Journey to Marco Part 6: La Mesa

I read this week that Colombian author and Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez did not like when critics described his work as “magical realism.” He thought the line between realism and surrealism is much blurrier. The implication is that “reality” for me, a Cartesian drenched North Atlantic citizen, is much different than that of a Latin American. My “real” is distanced from enchantment that exists in the real world of Latin America. La Mesa embodied this blurring.

We drove forty miles from Bogotá and descended 6,000 feet to arrive at La Mesa. We stayed at an eco-resort called Hotel Toscana. Our balcony faced southeast. Each morning, Silas would wake-up way too early, around 5:30am, and ask if he could sit in the balcony hammock. Alone, he would contemplate and watch the sunrise, a quality he came by honestly from his Papa Sir. The rest of us would slumber until the warmth would stir us.

By mid-morning the temperature would reach the mid-80’s and a storm would tumble across the eastern range of the Andes. The storms were quick to roll in and quick to roll out. La Mesa would cool for a while, and then heat back up. The rhythm of sunshine and rainstorms seems ordered, but not decipherable by me. Instead of iPhone reminders and Google Calendar alerts, the land dictated our days.

At night, June Bugs would swarm the area. They were like dry leaves in a windstorm, swirling around, bumping into each other. Light pollution from Bogotá seemed mostly obscured by the mountains. One night, I walked by myself around the property and heard footsteps behind me. It was the heavy leaves of a banana tree slapping in the soft breeze.

Another afternoon Silas encouraged Erin and I to come to the porch to see a spider. He said it was in the plant right off our porch. We approached lackadaisically. Of course spiders are neat, but when you are trying to adjust to having three kids, a four-year old’s excitement over a spider is hard to prioritize. I came out expecting some sort of semi-cool jungle spider, but I could not find what Silas’ little eyes had spotted. That was because I was trained to look for a spider, like a normal sized spider. Quickly a tarantula emerged from the plant. On another day we saw a horse suffer and survive a seizure. Erin picked mangoes off the tree for the kids to cut and eat.

The resort was tucked in a strange neighborhood. It was one part shanty-town, one part private estates. We never got the story of why these two worlds sat on top of each other. I was worried about walking off the resort looking like a couple of dumb gringos with their kids, but I forgot that Erin is not a gringo. We walked along the dirt road, Silas tossing rocks into pools of stagnant water, while Erin exchanged pleasantries with porch sitting locals. We were imposed upon by a pack of barking dogs. I panicked. Erin quickly made a hiss sound, as if she had encountered roaming packs of dogs many times before…because she has. I have often called her my Indiana Jones.

We were in La Mesa for one week, for only one purpose: to meet a judge. Besides the extra time to bond with Marco and observe Colombia, we had the bonus of visiting with some staff from our adoption agency. We met Scott Brown, Executive Vice President at Gladney, and Ella, the Latin America Program Assistant. They happened to be in Colombia at the same time as us. Scott was well known to us from communication over the years, but it was wonderful to get to know him better. Ella is a Colombian who now lives in Texas. Scott gave us a lot of great history on Gladney and Ella taught us a ton about Colombia. Again, we cannot recommend Gladney more!

But Friday our business came. We went to the courthouse and watched Jairo tisk, wink, and smirk our way into a faster procedure. When it was time to meet the judge, we walked into the second floor office of a building with Spanish colonial architecture. The windows were open, we could see the bustling marketplace and the yellow/blue/red flags of the town square. The judge played with Lucy and complimented Silas’ hair. She spoke with us for twenty minutes, asking about our jobs, our experience in Colombia, and we asked her about her story. She held Marco and we were never quizzed about our parenting style.

My conditioning to expect a small spider, a cynical court official, or to assume the sound of footsteps would not be banana leaves, revealed how acute is my sense of “reality.” I am romanticizing of course (especially about court officials). There is an enchantment here none-the-less. The enchantment of Latin America is something Erin discovered much before I did. Her season in Argentina, work in Guatemala, many visits to the Dominican, and now Colombia, have informed her affection for this part of the world. I am only beginning to learn. With these affections being stoked, is it any wonder God would bring us a Colombian son? We had no idea what he was doing when we began the adoption process, but now our family is forever tethered to this place. And this gorgeous, mysterious place really is Macondo.

Journey to Marco Part 5: Dispatches from Bogotá

We waited in the lobby of the doctor’s office, then saw a nurse, then made it back to the exam room. This was our pediatric exam for the U.S. Embassy. The doctor was so attentive. He was the chief of pediatrics and neonatology at the large hospital in Bogota. A friend we made here told us it is the best hospital in Colombia. We felt honored he would see us, but apparently he often sees children of international adoption.

His examination was very thorough and his bedside manner with parents was incredibly sensitive. We agreed he was the Ben Warner of Colombia; “Él es perfecto!” He was so thoughtful about our worries having just met Marco and he was eager to help us travel without the oxygen tank. He even hooked us up with a nurse from the hospital who specialized in respiratory issues in the neonatal unit. She would later make a house call and monitor Marco for two hours.

After that wonderful visit, we turned to vaccinations. Marco got two shots. I must say the speed and gentility were lacking here, but Arbor Pediatrics sets a high standard. It was about 3:30pm and we were ready to head home.

Like anywhere, this place is complicated. I am so thankful for my time with Andrew, the American pastor in Bogotá. He spoke with a lot of nuance. I am always suspicious when people are able to make generalize about a place or people. I learned this the hard way in the Dominican Republic. My friend Elliott, a missionary in the D.R. debunked a frequent American generalization, “they are the happiest people!” Perhaps Dominicans have a propensity for joy, but in the villages we used to visit, there was a lot of pain too. Elliott pointed out that if a bunch of Dominicans showed up in my town, I probably would put on a happy face and enjoy this break from reality afforded by my guests.

I have tried my best to ask many questions when we hang out with Colombians. I have learned about the professional soccer clubs. I was leaning towards making us a Santa Fe family, then I asked Jairo who his club was. With more joviality than he had let on to that point he responded, “Santa Fe!” This sealed it.

Many Colombians despise the show Narcos. Not because of the narrative, but apparently the accents are terrible. A Brazilian plays Pablo Escobar. People compare this to an American Southerner playing someone from London. On the flip side, some sober souls have told me the cultural portrayals are accurate and there are things to learn from the show about Colombian politics and history. One person told me that if you ask someone my age or older about Pablo Escobar, they most likely saw a bombing or had a relative killed by him. His terror was that prolific. In my limited encounters, people have in fact often had an anecdote or two. If there is one thing I realize Narcos misses, it is how much we should utterly hate this man.

Politics, like anywhere, is complicated. There are billboards all over promoting a “Sí” vote for the peace referendum. But after many taxi rides to different parts of Bogotá, I have started noticing “No” propaganda. I asked an acquaintance why there would be “No” votes for a peace agreement. She said, “that is me!” Her explanation was that the cease fire agreement provides too much amnesty for the guerrillas and she thinks it will not prevent future civil conflict.

In the original downtown of Bogotá, La Candelaria, we took the kids on a graffiti tour that was fascinating. Side note, I love my wife. The tour guide was a bit shocked by our arrival and I think quite sure we would leave early, but the gang could hang. At one point I snapped a picture of Erin letting Silas play on a defunct playground surrounded by graffiti in a back neighborhood of Bogotá. We learned about biodiversity, deforestation, the clashes over Marxism and Capitalism, and graffiti styles of course.

Like anywhere, this is a layered place. Trust no one who returns from Colombia with a clean narrative. We have barely scratched the surface and I can already see that the rise of economic development here has been wonderful and destructive. The military conflicts are not simply a civil war, but a mess of multiple guerrilla groups, the Colombian government, and narco-traffickers. Bogotá itself is one of the most beautiful, cosmopolitan cities I have ever visited. It also contains some terrible poverty. One thing is for sure, this place will not be easily conveyed to Marco via books and movies. It will require on the ground training and the Pfeiffer clan will be happy to provide such an education!

Journey to Marco Part 4: The Gauntlet

Wednesday, September 14^th, we were set to return to the orphanage. This would be a different experience. We would be comfortable, we knew Marco, and we would have a sense of his routine and the people we would meet with—or so I thought. We were picked up at 7:30am, caffeinated and bright-eyed. Before going to the orphanage we had to make a pit-stop at the Cancillería to have our visas extended. We popped out of Jairo’s car, took an elevator upstairs, and hopped in a short line. To boot, we got to skip ahead on account of our circus of children, stroller, and oxygen tank.

But not so fast, just days before our visit to the visa office, they changed their requirements asking all new applicants to fill-out an online form prior to coming in for processing. So Erin retreat with Marco to a nearby internet café and filled out the form. I pumped the older kids full of saltines and dad jokes until she returned about 45 minutes later. In those 45 minutes the line grew significantly. We made it into a waiting room full of exchange students from other South American countries, people from Asia looking to establish a long visit in Colombia, and possibly a few other adoptive families.

After another wait, Bruno Mars,
or a Colombian official who looked like Bruno Mars, brought us to his cubicle. Alas, Erin’s internet café form had not made its way into the system. He did not take pity, but he did take action. This is the day where Erin shined. Her ease of operation in other countries pulled us through. I can tell a difference in how Colombians (and in past memory Guatemalans and also Dominicans) treat her and how they treat me. People sense her cultural aptitude and the fact that she is not high maintenance, culturally arrogant, and in many ways savvy. They let her skip ahead and they give her the benefit of the doubt. That’s what happens, literally and figuratively, when you have a Global Entry card paper-clipped to your passport. For me, a grocery store clerk forced me to show him my cash before he would ring me up because I had “dumb” written all over my face. In his defense, they day before I had not brought cash.

So Bruno Mars pulled some strings and let us skip the online form. Again, this was not pity, as I could see on his very stressed face. It was willingness to work with someone he perceived as passing culturally (not me). So he sent us out to the waiting room, then brought us back to his cubicle about thirty minutes later. He looked over our passports. It was at this point I realized I needed to take this video. He sent us back to the waiting room again. Then we went to a cashier, but we did not pay yet. Again we circled back to the cubicle, then to the cashier, and four hours later, the “pit stop” was over.

We went outside and rewarded Silas with a Colombian National Team soccer jersey bought from a street vendor whom Silas torturously watched for four hours from the Cancillería’s window. The vendor named his price, which we were happy to pay. Jairo intervened with a swagger I had not anticipated. He calmly conjured the unimpressed face of McKayla Maroney and the vendor budged. This attitude has reared itself with more frequency as the process has become more intense. Jairo is not a driver, he is a fixer.

***Editorial comment: none of this is a reflection of Colombia, our adoption agency, or the people with whom we were working. It is just how things go when you have a lot of moving pieces. Erin and I reminded ourselves about construction permits in the United States, which are confusing and drawn-out, and these don’t even involve foreign travel, nor the transfer of a minor’s guardians!***

From the street vendor we hustled to the car as it began to rain. Lucy dropped her pacifier in the road, which we did not notice at first. She spat worried gibberish and when we finally realized what happened, I had to risk life and limb to re-enter the street to extract the left-behind treasure. As a side note, Lucy never used a pacifier in her whole life until we brought one on this trip for Marco. She has adopted the practice.

Onward we went to the orphanage to meet with Juliana. She was so sweet to all of our children and helpful with our understanding Marco’s past, present, and future. We also met Ana Maria. She is the attorney for our adoption agency, but she is more than an attorney. She arranged our relationship with Jairo, a pediatrician, and even helped us find our place in Bogotá. Ana Maria and Jairo form a sort of dynamic duo that makes the adoption happen. They are dogged and we owe our lives to them.

Juliana gave us a tour of the orphanage, which was wonderful. It was well-run, vibrant and clean, but it was also obvious no amount of professional excellence could replace a family. They reminded us of that, which was encouraging. Between our interview and the tour, we were signing papers. All of a sudden we were whisked off to a defensora’s office. On the way Lucy and I caught a nap.

This next stop was an impromptu visit to a defensora. As best I can tell this person is a sort of Guardian ad litem/social worker. We thought we were not seeing this person for a few more days, but she was able to squeeze us in. Jairo and Ana Maria shuffled us up to her office. In this situation, Jairo, Ana Maria, and Erin all spoke in a frenzy of Spanish.We signed some things and took the papers from the defensora back to the orphanage where we waited in Jairo’s car. Around 4pm we ventured back to the apartment. We had gone nine hours non-stop.

It was a gauntlet at sprint speed. We had to snack on the go—snacks Erin had packed. It was exhausting and distressing at times, but Erin and I agreed this was the way to do it. To spend one full day just banging out these tasks felt so accomplished in the end. We would much prefer one brutal gauntlet surrounded by a week of wonderful days exploring Bogotá; rather than spreading them out. We all slept well that night.

Journey to Marco Part 3: Bonding

The afternoon we brought home Marco, we ventured out with our umbrella stroller, oxygen tank, and three kids. Erin gave Marco a bottle near a playground where Silas and Lucy played. The older kids took out all their familial confusion with some hard play. Lucy did not come away without a face injury, but we all left quite content. We pushed the umbrella stroller across the craggy sidewalks of Bogotá with moderate success.

When we returned to the apartment Marco had a visitor. It was Lordes. She provided his respiratory therapy at the orphanage. Lordes brought her son Carlos, who translated. The drop-in nature of things made me nostalgic for our time in Boston when urban proximity made dropping-in even more possible than our current urban living. Lordes lived just a few blocks away and loaned us her nebulizer machine (is that right medical people)?

She was clearly in love with Marco. Her face gave away her heart ache when leaving him. It took me a few days to see this, but he is a charmer. When we returned to the orphanage after a week, the little person whom I thought was just a floppy, oxygen-lacking baby, was met with fanfare by all. I am told by every women in the world this is because of his eye lashes.

We had a week between bringing home Marco and returning to the orphanage for an evaluation of our bond. It was an interesting, beautiful, and anxious week. From the start Marco has been a stellar sleeper. Unfortunately this is probably something conditioned in him. The first few days felt like spinning plates as we balanced Marco’s regimen of inhalers, nebulizer, antibiotics, and on, and on, and on.

On Saturday, our third day with Marco, Silas got sick with what looked like altitude sickness. He was weak and throwing up, but he bounced back in the afternoon. He was able to watch a lot of football (American) in bed, so I helped with that. This same morning a pediatrician visited our apartment to examine Marco and she thought his respiratory issues were improving greatly. She encouraged us to try a few hours on, a few hours off the oxygen. This revolutionized our exploration of Bogotá.

We spent the week checking out public parks, one of which features a British double-decker bus turned café. We found a surprising amount of good coffee. Many coffee growing countries export their best product, but that is changing and we were the beneficiaries of some wonderful coffees that were 100% Colombian. We walked the city, Silas bringing a soccer ball colored like the Colombian flag to each park.

We have learned we overlooked an opportunity for funding our adoption. Bringing a ginger to a country where people mostly share the same dark hair coloring draws widespread fanfare. I also learned it is legal in Colombia to hand out Smirnoff Ice samples the same way energy drink companies do so on street corners in the States.

At night, my bond with Silas and Lucy really grew. Marco still required a lot of attention for feeding and treatment. Erin’s intentionality with Marco is no doubt the cause for his vitality. She
has helped him work on sitting up, holding things, stretching his stiff limbs. She administers most medicines, though I do have to do the dreaded nebulizer, hold him for vaccinations, and do the night feeding.

Silas, champ that he is, was easy. We would put him down first. He and I began a new tradition where I tell him stories about songs by artists I love. I would tell him about a Gillian Welch song or a Bright Eyes song and let him pick based on my synopsis. We would just listen to music until he fell asleep.

By the time Silas would be slumbering, Lucy would be melting from Marco jealousy. As you may know, Lucy is my kindred spirit in the family. We are night owls and we are expressive, deep feelers. So my little night owl thespian and I would grab an Ergo and hit the night streets of Bogotá. We would watch motorcycles, pedestrians, and we often visited a modern art interpretation of a dog made out of plastic. Upon our return the boys would be resting and Erin would put Lucy down.

Journey To Marco Part 2: Meeting Marco

When we received the referral to adopt Marco, I changed the background on my computer to Bogotá’s skyline and I started reading voraciously about Colombian history and culture. I was so excited to see a new nation and for most of our family, a new continent. But I quickly realized my attention was misaimed. We were not journeying to Colombia; we were journeying to Marco. Our mission was to bring home Marco and on Thursday, September 8^th, we were set to meet him.

We woke up well rested our first morning in Bogotá. We were still unsettled though. We made coffee, ate breakfast, and got dressed up for our visit to the orphanage. Once we were dressed and fed, we waited. We waited for our ride with Jairo. I am sure Jairo is a fixture in many families adoption stories and I will share more about him as we go on. As I was saying, we waited for Jairo. He was punctual, we were just ready early and those waiting moments felt like an eternity. We waited, laid around, waited. I tried to nap. Erin wanted to run to the store and buy candy to celebrate with the kids at the orphanage, but I refused her request for fear that Jairo might arrive and ask where she was and my lack of Spanish would leave us stranded. This speaks to our family’s dependence on Erin, which will also be well documented as we go on.

Jairo picked up the Pfeiffers at 10am. We were dressed in our best as he wove us through the bustling traffic of Bogotá. Whenever I travel to a new city I try my best to seek out another Presbyterian pastor to make a friend. Our denomination’s mission agency, MTW, has a team in Bogotá and I visited one of their churches. The pastor, Andrew, later took me out for a beer and I asked him a million questions about Bogotá and Colombia. He told me that cars get upset if motorcycles are not “on the stripes.” In other words, cars drive in the lanes and the motorcycles (of which there are probably 20 per block) ride on the shoulders and in the middle. Its not unlike many places outside the States, but I have never visited somewhere with this many motorcycles flooding the middle and sides of streets, filling every gap.

Jairo threaded the needle through the buses, cars, and motorcycles to get us to La Casa de la Madre y Niño. We were escorted into a glass waiting room thinking he might be walked past us at any moment. While waiting Silas and Lucy played with the resident teddy bears.

We were then moved to a conference room. On the table were two white binders. The top binder said “Juan Jose Ricardo Garcia.”
It contained every document about this little 8 kilo, 8 month old human being. On the bottom was a binder that said “Pfeiffer.” It contained every single adoption document we filed over the past six and a half years. The binders were stacked opposite ways as if to say, “these two complement each other.”

We finally had company; Ennis (sp?), who has worked at the orphanage for 47 years, and Juliana, a young child psychologist. The conversation was a vibrant exchange amongst the women. Erin, Ennis, and Juliana exchanged stories, biographical anecdotes, medical information, and then it came to business. Ennis was full of wisdom. Juliana intuitively zeroed in on Lucy, the once baby, now middle child, and immediately engaged her.Before that she briefed us on the psychological state of a child who has spent their life in an orphanage.

For Marco, that looked like coming home from birth at a hospital to an orphanage, contracting H1N1, then a respiratory infection, and spending most of his life in an isolated area of the orphanage. The care he received was wonderful and full of compassion, but no doubt lonely. More on this in a later post.

After preparing us that our baby would be strapped to an oxygen tank via tubes, they brought him in.

I fed him soup while Erin learned his medical regimen. He was grabby and floppy. He could not hold himself up and could barely keep food in his mouth—something for which Julianna prepared us. He had received therapy to work on his mouth skills, but he was still behind the curve. As the soup went from bowl to spoon to mouth to my lap, Erin took notes at a feverish pace. Marco required two inhalers, a nebulizer, a steroid, an antibiotic, a medication for acid reflux, all while on oxygen.

Marco’s brown eyes were impressive as advertised. He was not warm to us, as expected. We were more adults on his path to survival. I’m sure on some small level he was curious why we were walking him away from the doting affections of the care at La Casa. We took a picture outside and Jairo helped us get to the cab: 2 parents, 1 redheaded big brother, 1 eccentric sister, an oxygen tank, and a baby. On the cab ride home, he slept in Erin’s lap.

 

 

Journey to Marco Part 1: Travel to Colombia

(TO READ FROM THE BEGINNING, CLICK HERE)

If you know the adoption process, you know it is anything but straight and predictable. This is the case for every single adoption and many wise counselors have conditioned us to expect surprises and chaos. We waited a month to find out our travel date. As we did, we prepared for our travel, which Erin made look easy given her globetrotting nature. Of course in the Pfeiffer house children get passports weeks after birth. Lucy and Silas both have passport photos from early, early infancy because you never know when Erin might want to cart one off to Africa or Latin America. This is Silas’ third trip abroad, fifth if you count in utero!

We wondered if we would attend our church’s retreat Labor Day weekend. All we had to wait on was a letter from Immigration Services and Erin hounded the mailbox each day. When it looked like the church retreat was on for us, I decided I would ride my motorcycle up the Carolina mountains, since I knew such rides would not be frequent when Marco comes home. I packed my waterproof bag, cinched it to my seat, zipped my jacket, put on my gloves, buckled my helmet and began my journey from our driveway across the back roads of the Blue Ridge. It was 10am and our mailman always comes in the late afternoon, so waiting was futile. As I turned 5 feet out our drive, the mail truck stopped at our house.

I walked the bike backwards and waited…of course the letter would come today! And it did. Our agency prepared us that we would travel 10-14 days after receiving our letter. As I rode up the foothills, I thought about how I would be in Colombia in two weeks. After about an hour of riding, I stopped at a gas station in the midst of a lonely expanse of pines and rolling hills. Sweaty and dusty, I pulled off my helmet and strutted into the storefront. I bought a Red Bull and topped off my tank. As I leaned on my saddle, I pulled out my phone. Erin had texted me, “Beth says we can travel Wednesday! Maybe your dad can help us find flights?”

It was Friday the week before, I knew it was unlikely we would travel in 5 days, but I obliged. Erin is shy, I did not think she would just call my dad and I did not think a realistic flight could be found. I rode on through mountains of southwest North Carolina and as I rolled up and down, banking left and right, I continued pondering our exciting future in two weeks. I was wrong on all accounts. Erin’s tenacity to see Marco trumped her bashfulness and she and my dad schemed to get us flights 3 business days later. When I pulled off in Chimney Rock, I again checked my phone. “Have flights for Wednesday.”

Wednesday sounds like “sometime during the day Wednesday.” It was not. Our flight left Raleigh at 6am. We woke-up at 1:45am in Winston-Salem, piled our backpacks, umbrella strolled, pack-n-play (which was been to Guatemala and now Colombia), suitcases, and kids. We picked up Erin’s mom at 2:15am. She graciously drove our car back to Winston-Salem. We checked-in our circus of gear and made our way to a plane to Miami. From Miami we flew to Bogotá.

At 1pm we arrived in Bogotá and met our driver Jairo. We wound through the bustling city sans car seats…or should I say sin car seats? We arrived at our apartment around 3pm, too early to move-in. So we ditched our bags in a back room and wandered through Parque de la 93, our chic Bogotá locality. It is cosmopolitan with playgrounds, a beautiful green space, coffee shops, boutiques, and a sort of Whole Foods-inspired tienda. It felt like Paris or Manhattan.

When 5pm rolled around I was beginning to get testy. Not knowing the place or the language disoriented me and Erin was miles ahead in comfort. Our apartment (video tour here) was a welcomed sight. Our landlord, German (pronounced “hare-MON”), was so friendly. When he checked our TV remotes, the batteries were dead so he ran to a store and returned to replace them. Then a light bulb burned out and he did the same. After settling in we ventured out to find a grocery store. We got lost on the way, but fear not. In a city of 8 million, we ran into German, who along with his teenage daughter, walked us to a store.

The kids melted in the store and I also my lost rational mind. At this point, Erin was the lone confident wayfarer. We ate quickly, we slept early, and the next morning awoke ready to go meet Marco.

Journey to Marco Part 0

The story of Marco entering our lives goes back much farther than his little life. Sitting in La Mesa, halfway through our journey, I want to reflect far back in order to tell the stories of today. Here is my view:

 

When Erin and I were in pre-marital counseling, we discovered we both were interested in international adoption. My interest was shallow, as I at times also threatened to not want children. As you might expect, hers was developed and full of conviction.

A year and a half into our marriage, we went on a trip to her parent’s farm with our friends, Kevin, Matt, and Leslie (along with a brand new little Wade). It was the middle of winter in Indiana. Erin’s dad was beginning to convert an old cattle barn into what some of you know is the world’s most impressive woodworking shop. The slab was poured and the electrical was run, so it was time to insulate the walls. That day, Erin informed me she thought she might be pregnant…which was not our plan. I spent that day in a freezing barn, pumping insulation into 1’’ holes in the plywood walls. Eight hours of loud white noise and monotony. It was an ideal situation to process our impending change. I thought all day about what life with a child would be like and I realized, yes, I was ready to be a dad…not maturity-wise, priority-wise.

It turned out Erin was not pregnant, but this is when adoption talks began. We researched many agencies and narrowed it down to two. We began exploring the programs of each agency and learned that we qualified for almost no international adoptions. Either we had not been married long enough or our income was too low.

Then we found God’s plan for our life: we would adopt a child before having any biological children…a “Plan A” adoption. Our country would be Ethiopia and our agency would be Gladney. We knew God’s plan. You can read our interpretations of those years here. Two biological children, six years, and what has amounted to the closure of adoptions in Ethiopia, here we are with Marco in Colombia.

It was really six and a half years and they were not easy. We applied with Gladney in March of 2010. These years were full of joy, but also anguish. The process slowed, but we watched others move ahead thinking we would too. Silas was born, then we re-entered the process. It slowed some more, then Lucy was born and we re-entered the process. The early excitement of paperwork, fundraisers, prayer meetings, was replaced by yearly medical updates, speculative calculations for our “new wait times,” and periodic news that things were getting more difficult. We watched families in our church start their paperwork, finish it, submit it, travel, adopt, and live life with their child. About two years ago we wrestled with whether we should switch programs to a different country. We prayed hard and felt like God led us to stick with Ethiopia, so we did! Weeks later, we were told the program was ending and we could switch or withdraw. It was confusing.

As an aside, we could not be more pleased with Gladney. Their staff has been unbelievably transparent, ethical, professional, compassionate, and empathetic. Not a moment in these six years did we doubt them. In fact, their careful communication, sober sharing of news, and professionalism only made us trust them more. Our experience has been matched by their reputation here. The people working on adoptions in Colombia clearly have some cynical attitudes toward some agencies and they have made it very clear Gladney is a solid rock of an organization in a field full of fluidity and potential for mistakes or abuse.

At the end of July I was driving away from our house when a phone number I did not recognize appeared on my car’s display. Erin never answers these calls, I always answer them for the adventure. So I answered, “Hello?”

“Austin, this is Beth, from Gladney.”

I immediately knew why Beth was calling. I had just received an email, one of many I had received over six years, informing me my medical information was out of date. Once again, I would have to go see Dr. Larry Hollar, make his staff pull out the type-writer to fill-in the pre-printed form, get blood drawn, while knowing it was a futile visit because it would go out of date next year…as we wait more.

Beth responds, “and Erin, you’re there?”

I cut in, “no Erin is not here, I am in the car.”

Beth corrects me, “no we are on a three-way call, Erin?”

I have obviously misjudged the situation. This is THE call and I begin to tear-up. Beth responds with exuberance, “you’re having a baby!” That day we knew Marco was to be adopted into our family. A few days later, we all signed to accept the referral.

Sabbatical Reflection #3: An idolatry of control and people-pleasing

My sabbatical is coming to an end and I think I am ready. I am missing Salem Pres, missing the excitement of a new workday. These are the exciting forms of leadership for me. I love to look at our community and identify why things are thriving or not. And then I love to form patterns, habits, and communications to either perpetuate or correct these situations. This is my vocation.

Not many pastors like these forms of leadership. They usually like to think about ideas, disseminate those ideas in one-on-one conversations, in small groups, or to whole communities. Those ideas shape thought and behavior in a community and in many ways this is the pastoral calling—teaching. This mimics what the Apostles. They reflected on the words of Christ and took those words to the world not just to share opinions, but to shape thoughts and lifestyles so that people can dwell in union with Christ. I too like these forms of leadership and in many ways my sabbatical has been a time of reclaiming this calling of the pastor-poet.

But I also love to think through how the system operates. There is a lot of creativity and curiosity involved. Its like taking apart an engine and putting it back together. But this analogy only goes so far. An engine only works one way – the way it was designed. Church communities do not have one design. They are like families more than they are like engines. The beautiful side of my passion is that I can work with our community to prevent conflict and promote hospitality. Articulating and designing ways for people to join our family and ways to continue participating in our family are the work of a sort-of deacon-elder hybrid, which is how I see myself. Every gift has a dark side though. For the teacher, it might be the desire to impose one’s world-view on a group or it is a narcissistic need for validation. For my vocation, it is control and people-pleasing.

Because I like to “take things apart”, dissect, and reassemble, I spend an immense amount of energy preparing for each leadership moments in our church. When we discuss something organizational, I come with research, angles, analogies, and a proposal. Most of this is rooted in zeal—until it turns dark. It turns dark when I have no curiosity and act on fear. This is the language one of our elders used when confronting me about this behavior. Zeal means coming with much excitement, many ideas, and many proposals. Zeal turns to control when the excitement, the ideas, and the proposals are non-negotiable.

When I began at Salem Pres, there were so many leadership opportunities. The church was (and still is) so young. So much of the church was formed by lay leaders without strategy or the ability to scale-up. Many of these pioneers had also come and gone. It was the frontier. Small groups, the worship music, the liturgy, even our budget, were all led by people outside the elders and deacons. This was not a bad thing, and control of these things did not need to be “wrestled” away from these lay-leaders. It was simply that more intentionality, more attention could be invested in each for the long-term flourishing of the church. All these exciting raw portions of the community were opportunities for creativity and definition. Many of those raw portions have been shaped into something beautiful because of cooperation in our church.

I happened to come to Salem Pres in its sort of “third iteration.” It began as a grassroots, loosely defined community within community. Then it transitioned to being its own independent collective. When I came on it was beginning to pursue more definition as not just a community, but a community with a mission to grow, to be inclusive, to be thoughtful. It has been such a fun journey to participate in the settling of the wild frontier and to watch it prosper.

Many people probably do not know that I have worked in churches since 2003. I worked for churches in Colorado, California, and North Carolina before coming to Salem Pres. In that time I saw more examples of malady than vitality. That illness was often rooted in the pastoral leadership. Without meaning to, Pastors can hurt people deeply. Unfortunately, I have seen the deeper sickness of pastors deliberately hurting people, but even if it is accidental it can be scarring.

This motivates my zeal for being careful and thoughtful in pastoral leadership. It is terrible when pastors abuse and manipulate people for their own agenda. But the lesser evil (which is an evil none-the-less) is still the “gospel-cowboy” who while well-intentioned, does not think critically about collateral damage or external costs on people’s emotions when churches make decisions. I am scared to death of the church not assessing every single potential externality. When it hopes to prevent conflict, this is a good desire. But when fear is relentless and it produces stubborn over-thinking, the result is control and people-pleasing.

Being controlling is very problematic for the Christian because it basically dismisses God’s power and it also makes grace futile. So that is a big deal. It is not the same as micromanagement. I like to spread leadership around the community and empower people to contribute. I have loved over the past few years the way our church has empowered lots of worship leaders, liturgy writers, new elders, new servant leaders, re-thought small groups, and introduced new ways to do hospitality. Unfortunately I began to fear what could go wrong in each of this arenas and I became controlling. This probably comes as a surprise to the congregation, because it really only manifested itself in session meetings. Thankfully we are Presbyterian! My weakness was (hopefully) disguised by the particular body of wise, prudent, and spiritual elders our congregation called.

This form of control is rooted in people-pleasing, an accusation I would have never leveled at myself. I always thought people-pleasing meant a passive desire to be liked. I think some would accuse me of being socially aloof and callous  before they would call me a people-pleaser. But, my desire to prevent conflict and hurt in the church has been so graceless and controlling that I’ve realized its a form of people-pleasing. I may not care if people like me or like Salem Pres. I am just terrified people will rightfully say they were damaged by the church.

But of course they will be damaged by the church! I can play a small part in preventing that, but moving into fearful, controlling, non-negotiable thinking will certainly not stop it. Only prayer, humble curiosity, and grace will. Oh God, and your church, forgive me. Thank you for your grace.

 

Sabbatical Reflections #2: Misunderstanding My Calling

One of the great joys in reading Craig Barnes’ The Pastor As Minor Poet, is a reclamation of my vocation. I became a pastor because it was the closest things I could find to combining my interests. I studied poetry in undergrad, theology in graduate school, I have been a musician, I enjoy hospitality and community building, and these all manifest themselves in the pastorate. Barnes’ image of the pastor-poet reclaims for me a combination of these interests. It combats my trend towards executive-administrator.

Recently I have been daydreaming about what a different pastoral calling would look like. Not in a wanderlust sense at all. If anything, I probably idolize our current community too much. There is no temptation to flee. Instead, I recall portraits of Catholic priests in literature and film. It seems we always find them pacing the sanctuary, completely interruptible. A parishioner wanders in, the priest sits one row in front of his guest. He drapes an elbow on the back of the pew offering an ear to the only other soul in a hallowed house of God. In these scenes there is poetry, hospitality, and community. I endeavor to accomplish these, but struggle. With no sanctuary pews, no office couch, and a pile of spreadsheets, calendars, and tasks, I find myself inhospitable.

What is missing in the priest scenes is that someone has to sweep that sanctuary. Someone must pay the electric bill and order the candles. For the person to have found the parish, perhaps a website exists. I like to do these things. I like to serve my community by oiling the gears of the church’s engine. I enjoy nailing together the trellis on which the vines of community grow. But they have consumed me.

My resistance to self-care, my cynicism about the extraordinary nature of pastoral work, have led me to value the practical, the measurable. Instead of imagination I seek order. Instead of curiosity, I pursue policy. And people demand it in a sense. I want people to be happy and if they are unsatisfied with an indefinite small group, an unarticulated reason behind childcare, I feel an addictive urge to speak back with both volume and precision. I think our church is thriving because we took seriously the work of stewarding our money with intention. I think having a calendar allows us to flow through seasons of ministry without looking chaotic to the newcomer. I am proud of this work, but it is not missionary in its nature. These are the acts of caring for the soil, but they are not the harvest.

I actually think it is really important for churches to have pastors doing the administrative work. Were it given to an unordained administrator or a volunteer,  it becomes even easier to make the tilling an end instead of a means. The good souls tasked with clearing the garden bed would do their best work, but they would probably do such a good job that no one would ever stop to see if the field was seeded. The calendars, spreadsheets, newsletters are tidy, but are the wayfaring finding the gate of Christ? This is how so many churches operate. Good people make meticulous calendars, detailed spreadsheets, tidy member rolls, and precise budgets, but these are abstracted from the ministers.

I live in a conflicted space. It is good for me to see the field, till it, prepare it. But I need to do a better job of letting it go a little. I need to play with it more. The danger is to till it beyond health. It becomes so turned over nothing can grow there.

Okay, I have belabored the agrarian analogy long enough. My calling is to be a pastor-poet, interpreting the word of God into the lives of Winston-Salem. This might involve some organizing, but I cannot let that own me. There is bigger work as Barnes puts it

One of the reasons that people need pastors is precisely because God is always present but usually not apparent. It takes a poet to find that presence beneath the layers of strategy for coping with the feeling of its absence.

I am not an executive, an administrator, a president, politician, or chairman. I am a pastor-poet called to shepherd a flock of Americans trying to cope with a severe modernity that wants to obscure the gentle Christ.

Thoughts on Sabbatical #1

It has been over two years since I wrote something on this blog. That is for two reasons. One is that I was working on finishing my Th.M. thesis and hoping to turn my M.A. thesis into some sort of book. The other is that I have been burning the candle at both ends and half-failed at the first reason. So here I am in Indiana, listening to the breeze sweep across the tree tops on my in-laws farm, enjoying a short sabbatical, and I would like to share why.

This post is written with my church, Salem Presbyterian, in mind as audience. For clarity’s sake, I will note these are just my personal, biased, not-peer-reviewed thoughts. It has been a pretty crazy season for our church with Ben needing to take some time away for physical healing and our congregation moving to a temporary summer home. I did not really announce to people I would be taking most of July off, but I am in fact away as you may have noticed. I wrote a letter to the elders about a month ago asking for time away to refresh and with great kindness they agreed.

Since beginning at Salem, I have been running at a break-neck pace because I absolutely adore our church. I love pouring blood, sweat, and tears into the lives of our community and especially into making that community function as a place of mission and hospitality. But there are problems with this pace of life, as many of you know. One of the really hard things to deal with as a pastor is the constant state of being “on.” It is almost impossible to know when I am not working and in a lot of ways I do not mind because I love my job so much. I have always resented pastors who draw thick lines between work and life. The parish is too much of a family to be so unimaginative. But in my youthful arrogance, I did not offset a blending of work and community with sabbath and reflection.

I am reading two books right now (well I’m juggling a few more very poorly, but…) as part of my sabbatical I have assigned myself Resilient Ministry by Bob Burns, et al., and The Pastor As Minor Poet by Craig Barnes. In The Pastor As Minor Poet, Barnes notes the story of Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and writer I have always adored. Nouwen checked himself into a monastery for seven months after he realized he was writing, lecturing, but failing to simply spend time in prayer. Barnes describes Nouwen’s situation as, “complaining about all the demands on his schedule, [yet] he paradoxically found himself afraid to be alone.”¹

This is where I am.

It has been awesome to watch God work over these few years at Salem Pres. We have almost doubled as a congregation and seen so many new members come through our doors even as we commission many to go out into the wider world. I love tinkering with so many of the gears and pistons that make our community possible as we embrace and send, embrace and send. But a number of unhealthy habits and narratives have snuck into my mind.

I have described Barnes’ book as both a salve and a compass. His humor and empathy help me cope with the challenges of pastoral ministry. I have also resented pastors who claim that ministry is unlike any other career. I find that to be such a self-appreciating claim. On the flip side, it is a strange vocation and through these readings I am learning to embrace that it is a sometimes lonely and murky way to spend a life.

Resilient Ministry is more a diagnostic manual, identifying streams of habit and thought and prescribing alternatives to the destructive ones. I am learning about a few of my bad habits. When I wrote to our elders describing my exhaustion, I noted that I do not think my job description is too much work. It fits my gifts and I believe I can accomplish it reasonably. However, three things have led to dysfunction in my work-life.

 

1. Self-consciousness about my work life
2. Misunderstanding my calling
3. An idolatry of control and people-pleasing

I will save the latter two for later reflection. For a moment, I would love to address my self-consciousness about my work life. Resilient Ministry recommends finding ways to share with one’s congregation what it is we do for both the pastor’s and the congregation’s benefit. This combats a few of the habits and narratives I have allowed into my daily life. They note that pastor/writer Eugene Peterson was accustomed to writing a quarterly update on what it is he does week to week as a way of cluing-in his people. I hope to make a habit of the same…starting now.

I was so relieved to learn a study by the Anglican church found a pastor works an average of fifteen hours more a week than lay leaders realized. I feel this in a heavy way. I try to find work, because I feel I need to justify my vocation with other busy professionals in our church. Like I said before, I know my job could be accomplished in reasonable ways, but I feel like I need to “work.” I feel guilt about reading, I feel guilty about praying, and I feel guilty about NOT “working” during “business hours.”

Each morning I get to my desk intending to read scripture, pray, and journal. But immediately I think of the people out there doing “real work” like digging, bandaging, calculating, and serving. So I open my laptop and I begin to answer emails, make phone calls to small group leaders, create forms for the retreat, edit the bulletin, send out the weekly email, check our finances, or audit our member rolls and assure the unbaptized are scheduled for a baptism. Before you know it, it is lunch and I am meeting someone, then I meet with Ben in the afternoon, perhaps spend an hour again chipping away at emails, and by then it is dinner time. I eat dinner and head out of the house for a session meeting, to visit a small group, or to lead an evening prayer meeting. By the end I have busied myself, I have been with people, I have justified my existence and perhaps even competed with the most busy professionals in our congregation. But my soul is worse-off.

There are breaks in those times and some days I do not have any meetings. I could spend those days reading or even simply working on our house or yard, but I am afraid of being “caught” not working. I feel like I have to prove my job is a real job (which is absurd because when I look at other pastors I think “that is a nearly impossible vocation to survive.”) For myself however, I hear voices that people think I only sip coffee, flip through my study Bible, listen to podcasts, and go on walks.

I told a group of Duke Divinity School students earlier this year that the thing that surprised me most about being a pastor is that almost always someone is mad at you. My own pride drives me to tinkering with administrative work (which is necessary and valuable) because it is measurable and it makes me feel like I can rebut people’s expectations with my busywork. But this ignores the loftier task of being a priestly poet, one who discerns God’s word and then hopefully inserts it artfully in the lives of those around me–even if they are mad at me.

This task can only happen with self-care. Add “self-care” to the list of things I hate that pastors say. For those keeping score, I hate (1) firm lines between pastors and congregants (2) claiming ministry is unlike ANYTHING else, and (3) self-care. I fear these lines of thinking contradict Jesus’ call for followers to die to themselves, to take up their cross, to incur the cost of discipleship. Thankfully, Resilient Ministry has identified my equally arrogant cynicism,

The idea of self-care involves the pursuit of physical, mental, and emotional health. While just as important as spiritual formation, self-care may initially sound selfish. After all, didn’t Jesus say that those who follow him must give up all rights to themselves (Mark 8:34)? How does our Lord’s call to self-denial square with the idea of self-care?

In truth, responsible self-care is actually a way to deny oneself…The old life may have included slothful or obsessive activities such as inconsistent sleep habits, crazy work hours, poor or neurotic exercise, and an unhealthy diet. Self-denying self-care, on the other hand, may include getting to bed on time, saying no to work by setting aside periods for sabbath and sabbatical, getting responsible exercise, and eating a balanced diet.

Someone recently asked me what my hobbies are and while I have hobbies, all I could think of was work…I work.

I hope I can be at Salem Pres for a long time. For my part, I need to take better care so I can pour myself out better to the congregation. Barnes says, “Anybody with a few skills can run an effective meeting, so why waste a pastor on that assignment?…What if, instead of working so hard at omnicompetence, pastors were free to work hard simply at being better poets?”³ The only thing stopping me from following this advice is my own misunderstanding of my call and my own need for control.

¹ Craig Barnes, The Pastor As Minor Poet, 55.
² Bob Burns, et al., Resilient Ministry, 21.
³ Barnes, 44, 28.