Friday, April 29, 2011

Learning the Hard Way

Why didn’t anybody tell me this parenthood thing was gonna be hard? Oh that’s right, everyone did.


It’s been a rough week. On a scale of 1 - Rough, we’ve probably been landing somewhere around an 8.5. The adoption’s had some annoying (seemingly very avoidable) set-backs, we’re moving out of our house, but the house we were moving into fell through the night before our move (due to the even rougher week my pastor’s family’s been through), and on top of all that Ange and I have been struggling.


I thought maybe if I shared the lessons I’m learning with you here God will believe that I really have learned them and not feel the need to keep teaching them to me.

Love is not a feeling it’s a verb. We’ve all heard this, and I think I’ve definitely practiced it before, but when someone’s being awful to you it’s hard to even like them, let alone love them. However, if love’s not a feeling, how you’re being treated shouldn’t have anything to do with how you act.


If you can’t change the circumstances change your attitude. (My lawyer said this to me after he’d goofed up big time and I was a bit disappointed, I nearly answered “but I can change my lawyer.”) Later I realized I can’t change how much homework Ange has, and I can’t control her attitude, but I can control mine.


Motivation is more effective (and more fun) than punishment. Frankly, I don’t like bribing the child much more than punishing her, since both are works-based and I lean a bit heavy on the grace side of the Old vs. New Covenant spectrum. But I’m coming to realize that as long as my love isn’t earned or lost by her behavior, other prizes might not be totally out of the question. She’s already responding really well to the chart I made with silly pictures of her, where we talk about how she did each day waking up, doing her homework, going to bed, etc.


Love like Jesus showed does not expect anything in return. I’ve, honestly, always been horrible with doing things anonymously. I rationalize that I just want to know if it was well received so I’ll know whether to do things like that again or not waste the time, effort, and money, but really I probably just want to be appreciated. Since I never learned that one well, God’s giving me lots and lots of practice serving this little one who can’t return the half of it and often doesn’t even notice. What an awesome idea to give for the sake of giving instead of receiving.


Finally, the good times are totally worth the rough ones. And learning to be more selfless was part of the reason for this whole crazy adoption idea in the first place, so it’d be ridiculous to reject that benefit now.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Here I Am

Angie has her own room with a double bed (a luxury I never had, ironically, until I moved to Bolivia.) But sometimes she just doesn't want to be that far away from me. Last Wednesday, after I got back from my overnight trip to the Beni she begged and begged to sleep in my bed. The problem is, as you may recall from former posts, she's a serious wiggle worm in the middle of the night. Flailing about, using me as her dream soccer ball, talking sometimes. So, in attempts to not set any school night precedents about sharing a bed, I stuck to my "no."

But Sunday night I woke up in the middle of the night to find her lying next to me. In the morning I asked her why she'd come into my room and she said she'd heard something scary and jumped up and come to me, but I didn't hear her when she said "mommy" so she just lay down and thought, "she won't notice." It was the first time she'd ever come to me scared in the middle of the night, so it was pretty cute and I didn't think anymore of it, except maybe to dwell a bit on what a bum I was to sleep through her needing me.

However, last night at about 1:30am I found her in my bed again, this time not as still and peaceful. I hope she got a good night's sleep cause she woke me up at least every hour until my 5:40 alarm for my run (she blames this on the mosquitoes.)

At breakfast once again, I brought it up.

"So, why'd you come sleep with me again last night?"

"Weren't you calling me?" she replied.

"Huh?"

"Didn't you say 'Angelica, come here,'?"

"No. Wait a minute, did you read ahead to April 19th last night?" Ange and I read a day in the Spanish Bible in a Year for Kiddos every night. And she's recently been so into it that she stays up with her book light from Grandma and reads the next day's passage. Which is exactly what she did last night.

Any guesses what the story for April 19th is???

I'm inclined to think she fell asleep thinking about the story and dreamed about it, but just in case I think I'll teach her to respond to the Lord, "Speak, your servant is listening." And maybe I'll try to quit being so negligent in the middle of the night.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Getting to Know Trinidad

I usually love traveling for work or pleasure, but this week traveling meant leaving my little Ange for the first time overnight, and on Día del Niño at that! But, other than getting a little sick, probably from lack of rest due to the school-night sleepover, she did well, and I had a great trip too. A little absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

Coalson Lacey is a Texan vet with thoughts of serving with VetRed here in Bolivia longterm, specifically in the small city of Trinidad. Trinidad is the capital of Bolivia's department the Beni, an 8 hour-ish car ride, or 1 hour flight, Northwest of Santa Cruz. So, to help him solidify his ideas about God's plans for his life, Coalson's been visiting us here in Bolivia for about 10 days, very generously doing whatever's been requested of him by us, the veterinary school in Santa Cruz, or the university in Trinidad.

Requests as wide ranging as couriering down a portable isoflurane machine from the US, giving a lecture on shock to hundreds of students and professors at a veterinary conference, training the Trinidad students in small animal surgery, training the veterinarians in treating an equine foot abscess, giving a semi-spontaneous sermon at a church service, and castrating whatever large or small animals the Trinidad professors could wrangle up. Much of this while being recorded for the local university cable channel and closed-circuit TV for the students who wouldn't fit into the surgical suite.

He's held up amazingly well under the pressure of the film crew, large audiences, and the language barrier, even when he had to improvise on the spot or reach back 4-5 years in his memory for the last time he'd thought about the procedure asked of him. The cool thing about Coalson seems to be that he can do all these things not because of his own skill or expertise, but out of his reliance on God. As you might hear him say if you ask him to do something seemingly crazy or at least outside his comfort zone, "Nothing is impossible with God." An attitude I hope rubs off on me more when Coalson comes to join our team serving in a similarly hot, sticky, mosquito-filled tropical region of Bolivia. Don't worry Coalson, even surviving Dengue Fever is possible through Christ who strengthens us.

(I also want to recognize the sacrifice my co-workers Bill and David have made to leave their families for a week and show Coalson the beauty of Bolivia. Bill is now stuck in Trinidad indefinitely because of blockades preventing him from driving his car back home to SC. I'm sure he would appreciate your prayers.)

Monday, April 11, 2011

Día del Niño (isn't every day?)

Today's the Day of the Kid, and it's kind of a big deal. This is clearly my first of such holidays where I'm in charge of spoiling one of these aforementioned kids, but from what I can tell it's on a scale with Christmas and birthdays. We could maybe say it's a joint birthday party for every kid in Bolivia, replete with soda, cake, piñata, and sugar coma.

Sunday, to kick off the country wide celebration of youth, we joined a little rural church plant for a neighborhood party.
The meeting place was under a big tree, the stage - a flatbed truck, the publicity - speakers from said flatbed truck.
A hilarious clown attracted the children from the neighborhood. Then there were songs, a story about Zacchaeus, with an adorable craft, face painting, empanadas, and to top it all off of course, balloon animals!
To spare the children and faint of heart, I won't post a picture of the clown face I was decorated with, let's just say it was described as "intense". But it wasn't enough to scare away these kiddos, in some semblance of a line, eager for their balloons!
At the end of a great afternoon, I think this little 4-family church that meets in a house was quite happy with their party, and I know the kids were ecstatic.
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them." -Mark 10:14-16

I love how this verse in Spanish says Jesus hugged the kiddos.

Now, I'm leaving my Angel for the first night ever for a little work trip, better go get my hugs before the sugar coma sets in.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Buena Vista

Last Friday, special visitor in tow, I went to pick up Ange after school with plans to hit one of our favorite hotspots for out-of-town guests, the sand dunes. When her teacher handed me something I'd really not prepared for at all, her first report card. It was a bit of a tense moment as Angie, Jon, and her teacher all watched me scan the results and digest the fact that Ange is basically failing English class. Her teacher comforted me that it's only the first of three reports for the semester, and told me that the biggest problem is that she's talking to her friends and not paying attention in class. (Strangely, she got great marks in the "Respects Teacher" category.)

So, we talked once again about how we're gonna speak more English at home, we discussed how she's not gonna talk to anyone during class, and we clarified that our fun trip to play at the sand dunes was not a reward for those grades. Then we scheduled her appointment to get her eyes checked something I'd been meaning to do for a couple months.

She whined and complained and threatened not to get out of the car on the way to the optometrist. She tried her best to read those little letters on the eye test, and she sulked a bit during the picking out frames phase. But I think it helped that I was so jealous that she gets to wear them and I don't, and it definitely didn't hurt that we ended up with the cutest little glasses in the world, and of course she's no less beautiful than ever wearing them. And then ironically, she whined and complained because I didn't get a chance to pick them up the very next day. I can't win!
Yesterday, she tried them out for the first time at school. Of course there was one little boy who made fun of her. Yet again my ignorance of Spanish saved me, as I wanted to say "who is he? I'll beat him up!" but didn't know how to translate that. So instead we talked about how much Jesus got made fun of, and how he loved his enemies anyway. A lesson that's easier to explain than do because loving the enemies of your child is a whole 'nother level of agape!