"Profound starvation for honesty."

I was reading an article on "Blue Like Jazz" author Donald Miller just the other day.

The article says that according to Brian McLaren, author of "A New Kind of Christianity," Miller 'appeals to evangelicals because there is a "profound starvation for honesty."'

That phrase "profound starvation for honesty" has been tumbling around in my mind ever since.

I think he is unerringly correct. Sometimes I feel like I am just CRAVING honesty. Where do you get honesty in this day and age?

Now, I have to admit that while I crave honesty, I am not always honest with myself or others.

I can also use honesty as a tool to hurt or intimidate.

For the most part, my honesty one of those things about me that people generally love or hate.

When someone asks me "How are you doing?" I generally don't say "I'm fine" unless I really am fine. Usually, it's "I'm great!" or "I don't really feel well" or "Sucky." Whatever it is, it's generally honest.

I don't like hiding in social conventions. I don't like "white lies" to make someone feel better about something. I tend to think very black-and-white. I have had to teach myself to recognize the gray.

All that being said, I intend to be pretty darn honest on here. I will work to censor my words and leave out things that don't need to be shared. However, if you are offended, I apologize in advance.

You have two options.

Option #1- Email me and explain how I offended you.

Option #2- Don't read my blog

I am reading "The Ragamuffin Gospel" and I'm slowly coming to terms with my "ragamuffin" status.

I highly recommend you read this book if you know you are broken, weak, bedraggled, and beat-down. This book is for us!

Now, all of this was to get to a point.

Adoption has been laying heavy on my heart.

I have this desire to adopt. Maybe that's not something you think a twenty-three year old, single, certified ragamuffin should admit. But, by George, this is my blog and I'm going to be as honest as possible!

I've had this desire to adopt since I was a child. Somewhere around seven or eight year old, I became aware that there were children out there that lived in the foster system and didn't have a mommy and daddy to take care of them. I think I would have adopted as kid if they would have let me!

When I think about the future, I generally think about adoption in terms of international adoption. Not that I'm ruling out domestic at all! I just think about it internationally. I have never really felt drawn to adopt from one country over the other. I just knew adoption was, Lord God willing, somewhere in my future.

Then, the other day, I had this...thought? vision? concept? daydream?

I don't know how to describe it.

I was hugging my boyfriend and I suddenly saw this little Chinese girl's head on his shoulder.

Like I said, it's really hard to explain, but it was accompanied by this overwhelming feeling that this girl was the first. She was mine.

It was so strange. Seriously.

Then, I got to thinking. China is one of the most stringent places to adopt from!

You have to have something like $80,000 in assets, a certain BMI (Body Mass Index), be in a certain age range, etc.

I am a in-debt-over-my-eyeballs college student/aspiring photographer.

I literally do not see a way to adopt from China in the next ten years. Maybe twenty!

Isn't it great that God is not limited by our circumstances?

I was at one of my blogging heroes' website recently. Ashley Ann wrote a great post on her dreams and adoption. She's also sponsoring a giveaway to Foster Kade Designs. The creator of Foster Kade Designs is currently raising money to bring home there daughter from China!

Check out both their pages!

Honest hearts produce honest actions. ~Brigham Young

While I don't normally quote Brigham Young because of the conflict in our world-views, I found that for this subject he had a valid point. When I sat down to write this post, I started by googling a lot of different quotes on honesty. I found a great quote by Mary MacCracken "...Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child."

It's true. There are dim-witted children of course, but children can generally spot dishonesty because they tend to be more honest. Their little hearts haven't been corrupted by years and years of "white lies" and half-truths.

The Liangzhou County in the Gansu Province of China recently harnessed the integrity of eighteen schoolchildren to help them catch dishonest test takers - on their police force!

According to an article I read, the test takers were competing for sixty-six high ranking positions.

The eighteen fifth-graders walking the aisles spotted twenty-five alleged cheaters during the test. Apparently, the original adult monitors had been found to look the other way to avoid embarrassing some of the cheaters. No such luck with the kids! The article says that the "students took their jobs very seriously and their presence also applied greater moral pressure on the exam takers to perform honestly" and "encouraged them (the test takers) to set better examples in the future."

I don't have a lot to add to this. I just thought that it was rather ironic that children were the morality monitors for adults - police officers, no less!

(Update: Cool thing I discovered recently...Brigham Young and I were born on the same day. Weird, right?)