Sandra Bullock Adopted a Baby

We kind of stand out when we go out in public. One VERY white guy, a beautiful Mexican princess, and two very dark children. It's even more prevalent when I'm in uniform. Think neon flashing arrow point down. And people always ask us these two questions first. "Are they adopted?"...duh, and "Where are they from?" My first instinct is to say, "Oh, over at the Wal-mart on Mansfield road. Two for one special" but I figured someone could find that offensive out in PC America. They usually assume we adopted from Africa or, recently, Haiti.


It kind of annoys me that people make this assumption. The US is full of children who are in need of a good home right now. I can't really fault the average Joe though; the only people they "know" who adopt outside of their race is famous and they do it to make "a statement". So I was very excited to see the cover of People Magazine that had Sandra Bullock holding her recently adopted baby. You can read the rest of the story HERE which also talks about her divorce (none of my business), but the short of it is that she apparently had been working on this adoption in secret and its official. He's a little black by adopted from the New Orleans area. I thought it was very interesting and worth a read. Of course, the "real" story to the magazine is that she's divorcing her philandering husband. Maybe they should reevaluate priorities huh?

My Plan

I’ve never thought I had much of a testimony. I grew up in church and never left. My parents divorced but they had an amicable relationship. I had wonderful, Christian friends who preferred movies and card play over drugs and alcohol. While I appreciated the fact that I’ve never had to go through any of the strife and turmoil that people with really “good” testimonies have, it is kind of boring to tell my story.


Well let me tell you My Plan. My Plan after high school was to join the Air Force, get stationed somewhere in Florida, get my education and get out after four years. Well that was almost nine years ago now. The only part that actually happened the way I planned was joining the Air Force. Just before they handed out our assignments, I was talking to my fellow trainees and said, “I bet they’re going to send me to some place terrible, like New Mexico.” So of course a month later I was off to the Land of Enchantment. After being there a year I had a chance encounter with a lovely young lady who I courted and then married. God’s Plan.

Ok, fine. My Plan revised; be married for two years, get stationed in Europe and have our first of 2-4 children while there. Well we got shipped of to Europe alright, but it was about 900 miles from the mainland, on the Portuguese island of Terciera. No biggie, it’s still Europe, right? So after being there a bit we started trying for our first child. We celebrated our first (though apart the day of), second and third anniversary while on the island and while we weren’t “trying” for most of it (at least I wasn’t aware we were) we weren’t not trying either. After three years of marriage and having never practiced any form of birth control other than Natural Family Planning there was no offspring. So we’ll go see the doctor at our next base, which is going to be Aviano Air Base, Italy. It’s going to be awesome!

After we moved into our house in Shreveport, Louisiana, you know, the Italy of the South, we sought about getting checked. After months of all sorts of uncomfortable, embarrassing tests, the doctor tells us we’re perfectly healthy! Which is great and all, but you can’t fix healthy. We were diagnosed with “unexplained infertility” which means that the docs ain’t got a clue what’s wrong. Statistically speaking there was a 20% chance of Holly EVER getting pregnant from now until menopause (normally a woman has a 20% chance a month). So, basic math, there’s an 80% chance that we’ll NEVER get pregnant. Well we knew that God wanted us to have children, His idea of how was just different than ours.

New plan. We didn’t feel like it was right to go down the medical manipulation path, so what do we do? We’ll adopt. But since we don’t have $30,000 sitting around in the bank, we have to look alternatives. We eventually decided upon getting Foster/Adoptive certified in Louisiana, which will make us eligible to adopt from several other states as well. But we only want to foster children that we will eventually adopt. Our first to kids were not up for adoption, they were actually only needing a home for “2 or 3 weeks”. A month later we got a third child whose fate was also uncertain. Plan’s not working! Two months later the first two finally go home and we have a two year old and new born come to live with us that ARE going to be adoptable…eventually. This past Fall, the third child whose fate was uncertain gets to move in with his brother and his foster family that plans on adopting them both. Very cool. Back to two. Ok well we’ll adopt Xander and Lorelei and next spring we’ll think about looking into what options we have for acquiring our third child in the coming year. Good spacing and all. Sounds like a Plan!

On April Fools day, Holly called me at work and tells me her Coffee Story which, since I was helping a customer at the time wasn’t making a whole lot of sense to me until she got to the part about the “two pink lines”. My first response was, “that’s not funny, I don’t care what day it is” followed shortly there after by, “I’ll have to call you back”.

So, let’s recap. According to My Plan, right now I’m supposed to be living back in Naples, Fl, maybe married, maybe living in my Mom’s house. If married we’d probably be working on our second, and final, kid right now. I’d either be in a dead end, crap job or unemployed. According to God’s Plan, I’ve seen 9 different countries, am married to the most intelligent, wise, resourceful woman that there is, have a job that has forced me to grow as a leader, I’ve gotten to be a Daddy to 5 wonderful children, have another one on the way, I’ve meet and befriended some of the coolest people on the entire planet, and have a greater understanding and appreciation for God and the amazing design that he’s woven into each person and things that he’s created. So, which is better?

I’m a planner. I’m always thinking logistics, what I’m going to say (I’ve been working on this speech in my head for three weeks now), what could happen if. It’s very hard for me to just throw my hands up in the air, close my eyes and go were The Wind (a.k.a. The Almighty) takes me. But it’s a learning process and the more I see God’s Plan, the more I learn to keep My Plan in pencil. So, know that when I talk about my Chazown, nothing is set in stone. Just help me remember that from time to time, ok?

Medic!

It's a little after 10:00 pm here and we just got back from the ER. While walking around in the yard and holding Lorelei I some how managed to trip on the old dog house the Johnsons gave us and fell about two feet off our retaining wall. Lorelei banged her head pretty good and I dislocated my right shoulder. Lorelei was fine after a little "na" (or milk to the non-baby speakers) but I got be in pretty severe pain for couple of hours. I felt much better after they gave me morphine and something called "conscious anesthesia" which lets me interact with the docs while they're messing around but I remember nothing about it afterward. Good stuff. The doc put everything back as it should and the arm is feeling much better but I'll have to take it slow and see how it goes. But God was with me every step of the way (the constant pleading prayer helped I'm sure) and everything went pretty smoothly. I'm not a big fan of hospitals but the staff was wonderful and the whole experience was pretty good (could be the drugs though).

Quote of the Week

"We need to be struggling to produce something.  We're just marking time!" -Julie Dreher, wife of Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons

Ready for an Adventure?

The other day I sent out the following E-mail to a couple of my friends and family. The only response I’ve gotten so far (besides the one’s I knew were on board) was from my mother who said “LET'S GO FOR IT”. I wasn’t expecting to hear that from her, but I guess God works in unexpected ways. huh?

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Dear Friends,

I’ve realized that my priorities have changed drastically since moving into our house in Shreveport. When we’ve moved in we had no children, but were planning on starting a family, and I loathed yard work. Since then we’ve expanded our family by 150% and, though I still hate the Weedeater, I’ve gained a new perspective to “yard work”. Yard is no longer just a plot of grass that I have to keep pristine for someone’s, I don’t really know who, approval, but a field of possibilities. And work is more than just toil but a labor of love. Having grown up in the city I never put much thought into where my food came from. The store right? The concept that I can take this tiny fleck of a seed, put it into the ground, and it is designed to grow into this large plant that will supply food to my family year after year, it just blows me away!

Many of your have heard me speak several times over the last year or two of my dream to one day own a good sized piece of land and run a smalltime “hobby farm”, with a large garden, a few chickens and maybe a cow or goat for milk. Actually, one of my lifetime aspirations now is to serve a Thanksgiving meal completely (or as much a possible) raised/grown by our family. It’s crazy I know. I’ve also mused over the idea of everyone moving together and starting a “commune”. For clarification, not commune as in communism, nor in the sense of hold hands and sing to the mother goddess either, but commune as in a community of likeminded friends and family, all living within a few miles of each other, working, eating, and raising children together. The commune thing has always been tongue-in-cheek, in part because I had no other name for it, and because I never thought that anyone would be as crazy as us to want to move to the middle of no where and get back to the land.

The other day a good friend of mine called me up out of the blue, something he never does, and started asking about my “commune” idea and how serious I was about it. It told him I thought it would be awesome if all the people I cared about lived in the same area instead of spread out all over (literally) the world. He and his wife had been talking about the concept of getting away from all the craziness of the world and thought my idea sounded exactly like what they wanted. So after some discussion, we decided, with God’s blessing, to try and make our dream a reality, over the next 5, 10, or however many years moving toward this goal.

So why in the world am I telling you all of this? Well we thought that there might be other people out there, friends of ours, who were as crazy as we were and might like to join us. All of you at one time or another expressed some interest in my outlandish idea and I’m just trying to get a feel for anyone who would actually be willing to commit to a project such as this. Think about this, how would you feel about:

• A piece of land, however large or small, that you could call your own? Where at the very least you could throw a rock in any direction and wouldn’t be hitting your neighbor, or the neighbor two doors down for some
• A place where you could send your children outside to play, they could be gone for hours, and you would know that they are safe?
• A home where you have no hesitation leaving your doors and windows unlocked, or opened, anytime day or night?
• A neighborhood where you know everyone and each one of them is more than willing to show up to your house and help you whenever there is a need or crisis?
• Property that you can pass to your children, and children’s children, where they will have memories of growing up in a home that was filled with love and laughter, not just a house that acted solely as a place to get out of the rain?
• A community geared more toward teaching at home, not just reading, writing, and arithmetic, but biblical principals and values, not leaving it up to a 9-5 stranger?
• A place to escape, escape the constant bombardment of consumerism, escape the left-right bickering designed to keep us all in the dark while our real freedoms slip away, escape a world that is very quickly and literally, going to Hell?

I realize that this is a very idealistic vision and that it is unlikely that any of this will just happen. But if it is God’s will, and I do believe that this is in God’s will for us, then unlikely or not it will come to fruition. So if my idealistic fantasy entices you, then drop me a line and we’ll talk. I promise I’m not going to ask for your credit card or anything like that, just your willingness to be open to an idea that goes against the accepted norm.

Either way, know that we miss you all and hope all is well with you and yours.

God bless,

Chris, Holly, Xander, Lorelei, and Baby Deering

My Chazown

So what is my chazown? Over the last few months, maybe a year now, this dream has been developing. My wife, Holly, and I have taken what some would describe as a dive off the deep end. I come from what I would call a typical conservative Christian up bringing. Go to church every Sunday and Wednesday, attend the local public school but be weary of the secular encroachment, and always vote Republican. Holly was less than typical, being home schooled and having a large family, but still nothing too outlandish (most of the time anyway). Recently though, we’ve started to open our eyes and look around to see the way things are and we have begun to ask, “Why?”


Why is it that despite 70% of American’s claiming to be “Christian” we act the same as unbelievers whom we are trying to save? The Church is evolving to try and stay hip and relevant, we now have a coffee bar and donuts, men’s, women’s, high school, middle school, and children’s retreats, flashy lights and expensive sound systems, and a “Life Group” for every hobby, interest, and identifiable group imaginable, but its attendance rates are still falling like the proverbial millstone. We aspire to be “in the World, but not of it” yet we are still hiding eggs every Spring (a pagan tradition) and bringing a tree and jolly fat guy into our house every winter, we skip out on service for or arrange our lives around a sports game, television show, or other distraction, we go into debt buying the best house, the nicest car, and the newest gadget.

Why is it that America is now #30 in the world for education and we complain that there are too many students in a class, “they” are teaching our kids sex, evolution, secularism, “they” aren’t doing a good enough job, “they” want more money, more time, more of “them”, yet we send our children day after day to this institution, one espoused by Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto, and continue to complain? Why do mothers who choose not to work in turn also choose not to home school their children?

Why is it that national politicians as a whole are hovering around the 20% approval rating yet we continue to vote them into office every couple of years simply because they get their name out there the most and have an “R” or “D” next to it? Why is it that a politician can clam to be a “conservative” yet can spend money like it just comes out of thin air, can consume resources faster than they can be pulled from the earth, and can totally disregard the principals this country was founded on?

So what is my chazown then? This is my dream:

• I want a plot of land, be it 5 acres or 500 acres that I can call my own and one day will pass to my children and their children

• I love the idea that I can go out for a walk, be gone all day, and never leave my property

• I want to be able to grow as much of my own food as possible through natural methods, eating food as closely to how God created it in The Garden as possible

• I want to be able to send my children out in the morning, and know that they will be home safe at sunset

• I want to live within walking, or at least biking, distance of all of my closest friends and family. I want to spend holiday’s, weekends, and whenevers building something together and growing as a community

• I want to be able to rear our children in a manor as closely befitting God’s design as we can manage

• I want to be able to leave my doors and windows open whenever I feel like and not fear anything more than a mosquito getting in

• I want to be able to teach our children in a manner of our choosing, instilling not just the three R’s but also values and morals lacking in today’s world

As you can imagine, I get a lot of strange looks when I begin to profess my dreams. This sort of thing doesn’t appeal to everyone. But the more people I talk to about it, the more I find that this is what a lot of people want. People who are fed up with the way the world is turning out. People who at some level know that this is not the way God intended for us to live. I just pray that my dream is in sync with God’s plan because, as I’ve learned, His plan is always the one to go by.

Seeking My Chazown

What in the world is a Chazown?! I had never heard of the word until last week at church. If you’ve attended Church at Red River either of the last two weeks you should know. If you haven’t had the privilege, or weren’t paying attention (tisk tisk) allow me to explain.


Chazown, pronounced khaw-zone' (sounds like calzone without the “L”), is Hebrew for a dream, or more precisely, a vision. That’s what this blog is about, my dream for our family’s future as well as my vision of how we as Christians in the 21st century should strive to live.

I’ll go into detail in later posts about what exactly my chazone is but in short, I want live a Godly, conservative life on a nice piece of land in the middle of a rural section of the country with my close friends and family living near to us. There I want to have a “hobby farm” with a large garden, a few chickens, and some basic livestock, raise a family in a biblical fashion, and have a legacy to pass on to my children, grandchildren, etc. Is that so much to ask?

Basically, this is an instrument to voice my beliefs, concerns, and realizations without having to live vicariously through my wife’s blog anymore!