Holy Crap…(time flies)

I just had sort of a flashback.  I’m sitting in the Westridge Mall in Fargo ND (as if there were ‘ridges’ in Fargo) in about the exact spot that I started my rather sporadic blogging career somewhere in 2004 or so.

I was looking for my “Call”; God’s direction for my life and what I was to do to serve Him.  I began that year locating telephone cable and ended the year working as a Services Coordinator for Synstelien Community Services.  My last post to this blog (prior to this) was made in October of 2008.

In early November of 2008 I was given the responsibilities and title of Executive Director for Synstelien Community Services, a position I’ve held and started to grow into these past eight months.

Birth…

Five puppies (two girls and three boys) were born to our Shih-Tzu this morning. Our next ten fourteen weeks will be very busy.  We’ve taken many photographs.

Tilting at Windmills…

About a year ago in the context of my work I saw a clip from Facing the Giants. In this clip a young man, a leader of his football team, was asked by his coach to stretch himself, to go much further than he thought he could. After viewing that clip a member of our team commented that the movie, though produced by Christians, would be unfairly receiving a “PG” rather than a “G” rating. I sort of laughed to myself at the time that we somehow suppose that we are so pure of motive that everything we do deserves a “G” rating; or even that a “G” rating was good…as if “PG”, for “Parental Guidance” – a concept we esteem highly, was a bad thing. I guess it’s somewhat normal to try to apply “value” to every scale.

Today we rented and saw the movie.

Based upon the theological principles presented in the movie I learned two things; the first about me and the second about the Christology of American Evangelicals (at least as presented in the film):

The film’s main character, Grant Taylor and I have infertility in common. Well, the film never came right out and mentioned the S-word, but it was easy enough to put the pieces together that his doctor’s assessment was that Grant was not doing his part in the baby-creation department. What I learned (sarcasm alert) was that I have not yet turned over to Christ all that I should; Grant did and got his wife pregnant. If I was as good a Christian as Grant is my wife would be pregnant too – not just once but twice.

I also learned a lot about the nature of Jesus – His heavenly kingdom is really sort of a merit-based materials distribution system. When we do the right thing we get stuff, better stuff and more stuff.

In summation; the message of this film is that being ‘blessed’ means ‘getting stuff’ and that earthly ‘blessing’ is based upon earthly merit.

As a visual artist and as a follower of Jesus I’m appalled at the lack of devotion to craft, to quality and depth; as a mere Christian I’m appalled at the lack of sensitivity, the immature, selfish and materialistic theology demonstrated in this film.

Adoption Update…Waiting

We recently got news that our “referral” from China has been delayed again.  We were originally hoping for a “fly to China date” in late fall of 2007, but then it got pushed to the winter of 2008 and now we are facing a date in the summer of 2008.  However, going by the increased waiting times each month, we figure it’ll be more like November of 2008 or later.  It was disheartening, to say the least, and we thought maybe we’d need to check into other options.  We prayed and talked and looked into other countries and found we are only eligible to adopt (our choice of younger than 2 years) from Ethiopia with our current agency, but since we don’t feel called to that country, we’ll stay the course with China and wait our 2 years plus from our Log in Date of 11-6-06.  (Other countries are not only more expensive, but have lower age regulations and sometimes large amounts of time “in country” that we can’t afford.)   We’ve thought about trying to do a domestic adoption through another agency in the meantime, but I’m a bit weary and ragged right now when I think of another paperwork process and more expense (it feels too overwhelming) so we’ll see what the next month brings.  Guess we need to remember as Frank Peretti once said, “the wealth is in the waiting”…or at least the growth of character is.  It just doesn’t feel like it when you’re in the midst of it.

The next paperwork part of our China adoption will take place in November of 2007 when we’ll need to update our expired Home Study, Fingerprints, and our Immigration paperwork.  These deadlines have been pushed back in hopes that we won’t have to do them a third time before we fly to China.

As you think of us, we’d appreciate your continued prayers for us to grow in trust and submission to our heavenly Father, through this.  Thank you. 

We know that when we finally receive our daughter, the joy will be unspeakable and the frustrations and disappointments of the waiting time will have melted away.

Deciding to Become American…

From a post by myself over at Boar’s Head Tavern; a response to a racial discrimination conversation. 

Hi, my name is Kent. I’m an American guy from the state of Minnesota. My wife and I are trying to adopt a little girl from a place called China. We’re like a lot of other infertile couples; we just want a family. To some people we probably won’t look like a family because we won’t look alike. But we’ll be a family. I’m going to teach my daughter a lot about the country she came from, but mostly I’m going to teach her how to become an American. I’m pretty sure that sometime when I’m holding her we’ll compare the color of our skin; and I’m pretty sure hers will be darker than mine.

In what seems a long time from now we’re going to fly to China to pick her up. I’m planning to weep three times, but it might be more than that. I’m planning to weep when I first find her in my arms; I’m planning to weep when I’m standing on American soil in China getting her a passport and starting her on her journey to becoming an American; and I’m planning to weep when our plane lands in America.

I’m looking forward to all of this because it will remind me about what it means to be American; and because it will be a great story to tell my daughter so that she will know how she became an American. Some of us became Americans because we decided to, others because someone decided for us. I’m going to teach my daughter what it means to be an American so that she’ll understand why I’ll make this decision for her.

Painful News…

We’ve just received news from our adoption agency that the China Center for Adoption Affairs is continuing to increase the wait time (they have each month) because they can’t handle the demand for the number of referrals requested each month.  At this point, Kent and I won’t even receive a referral for a child until July of 2008 and that will likely increase by eight months or more before we get to our Log in Date of 11-6-06, going by the current increase in waiting times each month!

 We’re both deeply disappointed and (I for one am crying a lot today).  Basically, what this means for us is that we have to consider our options and possibly choose another country or something.  Kent’s age is becoming a bigger problem as we’ve hoped to adopt under 18 months and countries (on average) aren’t allowing more than a 45 year gap between child and parent.  (Kent is 47 this year.)  Even China has recently changed their standards in this area, but we were “grandfathered” in.  Not to mention the expenses are increasing each year and as the wait increases, more of our documents expire and have to be redone.

Please pray for us to understand God’s will and His direction.  We’re pretty heart broken right now.

The Runge Adoption Journey…

Many of you already know that Kent and I are in the middle of adopting an infant girl from China, but some of you do not, so this is to officially let you all know and to share our journey with you. After we finish our “paper pregnancy” or “paper chase” as it is often called, we will wait approximately 14 months for a referral from Chinese officials and then fly to China, sometime in early 2008, to get our daughter!

We’ve experienced fear and frustration along the way, but have learned that if we keep our eyes and hearts on the goal, it helps our focus tremendously. The “paper chase” part of this journey takes some serious perseverance, patience, and commitment, but anything worth doing in life takes that, right? We sum up the “paper chase” with this phrase, “hurry up and wait”!

The following are the details of our journey so far, but it is not for the faint of heart nor those in a hurry, as I am extremely detail oriented and I can get pretty “wordy”, so it may take you awhile to read; consider yourself warned.

A Statement of Faith…

If anything ever takes away that last .01% of synergism that I hang onto it will be this:

Throughout the 12.33 years of our marriage we’ve been struggling to have children. For a while after discovering our infertility we decided that medical intervention was not God’s ‘best will’ so we waited and prayed for him to either heal our ‘bodies’ or our ‘hearts’, i.e., to make a miracle in our ‘bodies’ or to make our ‘hearts’ ok for us to be without children. As we sought prayer and support within our local body we became accustomed to a certain amount of insensitivity from well-meaning and clueless people, i.e., “God has shown me a full quiver in your future”, “I know just how you feel, it took us seven months to get pregnant with our fifth child…”, “You need to claim healing and read _____, __:__ ___ number of times per day”, “I know this sounds crazy but what you need to do is adopt, then you’ll get pregnant”.

Great advice all of it (jn), but in reality their formulae don’t work. Likely this is a big factor in my resistance to modern formulaic evangelical christianity.

We are in a different place right now, and thoughout this last calendar year have pursued medical treatments and interventions meant to circumvent our infertility. We’ve not yet had a pregnancy, but we are hopeful and have committed ourselves to continue the effort for about four more attempts. We really wanted to trust in God to heal, but it wasn’t happening…

But recently we’ve both noticed in our conversations about this with our fellow members of the Body of Christ a particular and recurrent theme that plays out with frightening regularity and varying terminology sounding something like this:

“Yeah, I really believe that when God works some things out in your life He’s going to bless your desire to have children.”

Somebody in our past also made a statement:

“I’ve prayed and I think that Kent just needs to go through some healing and then God will give you children.”

I don’t know if anybody’s ever read Real Live Preacher’s story but he describes how I feel. Frankly, I don’t believe in the same capricious and manipulative God that many of my brothers and sisters in Jesus do, which of course brings up a the very good point of ‘why are you calling them brother and sisters’ then?

Well, ok, that’s a good point. But yesterday Laurie and I had a long discussion related to how abusive this false assertion has become. We know it’s false because we see tons of people who conceive children as easily as I pass gas and have not yet been ‘healed’ and have zero parental tendencies or skills.

In short, we have both come to realize that a pivotal aspect of the nature of the ‘relationship with God’ that we were both ’sold at the door’ so to speak of Christianity is, in reality, false. This realization has become a very big deal for my wife as it totally changes her understanding of God, His nature and how He manifests Himself in creation and the lives of His children. She truly believes that there is nowhere where she can fellowship where she can relate and participate with other believers on her new basis of understanding. She became a believer when she was 12 so to her this is a readjustment of everything she believes she’s known nearly her whole life.

Through it all what is most amazing is that we still believe in Jesus, the Son of God and man who takes away the sin of the world. The simple Gospel prevails…

iTunes, the Future, and Unspeakable Joy…

I’ve grown to love iTunes, first because it takes me back into the world of Apple, from which I unwillingly and painfully departed in the early nineties. Second because I’m able to make a note when I’m out in the world about a song I hear or think about and for less than the price of a diet pop I can add that song to my collection.

I’ve been listening to country music lately, which is a predilection I acquired only when I “went rural” about this time of year back in 1990. Somehow or another in the recent course of my life and work or wherever I’ve heard two country songs, My Front Porch Lookin’ In by Lonestar and Little Bitty by Alan Jackson, that I’ve fallen in love with. They speak to this moment of time in my life, a moment when I’m thinking about family, raising children and investing in the future.

Through ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) we are able to anticipate having children, we now have at least as good a chance at conceiving as a “normal” couple. We need help, but it’s far from hopeless, it’s highly likely that we can expect a normal pregnancy in the next year and a subsequent pregnancy when we so choose after the first.

There has never been a time in our lives that we did not want to have a family, to raise children. When we first encountered our infertility we were crushed, but now we have hope. We are filled with unspeakable joy.

My Front Porch Lookin’ In
There’s a carrot top that can barely walk with a sippy cup of milk,
A little blue-eyed blond with her shoes on wrong ’cause she likes to dress herself,
And the most beautiful girl, holdin’ both of them,
And the view I love the most is my front porch lookin’ in
–LonestarLittle Bitty
A good ol’ boy and a pretty little girl,
Start all over in a little bitty whirl,
A little bitty plan and a little bitty dream,
It’s all part of a little bitty scheme.
–Alan Jackson

Hope Springs…….Eventually…

My wife’s been battling with hope. To be more accurate, she’s been struggling with having her hopes dashed, being able to have children is chief among these dashed hopes. We had planned to have children with zero delay after our marriage, we wanted to start a family right away as we felt that a big part of what families are all about is raising children. We both worked with kids when we got married, Laurie teaching Sunday School, me teaching Sunday School, working with the youth group and in my daily work, I was a Youth Advocate for Colorado West Mental Health in Grand Junction Colorado.

Well, it didn’t happen, we turned out to be infertile, and it hurt. It hurt to see our friends and family have children, it hurt to hear a nephew named with a name we’d considered. It hurt and made us angry to see young unmarried girls have children that were “accidents”. We struggled with understanding why God would give children to people less fit than us. Why bother hoping if God wasn’t going to answer our prayer?

Right now we’re considering pursuing another course of action that, should it prove successful, we’d become parents. In discussing this course of action, and our desire to be parents with our pastor, he pointed out that we needed to examine ourselves to determine whether “becoming parents” had become an idol to us. He told us that one way we could tell that we had made it an idol, that we were pursuing parenthood in our own flesh was by watching our anxiety level. If we were anxious about this method, if we were going to be devastated should this method fail, than likely we had raised “parenthood” to idolotry.

Hebrews 11 says that “Faith is being sure of what we hope for…”, but it goes on to talk about the saints of old, who knew they were “sojourners” and “strangers” here on earth. In other words, what they hoped for was not what they’d receive on earth, what they hoped for was what they’d receive in death, ressurection, eternal life. Luke 11 tells us the story of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray; he goes on to ask them “what Father being asked for bread would give a stone?” He then tells them to ask the Father in heaven to give them the Holy Spirit, the bread of life.

It ain’t in, and it ain’t about this world. It’s all about the next…Hope Springs…Eventually…