Why Worry, When You Can Pay?

Doesn’t it go something like that? The song?

Oh, no, it was “pray.”

But I do mean “pay.”

Because there is precious little we can’t pay for, isn’t there? Sure, I don’t mean that everyone can run out willy-nilly and buy anything that strikes their fancy––there are cars that you will never own, boats that will never approach the likes of your budget––but, really: Aren’t most of the people in the socio-economic circles you inhabit able to pay for a whole ream of stuff way beyond necessities?

I’m not rich by my own country’s standards, but I totally know that there aren’t a whole lot of other people that I interact with here in western China who are saving up for a trip to Europe like I just took with my wife. (Though China does have, of course, its wealthy, and wildly wealthy, too.)

You want to go to Europe? (Or somewhere else if Europe’s home?) Chances are you could make that happen. It might take some years of saving; it might mean cutting out cable or buying a junkier car; but a splurge like that is probably not out of reach for a whole lot of Westerners if it’s something they really want.

Or, you could make different choices: keep that cable; buy the new Corvette with CarPlay; go to Disneyland. Whatever. Maybe you can afford all of the above and more. My point, I think, is that pretty much all of us, even though it’s oh-so-easy to solely notice only those above us on the money ladder, have choices.

What about dropping $30 grand on an international adoption? That’s a choice, too. A large one. $30K is such a large amount to so many of us that it becomes an obstacle that keeps many people who would otherwise consider adopting from ever signing up.

We only ever considered the money once: the first time.

And it was an obstacle: How on earth are we going to pay for this?

But the second time, it was completely God’s idea, and so we knew he would have to provide the funds.

Here’s exactly what I said at the time, in quote form and lifted from my upcomingandsoeasytoalwaysquotehereinthisblog book:

“OK, God. This second adoption was your idea. With all due respect, I would like to go on record as reiterating that it was not mine. I am sending you the bill.”

I meant that.

He still surprised us. 

All we were able to raise totaled $8 thousand. Then someone who didn’t know us from Adam gave us $22 thousand. We never found out who.

And now—slap of the palm to the forehead—here we go again, adopting for the third time. [A development that came on the scene, mind you, after our Eurotrip had been planned and largely paid for; otherwise we’d never have gone. For choosing to adopt surely means choosing not to do other things. But by that point it was too late to cancel anything, and we like to believe God did that on purpose for us and let us enjoy that special anniversary together.]

About the same time we were announcing this third adoption to our weekly fellowship, our inaugural round of adoption expenses (home study, background checks, etc.) came due. All told, something in the low $3K’s. One week later, a teenager in our fellowship who has an hourly-rate part-time job walked up to us and handed us an envelope. It was thick enough to feel the bills inside. She said she wanted to participate. God wanted her to give to our adoption. Wow.

Then the woman sitting next to me in the meeting, someone I’d met once, handed me another envelope. This one was ridiculously thick.

What’s this?

“For the adoption.”

I had to ask what her name was again so I could thank her.

Finally, once we were home, neighbors handed us money: “Here, someone wanted to contribute to the adoption anonymously.”

Those gifts totaled in the mid-$3K’s. God one step ahead.

So again I ask you: Why worry, when you can pay? 

Cause when He’s footing the bill, you can pay. You can pay for whatever he says. And often we can pay for a whole lot more. Sometimes it seems we can only pay for “less,” but then he turns our hearts towards those who truly have less, or…he brings the Body around, and everything gets all paid for after all.

Thanks, God.

We know you brought this boy to us, and we know that his adoption is not any kind of burden that falls on our shoulders. 

We are not worried.

What Are You Driving At, Anyway?

WHOOSH. Woosh. Woosh. WHOOSH whoosh whoosh whoosh WHOOSH tinkle clatter Crash.

The scene in my rearview mirror.

Somehow I’d ended up down a lane clearly not meant for driving. One second it was a road, the next it was outdoor cafés. Fancy umbrella-ed tables with silverware and wine glasses.

My wife and I are traveling in Italy right now. It’s our 20th wedding anniversary, and that’s the only reason a whole week went by last week with no updates to this blog (for the first time––not likely the last). It has been a special privilege indeed to enjoy a vacation without kids (thanks to my folks and Ruth, the kids’ Xi’an auntie). At the moment I’m typing on a train somewhere between Florence and Venice, which is just about as lovely as it sounds.

For three days we had a rental car, which we took from Rome to the Tuscan countryside to the sea and then back to Florence. While in the charming city of Siena, we found ourselves between ancient stone buildings on an ancient stone street: lots of people but no cars. Except ours. The people were huddled around their guides, or looking at maps or in our windows as we crept through their midst. The shops were selling gelato and postcards and trinkets. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a way out, and the road wound ever downwards, everything in the bowl funneling us to old city Centro. Every time I tried a turn, it seemed to be a road that was only more inappropriate.

Finally, the warning signs informed me the next pass between stone was only 2.0 meters. I longed for a digital option where the sign told me how wide my car was. At last, around the next bend there was a teeny garbage truck, a handicap parking space, and “P” signs. I wasn’t crazy. “Parking” up ahead. We emerged, blinking, into a large open square surrounded by churches. I saw the green-and-white-striped marble monstrosity on a postcard later.

Off to the side was a pile of compact cars like ours. I pulled up to the bumper of the last one in a row, the final “space” they’d formed in between the two rows of real spaces. At last I felt lucky, and we got out ready to walk around a bit.

I noticed a lady in a nametag watching us. She wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform, but she came towards us a few steps to scrutinize my license plate. “Blah blah blah blassio?” she asked in what I assume was perfect Italiano. “Um…no?” I replied in flawless English.

Thankfully she spoke English, too, and she kindly told me that not only was this resident parking only, but that driving within the city walls of all the cities in the whole region was illegal. Only residents and those with hotel reservations inside the wall.

“Oh.”

“There are cameras everywhere; they will put a €150 fine on the credit card connected to this rental car.”

Oh, my. This wasn’t even my first violation, then. Tickets surpassing our restaurant bills for two weeks was not my idea of a priceless vacation. We thanked her for the information and hightailed it out of there.

That’s when the WHOOSH story came back to me. The WHOOSH story didn’t happen on this trip. But the WHOOSH (an umbrella around a restaurant table spinning and spinning until it fell) story did happen in Italy. I’ve been here once before. For one night. 1994. One year before getting married. Only that time while driving, I’d found myself so deep into old stone roads that I’d left them altogether with only restaurants as far as the eye could see. Plus, that time it hadn’t been a Fiat 500C I’d been driving, it had been a diesel camping van. Six-sleeper.

Like on the current trip, then I had long been stressfully looking for an escape route. At the moment of my umbrella disaster, I’d actually judged the space wide enough, but…I’d forgotten about the double bed cannister above, extending out wider than the driver’s cab. That’s what swiped the umbrella.

It was bad enough to see a couple of Italian waiters running out into the street waving their arms and shouting, even though I got out and even though they told me not to worry. It was far worse, 100 meters later when the road truly became impassable, to have to throw the camper into reverse and go by them again backwards while they covered their mouths in a weak attempt to conceal their laughing.

Did the “beep beep beep” that day really sound like “I.Di.Ot” or is that just my memory?

Here’s what I will say: if those ticket violations from this trip really do show up on my visa card? For my next trip to Italy (which, if things follow the current pattern, I guess will fall in 2036) I’ll stick to trains.

 

Lily Was the Valley Excerpt: Screaming

No one told us about the screaming.

In the early stages, still filling out paperwork, I thought the hard part would be simply accomplishing this thing called adoption. But paperwork proved to be nothing to the war our daughter brought into the house. Struggle personified itself in the wiry body of a screaming girl who launched a campaign to take over our world.

I had taken no courses and done little reading. My realm had been the paperwork, and I plowed through it with due diligence and left the nurture stuff to my wife. I judged myself prepared—I was hardly a candidate for a class on how to be a dad; I was not in the “clueless new parent” category—but I was mistaken.

Nothing debilitates quite like being clueless about your own cluelessness. Somehow I missed the memo that adoption difficulties often stretch for years beyond finalization. Somehow I hadn’t learned that negligible touch and scant nurture in the first year of life can affect the human brain. I had never heard the words sensory, processing, and disorder together in one sentence. I’d had no reason to think about neurotransmitters or synapses since college biology. I had not one clue that the cerebral health of our new little family member might be something I should concern myself with.

Our difficulties with paperwork and waiting would fade to nostalgia.

I never dreamed there could be significant differences in rearing adopted versus biological children, but even once those differences had walloped me over the head, I was still ignorant about what to do about them. Doors onto life-giving adoptive theory were only opened to us years later when we got involved in our second adoption. Meanwhile, our first three months of adoptive life were difficult beyond expectation—exponentially so. Those three months got seared into memory. Having been a dad three times already counted for almost nothing.

The screams were bloodcurdling. Three hours, every night. I hear them still. They could start at seven and finish at ten, or start at nine and finish at midnight. Occasionally it seemed wiser to keep her up later to tire her. In reality it only meant starting at eleven and finishing at two, so we tried it seldom. There were no days off: seven nights each week, three hours each night, like clockwork.

And being down, we decided we might as well give ourselves a swift kick: cleft palate surgery. There was no mad rush, but we’d already booked it one month after our daughter’s homecoming. Now we wouldn’t only have an inconsolable child unable to receive comfort, we would have an inconsolable child in physical pain unable to receive comfort…

 

So begins Chapter Three.

If I happen to be unavailable for thinking and writing on a particular week (and I’m not available this week because my parents have just arrived from Chicago for a visit!), I might stick in a short book excerpt from time to time rather than leave this space un-updated.

Hope you enjoyed it. 🙂