Wee Cook Wednesday: Simple Soup

The other day I came across this recipe for a lovely Simple Soup at Anna’s “Domestic Felicity.” Perfect for a cold winter’s day, especially if you’re looking at the checkbook and realizing that “Santa” has blown the budget.

Bon Appetit!

Snags in the System: When Adoption Support Fails

It’s about a dire a situation as any family could face:  mom hospitalized with leukemia, four kids (foster-adopted sets of siblings) worried they are going to lose another mother, dad struggling to make ends meet. The oldest child – in and out of group homes for extreme emotional problems for the past eleven years — begins manifesting such violent behaviors that his little brothers are afraid to sleep at night. Afraid their oldest brother is going to kill them while they sleep. He has promised he will.

Fortunately, he has been no better at keeping his promises, so far, than the state has. Michigan DFS has made repeated promises to move this boy to a therapeutic foster home — for weeks and week, they’ve been promised this, as long as mom has been in the hospital. Each time a home is lined up, it falls through. Social worker says, “Soon. Don’t you have any friends or relatives who can take him?” (All their friends and relatives have younger children who would not be safe around him.) 

Legal counsel says, “Call the police and have him taken away, or abandon them and we’ll fight to keep you off the neglectful parent/abuser list.” This, too, does not seem like the solution.

The Michigan adoption support rep’s solution? The Adoption Subsidy Unit Supervisor  told Mark, “If you can’t find someone to take Cody, why don’t you farm out the other three boys to friends, and keep the oldest boy at your house?” (As opposed to giving the boy a referral for a therapeutic group home, which was HIS JOB!) Yes, that’s right, Pedro – force this overwhelmed, law-abiding, veteran foster father to find another home for three scared, well-behaved children, and leave the father who is already stretched tending to his family to cope with a violent head case, just so the state can save a few bucks!

Boot camps cost money — money this family would have been only too happy to spend, if they had it, just to keep the youngest boys safe. He’s not old enough, at 15, to be emancipated. Calling the police gets the boy a ride in an ambulance, to a mental hospital where he is discharged in a matter of hours and returned to the home. So the craziness continues.

At fifteen, the boy is a menace to his own family. Big enough to inflict real bodily harm — as he has demonstrated repeatedly. He steals. He admits to sexually assaulting two girls (he was smart enough to pick two who had credibility issues, so the accusations wouldn’t stick), and brags about his exploits to his little brothers. Therapists and counselors say he needs an “external conscience” because the one that should have developed as he was growing up, never did.

At fifteen, the boy is irreparably broken. And he is not alone. All over the state, there are teenagers just like him — who have been so mistreated and damaged at such a young age, they never recover. No matter how much love, how much compassion they are shown in later years … It is too late.

What is worse, the support available to these families is non-existent. Social workers all acknowledge, “This family needs help. Someone needs to take the boy.” But where do you put him? Who can help him, after the family has spent thousands of dollars of their own money for various in- and out-patient therapists, group homes, and psychologists.

It’s ironic that the families of the children who have been damaged the most, have the fewest alternatives available to them. We are raising the next criminal class … living time bombs, just waiting to self-destruct.  Nor are the Hooks an isolated case.  Social workers estimate that at least a thousand children across the state of Michigan are in similar need of specal mental health services — which are being denied to them. And so families are faced with a difficult choice: Live with the violence, or break the law and abandon the child so he does not endanger the other children. There simply aren’t enough trained foster homes to take them all.

If you’re reading this, please say a prayer for Cody and his family. They need it more than you know.

Does Someone You Love Have Cancer?

I received the following announcement from an old high-school buddy, Michael Paulison, about a new Christian cancer treatment center that is opening next spring. Do you know someone who needs this resource?

WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE OPENING OF THE
ROBERT CALHOUN CENTER FOR HEALTH AND WELLNESSS
APRIL 2010 IN THE BEAUTIFUL COLORADO ROCKY MOUNTAINS!!!

Does someone you know have cancer?  Are they interested in a better quality of life and alternative treatments?  In the past if they desired alternative treatments, they would have to go to one of the three world-renowned clinics. They could go to the Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland, the Sanoviv clinic in Mexico or the Wiley Clinic in San Diego.  There are other small clinics, but these are the three most well known due to their very unique styles of treatment. Now there is another option!

The Robert Calhoun Center is opening in April in the beautiful foothills of the Rockies and will combine all of the techniques used in the clinics mentioned above and more!  We have secured a 20,000 square foot home that has been recognized as one of the 100 nicest homes in the world. Our clinic will welcome eight clients at a time for a three-week session which will bring you the best in spiritual, holistic, and alternative treatments from around the world in a unique retreat setting!!  The following are some of our treatment methods:

1. Acupressure and Acupuncture
2. Balance and assessment of the median using techniques founded by world famous Dr. Nii
3. Personalized prayer partnership
4. Psychiatric counseling and breathing techniques
5. Hydro-therapy
6. Normalizing pH levels that can help stop cancer in its tracks.   This is the goal of the Rau diet from Switzerland.
7. Sleep therapy.  We will be using the program designed by the T.S. Wiley in San Diego.
8. Detoxification methods
9. Hyperthermia treatment
10. Myofacial therapy
11. Hormone Therapy
12. The SRM method- this is a unique chiropractic method designed by physician in New York to deal with pain.

These are very unique methods and you can find out more about them once our websites are up and running in January.

I wanted to let you know now, so you can let others know and take advantage of an amazing offer.  Anyone who signs up as a client by the end of the year will receive a 25% discount off the price of a three-week stay at the center.

This kind of treatment can be costly so the center has dedicated itself to finding unique financial planning methods that make it financially feasible for about 70% of the people in America. In order to make this facility accessible to everyone, we will also give one full scholarship a month and one half scholarship a session.  The goal is to give those with cancer the best chance of survival and healing.  These techniques have been found to be very successful even for those who have been declared cancer free. Studies have shown that if you have previously had cancer, there is a 25% chance you will have a re-occurrence in your lifetime.  These treatments have been found to drastically reduce that chance.

If you know someone who might benefit from this treatment please contact me as soon as possible to get this discount by the end of the year.  If you want to be placed on an email list in order to receive all the latest information about the Center please let me know as well.

Blessings,

Mike Paulison- Senior Care Representative 

Contact information:

mike_e_paulison@yahoo.com

Or call me at 303-249-0333

Weekend Ponderings: “Your name will never be … blotted out.”

As we enter the third week of Advent, the somber purple of the penitential season turns rosy. In years past, I’ve hosted a tea for a small group of girlfriends, so we can catch up on each other’s lives. Sadly, I had to let this go this year — at times even the best traditions need to take a back seat to more immediate concerns. 

This week at school, several families are struggling with serious illness. One parent died unexpectedly, another parent — a good friend — is fighting for her life.  As a community, we’re taking up collections and doing what we can for the families … but there’s something vaguely unsettling about it all. It makes you take stock, re-evaluate. Consider what things are of eternal consequence. Happy Advent!

This week I’ve also been in a couple of exchanges about a topic that resurfaces from time to time (primarily because my own POV on birth records doesn’t overlap neatly with views expressed on many other adoption sites).  For me, the subject of birth records is not one in which I have any real personal investment;  my own children know their birth parents already. However, I DO understand why others are so passionate about the subject: The names on the original birth certificate represent a missing link to the past, without which they cannot imagine a “happily ever after.”

And so, when the trail runs cold, it hurts the one member of the adoptive triad that least deserves to suffer. It forces the child to bear the painful consequences of his parents’ actions, addictions, or flaws. With adoption, the child loses his first parents, who tapped into the gift of procreation without the ability to parent a child together. And whenever this happens, the child suffers far more than the parents. Sometimes that child is raised without a parent. Sometimes he suffers abuse or neglect. Many, many times he pays with his life through abortion or child abuse. And sometimes … he is loses his original parents through adoption. No matter what form it takes, the pain is real … and it has far-reaching effects that can be measured not just in years, but in generations.

I’ve said it many times: Adoption is never God’s first choice. And yet, adoption does reflect the kind of divine love God showed to us when he brought us through adoption into his family, through the atoning death of Christ. And in that sense, families that are formed through adoption get to experience in a unique way the redemptive love of God.

Friday’s first reading offers a reassuring message for those who are struggling with their sense of self, whose identity — personal, spiritual, familial, cultural, or in any other sense — has not yet fully formed.  

“If you would hearken to my commandments,
your prosperity would be like a river,
and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand,
and those born of your stock like its grains,
Their name never cut off
or blotted out from my presence.”

That name we seek … that primal connection … is not one that we can ever hope to find in this life. We were created, first and foremost, to be called children of God.

Another Country Heard From: China Adoption

This morning I noticed a link to my blog at “China Adoption,” and stopped by to check out the blog. Sadly, this is not the first time I’ve been attacked by a mandatory open records advocate, and I suspect it won’t be the last. However, I’m not alone in advocating for a standard of mutual consent with regard to birth records.

The situation is simply not as cut-and-dried as the open records advocates suggest. And frankly, parents who adopt internationally come from a very different place than those of us who foster-adopt or who adopt domestically. Because of this it’s very easy — but also very unfair — to make snap judgments about other people’s motivations and beliefs. It isn’t necessary to vilify those who have a different point of view, based on their own journeys. In an ideal world, we can even learn from each other — so long as both sides work from a presumption of good will.

China Mom, I hope you are successful in helping your children find their birth parents, if that’s what they want. You certainly have a long road ahead of you, and I wish you the best. I can understand why this would be a deeply felt need — just as my kids will one day want to see their parents again. Which is something I will support when they are adults — because I already know this is what their birthmother wants.

Adoption is complicated, and no two triads are exactly alike because of the variety of circumstances and personalities that created that triad in the first place. There are some absolutes: Children deserve to be raised in a safe, stable  environment, securely bonded to the parents who love them. Parents deserve to make choices on behalf and for the benefit of their minor children, based on the information they have at the time. And all three sides of an adoption triad need to respect and honor the other two sides, recognizing that all three sides share a permanent bond.

“Respecting and honoring” can mean something very different from one family to the next. For some, it may involve searching and finding missing family members. For others, it means interpreting the events of the past as gently and with as much compassion as possible. “Speak the truth in love,” is the standard of St. Paul, and it applies very well to parents. The way of compassion and forgiveness is the way of healing.

It makes me sad when I read angry posts from members of an adoptive triad. It makes me wonder what good can come from wasting this kind of emotional energy, which could be much better spent just walking alongside those on the same path. However, when I encounter these individuals, I’ve learned that not much can be gained from prolonged discussion, as the same arguments tend to get rehashed over and over, with neither side willing to concede a point. There is too much pain and anger and frustration.

Sometimes the healing process can be a painful one. The other day I held my daughter as she got her H1N1 vaccination. She DID NOT WANT THAT SHOT. She screamed and kicked and raged at me for holding her down so the nurse could administer the vaccination. If it had been up to her, there is no way she would have allowed it. But as her parent, I knew it was my job to make that choice for her. Later, she asked me, “Mommy, why didn’t the shot hurt Christopher like it hurt me?”

I said to her, “Christopher didn’t struggle, honey. He was brave, and let me tell him a story to distract him while he got his shot so it didn’t hurt too much. Maybe next time, you’ll cooperate and let me tell you a story, and it won’t hurt you so much.”

There are some aspects of adoption that are a bit like that shot. Unpleasant, even painful. But easier when the child learns to trust the parent making choices for him. The story changes over time — the details are adapted or even added according to the needs of that child in a particular place and time. Ultimately, the child needs his parent to help him work through the big feelings and questions; it is the bond of family life that helps him find healing for his hurts, and answers for his questions.

Wee Cook Wednesdays: Friendship Cake

Have you ever made sourdough starter? I’m trying an experiment this week, to add a finishing touch to the baskets I do for various friends and family members. My mother used to make this starter — it requires a 10 day babysitting commitment, a true investment in time and effort that is the mark of most truly great Christmas gifts.

To make your sourdough starter (make this 3-10 days before you want to make the actual cake), in a small bowl combine 1 package active dry yeast and 1/2 C warm water. Stir to dissolve. Then, in a non-metallic bowl using a non-metallic spoon, combine 2-1/2 C warm water, 2 C all-purpose flour, and 2 Tbls sugar. Stir to combine well, and add yeast mixture. Cover bowl loosely with plastic wrap or cheesecloth and let stand in a warm place for 3 days, stirring 2-3 times daily. 

For your own baking:  After three days, place in refrigerator, stirring daily. Use within 11 days. Always bring starter to room temperature before using in cake recipe by allowing to set in a warm place for an hour before using. Stir well, then measure out the amount needed for recipe.

To share starter:  On Day 10 divide starter as follows:  2-3 C for recipe (below). Divide remaining starter into 1C portions and place in plastic or glass containers, cover with plastic wrap (don’t let starter touch metal lids). Keep one cup for yourself and give the rest to friends along with the “Nurturing Your Starter” directions:

Nurturing Your Starter:  Starter should have a sweet, yeasty smell. If you notice signs of spoiling, toss and start over. Do not add milk, cream, or eggs to starter or it may produce harmful bacteria.

*  Day 1 (starter received):  Stir mixture with spoon, let it sit on a counter loosely covered with plastic wrap or wax paper for one day. Do not refrigerate or place in metal container.

*  Days 2-4:  Refrigerate, stir the mixture each day, keep loosely covered.

*  Day 5:  Transfer starter to larger glass or ceramic jar or bowl. Add “starter food”:  1 C water, 1 C flour, 1 C sugar. Stir to mix, cover loosely, return batter to refrigerator. (Container should not be more than 1/2 full.)

*  Days 6 -9: Stir once a day and keep refrigerated, loosely covered.

*  Day 10:  Transfer to larger non-metallic container and add more starter food (1C water, 1C flour, 1C sugar). Allow starter to sit at room temperature for an hour. Remove 1C for each of 3 friends, use 3C for the following recipe.

Friendship Cake

1 C sugar
2 C flour
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 C vegetable oil
1-1/2 tsp vanilla
3 C starter
2 C chopped nuts or fruit (raisins, cherries, chopped apple, crushed pineapple, dates, pecans, almonds, etc.)
1 egg plus 2 egg whites

Combine dry ingredients in large bowl, set aside. In another bowl mix starter, egg, sugar, oil, and vanilla. Add flour mixture, fruit and nuts. Pour into a greased and floured tube pan or 9×11 loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes. Cool and dust with powdered sugar.

Are you still listening? (Sorry for the silence….)

Okay, it’s been nearly two weeks now since I’ve posted something. By all the blogging rules in the universe, no one will ever read this, since EVERYONE knows you have to post fresh content at least several times a week, or your readers will go in search of something fresher/better/more current.

But hopefully my “regulars” won’t give up quite that easily.

The first two weeks of Advent have been busier than usual, due to the fact that (a) Boosters has taken over 80% of my life and (b) various health issues (doctor’s appointments or actual sickness) have taken over the lion’s share of the other 20%. Well, maybe 10%. Whine. Whine. Whine.

Today was especially fun. Took Chris and Sarah to the doctor’s for their H1N1 booster (second dose), and found that Chris would have to get the injection because they’d run out of mist. Sarah heard the word “shot” and asked me point blank if she was getting one, too.

Not even the promise of McDonalds could stop the emotional tsunami that followed… After squirreling herself behind a storage cabinet as her brother bravely took his turn, Sarah nearly kicked a hole in the Venetian blind as we pulled her from her hiding place. It took three of us (two nurses and one red-faced mom) to restrain her legs long enough for the poke. From the screams (before, during, and after the actual poke) you’d have thought we were skinning her alive.

Later, when she was feeling more philosophical, Sarah asked me why the shot didn’t seem to hurt Chris as much as it had hurt her. I tried to explain to her that her muscles were all tense from her screaming and kicking, so it made the shot hurt more. “Next time, you might try taking deep breaths or singing a song, and not pay attention to the shot. I bet it won’t hurt as much.” (My nurse friend later suggested that we do Sarah first to avoid a similar scenario…)

Driving home, I thought about that. How often do we brace ourselves, worrying about some painful event until it turns our lives inside out? Just last week, I nearly made myself sick waiting for a particular confrontation that I had been warned was coming my way. When the moment finally came … nothing happened. No fireworks. No accusations. Nothing.

Most parents, I think, can relate to this sense of foreboding, the proverbial sword of Damocles hanging overhead. So much of the stuff that worries us, never comes to pass. No wonder the Lord urges us to brush worry from our lives (from Matthew 6:25-33):

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat (or drink), or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.

“If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, ¹⁹ and all these things will be given you besides.”