WiW #3 - There Is No Me Without You

I've finally let myself start reading a book that's been sitting on my shelf for months.  I knew it would be gripping; and I also knew that, while we were in the midst of our busy spring schedule of homeschool/music lessons/everything else, I wouldn't have the time--nor the emotional energy--to devote to it.  But now, I do.  :)

The book is There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene, a nonfiction book about Africa, the AIDS crisis, and the way one woman opens her home and heart to many (MANY!) children made orphans by the horrific, nearly incomprehensible spread of the disease.

Here is one of the passages that intrigued me:


Adoption is not the answer to HIV/AIDS in Africa.  Adoption rescues few...For every orphan turning up in a northern-hemisphere household--winning the spelling bee, winning the cross-country race, joining the Boy Scouts, learning to rollerblade, playing the trumpet or the violin--ten thousand African children remain behind alone.


"Adoption is a last resort," I would be told in November 2005 by Haddush Halefom, head of the Children's Commission under Ethiopia's Ministry of Labor, the arbiter of intercountry adoptions, "Historically, close kinship ties in our country meant that there were very few orphans:  orphaned children were raised by their extended families.  The HIV/AIDS pandemic has destroyed so many of our families that the possibility no longer exists to absorb all our Ethiopian orphans."


"I am deeply respectful of the families who care for our children," he said.  "But I am so very interested in any help that can be given to us to keep the children's first parents alive.  Adoption is good, but children, naturally, would prefer not to see their parents die."

Let me clarify:  the book is not anti-adoption (and neither am I...in fact, I'll confess to perusing the Ethiopia info on the website of the adoption agency my brother and his wife used when adopting their three children from Guatemala, All God's Children International...if I had a large sum of money sitting around, I'd adopt in a flash...and in fact, we very seriously considered it before we were surprised with Shav's pregnancy).  But I see the point of the book, that the problem is so immense that adoption doesn't come close to solving it.

Here's another good point the book made:

Fear of contagious disease is typical in tropical and subtropical countries.  Inhabitants of temperate zones fail to appreciate the extent to which their steel and glass civilizations are built upon the bedrock of annual winters, while those in tropical zones are bedeviled to death by contagious parasites, viruses, insects, and bacteria that are never beaten back by ice or cold.

As I have watched the ants return to my kitchen after their winter hiatus, I'm reminded of the truth of how blessed we are to have our insect population controlled by annual cold spells.  If that's not a blessing we take for granted, I don't know what is!

I'm less than halfway through the book, but already I give it two thumbs up.  If I didn't have laundry and dishes and cleaning and children calling my name, I'd curl up on the couch and spend the rest of the day reading it!

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This morning while my boys rode bikes on our driveway and played in and around the garage, I opened a storage box of papers and started decluttering.  This is one of the things I found:

These are 22 questions the members of John Wesley's Holy Club asked themselves each day in their private devotions over 200 years ago.
1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am?  In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward, or disregard?  If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me?

After reading that list, my first thought is, "Thank You, God, for Your grace!!!"  :)  But my second thought is, "Spiritual growth doesn't happen without honest assessment, and this is an outstanding tool for that."

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For more gathered words, visit Barbara H.'s Stray Thoughts.