Letters to a Graduate

Christina Jean Birmingham--Class of 2016

 

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 Christina,

From the very beginning, you have been a source of energy and happiness in our home.  Your vibrant spirit and love for life has been a wonderful complement to a family filled with often super-serious task-oriented people.  Although the busyness of life and the constant chaos of a large family can test the limits of anyone's expressions of joy, I appreciate the way that you are able to routinely cut through all of that and bring levity to our home.  Your passion for people and commitment to your family has been vital to our home and I know will continue to be.

It is my prayer that no matter what hardships, difficulties, or trials this world brings your way that you will continue to express your vibrant and loving personality in ever-increasing conformity with the character of God.  Just as the Lord has given himself for us, we are called to give of ourselves for others.  As we are all called to do as image bearers of Christ, I charge you to "in humility, count others more significant than yourself."  Philippians 2:3

 

Though there is always uncertainty in the future as well as regrets from the past, one thing that can be known with absolute confidence is the certainty of God's unending love for you and His perfect plan for your life.  I have been elated to see your passion for the Lord and his Word increase.  Our discussions on living as a Christian in a world that is aligned against a biblical worldview have been some of my happiest moments.

Paul expresses this mindset beautifully in Romans 12:2

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing, and perfect will."

No matter what path the Lord takes you on in the days ahead, always foster a discipline of thinking according to the revealed truth found in the word of God and expressed in the person of Jesus Christ.  Let his truth infuse every single aspect of your life, and you will never be able to be shaken, no matter how crazy the storms of life may be, whether coming from within or from the world around you.

You are entering a culture that systemically gives no consideration or glory to the God who is Lord over all.  It will not be easy to stand in the midst of such opposition.  But the God who loves you more than anyone will be your ever-present help.  The writer of Hebrews addresses this best, and I will paraphrase for you:  "Run with perseverance the race marked out for you, fixing your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.  Because of the joy set before him he endured the cross (death and persecution).  So consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

We love you,  

Dad

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 Dear Christina,

          As I contemplate the occasion of your high school graduation, I am amazed again by the fingerprints of God in your life.  I am grateful to your birth mom for choosing to give you life.  I am grateful for the neighbor who happened to hear you when you needed help.  I am grateful for the paramedics, policemen, and E.R. physicians who cuddled you up before my arms could, who cared for your wounds, and brought you to a safe place to recover.  I am grateful that the resident doctor who “happened” to be on call on your hospital floor that day in 2001, “happened” to be your future Daddy, so that his hands, which would be so instrumental in caring for your later needs, could also have a part in the healing of your tiny frame.  I love that you arrived on Mother’s Day.  I love how you and Rebekah captured my heart from the moment I saw you, and how you have it still.  

    

         If ever you doubt how precious you are to God, consider what had to happen to bring you all the way across the country and into our arms.  God had to blow up my plans for how and when I would have children.  He closed my womb.  That is all there is to it.  The doctors said, “There is no reason you cannot have children.”  But there was a reason!  My heart had to be opened to the possibility of YOU!  He brought the right people to speak gentle truths to us about how God might be building our family.  He softened our hearts and moved our feet into foster parent training. Then He allowed me to miss multiple placement phone calls—infants, tiny siblings—always placed  in other homes by the time I could call back.  He moved me to begin feathering my nest—for girls!  He knew!  And then He took the tragic circumstances of your early life and redeemed them, placing you where you would learn of Him, of His love for you, of the gifts He has given you, and of His plans for you.

 

         

 And what wonderful gifts you possess!  My earliest memory of you is of walking into the facility where you were brought after your release from the hospital.  There was a sweet, smiling redhead leaning against a table—and, streaking across the room, a tiny, curly-headed toddler with chubby cheeks and a great big grin. It is a perfect picture of you, as you have continued to approach life with that same spunky attitude and enthusiasm.  For better or worse, you are fearless and adventuresome.  You are brave and curious and full of wonder.  This has led you to the edge of a precipice a time or two, but God, in His providence has always provided a pair of strong hands—sometimes His, sometimes ours, sometimes others’—to pull you back.  Take this not as a desire to curb your freedom, but rather as a sign of His great love and protection!

 

  What I love about you:   Your wonderful sense of humor.  Your tenderness toward the weak, hurting, and disabled.  Your intuition and your observations about life and people.  Your industrious spirit.  Your love of music.  Your willingness to help with absolutely anything that needs doing.  Your instinctive and instructive way with children.  Your protectiveness toward your family (no beady-eyed vultures be gettin’ those boys!)  Your increasing love for and submission to the Lord.

 

          My charge to you:  In ALL your ways submit to God and He will direct your paths.  Embrace adventure, live fully, say yes to opportunity, but do it under the protective and loving gaze of your Heavenly Father.  There is freedom in His statutes and they will enable you to get the most possible joy out of life.  Make your closest friends people who love God as much as or more than you do, but never forget there is a world full of hurting people who need the love and truth that you have.  Always try to serve them and see them as God does.  Bad things will happen, but remember, God is the redeemer.  You have seen Him redeem the past and you can trust Him for the future.  He is faithful.

       And finally, I want you to know how very much we love you, how proud we are of you, and how glad we are that God has allowed us to be your parents.  You are a treasure and a gift, and I can’t wait to see what God has planned for your life! 

All my love, Mom

 

       

        

     

I, Racist or I, Human?

     I just finished reading a book about pain--specifically the pain carried by one person as he navigated the American experience as a black man, born and raised in the inner city.

        He was steeped in the poverty, violence, hopelessness, and the discrimination which is so common in urban areas, and taught to fear and hate the descendants of those who had perpetrated all the horrors of mental and physical slavery upon his ancestors. 

     He spoke of these atrocities with all the freshness of something that happened yesterday, and drew bitter lines from those days to the present, circling himself, his people, and his descendants in a protective barrier of mistrust.  

     He wrote of pale-skinned people as if we were a monolithic group, often attributing evil motives to us, and accusing "us" of waging a cultural and institutional war on him and everyone like him.


      Sometimes, he said, we act ignorantly, sometimes deliberately, but always we are acting with a will to power, within a structurally racist system, and with the subconscious need to keep minority people groups under our feet or in our pocket.

     Furthermore, I am told that I am unable to even speak to my inherent racism, having lived my whole life as a member of an intrinsically racist collective and as an unconscious beneficiary of it.  

     The book was called, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and it really was a thought-provoking read.  It was useful in that I think I better understand the great burden of anger and pain that so many African Americans carry every day.

     Maybe he is right about the inevitability and pervasiveness of racism in this country.  There are certainly large numbers of voices, both white and black, telling me he is.


     But what if they are only documenting the symptoms and not the cause?  What if the issue is more complicated than black and white, or more nuanced than the simple need for reparations, or more difficult than a government program could ever fix?  


     What if these problems don't just originate in a slave past or persist because of systemic modern-day corruption?


     What if the problem is not that some are black and some are white, but that all are human?  

     Would the solutions look any different if the problem was seen to be with the heart and not with the skin?

    As the protective mother bear of three bi-racial children, I have spent many years with my "racism radar" out, and on occasion I have found it.  


     It existed in pockets of angry ignorance, among small, bitter-spirited individuals.  Sometimes it came from strangers, and sometimes I found it in people who were close enough to me to know better.  

     I am happy to say, that in every case where I encountered racist rhetoric or attitudes from friends or relatives, the sweetness and beauty of my individual children and the relationships they established worked to erase those negative attitudes.


     I never drew my children's attention to comments I heard, and always told them to assume the best about others, and to this day, my 18 year old daughter cannot think of a circumstance where she felt diminished or discriminated against because of her color.  


    But even that, I am told, is evidence that I have stripped her of part of her birthright as a woman of color, specifically her "black-consciousness".  I have read a number of posts that intimate that without a connection with a larger collective black identity, a person of African descent is missing authentic personhood--i.e. identification of her "true self".


     So what does this mean for her and my other two racially mixed children?  Does being raised by white parents make her less of a person in the eyes of other African Americans?  

     Does her adoption make me akin to a modern day slaver, stripping my black children away from their roots and community in order to satisfy my desire to be a mom?  Or, as I've read, to exert my continuing superiority over African Americans by "saving" black babies from being raised by their own distinctive cultures due to my low opinion of that culture--in short, my subconscious desire to be the "white savior" to the black race?

      I read these arguments and I try to understand them.  I hear more and more Christians condemning my for the racism I am doomed to participate in simply because of the color I was born.  I am told I cannot even speak about the topic coherently because I am so steeped in it--"like a fish isn't qualified to talk about the water he is in because he knows nothing else." 

     I know that ignorance of a sin does not absolve a person of its guilt, but if I am not qualified to examine my own motives for adopting and loving my children, then who is?    

       It seems to me that racism, like so many sins, is born of the mistrust between all humans everywhere who are different in some way from one another.  It is also born of selfishness--the desire of one person or group to exalt himself/itself at the expense of another.

       The tangled and messy history of relations between the white and black folks of this country is a story that has been played out thousands upon thousands of times throughout human history in countless other places. 


    It has happened here among people of different colors.  It is happening in the Middle East among people of different religions.  It is happening even today on the continent of Africa among people of different tribes.   

      I think this is one of the problems I have with accusing white parents of stealing the black experience from their children.

     What really is the "African culture" which helps to comprise the "black consciousness?"  Ta-nehesi Coates refers often to the attitudes and attributes that black people have retained from "mother Africa", as if the vast African continent with its 50 plus countries, its 2,000 plus languages, its 3,000 plus unique tribes, and its billion plus individuals could possibly give birth to something called " the black experience".  


     In my opinion, such beautiful diversity does not deserve such a broad brush.


     As in this country, there are people there living in communities shaped by dire poverty and people living in vast wealth.  There are individuals who struggle daily with drought and famine and those living in lush landscapes.  There are urban cultures and rural cultures, people accustomed to war and people living in relative peace.  


     They eat different foods, wear different clothing, sing differently, dance differently, think differently, organize their communities differently, raise their children differently, and practice religion differently.  


     How patronizing it seems to lump them all into one, monolithic cultural group based on the darkness of their skin! 


     Even in this country, I think it is simplistic to talk about the "black experience", as if every person of color is marching through their life here in some deterministic lock-step.  There are people of color descended from slaves, and people who immigrated freely.  There are farmers, business owners, educators, artists, athletes, tradespeople, and engineers.  Country folk and city dwellers.  Heroes and villains.  It seems to me that black Americans, like all Americans, live rich and varied lives.  

      So what exactly is the "black culture" I should be giving to my children?  Too much of the literature I am reading seems to indicate that a good part of it involves a constant dredging up and meditation on horror and injustice, the inherent mistrust of others based on the color of their skin, and justifying and excusing the misbehavior of a small segment of lawless and irresponsible young men who insist on terrorizing their own neighborhoods.  If that is the case, then I will take a pass on giving that legacy to my bi-racial children.  


     Like others of  partially African descent, my children have some shared physical features, but that does not define them.

     Neither does this:  my bi-racial children all came from backgrounds of poverty and sadness, and they all tragically lost their first families. They all suffered through a season of uncertainty before we brought them home, and none of them look like the people who are raising them--but even with these shared traits they STILL cannot be painted with a broad brush.



     They are individuals and the way they have responded to every event in their lives is unique to them.  


     What they share with one another more than anything else, is a history of early pain that no child should have to endure on this earth.  The indignities they endured didn't happen to their great-great grandparents.  They didn't just happen to people somewhere who had skin like theirs, or hair like theirs, or genetic material like theirs.  


     Injustice happened to THEM, and since that time we have spent our lives trying to help them redeem the evil that was done.  


     This means helping them to see the infinite value they possess before the God who created them.  

     It means surrounding them with a community of people who affirm their worth as human beings.  

     It means teaching them how to forgive as we would want to be forgiven.  


     It means giving them a safe place in which to process their pain, trauma, and loss, and helping them understand a world that creates people who would hurt children-- so that they will know that they were not to blame for their parents' bad decisions.  

     It means helping them look for ways to minister to others who have been through hard times.  

     It means choosing to focus on the goodness and potential within them instead of dwelling on the pain and scars.


     Because there is no power in victim-hood.  The power lies in grace and the ability to acknowledge the reality of evil and yet not give it a foothold.  

     It seems to me that when life is viewed through a prism of grievances (either real or perceived), you forfeit your power to rise above them, becoming instead defined by your hopelessness and anger.  


     My children have the "right" to be embittered, distrustful, defensive, and angry, but those are rights I hope they will lay down.  

     I want them to have compassion for their birth parents.  I want them to see themselves as strong and capable and beautiful, not as impotent or damaged, and to live lives so bright and hopeful that others will want to lay down their pain and follow after.  


     After everything else, I would hate to see them imprisoned in their own never-ending nightmare of finger pointing and injustice collecting.  

     I have told them about the atrocities that happened during the Civil War, about the wrongs that were committed during the Civil Rights Movement and since then, but only so they can see the kind of tendencies we are all prone to when we consider our own selfish interests and do not choose to build bridges to one another--not so they can add to the list of ways they have been held back (or may be held back in the future).


     I think this is what I wish I could tell Ta-Nehisi Coates and the other people who are spending their lives in an endless blame game.  No one wins. 

      I'm not saying that we should never speak of humans in terms of shared characteristics or experiences, and I will be the first to say we should advocate on behalf of those who have been mistreated, but I wonder greatly at the wisdom of taking the horrors of the past and endlessly projecting them onto present and future generations of their descendants.  


     I also reject the idea that I, whose ancestors did not even live here during that awful time, am guilty of the crimes of slavery and racism, simply because I happen to suffer from the same lack of melanin as those who were guilty.  


     What if we all drew lines back?   I came from Viking stock, which means I probably owe  reparations to some native Swedes.  

     But then I also had some Moravian ancestors, who underwent severe persecution for several hundred years, routinely being forced to flee, losing their property, and being martyred for their beliefs.   

Several hundred years of being hunted down for the simple desire to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience!  Who should be held responsible for those horrors?  Maybe I should start a movement.


     But then, another line of my family tree comes up through the Kentucky Hatfields, who perpetrated horrendous murders and assassinations against the McCoy men, women, and children for several decades.  Where is the justice for the families burned in their sleep and young children tied to trees and shot? 


     But then, I am also a woman, a demographic which has been treated as chattel for thousands of years, and which continues to be subjected to the whims of the stronger sex even to this day.  

     What should be the price for the countless innocents of my own kind whose voices have been silenced and whose rights have been and continue to be trampled?  

     More recently, on separate occasions I have been personally scorned for having a large family, rudely questioned about the validity of my decision to homeschool, and made fun of for my Christian beliefs.  Shall I start a personal list of grievances and make sure my children learn it young?


     We live in a world full of misunderstandings, prejudice, fear, greed, and mistrust.  It comes out in various forms of ugliness until either the persecuted group rises up to address the wrongs, or another group rises up on its behalf--or both. 


      And so it goes.  Down and down through the entire sordid history of the human race.  


     So what is the answer to this dilemma?

     As with so much, it all comes back to God for me. Christianity, specifically--a faith which so beautifully lays out how the path to knowing God--opens the door to being able to love others well.  

     It is, first of all, supremely counter-intuitive, which is why I think children often understand it so quickly.  

     They are not thrown by apparent contradictions--the idea of a Savior loving us by dying for us...

     ...the call to find our lives by losing them...

     ...the idea that the last could be first, that weakness is strength, that humility is power, that in laying down our rights we are made royalty, that beyond our visible end is an invisible and infinitely better beginning. ..

     ...the truth that there is no "Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free", but that we are all one race of infinite worth, showing our beauty in thousands of different colors, cultures, features, sizes, ages, interests, and abilities.

     I have told my children that because we have been forgiven much, we need to forgive much.  And that since we can never out-forgive God, we have no right to keep a ledger against anyone else.  Ever.  

     So maybe the reason my girl can't recall being the victim of racism is that she chooses not to be one.  

     I have heard her laugh off inadvertent comments made by friends.  I have heard her graciously field awkward questions posed to her by children.  I have seen her smile at the rudeness of strangers who say with surprise right in front of her, "Is she yours?"  

     If one day she bears the brunt of a more violent form of discrimination, be it in a racial, religious, or moral context, I trust that even though she was raised by white folks, she will still know that she is perfectly loved by the One who made her, and be able to lay that injustice in His hands and walk forward.    

     Brown and beautiful and uniquely her.  

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 Micah 6:8

"What does the Lord require of us?  To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God."

A Post About Nothing

OK.  Please do not read this post unless you literally have nothing else to do.  

Literally. Nothing.  

It is devoid of anything useful, profound, thought-provoking, or meaningful.  It is a chocolate frosted bubble.  

A hollow belch into the blogosphere.  

Vacuous fiddle-faddle.  

If you are debating between reading this or surfing over to You Tube to watch videos of laughing goats, all I have to say is, "Hang ten, Sister!"

And say "hi" to the goats. It will be time better spent.

Honestly, I am simply typing to keep myself awake at Tim Horton's until Christina's symphony rehearsal is over.

Why are you still reading?  Don't you believe me? 

Whatever.  You've been warned, and I can offer no refunds for the squandered minutes of your life.

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A Letter to My Bed:

Dear Bed,

So, not long ago, I bought this pillow.  

It was clever, I thought, and at the time I really believed it.  I gave it a place of honor on a chair near you, remember?  And I snickered over it every night as I rolled into our room...

...well past midnight.  

It made me smile and feel--let's be honest--vaguely superior to all the plebes who needed a solid seven in order to function.

"Ha!" I thought. "Sleep is for sissies, divas, small children, and old people.  I have better things to do than waste precious time lying unconscious in my bed."


 Well, today, I just want to say,  "I'm so sorry."  

And then I just want to say, "I'm so tired."

I'm the kind of tired that forgets what she is saying mid-sentence.  

I'm the kind of tired that catches herself staring for long minutes into the fridge, into the pantry, into the dairy case at Walmart--into the small face of a talking child-- unable to remember why I am there and what I am supposed to do next.  

I am the kind of tired that puts the cheese in the silverware drawer.

You know me, Bed.

I wasn't always like this. Growing up, I was devoted to you.  In fact, I'm pretty sure you were my first true love.  I slept as late as possible every morning from birth and napped voluntarily all the way through high school and part of the way into college.  

I relished the feeling of sinking into my pillow in broad daylight, listening to the lazy drone of lawn mowers and airplanes and delivery trucks outside my window.  

There was something delicious about knowing that I was choosing to shut down while everyone else was still stuck on the hamster wheel of productivity.  Two hours later I would wake up in a post-concussive haze, blinking at my pillow as I tried to figure out who and where I was.  Ahhh, bliss!

For years, you and I were the best of friends.  It was in college, I think, that we had our first falling out.  Halfway through my first semester I realized that my grade-point might be improved by giving up my regular 2-4pm siesta.  I never told you, but I think that deep down I blamed you for the B minus I carried in botany that year.  

I guess I thought you could have told me sooner that the time we were spending together was threatening my brilliant science career.  But you didn't.

And, Bed, it drove a wedge.  I still loved you, but I began to prioritize my life away from you.  My grade point rose.  I realized that I could see you a lot less and still function very well.

My social life improved.  The less time we spent together, the less I felt I needed you.  I discovered the heady feeling of productivity.

And you lost my heart.  

Did you feel it?  Did you notice my absence?  I shudder to think of those nights when I only spent three, four, maybe five hours with you--but you knew I wasn't really "there"--that I was just using you to get me back up and out into the real business of busyness.

But then, college gave way to marriage and children and suddenly I began to see what I had missed for so long.  Oh!  How I saw it!  At every 2 o'clock (and 3 o'clock, and 4 o'clock) feeding, as I stumbled out of your warm depths to retrieve a squalling infant, I promised myself that I would make it up to you someday.  You recaptured my heart, soul, and imagination.  I would sit in my rocking chair in the middle of the night and torture myself with the thought of spending one. Whole. Night.

With you.  

But then, something happened.  Even after the children were long past midnight feedings, I didn't return to your blissful depths any more than I absolutely had to.  

It wasn't that I didn't love you.  I did.  But after so many years of living apart, I grew used to our separate lives.  It sounds like a cliche (because it is. duh.) but we grew apart.  

And life moved on.  It wasn't anything you did, Bed, it was me.  At some point I looked back over the years that had passed since we spent significant time together, and realized that our interests had simply gone in different directions.  

You wanted to hold down the bedroom floor like always, because that is just you!  As constant as the stars above. As sure as death and taxes (wait.  that may be not be the cliche I'm looking for...)

As reliable as the sunrise (better)--and I love that about you!  I do!  Its just that after 12 hours with the kids, I needed some space.  Frankly, I wanted to be awake with just myself.  

For as long as possible.

(And with Jamey--but I don't want you to blame him!  This is really all on me.  You need to know this.)  

With all the other responsibilities I carried at that time, I wasn't sure I wanted to dive back into another serious relationship.  

Even though your dreams of a future with me might never come to pass, I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you.  

I know you care about me, and I want you to know, I have filled those long nights away from you with good things.  Important things.  

Like washing all the kitchen counters and cleaning dog drool off the floor and then standing in the room and watching it stay clean for five straight minutes.  

Or wandering from room to room and listening to...nothing but sweet, heavenly silence.

Or walking downstairs and forgetting why and getting distracted by one of the projects I didn't finish earlier and then going back to grab something from upstairs (for the project) and  seeing another half-finished project and  remembering that THAT project was why I went downstairs in the first place.  

And don't forget the Family Ties reruns that only come on after midnight!  Good times! 

Sometimes I like to stay up and read a whole article at once.  And then get a snack.  And then read another whole article.  And then get another snack...

Or when it gets really late, and Jamey and I can't remember how to navigate from the couch to our room, we'll sit and click on our friends' You Tube videos.  Or watch random cat clips, or virtuoso accordion performances, or incredible moments in sports.    

Sleep is important, Bed, but so are these things!  Can you see why it has been so hard to come back to you when my late nights are bursting with all these meaningful experiences?  

Can you even put a price on a 2a.m. smorgasbord of ice cream, Captain Crunch, and honey-mustard pretzels?

You can?

Two cents?

Seriously.  You sound bitter.  

What are you saying?  

Well I'm saying that I'm tired during the day because I am old, not because I should get to bed earlier.  

Oh really!  That isn't fair.  Don't bring the kids into this.  

OK, fine!  Go ahead and ask the kids.  They will tell you I am fully functioning during daylight hours.  

Any head bobbing during read-alouds is simply a series of neck stretches I like to do every day between 2 and 4.  Lots of moms do them.

Slurring in algebra!  Who said that?  Well, his ears are sometimes iffy.  How many times do I have to call him before he even shows up for his seat work?  

What?  Garbled emails?  I have no idea...exactly who have you been talking to, Mr. "I'm-Just-Sitting-Here-Under-A-Mound-Of-Pillows-Looking-Cute"?

What about the pillows?  

Excessive?  No.  I don't think so at all.  I'm pretty sure Martha Stewart or Oprah or Gandhi once said there is no such thing as too many pillows.  It is a decorating law.  The world is full of beautiful pillows and you are basically a blank canvas, with (apparently) TOO MUCH time on your hands and a critical spirit to boot.  

You know, Bed, if you disagreed with my sleeping habits so strongly all these years, I'd like to know why you never said anything until right now.  If I have been killing brain cells and losing motor skills and writing crazy emails to my kids' teachers due to sleep deprivation all these years, it seems to me that a real friend would have said something before now. 

Yes.  That's exactly what I'm saying.  It makes me wonder. 

You know, I was going to say I had thought twice about my new pillow.  

That maybe you and I could make a new start and build on the friendship we once had, but I don't know now.  

If I'm going to give up midnight Pringles and late night cleaning binges, it has to be for something real, Bed, and honestly, I just don't know where you and I stand.  

A relationship has to allow for growth and change and I just don't feel that from you.  

Frankly, its sad after all we've been through, but I'm not giving up.  Maybe you just need a little more time to think.

And a few more pillows;)

Love, Sandra