Category Archives: abolition

the challenge: working through it together

Posted on by February 13, 2023

Every year we choose new books to read (do you do this, too?), but last year we started something different – we did a reading challenge. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it?

But it’s not, really. Just search the internet and you’ll find a hundred variations. Iree joined us and the three of us teamed up together to read 104 books. Two books per week seems like a lot, but between all of us, it seemed doable.

But we quickly discovered that it wasn’t, quite.

the challenge: working through it together

It wasn’t the number of books, but the categories that threw us. And I understand that the point of a challenge is to, well, challenge you, but there was only one slot for “a book you have no interest in” and I own too many books that I actually want to read to bother digging around with so many categories that were on there that I don’t.

So, taking a languid approach to it, we crossed the boring/inapplicable categories off as we went and replaced them with creative ones that were less boring (cough) more to our taste. Because seriously, I value theology and Christian living, but there were SO MANY of them on there, and absolutely nothing on writing, crafts, psychology, ancient history, criminology, or any of the other weird stuff we also really like.

And by the end of the year our list was a mess, but it was much more fun, and yes – we were still challenged.

This year we did it again, but started off with a clean list. We made sure the categories were both realistic and interesting right off the bat. We crowded around the kitchen island, just throwing ideas out there.

A book written by someone you know. A book with a character you’d want to be friends with. A book about a disaster. A book about personal growth. A book Shannon quoted in one of her books. A book of 800 pages or more. A memoir or autobiography. A book by Dickens.

“A book on Napoleonic history,” Vin suggested.

“Uhh…” Iree and I looked at each other.

“Only if you’re going to read it,” she said. (He said he would.)

Cham came in and we asked her for suggestions. And if you don’t know her, you will after hearing her ideas:

“A book about biology…a book on dissecting. Ohh! A book on cadavers!”

Yeah. Well…we only added one of those ideas; I’ll let you guess which.

There’s so much that we don’t know. We’ll read hundreds, thousands, of pages this year, and aside from the people we hang out with and the time we spend in prayer, very few things will influence our growth like these pages. So it’s important to choose good ones, and to enjoy the time spent with them.

I’m not kidding myself; I know I won’t remember most of what I read. I won’t like or agree with everything that I read. But even without remembering all the facts and storylines and characters and historical figures, we will be changed. The pages will leave an impression that wasn’t there last year.

Last year I started reading Plutarch’s Lives alongside Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Several months in, I realized my mistake. I thought they would reinforce each other, but usually I just get more confused as I try to untangle them from each other every week.

But I am learning.

I don’t remember all the individual lives in Plutarch, and I couldn’t tell you the exact timeline in Gibbon. But what I can tell you is an impression of these cultures and times. I can tell you that there were leaders who had wisdom for the ages, including ours. And there were also leaders who were so abhorrent in their depravity and disregard for the lives of others that the horrors they committed are hard to believe.

But they are in the history books. We generally don’t argue with them.

So, quick question, because I have to go there – why do people disbelieve or disregard the horrors we hear about today? Why are we so quick to mock and accuse people of being conspiracy theorists when they share information about celebrities and politicians doing abhorrent things?

Is it because they’re not in the history books yet? Is it because we have no interest in those categories?

Is it because those topics challenge us too much?

Or is it because we are their contemporaries, and their proximity to our own lives makes us uncomfortable? Because if these things are happening in the world we live in (and they are – it takes very little research to discover it, though you’ll have to use a search engine that doesn’t censor to do it, and you absolutely should not do so without being prayed up), then either a) we might be somewhat responsible that they exist, or b) we might need to do something about it so they no longer exist.

And those aren’t good, easy, fun options. It’s much more comfortable to shoot the messenger, lump it all as conspiracy theory and applaud the censorship that silences them, and move along with our noses heads held high.

I’ve heard some people disavow information simply because it didn’t match their personal experience. And I’m grateful they haven’t personally experienced anything that horrific, but our personal experiences do not define or limit the reality of other people experiences. It is arrogant, narcissistic, and foolishly ignorant to act like it does.

We still have so much to learn.

Hear me, friend: Children chained to beds and starved was not in my personal experience until we got involved in adoption.

Children who weighed 24 pounds at age four were not in my personal experience until we started our adoption paperwork. We converted kilos to pounds in astonishment; it had to be a miscalculation. But it wasn’t.

Children who were so neglected that they were only nine pounds at nine years old were not in our personal experience until we got involved with the people who were adopting them.

Our lack of personal experience did not prevent their existence or the abuse. It only proved our ignorance.

Our personal experience is not the epitome of reality. It is arrogant to assume that our x amount of years in any field (professional, personal, or otherwise) qualifies us to deny the reality of someone else’s differing experience, especially when it comes in the form of testimony with evidence and witnesses.

Just because something is so devastating that it is hard to believe, doesn’t mean it isn’t actually true.

And just because you don’t find information about fraud, horrific child abuse, or other crimes perpetrated by the elite on mainstream media (which no longer even attempts to hide how blatant their censorship is) doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means they want us to think it doesn’t…and that should lead us to some very important questions about what they have to lose.

There are many things that are hard to believe, but are nevertheless reality, regardless of how uncomfortable they make us feel, or how much we hate those categories.

And coming to understand that – and working through it together, with respect and love – may be the real challenge we all go through this year.

rattle my cage: learning what we’re made of when our safe places are shaken

Posted on by December 18, 2020

Snowy gloves pounded the window while the kids played outside. I overheard Vince yell, “We don’t hit windows!” and someone’s answering protest, “I wasn’t hitting, I was knocking!”

And here, friends, is the irony: We survived a 7.2 earthquake with no major structural damage, only to almost lose windows to children beating on them with Gortex mittens.

rattle my cage: learning what we're made of when our safe places are shaken

Local schools shut down for a while from all the damage, but the earthquake happened on a Friday morning and our homeschooled kids fretted all day about finishing their assignments for the week. I tried to talk to them about priorities – we were all alive, people were working to get the power back on, and everyone we knew was safe. As we waded through debris I kept telling them, for crying out loud, earthquakes are educational – you might forget half the stuff you read last week, but you’ll never forget living through this. You never forget learning that your shelters and safe places can be shaken.

I’ll never forget the feeling of being sifted as the house shook east-west, hearing the ground rumble and the walls rattle and glass and pottery shattering everywhere. I’ll never forget jumping out of bed, racing upstairs to find five of the kids on their beds, then running back down two flights of stairs to check on the other two kids, only one of whom was there. I have no idea how I made it up and down all the stairs while nine months pregnant and the house was still shaking. I’ll never forget seeing the entire west wall of library shelving slanted across the room, books smeared knee-high and spilling across stairs and entryway, and wondering if a cat was buried underneath.

We found the cats, all safe, all hiding under the kids’ beds. We found the kid who was missing; he ran outside when the shaking started. And we found the toilet upstairs, our only significant damage, cracked off its bolts on the tile floor — though the antique mirror and framed prints in the same bathroom were still hanging on the walls, just fine.

Early labor (which can last for weeks) started here around the same time as the earthquake. And it’s weird going into labor as aftershocks diminish; it’s like the earthquake in reverse. Contractions increase in intensity to the final, long-expected big event, while the earthquake shocked us in its suddenness and then decrescendoed to these little shakers that we mostly don’t even feel anymore.

Just in time, we officially decided on spelling Kavanagh with no U, in spite of the overwhelming results in our highly scientific polls on social media.  I almost had it – with a U, I mean – arguing with Vince that this isn’t the first baby we’ve given a last name as a first name to, and we didn’t arbitrarily remove vowels for Chamberlain or Reagan just because they seemed extraneous. And since the man is already familiar with Google, Wiki, and Justice Kavanaugh, I went to the next highest authority on the name I could think of: The Mitford series.

It’s the main character’s last name, and I thought, This will prove the spelling without a doubt, no contest. I’ve read this series all the way through twice – once when Mattie was a baby and again when I was pregnant with Afton – and then blew through some of the books again this year as comfort reading during the gruesome months of morning sickness. I know these stories and characters; this series remains the only modern fiction that I truly love.

So I grabbed one of the books off the shelf, confident of winning my case. Turned the pages. Skimmed the lines. Looked for it…hold on just a minute…lo and behold:

Kavanagh. No U.

WHAT.

Well, I’ll be et fer a tater.

I wanted to put more effort into walking him out in those weeks of early labor but a round-ligament-snappy-action prevented it, in league with a hip socket on strike that kept sending me in a slow melt to the floor without warning. (Yay forties!) So instead of causing alarming scenes in public, I made myself useful by staying home for two weeks and making pitiful requests to people around me: Can you bring me water? Can I have the orange yarn and the blue tape measure? Can you put on my socks?

Vin came over, picked up the pair of socks I brought with me, and briefly inspected them before he threw one of them back on the couch and started putting the other one on my foot.

“What, you don’t like that other sock?” I asked him.

“It’s the wrong one,” he answered, wrestling this one up my ankle, angling the heel just right and straightening the toes.

I know where he’s going with this; it’s one of our oldest arguments. For 22 years, since our college days when we first shacked up in Anchorage, he’s tried to convince me that Socks Are Not Interchangeable. Socks, he says, go on certain feet.

“See?” He holds the other one up. “The big toe is longer on this one, so it goes on this foot.” He commences wrestling that one, too, and I can see that he’s sort of, kind of, maybe a little bit right, though I’d never admit it to his face.

But this neediness and confinement also shook my safe places. I know labor and birth; this is our sixth delivery. We like to think that experience prepares us for what to expect. And sometimes it does.

But other times, it deceives us – not because our expectations are wrong, but because, however much it is, our experience still isn’t enough. Our expectations might not be big enough. Our endeavors might be too safe, or our safe places might be too small. Our priorities might be too narrow, focused on marking tasks off our lists and missing the fact that we can do truly hard things; we can live through and thrive in far more than we give ourselves credit for.

God has been preparing us for familiarity to take a flying leap for a long time. Last Christmas, when we didn’t know where He was sending us, He said, When you find yourself where you never thought you’d be, I’m positioning you for something you never could have planned. He kept saying, It’s a surprise, Love. Sometimes the surprise starts off with a shaking.

And then in April when we knew big changes were ahead but didn’t know Kavanagh was one of them, He said, You know how to do this, you’ve done it before. You’ve just never seen it like this. And we’ve been trying to roll with all of the surprises ever since.

So at 3am one morning, when early labor suddenly looked less like aftershocks and more like the big event, and the prospect of waking seven kids up to go to two different places in the middle of the night seemed so much harder than just having a friend come over and letting everyone else sleep, we rolled with that, too. After months of planning on a homebirth at the lighthouse, we threw out that plan and drove to the birth center in the wee hours of the morning. Just like we did for our last two babies.

The highway was snowy, the sky was dark; the midwives had the tub running when we got there because they knew how fast it went last time. And they knew the story of the one kid who was supposed to be a waterbirth but ended up being delivered on the bed while the tub was still filling, before the assistant arrived.

That, too, was the end of familiarity, because no matter how many times you’ve done this or what patterns you’ve come to expect, there’s no guarantee you won’t get your cage rattled. And I did. All our birth experiences have gotten easier and faster, except this one.

And “labor” doesn’t come close to expressing the amount of work and travail put into birthing a human…or anything else. We use the word so much that it has lost its impact as we gloss over the clawing, writhing pain of turning yourself inside out to do the work of bringing something (or someone) into the world.

The heat was terrible. She felt scorched to the bone, but it did not touch her strength. It grew hotter and hotter. She said, “I can bear it no longer.” Yet she went on.

– George MacDonald, The Golden Key

He is our stability, with us, among us, upon us in the heat and the friction and the shaking, regardless of what everything looks like around us or feels like within us.

After twenty-three hours of off-and-on that eventually progressed to hours of hard labor, we met the one we’ve been waiting for. And he is so worth it.

So often we give up on opportunity or calling because we think, I could never do that. That is for other people, stronger people, bigger people, people who are different from me. But what we really mean is, I don’t want my world to be shaken. Our excuse is our inadequacy but what really stops us is fear, or laziness, or a combination of the two.

Because labor is work, and shaking, and life-changing. We pooh-pooh ourselves while putting those who do bigger, harder things on a pedestal, while God wants us to see what we are really made of. We want a simple to-do list, a school chart of basic assignments to check off. But God calls many of us to the earthquake and the aftermath, saying, Hey Love, you have no idea what you’re capable of.

You’ll never forget living through this.

______

Related: What about the big changes that shake us, especially as we go into a new year? The newsletter comes out in a few days and you can sign up here if you need to. xo

whatever it takes: a rallying cry for adoptive and foster families

Posted on by August 25, 2023

Adoptive and foster families, this is for you.

You, who went through all the training, requirements, meetings, interviews, and red tape. It was crazy-thorough. Then you brought your child home.

whatever it takes: a rallying cry for adoptive and foster families

And you learned that all that preparation was kind of like going through earthquake survival drills – learning first aid, how to take cover, how to evacuate safely – versus actually living through an 8-point earthquake. It was like the difference between learning CPR versus actually having to administer it on someone who has no pulse.

Some of our kids came to us carrying grief and trauma equivalent to that 8-point earthquake.

And we love them. But it’s hard because they are hurting, and hurting people hurt other people, and we are here to do everything possible to break that cycle.

But some days we don’t know what to do with them. There your kid is, doing that same behavior that’s driving you both crazy: Rages. Lying. Something unmentionable involving bodily fluids. And yep, we love them, but they don’t always believe it so they test our love. Sometimes they push back hard. These attachment issues are no joke, friend.

Some days we pray and do one thing, and the next day we pray and feel like we need to try something else. We’ve learned to live in grace on a moment-to-moment basis.

I know your house used to be your sanctuary, but now, some days it feels like a warzone. The atmosphere’s changed and you barely recognize it: tense, palpable, high-alert, heavy. Sometimes you feel the weight and pressure of it in your gut. You’ve learned that you need God’s wisdom and presence in every moment, too.

And I know it may not feel like it anymore, but this is still your turf. Your territory. The spiritual attack is real but you own this space. You are the boss here. And as much as their behavior might contribute to the chaos, your kids need you to fight for dominion.

Don’t lose yourself, friend. Your kids need you to still be you – and they need you to find them in the darkness. There’s a uniquely brilliant person in there behind all the trauma and behaviors who is dying to get out and be known.

And there’s a real you in here, too. You may feel like you lost yourself somewhere between the airport and the millions of appointments, but you are becoming refined. Strong. Whole, and more you than you’ve ever been before. You didn’t think you could be this tough, did you? You had no idea you’d be able to do all this. And here you are. This is you, doing all the stuff.

I hear your excuses; I’ve said them to myself plenty of times, too. I know you don’t feel like you’re enough. You don’t feel like you’re getting enough done, getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, giving enough smiles, giving enough hugs to those kids. But those feelings aren’t the boss of you. They don’t change reality.

You are enough. You’re doing enough. God is enough to cover you in this time as you’re seeking Him, trying to shine light in darkness and find truth in trauma.

You’ve spent hours making phone calls, researching, getting references, making appointments, sitting in those appointments, wondering if this intervention is going to work for your child. Wondering if this professional is going to help your child, or if they’re going to do more harm than good.

You’ve missed some friends and social activities because things are different now. You wonder before every engagement if it’s going to be worth the effort, or if all the hoopla will evoke too much aftermath. We used to take for granted how easy it used to be, back when we never worried about overstimulation, hypervigilance with boundaries, and attachment issues.

You are the families who’ve been not just willing to go to the broken and hurting, but you’ve welcomed them into your own homes.

You are on the frontlines. And the church will see significant, exponential victory to the extent that it cares for those on the frontlines.

You’ve given everything you’ve got for the advancement of the Kingdom, and you’re giving people a vivid picture of how much God loves them. You are showing God’s heart for humanity – the same Spirit of adoption that He showed us.

In pockets around the world, the church is waking up to the power lying dormant in adoptive and foster families. The church is realizing that assumptions and lack of awareness about what these families endure have hindered not only the healing of the broken, but the growth of the Kingdom.

And there is a contingent of humble, repenting congregations rising up to do whatever it takes to support those who have already been doing whatever it takes – and in some cases, it’s taken everything – to walk out the spirit of adoption.

These teams – those who directly care for the broken, and those who support them in it – are unstoppable. They are mighty, gritty, capable of exploits, and not afraid to play hardball with darkness.

They are changing nations and generations. Together, they are living out a message that the world cannot ignore.

So you, my friends, are rocking this. Keep pushing through, and do whatever it takes to get some rest. To get some space. To find the you that you recognize again.

Because you’re in there, and you’re powerful. You’re changing the very nations with your daily steps to love your family and maintain dominion in your sanctuary.

_______

This is from Upside Down: Understanding and Supporting Attachment in Adoptive and Foster Families. You can purchase the new 3rd edition on Amazon or buy it directly from us (don’t miss our discounts for bulk purchases!).

upside down: understanding and supporting attachment in adoptive and foster families