Ok. Right now we're on our 4th day of being snowed-in at our home in Atlanta. So yes... we're about to go crazy being stuck in the house, not only for this long but with this amount of kids. In addition to feeling very slack for going so long without posting a blog it's probably necessary to give an account of how we're doing just in case someone else is considering adopting. It has been almost 3 years since we adopted our children from Brazil. So, let this be a record for anyone who is considering adopting a large sibling group and some of things that they may encounter. (In other words "this is fair warning!")
It would be hard to just sit down and write down all the stuff that's happened over the past 2+ years since I last blogged so I'll just hit some highlights (or lowlights... which ever you prefer). These aren't listed in any particular order. I'm just writing whatever comes to mind:
#1 - Our home has been destroyed.
Yes, I said it. Destroyed. Before we adopted our home was very neat and clean with everything in it's place. Now it looks like a small nuclear device was detonated in each and every room of our house. I don't know if our kids are any more destructive than most but, man!... every room? There are literally holes in our walls big enough to hide dead bodies in. There's one on the landing, on the steps, between the 1st and second floor. This is there because they think it's necessary to jump down the steps to the landing. And the hole (seriously, a whole body could be stuffed in it) is a result of someone flying through the wall because of the momentum that was being exerted as they jumped from the top of the steps.
#2 - Our yard has been destroyed.
Yes, I said yard. "How do you destroy a yard?" you ask. Well, let me break it down for you. In case you didn't know it. I use to own my own landscape company and we specialized in water features and landscape design. So, our yard was literally a "showcase." People use to use our yard for wedding receptions and parties. We would just have random people show-up unannounced wanting to walk through our yard. We would look out of our rear window and there would be some of our neighbors standing at our pond looking at the waterfall and pointing at our koi. It (our yard) was amazing. Perennial beds, annual beds, sweeping bedlines that held within their borders exotic plant material. A water feature that had a 6' waterfall and a stream that had 7 smaller cascading waterfalls that spilled into a pond that had about 40-50 beautiful Japanese koi swimming peacefully in their serene environment (run on sentence, I know... sorry just wanted you to feel my pain).
It was amazing. But now if you look out my rear window you'll see (this is no exaggeration) a used tire in the middle of the yard (I still have no idea where it came from), broken bicycles, a big chair (it use to be in their TV room but they mutilated it) sitting next to our fire pit waiting to be burned, misc. shoes and toys scattered everywhere. All the plant material looks like it's been either trampled or set on fire, which now that I think about it, some actually was. There are broken boulders... yes I said boulders (these were placed in the landscape to tie-in the landscape to the water feature). How do you break boulders? Or a better question would be, why? Why do they find it necessary to break everything?! Seriously. I've asked the question repeatedly and have yet to get an answer. It's crazy!
All of our patio furniture is broken. The turf is crying out for help. We have (or had) about one acre of sodded bermuda grass that covered our entire back yard but now it's only sporadic because of all the foot traffic, soccer games, bike races, random holes dug... the list goes on and on. I better stop before I get more depressed.
#3 - It's hardly ever quiet.
There's always somebody yelling, crying, laughing (that's usually Me and MJ because we're trying not to cry), playing drums, dogs barking... hey wait a minute, this sounds like that Calgon commercial from back in the day, huh? Constant noise.
#4 - A record number of broken DVD players.
I don't know what the world record for this is but I'd like to find out. I think we've got a shot at it. We, or should I say they, have broken 5-6 DVD players in the last 2 years. Now granted they weren't expensive DVD players but they were working DVD players before they got them. And it's not like we constantly put them in front of the TV either. Now yes, on occasion (don't judge us you would do it too) we have put them in front of a TV to watch a DVD just to get a break, but not very often. So these DVD players were getting what I would classify as "minimal use." So, how do they do it? How do they break something that hardly ever gets used? This is just another one of life's mysteries that will probably never be solved.
#5 - We have no friends.
Now let me clarify that. We do have friends. We have some great friends, actually. But not that many and none that we can do a lot of stuff with. I mean, who wants this many people to invade their home or business or store or... you get the point. So, having this many kids has definitely eliminated us doing a lot of stuff with other humans. We're basically stuck at home accept for when we're at church.
#6 - I'm not going to list any more.
I could sit here all day and list out all the things that have drastically changed over the last 2 years since I last blogged. We've had several trips to the emergency room, operations, doctor and dentist visits too numerous to count, thousands of pounds of groceries, 2,737 rolls of toilet paper (that's no joke either), power bills so high they would make you cry, MJ about to lose her mind trying to homeschool a bunch of kids who were already behind academically before we adopted them, no vacations, no extra money... depressing, huh?
So I guess the question is, would we do it all over again? Would we, knowing everything that we know now, willingly adopt a sibling group of 5 all over again? And the answer is yes. Without hesitation... yes. And not because it's easy. Not because it's comfortable. Not because the good times outnumber the bad, because honestly they don't. You heard me correctly... the good times don't outnumber the bad.
The reason is this: Jesus said in Matthew 7:13 "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is "easy" that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is "hard" that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
You see, most people look at that verse and apply it only to the act of salvation. But that verse is so much more. Because praying a one time prayer is easy. It's walking out the path that is difficult. It's actually doing everything that Christ asks you to do that is hard. That's why Jesus also said in Matthew 16:24 "if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." I don't know what comes to your mind when you hear that verse but denying yourself and taking up a cross aren't easy and comfortable.
So Mj and I use those verses as a measuring stick to whether or not we're doing what we're suppose to do. Is our life hard or easy. Is what we're doing difficult or simple. Can we honestly say that the only reason we're doing what we're doing is because we've taken up our cross (5 extra kids) and that we're following Christ? The answer is yes, it is hard, it is difficult and the only reason we're doing it is because we're following Christ. We're doing exactly what He's asked us to do. So if our house and our possessions look like Hiroshima after the atomic bomb dropped. And our friends are sparse and our mental stability is always on the brink of collapse... that's ok. It just causes us to press in closer to Christ. Because without Him, not only would we not do it, but, we couldn't do it.
So, I'll ask you the same question... is your life easy or difficult? Is what you're doing only going to be accomplished with the power of the Spirit or is your life so easy that you really don't need Jesus to show up at all because you "got this."? It's really a question we all need to ask ourselves.
God has an exciting, challenging, exhilarating, bigger-than-you-could-imagine-life waiting for you but it's going to take stepping out of the comfortable and into the arena of faith. Because that's where He shows up. And that's where His sustaining grace is. Let's just pray that He doesn't ask you to adopt 5 kids from another country... because that's just too much to ask, right?
Love Ya,
Jim
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