Archive for the ‘Food for Thought Friday’ Category

  • Knowing You Can Do More

    Date: 2019.06.07 | Category: Faith, Family Life, Food for Thought Friday

    In March 2018, I wrote a blog post called Thriving Not Just Surviving.  I poured my heart out about why we were moving and what I wanted to happen.  It’s one of the best blogs I have ever written and no one will ever read it.  Well, my mother-in-law and my grown kids have read it, but that will be it.  I can’t post it.

    Why?

    Because it didn’t come true.  I mean we moved but what I planned didn’t happen.  The reasons we moved were sound.  I did tons and tons of research.  I planned who would move to what room.  I planned what we would take with us.  I reused everything we had and I donated everything we wouldn’t need.   We worked hard fixing up our old house to sell and fixing up the new smaller house to move into.  My brother and his family were a huge help!   We moved one room at a time and went through everything in each and every room.

    I was horrified…

    At how much stuff we could give away.

    How much stuff we really truly didn’t need.

    How much stuff we had accumulated over the years.

    How much money we had spent collecting this stuff. 

    I kept thinking about those articles that show people around the world standing with all that they own in their front yards.  What would my yard look like?  Just google Americans and what they own.  There are 1,000’s of articles talking about how we are drowning in stuff.  That’s how I felt.  I felt like I was drowning in things that didn’t matter.  It felt good to purge it.  To simplify.  So we moved. 

    BUT then, for many reasons that I won’t go into, we moved back to our old home and none of what I wrote could ever be said.

    It’s really strange to say that I feel sad living in a big house.  I mean most people would be ecstatic to have 7 bedrooms and 3 baths and an extra 800 feet of living space (an apartment) in the garage.  Most people don’t understand how a big, beautiful house could make you sad.  I mean isn’t that what we all want? 

    More. 

    More house. 

    More room. 

    More things.

    I used to feel that way, but not any more.

    I wanted to spend less money every month so we could give more away.  Since I was a little girl I have wanted to be a philanthropist.  I have always wanted to anonymously give and do big things.  I didn’t want to be famous for it.  I just loved the thought of stepping in when people needed something and being God’s hands and feet.  

    I wanted to stop stressing about a house that I can never seem to make look like the big, beautiful house that it is.  It looked beautiful when we didn’t live in it, but it’s stressful trying to make it look put together.  I fail daily at that.

    13 kids are messy.  4 kids in wheelchairs and 2 kids with severe delays and extreme messy tendencies make for more than I can keep up with.  Well, I can’t keep up with making it look like a magazine ad.  I will admit that I have always had a bit of OCD when it comes to my house.  It’s hard to tell amidst the mess but I like organized.  I like a place for everything and everything in it’s place.  I really, really like that.  I mean really like that!  My kids, however, do not share this same passion. 

    We moved back to the bigger house for many reasons.  Reasons that everyone else had.  I can agree with most of the reasons but I still dealt with sadness.  Sadness that I couldn’t make the smaller house work.  Sadness because I felt like my dream died.   I feel guilt along with that sadness.

    I don’t know what to do with this guilt that I feel.  And before anyone starts to comment about guilt, I want you to know that I think we should all have some of this guilt.   Even years ago when we were struggling with money, we still had so much.  I see that now.   Maybe it’s wisdom that comes with age or maybe it’s because Love Without Boundaries has opened my eyes to the need all over the world, but there is such need everywhere.  I have so much so how could I not I feel some guilt?

    Guilt that I get to live in America where I can order anything I want at any time. Guilt that I can order food at any drive through I want or grab a cart full of whatever pleases me at the local grocery store.  Guilt that I own so much that I really don’t need.   Guilt that happens when I open up my inbox and read e-mails about trafficked children and children digging through the dump to find plastic to sell to get one meal a day and children who die because they need the simplest of medical care that we take for granted.  When I read about mothers walking hours to try to find someone to help their baby or families that sell everything they own trying to get the medical care their child needs.  Children who never get to go to school or have to drop out to work  when they hit the 3rd grade.  Children as young as 6 caring for their younger siblings while their families work.  My list could go on and on.   I feel guilt because I know the truth.

    I don’t deserve any of this.   It’s luck of the draw that I was born here, in this time, in this country.  Granted Dan worked hard to get through school and it took 15 years of our life to get through schooling and training, I am not downplaying hard work and working for success.   I believe in working hard for what you have.   I don’t want to take that for granted, but when God gives us much we should do more.  That’s what I want to do. MORE!

    Here’s what our move has taught me.  We can always do more.  We made a way for two house payments during all of this.  Granted I pushed our budget to the MAX and we had to borrow BUT it showed me there was wiggle room for doing more.  We all think we don’t have enough.  We all think we will do it later or someone else will do it.   But is that true?  Why do we hold on so tight to what we have?   Why are we so ready to spend our money on things that really don’t matter? 

    I mean I’m constantly looking at crowdfunding stuff that gets blown out of this world while people are trying to buy the next BIG thing that hasn’t been made yet.

    And yet at Love Without Boundaries we share these stories of hurting kids and families in need, and although we have the best supporters,

    and this bears repeating…THE VERY BEST SUPPORTERS,

    and have had them for a long time, we can’t quite get to the next level.  Some children never get funded.  Some stories just don’t tug on people’s heartstrings.  Some kids just wait.  We always seem to find a way to help but still there’s so much need that we have to say no to.  Why do kids wait for surgery?  Shouldn’t we all be lining up to do the right thing? 

    To help children who are trafficked. 

    To help fund a surgery so parents can stay with their child. 

    To help the mother who needs just a little help to feed her children. 

    To help a child get schooling so they can get out of this cycle of poverty. 

    To give someone a hot meal and an encouraging word.

    There’s so much to do and yet…

    Why does a new fangled watch that needs 100’s of 1,000’s of dollars get funded in 24 hours and a child who needs help sits waiting for someone to step up?

    Why? 

    Why don’t we step up?

    Why don’t we want to do more?

    My heart is so heavy.

    I don’t know what God has planned but my dream that I had last April is gone.  I wasn’t going to share my feelings.  It’s hard to be uncomfortable.  It’s hard to make yourself vulnerable.  It’s hard to share your thoughts and your feelings.  It’s hard to put yourself out there.  It’s easier to stay in our bubble of comfort and pretend that there aren’t hurting people in the world.  I saw this post and it helped…

    I can’t mess up God’s plan, I’m not that important.

    I was bogged down in feeling sad that I couldn’t do what I thought was the right way to do more, but I know God always provides a way.  I’ve seen it happen time and time again.  God knows the need.  He’s the answer, not me.  I’m but a small drop in a big ocean.  Now I’m just waiting for Him to show me what is next because there’s so much to do and I don’t know where to start.

    So much of my life went by while I was striving for the American dream and I realize that it was all a lie.  I don’t know why it took so long for my eyes to be opened, but now that they are…

    I want to open everyone’s eyes because we are striving for the wrong things.  We don’t need 10 blankets if we already have 8 and only use 5.  We need to share.  We need to comfort others.  We need to do more.  We need to step up and get out of our comfort zone.   Francis Chan said it best…

    “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that really don’t matter.”

    I don’t want to strive for things that really don’t matter any more.  I don’t want to be afraid to speak up worrying about what people will say.  I don’t want to be quiet any more. 

    I guess that’s what has made me the saddest about our move not working.  I wanted to be able to say, “See we did with less and you can too.”  It’s hard to preach about giving more to people when you live in a big, beautiful house.   They look at you and say, “Well, it’s easy for you to give.  You have so much.”  But I am saying we can all give more. 

    More of our time.

    More of our love.

    More of everything.

    We can all do that.   It’s not necessarily about money.  It’s about being there.  It’s about being invested.  It’s about caring.  It’s about sharing something as simple as a smile or an encouraging word.  It’s about making life not about you but about others. 

    Step out of your comfort zone and be the something that someone else needs today.  Don’t wait! 

  • What is a Life That Has Worth

    Date: 2016.05.27 | Category: Food for Thought Friday, Jasmine (Shuang Shuang)

    It’s been a while since we’ve done a Food For Thought Friday. Today seems a good day to start again.

    Jasmine came to us with great hope for a new life. The first two years were pretty darn amazing. She was happy to have a family. She was happy to start a new life with  people who cared for her.   She was filled with joy over being able to learn and do new things.  Then she had her spinal fusion surgery and for some reason, even though we told her over and over again that it would only fix her back, she believed she would be healed and be able to walk. We have dealt this past year with her loss of hope and feelings of worthlessness about being a burden to those around her.

    It’s a strange thing, considering she has never walked, but the loss of hope that she would one day walk, has taken it’s toll on her joyful heart. We go for periods of time where she can be content and turn it around, but her sadness over the fact that her life seems to have no worth because she is unable to do anything for herself except brush her teeth and eat, wins on too many days. Everyone has blue days and we allow her those, but this is much more than that and it breaks our hearts.

    She is angry and she doesn’t know what to do with that anger.  She rages and screams out.  She can be angry for days.  She refuses to talk to anyone, especially a therapist.  Add the fact that no one has been there to teach her how to deal with her feelings, as we do with our young children, and we are left with a very angry toddler in a 16 year old’s body.

    We have spent our days repeating over and over again that we want to care for her.  We have told her, unlike her bio parents and her grandparents, we knew going in what her disability meant.  Dan’s a physician.  We knew as soon as we met her that she had a degenerative muscle disease.  We knew and we loved her and she was then and always would be our daughter.  But being abandoned when you are eight because you are too heavy to carry, has colored our girl’s world.  She believes at some point, it will be too much and we too will abandon her.  She’s striking out because she wants to be in control this time.  She wants to be the person who leaves, but because of her physical limitations she is unable to, so she is left doing the only thing she can which is scream out in anger over a world that is unfair.

    It’s been a very difficult year with her trying to get her to see that her life has worth.  This is not sadness over adoption related issues but rather over the loss of hope of one day walking again.  For Jasmine this year has been much like a person who finds themselves injured and paralyzed, learning how to find your purpose in life, when everything has changed.

    Jasmine recently saw a movie trailer for “Me Before You”.  She was so excited to go see this movie about a young man who is a quadriplegic who falls in love with his caregiver.  Jasmine is a romantic.  She loves romance and happy endings.  She is often upset that she believes no one could love her since she is unable to do much for herself.  I was excited about taking her to this movie, especially when I heard these quotes.

    “You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”

    “Push yourself. Don’t Settle. Just live well. Just LIVE.”

    But then I read The Mighty‘s article about this movie. The movie ends with him ending his life with euthanasia. Really? We are trying our hardest to show our girl that you are more than your body.  That life is worth living.  We are trying to encourage her and get her to believe that what she was told in China is NOT the truth – that she does have worth. We are trying to show her that her life truly does have a purpose and that she has touched so many other lives.

    Now I have to say that I can not go to see this movie with her because no matter how wonderful the love story portion of the movie is, I can not deal with that subject right now.  She is at just too vulnerable a point.  I know at some point we will have to have this very heavy discussion.

    So for right now, we will continue to discuss what does “a life of worth” look like?

    If you can’t or don’t go to college, does your life still have worth?

    If you don’t marry, does your life have worth?

    If you don’t have children, does your life have worth?

    If you aren’t able to do any of your daily life cares, does your life have worth?

    • When you are left to live with your grandmother, because you are told your mother can not stand to look at you, you doubt your worth.
    • When you are abandoned because you are too heavy to carry any more, you doubt your worth.
    • When you are cared for in an orphanage where you aren’t even worth the time to teach because the school is one floor above you, you doubt your worth.
    • When you are left in a corner all day long because no one can bother moving you, you doubt your worth.
    • When you are left to sleep on the floor with no blankets because someone can’t be bothered to lift you or cover you up, you doubt your worth.
    • When you are told over and over again that the only way your life will have worth is if you walk, then what are you, as a child, to believe?

    These are Jasmine’s “truths” that we have to overcome.  She has talked about these facts often on her blog. (Flower that Blooms) She heard those truths for almost 14 years of her life.  She has heard our “truths” for only 3 years.  I know we will get there.  I just wish I could get her to see herself through my eyes.   I see a girl of great worth, who is compassionate and caring even though the world has let her down.  I see a girl that can change the world with just her words.  I see a girl of great strength and character.  I see a girl when told she can dream about anything, chooses to dream about a day when there are no more orphans.  I see a girl that others should try hard to be like.

    I believe that a life that has worth is a life that touches other’s lives.  I believe that you can have great purpose and never, ever fit the description of what the world believes is a life of worth.  My goal now is to get Jasmine to believe it.