Our Cramazing May, Episode XXXIII: Church with Tuna, Lunch at Domino's

In the wee hours of the next morning, I penned these words in my journal...

"And yet again <as opposed to how it had been the night before when we had met Tom but he wasn't yet with us at the hotel>, it’s different….one of the most precious days of our lives.  Jagat (Job….or Joboo, as Rex and I decided he should be called) is peacefully sleeping between his daddy and his brother.  This day has been an amazing, wonderful day, and I am incredibly proud of my little boy for the bravery with which he faced today—and I’m thankful to God for making him that way.  He is all about Daddy but is doing okay with me, too.  I am also incredibly thankful for my patient, silly, and loving husband who has wanted Jag to be his son since the moment he saw his picture.  Today, he became that dad, and for most of the day, Jag wanted nothing to do with me—but that was okay, because he was bonding to Papa—a good thing.

Karen and Scott made it tonight, and Lipily is down the hallway with them.  An amazing and surreal thing, that just 2 weeks ago we were wondering when we would come and surrendering to your plan, and here we are!  You are good.

Father, these children need families.  The most heartbreaking for me today was that of Naomi, the little girl in Jag’s room that I’ve had my eye on for 6 months.  Her parents <story deleted for privacy purposes>.  Ugh!  That after having been <more of story deleted>.  She is doing well…but she needs a family!  Will you raise up a family for her?

The children are beautiful, and the caretakers are loving.  Praise God!  Thank you for the many miracles you are working….we trust you and only you, with the future."

And later...

"He’s been stirring for about an hour, having gone to sleep in his papa’s arms nine hours ago.  Mama is impressed.  Slept right in between Papa and Brother for the whole night....maybe I will have to sleep in Rex’s top bunk for awhile when we get home….ha!

The best?  About five minutes ago, he started singing…just a little tune for a few short seconds, but it was priceless.  They Daddy promptly rolled over and put his arm around his little boy, pulling him in tight.  Precious, precious moments.  Three of the people I love most (Yes, I do love Tom that much already!) lying there , so peaceful.  It’s beautiful.

Now, I’m not naïve to think it’s going to always be this way.  No chance.  The tamtrums will come, and the tears will pour.  But we will be there to hold and to wipe away the tears.

I suppose it’s a bit like when we come to the Lord, isn’t it?  We come from a place of lostness and unbelonging, and we find ourselves plunged into a deep love relationship with our Father.  We can rest, we can sing, we can breathe easily…finally, we belong.  And then eventually, we get a little bit too used to the whole thing, and the tamtrums come.  We forget what it was like in those first moments after our salvation, and we settle into a new kind of restlessness.  But the Father is there, always wanting us to turn back.  And when he hears even the faintest cry of His children or the first lines of a song, he wraps his arms around us again, and there is peace.

I woke at 4:00 a.m. and haven’t been back to sleep yet.  It’s nearly 7:00 now, and while the birds sing outside, my little trio sleeps."

Another thing that happened while I was watching them was that Tom took his little right hand and felt his papa's face with his palm.  He doesn't have much feeling in his fingertips, so anytime he wants to see what something feels like, he has to use his palm.  He spent much of the night sucking his left thumb while his right palm caressed his daddy's 5-o'clock shadow.  :)

Sunday morning, we got up and ventured downstairs for the breakfast buffet.  It had been a good night's sleep, but the emotional toll shows in this picture...we were all pretty tired!

A view of our hotel's lobby from the 4th floor...the Ginger was very minimal, but it was clean, the staff was friendly, and the price was right!  The first few nights were a steal of a deal...$87 for 3 nights!  The last 2 nights were $80/night for some reason...never quite figured that out.  But we were thankful for the good price, as we knew that we would have to spend a lot more money on hotels once getting back to Delhi.

Tuna met us in the lobby to take us to his church.  When we were in Ethiopia, we went to church with our CCC staff brother, and we didn't want to miss the chance here.  Worshipping the Lord with believers in other parts of the world is a true blessing!  While inventorying our important belongings (passports, plane tickets, camera, etc.) the night before, I had discovered that I had lost my FLIP video recorder and was hoping that I had left it in the car that we had hired that day.  Tuna was able to call and check and, sure enough, the driver had found it and had put it aside for safe-keeping.  He was to be our driver the next morning, so we were told that we could get it then.  Good thing, as many of the precious videos that have already been shown here were recorded on my FLIP.  I was very relieved...to say the least.

Karen and Lipily...Lipily looked beautiful in all of the pretty dresses/clothes that Mama had brought for her, and despite her serious demeanor here, when she was in the room with Scott and Karen, she did great!  It was only when we went somewhere that she would seem nervous and withdrawn.  Keep watching, though...before long, the smiles come!  :)

Hoffbeast held Tom in the Ergo for almost the entire church service--and it was HOT in there!  Toward the end, and after Tom was very asleep, we switched and I held him....they were both so sweaty!  Again, the daddy was such a trooper...

...and so was Tom!  What a brave, beautiful little boy!

These pictures were taken as we sat outside the church building waiting for Tuna while he visited with some church friends.  Tom never left his papa's side.

Another trooper in the gang was Rex!  He loved Tom from the moment he met him, and he never showed signs of jealousy or anything of the sort.  Looking back, I can't imagine what our trip would have been like had he not come...it was SO important (and helpful) that he was there!

Without a doubt, one of the most poignant moments of our time in Orissa happened as we were driving away from the church.  Tuna's church happens to sit on the same road as a row of tiny shacks whose walls are made of cardboard, random clothing, corrugated metal, and various other materials that are tied together somehow.  It was a sad scene driving in, but driving out was by far worse, as men and women had come to sit on the driveway of the church and beg as the caravans of people left.  Even writing about it now, I still don't know how to process what I saw. 

I will never forget the man in white.  Skin so dark brown that the white fabric gleamed against it.  Sitting as dignified as he possibly could, perched atop a stool he had likely carried and leaning against his makeshift cane for balance.  His left hand stretches out toward our van as we drive away, and as it does, I see the hands of my son...60 years later.  Mangled hands that were missing fingers or whose fingers were shorter than they should be.  This man had value and purpose and meaning...and he was loved, loved, loved by Jesus!  And yet, very likely because of his hands, he had taken on the life of a beggar, forced to live that way because his culture says that he is worthless.  The worldview in India says that he deserved it.  But this man didn't have mangled hands because of a past life; the reason his hands were like that is because we live in a broken world where there are birth defects and where there is sin and where there is pain of all kinds.  Oh, how I longed to reach out to him with the love of Jesus, giving him a little silver and a lot of the Gospel.

But we drove on by, just like everyone else was doing that day.  How could I not think about my son as I looked at that man?  How his fate was being changed because God had led us to adopt and had brought Tom to us?  He and Hoffbeast were sitting right in front of me when I saw that man, and as I looked from the man's hands to Tom's hands and back again, I prayed for him....and praised God for our son and for the medical care that was on its way to him.  But still--it all seemed so wrong. 

I didn't know what to do then, and I still don't exactly know.  But I do know that I can advocate for special needs orphans in India one at a time...orphans who will eventually grow up to be the old man in white with the mangled hands, begging outside the doors of a church, a church who can't take care of all the needs because there are so many.  Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours.

Back at the Ginger, Daddy got a workout!  Tom didn't want to sit still and was often asking for Daddy to come with him (wherever it was that he was going....so cute!).  It reminded us of N, the son of our friends we had lived with all winter.  He was always doing that, and now we had a little adventure boy of our own!

I love these pictures...Tom is so confident!  "Hello, world!  This is my dad!"  He would sometimes look back at me as if to say, "Don't worry about him, lady...I'll take care of him!"

After church, the McFs returned to the hotel, and we ventured out on a drive down the road to find some lunch.  And we found...a Domino's!  The people there were so friendly, the food tasted a lot like home, and the best part--it was very, very air-conditioned in the dining room!  Check out their delivery motorbikes!

We ordered our pizza and took in the cool air, then returned to the hotel so that Tom could nap.  But when we arrived and checked on the McFs, they were hungry, too, and invited us to join them in their room.

We had a delicious hotel room pizza picnic, and it was great!  In the picture above, Lipily was showing her skills for eating hot foods--she would pour the pepper seasoning packets into her hand and eat them straight!  She was trying to get Karen to do it, but Karen wasn't quite as fond of the hot pepper.  :)

The kids were beginning to come out of their shells--Lipily and Tom were so glad to have each other there!--and it was so much fun to laugh and enjoy being together.