I have always been fascinated by the concept of the continental divide.  On one side of it, water flows into the Pacific Ocean, and on the other, into the Atlantic Ocean.

Theoretically a drop of water falling from the sky (also called “rain”), could land squarely on the ridge of a mountain along the divide, and depending on which side chaos (if you’re Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park) or Providence (if you’re us) decides it should go, its aqueous existence is changed forever.

I have been thinking recently about the two boys whom we hope to foster-adopt; there is a hold-up right now caused by one particular person in “the system” that is keeping us from receiving them (all the others have signed off on us fostering them).  There is a chance that a relative or friend of the biological mother will be given the children rather than us.

So the children’s lives and their fate is something like the drop of water falling toward the continental divide.  Their lives will be radically influenced by the parents chosen for them.  If we didn’t believe in God and in His loving Providence, it would truly seem cruel if the children were given to another person rather than to us, cruel for the children and cruel for us; but the fact is that our Lord is well-apprised of this entire situation and is intimately concerned about it and all of those involved, so we will not worry and will accept whatever the outcome is as His will.

Thank you for all of your prayers for us and these boys.

I only use my wedding china a few times a year.  So, when I do, I go all out.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello friends,

I hope you have had a good Thanksgiving holiday.  Katie and I are doing the double Thanksgiving this year, heading to my mom’s Saturday evening to spend time with her, my sister, and my cousin while spending Thanksgiving Thursday two days ago at my Dad’s with my step-family.

In between feasts, we played a game on Friday called Diplomacy with our friends; it took us a few hours to get the rules down and start playing, but once we did, the game was challenging and fun.  From the start, the ladies secretly allied against us guys and quickly gained the upper hand as we were fighting amongst ourselves somewhat before we realized we had to form a men’s alliance.  Even so, the ladies were declared the winners after about 4 rounds of play.  I have no philosophical thoughts about Diplomacy, but it did seem curiously representative of the little skirmishes and alliances that often seem to characterize time with family during holidays.

For almost all families, inevitably during the holidays there are times of difficulty and disharmony; why doesn’t everyone get along well with everyone else, why do families have little blow-ups or why are mean things said?  The only thing I can seem to make sense of is that the more virtuous we become, the less our faults hurt others and the more our love blesses them.

Oftentimes it is hard to have discussions about religion and faith, about politics, about matters of the heart affecting us right now, or about much of anything of import because mutual respect and trust are missing.  So we can watch the football game or talk about relatively superficial things, but the deep communion for which we were made and for which we long is missing.

What can we do?  I believe Christ is calling us to shine with love and forgiveness before our family, and for me that means fighting the immediate desire to become angry if someone says something unkind or ignores us or whatever, and instead forgiving that person and asking God to convert their hearts to Him more deeply.

Time with our families during the holidays seems to evoke a perplexing mixture of joy and sadness that typifies our common human struggle in this world: Man’s nature has been wounded by sin but redeemed by Christ, who has set us free and given us the grace to love Him and others, yet it is a gift we must accept each day and in each situation we encounter.

May God bless you this Thanksgiving holiday and your families as well!  With Him all things are possible, even harmony in your home.

We weren’t overly keen on the previous theme (nor was Amy), so we have switched to Maple Leaf and plan to go with it unless we decide we don’t like it.

If you have feedback on this theme, feel free to weigh in.

“A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope,” Pope John Paul II prophetically spoke in 1996.

In Russia, the country is scrambling to reverse their falling birth rate, which has plummeted over the past decade: the total fertility rate is estimated to be about 1.4 (far below the replacement rate of 2.1).

St. Basil

In one Russian city they have declared this week to be a pro-life one with no abortions (except in “extreme” cases). I could hardly believe it when I read this paragraph in the article:

The number of abortions in Russia is amongst the highest in the world. Nearly 70% of pregnancies are terminated. In 2004 the number of abortions in Russia surpassed the number of births by 100,000. According to the statistics published by the national centre of gynaecology and midwifery, around 10-15% of abortions in Russia have complications, leaving 7-8% of operated women sterile.

7 out of 10 children conceived in Russia are killed via abortion–the horror is unimaginable to me, and almost 10% of the women are rendered sterile from their abortions.  A nation without hope.

2008 was declared to be the “Year of Family” by the Russian government, with the intention of improving the demographic situation in the country. The propaganda of abortions and their advertising has recently been banned in the Russian media. Other policies intended to boost childbirth in Russia have included welfare payments for childbirth, social advertisements and active improvements of the healthcare system.

The Russian government has realized the danger of an imploding population–it can’t sustain itself and will eventually cause the death of the nation.

It is tragically ironic that the architects of the culture of death have trumpeted for decades the danger of the exponential growth of the human race, but the far closer and imminent danger is the exact opposite and is occurring all over the world right now, when a people either loses hope for the future or turns inward on themselves and chooses to live selfishly.

From the Husing’s blog about a young woman who survived the attempt to abort her.

I thought it was about time for a new blog theme, so here it is, customized slightly off of the mts-journey WordPress theme.

I still need to fiddle with the left and right sidebars and figure out why stuff shows up twice but in somewhat different formats, and I just realized the comment box doesn’t play nicely with re-captcha–hmmm, that could be bad.  Please let me know if you run into other problems, and let me know what you think about it!

One medium-sized difference: The theme is flexible width, so I set it to 1000 pixels, hoping that people who have 1024×768 resolutions could see it all without horizontal scroll bars showing up.

Today is the Catholic feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the liturgical year before we start a new year with Advent.  Such a king we follow.  Ours is a king who heals our wounds, who gives the blind to see and the lame to walk.  Who takes on our flesh to make our flesh whole.  Who takes on our tears to turn them into laughter.  Who takes on our death to make it a path to glorious life.  Such a king we serve.

Christ in Majesty, Fra Angelico

Come, exalted shepherd and lead us to peace.

We are feeling quite Thanksgivingish these days.  It’s grey and cool out today, and the leaves are just starting to turn.

Yesterday, we went to the Alexander Family Farm and picked up our Thanksgiving turkey.

Our fellow turkey-purchasers waiting in line.

The turkey processing crew in the butcher shack.

Our bird for Thanksgiving 2008.

Today, we are going to plant our winter garlic and cilantro.

And, I am finally starting to get my bread recipe right.  These loaves turned out beautifully and make me feel very autumnal.

We can finally announce that we have been chosen to foster-adopt two boys.

Hurray hurray hurray!

We received the first call about them two and a half weeks ago, inquiring if we’d be open to foster/adopting the boys, and gave a resounding yes.  However, we’ve had to wait the past two weeks while CPS checked our the birth mother’s next of kin, in case any of them were eligible to take the two.  The waiting has been brutal.

However, as a special gift to us on the Feast of the Presentation of Mary, we just got another phone call.  We just learned that none of the birth mother’s kin are acceptable to CPS, so we are going to receive the boys.  There is a 90% chance that we will be able to adopt them, though we must remain open because one never knows with CPS.

How generous is Our Lord.

Devin’s Update 11/22/2008: Thank you, dear friends, for all your kind wishes and prayers.  One important note: I removed the words in this post and in the comments describing the two boys that is the “same name as the Minnesota baseball team”, and I have decided to avoid using that word on our blog, so please also don’t use it in the comments if you can remember.  I edited some of your comments so don’t be offended.

It is a little bit paranoid of me, I know, but I did a search already for that word and a few others that would be reasonable to search for, and I found this post on the second page of Google.

Feel free to use whatever synonym you like that is not that word, perhaps “doublet” or “duo” or something similar–I know it sounds weird but I want to protect our family.  I would even be open to working in a certain movie reference involving Danny Devito and Arnold.

Thanks again, y’all!  We are so excited and grateful to God and to you for your support.