What a difference a year makes...

What a difference a year makes...
It has been quite a long time since our last blog post.  For those of you who have forgotten us, let me start with who we are.  We are a family of twelve with 10 children, 2 parents, 3 dogs, 2 cats, 2
horses, and 11 chickens.  Six of our children are adopted internationally, and 4 of them are biological.  The young ones range in age from 4 to 14.

We are odd; we standout from the crowd. We have 6 children with dark skin and 4 with light skin.  We drive a mid sized bedroom on wheels.  We are loud and creative.  All of these factors make
us novel in our small mid-west home.  For evidence to support this oddness, following us to Sam's would make you a believer. 

Testosterone thrives in our midst.  We are rambunxious, mostly coming from the 7 boys with a small contribution from the 3 girls.  The boys are between the ages of 10 and 4.  Daily we wrestle,
punch, kick, or attempt to fight our way to the top.  One would think you should feel sorry for the girls in the household, and this would be a valid assumption. 

The milestone of this past month is that our newest four children have been home a year.  They were ages 9,7,6, and 5 when they arrived in America.  Without English or knowledge of our food or
culture they have adapted amazingly well.  We can communicate freely, have identified with American food they love (pizza), and understand basic cultural norms (i.e. flushing toilets and using
hand dryers).

Now while I will tell you that we like American foods, we still eat them a little differently.  Take a hamburger for instance.  A typical American will pick up the burger and eat it one bite at a time, all
layers together.  We, however, tend to eat it one layer at a time-- bun, tomato, lettuce, cheese, meat, and then bun.  Everything dipped in a fair amount of ketchup for good measure.  In fact, this
style has become so popular in the Stinson household that our oldest son, who was born in America, has adopted this practice at times. 

We have the most interesting conversations. One of our older boys after watching the Son of God movie prayed, "Dear God, I am sorry that they killed you.  I don't want them to kill you."
Or from our younger group, "Dad, does Batman throw bats?"  My response, "Yes, son. He throws little bats at bad guys."  His response, "If Batman were called Buttman, would he throw butts?" 
Trying to end the conversation, "Well, I guess he would."  At that moment you could see his brain attempting to connect the dots, "Wouldn't that make his car the-"  Interupting "Let's not go
there,son."

A year ago, knowing how challenging it was going to be as we brought these four lives into our home, we set goals.  My goal was to survive.  We have done this, sometimes by a thread and
sometimes with great success.  This week alone we have had one struggle with our son attempting to dominate everyone else which deteriorated into him attempting to break everything around
him.  One hour later we emerged from the violence without spitting, biting, or hitting.  A major improvement!  We had another in the middle of a ride at Silver Dollar City, who paused and glazed
over, fingers in his ears.  A surreal site to observe as he attempted to mentally remove himself from the overstimulation.

The truth of this last year is that we all have scars.  The 6 we have adopted have obvious scars from physical abuse, lack of food, and mental trauma.  Dealing with these has been humbling and
beyond difficult.  We will continue to fight these battles with them for the rest of their lives. 
The less recognizable struggle is how these scars have become woven into the fabric of our being.  If you would have asked me a few years ago I would have said I want to walk through the pain
with them, but that isn't the nature of this type of pain.  These scars are so raw and untouched that what happens is the pain gets transferred to us.  It isn't enough to walk through it as an observer;
we must experience the pain with them.  We experience it through the violence, anger, outbursts, and reclusiveness which occur, and we start to develop those same tendencies.  Their pain starts
to manifest in our own lives.  Our relationships get affected.  We stop communicating with each other.  Emotions become hidden, and what was once a small struggle has become a Goliath in our
lives.

We now fight this battle, a battle to deal with the scars created in our own lives.  We want to reclaim our lives from the despair and pain of the evil in this world and begin to thrive, not just survive.  I
believe this is what Christ meant when he said, "I have come that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly."  He can take the broken and make it beautiful.  He can take the past
and the evil and make it into a beautiful abundance in Him.  His perspective came from above; a perspective that was deeply planted in the eternal.  He wasn't focused on the hurt of today.  He
wasn't caught in the circumstance and left feeling the anger.  For now, we will take time to share in the sorrow and mourn the pain of our sweet children, but we will trust Him to make it beautiful. 
His abundance is for now.    

Funny, interesting, and sad

It seems there is a cacophany of stories we could tell of what it is like to have 10 children, with 4 recently adopted from a foreign country.  Some stories are funny, some interesting, and some hearbreaking.  In fact so many interesting statements come out of the mouths of the twelve of us that we have created a quote book to capture them.  Interestingly enough,  the funniest tend to eminate from Chandra or me.  Here are some classics.

Chandra--  "Worth, no.  Don't touch your brother's bottom."

Graham, on Thanksgiving--  "Why do I have food in my crotch!?"

Aubrey--  "Graham, do what the microwave tells you."

Lee, when buying orange juice-- "Look, mom.  Orange milk!"

Levi, after Chandra explained that snow was falling from the sky and we could build a snowman--  "Look mom, the snowman is falling"

Chandra, after a short wedgie fest with Dad and the boys-- "We don't give a wedgie to someone unless they want one."  Surely prompted by vision of our children giving wedgies to random people at Church or in Wal-mart. 

Christmas is huge in our house as evidenced by the speakers bellowing out Christmas anthems as October rolls around.  As we have gone throughout the season, we discovered the fource had never experienced or heard of Christmas.  We would ask questions like do you know Mary, baby Jesus, Christmas trees, Santa, etc.  The answer would always be, "I don't know."  While we expected this, it was also a reality check.  Five months ago our lives were so different.

While there are definately some hilarious times there are also heavy challenges.  For the very few of you who aren't aware, we have had 2 visits from the police, one televised.  The first episode occurred in Springfield after our son had tried to run away out of frustration of sharing.  In Ethiopia there is no unsafe place-- kids run on the streets, cars stop, and life continues.  When you are frustrated you get away as fast as you can.  Not so, in America.  As I was attempting to calm him down, observed by oncoming traffic and small businesses, up pulls the Springfield police department.  Forty-five minutes later they understood I wasn't abusing him.

Episode #2, or the televised episode, was a similar "running" episode and occurred at home.  It involved friends, our social worker, the Greene County Police Department, approximately 12 officers, the canine unit, the Missouri State Troopers, a helicopter, and two television trucks.  The helicopter was the winner and found our son 3 1/2 hours after he ran to get some space. 

The harsh truth is that this work we have been called to is very hard.  Friends and family have seen this first hand, and without them I know we wouldn't be standing here.  Just yesterday after a very difficult time Chandra said, "This can't be what we were called to."  And yet we both know in the essence of our being the truth.  But, in desperate times we say desperate things.  It reminds me of a quote from an associate of Mother Teresa, "She is free to be nothing; thefore God can use her for anything."  Unlike Mother Teresa this characteristic doesn't come naturally to us, we have to be taught the beauty of nothingness. 

As I was driving home a few days ago I listened to an old Mat Kearney song called What's a Boy to Do.  The song is about a boy who has no father and it follows him throughout his life.  It is not a traditional or flashy song and doesn't follow the typical verse, chorus, verse, bridge pattern.  It takes time to digest because at the end of each stanza is a phrase that flows into the next end of stanza phrase.  Let me put them together...

What's a boy to do who knows no man now?
What's a boy to do when there's no man at home?
What's a boy to do with no man in his heart? 
What's the Son of Man and a boy to do?
What's the Son of Man and this boy to you?

Do you see the progression?  No parent, no grounding, no example, no understanding of our Father, no hope, and we find out in the end, death.  This world will chew us up and spit us out without a second thought.  Why should we expect any other outcome?  So we remember 1 Corinthians 10:13  "He will not give us more than we can bear..." and we persevere. 

So we write quotes in a quote book to laugh, endure our visits with the police, and cry when we need to remembering, all the time holding fast to His promise of finishing this good work He has started.