I don't want to get into this topic because it is way too complicated for Monday morning, and I don't want you to think I don't care about the 147 Million Orphans living in the world, but this discussion my family had last night made me laugh and laugh, and I thought everyone could use a Monday morning laugh. Unfortunately it does touch on complicated subjects, so please suspend any judgment of me and enjoy the laugh. Thanks!
So at dinner I was talking to my husband and our friend about the verse James 1:27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world," and that some Christians seem to take that verse as a call to all Christians to adopt. However, I haven't found much on-line about how Christians should care for the widow (June is apparently widow month, but I couldn't find out when Widow Sunday was).
So I said, because the idea is funny to me, "That the equivalent would be to have a call to all single Christian men to marry widows. In fact, (I do not actually believe we should do this!) maybe we should throw out the rules against bigamy and have all Christian men marry a widow or two."
My six year old said, "or throw out Daddy to make room for some widows in our house!"
My ten year old said, "but that would make Mommy a widow and who would take care of her?"
Sorry, it just went down hill from there, because really all I could think of was 4 or 5 widowed ladies sharing my room and my tiny master bath while my husband lived in the car!
Well, I hope it makes you smile; I'm off to buy some bunk beds to make room for all my new roommates.
I have lots of profound thoughts swimming in my head to share with my 5 readers, but even though I had a great day at MOPS and a short nap in the afternoon, my head hurts, so I'll leave the profound for another day.
However, in the interest of documenting our adoption process, I thought I would share this story.
When we first started this process, we bought some Learn Mandarin CD's. We didn't think it would be sufficient to actually learn it, but maybe, just maybe by listening to them we would pick up on a little and be more prepared to learn the language with our child when she is ready to learn one of the languages of her birth country. (We have a LID of 8/15/2006).
So my husband and I were sitting on the couch listening to the CD's when Huckleberry (now 10, then 6) came downstairs and asked what we were doing.
We explained. He looked puzzled and said, "won't it be easier to teach her English than for all 4 (there are now 5) of us to learn Chinese?"
Ha! If we can all learn Mandarin that would be terrific, but Yes, we will be teaching her English.
My husband thinks that based on yesterday's post I'm taking all this adoption stuff too seriously. He hasn't read all the books yet, so probably I am taking it more seriously than he, but while I think it is serious stuff, I don't want to be too serious. I'm thinking maybe I didn't communicate exactly what I wanted yesterday. I certainly don't want you to fear that I will class my child as a victim and wallow in anger and grief for her woe-as-me life. I certainly can't hold grudges for people saying things in innocence--I really do get in trouble for this myself all of the time!
So lest you think I am a too serious person (in real life I have the reputation of being funny and organized--my two most frequently used descriptions!), I thought I would share my mother's favorite joke. *Warning* it may offend the PC police and Animal Rights Activists.
A man walked out of a bar highly inebriated followed by his pet alligator. As he weaved down the street the alligator said, "drunk."
"Stop it," said the man.
"Drunk," said the alligator.
"I said, stop it!"
"Drunk, drunk, drunk..."
"Stop it. I mean it! If you say it one more time I will turn you inside out!"
"Drunk!"
"That's it!" Now envision me reaching my arm out and pulling it back as I say: the man reached down into the alligator's mouth, past his teeth, through his stomach and all the way to the tip of his tail and grabbed the inside of the tail and pulled it all the way through the stomach, the mouth and back past the teeth.
"There! That should do it." The man and alligator started walking again.
"Knurd! Knurd! Knurd!"
Now don't judge my mom too harshly, her tastes may have changed over time had she lived. However, she did punish me for telling my sister this joke I had read in Readers' Digest:
"You were adopted, (dramatic pause) but they brought you back."
Now you are probably thinking my friends mean I am funny peculiar and not funny ha ha, but I choose to live the lie. Thank you very much.
