It Just Got Real

I read in an adoption book last year that parenting teenagers keeps us honest. They don't let you get away with inconsistencies, they call you on your bluffs. Turns out it applies to 9 year olds too, but for all intents and purposes she's a precocious little teen in so many ways already.

I knew when I decided to adopt that my life would change. People kept asking me if I knew that, of course I knew that! But somehow, in their words they couldn't convey the extent of what they meant by change, and I had no idea, it's not their fault, they tried. I think about one person in particular, coming from left field, knocking me off balance, telling me I wasn't ready for this, I didn't know what I was getting into, adopting Angie was a bad idea. And to her I'd say, now after 15 months, "you were right."

But so was I.

I had no idea what I was getting into. I wasn't ready. It's rocked my world. But it wasn't a bad idea. God's ideas never are. Just because an idea makes a mess, looks ugly for awhile, it doesn't lose its inherent goodness. Just because we get ourselves into something expecting one outcome, for instance daily gratitude and fun, and we get something completely different, let's call it real life, doesn't mean we shouldn't have done it, but it might mean the reasons we had in mind for doing it were not the reasons God was thinking of.

Nonetheless, among my motives, truly was the idea of becoming less selfish. A single person can look holier than holy to the world, sacrificial, spiritual, just generally good, because there's no one looking close enough to see all their flaws. I think I knew this. What I didn't fully understand was that there's also no one asking them to prove their sacrificialness, their spirituality. I could give what didn't hurt, I could give of my excess time, my excess clothes, my excess money, and if it was more than the average middle class person was giving it looked altruistic. But as all of you parents and spouses know, and I was the last to find out, the singles that look so altruistic have no idea what selflessness is, and maybe won't until there's someone else making them look their selfishness in the mirror every single day. Oh man, it's hideous. It's hard to say thank you to Angie and Jon for making me stare at this revolting part of my being, but it wouldn't be very kind of them to let me walk around with garbage all over my face without telling me, so they're doing the right thing. Keep up the good work guys, keep being agents of God's refining change in my life, sorry I'm not always gonna thank you, but sometimes I will.

This is not at all what I wanted to write about. I started out thinking I was going to write about my car being broken into.

My beauty (used in the most sarcastic of tones) of a ginormous car was broken into for the second time on Sunday during church, sitting right outside the building in a busy market, on a main street. For the second time, the face of the cheapest stereo I could find was stolen, this time along with our ~5 year-old iPod Shuffle, our speakers, and the control to the winch. It's life. It's not blog-worthy. But last night when I was telling a friend about it, I revealed that when we found a little blood on the shattered window and on the seats the bad guy had crawled across to get to the stereo I felt a little sense of justice, not compassion. I was glad the jerk had suffered a little, while destroying our stuff. I'd mentioned this thought to a couple people fairly unabashedly, but last night I hesitated because Angie was sitting there, Angie the queen of compassion herself. But you know what, instead of feeling bad for the guy and thus condemning me to be the spiritually immature grown-up in comparison, she kinda smiled as well. Instead of saying "Mommy, you shouldn't want revenge," she felt the same satisfaction that I had that the new owner of our precious little music had to pay for it a bit.

And in her commiseration with me instead of the bloody dude with all our gear, I saw my inconsistency. We started off joking about how Jesus wouldn't have wanted me to beat him up, as I'd threatened I would have done if I'd caught him in the act. And we began to talk about what Christ would really have done if he'd left church to find someone bleeding in his car tearing apart his dashboard. And then it got real. "If someone slaps you on one cheek turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them." We semi-kidded that instead of pepper-spraying the thief, he would have handed him the keys to the ignition. And we said that's why Jesus didn't have any stuff. But was it that He didn't have any stuff so He wouldn't have to be giving it away all the time, or did He not have any stuff because He was always giving it away all the time. Either way it's pretty clear His example is to not hold too tightly to our things.

So, the next time, if I surprise the guy breaking into my car, I'm not going to be able to call it manslaughter, because I've premeditated it, and I think I know what Jesus might do. My inconsistency's been brought to light. I'll have to at least bandage his wounds, if not give him the whole car. Who knew parenting would be so expensive?! Who knew following Christ would be so costly?! And I, for one, had no idea the two were so intertwined.