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Today is the day I leave. The day I begin a three-day trek from Lancaster to Philadelphia to New York City to Dubai to Colombo, Sri Lanka. The day I say goodbye to Mai and the kids. The day I say hello to a new group of blogger friends and a whirling mass of traveling strangers and a country full of people who will undoubtedly change my life.

Today.

But I can’t stop thinking about this summer and what a difficult journey it has been. We arrived home from our four-month road trip and in many ways it felt like the bottom had fallen out of my life. I had no new writing projects lined up (ie no income). We were back in my parents’ basement, trying to figure out where we would live. One of my children struggled with anxiety and I found myself frustrated and short-tempered with his questioning, his doubt, his uncertainty – yet I found myself asking the same questions.

Hello, God? Remember me? I’m the one with a wife and four children? The one you sort of convinced to go on this crazy, once-in-a-life trip? The one you brought safely home? Yeah, I’m home now, and I don’t have any money and work seems to have dried up. Does this situation ring any bells with you?

And the summer passed. Slowly. June turned into July turned into August. I turned down a job at some point in there, but as the summer passed it seemed like one of the most ridiculous decisions I’d ever made.

Wait, the voice kept saying. Wait.

So I waited. Impatient some of the time. Angry most of the time. Hope got mixed up with despair, like the beginnings and endings of summer when you can’t always tell it from spring or fall. Was I coming or going? Intensifying or fading? Planting or harvesting?

Then three days before leaving for Sri Lanka, I got an email from a potential client.

“Good news on this cloudy Monday – the project has been approved!”

Thank you.

* * * * *

Sometimes life feels like a handful of dice thrown into the air, its outcome determined by the random result of their configuration. But very occasionally I recognize a more deliberate hand at work – like going on a four-month road trip and attending a conference held by a friend I met after my business went under and at that conference meeting another friend named Matthew who a few months later asks me to go on a trip I wouldn’t have been able to go on if I would have said yes to that job I never would have needed now that this project has come through.

“But dad, what if you aren’t here when I wake up in morning,” my child asks me, eyes tearing up, hands holding tightly to a blanket pulled up to cover his mouth. “What if you don’t come to pick me up after church? What if you and mom forget about me?”

And it’s strange that it took me so long to recognize myself in that line of questions.

God, what if you aren’t here for me? What if you forget me? What if you leave me?

* * * * *

I’ve always know the phrase that God “will never leave you nor forsake you.” What I often forget is the context of that wisdom in Hebrews:

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

So we say with confidence,“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.What can mere mortals do to me?”

So I set out for Sri Lanka, some questions answered, others lingering. I still don’t know as much as I’d like to know. I still clutch at promises the way a child clings to a blanket.

Today I leave for Sri Lanka, and I’ll blog about the trip for World Vision as I witness for myself the way that child sponsorship changes lives. I’d love for you to join me – all you have to do is show up here from August 25th through August 30th.

In the mean time, please consider sponsoring a child through World Vision. For around $30 a month you can change the life of a child and their family. Find out more about child sponsorship (and check out my cool landing page) HERE.

It is the 71^st morning in my parents’ basement with my wife and four children. 71 days since we returned from four months on the road in a big blue bus. I wake up early and creep from the dark bedroom, trying not to wake Maile or our two youngest children asleep in the small bedroom with us. The door creaks behind me.

I sit at the small table in the main area of the basement without turning on the light and open up my laptop. It is the moon, and I make a list of the things I need to take on my upcoming trip to Sri Lanka.

You can find the rest of today’s post over at my friend Michelle DeRusha’s blog. While you’re there, look around – she’s a fabulous, inspiring person.

* * * * *

If this is your first time at my blog, welcome! Some of my more popular recent posts have been:

What God Asked Me After I Listed All the Things that Suck About My Life
Why Being Terribly Afraid is Perhaps the Best Reason for Going
What We Did to the Unwelcome Guest at Our Wedding

Tomorrow I leave for Sri Lanka! Join me on the trip right here at the blog.

In two days I’ll be hitting the friendly skies for a three-day journey to Sri Lanka. I’m excited, nervous, apprehensive…you name it. So today in the comments I’d like your answers to any of these questions:

1 – What’s the best trip you ever went on?

2 – What’s the biggest mistake you ever made regarding travel or vacation?

OR

3 – If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Bon voyage!

We climbed into a big van and drove into Philadelphia. The hum of the city coursed through my 10-year-old veins. I feel asleep on the way there, our road surrounded by wide open, snow-covered fields. I woke up to black slush piled around poles, kicked at by loitering strangers. All of us country folk were so unused to the jagged sidewalks and the empty glances and a rectangular skyline uninterrupted by trees.

The air pressed in around me, cold and foreign, and I was scared when my dad and my uncle opened the back of the van to reveal the treasure we carried: boxes and boxes of gleaming white tube socks wrapped in plastic.

“Hey, buddy,” my dad called, never scared, never one to hesitate. “You need some socks?”

The man pushed his cart over towards us, squinting his eyes. He grunted as if to say of course, who wouldn’t want new socks?

My dad tossed him a few pair and the old man broke into a toothless grin. He sat down, right there in the snow, hiked up his threadbare pants and yanked off his old socks, his bare feet thin and tired in the winter air. Then he pulled on those brand spanking new tube socks, and he smiled, and he stared at his feet as if they belonged to someone else, and he wiggled his toes.

He pulled on his shoes and tucked his old socks in amongst his belongings. Maybe he thought we might change our minds at some point, chase him down, and demand he return the new ones. I don’t know. But it was a cold day, and he kept looking over his shoulder as he walked away. Meanwhile, a crowd of homeless men gathered, and we handed socks to them. Small weapons with which to fight the cold.

* * * * *

“How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: “What is my poverty?” Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That’s the place where God wants to dwell! “How blessed are the poor,” Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.”

As many of you know, in less than one week I’ll be traveling to Sri Lanka with a group of World Vision bloggers. We’ll be reporting to you first hand about that beautiful country and the benefits of child sponsorship.

To celebrate this coming journey, we’re having a little contest/giveaway. We’ve put together four identical prize packages, a collection of some of our favorite books, music, and World Vision apparel. To each of those four prize packs we will add something from Sri Lanka, a unique prize made by the people of Sri Lanka.

This is what each of the four winners will receive:

-A copy of World Vision’s Faith in Action Study Bible
-A copy of The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns, World Vision’s president
-An autographed copy of Love Story: The Hand That Holds Us from the Cradle to the Grave by Nichole Nordeman
-A copy of Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human Spirit by River Jordan
-A copy of Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life by Nick Vujicic
-A copy of From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey by James Stuart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson
-A copy of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp (as well as a copy of Ann’s “gift book” called Selections from One Thousand Gifts: Finding Joy in What Really Matters (this book features Ann’s words and photography)

-A copy of Music Inspired By the Story, a compilation CD that includes music by Amy Grant, Nichole Nordeman, Michael W. Smith, Natalie Grant, Jeremy Camp and many more.
-A copy of Hurt & the Healer by MercyMe
-A copy of As Long As it Takes by Meredith Andrews
-A copy of Who I Am from American Idol alum Jason Castro
-A copy of The Reckoning by Needtobreathe
-A copy of Hundred More Years by Francesca Battistelli

-A World Vision t-shirt from its GIVEN apparel line
-An official World Vision track jacket

-And a handmade item from Sri Lanka…

To enter for your chance to win, simply “like” World Vision’s Facebook page and each of the bloggers’ Facebook pages using the handy Rafflecopter tool (Note: you will need to be signed into your Facebook account for it to work) and you will automatically be entered to win one of the FOUR amazing prize packages.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

This contest begins on Thursday, August 16, 2012 and will end at midnight (PST) on Wednesday August 22, 2012. Winners will be selected at random. One winner per household. You must be 18 years or older and have a valid United States address to enter. No purchase is necessary. Winners will be contacted by email on or before September 10, 2012.

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Jeffrey Lane. He and his wife have been providing foster care for children ever since they got married in 2004.

Never let kids use permanent markers.  This was a lesson I learned the hard way.  What had started as a normal day of arts and crafts at the dining table, turned suddenly sour when I found Vincent using our backdoor as his canvas of choice.  We had been spending the day making some works of art and I had hardly noticed as he had gotten up from the table and made his way to the kitchen, the next room over. But when I found him there I quickly and painfully realized my mistake.

Vincent was a pleasantly plump 8 year old.  One of the chunkiest and most gregarious kids we had ever had in our home.  He and his sister had been spending a few weeks with us while his family situation was being figured out.  As usual these were incredible kids who were simply victims of circumstances outside of their control.  He and his sister were helpful and courteous in our home and grateful for anything that we provided.  I guess that is why it surprised me to find him hiding in our back room with a marker in hand and our kitchen door now tattooed with graffiti.

I approached as patiently as I could when I realized what he had done.  It was not the first or last time our stuff would be permanently defaced.  Our cars and houses have always had marks and memories permanently rendered by our kids.  But black permanent marker on a beautiful white door was enough to challenge my usually calm demeanor.

I immediately switched into serious Super Nanny discipline mode, trying to be clear and firm.  I told Vincent that we only use markers at the table and only on paper.  I told him that he was going to have to wash the door until it was clean and that he was going to have to help me paint it back to normal.

Vincent immediately became emotional, which was not the reaction I was hoping for.

Thankfully my wife then came to the rescue and intervened.

She has a bit more perspective than I do and immediately got on his level.  She tried to get a further understanding of why Vincent, who had never been a discipline problem to this point, had gone and done such an act.

Through his tears she was able to get to the heart of what was going on.  As he explained I began to soften as well and then I looked again at the half erased words that were still visible on the door.

I realized that he was not simply drawing random graffiti, but he had written his address.

He wasn’t trying to hurt our home – he was trying to hold on to the memory of his own.  It was then that we heard him say, “I didn’t want to forget where I live.”

Please check out Jeffrey Lane’s blog HERE. Or you can find out more about his book The Samaritan Project.

If you’d like to submit a post telling the story of a poignant moment that occurred during adoption or foster care, please email your 500-word submission to shawnsmucker@yahoo.com. Thanks!

THERE WILL BE NO NEW ADOPTION POSTS FOR THE NEXT TWO FRIDAYS, AS I WILL BE TRAVELING IN SRI LANKA. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO JOIN ME ON THE TRIP! (IN THE SHOW-UP-DAILY-AT-MY-BLOG SENSE, NOT THE SHOW-UP-AT-THE-AIRPORT-WITH-YOUR-BAGS-PACKED SENSE.)

Prior adoption and foster care posts include:

Fear and an Open Adoption – Adoption Stories With Rebecca Wenrich
I Saw Our New Son and the Voice Said, “Run Away” – Adoption Stories With Kim Van Brunt
Checking ‘Yes’ to Everything: Adoption Stories With Sonya Judkins
Because Someone Has To: Adoption Stories With Shar Halvorsen
Momma For a Moment: A Foster Care Story, With Tamara Out Loud