That being said, as adoption has grown more and more popular, I’ve also noticed an uprise in talk about the romantic side of adoption. Frankly, it seems as if adoption is the cool thing to do if you are a hip and progressive. Now, don’t get me wrong I don’t think that everyone who adopts now does it to be hip – I imagine even some movie stars do it out of good motives.

Of course, there is a romantic aspect of adoption. There is nothing that compares to the moment when, after years of waiting and mountains of paper work, you are handed the child you’ve only seen pictures of for the last 10 months. It’s labor and delivery in its own unique way. I could go on and on about all the amazing, romantic sides of adoption. But in the midst of all this – sometimes I think we forget that it’s not all perfect and is, at times, extremely difficult.

We have four kids (all boys by the way). Three of them are biological and one is adopted. Frankly, it’s difficult when you have a child that just doesn’t fit like the rest of your kids do. Our adopted son has a lot going against him. He was ten months when he was taken from his home and his family and given to strange looking white couple that spoke a completely different language (He was with a foster mom and foster family those first 10 months). To those of you who have children: can you imagine giving up your 10 month old child? At that point, there is quite a bond, no? How does a little 10-month old mind process the reality that he’s just been taken from the only people that have ever loved him. It’s clear to us by now that Mason struggles with this reality. No, he can’t explain it nor can he even recognize it as such. But there is no doubt that he struggles with abandonment issues. His identity is likely all out of whack. He’ll probably battle this for the rest of his life.

He is a bundle of energy that at his best keeps our house alive with excitement, singing, joy and laughter. But at his worst, he cracks and doesn’t know how to control his emotions and just totally loses it.

Now, when our other kids go crazy, we can pretty much say “yep, that’a a little version of your father” or “you definitely got that from your mother” and we can figure out easier how to handle them – because, well, it’s like handling the child version of us.  With Mason, we have no framework. We don’t know his biological parents, his biological brothers and sisters. We don’t know their personalities. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their habits. With this, we’re flying blind.

The point is this: Mason has a lot stacked against him. He’s an adopted, second born, middle-ish, Guatemalan born, darker skinned child in a white family and his personality is totally different than his brothers.

But it all of this, he’s our son.

Now, it’s not always hard. Like I said before, he’s one of the most entertaining, creative kids I’ve ever met. He’s spunky. He makes us laugh. He’s one of the most generous five-year olds I’ve ever seen (he probably gave away more than half of his Halloween candy to his brothers and friends).

But the truth is, having him as part of our family makes our life together more challenging. There is just no way around that. Perhaps that sounds awful. But it’s reality. In all of this, there is one belief that my wife an I have to keep telling ourselves:

We did not adopt Mason to make our lives easier or to make ourselves happy. 

I cannot bold, italicize this enough. This is a truth that we cannot ever forget. (By the way, this is a truth that any parent – adoptive or not – not matter how challenging the child is, cannot ever forget.)

The adoption of Mason was not about us. It was about him and our belief that God cares for those who are orphaned. It was about giving a child a better chance at a healthy, whole life. It was about opening our home and family to love a beautiful child who was made in the image of God and is worth more than we could ever imagine. It was about welcoming him into our family.

A lot is currently being said about marriage these days due to the recent publication of two books on marriage by two famous (and/or infamous) pastors. I won’t link to one of them because I just don’t think it would be helpful, but I will link to the other one because (while I haven’t read it) I imagine it’s probably helpful in some ways because I really respect the author.

But, over the years I have developed a some thoughts that I (and others it seems) have found helpful when it comes to the vocation of marriage. Now, I don’t fancy myself an complete expert when it comes to being married, just ask my wife. But, in the midst of our struggles the following thoughts have aided us in putting our marriage, and all that goes with it, within a helpful mission-centered framework (how’s that for a catchy phrase?).

I think for us to begin talking about marriage we have to go back to the creation. Most people do too so this isn’t anything new. But, I want to take a bit of a different look at the image of God and it’s implications for our vocation as individuals and more importantly, together as a couple.

In Genesis 1 we read, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. On the 5th day he created mankind and said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Okay, again I am not telling each of you anything new. You, me, all of us are created in the image of God. Of course, there are many different implications to being made in the image of God. The most obvious is that we are His beloved creation, worth more to Him than we can ever imagine. Worth so much that God chose to become man himself, walk among us in the dirt and suffer death on the cross. This is an amazing beautiful truth that I am not sure we will ever really comprehend.

But there is another side to being made in the image of God that I think we can sometimes miss. If being his beloved children shows us who’s we are, this second piece speaks of who we are to be as his children.

In order to understand this side better, it might be helpful to use a alternative word to “image.” Perhaps the greek version of the word is more helpful. That is “eikon.” (All this “eikon” talk is stolen taken straight from Scot McKnight’s book Embracing Grace)

For many of us, the word “eikon” brings some more tangible ideas. Some of us may associate this with religious icons, or pop icons (like Michael Jackson) and those of us who spend our time in front of computers will associate this with the little images that we click on to open up applications like our web browser or wordprocessor.

In each of these cases, the icon is not the object of focus. Rather, what these icons point to is the thing that is important. A religious icon serves the purpose of pointing the worshipper to God. A computer icon serves the purpose of pointing to, or being a shortcut to a computer application.

As beings who are created in the image of God, we serve a similar purpose and role in this world. We are not meant to be God, but rather we are meant to point to God. We are not meant to be the creator, but we are meant to point to the Creator. Following the computer line of thought, if you double click on us, that is, if you look at our lives, you should see God. (Cheesy, I know, but it works right?)

But, here’s the thing: Image bearing doesn’t stop with at people being individuals. 

The Bible continues in Genesis and says that the man and woman are to become one flesh… Two become one. And because of this, in a very real sense, the married couple makes one eikon of God. 

I think the implications of this are huge.

When we look at marriage in our culture there are many different definition of success. A good job, a family, a great sex life, beautiful grandkids, a wealthy retirement and other culturally-based goals.

But, I believe that according to the Bible, the mark of a successful marriage is when two people come together and their lives continually point others to God.

This then is our vocation: To join our lives together and spend the rest of them pointing others to God. So, my wife and I judge our marriage based on how well we point others to God. As God called Israel to be blessed and be a blessing, as God calls the church to be blessed and be a blessing… So God calls the two of us to come together as one, not only to be blessed but to be a blessing and point others to God.

We raise kids with this goal, we neighbor with this goal, we argue (yikes) with this goal, we shop with this goal, we spend money with this goal, we date with this goal, we live in community with this goal, we do everything with the goal of being a shared eikon of God.

If we wake up when we’re 80 and we can say, by the grace of God, we’ve done this. I’ll be happy.

I used to be one of those guys who would look at people running and say “those people are nuts.” I mean, why would I run? Growing up playing sports, running was always the punishment for doing something wrong. Miss too many free  throws? Run. Drop a fly ball? Run. Make the wrong pass? Run. Be slow getting back on defense? Run.

You get the point. Running is punishment. How in the world could people do it for fun?

Well, my last post talked about why I started running.

So to all you running skeptics out there – and I know there are many of you – I offer you the reasons I keep on running:

• I run because I don’t want to wake up at 40 and be twice the size as I am now. I hear getting it off after you put it on is ridiculously hard. I’m trying to just keep it off. You know, be proactive about it.
• I run because I love the challenge.
• I run because I had always been an athlete and I missed the challenge and competition.
• I run because it is one of the few places I am alone and quiet. I don’t run with music so its just me and the road or trail. It’s honestly been one of my best spiritual disciplines I’ve ever taken up.
• I run to relieve stress.
• I run because I enjoy inspiring others to do the same. This is why I post my times / runs on Facebook and Runkeeper. It’s been cool to hear that my running has inspired others to get in shape or take up some other discipline in their life.
• I run because I am a fairly undisciplined person. Running has helped me improve this. A lot.
• I run because I want to model a healthy life for my kids.
• I run because I really, really like running shoes. Seriously, I think I have a problem. I think I am one of the biggest Brooks Running evangelists ever.
• I run because I love the feeling after I am done with a run. There is nothing like finishing a 20 mile run and being able to say “Yeah, I just did that.”
• I run because I’m constantly amazed at what the human body is able to accomplish when we push ourselves.
• I run because it makes me stronger mentally. It was after my first 1/2 marathon that I realized that endurance running is at least 50% mental – if not more.
• I run because my spiritual health is directly connected to my physical health. I’ve always known this but never really understood it until I started running.
• I run because I have actually grown to like the pain.
• I run because it makes me a happier person.
• I run because its a great time to think. Almost better than the shower.
• I run because I signed up for a marathon and if I don’t train I’m screwed.

If you are a runner, why do you run?

Today, I’ve been laying in bed a most of the day recovering from back surgery that I had yesterday.  I had spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spine) plus a herniated disk in the L4-L4 vertebrae that my wonderful doctor kindly fixed for me. I am still a bit sore and kinda doped up on percocet so I hereby am not held accountable for anything I write in this blog post that is offensive or rude or doesn’t make sense!

But, there is one thought that I have been reflecting on a ton the last 24 hours. It hit me yesterday that I am blessed and privileged to be able to get this surgery. I have talked to about 10 or more people who had the same injury/problem I had that have chosen to not get the surgery done due to bad insurance and/or financial reasons. And I live in the suburbs where everything has all they ever wanted (sarcasm).  I can’t help but think of all the people across the world in places like the ghetto in La Limonada and the slums I visited when i was in Zambia who have much, much worse physical conditions than I do.

I am simply broken that they have to continue to live through pain.

So, I guess as I reflect on my surgery, I am thankful to God that I was able to get this done. Thankful that I have relief from pain. At the same time, I mourn for the millions of people around the world that don’t have that same luxury.

I have a renewed sense of thankfulness and respect for the many doctors and nursers who give up their time to visit the poor in places like Haiti, Zambia, La Limonada, West Africa and other impoverished countries to be the healing touch of Jesus there.

It is my prayer that in their poverty, these suffering men, women and children would find and experience the healing touch of the Jesus, our risen savoir, the great physician when no doctors and surgens are available to them.

It was that experience that I was thinking about as I stood in a mass of about 18,500 people about to start the Philadelphia Rock n Roll Half-Marathon.  If you follow me on twitter, or we are friends on facebook, you’ll know that I’ve been training for this event all summer.  Actually, I’ve been training for it for 7 weeks.  My wife signed me up in May and I kinda forgot about it till about 7 weeks before the race.  It hit me when we were with some friends that the race was only that far away and a few of them were pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to pull it off.  Thankfully if you google “7 week 1/2 marathon training” a few options come up! And, thankfully, I had done some running early this year so I had at least dealt a little bit with the mental transition into running.  Of course, six weeks into the training I realized that I had miscalculated and I only had six weeks to train. (I’m not so good at math!)

In my training I had already run 10 miles so I felt pretty good about the 13.1 coming before me.  But, I learned a lot this past Sunday. Here are some random thoughts for those of you who are training or desiring to run a 1/2 marathon.

• First, the whole experience is a ton of fun! I’ve never been to a race before so this was all new to me. We went as a family to the expo on Saturday to pick up my race bib/number and spent some time checking out the booths and getting free stuff.  It was interesting to see and experience the “runner culture.”  Race day was great too. The energy was really high and that made running that much easier. However, my only complaint was that the “Rock and Roll” wasn’t so rocky and rolly. In fact the bands were kinda disappointing. Most of the energy came from the spectators but running up and then back down Kelly drive was a pretty quiet and rather lonely place.
• Follow a training program, even if you’ve been running. This was really helpful for me and made me run distances that I probably wouldn’t have done without the program telling me what to do.  I didn’t follow it perfectly but I followed it pretty closely.  As I said the longest I had run in my training was 10 miles and I felt great up till then.  After that, I struggled. I am not sure how much of this was the mental hurdle or just the physical training but I am sure missing that week in the training didn’t help.
• Go to the bathroom early and don’t drink anything 2 hours before the race. I read this on a few other blogs/websites and was kinda confused. I thought I was supposed to be nice and hydrated.  Well, hydration starts the week of the race (in fact, good hydration is necessary for normal life too!).  If you are well hydrated it won’t hurt you to not drink much 2 hours before.  Why do we do this?  Well, simple.  So you don’t have to stand in line for 35 minutes for a port-a-potty.  The closer it gets to race time, the longer the lines get.  Also, nothing is worse than having to head into a port-a-potty on mile 3 after some hot and sweaty dude get’s done.  I gave in an took a small drink before we ran and I ended up having to stop quickly at mile 4. Thankfully there wasn’t a line.
• Men, be careful with those nipples. Yep. I just said nipples. I had heard this from some friends but apparently if your shirt rubs against your nipples over and over again for 13+ miles it rubs them raw and they can start to bleed.  Everyone who watches The Office remembers Andy Bernard’s bleeding nipples in the race episode.  Yeah, that’s for real. While mine didn’t bleed, but they are scabbed and slowly recovering.  I did see some poor dude who had totally bled through his shirt and made Andy look like he was in good shape. Best way forward?  Put Bandaids on them. Other thing is, don’t run in a new shirt. I’ve found in training that some shirts rub more than others so I wouldn’t use an untested shirt for race day.
• If you run with headphones in training, bring them with (and visa-versa).  I think ideally I like the feeling of running without music.  But, I mostly trained with them so that was just one extra hurdle to overcome mentally.  After running without them however, I think I am going to run without music more and more.  One of my best memories of the event was when we were running down Kelly drive in a part of the race where there wasn’t any music.  The sound of everyone’s feet hitting the ground over and over again was just really cool and strangely soothing.
• It’s a strangely emotional experience. I found myself going in and out of some weird emotions as I ran.  I was cracking up at some of the signs. My favorite one I can’t really repeat on my blog or I’ll get blocked from some of your web content filters. My favorite one was of a guy who was wearing a shirt where he had written in marker “I love my wife.”  It was weird, I almost got choked up. I don’t know why this. I am sure someone could explain it in terms of all the adrenaline and things goijng through my body. But, it made me think for about a 1/2 mile or so about all 18,500 people who were doing this and all the families and stories that were behind all these people.  I talked with one 50+ year old guy between mile 11-12 who had a heart attack last year during mile 24 of his marathon.  He had multiple bypass open heart surgery and here he was running the very next year in a half-marathon.  This was his first race back and after running with me for about 3/4 a mile he left me in his dust.

All in all, I am so glad that I ran. I didn’t even dry heave at the end!  I am already thinking about what my next race will be. I can’t get to carried away because all the races tend to be on Sundays and I kinda have to work most Sunday’s.  But I think I’ll shoot for at least 2 races a year.  That will keep me motivated to stay in shape and keep on running.

I’ve felt so good, emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally since I started running. I have had a few people tell me they thing I’ve lost some weight (though I haven’t weighed myself).  I do know however, that if I don’t have a goal in mind, like a race, I won’t be as disciplined in running consistently.  I think I’ll shoot for a 1/2 in the Spring and maybe one more next fall.  I have a friend who is trying to convince me that I should run an ultra marathon with him (30 miles) but I can’t even imagine that at this point!

For all you runners out there, I’ve been using the iPhone app called Runkeeper to track all my times and training. It has been awesome to use and I don’t get any money or anything for recommending them. :)  However, I did use it during my race and the GPS must have not liked the city streets of Philly because it got all confused with where I was.  When I got to mile 7 I realized that my GPS updates and the real distance were about 3/4 mile of. I had only ran 7 miles but I thought I had run almost 8.  That sucked.

Oh, the results?  I finished in 2:15:36.  I was really pleased with that.

Anyone else have any half-marathon advice?

As you may know, our middle son Mason Carlos is adopted from Guatemala. When we visited his birth country to bring him home two years ago, we left part of our hearts there. We have been longing to go back and serve there since we left two years ago. We are excited about this trip because we have the opportunity to establish a long-term relationship with some locals who have been serving the poorest of the poor in Guatemala for about seventeen years. Our hope is that as our three boys grow older, we will be able to love and serve these beautiful people together. This trip is the first step towards realizing that dream.

This summer we will be working alongside the staff of a school that has been established in the La Limonada slum by an organization called Lemonade International. In a country where school is a privilege and not a right, those in the poorest neighborhoods are mostly denied access to education. In partnership with some locals, Lemonade International has helped set up and support 2 schools and a young church plant. These schools bring hope by providing quality education for the children of the slum, along with support services for families. In the context of this tangible and meaningful help, these kids and their families are experiencing the love of Christ in action. If you’d like to read more and see pictures, check out the website of the organization we will be serving with at you may visit: http://www.lemonadeinternational.org/blog

If you would like to make a financial gift towards our trip you may do so on The Well’s website at: http://give.thewellpa.com. You may also send a check to The Well using the envelope provided. Thanks so much for your friendship. We greatly appreciate your prayerful consideration in partnering with us on this trip.

I am sure I’ll resume sooner or later. Subscribe to the feed to find out when.