The Time That a Twitter Fight Lead to a Blog About Religion & Spirituality

Many years ago (back before my career was where it is today - a point where I was on the verge of considering the prospects of becoming either a truck driver or a bar tender) I sold cellular phones, pagers, and accessories for such devices in order to make a living. We had a representative from the wireless company we were affiliated with who would come by every so often and she was always quick to give us new tips on how to be better salespeople. I remember her telling me that it's never a bad idea to get to know your customer by making small talk but she was quick to point out that there are two subjects that, as a salesman, you should never go near: Politics and religion. She was absolutely correct because there are no other subjects, short rivalries in college athletics, that will divide people as quickly as matters of state or those of spirituality.

It was a lesson I took to heart. To this day, I tend to allow that kind of conversation to happen as the result of some other participant having initiated it, and even then I usually only go so far as to hear out whatever they may have to say without putting myself in alignment with one perspective or another. Certainly, I have my own opinions, however I am very guarded in when, how, and with whom I share them. (The Rush lyric "by choosing not to decide you still have made a choice" doesn't apply to me in this situation, or at least I don't think it does.) Paranoia of either offending someone or of causing an argument gets the best of me every time as I am not an argumentative person. I wasn't always this way but as I've gotten older I find that I'm the kind of guy who would sooner look at things from multiple angles and seek out compromise. Age and maturity dulling a youthful ego, as it were.

I am a Christ-follower and I have been for the better part of my life, however I am also a ponderer of many things. You know how you used to sit and stare out a window as a kid, thinking about toys and the opposite sex? Yeah, I still do that, only I'm thinking about life and the world that surrounds us (and toys - okay, and sometimes the opposite sex, too). Despite my pondering, I haven't solved all the world's problems. I accept that there are things I will never fully understand and I'm content to accept that a great many of those things are mysteries that exist without what would be considered reasonable explanation to we mere mortals. To that end, I also accept that what my spirituality assures me of isn't rooted in logic but in faith.

It would seem to me that a majority of people share this stance, that there is some higher power out there and that the influence of he/she/it is why humanity and the world around us is what it is. There are those, though, who don't subscribe to this line of thought - atheists, who believe that there is no such thing as a deity and that unless it (whatever "it" is) can be proven by science that it cannot possibly be true.

Despite what you may think, I'm not going to try and vilify atheists. I say they're welcome to their own opinion because, who knows, they may be right. Yes, you read that correctly - I'm a Christian and if you aren't a Christ-follower as well I'm not going to try to convince you that you're wrong just because we may not agree on whether or not there is a God (for that matter, if you're Muslim, Buddhist, Wicca, or whatever else I won't bother to argue that my God is "right" and yours is "wrong"). Quite frankly, I think that's the kind of heavy-handedness that's driven people away from spirituality. Too much hellfire & brimstone, not enough tolerance of the fact that we were all blessed with the gift of free will.

All that having been said, a relative of mine who is also a Christian, took to Twitter recently to express some of their thoughts on atheism. The image below is a screen grab of the tweet they made and one reply to it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the responses that followed were not exactly the most cordial of correspondence. It was very much the opposite as there seemed to be a literal cavalcade of Twitter users who were lined up waiting for their chance to respond with some sort of rebuttal to the stance expressed by my relative.

Theological discussions rarely seem to be able to transpire without breaking down into something that would more readily resemble an episode of the Jerry Springer Show. (Here again, another reason why I was coached to never bring up such things while making chit-chat with customers.) It bothered me to read the back and forth that ensued. Ultimately there were no points to be made, just the noise made by two sets of people aligned against one another.

It bothers me that people can't just talk anymore. Everyone wants to debate their own points without stopping to at least consider an alternative perspective. I blame the influence of the media but that's a blog topic for another time.

Atheists would seem to adore science because it gives them comfort in that it explains things. Spiritual people would seem to adore faith because it assures them they don't have to have an explanation for everything. I see myself somewhere in the middle - I accept that science gives us measurable, quantifiable truths about the world around us yet at the same time I accept that I will never be able to wrap my head around things like how it was that our species, our world, or our universe came to be.

Is it even worth arguing points like these? (I say that knowing that an aspect of most religions, Christianity included, is that in order to be considered a "true believer" one has to accept a given religions' perception of how our world was conceived.) In the grand scheme of things, what difference does it make where we came from? We're here, right now. Does the knowledge that we started back there, somewhere, improve our ability to lead moral, righteous lives? How much more advanced would mankind be if we'd let go of the pursuit of trivialities and instead took up the role of stewards to one another? I think it's about time we spent more effort on teaching the benefits of living considerate, noble lives as opposed to frivolous, self-centered ones.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Moment Things Got Real

I will fully admit that I haven't written much about the experiences my wife & I have been through in trying to adopt children. I don't want it to seem like I feel it's not important enough to chronicle here - gosh knows all my thoughts on professional wrestling, movies, and the like deserve their space - but Jill has taken the reigns when it comes to keeping all those stories together in her blog, The Truesdale Times. (That blog was originally supposed to have been a shared space for the both of us. Over time it's metamorphosed into her personal chunk of blogging territory just as Redbeard's Rambling is mine.) She's done a fantastic job of documenting our every move and what it amounts to is that I simply don't think I could do a better job, so if you're curious to read more about what we've encountered thus far please take the time to check out her entries. They're quite insightful, especially for anyone who may be thinking of or otherwise already involved in dealings similar to ours.

That said, I wanted to share an update with you, dear reader, about a realization I had recently.

Truth be told, Jill & I have been having some frustrations with this process here lately. We've done all the paperwork, we've gone through all the inspections, and we've gotten our approvals. It is my understanding that where we are at this point is more or less a waiting game. When it comes to adoptions through the Department of Social Services here in South Carolina, there are boards in place the members of which work to try and pair up children with prospective parents. We're to the stage where it seems like the best we can do is hope we get noticed - to make a sports analogy, it's like we've declared for the NFL Draft and our Wonderlic scores came back high but we don't know which team (if any) will give us a chance to prove ourselves.

Jill has gone out of her way to be our own best advocate. That she has done this was no surprise to me. Jill is her mother's child; when I say that, I mean to point out that - much like her mother - she is not content to merely sit idly by when it appears that there's work to be done on something she's passionate about. (I added that last bit regarding her passions because while my wife will not hesitate to assume the role of master and commander when it comes to a situation in which she's emotionally invested, I have yet to have her sprint to action over matters of state like laundry, cleaning the house, or dish washing.) She has done all she can to investigate details on children, those in South Carolina as well as in other states, who are available for adoption by contacting the agencies providing them care. On top of that, she has sent countless emails and made Lord only knows how many phone calls to our own social worker.

I understand that everyone is busy these days and that it seems like every government office is having to learn to do not more with less but more with nothing. (Having worked in the public sector for more than 6 years, I can tell you that statement is true on a variety of levels.) Be that as it may, it's been difficult to get over how uncommunicative certain entities have been with us now that we are where we are. You're in the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Did you forget your voicemail passcode? We rarely get a callback, and when we do it's typically not in a timely manner. How hard is it to reply to an email? We're not expecting a message that's 10 paragraphs in length, just a simple acknowledgement that you are still there and that we're not wasting our time by contacting you is more than enough.

I feel like patience is one of my better virtues, and as it relates to the adoption process I have done my best to be patient in navigating the various twists and turns. When we got into this I knew it wasn't going to be something that came to fruition within a couple weeks. For that matter, I knew it was going to take a number of months if not more than a year for our efforts to pan out. (People I know and work with ask me often how long it's been since we've been at this; I try to keep it in perspective by remembering that were we genuinely pregnant we'd only be about 7 months into the delivery. In reality, were things to have worked out differently, we'd still have at least a little ways to go.) As much as I would like for it to be different, this isn't a situation where you can force someone's hand with sweet talking, threats, bribes, or even litigation (which would probably draw it out even further, more than likely). Jill, on the other hand, has never been a particularly patient person. Try as I might to remind her of the teachings of Master Yoda ("Patience you must have, young padawan..." is a favorite quote of mine to use on her), I've learned over the course of our relationship that there's not a whole lot I can do to divert her away from whatever path she's on. I'm not saying that her desire and passion is a bad thing, especially in these circumstances, rather I merely wish she would understand the subtle difference between persistence and insistence (she knows I feel this way, so don't go thinking I'm taking to my blog to air dirty laundry).

Be that as it may, within the past week we made contact with an out-of-state agency about a child in their care and they responded to us almost immediately (as in within 24 hours; that's a precedent no other group has lived up to). The agency said that they were fielding a number of inquiries about the child and that they were in the process of trying to narrow down prospective families but they felt we would be great candidates, part of their reasoning being Jill's experience as a social worker. They granted us an opportunity to learn more about the child's history at which point we were required to sign confidentiality waivers which is why I have to be somewhat guarded in saying what I'm going to talk about next.

There is no reason a child should have to endure what this one has. The report we received spelled things out very clearly and concisely, detailing the data they've collected over the span of time the child has been in their custody (roughly three years). As painful as it was to read, it was more painful to come to the quiet realization that it didn't seem like there was an opportunity for us to help. The list of issues they are dealing with felt insurmountable in my mind, and the fact that the child has begun to develop defense mechanisms in order to deal with them made their plight that much more awful.

It wasn't until I read the report that it dawned on me, this is the kind of abuse that gets found out and these are the kids that we'll be adding to our family. It hasn't dissuaded me from the prospect - not in the least. However, it has made me come to terms with the fact that we're all broken in some way, shape, or form. No one gets through life without chips, dings, and cracks. Sometimes the damage is so bad it seems like it can't be fixed, and even when it can be sometimes you have to admit, no matter how bad you want for things to be otherwise, you aren't the one to handle the repairs.

I mentioned earlier about how the agency representing this child made a point to bring up my wife's career as a social worker. A close friend of ours made a fantastic comment about this and it is one that I'm sure we'll need to be reminded of again as this process continues. The comment was that my wife isn't going to be our child's (or children's) social worker, she's going to be their mother. While her experiences in social work give her a unique perspective, she shouldn't have to be saddled with that role because it would undoubtedly get in the way of the bigger task, that of being a parent.

We decided this particular child has needs we are not prepared to tackle. We have had a tough time of admitting this because we don't know how many opportunities like this we may get. Sure, there are thousands of children out there, but there are potentially as many prospective families. As odd as it may seem, this is something of a competition. What's more, we've both felt in a way that we're letting the child down. Even though we'll never meet the child and the child will never have any idea that we made an inquiry, it's been as though we had to tell the child "no" face to face.

That is what's broken my heart. Two letters, one word, and yet so much hurt it can cause.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Story So Far

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: My wife has done an auspiciously better job of detailing how far we've come in this process than I ever could in her own blog, The Truesdale Times, so please check it out as well - http://thetruesdaletimes.blogspot.com/]

"When are you going to have a baby?"

"You guys do want kids, right?"

"How much longer are you going to wait before you start a family?"

"You're going to be an old dad!"

I don't know that people understand how offensive or otherwise poorly timed their words can be. I can't count the number of instances where the questions above, or a variation on them, have been posed to my wife & I since we've been married. (I'm so jaded about it that I'm at a point where when I hear of a couple being pregnant, especially through some cutesy, staged announcement, my reaction is to smile and mutter a very sternly worded assault of their character, occasionally sprinkled with expletives, under my breath.) They've come from members of our family, friends, and people we barely know. The answer was always the same for us: "We've been trying - so whenever it happens, it happens." We were putting on a good face, as it were.

Except nothing happened. At least not what we were expecting to happen.

I've had a difficult time of convincing myself that I should write about this, mainly because it's a topic that involves some of the most painful realizations I've ever had to deal with. I wasn't sure I wanted to share those moments with anyone other than my wife, for various reasons all of which I'll leave to you, dear reader, to interpret for yourselves. Even so, I find that the path we're on now is one best not walked alone. For that reason, I am putting pen to paper - or finger to keyboard, as is actually the case - in an attempt to convey what I, we have been through in the process of building a family.

After my wife & I got married in May of 2010, we were living in a house in Orangeburg, South Carolina that I'd been renting since I moved into town back in February of 2008. It was a good bachelor pad and more than enough room for one person, but neither of us wanted to live there forever as we both had dreams of owning our own home, somewhere that we could settle into and enjoy as it would be ours, not just a space we happened to be inhabiting. My wife waited patiently as I asked her to give me two years to work on getting to a place financially where I felt like we'd have more stability. Truth be told, I had a plan in mind; first would come the house, then we would work on our family (not to say a baby wouldn't have been welcome before then, just that in my head that's the way it would've panned out best). Call it a blessing, clairvoyance, or just dumb luck but we closed on our house June 1, 2012.

So I needed an extra month. Sue me.

It was time to get down to business, and that became a problem for me.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. Making love is awesome - or at least it should be. When it becomes a chore, you know something is wrong. And in my mind, when we were trying our hardest to get pregnant the whole thing lost its appeal. Sex had become not something we were doing for fun anymore, instead it was this thing we were doing because we had to and in my head that made it less desirable. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to my wife, it was the stress and the pressure from the mindset of, "Okay, we've got to get this done now...If it doesn't happen now, people are going to keep bugging us about it and even though we're never going to live up to their expectations we have to do this or else we've failed as a couple."

Notice the word failed there. I'm not afraid of many things. I'm old enough to have a sense of logic that affords me the comfort of being able to differentiate between what's worthy of fear and what isn't. Failure never has been kind enough to make itself so conveniently sorted. The fear of having done all that I could and still come up short has always haunted me, ever since I was a child. I had terrible stomach cramps when I was in college because I had put myself into a position of being incredibly fearful about whether or not I'd be able to perform (I'd say taking advanced courses in logic and mathematics would be enough to upset most people's stomachs). I still deal with it to this day. It's a debilitating feeling, trust me. People act surprised when I tell them about this because they say I don't have the outward expression of someone who's constantly tied in knots. I guess I've dealt with it long enough that I hide it well, or at least better than others.

That said, the fear of failing in this particular instance was getting to me, mainly because I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was going wrong or how it could be remedied. My wife had been off of birth control for a while and we'd had no luck as of yet. She was doing all that she knew to do, going so far as to take prenatal vitamins and at-home ovulation tests (she even had an app on her tablet that was supposed to help predict when she'd be at her most fertile, for crying out loud). It dawned on the both of us that we were getting to a point where we would have to look into the possibility of there being medical reasons as to why we weren't seeing any results.

My parents got divorced when I was very young and the only father-figure I had growing up was my Grandfather. Unfortunately, he passed away when I was 12 and as I grew up there was a hole in my life that never quite got filled. I've made it known in previous blog entries that there was a point in time where I didn't believe in the concept of marriage and that I thought I'd never get married. I think the desire to be a father set upon me around the same time that I became mature enough to put away those beliefs. I knew in my mind that I wanted to give a child (or children) the sort of love, guidance and upbringing that I had but in a complete, whole family setting. It had become a dream, the desire to someday go out in public with pride while wearing one of those baby slings you see dads wearing - you know, the kind where the baby is more or less strapped to the guy's chest or back? I wanted to be that guy, in the worst way.

Jill and I finally did consult with a specialist regarding the issues we'd been having in trying to get pregnant, and it broke my heart when we found out that it would be all but impossible for us to conceive a child of our own.

We had picked out names for our children, one for a boy and one for a girl.

To have a dream taken from you is one of the most painful things a person can ever experience. The hurt from that news is still there, to this day. The questions, the wonder about why this happened to us, the urge to shake my fist at the sky and scream with every bit of anger I could possibly muster - all still there and probably not going away any time soon. (I am saddened by the many prospects that were dashed by this turn of events but what weighs most heavily on me now is that the bloodlines of our families will end with us. That's a medieval concept, I know. I've just not been able to shake the hurt from that.) But life goes on, with or without you, and so has our effort to build a family.

We have talked openly about the idea of adopting at least as long as we've been married. It wasn't a stretch for us to discuss that opportunity, what with my wife having a background in social work and several cousins who were adopted. However, I'll admit that I never thought we'd actually pursue it because I didn't think we'd have no other option when it came to growing our family. I know that could sound harsh but the reality of the matter is that adoption prior to now, in my mind, would've been an effort of last resort. As it would turn out, it was always our best option.

Around the end of September, we began the process of getting involved with an organization called Heartfelt Calling which is associated with the South Carolina Foster Parent Association and the South Carolina Department of Social Services. Prospective applicants have the option of being foster parents, foster-to-adopt, or adoptive parents and we at least for now have chosen to take the latter route. We received an application packet from them, which was just shy of the thickness of your average textbook. It goes without saying that the sort of information they gather on prospective adoptive parents is vast (a background check complete with fingerprints, financial reports, a floor plan of our home with an evacuation route, proof of our dog's vaccination records, etc.), and not all of it was necessarily the sort of data you'd expect to have to submit. Apparently it was vital that they know my cholesterol levels as I had to have blood work done in order to get every piece of information required for the application to be completed. As of this writing, I believe the only portions of the application that haven't been turned in are reference letters from a few of our friends (if you're reading this, and you know who you are, GET ON THE BALL).

The paperwork was tedious and time consuming, and so too have been the classes we've had to attend. There's an old joke about how some people should be forced to take a training course before they can be parents. As it turns out, in certain cases, that's exactly what you have to do. When talking about them, I've referred to the trio of classes we've attended as Parenting 101, 102, and 103. Combined, we wound up spending about 20-25 hours in a classroom setting. (None of the meetings we've had to attend have been nearby; even though we're closer to Columbia than Charleston, a majority of the sessions we've had to attend have been in the Low Country, meaning we've sacrificed our free time and put a good amount of miles on our vehicles these past few months as well.) Fortunately the classes weren't a pass/fail scenario as all we had to do was show up and participate in order to receive credit. They weren't so much curriculum-based in regard to teaching people how to be parents or even better parents; they were sessions geared towards preparing prospective foster or adoptive parents for the kind of children who find themselves in this system (kids with disabilities, who have been abused or neglected, or what have you) and the associated issues that they may encounter as a result of inviting such children into their home.

This process of completing paperwork and going to class is leading up to our eventually being licensed to serve as adoptive parents. There's another aspect to all of this which involves in-home inspections and home studies. Thus far we've worked with the local Department of Health and Environmental Control and we're waiting to be seen by the fire marshal as well as a home study to be conducted by DSS.

Prior to the DHEC inspection we went about making a series of changes to our home - "child-proofing", as it were. The cabinetry locks were simple to add as they slip over your existing knobs and handles, however let me be frank in saying that I highly doubt the people who design the drawer latches we purchased have ever had to install them. Those things were an absolute nightmare to get into place because the cabinets we have are made from material that evidently was never intended to be modified. We got them in, though, albeit not without the usage of a variety of colorful metaphors, as Spock would call them.

We emptied out the storage spaces underneath our kitchen and bathroom sinks, tossing out a fair amount of clutter in the process, then gathered together all of our cleaning supplies. Our laundry room is more like a closet than a room as it's situated in the main hallway of our home and features a set of double doors. A friend of mine had shared an article with me on life-hacks a few weeks prior and in it was an idea about using over-the-door shoe organizers to keep all your cleaning supplies together and in one place. This was a brilliant concept for us as we were able to use the organizers and that closet to effectively secure every cleaning product we have.

My wife and I came to the conclusion that the term "child-proofing" is an absolute misnomer. It doesn't matter how thorough you may be or how many precautions you may take, kids are going to hurt themselves because they don't know any better. That's not a bad thing, though. It's how they learn about the world around them. I did it, she did it, we've all done it - we're all still here and more or less intact. One has to hope, as a parent, that dropping a TV on their heads isn't part of the learning process.

We made sure to cover a few other random items before DHEC had their way with our home, such as verifying that the temperature of our hot water didn't exceed 120°, that the refrigerator was at an appropriate level of chill, and that our firearms were stored in locked containers away from their ammunition (because a gun purchased with the intent of being used as home defense is useful in that scenario). Our home has a septic tank and so the inspector would have to walk over it as well - I assume the idea there being that you're in the clear so long as they don't see a puddle of turds and toilet paper in your yard. We felt like we knew what to expect because we were working off of a cheat sheet that had been given to us as part of the applicant packet.

As I expected it would, the DHEC inspection went off without a hitch. (I will add that we did something of a mad-dash cleaning of the house the night before as we were running short on time with all we had going on the week of the inspection.) What can I say, I was confident in the work we'd done. By some odd turn of events, it happened that my wife and the inspector had been acquaintances in college as they were both students at Winthrop University. He was thorough, nevertheless, as he did all the things we had counted on and he even went so far as to check our window blinds in order to determine if they were a variety that could potentially contain toxic metals (that wasn't on the cheat sheet). We were in the clear all around, though, as he signed off on our home without encountering any potential issues.

At present, we need to work on getting a fire extinguisher (which has to be mounted to a wall in our kitchen - I'm not thrilled about that, to be honest) and a carbon monoxide detector as the next phase of this process will involve the fire marshal inspecting our home. I didn't mention this earlier, but part of the applicant packet was a worksheet wherein we had to submit measurements of the openings of our windows. I forget what the specification was but ours appeared to have been up to snuff. It wasn't explained to us as to why the windows needed to be a certain size. I assumed it was to insure they were adequate evacuation ports; this is true but as it turns out there's also a consideration here for whether or not a firefighter wearing SCUBA would be able to get in through that same space. That's an example of the kind of thing that wouldn't cross an average person's mind unless you're being made to endure a process like this.

To that end, it's rather mind-boggling to think about what we've been through so far. We've jumped through one hoop after another in order to confirm that we're fit to be parents whereas there are people in this world having babies every day who don't want them and won't love them. It doesn't seem fair, is what I'm getting at. I'm a natural cynic and I can't help but express these feelings.

Regardless, we are where we are and we know where we're going, and that's what we will continue to focus our efforts upon. Building a family, one day at a time.