And I don’t want you to get me anything.

Well, scratch that. I do want a present, but it’s not what you’re thinking.

I am already blessed in every aspect of my life. God has placed me in a position to be a blessing to others and I want you to join me in experiencing that joy. So this year for my birthday I’m giving it up. Instead, I want you to help me help an organization that I’m close to and support wholeheartedly. Both Ends Burning is a non profit organization tackling the mess that is international adoption.

According to UNICEF, there are 160 million orphans around the world. In 2006, over 20,000 of them were adopted into loving families. In 2010, only 11,000. There is a problem with the adoption process. There is no shortage of families that want to adopt, but the process they must go through is excruciating. In Kyrgyzstan, the average family has to wait over 2 years AFTER adopting a child, before they get to meet them and take them home. 2 YEARS! This is unacceptable.

Cross-cultural studies of children have found that the length of time spent in conditions of social deprivation, like orphanages, correlates with a wide array of psychological and developmental challenges. Children living in institutional settings are at significantly higher risk for developing learning problems, behavioral issues and language disorders. If a child spends more than 2 years in an institution, research has shown that they will NEVER fully recover and reach their full potential. The timing involved with getting these children into homes with families who love them and desperately want them is critical.

So that’s my pitch, and here’s the deal. I’m turning 26, and I want you to donate $26 to help fund Both Ends Burning. They are currently in the process of filming a feature length documentary. They have been blessed with a challenge made by one of their biggest supporters, who said that he will match every dollar raised between now and the end of the year, up to $500,000. I want to say we helped get them there. So, click on the button below, donate $26 instead spending it on things you probably don’t need anyway. I may not have $500,000 BUT I promise to match all donations raised through my site up, up to $2600! Get the word out! Tweet this post! Share it on Facebook. Talk about it to your friends and family and co workers.

Get these children home!

Last night at dinner with my parents we were talking about some of the things in which we struggle.  Recently,  it feels like a lot of people around me have been going through some stuff. Broken relationships, disease, financial troubles, etc. My mom’s husband Alex quoted George Herbert with a phrase that I’ve gone over dozens of times in my mind since that conversation. He said “The best revenge is a life lived well.”

Now hang with me here for a second, because I’m not saying that exacting revenge is going to accomplish anything, but we were talking it out and I agree that the sentiment behind it makes sense. Whether you’ve lost your house and had to uproot your family and move or are going through the process of a marriage that didn’t make it, the idea that the best thing you can do is look forward and live your life the best way you know how is inspiring. I’m going to make it a point that whenever I start to regress back to feelings that I don’t cut it or I’m insignificant, I want to remember this phrase. All I can do is look forward and realize that there are good things in my life, and the best way to “get back” at that situation or event that hurt you is the be able to say “See, you can’t hold me down, I’m gonna be just fine. Take that!”

This is going to be a long one. I’ve decided to lump parts 2 and 3 together. Fasten your seatbelt.

May 10th, 2000. This day will be forever scarred into my mind. 8 am on what I think was a Tuesday and the front door goes crazy. Someone is ringing the doorbell like a mad man and there is pounding like you don’t want to hear at 8am on a Tuesday. I figured that our prankster friends were coming over for breakfast. My mother is on the phone in a bathrobe and I’m playing with the cat before leaving for school. John is still asleep and my brother has already left for 5th grade.

My mom yells for me to answer quickly so not to wake up John, and I run to the front door. I open it to a full S.W.A.T team with guns drawn and battering ram staring me in the face. They immediately rush the house yelling “FBI, who’s in the house?” I was dragged outside and questioned by the local police while my mom had her phone slapped out of her hand and arm pinned behind her back. I guess they thought the phone she was holding was dangerous or something. John was contained upstairs in the bedroom and we couldn’t see him for a good half hour while they secured the house. For the next several hours, they searched and seized just about everything. The Corvette, jewelry, cash (lots of cash), computers, safes and lock boxes, file cabinets and dozens of floppy discs were loaded up and taken away to be thoroughly scrutinized. My mother and I were questioned but ultimately let go and asked to leave.

To this day I still have a bit of post traumatic stress about door bells and heavy knocking. My heart races and I get very agitated when this happens.

For the next year, things were quite a bit different (as if that was tough to figure out). They froze all of our assets. John’s security team ran sweeps of the house for bugs, and we didn’t actually move back in for a couple of weeks. I remember that in order to pay bills, my step sister and I would go from bank branch to bank branch withdrawing $9500 cash at each one because it was just under the minimum to declare why you were taking the money. I would be sitting shotgun with stacks of cash that would make any rapper blush.

A year or so went by and eventually John was arrested. He was taken to Seattle where he was held until trial. Oh I almost forgot… He was taken to Seattle and held until trial because the man fled the country to Costa Rica and thought he was going to convince my mom to bring all of us down there and we’d make a new life on the run from the law. No, I’m not kidding.

He pleaded guilty for reasons unknown. I speculate that it’s because he was making a deal that would keep his family from facing any charges. During his sentence, he would write me letters quoting Bible verses and telling me how everything was going to be ok. Never once did he admit that anything he did was wrong.

About a year into it, my mom went up to visit him, where he proceeded to berate her for everything that had happened, blaming it all on her and accusing her of wasting thousands of dollars while he was in jail. The divorce was final a few months later. I still am in awe sometimes of how my mom handled the situation. If there ever needed to be a movie made about the strength and wisdom of a person under stress, give my momma call!

Throughout this entire escapade, my dad stayed calm and supportive of me and my family. I can only imagine the stuff that must have been going through his head about what his kids and first wife were going through. But he never condemned, never judged, never got angry. Again, if there ever needed to be a movie made about the patience and unconditional love of a person, give my pops a call!

By this time I was in high school and devastatingly ashamed of everything that had gone on in my life. It was years before I ever told the story of what had been happening to any of my friends. I was afraid that they’d judge me, make fun of me, want nothing to do with me, all of it. I learned to switch off and become cold to all emotions surrounding the events. It was a defense mechanism that helped me cope trough a lot of things I didn’t fully understand.

My mom is a hero to me. Plain and simple. I saw her go from years of not having a job to supporting me and my brother as a single mom for the first time in her life. She hustled. She worked crazy hours, sacrificed where ever she needed and made sure there was food on the table every night. I started working at an ice cream shop to earn some extra money when I was 14 or 15. One of my fondest memories was at Christmas one year when my mom decided not to buy a Christmas tree so she could spend that money on gifts for me and my brother. I got to go out and buy her one with my own money. I will never understand how people can disrespect money after being given the opportunity to do that for her. Was one of the best Christmases ever.

I made it through high school. I had the uncanny ability to never study for anything and ace all of my tests. I slacked off everywhere I could, and when college came I was unprepared to say the least. I moved out my senior year of high school with my best friend Steve and we got an apartment together. When you’re the only one of your friends who lives on their own, it’s pretty much assumed that they’re all going to hang out there. And that’s exactly what we did. That first summer I don’t think there was a single night we didn’t have at least one person over. We partied like we were kings, and somehow managed to escape without paying thousands of dollars for repairs.

Ultimately, college wasn’t for me. I was disenchanted with the entire concept of college. I felt like everyone around me was judgmental. This might have been me projecting my baggage on others or something, but I didn’t have any engaging experiences that I thought college should provide. I also had no idea how to study. Note taking was not in my bag of tricks to say the least. I changed majors a couple of times and was never satisfied with what I ended up picking. I started taking classes for one particular course, and would change directions and have to start over again. All of this while footing a bill of what at the time seemed like insane amounts of money. (I now realize that it was just a drop in the bucket of what people actually pay for their education, so I’m glad I got out early).

Instead I started working in customer service at a major internet firm. I still work there today and I love it! I’ve been opened up to a whole new world of entrepreneurial gloriousness (if that isn’t a word, it should be). This place was the school I was looking for all along. I moved around to a few different departments to spread my wings and ended up where I am now working with some of the best and brightest in the industry. I was afforded the ability to purchase my first home when I was 19, and jumped at the opportunity. This was major turning point #2 for my life.

I bought a house in Queen Creek in 2006. If you live in Arizona, you probably know that real estate purchases + Queen Creek + 2006 = a REALLY bad idea. The bubble burst, I took a pay cut, lived at least an hour away from all of my friends, and in general hated living there. To top it off, I was about to go through one of the largest personal struggles of my young life.

I took a trip with my church to Swaziland, Africa in 2007. To this day it was one of the single best experiences I’ve ever had and has shaped so much of what I value and respect that I recommend a trip like that to every single person in their 20s. I spent two weeks renovating abandoned houses for orphans to live in and visited schools. Swaziland holds the highest HIV infection rate in the world, with over 50% of the population infected. Research estimates that if radical measures aren’t taken immediately, the Swazi people will be extinct by 2025. It’s eliminating the working class so no one is able to keep the economy running and as a result, everyone is dying. We got the chance to travel to one of the villages and plant crops for people with no other way to support themselves, and no money to buy seed to plant food that will be their primary source of sustenance for the next coming season. It. Was. Amazing.

When I returned home my perspective on the American way of life shifted drastically. I despised wealth. Anyone who drove a luxury car or God forbid owned a boat was single-handedly contributing to the destruction of the African people in my eyes. I’ve since come to understand and accept that this isn’t the case (well, not all the time anyway ) and that putting that judgement on people is not the way I want to live. But after all I had been through with John and going from one end of the financial spectrum, I was a mess. I did well for myself considering that I had no formal education and was still too young to drink legally. I wrestled with my own financial position and fell into a deep depression that took me down a long lonely road. I began to self medicate and inflict harm to my body. I had a set of french doors that I took of the hinges and set up in my garage. I would get so angry that I would just lay into them until I couldn’t lift my arm anymore. I was isolated and had thoughts of suicide regularly.

A friend and co-worker took notice and probably did the most impactful thing that they could and it truly did set me on the path to recovery. To this day I don’t know if they really know what it meant, but if you’re reading this THANK YOU!. I came into work one day with my hands all swollen and bruised and cut all over my knuckles and they walked over to my desk, dropped the business card to a counselor on my keyboard and walked away without saying anything.

I called. I went. I spent two days a week working through junk that needed working through. It wasn’t easy. She challenged me on a lot of things that made me angry and exhausted. But it worked. I got my proverbial crap together and a year later left that office at peace.

Shortly after I left counseling, I sold my house in Queen Creek, met a girl, and started a new chapter in my life. I got involved with a church that has become an extension of my family and I an extension of theirs. They support me, challenge me, motivate me, and can put up with me and my antics. I love all of them to death and would do just about anything for them. When it didn’t work out with the girl, they stepped up and supported me 110% and walked with me through a lot of what was going on in my head.

So here I am today. I work in the internet industry and cannot get enough of it. I work in the loving people industry and cannot get enough of it. I work in the giving grace industry and CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF IT! I don’t know what lies ahead for me, but I know that I’ve got family and friends and a loving God who are in my corner making all things work together for my good. I try to travel to Haiti twice a year to continue working with orphans and it gets better every time. I’m developing relationships with people who I admire and love greatly through this type of work. I may go back to school, I may not. I now know that either way, I’ve got a mother and father who don’t think any less of me and support me completely. I have some of the greatest friends anyone can ask for. They know exactly when I need a break from the routine of day-to-day life and can cheer me up at a moments notice. They challenge me to grow and drop bombs of grace that make me proud. Oh yea, and they’re die-hard college football fans. GO BIG RED!

Anyway, thanks for reading and may you find the things I’ve found and come to understand that grace is there whether you think you can handle it or not. I encourage you to grab ahold of it and run like the wind because no one ever lay on their death-bed and think to back on their life and say “You know what I wish I lived more cautiously. I wish I took less risks.”