My Overthinking

Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption

Factory Girls Book Club

I’m a social drinker. Take me out to a coffee house, and I’ll sit and sip on that decaf latte and chat the night away. But, gone are the days of meeting girlfriends for a night out once a week to talk about things we’re reading – at least for a season. A little too much going on lately for that.

So, when a girl like me wants to read a book and talk about it with somebody other than her dear husband laying beside her breathing deeply no longer conscious, she’s gotta go to Facebook. 

Here’s the book – Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China for about $10.

If you wanna join a handful of other ladies who will be sitting at their computer screens with their decaf lattes in hand on Monday or Tuesday nights for about 7 weeks to give their two cents about this highly acclaimed book, go ahead and brew yourself acuppa joe and pull up your chair to our Facebook group.

We’re so modern and cool, such women of 2013, aren’t we?

Yeah, we are.

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He is There

Christmas 2009. Three Christmases ago. I was a wreck. We were so close to finding our new daughter. I just knew it would be a few weeks after Christmas.

And, that meant that though I didn’t know who she was or where exactly she was, what she looked like or how old she was. I knew she was. I knew she was somewhere across the world, alone for Christmas, what was her first Christmas.

And, though I was anxious and wondering and thinking all the time about her, there was something that gave me great peace.

God was there.

In Luke 2:6-20, Luke mentioned the manger three times. Why?

The manger was messy. It wasn’t what we picture–a wooden contraption with a sweet bed of hay. It was more like a box looking thing or basin made out of clay mixed with hay or stones and held together with mud. All kinds of food for animals were put in it, not just nice yellow hay. It was dirty, maybe moldy, smelly.

And, God was there. Very literally, God was there. 

As spunky and full of life as Lydia is now, it wasn’t that long ago that she was in a pretty messy place. I believe her orphanage was one of the better ones–her needs were met and we’ve learned more recently that there were quite caring women who took to her there. There was a wall of windows with natural light in the room where she lived 24-7. In that room were 40 cribs and a few toys for all to share to pass the time. There were older children in that orphanage too, children we weren’t allowed to see. And, I wonder what their days were like.

I’ve heard a lot of stories–about adopted children who flinch when someone moves their direction in fear that they will be hit; children who were never held, children who have come to accept that no one wants to bring home a child their age, only babies; children who suffer significant consequences from not having the medical treatment they needed earlier.

And, yet, I believe God is there.

God is not only not afraid to get his feet dirty; He is about getting His feet dirty. That’s what advent is all about, isn’t it? God coming down, the perfect to the broken, the holy to the unholy.

Psalm 34:18 tells us He’s close to the brokenhearted–and there are so many right now. I can only imagine that He is very close indeed to brokenhearted children–here and there–whether they are aware of their brokenness or not. He’s there.

I prayed for our daughter 3 Christmases ago, that He would be close to her, that He would remain close to her. That He would be tangibly felt in that room where she slept. That He would wrap His arms around her when she was cold. That He’d rock her when she needed comfort. That He’d be in the manger with her. 
I know He was there.

And, somehow, in the dark places of orphanages around the world, I can’t explain how or what He always looks like there, but I believe that He’s there. In the warmth of the sun pouring in the windows, He comforted my child. In the smile of a nanny. In the gaze of another orphan. In the provision sent by charities around the world. In her broken heart–emotionally and literally. 
Somehow, He was there.
Now, as my children listen to us read about His story every night around our table, sneak Hershey kisses in their mouths as we make reindeer eyes, and use entirely too much scotch tape on crafts and wrapping paper alike, He is here…and, He is there, somehow making an unholy place, holy.
That’s what He’s about. That’s what advent is about. 

photos courtesy of KC Photography

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Made in China {a new perspective}

He was a quarter at a yard sale. I thought he was cute–soft suede-like material and a retro look about him. He fit perfectly in the girls’ room that has a bit of a vintage feel to it. So, there he sits upon a stack of antique books on Ashlyn’s dresser, presiding over a Lego mini figure, a wind-up toy, and other plastic things that have been sitting collecting dust. While we’ve cleaned out a half dozen times since this guy came home, he’s consistently made the cut. Just something about him that we all took a liking to.

The same photographer, Michael Wolf, who took the 100×100 pictures I shared 9 months ago produced another project called The Real Toy Story. When I clicked on the link, the first picture I saw was this one.

There he was. The dog sitting upon her dresser that we’ve never even named. There he was in the hands of young women who have performed one step in his construction, perhaps attaching thousands upon thousands of fluffy yellow hats.

And, there were more pictures, all from 5 toy factories in China where 75% of the world’s toys are made.

Where migrant workers travel far from home to pursue a better life for themselves. Some are very young, quitting school to make money. Some have children they leave behind with grandparents. Each one, working hard, oftentimes 6 or 7 days a week from 8 in the morning until 10 at night, for about $240 a month including overtime hours.

Where they live in dorms there at the factories with 10-15 people in a room, oftentimes 50 people to one bathroom, a bathroom where running water is shut off at night to save money.
They are not faceless pawns in globalization there simply to satisfy our wants. Each one of these workers is independent and ambitious, hopeful and driven. Each one of the 130 million migrant workers in China has a story, one that we somehow get entangled in through little red sueded dogs.

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Last Train Home {Giveaway}

I’m quiet tonight as a few scenes from Last Train Home continue in my mind.

Every year, as Chinese New Year approaches, 130 million people in China who have left their homes to work in cities return home, creating the single largest migration in the world every single year. Last Train Home, created by Chinese Canadian Lixin Fan, focuses on two of those 130 million people–Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin. They left their two children as infants in their rural village in Sichuan Province to be cared for by an elderly grandmother and set out for Guangzhou with the hope of giving their son and daughter a better life than they had experienced themselves.

The stunning contrast between the crowded, riotous train station as they and many others literally push their way through to leave their factory work and dormitory living to journey home and the peaceful, magnificent landscapes they can see from their train window left me stunned. Chaos and beauty–true of the physical world as well as their relationships.

Though these parents gave all they literally could for the sake of their children, their relationships are critically broken with a wall between the father and daughter in particular that you can nearly reach out and touch as you watch them on the screen in front of you on the other side of the world captured in time. Their pain is intense. Somehow, it became even more real to me with the English subtitles as I was forced to focus on expressions and tones rather than simply words.

As their 15-year-old daughter wrestles with her own desire for independence and the hole left in her heart from absent parents, I realized I was literally holding my breath while I watched, wanting to see something happen that wasn’t going to happen while feeling somewhat embarrassed that I was getting such an intimate view of their brokenness. It isn’t fair. Her mother told her daughter she had not yet tasted the bitterness of life; I think she’s known it all along.

This is one family’s story, one intimate and intense enough to leave you holding your breath. Multiply their story by the 130 million who share similar journeys as migrant workers and this movie becomes epic in impact, no less necessary that Schindler’s List or Hotel Rwanda as we consider the reality of the world outside our own small borders.

I want you to see this. I want you to own it and share it with others. I want more people to understand the lives of Zhang Changhua, Chen Suqin, and Zhang Qin and the 129,999,997 others their lives represent. So, I’m giving away a copy of the DVD here.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*note* this movie is not appropriate for young audiences. There is one particular scene with language and domestic violence. 
Giveaway is for the DVD and shipping to the Continental United States. If winner cannot provide a mailing address within the Continental United States, he/she will have the option of paying for shipping for the DVD.

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