New Beginnings

Where were you at 34? I am thinking about my kids right now...

When I turned 34 back in the early 2000s, Marilyn & I had three kids already: Malachi (10), Micah (8), Rebekah (6). In the fall of 2001, the tech bubble had finally burst. Like many of my peers, I got laid off with little fanfare, followed by great trepidation. I had a strong resume and nearly a decade of experience in cutting edge technology, so my skills were still in high demand. Unlike most of my Silicon Valley peers, however, I was working remotely, based in the wilds of Montana (which is kind of like being unemployed in Greenland).

The winter of 2001 was mostly terror. But then God intervened (dramatically!), and by May of 2002, Marilyn & I were pivoting hard, getting ready to relocate our family to inner-city Philly so I could attend seminary and pursue a life of ministry. This was our first real taste of learning to "live by faith", and with a wife and three kids depending on you, life gets real, quickly.

Flash forward to right now, nearly twenty-five years later. Malachi has been married to Jordan (and living here in Austin) now for a full decade. Jordan turned 34 last April, the mother of her first and only child, Ransom Rose. She had her second child, Minnie May, right after Thanksgiving. And then she met Miss B and the whole world lurched...

Malachi turned 34 less than a month ago, in early January. There was so much happening at the time – with Miss B's cancer and the mad rush to catch her girls before the bottom fell out – we completely missed his birthday. Then on January 17, he and Jordan celebrated ten years of marriage. But we missed that too, because that was the day that Miss B died.

And here we are now, just two weeks later...

We helped the girls bury Miss B last Friday. It felt like the entire Congolese community in Austin turned out. They asked me to preach. And they in turn sang, wailed, and then sang some more. It was an incredible experience. And we feel incredibly privileged to have been able to participate. Miss B's body now rests just down the street from us, in the old cemetery at the corner of 12th and Airport.

And now suddenly, at 34, Malachi and Jordan are the ones learning to "live by faith" – only they find themselves a family of eight, with six girls (two of them teenagers!), and the world is now spinning for all of them...

I talked to Jordan on the phone this morning, and here is what she said (she graciously agreed to put this in an email, to make it easier for me to share):

The past month has been a whirlwind. The image that keeps coming to us over and over again is walking on water. We have been walking on water through this storm, and by God's grace the waves have not overwhelmed us. The dominant emotion has not been grief or fear as you might expect, but joy, amazement, worship. We have seen God walk us through one impossible thing after another, and at every turn we are finding still more impossible things that we need him to walk us through.

It is a good thing he's spent the last 10 years [e.g. with Malachi's health issues] teaching us to call out to him for impossible things. 

Now that we are past the funeral, we need to begin the process of building a new family. With your own kids you get all the benefits of gradually growing them up in your family culture, teaching them things over time, introducing them to Jesus and praying for years.

We do not have that luxury in this case. These girls are incredible, smart, funny, and eager to participate in our family life. They are, however, also missing many foundational life skills. It is clear that public education has failed them and social media has numbed them. In one sense they are literate and in another sense they are anything but. They were raised in a Christian home, but they couldn't tell me the Christmas story, what the New Testament is, or why Jesus's death and resurrection matters. 

So what do you do when faced with these challenges?

How do we help them heal from anxiety? How do we stop their phone addictions? How do we teach them to think critically? How do we teach them to read? How do we teach them the bible stories we've spent 34 years steeped in? How do we introduce them to the Jesus we know? 

And I think the answer is: You pray and do your best. It is very clear we are not in control here; God is. Even those who have never adopted children are probably asking the same questions.

These challenges are not unique to our situation. The illusion that we have some kind of control over how our kids turn out has quickly been stripped away from us, and probably for the better. Even our biological kids were never going to achieve anything or know Jesus without the grace of God.

So now we're facing what feels like an even harder situation to parent in, and I'm being reminded that God has these girls' best interests at heart far more than I do, far more than Miss B did, too.

They were his children first, and we have just been given the privilege of stewarding their lives for the time being. So instead of control, we are submitting. We have submitted all our time, energy, skills, and resources to God to spend as he sees fit on these girls. There is no amount of intervention from us that will change their lives. Only God can do that. 

So please pray for us and for them. Pray for supernatural energy and wisdom. Pray for Malachi's healing. Pray that these girls would become women of great faith, sharing their testimony of God moving heaven and earth to come save them. Pray that they voluntarily set their phones down and see the true beauty of Jesus as worth everything. We're just in the middle of the story, and I can't wait to see where this goes.

If that doesn't get you praying, I don't know what will.

There's so much more to be said, but there will be plenty of time for that in the future. For now, we just want to say THANK YOU – to all who have so generously prayed, cared, cried, and supported this brand new family in this very difficult time. Please continue to pray (there will be a lot more to say about this in the future, too). But mostly, pray for the girls, and for Malachi & Jordan, and for us as their community, that we might know how to support and encourage them in this.

In the meantime, I'd like to share two small video clips, just to give you a taste of life here on the ground...

The first is a short clip from the graveside service last Friday: if you want to catch a glimpse of Congolese singing (and a little taste of heaven), this is it:

The second is an original song by Leya, written over the past few weeks as she walks through these valleys, then turned into a video as part of her application process for a local magnet high school in the arts and sciences. Leya has a beautiful voice, and a very gentle spirit. And she would really appreciate your prayers on her behalf – it's extremely competitive to get in, but the school would be great for her (on so many fronts)...

With You
I'm in the car, windows down
Laughing softly with that smile
With you I feel complete
You're my missing puzzle piece

Always running down familiar roads
Chasing down old feelings you know
I'll remember all this one day
But for now I'd rather lay with you*

*Chorus: With you, with you,
With you, with you, I smile.
With you, with you,
It feels like everything is better with you...

Polaroids in a shoebox deep
Late night talks we didn't sleep
Said we'd run but we'd probably stay
Didn't know this was the good 'ol days with you*

As always, thanks for reading and praying and being with us in this journey...

Much love in Jesus,
Christian & Marilyn