Guest: A Hard Conversation With Myself

My Life Is Crazy Too is a new series of reader submissions. This is your opportunity to share stories about life, love, and mommyhood to provide understanding, hope, and compassion in the unique situations each of us face every day. If you would like to submit a story to this series, email me. Today’s crazy guest is Alisa Martin. {updated with new family photos}

I started thinking about this as we were completing our second adoption. Fund-raising. And can I just say we did a lot of fund-raising, which was probably what made me think long and hard about it—coffee, t-shirts, celebration cards, garage sales, silent auctions—and I’m sure I left something out. Oh, yeah, begging. But that doesn’t count, does it?
With the adoption of our first son from Ethiopia we weren’t very schooled in fundraising, so we didn’t really make any grand attempts at it. Yet we were still blessed to bring Micah home without incurring any debt. I was working part-time, which helped a little. And we had some very special Brothers and Sisters in the Lord make some very generous donations toward our adoption expenses, which helped a lot!!

Even still with our second adoption I think I lost a little faith. God did such miracles to bring our Micah home that I really just expected to have to suck it up with Judah. So the fund-raising ensued.
But something really started to haunt me as we pursued different fund-raising efforts. I was asking others to give toward our adoption, but what was I willing to give?? Or maybe give up is the better question. I’m a stay-at-home mom and my husband is a minister, so we don’t have much expendable income that we just blow. Our cars are older, and paid for. We don’t take luxurious vacations. We never spend more than $20 when we eat out. I don’t own a pair of jeans that cost more than $35. So there’s really no where to cut back. Right?

Well for some reason, I was still never able to find peace about our adoption fund-raising. Yet I pushed ahead anyway…hoping for that generous donor. Let’s face it, if we’re honest, fund-raising is really just an elaborate way to say, give me money, please—and preferably ten times the cost of whatever I’m selling. In the end, God graciously (despite my waning faith) provided in a beautiful and unexpected way. However we still returned home from China with adoption debt.
Where in the world am I going with all this? Oh yeah, fundraising. Or maybe I could call it stealing. Here’s where it gets sticky. And let me just say that my husband and I have had some heated discussions about this, and he’s not in total agreement with me—but please let me think out-loud anyway.
Stealing?? Who in the world was my family stealing from??
For starters, the 14-year old sexually-abused girl in Russia who will never have a home…the exhausted pastor in Haiti who’s pouring himself out for orphaned children in his community…the little boy in Cambodia in desperate need of surgery to repair his club foot.

A deep, lasting impression was made upon me when I read King David’s words in the Old Testament many years ago (1 Chronicles 21), “I will not take for the Lord what is yours, nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” Now I know there are adoptive families who have given their all, and I know others who have very little to give. But I can’t help but wonder if maybe you’re like our family, giving to God what really cost us nothing and stealing from the poor all the meanwhile. And maybe even robbing other adoptive families who desperately need assistance, but aren’t cool enough in the blog-world to be known.
What could we have done differently? I believe if we would have had the audacity to ask God that He would have shown us. Maybe down-sized our rental home to an apartment, sold one of our vehicles. I realize this isn’t possible for all families, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have possibilities of your own! And I hope you’ll consider them as you press forward in God’s call for your family.

I know we will.

When we chose to fund-raise first instead of sacrifice, stop and consider, who are we cheating? Amid the masses, could it even be that we’re cheating ourselves. Hear me! Fund-raising isn’t inherently wrong—but instead of using our adoptions as platforms to pedal our goods, maybe we could make some major life-style changes, and fully-devote our platforms to the Gospel and orphan care. Educating and encouraging friends and families who’ve not been called to adopt about ways they can serve the fatherless whom will never have families coming to get them. And most importantly, open the doors wide for the laborers who are sharing the good news with the destitute fatherless about the Father of the fatherless—a Heavenly Father—a righteous judge

Who will execute their justice!

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