Itsara

I apologize for the silence. My family (by which I mean my entire immediate family: two parents, three brothers, one sister, one sister-in-law, two nieces, and one soon-to-be-brother-in-law) has invaded and I haven’t thought much about what to write nor had time to write.

Most of them have never been to Thailand, so we’ve been showing them around, which is fun for our kids who have not been to most of the tourist sites around town. Matt and Sandra are in Bangkok with their mom for the holidays. Pan is in her village for the New Year’s weekend. Alaypa and Lutiya are enjoying the pseudo-break they’re having, even though they still have to go to school.

We’ve hit the market, the elephant camp, the monkey school, the night bazaar, the mall, and some caves. Today I think we’re aiming at the zoo, massages, and some good Thai grub (although the latter has been a constant attraction). I’m not taking pictures myself hoping to steal all from my family. I find it much more enjoyable to see Chiang Mai through new eyes anyway. I’d just keep taking pictures of Isaac.

Oh wait, they do too.

I took Lutiya to her home administration office for some paperwork the other day. It ended up being a lot of waiting for nothing, but I did get to spend a lot of time with her. The office was very close to her home village, and she knew it. A couple of times she jokingly (or half-jokingly) said she was running away to go back. And a couple of other times she actually got angry.

Lutiya misses her village and her friends and her family. I don’t think she understands why she had to leave. Unfortunately, it’s not safe for her there, but that doesn’t help her any right now. Though she admitted she wasn’t angry with me, she said she was angry. A couple of times I told her I loved her and she said she didn’t believe me. She wouldn’t answer when I asked why.

At first I was really hurt by this. Why wouldn’t she believe me? Did I do something? I prayed and realized that, while I have accepted this little girl as my own daughter, she hasn’t accepted me as her father - actually she may never accept me as her father. That’s true for most of our kids, maybe all of them. Although each one is new and special and unique to us, to them we are just another place that is not their home. And for some of them that is all we’ll ever be.

I wasn’t sure how to handle this. It makes me sad when these kids get angry with me - not because of anything I did but just because of who I am to them. I’m the man who wants to replace their father, or I’m the guy who requires them to respect me when nobody else ever has, or I’m the unfair guardian who tells them they can’t cheat on their homework even though everybody else does. What if it’s always like that? There’s no guarantee it will change, especially for the older ones.

Of course there’s hope that one day, even if it’s long after they leave us, they will realize how much I’ve done for them, but God took me one better. I realized that if I wait to find joy in the results of what I do, I will be almost constantly frustrated and disappointed. In order to be able to be filled with joy, peace, contentment - in order be able to rejoice in the Lord always - I cannot find joy because of what I do, rather I have to do it because I have found joy.

Even moreso (God showed me) this is what Jesus did. Jesus once said that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends, but I think he was being modest because Jesus did far more than that. He laid down his life for people who would never be his friend. People who would hate him and despise him and spend their whole lives proving to others that he didn’t exist or that he was crazy or that he was nothing more than a wise man and his death was for nothing - these are the people he died for, among others.

He poured out love on those who might never love him, and he knew it the whole time. His hope was not in the results of what he did, but in the Love that drove him to do it. Now that I know it in my head, I’ve got to figure out how to actually live like that. This might take a while.

Because many of the kids will be gone on Christmas Day, we had our family Christmas early this year. We did some of the same things as last year. I made the breakfast lasagne (faster and better this year), we made ornaments, we sang songs. Cindy got slightly higher-quality Christmas lights, and they’ve so far lasted a whole two weeks (which is better than the other ones did last year).

About presents though. We got them, but we were torn between getting nice, big gifts and just getting little things. I’ve always felt that Christmas is all about the presents, and I’ve always known it shouldn’t be, but I never really did anything about it. I don’t think I knew what I could do about it.

The tradition I grew up with kinda went like this. Wake up Christmas morning, stockings were fair game for whoever woke up whenever, but presents had to wait until the end. After breakfast, shower, and Dad going over the Christmas story we’d do the presents - youngest would open theirs first and up the age ladder. I love this tradition, but it occurred to me that it kinda focuses on the presents - they’re like the big finale at the end of the show - so last night and this morning I was trying to think about how we can downplay their importance.

We ended up doing presents all at once, and overall the presents are nothing huge (both because we want to downplay them and because we just don’t have the money for 7 nice presents), and we ended with the story and worship as our “finale” instead.

It wasn’t easy getting small gifts. Cindy came home last night and looked at her bag of gifts (a jump rope, a takraw ball, and swim goggles) and felt bad. I admit I did too - like we had gone shopping for our kids at the 99 cent store. But I realized (and said) that if we want to downplay presents, then this has got to be it. Not like we’re shortchanging our kids… actually, I think if we had focused on nice presents, that might have been shortchanging them. Cuz this morning, my favorite part was not the presents or the lasagne, but it was getting to tell the story of Jesus. Actually, I told them the whole story, from God making humans out of love, to us deciding we were more important than God, to God leaving (and that’s why this world kinda sucks), to God’s desperate attempt at winning us back by becoming one of us, teaching us, loving us, and dying for us. And all we have to do is believe in Jesus - know him and love him. That’s why we do what we do - not to get to Heaven, but because we love Jesus.

I loved that part. The fact that they were all listening to me really well helped a lot. Then we sang some Thai worship songs, which we also don’t do together very often. The last song we sang (at Cindy’s request) was the one I had had in my dream so long ago. I decided to tell them the story of that dream and how God told us to move into this big house even though we didn’t know why. It’s even more amazing in hindsight than it was at the time. If we hadn’t moved here, not only would we have had no space for these three kids, but we would never have met the woman who brought them to us in the first place. If we had stayed at the old house, none of this would have happened. It’s kinda scary how much impact a seemingly simple decision like that had.

So I recently finished reading this book, Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller. This is the second book I’ve read by this guy (the other being Blue Like Jazz) and I love the way this guy thinks about Christianity and humanity. It’s so real and so different from the rigid, academic theology I’ve grown up with.

In this book, he tries to explain most, if not all, of our problems using what he calls the Lifeboat Theory. It was something his teacher once asked him as a kid: if there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctor, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbageman, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, which person would you choose? But now extend the made-up scenario to include everyone, and say there’s something inside of us that tells us that the least desirable among us will be thrown overboard when all is said and done.

This would explain why we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, why we put others down to build ourselves up - even over meaningless things, like which sports team we like - why we try to associate ourselves with those we think are cool and dissociate from the uncool or unlovely, why most of what we do is an attempt to get someone to say, “Yes, you are worth something.” Or at least, “Yes, you are worth more than that person over there, so you win.” (more…)

So on Father’s Day (of the Ninja) we took the family to go see the land. They don’t have enough workers/materials to work on both houses at the same time, so they’ll do one stage of our house, then one stage of the Abbott’s, and so on. These pictures are just of our house, but I’m sure Sean has been taking pics that he just hasn’t been able to put up yet.

So after digging the holes for the columns, they put in the rebar, poured in the concrete, then went to work on the footers. On the day these pictures were taken (though I have none of his house - sorry!), they had the frames for Sean’s footers in place with the rebar inside all ready to pour in the concrete. On our house, the footers are done and they’ve poured the columns as high as the first floor.

The piping you see around the footers there is for termites and other pest control. Those pipes are filled with little holes everywhere and if/when there’s a pest problem, they can just come in and spray high-pressured pesticide or whatever into the opening of the pipe above ground and it will seep all underneath the house killing whatever’s there. And they won’t have to dig through our floor to do it.

At least, that’s the idea. Anyway, here are the pictures.

Sorry for the relative lack of updates. It has been a crazy week, and not in a good way. Cindy and I have been on the fast track for earning parenting experience levels, but this last week we had to fight a boss.* There have been many times when one or both of us thought we had reached the end of consequences only to find that there were still more we hadn’t tried, but this past week we truly came to the end.

It’s been a few days since things have calmed down, but not without leaving me somewhat shaken. I find myself more afraid of correcting and disciplining, which is a bad place to be for a parent. But I’ve learned quite a bit too. I thought I was pretty patient before, but I’m learning a level of patience I never knew existed except in Jesus. I’m starting to understand a lot about Jesus actually. Suddenly a lot of things about him seem more humanly possible and less like… “Well, he’s God, so of course he can do that.”

But one thing I realized is that I was using discipline as a means to control. It’s weird, because I was always aware of this danger and that this was a Bad Thing to do, yet I didn’t realize that I was doing it. When we came to the end, I realized that part of the reason I was so shaken was because I thought I had nothing left. I thought I knew that love was the best way to fight this battle, but I don’t think I realized how far love could go.

Hm, I feel like I’m rappelling again. Odd how often that keeps happening when I follow Jesus.

*This is gaming terminology. Do not take this literally.

Today is the king’s birthday here in Thailand, which also means it’s Father’s Day. We get the day off today (which is much needed, the last week or so has been really crazy and it’ll be good to just relax with the family), and I get to be treated like a king. So all in all a good day. We have plans to play games with our Kiwi gamer friends and eat Thai barbeque tonight, but we’ll see what happens.

Also, perhaps not coincidentally, today is Day of the Ninja. So even if you’re not a father, you can have something to celebrate today too.