Category: Uncategorized

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

I sit in coffee shops and I eat at a kitchen table and I go to sleep at night in a bed that’s in a house, not a bus. In the spaces between those times, and occasionally in a misplaced dream, I think about how on our recent cross-country trip the bus galloped over a bridge or bounced up and down after cresting a wave in the road.

And when the essence of my current life is “wait,” the road sings a Siren’s song. I posted about it on my Facebook page:

“I’ve spent the last few days going back over my blog posts from the trip and trying to figure out what a book about that experience would look like. In other news…I really miss being on the road.”

They are fine reflections, those memories of the miles we crossed. In response, my friend Jason posed an interesting question:

“next blog post: is being on the road a destination or avoidance. or something to that effect.”

I didn’t have to think long. In regards to yesterday’s desire to hit the road, the answer is easy: avoidance. I want to drive away from my worries and my insecurities and this incorrigible waiting. I want to pull into a well-lit Walmart, park the big blue bus we traveled in, and write at the small table with Maile while the kids fall asleep in their bunks. I want to drive on roads I’ve never driven, wind along gorges that make me feel queasy from the sheer drop to either side, and forget this present reality.

Then I saw this quote from John Steinbeck:

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.”

* * * * *

Perhaps there are at least two reasons for traveling: there’s this one that Steinbeck talks about, the one I admit to feeling right now if I’m honest with myself: a wanting to move away, not to something, but away from something. Yet there is another reason to hit the road, one that has perhaps a dash of avoidance but at its heart is so much more.

I know this second reason exists because it is the reason we went on our trip in February – I didn’t feel the need to escape from anything back then. There was no dire financial situation to run from, no grating relationships or unbearable waiting. We were simply in the middle of a good life, and we wanted to take an adventure, and perhaps make life even better. We wanted to prove that we could do it, in spite of being afraid.

And it’s for that reason I am going to Sri Lanka in one week: for the going, not for the avoiding or the not-staying. I want to see things I’ve never seen and meet people I’ve only heard about and taste foods that will knock my socks off. Part of me is terribly afraid – not of the time change or the food or any mosquito-harboring disease I might get. Not of writer’s block or plane crashes.

No, I’m terribly afraid of the change that might be wrought in me. I’m scared of what seeing people in such dire circumstances will do to my world view or my Self.

I wonder. Of all the reasons there are for going, perhaps being terribly afraid is one of the best.

* * * * *

In one week I’ll be leaving 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.

Someone shouted my name last night as we walked the city streets. A thunderstorm rolled in from the west but we kept meandering the alleys and there was that man playing a piano badly in an unlit corner across from the parking garage. I wondered who put it there. I wondered if they ever imagined a homeless man would find such joy in its sad chaos, those sounds of rain and thunder at his fingertips.

The sunlight struggled out from behind the storm clouds but it was too late and too low and we didn’t care enough to pay attention, so it sank behind all the buildings while we ate ice cream and pretended we lived there among the brick and the asphalt, pretended we could come back to that ice cream parlor anytime we wanted. We pretended the city was ours and we could have any house we wanted and that these days would go on, and we would be unchanged.

And then as we left and turned right on Prince Street and walked the broken-toothed sidewalk that runs along the galleries I heard a voice shout my name. You heard it too, because you stopped just like I did and looked west, but no one was there. Just another busy street, and people shouting, but not to me. We both turned reluctantly. We both kept looking over our shoulder.

Without the lights that came on as we left the city there wouldn’t have been any shadows. But they did and there were and we drove through them and they dripped from the car so we turned on our headlights and followed the beams into the country where the sound of cicadas or crickets or the smell of green felt louder than any part of that place we had just left behind. And I think perhaps that when we move there it will not be the noise that keeps us up but the silence.

Still, tonight, with the lights going out and the children going to sleep I can hear the echo of the voice that shouted my name through the city. I can still feel the way both of our bodies turned together, expecting to find someone we knew. Or perhaps someone we wanted to know.

There is something about someone shouting your name in a city that is not easily ignored or forgotten.

Thirteen years ago August 14th was a Saturday, and it came during one of the driest summers on record in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There had been no measurable rainfall for months. Brittle grass crunched under foot like fall leaves. On that day, a young man dressed in a tuxedo stood in a garage.

During the previous week the young man’s aunt had canvassed the surrounding farms, asking them to please not spread manure in the days leading up to the wedding. At night, when no one could see, she defied the local restrictions and watered her flowers. There was going to be a wedding in her back yard. The grass might be scorched, but her flower gardens would at least be presentable.

But at that moment, as the young man stood quietly in the neighboring garage with his best man and ushers and groomsmen, his aunt was in the house with the bride who watched as the guests began to arrive, followed by dark clouds and an uncharacteristically cool breeze that tugged at the table cloths, billowed out the side of the tent, and whipped the leaves of the trees into a thunderous applause.

Then huge drops fell, and the guests who had received an invitation (unlike the storm) ran for the cover of the reception tent or one of the surrounding gazebos. And the bride wept that of all the Saturdays that summer, the rain had decided to come on that one.

They waited ten minutes after the scheduled start time, then twenty. The two mothers consoled one another. The fathers paced. The groom was the only one who didn’t seem to care.

“I’m getting married today,” he said, shrugging. “That’s all that matters to me.”

Then the same fierce wind pushed the clouds past. The sun shone on everything, glistening off the water. The ushers rushed from seat to seat, drying them with fluffy white towels and then seating people. The musicians tuned their instruments again. The guests were seated but their surprise at the sudden weather change sent a murmuring through the crowd.

Smiles all around. The rain had brought with it not only a refreshing coolness but a sense of promise.

The only hitch in the ceremony: a fly drowning in the communion cup. “This life…” Well, there was another hitch, one that would not be discovered for a few weeks, when the couple sat down with the photographer who tried to explain how the camera she had used hadn’t worked, the film was irretrievably damaged, and none of the pictures could be salvaged.

The crowd stayed long into the night, dancing under the glowing gazebo. Eventually their friends evaporated into the shadows, and soon they were saying good-bye to their parents, climbing into an old car and driving away.

* * * * *

August 13th, 2012. The guy who was the groom that day leans across a tiny table towards the girl who was the bride.

“Tomorrow, 13 years,” he says smiling.

“I guess it was a good decision,” she says coyly, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

He laughs.

In the neighboring room, their two youngest children whisper and get out of bed and cause all kinds of chaos, like a summer storm. Upstairs the older two read and become sleepy.

Maile, I mentioned this quote on your birthday, but it seems more applicable in light of our wedding story:

“Being soaked alone is cold. Being soaked with your best friend is an adventure.” ― Emily Wing

Sometimes it feels like we’re getting soaked, but at least we’re doing it together. Happy Anniversary, beautiful co-adventurer.