Now we’re a family of five.

We’ve been pretty tight-lipped about this adoption, both because of the speed of the process (we got the call on June 8) and the nature of the situation. But it’s happening. So the beans get spilled.

Last week Abby and our good friend Nicole traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to meet Yeshumnesh (pronounced Ye-shem-nesh). They return today (hopefully). She’s a bright, out-going and active Ethiopian girl who will turn 11 in August. She originally came to the United States in December of 2009, but that original adoption is being disrupted (that’s adoption lingo for what happens when a child is placed with a family and it doesn’t work out). The reasons behind that disruption will remain private, but in general this family was not the right fit for Yeshumnesh.

Yeshumesh will go to school a few blocks from our house. She’s very athletic and enjoys soccer, biking, cross-country skiing and ice skating (hockey!). She likes to color and enjoys listening to stories. She loves movies, including High School Musical and Hannah Montana. She’s pretty good with her English though is still catching up. She’ll have her own bedroom across from Lexi & Milo’s that we hope we can decorate together.

This has been a pretty insane week. And I’m not in Alaska. I stayed home with the kids and tried to maintain some normalcy. This is the longest Milo has ever been away from Abby and I realized it’s also the longest I’ve been away from my wife in, well, I don’t remember how long. Definitely since we had kids, probably longer. Maybe since we got married.

And I’m sure it’s been crazier in Alaska. Welcoming an older child into your family isn’t like adopting an infant. It’s a whole new ball of wax. We’ve had a rollercoaster of a summer preparing for this and it’s finally coming together. It’s not going to be easy. Yeshumnesh needs to get used to our family—and an entirely new life—and we need to get used to her. Lexi and Milo will have their own transitions, so it could be bumpy all the way around as we get used to one another.

We’ll be leaning on a lot of folks for support, from social workers and therapists to friends and family. I’ve been leaning on them pretty hard this week and it’s just me and the little ones. I don’t know where we’d be without help—definitely not here, that’s for sure. You can’t do this kind of thing without help.

Our friends and family have been incredibly supportive of Milo’s adoption and we’re hoping to find the same love and support this time around. Any efforts to shore up our sanity are always appreciated. If you’re the praying type, we could use lots of prayer for the remaining legal issues, travel, transitions, family bonding, logistics and financial considerations.

I never imagined I’d be the father of three and rocking a mohawk at 31.

So $100 for charity: water, clean water for more people and a new ‘do for me. Everybody wins.

My wife hates it. I kinda like it.

You can donate here to support my charity: water campaign and help build a well in Ethiopia. So far we’ve raised $1,914. You can help us get to $5,000. Thanks!

Before:

After:

Oh, and this is the first time in at least three years that I’ve had a real haircut.

I need a haircut.

So here’s the situation:

1. I need a haircut.
2. My wife is going out of town.
3. I need to raise $3,186 more to build a well in Ethiopia.

So here’s the plan:

1. Pick a hairstyle. (Feel free to use this handy PDF or JPG to draw your own.)
2. Make a donation to my charity: water campaign.
3. Biggest donation wins. I’ll rock your selected hairstyle until my wife returns.

It’s pretty simple. A haircut for clean water, and you get to pick the style (or lack thereof). Have fun, be stupid and give generously. Remember you can always support the well simply by buying a copy of my book. I’m only doing this because my wife will be out of town and I can get away with it. Plus I need a haircut and I’d rather see some good come out of that, like clean water. All in good, clean fun.

Draw your own hairstyle!

To Enter:

• Make a donation to my charity: water campaign by 1 p.m. CT on Friday, July 23.
• Note in the comments of the donation what hairstyle you’d like me to rock.
• Send me your proposed hairstyle and I’ll post them here (post the image somewhere and send me a link or e-mail the image to me).

Rules:

Plenty to work with.

• Facial hair is in play. Eyebrows are not. No razor blades (i.e., I’ll cut it clippers short, but I’m not shaving it with a razor short—wife vetoed that).
• Donations must be made between Monday, July 19 and Friday, July 23 at 1 p.m. Central Time.
• I’ll get the haircut on Friday afternoon/evening and it will last until Monday, July 26.
• It has to be a haircut a barber shop can actually do simply by cutting my hair (no extensions, no dye jobs, nothing the fine people at Great Clips can’t manage).
• I promise to conduct business as usual with the winning haircut (i.e., no hiding out at home). I’m thinking about hitting up the Middle Eastern Festival (camel rides!) on Friday, the Red Bull Flugtag on Saturday and I will attend church on Sunday (I’d pitch sporting the winning ‘do at work, but the whole work-at-home thing makes that kind of boring).
• Nothing inappropriate can be shaved into my head.
• I reserve the right to donate myself and trump lame-o entries (i.e., if the winning donation turns out to be a paltry $20 for a mullet, I’ll donate $25 myself and pick something better). In a nutshell, if I’m going to look like an idiot in public for three days, it has to be worth it. So if you want me to look  like an idiot, better donate more than I likely would.

Let’s build that well in Ethiopia! Thanks.

It’s been an interesting exercise. At any rate, I found myself trying to describe our family as financially responsible and frugal and trying to give realistic examples to back it up. I kept wondering what other people do to be cheap. After all, one person’s frugal is another person’s extravagance. One person’s necessity is another person’s luxury.

I want to share a few areas where I think my family is being cheap—not to brag, but to share some thrifty ideas. I hope you’ll share your thrifty ideas in the comments. It’s kind of a touchy subject because everyone has different values (cable TV may seem like an extravagance, but if it’s your only entertainment expense and you never go to the movies or buy DVDs that might be pretty economical), but I hope maybe we can learn something from how others have done it. Saving money is always good, but especially in this economy.

Here are a few of the things we do to be cheap:

• One car. Except for a brief period when we owned a junker (literally, we traded an air conditioner for it—guess which one still works), we’ve been a one-car family. Especially with two kids it makes life more complicated, but the savings are significant when you consider all the extra expenses that go along with car ownership.
• Technologically immobile. I’m a pretty tech savvy guy, but I could care less about mobile technology. An iPhone is tempting, but I don’t need one. We don’t even spring for the unlimited text message plan. When I’m out of the house I don’t need to check my e-mail. I just can’t imagine paying the monthly fees for a data plan. Considering all my Facebook and Twitter friends who talk about these technologies I feel like the odd man out, though I suspect that’s a reality distortion.
• Cheap entertainment. We try to keep our entertainment choices pretty cheap. We rarely go to the movie theater (maybe 3-4 movies per year, depending on what big movies are coming out), we don’t have cable TV and we don’t do Netflix (we had it, loved it and cut it to save money). We occasionally rent movies from the $1 rental machine at the grocery store or the library (free!). We also watch a lot of stuff online (go Hulu!) and watch DVDs. We have quite a DVD collection, though we try not to spend too much on DVDs (most of them are gifts).
• Clothes. Clothing always seems like an area where you can find a lot of savings. I used to scout the clearance racks pretty regularly and prided myself on finding $3 jeans. I haven’t been able to do that lately, but Abby does try to shop second hand stores and make the most of deals. I’ve also been patching my jeans to make them last longer, with decent success. It also helps that I work at home and don’t need a stockpile of dress clothes.
• Food. Grocery shopping is always a tough one. It seems like everyone has their tips and tricks for saving a little money here. I’m always amazed at the people who clip coupons and somehow seem to save gobs of money. We shop at Costco and take advantage of buying in bulk, though I’m always trying to compare prices and make sure we’re really saving money (and not letting things go to waste). We’ve probably saved the most money on produce and meat. We also try to stock up when stuff is on sale and buy generic as much as possible. This is probably an area we where we could better.
• Monthly payments. This one is more general, but I’m always leery of anything that has a monthly subscription fee. $10 a month doesn’t sound bad at all, until you consider how quickly that adds up. Five years later that’s a big chunk of change.
• Lawn care. I’m notoriously cheap when it comes to yard work. I use a me-powered reel mower. I hemmed and hawed about buying a weed whacker. I don’t bother with fertilizer or pesticides or killing weeds. Bring on the creeping charlie! My neighbors must hate me. But frankly, I’ve got better things to spend my time and money on.
• Holidays. I’ve talked before about redefining Christmas. We try to do something similar for Valentine’s Day and not spend money (though be careful with that one guys—this isn’t an excuse to cheap out; you usually have to put in more effort if you’re not going to spend money).

And a few areas where we fail:

• We’ve had a family cell phone plan with the lowest possible minutes for almost four years now and I don’t think we’ve ever used close to our total allotted minutes per month. We love the convenience and safety of it, but I’m beginning to think it just isn’t cost effective. When our contract is up next month I think we’re going to switch to a pay-as-you-go phone. We could easily save $50/month.
• Eating out. This is a hard one. We can be pretty lazy when it comes to cooking and it’s often easy to just go out, whether it’s to a restaurant or just fast food. Not only is it expensive but it just isn’t healthy. Thankfully having little kids has minimized this one, but we always need to do better.
• New car. As much as I think our one-car approach has saved money, the fact that we’ve bought new cars probably hasn’t helped (though getting the family member discount has been a huge plus!). I’ve always wanted to be a member of the Junky Car Club, but if you only have one car it’s extremely important that it be reliable. As our current car approaches the end of its loan period I’m really salivating at the idea of no car payment.
• Pop. I grew up drinking a lot of soda, so I was always a bit shocked that in college my cheapness really minimized my pop intake. For a while when we were first married we never kept pop in the house. But I’ve slowly fallen back into pop drinking and currently nurse a one can per day addiction. OK, sometimes two. I suppose it’s not that bad, but the expense certainly adds up.
• Books. Being a teacher and a writer books are easily a soft spot. We used to be regular visitors to the used section at Barnes & Noble, gobbling up books at their half off and $1 sales. The result is a library that easily exceeds 1,500 books. In the past few years I’ve realized I’m never going to read all these books and have really cut back on the purchases. I’ve been doing a lot more library borrowing and realizing that I just don’t need to own every book out there.

A lot of this comes down to living simply. It’s something I’m always trying to learn and always realizing how far I have to go. Sometimes we need to march against ourselves. There’s so much we really don’t need, and when we’re able to go without it frees us up to do so much more. As Johnny Cash says, “Every possession is just another stick to beat youself with.”

You could spend a fortune on books about being frugal, but sometimes it’s easier to hear it from a friend. So what do you do to be cheap?

Instead the past month has been pretty head-spinning. Our slow, leisurely adoption plan that likely wouldn’t have seen a child join our family until next summer went into overdrive with a single phone call we received about 30 days ago. Since then that relaxing summer plan has gone completely out the window. The best-laid plans, huh?

Let’s recap the last 30 days:

• We skipped an all-church camp weekend in Northern Wisconsin due to sickness (failed plans is going to be a recurring theme).
• Lexi started weekly swim lessons.
• I pitched my book to the Social Media Breakfast crowd and raised some extra money for charity: water (proving once again how much I hate and am terrible at public speaking).
• We celebrated a birthday and Father’s Day.
• Abby had an entire week of day-long conferences.
• We had a major article appear in the local paper hyping my book (still getting comments about that one—so cool).
• I spent the night and a separate evening at church.
• I skipped out on the week-long youth group missions trip to Chicago I was supposed to chaperone because things were too crazy.
• A brand new niece came into the world (and I’ve lost count of how many people are pregnant right now).
• We moved Milo from his crib into a real bed.
• We switched Lexi and Milo into a new bedroom.
• We installed a new cabinet in the bathroom and somehow acquired three large pieces of furniture.
• Both sets of grandparents visited on the same weekend.
• We averaged 4-5 meetings, playdates or non-standard commitments every week. In a normal week we maybe average one.
• We’ve had a total of 12 meetings or scheduled conference calls regarding the adoption. When I added them all up I was actually surprised it wasn’t more.
• Tomorrow we attend the massive Summer Mehaber, a picnic for Ethiopian families, and my book will have its own booth (thankfully I hired a couple guys to run the booth for me).
• The only reason I have time to write this post is because Lexi is sick and we’re staying home from today’s massive zoo trip with Ethiopian families in town for the picnic.

And at this point we still don’t have a timeline for when our adoption will happen, though it’s possible it will start as soon as late next week. How’s that for massive change? Not knowing when you’re welcoming an 11-year-old into your family.

So yes, head-spinning limbo. I’ve been too busy for Twitter. Too busy for blogging (though I’m shocked I blogged as much as I did in June). Too busy for thinking.

In the weeks before we traveled to Ethiopia to meet Milo, I remember being in this kind of constant frenzy. We’d lie awake at night throwing out random things we needed to remember or do or prepare and eventually would just fall asleep in a blur of mumbled prayers. This time around that’s too much to ask. I lose the the threads of thought about what thing we need to do or person we need to call before I can even get them out. For a few days last week I started carrying around a notepad so I could literally write down these things before I forgot them (though I don’t think it helped much).

Life is hard right now. But it’s also fun and incredible and amazing. Milo has probably doubled his language in the past month. He’s become addicted to cars and is constantly puttering one of my old NASCAR collectibles across the floor. I took Lexi to her first movie theater experience (Toy Story 3) and she’s constantly surprising me with her compassion and concern (at least when she’s not fighting with Milo). Yesterday she told me I should shave my head for clean water—if only it were that simple.

As hard as things are, I can’t help but feeling incredibly blessed. Difficult times like this magnify our faults, and mine are pretty plain to see. Grace and forgiveness and mercy are so desperately needed. We couldn’t do it without friends and family supporting us, giving us a little extra sanity.

I imagine everyone’s last 30 days would look insane if you spelled it out like this, so I imagine we’re not alone. But it puts it in perspective a bit.

That’s enough perspective. Back to work.

“I was so angry,” Jeff admits. “I felt like a cold knife was plunged through my heart. All I could think of was, what about my forefathers and the blood of my people that has been spilled on this land?”

That’s a sentiment I’ve often felt as church worship strays from Creator to country. The freedom we have in America is worth celebrating, but it becomes dangerous when we whitewash our history in a red, white and blue frenzy. It becomes too easy to swell with pride and forget our failures. That kind of blind celebration becomes a slap in the face to those who endured injustice. As we celebrate our freedom we should remember our failures and steal ourselves to correct current and future failures.

The Fourth of July isn’t just an excuse to blow stuff up. It’s a chance to celebrate and move forward, towards a more perfect Union.

Jeff Yellow Owl eventually found the strength to do just that:

But forgiving the past was “a process and didn’t happen all at once,” he says. “That kind of forgiveness has to be supernatural.” …

He prayed: “I want to be healed from my anger. I don’t want this feeling in my heart anymore.”

Operation Moses was a covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews (also known as Beta Israel) in 1984. Facing religious persecution and famine in Ethiopia under the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, some 13,000 Jews escaped Ethiopia on foot and made for Sudan. Israel then airlifted the refugees to safety with the secret cooperation of the Sudanese government. It’s estimated that 4,000 died on the way trek to Sudan and another 1,000 were left behind when operation became public and other Arab nations pressured Sudan to stop the secret evacuations.

Many of those left behind in Sudan were later brought to Israel as part of the U.S.-lead follow-up mission, Operation Joshua, in 1985.

The situation didn’t change until 1991 and the Ethiopian revolution when Israel took advantage of the political instability to evacuate the remaining Ethiopian Jews as part of Operation Solomon. More than 14,000 were evacuated in a 36-hour period on 34 different flights. Today there are still several thousand Ethiopian Jews remaining in Ethiopia.

It’s an incredible story and bit of history you don’t really hear about. The Return tells the story from the perspective of a teenage girl who evacuates Ethiopia. The book gives a pretty detailed portrayal of the life of a rural Ethiopian Jew. You actually don’t get much of sense of what was actually happening with Operation Moses until the very end, which for me just prompted more research (and I’d love to do more beyond Wikipedia and a few random articles).

It’s another layer to the incredible history and people of Ethiopia.

This week I finally volunteered for the organization, sleeping over at my church on Monday night as an overnight volunteer and spending Tuesday evening there as well. There were four families spending the night at our church, five adults and 11 kids. They spend the day at family shelters, finding services they need, working or whatever they need to do, and come to our church for around 12 hours, from after supper until the morning. We offer snacks and breakfast, and then provide whatever they may need. Usually that means keeping the kids entertained while the adults relax.

It’s an eye-opening experience. These are families being chewed up by poverty and the economy. You can see how out of sorts the kids are, in a strange place with new volunteers every night and parents who are pushed to the edge. And I said we’re the overflow shelter—we’re actually the overflow for the overflow shelter. Some months there’s even a third overflow shelter. The need is tremendous.

I’ve been wanting to volunteer with Project Home for a long time, and this year it got to the point where I don’t think I could face my good friend Mark Horvath if I hadn’t volunteered with Project Home. Mark is good at kicking my butt that way.

While I’m glad I finally volunteered, and I’m up for doing it again, I felt completely inadequate. I’m not the outgoing, talkative person who strikes up conversations with ease. I did my job, but I never felt like I did it very well. I guess I felt like these families deserved something more. And they do.

These stories suck. But I want to be honest that they happen. That’s pretty obvious after that whole putting a kid on a plane to Russia debacle, but sometimes we need less sensational and more real stories. I don’t want to imply that these cases are completely devoid of hope—I’m kind of an annoying idealist that way and believe hope can eventually come to the darkest situation. But in the midst of that darkness it can be pretty impossible to see the hope. I can only pray it’s there.

In Addition by Adoption I mentioned a family of six that had moved to Uganda to finalize their adoption. It was an incredible story. Unfortunately late last year the family moved back to the United States without their new addition. At the time they weren’t sharing any details, but earlier this month they broke their silence. The dad shared the details and his perspective here and the mom later added her perspective here.

The story, in a nutshell, is that they discovered the 5-year-old boy they were trying to adopt had been abusing their toddler-aged daughter. A history and pattern of abuse emerged, something that’s sadly not uncommon for institutionalized children. They had to make the painful decision to relinquish the child and ultimately chose to return to the United States.

The family has a deep Christian faith—and I only share that because if you’re not a person of faith you might find their perspective a little jarring. As a Christian myself I found it a little jarring, though perhaps that’s only because if I were in their shoes I would have been full of holy rage. They share a question they felt God had been asking them since they started this process—Do you trust me with your children?—and in the light of all this I marvel that they can still trust God. I’d be pretty shaken. I imagine they’ve processed a lot in their six months of silence and an entirely different post would have been written six months ago, perhaps laced with the anger I’m feeling.

At any rate, I’m praying for them and hope they’re able to put themselves back together after this five-year attempt at adoption comes to an end. I’m also pretty impressed with their bravery. I’d be tempted to crawl into that cave of silence and never come out.

Brokenness and pain in some form or another is what causes the need for adoption. In the end, hopefully lives can be put back together and some semblance of healing is found. And sometimes, horribly, that brokenness and pain only spreads. I don’t have an answer for it, other than to say that shouldn’t dissuade us. Pain, brokenness and abuse can happen, whether your children are adopted or biological. We can’t ignore these painful realities of adoption or allow them to turn our back on the millions of kids in this world who need permanent, loving families.

Bad stuff happens. And it makes me mad. It makes me crave redemption, healing and restoration all the more. It makes the need for adoption that much greater. It makes the need for addressing what causes children to be adopted in the first place—poverty, disease, death, abuse—that much more important.

I think I’m trying to say that anger is right and good in response to something like this. But in addition to that anger, we also need action.