Pure and faultless religion

On our best days, we Christians strive to line our hearts up with the heart of God. Tall order, no doubt. In our search to find the Divine Will, we cannot avoid that unambiguous verse, James 1:27, that defines pure and faultless religion as taking care of orphans in their distress. Since we don't  often encounter orphans, their uncomfortable reality is easy to avoid.

I am not an expert on adoption, but I had a crash course during our adventure described in  But the Greatest of These is Love. After that enlightenment, I cannot go back into the darkness of ignorance.

The statistics are heartbreaking. My knowledge is limited to Russian orphans, but, tragically, there is no short supply of orphans anywhere in the world.

The Russian Children Welfare Society reports,

• 740,000 orphans live in Russia, a troubling number that grows by 113,000 per year, according to UNICEF.
• Less than 3% of those children are being considered for adoption by Russian families.
• Approximately 95% are "social" orphans, meaning they have at least one living parent who has relinquished them to the negligent care of the broken state system.  
• The number of orphanages in Russia in 2012 was 2,176, up 100% in the last decade. The facilities often lack basic necessities such as heat, running water, and functional kitchens. 

According to the Russian Ministry of Education

• 1500 children leave the orphanages each year, usually at the age of 16 or 17, as they "age out" of the system, poorly equipped to function in society.
• 50% fall into a high risk category after graduation.
• 40% became involved in criminal activity.
• 10% commit suicide.
• 33% remain unemployed.
• 20% become homeless.
• Only 4% are admitted to universities.

According to the Ministries of Internal Affairs

• 2.5 million children born in Russia are homeless.
• 50% of Russian children are born into poverty.
• In the last decade, the number of children in Russia has decreased by 4 million. Over four times more abortions are recorded than live births. 
• 617,000 Russian children are disabled. Twenty babies a day are born to HIV mothers, two of which will be abandoned at birth. 
• 70% of medical equipment in hospitals are outdated or broken. 
• 60% of Russia's youth are in poor physical or psychological health.
• Only 15-20% of newborn Russian babies are considered healthy. 

These statistics paint a dismal picture of innocent children at risk—the "least of these."

Yet, God has promised that he will not leave us orphans. What is our responsibility, now that we know the facts? This knowledge becomes more important, now, with the ban on American adoptions pending in Russia. This political move will devastate the children languishing in orphanages, especially the handicapped ones, who are warehoused in asylums, left to die, starved of human contact, even those with minor physical handicaps.

I invite you to watch this heartbreaking, yet hopeful Dateline report The Boy From Baby House 10, a true, and perhaps typical account of the life of a boy in an orphanage, except Vanya is one of the few who make it out of the system, due only to a few people who took an interest in him.

If your heart is tugged to help, and it will be if you have a pulse, please consider getting involved on some level with an orphan care organization, such as Orphan Care Resources. One hundred percent of the profits of my book will be donated to some type of orphan care, including OCR and direct gifts to hosting and adopting families.

What can you do to help?

Be thankful in all things!

Consider it all joy . . .  whenever we face trials of many kinds, because testing of our faith produces many beneficial consequences, like patience, endurance, character, and hope. But the awkward reality of trials is they often involve suffering, and in spite of the benefits, there is no long line to sign up for suffering. James, the brother of Jesus, suggests our trials will produce joy in us; even so, we are much more likely to run from trials than embrace them. Run as we might, trials and suffering are as inevitable as rain.

My most interesting friends are interesting because their testimonies involve suffering. Talk to anyone who lived through unimaginable trials, and their stories of "overcoming" are tinted with joy of experiencing a  revelation of Something infinitely bigger than ourselves. 

I have a friend from my school days, back from fifth grade. After high school graduation, my contact with Ann was confined to high school reunions every five years. (Even though I live five hours away, I never miss a reunion.) One reunion, about twelve years ago, Ann was minus her left arm, all the way up to the shoulder. But an eight year battle with an aggressive cancer hadn't stolen her spirit. She was her usually bubbly self, hugging everyone with one arm, as if nothing had changed. A lot had changed for Ann.

When I finally had a moment with Ann alone, I expressed my compassion for her loss. Her words surprised me. "Debbie, it was the best thing that could have happened to me."

Now obviously, losing her arm didn't cause Ann's joy, otherwise we would all be lopping off our limbs! What I recognized in Ann was something much deeper than the tragic loss of her arm.  Something had changed Ann, for the better. She didn't have self-pity, but a hope that is other-worldly.

Now with social media, I "speak" with Ann regularly.  I had the pleasure to talk to Ann on the phone this week. Her life has been marked by trials, more than her share. And yet, there is pure joy. She speaks freely of God and her faith. And her transformed life through seemingly unbearable hardships. 

Does Ann have it all together? No. Neither do I! (If you do, we need to talk!)

For many, the deal breaker for belief in a caring, personal God, is suffering. How could a loving God allow suffering? Yet, if we didn't face trials, how could we be compassionate to others who have? How could we "feel" their pain?  Would we feel compelled to encourage others if we never needed a kind word of encouragement ourselves? Our trials and suffering bond us to one another, as well as to God.

Did God cause Ann to lose her arm, or 911, or fill-in-the-blank with your own tragedy? I don't believe God causes these incidents to punish us, but He allows them, and shows up in the pain. When we have hit rock bottom, God is always there, when often, no one else is. 

Paradoxically, the moments in our lives that bring us indescribable joy, are not the day we finally bought that dream house, or landed that lucrative job, or anything else that we might have expected to finally be the ultimate producer of joy. These moments don't last as long as we would expect, nor give us the joy we had hoped for. 

Today, consider writing your own testimony  Ponder your own personal suffering and how it changed you. 

God tells us to be thankful in all things. 

If you write it, they will read, part two

Who has the disposable income to shell out $5–$10,000 to self-publish a book? (Maybe a poor choice, calling it "disposable," as if it is being thrown away!) Roma's tuition at Fork Union Military Academy for his second and final year, was $30,000. That cost PLUS a book venture in one year?  I started praying for clarity about money!

"Haven't I already given you this money," seemed to be God's reply. It was true. When we sold our house in 2007, we did so without an agent in a market where nothing was selling, and the prices were plummeting. Almost miraculously our house sold to a family with an adopted Russian child, in case we should miss God's hand in the transaction! (And a couple of other very interesting "coincidences" (as though there are such things! But that is another story.)  Without a realtor, we saved over $30,000 in realtor commissions. Then three years later, we decided to sell land in the Durham-Chapel Hill (N.C.) area that we had bought in 1980, to buy property in West Virginia. Again, we prayed, and God showed up. Instead of having to involve a realtor, a buyer contacted us! After seeing the logo on the truck, a man actually stopped the appraiser to ask what property was for sale, looked us up on the county tax assessor, sent Bruce an email, hoping it was the Bruce Michael who owned property in the area. (You can't make this stuff up.) We saved over $30,000, again, in realtor fees. Plus, the appraisal was much higher than we had hoped. And because another perspective buyer appeared, the competition allowed us to get full appraisal price. The "over $60,000" combined amount was not lost on me—it was two years of tuition at FUMA, even though, at the time we didn't know Roma was going to have such an expensive high school experience!

Yeah, God had provided money for us over the years. But since we didn't know about the Fork Union plans at the time, we hadn't set it aside in an account reserved for that. It had just reduced our loans at the time.

Then there was that amazing incident of opening the mail a few years ago, and finding a check for $20,000 from one of Bruce's generous cousins and his wife, saying that God had put it on their hearts to give us the money. We were infinitely thankful and shocked to put it mildly. We did bank that money, and Roma's first year at Fork Union was not a financial hardship because of it. But how would we pay for another year? Especially now with this crazy idea about publishing a book. There was no way. But in one of those heightened awareness kind of God moments, I said yes to my friends who were gathered in my family room one evening when the conversation  took a wild turn toward my book. The next day, after sending my unsuspecting husband an email asking if he would divorce me if I paid to self-published the book, and receiving what I loosely interpreted as a no, I called and committed a little over $5000 to a basic package at Inspiring Voices, a division of Guideposts Books.

Then there was an "offer" the additional optional fees for publicity. Another $5000 plus. Should I spend it? I hadn't expected that fee. There would be the cost of buying books on top of that. How many books would I have to sell to recoup my expenses? I remembered the agent's warning—if I self-published, I likely wouldn't sell many copies.

But I felt God's involvement, even though I was going to be spending $40,000 in 2012 on Roma's school and a book about him. I asked friends for prayers. One close friend who read the manuscript and who had lived through the adoption adventure with me, sent me an email and asked me to consider three questions: 1) Who is the main character of the book, 2) to whom does the book bring glory, and 3) whose money was I using for the book? Of course, the answer to all three questions was God. It was a leap of faith to call with the go-ahead for the publicity campaign.

I have gone way over my word count for today, so please tune in for what Paul Harvey would say is, "the rest of the story" . . .

Conclusion

If you write it, they will read, part one

My next few posts will be dedicated to telling the stories behind the publication of But the Greatest of These is Love. They are awesome details about the God who continually pursues me. I am pretty oblivious and stubborn, so He has his hands full!

Back to the book . . . Any new author's dream is to find a successful literary agent who will represent her book, otherwise publication is all but impossible. I had written a great book, I had polished, and shared, taken suggestions, edited, and polished, and repeated the process. Who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to represent my magnum opus?  After a couple of years getting form rejection letters in return email, I finally got some encouragement. I saved this one which represeted a moral victory. I have deleted a sentence here and there, for brevity, but the words are hers.

"Thank you so much for contacting ___ Literary Agency. You certainly do have a poignant story that is a beautiful tribute to God's amazing love, and the power of the human spirit. I'm sure that it could be inspiring to many.

Unfortunately, having a valuable story isn't enough to get a book published these days. Agents are faced with a big dilemma in taking on unknown authors with good books. Publishers want a "platform". Basically, they want an author who has the ability to help them move books. Begin to see yourself as an author/speaker with a message to share about the amazing ways God uses ordinary people to accomplish His mission. This way you will begin to build yourself a platform -- speaking in churches and other organizations.

Publishers want to see what the author is already doing to get their message out. If you could demonstrate, in you book proposal, that you have a strong and growing platform, I could likely make sure this got a good look at the publishing houses. If not, I would strongly recommend that you take the time and effort needed to build your platform (even if it takes a year or two). Without this, no matter how good or helpful the book is, publishers are simply not giving even good books the time of day (sorry to say). Your next option is to self publish and sell the books yourself, which many authors are doing  (but you likely won't sell many copies). 

I encourage you to work on building a platform, and continue seeking representation and/or publication. I truly hope God provides a way for you to have this project published."

I have  emboldened the words that jumped off the page at me: "a year or two." A finished, ready-to-read book had been my mother's prayer for years already. I was afraid she wouldn't live long enough for me to establish a "platform," even if I knew what a "platform" was!

Self-publishing had never been an option for me. Her letter echoed in my mind for the next year, particularly the "you won't sell many copies."

Well, what came to me one day when I was overwhelmed trying to start a blog, and learn to tweet, figure out an appealing platform, and do it in a way to gain followers, yesterday--I had a sudden and foreign thought: (I knew from experience where these "random" thoughts come from.) God is in control of this project. If He wants people to read the book, He will make a way for it to happen. He will do it, not a great agent, not my marvelous tweeting abilities (certainly not that!), not a captivating "platform." God will make it happen. Then, in Him only can I boast. He had clearly been behind, or in front of, the writing of the book. To what end? So people would read it. So, the steps toward self-publishing began.

Stay tuned. God is awesome! Continue here.

Fifty shades of red

As I wade into the muddy waters of marketing and promoting my infant book, But the Greatest of These is Love (The Greatest), I look to popular best sellers to provide a model plan. My search takes me to the best selling paperback of all time, the blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades.)

It might be safe to assume that if you are a big fan of Fifty Shades, you just might find my sweet little narrative a bit too tame. However, the two do have some things in common:  first, they are both books, and, second, Fifty Shades has a character named “Christian,” and my book has a theme that is “Christian.” Beyond that, the plots deviate, Fifty Shades, more so than The Greatest. 

While investigating the success of Fifty Shades, I read parts, blushing all the while, shielding my book from the XXX-rated theme. On closer examination, I discovered maybe another similarity: they both examine human nature and free will.

I am not bashing Fifty Shades, nor am I advocating book banning or preaching against the evils of lust in literature. Frankly, I am a bit jealous.  While I am holding my new-born book gingerly and carefully navigating unknown waters of social media networks, I watch out of the corner of my eye the giant seductress rack up worldwide sales of over 60 million, and growing, out pacing even the Harry Potter series.  Most of the major production companies were competing for a deal for the film version, expected in 2013. Sign me up for that!

Short of throwing in a few scenes of gratuitous sadomasochistic sex, there probably isn't any hope of competing with the record-blasting erotic sensation that is Fifty Shades.  We humans derive a dark pleasure in having our own way, to do what is right in our own mind. As a character in The Greatest, I am no different.

I am reminded of the classic cartoons where a red, pitchfork-laden devil is perched on one shoulder, a winged angel on the other. Stuck uncomfortably in the middle, hearing both voices, is man, better known as you and me. We are faced with two main options: to indulge one’s Self, or to do battle against the overwhelming desire to indulge one’s Self.

In both books, we characters want our own way. It is a theme woven throughout both stories. In the end, do we “win”? 

Or will there be a Greater outcome, the paradox of losing one's life to save one's life? 

Sign me up for that!

consider it all joy

Over the past ten years when I have told people our youngest son was adopted from Russia at the age of seven, their eyebrows go up. People seem intrigued by this information, and they have questions: What made us consider adoption, and why did we adopt an older boy from Russia? Did we consider the numerous candidates in the foster system?

When I respond that I didn’t choose an older boy from Russia, God chose him for me, the eyebrows go up again, but the eyes look anywhere except at me. I am thankful that I do not have to squirm under the scrutinizing gaze of cynicism coming at me from Cyberspace. I know how crazy it sounds! I am learning to answer the disembodied words from strangers. And what I am learning is that we were not the only ones who have had this mystical experience of feeling like God was drawing us toward adoption, that God was the Ultimate matchmaker, lining our family up with a perfect fit for a child who was without a family,  that adopting was something we were "supposed to do."

There are the skeptics, of course, but strangers have messaged me to say that they too are members of the "secret society of 'called' adoptive moms," a label I use in the book to describe how it felt. First against my knowledge, and later against my will, I felt God was selecting me to be the mother of one of His lost and forgotten children. So why did God chose Russia and Roma? Of course I do not know the full answer, but I suspect part of it is because Roma fits so well into our family. He kids like us, his personality is so  similar to ours, we understand each other on a higher level, and I am a strong-willed mother to a hard-headed boy! My older son said, when Roma came, that, until he could think of Roma as a brother, he would consider him an “exchange student from God.” Rearing a child sent from God is a duty not to be taken lightly! Another reason, perhaps more important in God's economy, is that during this experience, we have learned to trust that God knows what we need better than we do. God wants total surrender and obedience.

The reward for our obedience, albeit reluctant and whiny on my part, included cup-running-over joy and blessings!

Embracing God's invitation

Welcome to my inaugural blog. Everyone has a story. This blog is about mine.

Moments when you believe, or know, that you have heard a word from God are difficult to describe. My moment hit me with the force of a lightning bolt. I didn't see it coming, nor did have time to take cover. Never before had I encountered the God who is not silent! I was left singed and smoking. God had stricken me with one enduring, unthinkable directive: Adopt an older boy from Russia.

I was not eager to embrace God's invitation.  Hadn't He noticed that I already had three children? Two were teenage girls, for God's sake! And my precious eleven-year-old son had been the baby too long to     relinquish that coveted role willingly.

I limped along for months, licking my wounds, blind at first to the reality that the lightning bolt had ignited a shallow faith and was transforming it into one that was electrified! During the months I spent in self pity and deep despair, the God of the universe was at work, reordering my life. What are humans that He is mindful of us? I have no idea! My human brain doesn't stretch enough to comprehend that immense, overriding Love for selfish creatures like myself.

I started writing But the Greatest of These is Love while I was on the runway preparing to depart for Russia, still seeking an escape route. That tense experience became my first chapter.

I have been a lifelong writer, as well as a visual artist. Writing is like painting with words. As a kid, my journals were engrossing and therapeutic.  My notebooks of letters-never-intended-to-be-sent let me resolve issues and achieve perspective. Writing this story was no different. In the process, I saw God in places I had missed with just my visual sense. Sometimes sentences and paragraphs seemed to write themselves, exposing more of this personal God with whom I was becoming acquainted and learning to trust.

My desire for readers of But the Greatest of These is Love, and this blog is that they will trust that God’s Divine plan for us is infinitely richer than the confortable little lives we can plan for ourselves. God has been here all along. My motivation for writing this book is to make Him visible.

“If the journey did not include a few unexpected detours, we would hardly need faith,” Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God