Adopted Kids

Maggie's friends slept here last night and rose at 3:30 to catch an early plane to St. Vincent for a mission trip. One of them reported that her parents now had 7 kids because they had taken in 2 children from Guatamala, a 9 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. Both children are sweet, and I know from experience, their mother adores them.

I also know from experience that that mother is in for a roller coaster ride. "Yes," says, Rachel, "pray for my mom."

When we got our boys from an orphanage in Ukraine, I was aware that there could be "adoption issues" attached to them, but I chose to fully rely on God to train me rather than to delve into textbooks of psychology for answers which may or may not apply to our situation. Instead of me hearing the voice of the Spirit, human authors could put worldly notions in my head, ideas that do not take into account that God is the Father to the fatherless and that He already has been working in a customized way in that child's life, and I had best NOT step in without consulting Him.

It turns out to be so true. And God being the gracious Father of the fatherless, He keeps right on working in young hearts. Only now, He occasionally allows us a window into their souls to see what He is currently cleaning up in there.

The most recent is that something, as they say, turned up missing at our house. This brought up the huge issue of trust and whether things have been missing occasionally in the past as well. And whether this loving mama has turned a blind eye because she wanted to think the best.

........Then last night, downtown, as I stood with my hand on the back of a very serious man who asked me to pray he'd be free from his drug addiction, I saw it all clearly and, oh so simply.

I head myself saying, "Tony, we all have idols in our life. Some of us love a person more than God. Some love alcohol more than God, some love our stuff or money more than God. When we do that, we break the very first commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve."

If you look at a syringe or a packet of white powder or a bottle of pills and want that more than God, that is your idol. And you are sinning against God's first commandment. So it is a matter of having a false god. You are saying to that white powder, "I am looking to you for my provision, my joy, my security, my healing, my very life." It is does not makes sense that you should make a god out of some white powder. Give it up and worship the one true God."

I reminded my boys this morning how another of our friends, A.C., stood up at the meeting last night and bravely shared how he had been in the "doghouse" for 2 years and that his life, even when he was good, was a fake good life for us all to see, that God was NOT impressed by his being an usher in church now.

This past week A.C. had come to Amy's and confessed it all, and last night he entered the REAL, narrow gate, the gate of obedience that leads to life. Last night in front of a big crowd of Believers and sinners, skeptics, drug addicts, lame, sick, 'church folks' and street buddies, A.C. was baptized in a big, round, blue, swimming pool with Bible verses painted round it and on the bottom of it.

John 3:36 says, He that believes on the Son of God has eternal life, but he who does not OBEY the Son of God, the wrath of God abides on him. This applies to the rebellious ones downtown or uptown, the drug addicts, the thieves downtown or uptown, it applies to the "good" folks and the bad, the biological children or the adopted kids.

The narrow gate is the gate of obedience to God's laws. Or the wrath of God abides on us.

Trust AND obey, for there's NO OTHER WAY. Trust AND obey. This applies to the church kids or the orphanage kids. We all gotta do it.

Being Tough

Maggie laughs at me and I at her, and then we tease each other about our weak areas.

Her weakness is definitely NOT in being tough with teenage boys. Mine is. She loves the power she feels when she stares into the face of a teenage boy and tells him 'what for.' I struggle to look tough, while I quake inside.

However, God has called us to do things whether we feel tough or not. My girfriend, Angel, whose kids adore her, was a single mom for 4 years. But she ran a construction company and she made a fortune doing it. She says, "Successful people do things whether they feel like it or not."

So whether I felt like it or not, I took a frying pan to the seat of somebody's pants the other day for being sulky when we were downtown supposedly bringing joy and love to the homeless guys in the park. What made it extra hard was, he ran away when I did it.

But the big, strong, stern policeman standing by my garage door said, "Ma'am, make him mind you! He's got to mind you." I could tell from the look in his eyes, he meant, "MAKE HIM MIND YOU. " And as he climbed back into his police car he added, "He'll be back. Don't you worry."

Thank you Lord for your help in time of need.

That blessed policeman also drove around looking without filing a report! But the one God chose to actually find our boy was the sweet rabbi who loves him bigtime. He was only a quarter mile from home sitting on a curb, thinking. The two of them talked about the old days, the hurts, and his future. The rabbi may have told him about his bad old days, the bull riding, the hurts and all, and about God's steady, firm hand on his life.

Now that everyone is back to their old, sweet selves, I still have to be tough, because the two weeks' grounding punishment means early bedtimes, no more sports, and missing the big athletic banquet tonight.

Successful people do what they have to do, even when they don't feel like it and their husband is out of town. Especially when their husband is out of town.

Medal

I chuckle when I think of kindergarten, homeschooling days.

I kept our tiny Robbie home an extra year when other kids his age were going off to school, but twice a week I'd drop off him off at a nearby school for P.E. classes. His buddies, already out on the grass, would spot our car pulling up and yell, "Rob's here, let's race!!"

Now in 10th grade he is still racing against his buddies, and this past weekend won third place in the 2 mile relay in the MPSA Statewide tournament. Glory to God. (The Mississippi Private Schools Association finals actually included Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee along with Mississippi.)

He now has a nice medal to dangle round his neck, a stalwart smile on his face, and callouses on his two feet to show for it.

In his steady way he has always loved to compete. Saturday evening he looked at me with eyebrows raised and quietly said, "Wow, Mom, those guys were fast!"

This is a good thing for our fast boy. God be praised.

Hobo

As the boys and I were going down the food line greeting the guys before breakfast in the "homeless park" this morning , we encountered several James, some Roberts, two Corneliuses, and a sprinkling of Williams. Then we came to Buck.

Buck's smile was big and toothless and genuine, and his handshake so real and so firm, that I stopped everything and made our Rob and James and some of the nearby men shake hands with him. They needed to feel the strength of that solid grip, the opposite of what Bob calls a banana handshake, where the hand goes squishy and limp on you.

I had to find out more about this grey-haired, brown-weathered Buck. Buck is Cajun and jabbered it like Chinese onto his cellphone. It turns out he has gone thorough great heartaches and trouble, lost his wife and son to an automobile accident and his parents to a house fire when he was a boy of nine years. As he told us this, James' eyes widened, and so I asked if he'd like to tell Buck about his birth parents.

He shook his head. Buck sized him up with a tender look, came over and put his arm around him and said, "I know about your parents. Life is sometimes like that, but we keep our eyes on the Lord, and we'll be all right."

Buck is from New Orleans and passing through. We got talking with him so long that, as usually happens, all the other folks had left the park. We were still sitting there discussing the Air Force verses the Marines, flying a plane, getting lost in a jungle in Central America (Buck has a global positioner for such an emergency), building in Brazil, helping folks after a tornado, writing books about a hobo camp, and dial-up verses high speed internet.

Buck is not your ordinary hobo, but he is living as one as he writes his second book. The first was Lover, Fighter, and H-lluva Freight Train Rider. The second will be entitled Country Gypsy.

You meet all kinds in the park on a Sunday morning.