This Road To Damascus Experience

I feel as though I've been a bad blogger lately. Touching on some of the lighter things going on around us. Avoiding the blogger log-in button in a similar fashion to the way I sometimes clean the house, in order to avoid working on our budget.

Last Friday I started Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace. And, as of tonight I have finished it. It was my second time around and this time more thought-provoking that the first...though it's been about ten years.

Three days ago, I picked up my copy of From Ashes To Africa. Josh and Amy Bottomly recount their journey from early marriage, through the trials of barrenness, all the way to Africa. Specifically, their journey leads them to Ethiopia and their son, Silas. Their lives will never be the same and they are now sharing their memoir. My copy arrived in the mail Tuesday mid-afternoon. I finished for the first time at 8am on Wednesday. I read it again this afternoon. While it's not a really short book, the 180 pages are a relatively easy read. (I'm open to lending it out, if you want to borrow my copy!)

I have to say, I'm one of those people who cannot put something down once it has been started. I have to finish whatever sewing project it is I have started, that same day. I like magazines because I can read one article start to finish in minimal time. Ben just completed a puzzle (a tough one) started on Boxing Day. I'm in awe that he kept going back. I couldn't attempt to even start something so overwhelming.

You get the point - reading a novel is challenging for me because it can be hard to start and finish all in one long sitting. But finding works as heart-wrenching, soul searching, mind changing, and spirit seeking as the two I've read lately is refreshing.

While there were several parts of the Josh & Amy Bottomly's life together which I couldn't relate to, such as a rocky early-years marriage and infertility, the openness of their words and thoughts gave me that "uh huh" feeling in my gut over and over. They don't riddle their book with statistics. They don't point fingers repeatedly. They don't linger on the devastating poverty that is most parts of Africa. Instead, they offer hope. They open the door a crack and allow the reader to empathize, energize, and strive to attain this common goal of eradicating "stupid poverty". And, while they correctly state that most people avoid looking at the manifestations of "stupid poverty" (hunger, illiteracy, disease...), they have chosen the path less travelled.

Josh shared with the reader what his mentor Ken Gire once told him:

[...] any time art touches your life with tears, whether through a story, song, film, or painting, it was wise to pay attention to those tears because your tears could help you find your heart. And if you found your heart, you found what was dear to God. If you found what was dear to God, you found the answer to how you should live your life.

I think this really struck me because it was while watching some short Ethiopian Adoption video clips that it became clear what was dear to my God...the answer to how I should live my life. And that answer of course is what Kenny tells Emmy in Invisible Children's, "The Story Of Emmy"...

Pointing to their two vials of blood, Kenny tells Emmy, "You see, we're not so different, you and me. We share the same colour of blood."

Josh reminds the reader a few pages shortly thereafter, of the responsibility handed to him and to me, also.

I [have] been chosen for the privileged responsibility of participating in one of God's many projects to bring order to the chaos on the earth, and more specifically, I [have been] called to do this in the life of one Ethiopian child.

I loved how throughout their journey the Bottomly's were so candid. They offered no great expertise, other than their personal experience. They suggested no "do this and do that" list for adoption, travel, and post-adoption "what the??!!" experiences. What they shared was deeply personal. Rocked to the core by what life had handed them. At the risk of being cliche, they took their lemons, fumbled around for awhile, sought the will of their Maker, and quenched their thirst in the lemon-aide only He could have helped squeeze.

Josh addresses what it is in our life that makes us slow down, listen, and follow. He suggests the phenomenon which brings us together...that reconnects us with others.

Suffering

In Philippians 3:10, Paul addresses this and declares, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering". As Josh and Amy candidly remind us, community does not simply occur. It is a product of suffering together - and it is earned.

And though all this worldly suffering is not necessary, as Amy states...

.

In a world put back to rights, Ethiopia would never have to open her borders again to outsides like me to come in and adopt their children. Instead orphanages would be filled with empty beds, and adoption organizations would shut down.

...I am privileged to have been chosen to not simply "feel compassion for the poor". I am required to "become compassion in flesh-and-blood".

And that is quite another thing.