Our Little Brown Bear...
Readers know our children have adopted two sons from Ethiopia and are in the process of adopting a third child. So a favorite theme of family feasts is our adoption by our Heavenly Father and our adoption of these little ones bearing His Image.
Since the fam reads, writes, and designs, they got talking and decided to do a book on adoption. They still hope to tweak it some, but here it is. It's titled Our Little Brown Bear and it features the Ummel family--Doug and Heather with their blessings Jonathan, Nathan, Bayly, Alison; and little brown bear himself, Josiah. Hope you all like it.
And for those keeping track, our children now have ten blessings from God with three more on the way (two mothers expecting and one adoption in process). What joy! (TB)
Clearnote Churches
Clearnote Fellowship
Christ the Word
Monthly archive
- May 2013 (18)
- April 2013 (33)
- March 2013 (43)
- February 2013 (28)
- January 2013 (41)
- December 2012 (31)
- November 2012 (37)
- October 2012 (38)
- September 2012 (21)
- August 2012 (28)
- July 2012 (46)
- June 2012 (50)
Popular Posts
Tags
Recent Comments
- Sue McKeown on The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away....
- Fr. Bill on The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away....
- K. Bartholomew on The difference between pro-life and anti-antiabortion...
- Kamilla on Inflammatory rhetoric in the abortion debate...
- David Gray on Teach daughters not to be brash and sons not to be effeminate...
Comments
Beautiful! Doug and Heather (and Tim), thank you for sharing your story and life with us. To think, I remember when Heather was about Josiah's age, riding her tricycle around the seminary student housing parking lot. Who would have dreamed such blessings? God has richly blessed you all, and may He still.
What an awful title! Would you want to be identified by your skin color?
I've got adopted kids myself, who are a different race than me, and I'd never refer to their racial differences in that way.
Children want you to acknowledge their sameness, not point out their differences, which they are already quite aware of anyway. I'm sure the book is fine but I'd definitely change the title (and I hope you don't refer to the kids that way).
Mack,
God created us with glorious differences. Ignoring these differences is foolish in my opinion as Josiah certainly notices them as does anyone anytime that we are out in public as you have certainly noticed as well. Of course we talk about how we are similar as well. Any idiot would do so. "God created us in His image." "We were all put into this family by God." "God gave all of us our skin color."
In our judgment, ignoring the fact that Josiah is African and has different colored skin would simply place in his mind that this is something that we don't talk about. Why don't we talk about it? Is it because he isn't white like us? Is there something wrong with his skin color? Why can't he be white? It would allow him to be precious (like Gollum with his ring) with his doubts and fears.
We see these issues coming and think it best to address them head on and not allow Josiah to make his skin color an issue. It isn't an issue if it is spoken of openly and reassurance given that this is how God made him and he is loved and cherished by all who know him. We have done a lot of reading and talking to many other adoptive parents and have solicited and engaged in much prayer. We think this way best. You may disagree. That's fine, but I think that you are wrong.
Happy to discuss it more, but I think that the cat might out of the bag with Josiah. He kinda has it figured out that he is different... :)
With great respect for your love of the least of these,
Doug (Josiah's father)
Beautiful. The content and the title.
Love,
When he's old enough, I would ask Josiah how he feels by having a white family constantly mention he is brown.
Take a look at the book. It says he is brown on nearly every page. I'm sure Josiah loves that. It sounds as though you are uncomfortable with his race. Otherwise, why mention his skin color so darned often?
As an adoption social worker and adoptive parent, I can tell you this is a bad idea.
Look at it this way: If you died and one of your biological sons had to go live with a black family, would you want them to write a book called "Our Little White Boy?" Like he was some sort of pet?
Think, man! Do you want all the black people in their neighborhood to call him that? Wouldn't that call attention to the fact that he is different? Racially isolated?
I hope you are giving Josiah lots of exposure to other black children and families. He will need to learn what it is like to be a black man in our society.
>>When he's old enough, I would ask Josiah how he feels by having a white family constantly mention he is brown.
Actually children generally enjoy distinctives which are bathed in love.
>>He will need to learn what it is like to be a black man in our society.
More to the point he'll need to learn to be a man in our society, far too many fail to achieve that. He's better situated than most to achieve that end.
Mack,
First you say these parents should pretend their little boy does not have a different skin colour. That they should pretend he is the same.
Then you tell them that this little boy needs to learn what it means to be a black person in this society from black people, as though his skin-colour is the most defining characteristic of who he is, and that he is in fact so different that his white parents must seek out black people to teach him how to live.
So you want to treat this boy as though his skin color is not different (which is false) and you also believe that 'different' people need to help raise this boy because his humanity is fundamentally different than his parents (which is also false).
Actually Mack, it sounds like the only person here who is uncomfortable with this beautiful little boy's skin colour is you. I humbly suggest you reflect on your own heart in this matter.
I haven't read the book, so I don't know which way it tends, but with any one thing about a child, good, bad, or indifferent, I think it's best not to dwell on it too much. If the thing is indifferent, tho, it's definitely important to talk about it some, just so the child doesn't think it's bad. The worry with talking too much about it is that the child will think it really *is* bad and you're just trying to make him feel better. As with a lot of things, there's too little, about right, and too much.
Doug and Heather, your book is a beautiful answer to Josiah's question about his sweet nickname. I was all smiles and tears reading it. May the Lord indeed guide you always as you raise this dear little one.
Just finished the book. It was great. Well done!
Mack,
If you don't have something nice to say....
But seriously. I'm guessing you got your social work degree before you had the blessing of children. You have all kinds of preconceived notions about children you read into your own children and their responses to life. They likely reflect you and your own discomfort with distinctions.
I don't like being told I'm a sinner. It's uncomfortable to me. Unfortunately, the Bible tells me that over and over again. Why? Because it's also telling me the right response to that. What we're doing in Josiah's book is allowing him to know right from the beginning the right response to something that he will struggle with at times: "Why do I look different from the rest of my family?" We want to make it very clear to him that GOD made him the beautiful color he is, that GOD chose for him to be in our family. We think that's a beautiful thing, and it's something we want him to be comfortable with. I'm sorry you don't see it that way, and I'm sorry you find it necessary to tell other believers and fellow adopters that they are parenting wrong. May God have mercy on us both in this difficult work.
Also, this seems like a good place to thank Kyla Curell for her excellent photography. Thanks so much, Kyla!! And to set the record straight, as this post makes clear, I didn't actually write the whole book. Michal and Hannah both worked on it; it was very much a group project. Thanks to all.
Your book is great! It's so obvious how much you, Doug, and your other children love your little "brown bear".
Hope lots of people adopting children from Africa, as well as those from India, other countries where people have a brown skin tone, or biracial children from ths U.S./Canada buy this book.
Good work from you and your co-authors and photographer.
Hey all, Mack is a frequenter of a site that specializes in the scoffing of reprobates. Something about pearls...
Love,
I love the book!!
Pastor Tim, I hate what Mack has to say, but are you really calling him a reprobate?
As I'm thinking about your comment more, I don't think that's what you're saying. But I'm still not sure...
Malorie, Tim is not calling Mack a reprobate, but character matters and so if someone regularly takes part with scoffers and mockers of truth, that affects how much weight we should give to his words. (Following the wisdom of a man who acts like a fool wouldn't be wise.)
Brad Jones on comment 8- BOOM. Mack had the sense to know his position was done after that. Some of you are beating a dead horse of a different color.
rcjr- father of two precious brown bears
>>are you really calling him a reprobate?
Dear Malorie,
What I meant to say was that Mack hangs with reprobates and should be known by the company he keeps. Chesterton says the anti-Christian is always a half-Christian gone mad and "Mack's" site is filled with the blasphemies of anti-Christians. They keep a watch on Baylyblog and mock and scorn and blaspheme.
Readers wouldn't know this without my telling them. I've never mentioned this site's reprobation before, but this time I wanted readers to know enough to leave "Mack" to his pigsty.
Love,
Nathan Clark George graciously agreed to come and sing at Denise's memorial service. I asked him to sing Rise in the Darkness, taken from Isaiah 58. Its hopeful and optimistic vision has always meant so much to Denise and me. I was worried, however, at how well it actually fit the occasion not because of the optimism, but because of gospel obedience it celebrated. As he sang that day, however, and I held our Reilly and Donovan I broke into fresh tears, praising God for the spirit He gave Denise, that she did go and loose bonds, that she did share food, that she brought the poor into our house, and that out of that our family is blessed with these two precious boys. Thank you for the book, and better still, for rescuing your little boy.
Just listened to the song.
Sorry, I don't know how to imbed: http://nathanclarkgeorge.bandcamp.com/track/rise-in-the-darkness-from-isaiah-58
Thanks for sharing that. I've never heard of Nathan Clark George before, and that was a treat. Especially meaningful as that passage was what led my husband and me to adopt 6 years ago. So sorry about the recent loss of your wife, but glad to hear that you have your sons as a comfort.
Pastor Tim, thank you for explaining that to me.
Daniel, thank you for explaining.
Something that's so amazing about adoption that we learn from the Scriptures is that our adoption is *real*: we are truly sons of our heavenly Father. How can we tell? Not only do we have a new Father, but...
- We have a new Brother, Jesus Christ
- We have a new mother, the church
- We have a new family, our brothers and sisters in the household of God
- We share in the inheritance of sons (if our former father were still our "real" father, we would receive our inheritance from him, not from God)
To treat our adopted kids as though they were not our true sons would fly in the face of all these glorious truths. No, thank God our new family is our real family! The world will never understand this.
Having read the book and this post, I'm going to be more patient with the Little Brown Bear during after-church childcare.
>>> The world will never understand this.
Where is my faith? Sure they will:
"For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name will be great among the nations," says the LORD of hosts.
- Malachi 1:11 NASB
Add new comment