5:38am EST
YOU'RE EVERYTHING: As I write this much of the world is still asleep this morning. And that's ok because sometimes I need to be alone with God, and my thoughts early in the morning...
Last night my son got in from work and he was discouraged. If you are not aware, I'm an adoptive father of a young Hatian man who has some pretty significant challenges. When he was adopted at age ten he had been consistently malnurished for some time. His little body was about the size of a five year old.
Yesterday he worked from about 8am-6pm. It was a good day in terms of work. He was tipped well, and the place he worked stayed busy.
I was upstairs with the Lovely Bride when we heard him come in. As we finished up our conversation upstairs, I came on down to ask him how his day was. I could tell on the front of his face that something was wrong.
Even though he primarily speaks English now - he sometimes still has challenges finding the the words to articulate what he really wants to say. As he unfolded what was on his heart - I could tell the discouragement had mounted.
Some of his co-workers had teased him that day and teasing is something that's hard for someone to take who can get easily confused about how serious to take life to begin with. We talked for about forty-five minutes, we developed an action plan for him to express himself calmly to his manager the next time something happened, as opposed to keeping it all bottled up on the inside.
Later in the evening, I could still tell that it was bothering him and we talked again till well past midnight. As I crawled into bed next to the Lovely Bride we talked about my son's challenges. As we were relatively unprepared when he moved in with us in September - the last several months had the great potential to reap great disaster upon us. But God has been faithful... in so many ways.
In 2005 we lost the Lovely Bride's mom, but that came after a stretch from February to July of seeing her go through two brain surgeries, liver failure, and a persistent downhill trend. After losing Mom we took our first true vacation away from everything at the end of August. We went to a place where nobody knew us and stay there without cable, internet, and barely anything else. We took time to make that reconnection only to see our recovery come crashing down with my ex's phone call telling me she had kicked our son out of her home and that he was going to be on a plane the next day.
