Family and Faith and Hope and Challenges

   It doesn't seem that long ago and for me to mention it now doesn't really make sense.  There is no magical calendar date kind of a reason to celebrate today.  But I find myself thankful.  About seven and a half years ago two new children joined our family.  We already had four of them, so what was two more?  But these two have changed our lives.  Temamen is now thirteen years old (we think) and has discovered that American sports are definitely worthwhile pastimes.  He likes to try them all and so far only lacrosse has not met with his approval.  Tessa is twelve, plays the role of bothersome little sister well, and enjoys conversations with just about anyone who will listen.  They both do well in school and have just changed us.  I am thankful to be allowed by God to come through my experience with cancer and still be their earthly father for a while longer.
   The story is one of faith.  My wife and I were old seven and a half years ago.  We are both older than we were then, but we are also a little younger than we were.  By 2010 we had lived half a century each, and had decided that our proverbial quiver was full enough with four children.  But God changed things.  He gave us an opportunity to exercise our faith in ways that did not make any sense. There were hurdles to jump, oceans to cross, money to raise, and issues too big for us to solve.  But he gave us the courage to walk on water to meet him and has blessed us through it all.  When we were expecting to be turned down by the adoption agency for reasons of age and cancer, we were instead approved.  When we ran out of money and needed $1000 by the next morning, a friend from California sent in a check without knowing our circumstances but it arrived on the day we needed it...for $1000.  When we needed air fare, it was there.  When we needed food, it was there.  When we needed our other children to join in the challenge, they were there.  When our faith wavered, he came through.  Faith and hope are blessings from God.  We were privileged through the whole story to experience those blessings first-hand.
   But faith gets challenged.  Ten years after Connie was recovering from her bout with cancer, I was challenged with my own version of it.  When a new job opportunity was offered to me, that faith was again challenged.  As our fourth child Robbie is now going through his prodigal days and living a life that has nothing to do with how he was raised and we have no sign that his poor choices will be abating any time soon, our faith is once again challenged.  It is hard to go through this episode as a parent and as a family.  Our choice to adopt him was the right one, but that nagging doubt creeps in every once in a while and I hate it.  But he is here, he has life, and he is the one who must find his way.  His bouts of mental illness and poor choices and self-inflicted problems bother me so much that there are times that I find it hard to pray for him.  I find it hard to imagine what he can become if he were to find that sense of faith in Jesus instead of himself.  As a dad I need to once again step into the kind of faith that says, "We'll get through this.  With God, we can do this."  I need to find that sense of certainty that someday Robbie will also understand that the fullness of life does not depend on freedom without responsibility, independence without family, love without commitment.  But I honestly do not carry that kind of faith all the time.  I should...but I don't.  "God, you have worked in marvelous ways for us.  We are so blessed by your goodness.  Please help me as a father to find that sense of faith and certainty that you have the power to bring Robbie out of his dark days.  Help us to know what to do and what not to do.  Protect our family through all of this.  Watch over him tonight.  Amen."
   We have so much.  We are blessed.  Family is indeed a gift from God.  But now that I have six children, two sons-in-law, two grandchildren, a dog and a cat, one would think that by now I would have it all figured out.  But this faith thing still seems to come and go even though I know better.  That frustrates me.  But from what I understand of God and faith and hope and challenges, I think it is being renewed already by the hard things that are a part of life. The child-like trust in a good Father is a daily choice.  I need to choose it each day.  I need to be more like Tessa who prayed this prayer many years ago (and it lives on in the oral tradition of our family):

"Dear God, you did real good today.  Thanks.  Amen."

"But he knows the way I take; 

when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.

My feet have closely followed his steps; 
I have kept to his way without turning aside...

For he stands alone, and who can oppose him?"

Job 23:10-13