I am on a facebook fast and it has been amazing. I watch as my KLOUT scores tank and am concerned about not reading and being up to date with all of my friend, but this book has been on my heart and I have had to write it as i believe it is a calling and command via the Holy Spirit. We are also launching a new newsie blog that will talk about mother's and women's issues. In the past 10 days I have written about 30k words and am on a roll. Please pray for me. I will be making blog posts and sending them to Facebook via blogger (so officially I won't be breaking my fast). So please consider responding and participating and helping me by coming to my blog here Mother the World to answer some questions for me in the comments section. It will be fun. If you prefer you can email the answers to me at djoprods@me.com.
Today's questions are:
Can you explain how confidence and humility can co-exist in a person? And what is the difference...
Who was the most humble woman in your life? Was there strength in her humility?
Please contribute by telling me of a time you were in self imposed isolation. What did that feel like? Did you finally come out of hiding? (I talked about keeping my abortion secret for years and the amazing healing that occured once I confessed)..
D
Don't All Dads Play Piano?
Whenever this happened, the saddest face always belonged to the one boy that our son seemed closest to. He was just a bit younger than Alec; just about a month short of five years old.
There was one day when the weather was particularly bad, with heavy rain. There was no way we could take Alec outside, so instead we took him into an adjacent room that happened to have an old, out of tune piano in it. I played the piano and Deanna sang, and Alec really seemed to enjoy it.
After a while, one of the caregivers asked if we could play and sing for the other kids in his group as well. Of course, we were delighted; so she brought in the other boys, and we played and sang and danced with them for about half an hour, until the caregiver said that it was time for them to go. Sure enough, Alec's best friend looked back at us and broke into tears as he was pulled from the room. It absolutely broke our hearts. We found out that after we brought Alec home from Ukraine, that the same boy would ask his caregiver if a family would one day come for him. The day that we said goodbye to this boy was truly heartbreaking. The image of his crying face has haunted me ever since. Call me an "old softy" if you want, but this kid really touched my heart. We've prayed for him at the dinner table ever since we returned.
Well we're so thrilled to report that his new parents have recently arrived to complete their adoption process and bring him home to the states! Soon Alec and his best buddy will soon be Skyping each other non-stop. Hopefully at some point they'll even be able to visit each other.
Here's a part of the story that really touched my heart: When this little boy met his parents for the first time, they all went for a walk outside, hand-in-hand. After returning from their walk, the boy pulled his new Dad to that very same piano, and asked him to play for him, just as I had done. He must be thinking that all Dads play piano! So precious! All the caregivers at the orphanage were women, and these kids have never known their fathers; so it stands to reason that the whole concept of "Dad" is foreign to them. So it makes sense that he would expect that his Dad would behave just like Alec's Dad did. Don't all Dads play piano? It was a logical assumption.
We're delighted to know that this angel will now be loved and cherished, just as we love and adore Alec. And it makes me smile to know that I was able to love on him for the few weeks that I was there, and create a lasting memory for him.
Of course, two boys from his group still remain, waiting for their forever families to come. And there are millions upon millions of orphans worldwide, very much in need of mothers and fathers. We continue to pray for each and every one of them.
-Mark Falchook
We all know about
China’s one-child policy.
Vietnam is revisiting
implementing a two-child policy.
India is also proposing a two-child policy even in the wake of India’s decreasing
population and a huge gender discrepancy due to female infanticide and sex
selected abortion eliminating females.
I am the mother of 7
children. When people ask me how many children I have, they gasp. Why do they
gasp? They respond this way because large families in America do not represent
the ideal. Why are they not ideal?
Why has the concept of family size over 2.5 children become less than
ideal? What is the ‘ideal’ family
size?
My journey into
motherhood has been extra-ordinary. At the age of 18 I had an abortion. After years of healing and getting over
the significant guilt and regret in my life through counseling and therapy, I
realized that my decision to abort was very much influenced by some external
influence that was difficult to identify. Was it just the media? Or was there
some other form of manipulation pushing me into an unwanted choice (see Planned Parenthood/Margaret Sanger's quotes)? I knew that my situation as a single
young woman was not ‘ideal.’ Years
later after I was married I was blessed with a more ‘ideal’ situation and gave
birth to my daughter and a few years after that, a son. With the perfect family, a boy and a
girl, the idea of expanding my family just didn’t make sense in the world I
lived in at the time. Everyone I knew had less than 2 children. I somehow
believed that the ideal family size was 2 children (a boy and a girl). Still,
somehow I miraculously was drawn to grow my family even more, this time via
adoption.
In 2005, our quest took
us to Guatemala. Our daughter Matea was not born in the most ‘ideal’ situation.
Her mother was 14 years old and lived in a very impoverished area of Guatemala
and decided to relinquish her rights as her mother. Then we were a family with three children hovering slightly
beyond the ideal but still acceptable to most outsiders. In 2007, while performing at a
fundraising concert for Zimbabwe we were made aware of the millions of children
orphaned globally. Indignant, I proclaimed “The statistics that show by 2010
there will be 150 million orphans is just an incorrect figure.” I would
discover that week after doing some research that the number was only incorrect
due to the fact that it was an underestimated projection. . When we announced
our intentions to adopt 3 children to friends and extended family, there was
obvious concern and resistance. I believe all of my friends would admit there
was a sense of disbelief that anyone in their ‘right’ American minds would
volunteer to double the size of their family. In spite of resistance we headed to Ethiopia in 2008 and
completed the adoption of a sibling group of 3 who had been orphaned due to
AIDS. As a family of 6 children,
we turned heads and often drew comments such as ‘better you then me’…followed
by a laugh. This year we adopted
our youngest child (age 5) from Ukraine. Our son, Alec is HIV positive and had
spent his entire life in an orphanage. We considered this a far from ideal life
for him and brought him into something he had never experienced in his young
life …a family. We now are considered by most to be way beyond the norm with 7
children in our family.
This past week two
worlds that I advocate in collided in front of my eyes. I believe up until
today I was one of the few people hovering in these two circles of pro-life and orphan advocacy to notice
this collision.
ADOPTION
First, my dear friend,
Carolyn Twietmeyer from PROJECT HOPEFUL, was invited to the White House to
discuss concerns related to HIV orphans and restrictions of family size for
people wanting to adopt via foster care and internationally. In my home state
of Illinois, where Carolyn currently lives, families who want to adopt
internationally must receive approval from the Department of Children and Family Services. This is not the case in every state. Most states like NC,
where I reside with my family, the only requirement for international adoption
is an approval by a certified state approved social worker. There is no family
size restriction for international adoption. In Illinois however, in addition to DCFS approval, the
family has to have a foster care license to adopt through social services. However, Illinois families are not permitted to adopt internationally in countries that offer guardianship only. Most states permit families to adopt under these circumstance and re-adopt within the state they reside. The restrictions
also do not allow a family to have more than 8 children in the household. AND
each special needs child counts as two in the eyes of the Illinois Department
of Children and Family Services. (article in CHICAGO TRIBUNE)
In North Carolina, we do
have restrictions on family size to adopt via the foster care system. We have
approximately 10,000 children in our foster care system in NC, many available
for adoption. Families with more than 5 children in the household are not
permitted to adopt (via the state) or foster. The states have determined what the ideal family size would
be. This has nothing to do with families being economically equipped, mentally
stable and spiritually sound. It is simply about the perception of our
inability to parent properly with more than a predetermined state mandated
acceptable number of children. This obviously limits the number of qualified
foster parents as well for the 10,000 children waiting in NC for families.
There are currently 4 other states in addition to NC and Illinois in the US
with similar restrictions. They are Alabama, Mississippi, Colorado and South
Carolina.
Secondly, this week Abby Johnson who was the director of a Planned Parenthood in TX and is now a strong
pro-life advocate, released a memorandum that she claims was a memo that
Planned Parenthood often refers to as the ideal goal in reducing population
globally. The memorandum is called the Jaffe Memo and was written to Bernard
Berelson (President, Population Council) and found in “Activities Relevant to
the Study of Population Policy for the U.S.” in March/1969. What was riveting to me in light of
what Carolyn and other potential adoptive parents are experiencing is that not
only have de-population measures impacted the unborn but it is now officially
impacting the viable orphaned children (many who are in their teens) from
finding families. There are several items in this memo that are disturbing but let me point out a few that will
illustrate my point:
Social Constraints (Jaffe Memo)
Restructure family:
a) Postpone or avoid
marriage
b) Alter image of ideal family size
Educate for
family limitation
Fertility
control agents in water supply
Encourage women to work
One of the
goals of the Jaffe Memo is to restructure family. The ultimate goal is to
depopulate the world by convincing individuals as to what the ideal image of
family size is. More obvious is the desire of over population theorists to
decrease the amount of children on the planet via means of abortion, payments
toward voluntary sterilization, fertility control agents in water and even
added economic pressure on larger families and stressful living conditions.
This memo
and these concepts may come from 1969 but they have seeped their way into our
psyche as secretly as the tainted water that many are unknowingly drinking to
reduce their childbearing (see the memo again). I started this article with
questioning WHY we have a number as to the ‘ideal’ family size. Why would I as
an 18 year old girl be so convinced that I MUST abort my baby? And why are we
stunned when we come across larger families. I think we all need to ask
ourselves if we have been drinking from the well, polluted with falsehoods
about what is ‘ideal.’ In
other-words, do we think smaller families are ‘ideal’ because quite frankly we
have been taught to believe this way based on a conscious plan by
over-population theorists that simply believe people should not be procreating.
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