppy & $100 Visa Gift Card Giveaway

Also, if you haven’t discovered the downplayer yet, I highly recommend it.  They give away 10 free songs a day – no commitment.  Today Skinny Love by Bon Iver is a selection.  You’re welcome.

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why adopt from there when there are children here?

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The Orange County Register ran a story on our family this week.  They had contacted us a while back, wanting to do an update since Kembe's homecoming.  They ended up writing from the angle of us being together for our first holiday . . . a nice surprise, and echoing so many of my own thoughts.  I love the photos that Mindy Shauer captured.  She wanted to get snapshots of our everyday life, and I think she really did.  Especially the one of the three kids jamming on the coffee table.  And if you look closely, you can see my beans and rice cooking in the kitchen.  Just a typical day.  Aside from the tie Kembe is wearing.

(Also, as my luck would have it, our photo shoot was scheduled at the point when his braids had become more Coolio than cool, and without a three-hour time block to change that fact.  So now I can be forever memorialized in print as the white woman who neglects her son’s hair.  Yeesh. Since that day it has been cut and retwisted.  I promise.)  













 Photos: Mindy Schauer, The Orange County Register

I have some ambivalent feelings about being in the media.  On the one hand, I like putting a face to adoption beyond the typical stories of parents returning their children.  It is usually adoptions gone wrong that make the headlines, so if our little slice of life brings some normalcy to the public perspective of adoption, then I think it’s a good thing.  At the same time, as an introvert in can be a little challenging in terms of privacy, and it also opens us up to random criticism.  Obviously, writing a blog does that as well, but typically speaking blog readers are a self-selected audience.  When your story hits the papers, it’s open season.

For whatever reason, one of the resounding comments we get when random people hear our story is, “Why do these people have to adopt kids from other countries?  Why can’t they take care of the kids here in the US?”  This question is so common that literally, before it went to print, I jokingly asked Mark how long he thought it would be before someone posed that question.  And, ding! ding! ding!  Within about an hour of the story going live, we had a winner. 

(There were also some digs about white people adopting black children, but those were deleted).

This question both angers and amuses me.  Amusing because it is so completely petty and almost always posed by people who are doing absolutely nothing about the “kids here in the US” that they are so indignant about. And angering because it is so ridiculous to assume that children born in other countries have less of a right to be adopted into a loving home than those born in the states.

I typically don’t feel defensive by this question (obviously, since we DID adopt a child from the US), but it does irritate me.  My friend Alida commented back and I really appreciate what she said.  She is a former foster child herself, an African American/biracial mom of five, and she is in the process of getting her fostercare license.  So I think she knows a little something something about all that.

“One thing to consider, at least here in the US we have foster care. The government sets aside money for each child to have the basics, food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, developmental services, therapy, etc. In Haiti, Africa, places in S. America, Asia, there is NOTHING!  You are a FORTUNATE orphan if you have access to the few poor overcrowded orphanages available. Even still you are probably malnourished. Those not in orphanages are often forced into child traffic, slave labor, criminal activity, abuse, begging, uneducated sick, and expose to the elements. Having been in foster care myself, it wasn't pleasant but my basic needs were met. I have lived in group homes here and they were nice. It wasn't perfect but I never went to bed hungry. There are well over 153,000,000 worldwide and as many as 163,000 right here in the good ole US of A in need of adoption, 500,000 here needing foster homes. If you are concerned with US orphans, I'd encourage you, to sign up today. There is also a special need for domestic adoption of black or biracial infants not in foster care. I hope that the many folks that so quickly ask the "why adopt from there when there are children here " are the same ones I see in my foster/adoption classes.  Have you ever tried to adopt from the foster care system? It is difficult, time consuming and a VERY intrusive process. I should read you some of the homestudy questions! You'd blush! There are SO MANY REQUIREMENTS. You may or may not meet the requirements based on your family size, home size, views on birth control, parenting style etc. You could have a child or children in your home for YEARS and never be able to adopt that child and call them your own. You may have a child or sibling set that you have tenderly loved and cared for and have to return them (yes even years later) to the SAME drug addicted people that abused or neglected that child in the first place! We are trying to adopt a sibling set from foster care and the hoops I have to jump through to do it make international adoption look oh so appealing. It works for many and I hope we are successful. I pray each US child finds a forever family, but I can easily see why others chose international.”

I think so much of this is true.  Having worked in group homes for many years, I can say that there is truly no comparison between US fostercare and third world orphanage conditions.  And adopting from the US fostercare system is an excruciating process.  Most DCFS offices are understaffed, underpaid and incompetent.  Even with the best-intentioned staff, it is simply not set up to adequately care for the number of children in state care, and the permanency of children is what hangs in the balance.  I could complain all day about how poorly foster parents are treated by the system . . . but the real injustice here is to the children, who sit for years in a limbo between family preservation and adoption.  My friend Esther is experiencing this right now and reading her story is a painful reminder of all we went through with Jafta.  I don’t have easy answers, but I do know that the system is very broken, and it is failing children by making it so difficult for prospective parents to adopt kids in fostercare who need families.  If I wasn’t so exhausted from our own battle, I would pick up the torch and fight for reform.  Some day, I will.  Today, I have more important matters to attend to.  Like packing lunches for preschool tomorrow. And sleeping.

Anyways, as always, my response to the question of “why adopt from there when there are children here?” is:

Why don’t YOU?

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perspective

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via Mike Rusch:

(and some ideas for what to do about it)

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that's what S/HE said: religious edition

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Some interesting food for thought, no matter where you fall on the religious spectrum:
What the Bible Got Wrong at Jesus Needs New PR

“What does a chart like this make you feel? Anger? Doubt? Frustration? Confusion? Does it challenge your faith? Were you aware of these “errors”? How should Christians respond?”

The comments on this post are as fascinating as the post itself. 

Medium: Cool by Brett McCracken

I always find Brett’s analysis of the Christian hipster culture fascinating, especially because it often sounds like he is describing my very church.  I share his concerns.

"Can we embody that selfless, humble, transcendent Gospel of Christ when we look the part of a self-focused, vain, trendy hipster?I think we need to deal with this dissonance, and confront the implications of cool head on. I think we need to redefine cool in terms that aren’t as much about consuming the right sorts of things or having privileged knowledge of what is or isn’t fashionable, as much as about the things that are truly attractive and appealing about our faith."

God Loves Jay Bakker at NY Times

“Tonight’s message—that religion is divisive, a bane rather than a balm—is one that Bakker, the fallen scion of American’s most infamous Christian family, knows his way around. But Bakker isn’t thinking about himself right now. He’s thinking about the country seething over the “ground-zero mosque,” about the umpteenth round of Middle East peace talks, about the soldiers who are finally returning from a war in Iraq that’s been considered an American crusade . . .”

Not knowing what to do about good friends who are raising punk kids. by Stuff Christians Like

(And by punk, he means brats.  Not fans of Social Distortion.  Because THAT would be really bad parenting.  *cough*)

Christmas: Thinking about Whose Birthday It Is by Anne at A Holy Experience

“It’s been over ten years of nothing under the Christmas tree here.  Strange, the way children teach men. . . .”

Are Short-Term Mission Trips the Answer?  by Heather Hendricks

A few years ago, if you would have asked us, "Can mission trips be a bad thing?" our church-going, party-line answer would have been, "No.  Never ever.  Mission trip, good.  Grunt.  Grunt."  We may have even talked about what a jerk you were to raise such a ridiculous question.  Now, we're always a little leery of people who are threatened by questions, and our thoughts on mission trips have morphed a bit.

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why I put my tree up in mid-november

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That's right. I'm totally THAT PERSON this year.

I realize it is obnoxious.  I hate THAT PERSON every other Christmas season.  But listen . . . this year?  Is the first time in a really long time that our family is complete.  Together.  No ambiguity hanging over our heads.  No family member living in a boy's home in another country.  No angst over how we would split up our holidays so we could spend time with our son who lived in another country.  No words like "bittersweet" to mask the total suckage of the holiday season for the Howerton set.

The holidays can be a hard time with there are family issues.  We have spent a lot of holidays over the past ten years being tentative.  And by tentative, I mean gritting our teeth and doing the bare minimum to seem like functioning, polite adults.  We've spent Christmases grieving over not being parents, or wondering if THIS would be the pregnancy that made it to full term.  We spent years wondering if Jafta would be a permanent member of the family, or just a foster child whose face joined ours in several years of holiday cards.  And then, we had three years of knowing Kembe was our son, but not knowing when he would come home.

Well, he's here, dammit.  So forgive us.  But we're going big.



The kids helped me put up the tree on Thursday.  On Friday, we hosted a little dinner party for our neighbors (and friends). It's a tradition we started almost a decade ago.  Last year, we were feeling sour and we skipped it.  Then we regretted it, because it felt sad to miss out on this special time with friends.  So we decided, despite the total chaos, that we were hosting this year.  I'm so glad we did.



Yeah, that's right.  I spray painted the pumpkins gold.  And I made a Christmas painting to hang by the tree. And I discovered how to make an holiday playlist on Pandora:

Sufjan Stevens (Holiday) + Sara Groves (Holiday) + Nora Jones (Holiday) = Awesome.

Today, we took the kids to Disneyland to see the holiday decorations. 

I know.  I just don't know what's come over me.  But I know this:  I'm feeling content, and I'm having fun.  And so is Kembe.

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