Photo by Solving Healthcare on Unsplash

We live in a culture obsessed with productivity. From the moment the alarm goes off, many are off for a five-mile run, getting a jump on answering emails, filling out their utilization sheets to deliver to payroll for the week, or learning new time management hacks. But beneath this drive to perform lies a quiet, nagging question that haunts a lot of our society at some point: If I’m not being productive, what am I actually worth?

Without realizing it, many have bought into a dangerous lie—that our human value is something we have to earn.

In economics, evaluating things by their usefulness makes sense. But when we apply that same standard to human beings, things get dark fast. When a society decides that a person’s value depends on what they produce, human dignity stops being a basic birthright.

When we tie human worth to utilization, we stop seeing people as individuals and start viewing them as tools. A person is no longer valued simply for who and what they are, but for what they can deliver—to an employer or the economy. But the reality is that no one is at prime capacity all the time.

In Robert S. McGee’s book, The Search For Significance, he writes, “Consciously or unconsciously, all of us have experienced this feeling that we must meet certain arbitrary standards to attain self-worth. Failure to do so threatens our security and significance. Such a threat, real or perceived, results in fear of failure. At that point, we are accepting the false belief I must meet certain standards to feel good about myself. When we believe this about ourselves, Satan’s distortion of truth is often reflected in our attitudes and beliefs” (page 30).

This mindset creates anxiety. It’s why so many of us feel guilty when we sit on the couch and do nothing, or why taking a mental health day can feel almost like a personal failure. We’ve been conditioned to link our identity to our output. So, when burnout hits, when an illness slows us down, or when we step away from a career, we don’t just feel tired, many of us face a crisis.

Even worse, when utility becomes the standard for human value, the most vulnerable people always pay the price. The frail elderly, people living with severe disabilities, the chronically ill, and those who simply can’t participate in the economy are suddenly viewed as burdens. Once we accept the idea that a life has to reach a certain threshold of usefulness to be worth protecting, the pool of who truly belongs starts to shrink.

Long before modern productivity apps existed, thinkers and human rights advocates recognized this trap. Immanuel Kant, a nineteenth century philosopher, pointed out the difference between items and people: things have a price and a function, but human beings have dignity.

You can replace an app, a car, or a tool with a better model because it serves a purpose. A human being can’t be replaced, because their value isn’t based on what they do—it’s based on the fact that they exist. God created us on purpose, for Him.

McGee continues, “The focus of the Christian life should be on Christ, not on self-imposed regulations. Our experience of Christ’s lordship is dependent on our moment-by-moment attention to His instruction, not our own regimented schedule” (pages 30-31).

When world leaders gathered in France in 1948, they wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the horrors of World War II, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. They didn’t say rights were privileges handed out to hard workers or useful taxpayers. They stated that dignity is inherent. It’s built-in. You don’t unlock personhood by achieving a certain status, nor do you lose it when you get sick or grow old.

Now, if the U.N. would only stick with our rights. For we learned during Covid that the government can give itself the power to hold us in “chains” at home except for abortions or to get yourself euthanized in the UK. We know that Freedom of Expression can get you fired, blacklisted or canceled. And, of course Freedom of Religion is under attack—particularly Christianity—as well as private property with our leap towards Socialism…and the U.N. has no problem with these violations.

This distinction of inherent dignity is the only thing that makes true equality possible. To be honest, we know that humans aren’t equal in capabilities. God has given all of us different talents, physical strengths and intelligence. If our value came from those traits, we wouldn’t actually be equal at all.

True equality—for all the Socialists and Communists getting elected out there—only works if our worth is attached to something we all share 100% equally: our God-given humanity.

The grim reality is that the above-mentioned people in power and those poised to take it, including Marxists and Islamists, don’t find intrinsic value in all humans. They promote abortion up to birth, sign bills to push us down the slippery slope of assisted suicide which is going to target children like it does in other nations, want universal healthcare (which will certainly kill people), foment envy and racism and despise Capitalism, Conservatives, Christianity and our Constitution.

The clash is happening everywhere:

• In Healthcare: Medical systems increasingly use economic equations to decide where shrinking budget dollars go, quietly ranking care based on a patient’s predicted “quality of life.” When the system starts focusing purely on cost versus output, those with chronic illnesses or disabilities often get pushed to the margins or worse, are euthanized, even against their will, at an increasing rates in the western hemisphere.

• In the Age of AI: As technology accelerates, human intelligence and output are constantly graded against machines. If we evaluate our self-worth solely on our cognitive output or economic productivity, it’s easy to feel obsolete in a world dominated by algorithms. Yuval Noah Harari of the U.N.—that same U.N. that adopted the view that dignity is inherent—has used terms like “useless class” and “superfluous people” to describe society as AI ramps up to take even more jobs from people.

• In Everyday Life: We see it in how people introduce themselves by job title. Often right after we meet someone new, they ask “What do you do?” Even in Christian circles. We also judge our days as good or bad based on how much we accomplished.

• In Climate Change Extremism: The current ultimate goal of the U.N., the New World Order and people like Yuval Noah Harari is to reduce the world population from eight billion people to five-hundred million. To want most of the world’s population dead in order to carry out an agenda to “save the planet,” but really to more easily control people, is demonic.

• In the Abortion Industry: Roughly thirty percent of babies that are conceived are aborted. Babies are increasingly viewed as a liability to productivity and to abort them is a boon to economic success, as Kamala Harris posted on one of her social media accounts (I’m paraphrasing).

  Iceland has reported a one-hundred percent abortion rate of babies with Down Syndrome, while Denmark isn’t far behind at ninety-eight percent murder in the womb of these precious babies. These are human beings, also made in the image of God, that are judged in utero for having less worth and more needs, and therefore disposable.

Flipping this script doesn’t mean we should stop making goals for ourselves, or quit working hard, or abandon our dreams. Contributing to our communities is a wonderful part of being human. But production should serve human flourishing—it shouldn’t define human identity.

Reclaiming intrinsic worth means changing how we view ourselves and each other. It means recognizing that dependency isn’t a flaw in human nature; it’s a normal part of God’s process for our lives. The facts are that we enter this world completely helpless, go through periods of needing help, and eventually face limitations from aging. Needing support doesn’t make someone less valuable; it just makes them human.

You don’t have to earn your right to be here. God already gave it to you.

I noticed a discernable shift, a hijacking of the Bible, so to speak, when Pete Buttigieg, former Transportation Secretary, appeared on the national scene. He stated that Christianity belongs to the Left, not to Republicans or Conservatives. Around that same time, it broke my heart to watch a video of a young man coming out to his church as gay, crediting Buttigieg for giving him the courage to do so. Tragically, that apostate church embraced his homosexuality rather than calling him to biblical truth.

As we live in increasingly deceptive times, it’s not surprising that more false pastors and political candidates will twist Christianity to cater to their congregants and bases—and demean true Christians.

Remember when the Left suddenly found Scripture and sent out a flurry of social media posts citing it about welcoming the stranger and foreigner? They also claimed “Jesus was an immigrant,” all to justify mass illegal immigration. They were poking a finger in the eye of believers as heartless if we disagreed that breaking the law and not vetting massive numbers of newcomers given taxpayer money is a fine way to run a country.

Look at a completely overtaken Minneapolis today—where Islamic calls to prayer ring through the streets five times a day including at three-thirty in the morning.

Consider James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and Texas state representative running for the Senate this year. He admits to being heavily influenced by an extreme, progressive church focused on LGBT rights and wokeness. He says this shaping of his views is why he’s running for office. Does he plan to use our Senate to espouse his ludicrous and damning ideology and influence people? Satan would love that.

The Christian Post highlighted his background under Pastor Jim Rigby, whose church made headlines in 2005 for welcoming Robert Jensen—an activist and emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Jensen wrote extensively on Left-wing topics like the patriarchy, climate change, and radical feminism. He admitted to joining the church as “more a political than a theological act,” openly rejecting belief in God and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Rigby also has a long history of protesting traditional biblical doctrine, dating back to the 1990s. Listening to Talarico’s statements evokes memories of another political figure who sat under a pastor’s unbiblical and downright racist ideology…

Talarico’s views are biblically unsound and provocative. In an interview, he asserted that Texas Conservatives’ efforts to display the Ten Commandments in schools, ban abortion, and restrict medical gender transitions for minors (ital. mine) stem from a “Christofascism movement,” which he defined as “using faith to exercise raw political, social, and economic power.” He claimed this movement is “dangerous to all of us, but particularly to those who are marginalized and oppressed in our state.”

Talarico makes victims of biblical truths with blasphemous and reckless views and words instead of calling out sin as a seminarian. He would also be a hypocrite if he plans to espouse his apostacy as truth from the Senate floor for his own political power.

How are the Ten Commandments of the Lord oppressive? They are His instructions to guide us in righteous living before the one true God to whom this nation was dedicated centuries ago.

But then, teaching kids not to steal or covet other people’s stuff can’t be tolerated by a Communist Left that needs crime and class warfare to enact its agenda.

How is saving babies in the womb intolerable? Talarico justifies abortion by claiming that Mary’s consent to carry and give birth to the Savior of the world was given, therefore, God is “pro-choice.” Unbelievable deception!

The Bible doesn’t mention the word “abortion,” but does forbid murder. Scripture teaches that an unborn child is a human being. The Greek word translated “baby” in reference to the child inside Elizabeth’s womb is the same word used for an infant outside of the womb. The preborn Jesus is also referred to as a baby, a living, human being. Starting with Genesis, the value of human life is established by God when He made human beings in His image.

How is refusing to mutilate children’s bodies and lead them into a lifestyle of sin, grievous? While I believe a tiny fraction of children experience legitimate gender dysphoria at early ages, it’s due to the reality of being born into a fallen world. It requires true compassion and discernment but the ultimate answer remains salvation in Jesus Christ. God offers healing, transformation, and the grace to resist temptation.

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Essentially, Talarico is maligning our Judeo-Christian heritage and biblically sound doctrine which undergirds our Constitution. And worse yet, with the word “fascist,” the people who stand on God’s Word without warping it into justification of slaughter in the womb, removal of God’s Ten Commandments in schools or abuse and mutilation of children. He thinks we’re all dangerous and power hungry. His words are an abomination to God and a threat to believers nationwide.

How unwise it is for a political candidate to call Texas Conservatives “Christofascists,” when as a nation we’ve recently experienced the horrific tragedies of children gunned down in Christian schools by transgendered people. Stirring up hostility against traditional believers creates false narratives of victimhood that lead to evil, real-world outcomes.

He also stated the “closest thing we have to the kingdom of heaven is a multiracial, multicultural democracy where power is truly shared among all people.”

(Note: Democrats never refer to America as the Constitutional Republic it’s supposed to be).

The kingdom of heaven isn’t about the color of one’s skin, where in the world a person’s ancestors lived, or power to the people with a majority ruling.

“The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all” (Psalm 103:19).

The Bible tells us to “seek ye first the kingdom of God“ meaning to prioritize God’s rule and righteousness above all else in our lives (ital. mine). By doing so, Jesus promises that all our needs will be met (Matthew 6:33).

The kingdom of heaven is the Lord Sovereign over the universe, and so in that sense His kingdom is universal. As for the appearing of the Lord, “God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords.” (1 Timothy 6:15).

At the same time, the kingdom of God involves repentance and the new birth, as God rules in the hearts of His children in this world in preparation for the next. The work begun on earth will find its consummation in heaven “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

In 2022, Talarico pressured former President Joe Biden to establish abortion centers on federal property across the country to counter what he called an “anti-choice” threat to “our most basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The irony is profound: abortion intentionally strips innocent human beings of the fundamental right to life, denying them any chance at liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

There are more like Buttigieg and Talarico. A Kansas pastor and Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate told his church in a newly resurfaced sermon that he believes people from all religions can inherit eternal life apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the multi-campus United Methodist Church (UMC) of the Resurrection (a strange choice for a church name since you don’t have to believe in one to be saved, according to Hamilton) in Leawood, won the Kansas Democratic Party nomination for the Senate on Aug. 4, 2026.

In a 2022 clip titled “Who goes to Heaven? Who goes to Hell?” Hamilton cited 1 Timothy 2:3-6, noting God’s desire that all people be saved, and explained that Jesus “has already paid whatever price needs to be paid for the sins of the world.” Hamilton continued, “Many of us believe that God can give the saving work of Jesus, God can take that payment Jesus has made and apply it to anyone he chooses based upon what he sees of their own hearts.”

But the Bible tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Only the Lord can change hearts, and it begins with acknowledgment of our sins and declaration of faith that Jesus is the true Son of God who died on the cross for those sins and rose again to give us everlasting life. Interfaith is an abomination to the Lord.

“They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that! They are the kind who worm their way into homes (perhaps through a screen) and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins (abortion is very important to female Liberals and the Communist wannabes, so tell them it’s really sanctioned by God) and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth… so also these teachers oppose the truth...They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. (2 Timothy 3:5-8).

Ralph Warnock is a pastor and senator from Georgia. The fact that he’s even a Democrat and supports abortion as a pastor was hard to swallow when he was first elected. No true pastor of a church stands for tiny human beings murdered, cut up into pieces and used as commodities. No biblically sound, God-fearing pastor would align himself with a party of antisemitism that pushes Marxism and Socialism.

Anyone who uses a platform to blaspheme God and His Word will pay the consequences. Those who add to or detract from the Bible will pay the penalty. “God will not be mocked” (Galatians 6:7). I’m praying Texans and those in Kansas will understand who these men really are and that they will be soundly defeated in their runs for Senate. I also pray true salvation for all of them.

Right now, we have a Congress and people in power who want nothing to do with God like Jerry Nadler (D-NY) who said during a February 25, 2021, debate on the House floor regarding the Equality Act. (D-NY) : “What any religious tradition describes as God’s will is no concern of this Congress.”

Then there are the Islamists like Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed stating they want to be Sharia compliant in all they do and want Israel and our Judeo-Christian ethic destroyed.

And, those who are plainly perverting the Bible for their own glory and power. All of it is Satanic. We need to engage heavily in spiritual warfare and pray for America.

This is going to continue as Jesus said of the latter days. When the next pro-abortion, pro-gender confusion, pro-Marxism Democrat is elected to the White House, we will surely groan. “When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.” (Proverbs 29:2), but I also believe no matter who is in office we will see a ramping up of wickedness and deception sure to come.

• Vote! And vote with biblical wisdom.

• Pray without ceasing for our nation and that God would raise up righteous representatives and leaders.

• Intercede for those deceived by progressive ideology.

• Stand firm in the faith, sharing the uncompromised truth of the Gospel and the necessity of repentance.

Sources:

James Talarico suggests opponents of abortion, gender ideology are ‘Christofascists’ Life Site News, 8.12.26, Calvin Freiburger

Democratic Candidate’s Past Declarations Resurface Julia H. in Red Right Patriot 8.13.26 ijr.com

“UMC pastor, Democratic nominee for Senate says atheists, non-Christians ‘going to be in Heaven’” Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter, Friday, August 14, 2026

Gotquestions.org

I’m so happy to announce the upcoming release of my memoir on November 9, 2026, “World Adoption Day.”

I’m still searching for advance readers and those willing to be a part of my book launch team.

This is the unfiltered story of Christine and John’s fight for a family. As they navigate the maze of disappointing fertility treatments, a parallel adoption pursuit starts to feel like a divine answer. But as one devastating road block after another jeopardizes the placement of a baby into their arms, they are often left with desperate prayers and tears.

A powerful memoir of tender faith and the miraculous journey to parenthood, The Adopted Son Who Almost Wasn’t will touch your heart and remind you that sometimes, the greatest blessings are born out of the toughest battles.

With thanks,

Christine Rhyner: www.christinerhyner.com

This post just touches on a complex and ever-expanding topic.

What is transhumanism?

The concept of what makes us human and the merging of biotechnology and AI has its roots in what the World Economic Forum (WEF) calls transhumanism.

In an excerpt defining transhumanism written by David Trippett (a Senior Lecturer and musicologist at the University of Cambridge) in his article “Music and the Transhuman Ear: Ultrasonics, Material Bodies, and the Limits of Sensation” published in The Musical Quarterly (Oxford Academic) he describes it this way:

“It is rooted in the belief that humans can and will be enhanced by the genetic engineering and information technology of today, as well as anticipated advances, such as bioengineering, artificial intelligence, and molecular nanotechnology. The result is an iteration of Homo sapiens enhanced or augmented, but still fundamentally human.”

The article continues with “biological evolution will eventually be overtaken by advances in genetic, wearable and implantable technologies that artificially expedite the evolutionary process.”

We see that this venture is predicated on the belief in evolutionary theory, not creationism. If anything, it seems society has devolved in recent years.

Transhumanism doesn’t fit in with God’s design for our bodies or our lives. God owns the blueprint to life, not man.

Neither does it work with a Constitutional Republic in which our rights come from God and representative government.

“Indeed, to the extent that implementing the transhumanist agenda is possible, it requires the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a global elite and the dependence of people on the state,” said Dr. Miklos Lukacs de Pereny who has Ph.D. in management from the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR) from the University of Manchester.

It could be said that in importing tens of millions of illegal aliens into the country, globalist elitists have not only in mind Democrat votes, but have been creating a poorly informed permanent underclass dependent on the state. Add to that the Communists and Marxists gaining ground in our elections who want us all government dependent, and the stage is being set for Lukacs’ warning.

“Transhumanism is far from benign. Rather, it is at complete enmity with Christianity,” Lukacs pointed out during a virtual Truth Over Fear Summit organized by California-based Catholic writer and broadcaster Patrick Coffin.

Transhumanists’ religion is science. They believe in a philosophy of absolute relativism.

Absolute relativism purports that truth and morality aren’t absolute, but totally dependent on individual or cultural perspectives, with no objective standards to judge one view as better than another. It claims that what is true or right is always relative to a person’s or group’s beliefs, making universal judgments impossible.

Sound familiar as society increasingly claims it lives out “my truth?”

It also believes individuals can change reality at will, and they seek to “relativize the human being” and turn it into a glob of clay, essentially, that can be modified or molded to our taste and our desire and by rejecting limits nature or God have placed on us.

Evidence that absolute relativism has caught hold in the Western world is the rapid and widespread rise in trangenderism.

Lukacs also noted cases of transspecisim, transageism, transableism, and transracism.

Examples of these attempts to reshape one’s reality at will include a Canadian man living as a six-year-old, a British woman who blinded herself because she wanted to be disabled, and a German woman who injected herself with melatonin to darken her skin to identify as black. Don’t forget the furries and children identifying as animals provided litter boxes in schools!

It seems right on cue that we now have “evidence” of differing kinds of aliens from other galaxies.

Transhumanism requires “the destruction of the Judeo-Christian morality, which is based on absolute principles and values.”

Joe Allen, in his book, Dark Aeon, Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity has this to say:

“Above all, transhumanists exalt technology as the highest power. Under the guise of “philanthropy,” they want to probe our brains, digitize the human mind, and read our thoughts. They want to drill holes in our skulls, insert hair-thin wires, and bring our souls into full communication with artificial intelligence.”

An example of this philanthropic approach they will take is Elon Musk’s NeuraLink, which is an “interface that is applied to the cerebral cortex” and which Musk says will help people with Alzheimer’s or epilepsy, but which Lukacs speculates could “open the door” to “neuro-hackers.”

Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian, author of Homo Deus, or “human god,” and part of the WEF has been promoting transhumanism. He outright calls Christ’s death on the Cross and resurrection a “myth.”

Transhumanists propose to use technology to alter human nature to produce human beings with “super longevity, super intelligence, super well-being,” Lukacs said. Sounds philanthropic, doesn’t it?

What Does This Have to do with Abortion?

Proponents of transhumanism reject the Christian belief in absolute truth, and that God creates human beings in His image and likeness, and see absolute values as a brake for their pretensions of transhumanist and globalist progressivism. Therefore, I believe there will be increasing attacks against Christianity and those who are pro-life.

Lukacs says societal “approval of abortion” is key to understanding “why we are entering fully into this transhumanist agenda” of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

When abortion was approved, he says, the “political, economic order and moral values” on which Western civilization is based collapsed.

“Abortion means nothing other than the transition of the human being from a subject of rights to an object of commercialization, to an object of experimentation,” he said.

From illegal sale of babies’ body parts for profit, to shipping pieces of them to universities for barbaric, degrading experimentation, to tossing embryos into artificial wombs only to watch them die—we are there.

“Life ceases to have an inherent value, an inherent dignity. It becomes an object of consumption, an object of production,” and this aligns perfectly with the goal of transhumanists “to experiment with the human being,” states Lukacs.

Where in the world are we going from here?

Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”

Even though world leaders and scientists push their plans forward, God’s sovereignty remains. As Christians, we must declare the truth that God is the Creator and Designer of Life and that no human holds this power. If scientists and doctors can create life in fertility clinics, it’s only because God has allowed them to, not that He sanctions it for their nefarious purposes.

May the chips fall where they may for my embracing the Right to Life, just nowhere near my brain.

*photo by Steve A. Johnson for Unsplash

Sources: Intercessors For America, Transhumanism?! How Should Christians Respond? Angela Rodriguez, IFA Contributing Writer | May 22, 2021

LIFE SITE Transhumanism: Expert exposes liberal billionaire elitists’ ‘Great Reset’ agenda Lianne Laurence 11/10/2020

Long ago I went up for prayer from a guest speaker at a church. I wasn’t saved yet, but I was so ready for a word from God that would resonate deeply within me and give me much needed hope. The Australian pastor scrunched his face at me and said just three words, “You need wisdom.” I thought, that’s it? Don’t we all need wisdom? Where was my personal word from the Lord like what ministry He wanted for me? Maybe even a word of affirmation? I was disappointed.

Years later, I’m embarrassed to recall that moment I stood in front of a pastor with an immature, self-seeking desire to receive a pat on the back or the gift of ministry. I wanted to hear that I mattered to God—when in fact I mattered to Him before the foundation of the world. But it did resonate as I considered how much God and the sacrifice of His Son to redeem me from Satan’s slave market mattered to me.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10).

This “fear” is not terror or panic. It’s a reverent, humble respect which acknowledges who and what God is. The cornerstone of that recognition leads a person to Christ for salvation. To “fear” the Lord is to believe on Him. No wonder I needed wisdom!

The fear of the LORD leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction;
He will not be visited with evil (Proverbs 19:23).

The fear of the LORD leads to life: Since the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, it wonderfully leads to life. If we want life, we should begin with this honor, reverent awe and submission to God.

The book of Proverbs is called wisdom literature. Proverbs is filled with practical instructions for life. Many proverbs contrast the wise with the foolish and warn against repeating foolish actions:

Proverbs 3:35: “The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the legacy of fools” (NKJV).

Proverbs 14:24: “The crown of the wise is their riches, but the foolishness of fools is folly.”

Proverbs 15:7: “The lips of the wise disperse knowledge, but the heart of the fool does not do so.”

And the graphic Proverbs 26:11: “As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”

Everyone makes mistakes, but the wise learn from their mistakes and take steps to avoid repeating them. The foolish may make the same mistake over and over again and never learn their lesson.

He who has it will abide in satisfaction: When we have and walk in the fear of the LORD, it leads to a life of satisfaction. The world, the flesh, and the devil want us to believe that a life founded on fear of the LORD leads to misery and bondage:

The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,

“Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us” (Psalm 2:2-3).

But the opposite is true. It brings satisfaction and keeps us from a future of evil.

Will not be visited with evil: “When one lives a life of piety, the Lord provides a quality of life that cannot be disrupted by such evil.” (Ross)

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:5-8).

If any of you lacks wisdom:

Trials bring a necessary season to seek wisdom from God. We often don’t know we need wisdom until our time of difficulty. Once in a time of trial, we need to know if a particular trial is something God wants us to eliminate by faith or persevere in by faith. This requires wisdom.

In trials, we need wisdom a lot more than we need knowledge.

Knowledge is raw information,

Wisdom knows how to use it.

It’s been said that knowledge is the ability to take things apart, but wisdom is the ability to put things together.

Let him ask of God: To receive wisdom, we simply ask of God – who gives wisdom generously (liberally), and without despising our request (without reproach).

“We are all so ready to go to books, to go to men, to go to ceremonies, to anything except to God… Consequently, the text does not say, ‘Let him ask books,’ nor ‘ask priests,’ but, ‘let him ask of God.’” (Charles Spurgeon)

God does indeed give liberally. “He gives according to his excellent greatness; as Alexander the Great gave a poor man a city; and when he modestly refused it as too great for him, Alexander answered, “The business is not what thou are fit to receive, but what it becometh me to give.” (Trapp)

Without reproach: “This is added, lest anyone should fear to come too often to God… for he is ready ever to add new blessings to former ones, without any end or limitation.” (Calvin)

Knowing God’s generosity – that He never despises or resents us for asking for wisdom – should encourage us to ask Him often. We understand that He is the God of the open hand, not the God of the clenched fist.

When we want wisdom, the place to begin and end is the Bible. True wisdom will always be consistent with God’s word.

The language here implies humility in coming to God. “It does not say, ‘Let him buy of God, let him demand of God, let him earn from God.’ Oh! No – ‘let him ask of God.’ It is the beggar’s word. The beggar asks an alms. You are to ask as the beggar asks of you in the street, and God will give to you far more liberally than you give to the poor. You must confess that you have no merit of your own.” (Spurgeon)

But let him ask in faith: Our request for wisdom must be made like any other request – in faith, without doubting God’s ability or desire to give us His wisdom.

“Do you believe that God can give you wisdom, and that he will do so if you ask him? Then, go at once to him, and say, ‘Lord, this is what I need.’ Specify your wants, state your exact condition, lay the whole case before God with as much orderliness as if you were telling your story to an intelligent friend who was willing to hear it, and prepared to help you; and then say, ‘Lord, this is specifically what I think I want; and I ask this of thee believing that thou canst give it to me.’” (Spurgeon)

Those words from that pastor still resonate with me as I continue to seek wisdom from the Lord for each new day.

Scheduled for release November 9, 2026, World Adoption Day.

This is the unfiltered story of Christine and John’s fight for a family. As they navigate the maze of disappointing fertility treatments, a parallel adoption pursuit starts to feel like a divine answer. But as one devastating road block after another jeopardizes the placement of a baby into their arms, they are often left with desperate prayers and tears.

A powerful memoir of tender faith and the miraculous journey to parenthood, The Adopted Son Who Almost Wasn’t will touch your heart and remind you that sometimes, the greatest blessings are born out of the toughest battles.

Seeking Advanced Copy Readers and launch team members.

www.christinerhyner.com

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash

Hello faith-filled Substack community.

My memoir is finally scheduled for release on World Adoption Day, November 9, 2026!

This is the working title and tentative cover:

Without counsel, plans go awry,
But in the multitude of counselors they are established (Proverbs 15:22).

Constructive feedback is welcome.

Below is a chapter segment. If you enjoy my work, are interested in such a read or know of someone who might be, please consider or suggest being an Advanced Copy Reader (October) to leave reviews or to be part of my launch team. Thank you for your support. For more, visit my website at www.christinerhyner.com.

Regardless of your interest in such a topic, thank you for being a community that for the past year-and-a-half or so that has exhorted, encouraged and convicted me.

Seated at the end of our table at dinner, I don’t hear the conversation between Mark Drummond and Mr. Brinks, our adoption director, until it starts to get loud.

Suddenly, Mark jumps up from his chair, knocking it over. He threatens to use his political connections back in New York to have Mr. Brinks’ adoption license pulled if we don’t receive our babies the next day. That apparently crosses a line that sends Mr. Brinks to his feet as well. He forcefully volleys back, “I’m canceling the adoptions, period!”

Hearing this breaks me. I begin to weep uncontrollably and slide out of my chair to find a private place to collect myself. But in this bustling Vietnamese city there doesn’t appear to be anywhere to be alone.

So, this is how all the months of waiting and uncertainty are going to end? It rattles my faith in God and sends John and me to our knees that evening in surrender to His timing and purpose here. God has got to have a good reason if we are to leave Vietnam without our son. Though eighty percent of me doesn’t believe that will happen, twenty percent of me unfortunately entertains the enemy of my soul, doubt.

The next morning in our hotel room, the phone rings. It’s our adoption facilitator Lan. I expect resolution from last night’s drama with the assurance that we can still adopt Lucas soon. But I am instead stunned to be chastised for crying the prior evening in un-Vietnamese-like fashion for a woman. I’m an American, not Vietnamese I want to tell her, but don’t. Being from the U.S. just adds to Lan’s disdain for us and poor treatment during the adoption proceedings.

How on earth did she even know I was crying atop the famous Rex Hotel the night before? Does she have spies? Our emails, phone calls, and now our outings, all seem to be monitored. What about our baby? Will we be able to hold him in our arms for good?

NOTE: FIRST APPEARED IN:

SHARING MAGAZINE, A JOURNAL OF CHRISTIAN HEALING

Outside lay eighteen inches of snow. Dense fog shrouded the bay. But inside my cozy cottage, the pot-bellied stove filled with fresh wood, crackled away.

The kids and my husband were out of town, so I grabbed a quilt and lay on the sofa to catch a rare movie. Silence of the Lambs was about to start. My thumb hovered over the remote control as I promised myself if it got gory or full of foul language, I’d turn it off. I was curious about the buzz when it appeared in theaters years before.

In one scene well into the movie, the infamous Hannibal Lecter pries out of a fledgling FBI agent Clarice, her most painful memory. She is a child awakened to the sound of lambs bleating on her uncle’s farm. She realizes they are being led to slaughter. Horrified, she rushes outside and manages to scoop up one lamb. But she’s small and the lamb grows heavier with each step. Her uncle, who took her in as an orphan catches up with Clarice. He seizes the lamb from her, then sends her away.

Then Lecter asks her if she can save a kidnapped girl by another psychopathic killer in time, will it silence the sound of the lambs in her head?

In that instant, a memory surfaced before my mind’s eye and I began to sob. I cried over the savagery, the betrayal and my inability to stop a murder.

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My mother told me, “Go to Mr. Jonas’s house. He needs your help finding a kitten in his basement.”

Six-years-old, I was thrilled to be needed. I sprinted the few houses from ours to his, yanked open the front door and jump-stepped down the stairs to the dank, dim, unfinished basement. I loved kittens. Maybe I’d get to keep it.

Jonas stood hands on hips; brows furrowed.

“I can find it,” I told Jonas. I did my best meow-mimicking in me, then stopped to listen. After a couple rounds of this there was a faint meowing response.

Though I couldn’t see it, I knew it was to my right. Jonas approached the area filled with two by four planks of wood, an old dresser and some partially used paint cans. He stooped down and came back up with a tiny ball of fur by the scruff of its neck. Something began to feel wrong.

He snatched an old, dirty bucket with his other hand. I was confused as an ominous chill ran up and down my spine and my heart felt as though it were knocking into my ribcage. My eyes shifted from the putrid bucket to Jonas’s right arm raised high with the kitten he clutched.

Then I felt great fear. “Can I keep it?” I pleaded with Jonas. “Please!”

Jonas raised the motionless feline higher into the air.

Beg him for the kitten, my head told me.

“Mr. Jona—!” His name caught in my throat and I couldn’t breathe. I saw Jonas take that kitten as though it were some enormous, filthy cockroach he had unearthed and slam it into that decrepit bucket.

I couldn’t cry or speak. The betrayal of being used to help kill sent me scrambling back up the steps on all fours like hotly pursued prey with the warm spittle of a predator on the back of my neck. Splinters from the wood pierced my fingertips. I bumped into the basement door head first and spilled onto his kitchen floor.

I jumped up, tore through the living room and on out the front door and back home. And I said nothing to my parents of what happened. If Jonas could do what he did to a defenseless kitten, what was he capable of doing to me if I told on him?

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One short scene in the movie of my own life, and the script was flipped. Satan used it to skew my perception of myself and fill me with guilt, shame and fear. I had been both a co-participant in killing and useless to stop it.

I didn’t remember the script-flip for years, nor did I know it had a name. I thought it was just a bad experience that could be healed by forgiving Mr. Jonas. I would come to understand it as trauma, and it contributed to a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I froze in that basement that day unable to act as I watched that poor kitten brutally killed. Following that event, I would always freeze in crisis situations which required calm, courage and action. I’d just leave crucial decisions—even about my own life—to others. Then my inaction would cause me more self-condemnation.

I felt a serious blow one day when a man I dated before accepting Christ told me, “You’re no good in a crisis,” echoing my own sentiments about myself without knowing I even harbored them deep inside! At that moment my cat was delivering kittens. After a call from my mother to come home because things didn’t seem to be going so well, I had expressed terrible anxiety to him. His hurtful reply felt as though the devil was attempting to cement into me my own feelings of worthlessness!

In his book, Healing for Damaged Emotions, David Seamands writes, “Satan’s greatest psychological weapon is a gut level feeling of inferiority, inadequacy, and low self-worth… Although (Christians) understand their position as sons and daughters of God, they are tied up in knots, bound by a terrible feeling of inferiority, and chained to a deep sense of worthlessness.”

I felt this way even after accepting Jesus into my heart. I was right where satan, the “accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:10), wanted me to be. He wants us so bound that we are useless for God’s kingdom. If I could heal from this trauma, would it silence the perpetual ring of condemnation in my head?

We can thank God that traumas matter a great deal to him. He does not want painful memories in our lives to continue to dictate our behaviors and thoughts. He wants to free us from our chains. Yet, no matter how many times I quoted Romans 5:1 which says, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” self-condemnation stayed with me.

Through prayer and meditation, I began to understand that healing begins when we finally want to get well. Had I still not made the choice to get well? In some areas yes because I didn’t realize I was unwell. I didn’t know the number PTSD had done on me.

I realize it may sound like a no-brainer to want peace. But just as with alcohol or chemical dependencies, there is something seductive about negative thinking, even though it puts us in bad way. It can be our go-to, where we ruminate instead of activate. It’s where we nurse grudges, fantasize about vengeance, or play victim. I hit rock bottom when my negative thoughts turned into a steady stream of negative words. It had all taken a toll on my marriage and relationships with my children. My husband told me there was no place left to go for us if I sat in my emotions. My children wouldn’t confide in me for fear of my probable emotional outbursts. It was then that I decided I wanted—and needed to get well.

The next step to healing is to identify the source(s) of pain and choose to forgive those responsible. If we ask God to reveal to us experiences that need His healing, He will—when we’re ready to remember. After He does, we’re likely to ask, “Why God? Why did such a thing (or many) happen to me?” We need to recognize that we may hold blame in our hearts towards Him for not intervening when we are victimized, or for allowing it to happen in the first place. In a fallen world where God gives us free will, all of us will be the recipients of others’ sin at times. We need to forgive the Lord as well.

I now understand living the emotion-led life is sin. Being preoccupied with lies about ourselves instead of meditating on who God says we are is selfish and it’s carnal. It turns lies into mini-gods or idols that consume our God-given time and talents. It also ruins relationships. The Bible says we are to love one another and to make no idols or mini-gods for ourselves (John 13:34, Exodus 20:3).

Lastly, we must choose to forgive ourselves. We can’t do it without co-participating with God who knows all of our past trauma and wants us well. It just so happened that he met me alone on a sofa, watching Silence of the Lambs.

I was finally able to sob for that kitten. I released it to the Lord and forgave myself.

I began to put into practice, to “take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Often, when Satan or my own long-rehearsed false narratives about myself enter my mind, I speak aloud to the lies because “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). I choose to speak words of life over myself. If I have the thought that I’m no good in crises, I’ll say, “No, I am not useless in a crisis. “’God has not given to me a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind’” (2 Timothy 1:7). I then thank Him for His truths in the Bible about who I am in Him.

It’s okay to get help. God led me to a Christian wellness center that focused on mind, body and spirit, and where for the first time I heard the words Post Traumatic Stress Disorder applied to me. Not just for the kitten in the bucket episode, but for other traumas too. I now also have a wonderful Christian therapist.

My communication skills with my husband and children improved dramatically. It was with tears filled with remorse when I went to each one of them and asked their forgiveness. Those tears turned to joy when they all extended grace and forgave me, happy that I was taking steps to work on my emotions. From that time on, I’ve made a conscious choice to stop expressing a negative opinion about everything and blowing my stack out of feelings that have really been about a sense of worthlessness and hurt.

Becoming unchained, I am learning to love myself for who God says I am—“chosen of God, holy and dearly loved” (Colossians 3:12; Thessalonians 1:4). And when you better understand your value to Christ, you can more genuinely love others for who they also are in Christ, and for those who don’t know Him. I often pray that God would help me to be tender-hearted because trauma can cause you to build walls and steel your heart against future potential pain from other people.

The scripts of our lives may be evilly flipped for the bad, but God, the Master Director, can “bestow on us a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair” (Isaiah 61:3).

Current issues plague our nation. We are a country in deep trouble.

While we debate about and concern ourselves with leadership, immigration, corruption, the economy, abortion, guns and free speech, we are focused on only some of the symptoms of our country’s sickness, not the source of the illness.

Just what is the root cause of all of the chaos, confusion, hate and division we see happening in our once great nation? The America that once was a “shining light on a hill,” to which people flocked for a life of freedom and opportunity? And which many still do though they won’t find it in the measure that once existed?

I believe it is a lack of something once important to us. It was incorporated into our Constitution, our educational systems and our churches. It was taught in our homes. It was important to develop, maintain and cultivate in our youth. That one thing we had was virtue.

Virtue is no longer even part of our everyday lexicon.

But what is virtue exactly?

It’s directly linked to moral behavior and to the development of three characteristics. These are named using the Greek words: Arête, Phronesis and Eudaimonia.

Arête is excellence in character that naturally exemplifies goodness, honesty and self-control. Phronesis is moral or practical wisdom that knows the right course to take in any circumstance. Eudaimonia is a good, flourishing life.

Virtue is of great importance to God. You can’t be virtuous without God and His commandments and requirements. One can’t develop true wisdom on one’s own. It originates from the Lord. “For the LORD gives [skillful and godly] wisdom;

From His mouth come knowledge and understanding” (Proverbs 2:6 AMP). To acquire it is to first have reverence for the Lord. “The [reverent] fear of the LORD [that is, worshiping Him and regarding Him as truly awesome] is the beginning and the preeminent part of knowledge [its starting point and its essence]; But arrogant fools despise [skillful and godly] wisdom and instruction and self-discipline” (Proverbs 1:7 AMP).

The Founders didn’t merely rely on their own intellect to frame our Constitution. Collectively, they went to prayer. In doing so, they created an historic lifeline flowing from the Bible, God’s Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes extending to us today.

They based our Constitution on the Natural Law, acknowledging One Creator and Designer of the universe with respect to His ordinances. They established that God made all things. “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God” (Romans 1:20-22 NLT) and that He revealed a moral code of behavior, instructing us in right from wrong. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20 NIV).

They acknowledged that our Creator has made us responsible for how we treat one another. This document is not simply a piece of paper; it is our Founding Fathers’ covenant with God. And a covenant with God cannot be an evolving document as some of our political figures would like it to be. This covenant, or our historic lifeline reveals the secret of America’s exceptionalism. Virtue is the reason America has prospered and enjoyed a kind of invincibility with our enemies.

Vice is today’s virtue. We no longer have a standard of moral excellence. Without virtue humility is replaced by pride, generosity by greed, gratitude by discontent, self-restraint by self-indulgence, social ethics by rudeness and discernment by delusion. The very soul of America is on life support. God is warning His people about turning their backs on Him. He always does before He brings consequences, trouble and great shaking to a nation.

When my husband, John, and I returned home with our nine-month-old son from Vietnam, our house was suddenly filled with the warmth of visiting friends and family. It was a celebratory time. During one of these visits, our friend Jeff sat on the couch, carefully cradling our baby in his arms. He looked up at John and me, his expression entirely earnest.

“When he speaks,” Jeff asked, “Will it be in English or Vietnamese?”

One may find it difficult to believe that we were asked this question. Amazingly, it wasn’t a one-time occurrence; it was asked by more than one person!

The Blueprint of Belief

We must assume there is a widespread misconception out there, shared by more than a few, that language is something inborn—an immutable trait so deeply etched into the biological fabric of the brain from birth that it cannot be overwritten by environment. The fact that our son had been spoken to in Vietnamese for the first nine months of his life was enough for some people to imagine that this language would be the one he would instinctively attempt to communicate with us months later when he began to talk.

As adoptive parents, we are frequently asked strange, unexpected questions. This one, in particular, made me laugh a little. It is a question that simply doesn’t apply to a foreign-born infant who isn’t actually verbalizing yet. To think that when he finally began to speak, he wouldn’t be parroting back whatever words we were speaking and teaching him daily is a little funny. Children learn to speak what they hear, a mimicry of their environment.

Had he been speaking at all before leaving Vietnam, he might have been using some very basic, foundational Vietnamese words. At nine months old, however, we found he really didn’t say much of anything yet. Yet, despite the initial silence, he caught on to English incredibly well. This happened even though we were initially advised by his doctors to seek out early language intervention, just to ensure he wouldn’t fall behind due to the sudden shift in his surroundings. He bypassed the hurdles and absorbed the language of our home like a sponge.

The Human Need for Answers

Reflecting on the myriad of things people have said about my adopted child over the years has given me insight into human prejudices, ignorance, and misconceptions—including my own. It is not inherently a bad thing to realize that human beings just don’t know certain things if they have never been personally exposed to them. I believe that within all of us lies a deep, hardwired desire for understanding.

Just ask almost anybody what he or she thinks about a given topic. Even if they don’t know much about the subject, they will likely offer some sort of opinion. Everyone likes to feel as though they have a little bit of a grasp on the world around them, even if they lack the facts or information necessary to make an accurate assessment. We speculate to fill the gaps in our knowledge.

There is no such thing as a stupid question.

When it comes to others questioning me about my kids, I often have to remind myself of the compassionate teachers I’ve had who championed that exact phrase. In those classrooms, I felt reassured. I knew that in my genuine desire to understand something new, I didn’t have to fear looking foolish or just plain dumb by asking a question that might have been glaringly apparent to everyone else in the room.

The Echoes of Being Silenced

Unfortunately, I have also experienced the opposite end of the educational spectrum. I had teachers, primarily in parochial school, who actively discouraged questions. For instance, when I wanted to know more about God or the Bible—specifically seeking further explanation about the sixty distinct “mortal” and “venial” sins we were forced to memorize at the tender age of ten for the sacrament of Confirmation—I found myself abruptly silenced. I was treated as though I were an impudent heretic merely for wanting clarity. I still distinctly remember the sharp sting of humiliation I felt when told by a nun, “We don’t ask questions about the Bible.”

I also know how terribly frustrating it can be to ask a question that never gets answered at all. I remember asking my mother when I was six years old, “Mommy, why does Janie pull her hair out?”

How does a mother easily explain a complex, impulse-control disorder like trichotillomania to a first-grader? But child-like curiosity is persistent, so I pressed on: “Did she pull it out one hair at a time, or all together?”

Obviously uncomfortable, and perhaps not entirely sure of the medical mechanics herself back then—long before this kind of condition was as widely understood as it is today—she didn’t provide an answer. Decades later, I can still remember our little exchange and the heavy, lingering thought that I had somehow asked a “bad” question.

Choosing Grace

Because of these memories, I look at the people asking about our child through a different lens. Having sat on both sides of the coin—the student shamed into silence and the child ignored out of adult discomfort—I realize the responsibility I hold as a parent.

With all these situations woven into the tapestry of my own experience, I know that as an adoptive mom, I have to give grace to others and their questions. Even when those inquiries seem silly, uneducated, or entirely unworthy of an answer, I choose to respond. By offering patient answers instead of defensiveness or sarcasm, I can turn a moment into an opportunity for understanding, ensuring no one leaves the conversation feeling the way I did as a child.

Photo by Jason Sung on Unsplash

Language in the digital age has become a minefield. In an online forum of transracial adoptive families—a space supposedly rooted in “diversity” and mutual respect—I shared a simple sentiment: I don’t see what’s so wrong with using the term “Gotcha Day” for the anniversaries of our children’s adoptions.

The reaction was swift and visceral by one parent I’ll call “B.” She responded with a digital scream, “I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE the term,” she wrote. “IT’S ABOUT KIDNAPPING, VIOLENCE AND IMPRISONMENT!” she bellowed through the screen.

I took a long pause. November 7th and November 24th—the days my children finally crossed the threshold of our door and their new lives. Both arrivals, ironically, occurred during National Adoption Month. For years, we celebrated these anniversaries with gifts to our children from their native countries, honoring the beauty and craftsmanship of their cultures. And yes, we said, “Happy Gotcha Day.”

The Anatomy of a Word

In the context of international adoption, gotcha feels less like a conquest and more like a conclusion to an arduous, global marathon. If we didn’t travel across the world to “get” them, what exactly did we do?

When we adopted our son from Vietnam, the birth country’s government officials called our adoption a “Giving and Receiving Ceremony.” They gave; we received. We brought him home to love, to nurture, and to protect.

The critics argued that “Gotcha” implies a predatory “taking.” They suggest it frames the parent as the hunter and the child as the prize. “It’s the day I took you away,” one member explained. My immediate, perhaps unrefined, response was: And?

What, exactly, did I take my son away from? Was it an abundance of family and resources? No. I took him away from a lack of medical care and proper nutrition, away from the very real threat of death—a fate that claimed four other babies in his orphanage who succumbed to the same bronchial infection he had. They didn’t have parents on the way to fund their care. He needed nebulizer treatments for nearly a year at home with us.

I took him away from a corrupt adoption hierarchy where our facilitator grew wealthy selling the defenseless before being arrested and convicted (our baby wasn’t among them).

To suggest that removing a child from those circumstances is violent feels like an exercise in extreme intellectual privilege.

The “Savior” Narrative and the Reality of Loss

In the heat of the forum debate, B accused me of having a “savior complex.” She labeled me a “first family blamer”—a term used to describe those who disparage biological parents.

These accusations are not only false; they are lazy. B didn’t know I hold a deep gratitude for my children’s biological parents and pray for them and their salvation.

I am aware of the heartbreak they must have endured.

I don’t see myself as a hero but rather a mother who answered a call. From the moment I saw my son’s picture, I felt a fierce, God-given responsibility to carry out the plan intended for both of our lives.

Some adult adoptees in the thread expressed that the day is a reminder of the loss of their “first families.” I hear that. I honor that. Adoption is born of loss, and no amount of celebration can or should erase that truth. But must we annihilate the celebration of the new family to acknowledge the loss of the old?

Tyranny of the Offended

What became most troubling wasn’t the disagreement over the word—it was the environment in which it happened. We live in a society that increasingly over-intellectualizes and scrutinizes every syllable until the act of speaking becomes a high-stakes risk.

In a group of thousands of members, a single, loud voice was permitted to dominate. B didn’t just share her perspective; she attempted to legislate mine. She sent knee jerk responses in all bold caps, telling me what I “can’t” say and what I “must” substitute. She declared that I was “stubbornly refusing” to convert to the group’s collective wisdom.

When did “diverse” come to mean “uniformity of thought”? When did a difference of opinion become a justification for character assassination?

It is a strange irony that those who claim the most sensitivity often are the quickest to show a total lack of it toward anyone who doesn’t use their approved vocabulary. I left that forum without regret. I have no interest in a “community” that encourages inflammatory responses while squashing any voice that dares to offer a counter-perspective.

The Journey to the Doorstep

To understand why “Gotcha” felt fine to me, one must understand the hell and back journey many adoptive parents endure. Our story involved:

• A month in anxious limbo in Vietnam.

• The Vietnamese government’s fear of placing children with New York couples in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

• Mistreatment by a facilitator who abandoned us on a cold, mosquito-laden beach at night, and spied on our emails (and was later imprisoned for baby selling).

• Three separate 14-hour van rides to an orphanage, expecting to bring our baby home, only to be told “not today.”

When we finally walked through our front door with our son—“Gotcha” captured the relief. It was the moment the red tape, the bureaucracy, the despair, and the hurdles finally fell away. We could finally breathe.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Ultimately, the opinions that matter most aren’t found in a Facebook group. They are found in my living room.

I sat down with my children—both pre-adolescent—and asked them directly: Does the term “Gotcha Day” offend you? Do you want to change it? Do you feel like you were “captured”?

They didn’t see kidnapping or violence. They saw the start of their lives with us. My eleven-year-old daughter summed it up perfectly:

“No Mommy, because we gotcha too.”

That is the missing piece of the equation. “Gotcha Day” isn’t a one-way transaction of a parent seizing a child. It is a mutual “getting.” It is the day a child gets a family, and a family gets a child. It is a celebration of the fact that, against all odds, we found each other.

We can argue over semantics until we are blue in the face, but I will choose the wisdom of my daughter over the “wisdom” of an angry forum every time. We got each other, and for that, I will always be grateful.

Photo by Ivan Rudoy for Unsplash

If you enjoy my writing, check out my website at: www.christinerhyner.com

“You must not mistreat any widow or fatherless child” (Exodus 22:22).

“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation” (Psalm 68:5).

“Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. And all the people shall say, ‘Amen’” (Deuteronomy 27:19). (bold italics mine)

A prison ministry group decided to do something special for inmates at a men’s prison. They brought in a supply of free Mother’s Day cards so the men could send them to their mothers.

The response was overwhelming. Lines wrapped around the room for the cards. Even some of the most hardened inmates were eager to connect with and honor their mothers.

Inspired by this, the ministry decided to repeat the same program a month later for Father’s Day. They brought in a fresh supply of cards, set up the tables, and waited. The result: practically no one showed up.

When organizers asked the men why they didn’t want the Father’s Day cards, the answers were heartbreaking:

• “Thank my father for what?”

• “I don’t even know who my father is.”

• “He walked out on us when I was a kid.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center, the United States currently leads the world in the rate of children living in single-parent households at nearly twenty-five percent. Approximately 18.4 million children, or one in four under the age of eighteen, live in a household without a biological, step, or adoptive father present. To put that into perspective, the global average is seven percent.

The absence of a father figure in the home is a widespread reality that shapes the economic, educational, spiritual and emotional futures of millions of American children and society at large.

Census data shows that the prevalence varies greatly across demographic groups:

• Black families: fifty percent.

• Hispanic families: twenty-nine percent.

• White families: twenty percent.

Long-term tracking from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study—reveals that a father’s absence is associated with socioeconomic problems.

Financial Strain

The most immediate impact of a single-parent household is often economic. Single-mother households account for roughly eighty percent of all single-parent homes in the U.S., and they face disproportionately high rates of financial hardship.

Children raised in father-absent homes are four times more likely to experience poverty and hunger compared to those living in married, two-parent households.

Academic Performance

The presence of an active father figure plays a huge role in a child’s academic achievements.

• Children in father-absent homes are statistically twice as likely to drop out of high school.

Incarceration

The effects extend into early adulthood, particularly for young men. Boys who grow up without a biological father in the home are roughly twice as likely to spend time in jail by the age of thirty. These men are significantly more likely not to be enrolled in school or employed by their mid-twenties.

Mental Health and Well-being

Growing up in a single-parent family is also tied to higher risks for behavioral disorders and substance abuse. Data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also links father absence to higher rates of youth suicide and running away from home compared to two-parent environments.

But when nonresident fathers maintain consistent, positive emotional and financial involvement, it significantly mitigates negative outcomes. When dads stay active, engaged, and supportive—even from a different household—their children thrive.

Societal Changes

If we look back at the 1950s, the rate of fatherlessness in America averaged roughly six to eight percent, more in line with the global average of fatherlessness today.

A child living in a single-parent household was far more likely to be the result of a father’s death (fathers who died from illness, workplace accidents, or as a lingering consequence of World War II). Divorce rates were low, and stigma around divorce and births outside of marriage kept the traditional nuclear family structure more intact.

Seventy years ago, only about four to five percent of all births in the United States were to unmarried mothers compared with forty percent today.

The massive shift didn’t begin until the late 1960s and 1970s brought on by changing social norms (sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, feminism), erosion of biblical principles and their disappearance from the classroom, the economic independence of women, and the introduction of no-fault divorce laws.

No-fault divorce laws (beginning in California in 1969) allowed couples to divorce by mutual consent without proving wrongdoing. While this provided a way out of bad marriages, it also led to a sharp spike in divorce rates throughout the 1970s and 1980s, suddenly fracturing millions of families.

Societal expectations around family structure have taken a departure from those of the mid-20th century with a huge expansion of social welfare programs. In the 1950s the social safety net for single parents rested almost entirely on a single program: Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), which was created under the Social Security Act of 1935. By contrast, today The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) alone administers over 100 taxpayer funded programs, many of which provide essential support to single-parent households (DHHS website). No amount of your taxes or mine will “fix” the issue of fatherlessness. Only God can, by changing hearts.

Over the decades, the cultural stigma surrounding living together unmarried, (instead of embracing God’s divine covenant of marriage), and single parenting have largely dissolved. Today, many children are born to cohabiting couples who later split up, are raised by lesbian couples or solo mothers by choice (many through reproductive technologies) or circumstance, without the expectation of marriage. Sadly, I’ve discovered that even in some Christian circles, the idea of cohabitation producing children is considered commitment enough. It isn’t. It’s sin.

Changes in the American economy have played a huge, often overlooked role in family stability, particularly among working-class communities.

The post-WWII economy featured a booming manufacturing sector. A young man with a high school education could secure a stable, union job that paid enough to single-handedly buy a home and support a wife and children. This made young men highly stable marriage prospects. And, allowed mothers to stay at home with their children, supervising, nurturing, teaching, disciplining.

But, decades of deindustrialization, automation, and the decline of blue-collar jobs hit working-class men hard. As real wages for men without college degrees stagnated or declined, their perceived economic stability as long-term partners decreased. At the same time, women entered the workforce in massive numbers, many achieving financial independence.

Spiritual Implications

The spiritual implications of fatherlessness are most disturbing. An earthly father is our first blueprint for understanding our Divine Father. When a father is absent, a child may lack the primary, tangible reference point for a Heavenly Father. God as divine Protector, Provider, or loving Authority can become highly abstract or difficult to trust.

Then there’s what’s called the “Father Wound.” It’s often described as a deep ache or void left by an absent father. If left unaddressed, this wound can manifest spiritually as a chronic feeling of being unprotected, orphaned, or inherently unlovable. That’s one reason why many fatherless children often turn to gangs to find a sense of belonging.

For a child who experienced abandonment or chronic father-absence, saving grace can be incredibly difficult to accept as well. The logic often becomes: “If my own earthly father didn’t stay to protect and cherish me, why would an invisible God do so?”

The “orphan spirit” is a spiritual state of constant striving, anxiety, and spiritual homelessness. A child operating from this space may feel they must earn love, security, and salvation through perfectionism or hyper-independence, struggling to rest in a sense of spiritual belonging. I’ve experienced this orphan spirit as a child of divorce with an emotionally distant, non-affirming father.

But of all the ways God could have chosen to relate to humanity, He chose family with the name Father. While Islam has ninety-nine names for Allah, not one of them is father.

If you see yourself in any of these conditions that make it difficult to receive the love of God and have a relationship with our Heavenly Father, know that God has a special compassion for the fatherless as the above verses state. He is more than ready to supply us with security, belonging and purpose. “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close” (Psalm 27:10, NLT, italics mine).

Because of the fall of man, we all come to God with somewhat of an orphan mentality. Just as Adam and Eve lost their connection to God, we are born without this special relationship that fulfills us with true self-worth.

The church should have godly compassion and programs for young men who were robbed of the presence of a loving father.

(Credit to people like Charlie Kirk and evangelist Mario Murillo whose ministries have resulted in thousands of young men receiving Christ).

In some cases, because the traditional earthly blueprint for security and identity is missing, the fatherless can be uniquely positioned to develop a direct reliance on God. The void left by a human father can become a sacred space where a deeper sense of belonging takes root. In this way, the Lord’s compassion isn’t passive pity; it actively redeems the fracture, inviting the fatherless into a sacred adoption with purpose, empathy, and enduring strength.

An excellent book called The Search For Significance, Seeing Your TRUE WORTH through GOD’S EYES, by Robert S. McGee is a must read for those who struggle with identity in Christ issues.

‘The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.’

George Washington, inaugural address with the first fully formed Congress, April 30, 1789, New York city…

New York city, 1956, one-hundred-and-fifty-foot crosses gleam in the night sky on City Services Company, City Bank Farmers Trust Company and The Forty Wall Street Corporate buildings in the Financial District.

This was before the Bible and prayer were removed from the classroom in 1963…

Before sex, drugs and rock and roll in the 1960’s-1970’s…

Before New York was the first state to legalize killing human beings in the womb in 1970…

Before the Supreme Court ruled that babies in the womb have no Constitutional rights, and that intentional murder of the most vulnerable among us should be the law of the land in 1973…

Before homosexuals took of all things, God’s covenant rainbow which He created as a promise. He would never again destroy the earth with floodwaters for the wickedness of man, but it is now a defiant symbol of pride in what God calls perversion…

Before America’s global influence pushed abortion onto other countries, using U.S. citizens’ tax dollars to kill babies around the world…

Before drug wars and escalation of crime by over eight-hundred-percent since the Bible was removed from the classroom in 1963…

Before God allowed a breach in our national security by radical Islam that struck the heart of our financial district on September 11, 2001, killing three-thousand souls...

Before the foundation of the Twin Towers stood as this symbol of the Cross rising up out of the rubble...the Cross that Christ was nailed to and died a torturous death for humanity’s sins; Christ who reigns Supreme forever and is not done with America if only we would turn back to our gospel heritage and the Bible…

Before people flocked to churches for comfort from the worst terrorist attack on the globe…

Before they emptied out of them without national repentance…

Before Planned Parenthood, a murder mill founded to exterminate black lives, became a powerful political entity, funding abortion-pushing politicians into office…

Before a Marxist who posed as a Christian was elected to the presidency twice, to radically transform America…

Before lines between the sexes were blurred…

Before little girls were forced to share bathrooms with pedophiles…

Before the military became a social engineering project…

Before political correctness became..

Identity politics…

Wokeness...

Cancel culture...

Before the Supreme Court made gay marriage the law of the land, ruling in opposition to God’s divine covenant of marriage between one man and one woman on June 26, 2015…

Before crosses, gleaming in the New York city skyline, were gone forever in exchange for a Hindu goddess of death projected onto the Empire State building in New York city…

A Hindu goddess with a skirt of severed arms, a necklace of decapitated heads, earrings of dead children and a black face in the city where more black babies are slaughtered than born…

And people called that good as a symbol of the defense of the lives of animals and the environment, a growing worship of the created rather than the Creator…

Before the New York Governor told those who believe in traditional marriage and the Right to Life to get out of his state…

Before the media became pure propaganda…

Before Lady Justice had her blindfold ripped off...

Before a divided, deceived nation called Godly things evil and evil things good…

Before barbaric baby sacrifice called abortion—once called tragic and rare, became a choice, then reproductive health, bodily autonomy, a reproductive right, a path to success with pregnancy practically called a disease…

Before barbaric infanticide up to the moment of birth became legal in New York, the place where baby slaughter was first legalized, known as the mecca of abortion for the nation...

Before the New York skyline was lit up pink in celebration of infanticide legislation…

Before, less than a year later, the Empire State building glowed with a fiery-red ‘beacon of doom’ in the epicenter of the globe for death from a China government-sent plague…

America is losing her standing as the most blessed, prosperous and powerful nation on the earth with Her widespread and exponential rejection of her Covenant with the God of the Bible by the first settlers to her shores. The broken Covenant has led to the dehumanization of others, and murder of children in the womb, which has led to increased wickedness, resulting in our sorrows as a nation.

We cannot expect the propitious smiles of Heaven...

There’s a nagging thought that I sometimes get about social media including Substack: I’m only as good as my next post.

I don’t know who else feels this weight. Some of you post fantastic articles daily with incredible consistency, while I stick to my weekly Thursday long-form posts. Last week I was unhappy with what I wrote, but I hit publish anyway. For the first time in over a year of writing here, I lost multiple followers. It felt like an immediate, stinging confirmation of the enemy’s lies: My worth equals my performance, and my value is tied to the opinions of others.

Lately, however, my attention has been redirected. I’ll be attending a Christian writers conference soon. I have a completed book ready to go, but preparing for the event feels like a mountain of pressure. I’m fine-tuning my One Sheet, polishing my First Page requirements to ensure they are as compelling as possible, registering for classes, and selecting the staff I believe God wants me to meet with.

I hope and pray God might grant my desire for an agent or an editor to ask for my manuscript. Yet, intermingled with the belief that God gave me this book to write, lies the same trap: a need for affirmation based on my performance and the somewhat subjective opinions of strangers. Meanwhile, the volume of prep work has left me with very little time to produce the kind of Substack articles I want to write.

Roots of Perfectionism

This cycle isn’t new for me and many others. When you’re a child and you bring home a report card full of A’s, only to be asked why they aren’t A+’s, you quickly learn to feel like you’ll never be good enough. When you pick up a musical instrument and your parents immediately tell you they want to see you performing at Carnegie Hall, you learn to fear that you’ll never measure up. Perfectionism and a works-based mindset crept into my psyche early.

On a larger scale, this is the reality of the Fall. When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost their ultimate security in God. They lost their original, uncorrupted purpose—which was to glorify God, reflect His character, tend to creation, and procreate. Instead, their purpose became painful, exhausting, and sometimes fruitless:

“To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’

To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you... Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you... By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground...’” — Genesis 3:16-19

A New Identity and True Success

We still feel the sweat of the brow and the sting of the thistles in our work today—even in our writing. But God sent Jesus to the Cross not only to pay the penalty for our sins, but to give us a completely new identity. As new creations in Christ, the motives we live for are to change dramatically.

Without Him, our best efforts fall short. As Isaiah 64:6 reminds us:

“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”

But with Him, using the unique gifts He has given us, we find a different definition of success. True fruitfulness comes when we abide in Him, and He in us.

In God’s economy, success rarely looks like a perfectly optimized algorithm, a viral post, or surging subscriber metrics. Sometimes, it looks like obedience in a dry season where the words simply won’t flow because God’s working on our hearts. At others, it looks like a necessary shift in focus, where we perhaps repurpose our older, best work because our current capacity is limited—even if it doesn’t get the same “applause” the second time around.

Even in what looks like a loss to us, and even when our numbers and platform aren’t what we hoped they would be, I believe God is at work. He can use the drop in follower counts, the dry seasons, and the pre-conference preparations for my ultimate good. And He can accomplish good in those times for you. Through it all, we have only to look to the Cross for our true worth and speak it back to the enemy of truth.

If I were to announce to my family and friends when I turn sixty-five that I am expecting twins—let alone quadruplets—they would think I had completely lost my mind.

Yet, this was the reality for a woman named Annegret Raunigk, a 65-year-old German schoolteacher and mother of thirteen, who made headlines after becoming pregnant with quadruplets. According to reports, her youngest child—a nine-year-old she gave birth to at age fifty-five—began pestering her for a younger sibling. Apparently, her twelve older siblings and various nieces and nephews weren’t enough company.

Because reproductive medicine laws in Germany strictly banned egg donation and multiple embryo transfers of this nature, Raunigk bypassed domestic restrictions by traveling to Ukraine to undergo In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Commercial fertility tourism allowed her to circumvent safeguards. The procedure utilized both donor eggs and donor sperm.

The Legacy of Octomom

Raunigk’s story evokes memories of Nadya Suleman, the infamous “Octomom.” In January 2009, Suleman—already a single mother to six children conceived through In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)—gave birth to octuplets. The aftermath was a public train wreck. Tabloids detailed a life of government assistance, financial desperation, and eventual welfare fraud charges stemming from adult film work. At one point, a stressed Suleman reportedly described her infants as “disgusting” and her older children as “animals.”

While it’s easy to point fingers at the parents, the deeper question lies with the medical establishment. What kind of fertility specialist sees a single mother of six and decides to implant eight embryos? What doctor looks at a 65-year-old woman and agrees to implant four donor embryos?

While we don’t know Raunigk’s exact financial situation, we do know the physical toll of raising quadruplets in retirement. It seems highly likely that her older, adult children were effectively drafted into service as caretakers for this new brood. That is, after her preemies born at just twenty-six weeks gestation, weighing between 1 lb. 7 oz. and 2 lbs. 2 oz., spent months in intensive care. Raunigk was released from the hospital after forty-eight hours.

An Unfair System: A Personal Reflection

This medical recklessness feels like a slap in the face to those of us who have navigated the grueling world of fertility and family planning.

Years ago, I started the IVF process. After thousands of dollars in hormone injections, endless clinic visits, and emotional highs and lows, my treatment was abruptly canceled. My specialist informed me that they would not proceed unless at least four healthy eggs could be extracted.

The hypocrisy is glaring. A clinic will happily crush a regular person’s dream of parenthood because they don’t meet a statistical protocol—a protocol heavily driven by success rates, business metrics, and profit margins. Yet, that same industry will simultaneously look the other way and place women and babies at extreme medical risk by creating multiple pregnancies.

The Adoption Double Standard

As someone who has adopted more than once, I know firsthand how grueling the process can be. Adoption is intentionally arduous. It involves home studies, background checks, and endless invasive requirements to prove you are mentally, physically, and financially capable of raising a child.

Why aren’t similar, strict psychological and financial protocols in place for those agreeing to the implantation of high numbers of embryos?

The Ultimate Irony

If Annegret Raunigk had the financial means to pay for international IVF and the impending costs of quadruplets, she certainly could have afforded to adopt an older child to give her nine-year-old a sibling.

But here’s the rub: No legitimate adoption agency, birth parent, or country would ever approve a 65-year-old to adopt a child.

The adoption system prioritizes the long-term well-being of the child. The multi-billion-dollar reproductive technology industry, however, often prioritizes the desires of the paying adult. It says volumes about our current society that while the state strictly guards who is allowed to adopt a life, there are much looser boundaries on what a person can have created in a lab—despite age, the risk, or the cost.

Repost. Originally posted 09/25

When God knocked on the door of my heart in 1994 and I let Him in, I thought if I asked, He would provide definitive directives in various areas of my life.

Not only would I do what was right in His sight, He would eliminate situational uncertainty and despair.

Thankfully, I grew more mature in my faith than this. I am grateful that God was more interested in changing my worldly heart and mind than circumstances. But as a spiritual infant then, I struggled to understand how my newfound desire to please Him as a woman of service to others was not an easy success.

After all, I gave up my desire to achieve and prosper in the advertising industry. I faithfully held to a new and strong conviction that making people think they could not live without things they did not need was a manipulative and dishonorable profession. I also turned down a maybe sort of fun and creative offer to write fortunes in cookies, rejecting the occultist nature of such things. Instead, I took a job as a counselor at a crisis hotline for youth to make a positive difference. Yet, it took both an emotional and physical toll on me. Barely a teen on the streets called, but many people suffering mental health issues that did not really want referrals to get help, did. Many calls were from pranksters with nothing better to do. Still, I shared with many that God was their true source of help. But I found myself regularly reprimanded by my supervisor for ‘proselytizing,’ a term I was not even familiar with. This came as a surprise to me at a Catholic organization called ‘The Covenant House,’ where I would be summoned into her office for scolding as I stared in confusion at a large, framed Bible verse on the wall behind her.

But even more unsettling than the calls was that a coworker who would hear me talk about God and became hostile. Juan’s dirty looks, intentional bumping into me and angry comments finally became unsettling enough to turn into a plea to my supervisor to intervene. She sent me to an empty conference room with whom she referred to as ‘the harmless Juan’ to work it out. With steely eyes, he told me that every time I mentioned God, he wanted to murder me and graphically laid out how he would do it. All of the stress caused IBS-related pain in the gut that doubled me over in my cubicle.

I lacked the wisdom, insight and maturity to not personalize everything as a commentary on my incompetence to please God and as a painful rejectability factor among people. I did not understand that Satan wanted to wrest my soul back into the pit, but that the attacks from him were a sign that he never would! Instead, I obsessed with wondering did God want me to quit or do better? Should I accept defeat and struggle with another angst of how to earn a living? Oh, me of little faith!

Adding to my professional woes was a stressful relationship with a man I met at my church’s singles’ group. I believed that just because he was a Christian, it was a foregone conclusion that we were right for each other. My naivete, along with what I believed to be the prophetic words of my Bible instructor that he saw us ‘married in four months,’ kept me working at pleasing a man with huge expectations and not a lot of respect.

God seemed so silent as I endured fear, pain, and the constant sting of rejection. One day as I stood on the platform waiting for a train to take me to my terrible job, I prayed, ‘Lord, show me a tangible sign of hope from You with a butterfly.’ Suddenly one softly fluttered by, lifting my spirits at His visible answer to a simple prayer from a spiritual infant. With continued prayers for a tangible way to feel His presence, and more sightings of butterflies, I began to feel a comforting, special connection to God with these winged creatures.

One afternoon when I was feeling particularly alone and dejected on a lunch break at an outside table at work, a butterfly descended out of windy skies. The delicate, orange, gold and black insect perched on my handbag for at least a minute or two before rising back up overhead and fluttering out of view. I thanked and praised God, and returned to my job renewed for the afternoon.

Weeks later, when on my way to a friend’s party where the boyfriend who broke up with me was also invited, I prayed for God to calm my anxieties. Suddenly there appeared a large, low-sailing butterfly that descended to about knee’s length, at kept pace with me in companionship for the whole two blocks I walked to that party.

Six months later, I lost the job too, and found out my nephew had leukemia. On a family trip to Disney World, I felt like the saddest person in the enchanted kingdom. I prayed for a sign of hope from God but laughed at myself for wanting butterflies in the night while my family and I waited for a parade to pass. But to my astonishment, a Kingdom of life, light and hope made itself real to me as no less than a dozen dancers atop a float swayed and fluttered by, dressed in a dazzling rainbow of colorful wings with a tribute to the beautiful butterfly.

Like a child who looks up at her father and pleads, ‘Dad, tell that story again,’ the butterfly is to this day is to my spirit a tangible and comforting sign of hope from the Lord of His presence and care for me. Along with all the other little children at the Disney parade, I clapped in awe and wonder.

My nephew was healed and shortly after this, I met my husband of twenty-three years now who loves me unconditionally. God gave me the greatest job I could ever hope for with the gift of raising two, beautiful, adopted children.

I tend to write about serious subjects. This week’s post is a little different, lighter, because among the thousands of writers here on Substack, some are fiction writers. I see you. And, maybe you’re a little bit like me when I get going on a writing project.

When you’ve finally gained altitude—when you are soaring through the heart of the writing project you promised yourself you’d finish some three-hundred yesterdays ago—the momentum becomes alive. It’s a freight train with no brakes, and you’re both the engineer and the tracks. You no longer merely sit at a desk; you inhabit an alternate universe. You battle demons, or obsess over the micro-expressions of people who don’t exist, or swim along the bottom of a phantom sea digging up skeletons and gold nuggets...

Meanwhile, the people living in the here and now begin to question where you’ve gone. They look at you and wonder why the pilot light seems to be flickering. They grow frustrated, then bored, and eventually resentful of your absence. To them, you are drifting. To you, you’re finally awake.

The collision of these worlds usually happens at the most inopportune times. Your spouse hovers over you, their voice rising in a crescendo: “I said, do you want green beans or corn with dinner?”

You look up, blinking through a thick fog of prose. You stare at them, genuinely bewildered that a side dish could carry such weight. Don’t they understand? You were in the middle of saving a civilization from total collapse, and they’ve interrupted the siege to talk about vegetables!

“Beans. No, corn. You choose,” you mumble, desperate to get back to the battlements.

You find yourself explaining your plot to someone. You dare to offer a glimpse into your literary soul, watching their eyes turn large and round under arched brows. They offer a tight, polite smile and say, “Oh, that’s nice.”

You realize then that they aren’t seeing what you do; they’re just seeing a person who needs a haircut.

And you hear others’ stories about the new restaurant in town or an appointment they missed, or a recipe they tried out but what you really want to talk about is a motivation driving an imaginary person, or the slope of a cliff, or a clever phrase you’ve coined to explain an emotion or societal condition…

Your physical environment reflects this displacement. You might have moved into a new home two months ago, yet you’re still surrounded by a stack of cardboard boxes. It doesn’t matter. All you need is your laptop, phone and a power outlet. You don’t mind wearing the same four outfits on rotation—two of which classify as pajamas—because the boxes aren’t going anywhere, but the inspiration might.

If you were paid even minimum wage for every hour spent writing, dreaming about writing, or researching you could buy a private island and invite everyone you know to live in your palatial estate. Instead, you’re just a person in pajamas staring at a screen.

When the fever finally breaks and you “snap out” of the world they don’t inhabit, you often find yourself in a quiet room. You sit in your chair, staring at the empty one beside you, wishing someone were there to hear it all. But they’ve grown fed up and gone to bed. So, you start talking to the empty chair—about the depth of the theme, the spark of the next idea, the fluid nature of reality.

Because that’s the secret: writing isn’t what you do. It is what you are. To the world, you are eccentric or distracted. To you, reality is an expanding thing that turns into something weird, scary, or profound the moment you touch a keyboard. You aren’t losing your mind; you’re building new ones.

We were in between churches at the time. We had recently walked away from a congregation where we’d found wonderful connections but also experienced deep church hurt. Struggling to find a new place to call home, we decided to simply stay in that Sunday.

There was no breakfast in bed when I awoke that Mother’s Day. Neither my ten-year-old son nor my eight-year-old daughter, Liv, came to wish me a happy day in the hours after I got up. In fact, at eleven o’clock, I finally went to wake them.

As I walked into Liv’s room, I saw that she was already awake. As I looked at her, I felt it—that maternal intuition God places within us to intervene for our children. Something in her demeanor seemed heavy. Initially, my flesh felt a twinge of annoyance; I was frustrated she had slept in, and disappointed that my husband hadn’t rallied the kids to prepare breakfast, or at least present the expected cards, flowers, and chocolates. The day was slipping away, and I felt overlooked.

But as I wished her a good morning, her face was morose. The annoyance faded, replaced by a sudden burst of clarity.

“Are you thinking of your biological mother today?” I asked.

The question hung in the air. I had identified the elephant in the room without even thinking; it was as though God had simply placed the words on my tongue.

My mind flashed back to when she was five years old. I was in the kitchen packing school lunches when I heard it: that signature, heartbreaking, soft wail. I spun around to find her face nearly pressed into her cereal bowl.

The sight mirrored her very first bath in China. Frightened by the water, she had hunched forward until her face nearly touched the surface, her tiny spine protruding—a fragile, haunting image of a thirteen pound, thirteen-month-old child who felt she had no solid ground.

“Liv, what’s the matter?” I had asked then, my mind racing through possibilities. A lost tooth? A bug bite?

With her head still bowed over the bowl, she sobbed, “My own mother didn’t even want me!”

I was stunned. I felt her grief, but I also felt the sting of my own insecurity: Am I not enough for her? I had to quickly push aside my own sense of rejection and shoot a “rocket prayer” to the Lord for wisdom.

“Liv,” I said, sitting beside her. “Look at me.” I smoothed her hair, desperate to fix the unfixable. “No mother wants to give up her child—ever.” I wanted to say, “But I am your mother,” but I knew that wouldn’t touch the wound. She was mourning a severed attachment that goes deeper than words. I tried to explain government policies and the “One Child” rule. Then I chastised myself for possibly making her wonder if she was a second-born child with a sibling.

Now, three years later on this quiet Mother’s Day, those memories flooded back. I realized what this holiday must feel like for a child with no information, no contact, and no connection to the woman who gave her life.

“A little,” she finally answered.

“I understand,” I said, though there was no way to fully comprehend her feelings.

Liv keeps things close to the vest. Perhaps in that moment she was worried that her thoughts of another mother would hurt my feelings. I reiterated what I’d told her years before: her first mother had given her the greatest gift of all—life.

“She carried you, took care of you, and found a safe place for you to be found,” I said. After a pause, I added, “She loved you then, and I’m sure she thinks of you still. She would be so proud of the girl you are today.”

That elicited a tiny smile. Words of affirmation are her love language.

“Do you know what the best part is?” I asked. She shook her head. “We can pray for your biological parents. We can pray to see them in heaven, and there, you can have a reunion that lasts forever.”

I had prayed for them privately for years, but never with my children. A conviction stirred in my heart. I dropped to my knees by her bed. “Join me?”

She knelt, and I prayed: Father God, we lift up Liv’s biological mother and father. If they don’t know You, we pray they will. We pray they accept Jesus so that one day, they and Liv can have a great celebration together in heaven. Amen.

Later that afternoon, the cards and gifts appeared. But for the first time, I didn’t care about the fuss. I was more moved by the quiet breakthrough that morning. The Holy Spirit had given me insight into a hidden hurt, and we had taken it to the only One who can truly heal.

Today, Liv is a lovely young adult. She is a gifted listener, smart, and her cards to me over the years have been filled with words that tell me I’m the best mother she could have. I still pray for her biological parents to come to a saving knowledge of the truth. And now, those prayers extend to my two children, who have yet to fully claim that faith for themselves.

I trust the Lord to do whatever it takes to draw them in. I hope Liv remembers that Mother’s Day prayer—how we took her deepest despair to the Father, trusting that He hears us, remembers us, and never overlooks our pain.

Hardened Hearts

As an advocate of the Right to Life, I want to see a society that cherishes and protects its most vulnerable members, ensuring that every person has the opportunity to fulfill their potential. I don’t believe anyone should be killed because they’re inconvenient or a burden. That goes for abortion and euthanasia.

How disturbing it is, that in less than a decade, the global conversation surrounding “assisted suicide” has shifted from an end to great suffering for the terminally ill, to a standard medical offering for a growing list of vulnerable populations. It’s increasingly revealing itself to be a functional tool that threatens the disabled, the poor, and the mentally ill. By looking at the trajectory of Canada’s MAiD or “Medical Aid in Dying” program of state-sanctioned deaths, it becomes clear that (MAiD) is headed toward an even worse devaluing of human life the Lord creates than it already is.

The initial pitch for euthanasia was built on the promise of relieving the physical agony of those on the brink of death. However, as Bobby Schindler (brother of Terri Schiavo who was starved and dehydrated to death in 2005) says, “This is the natural progression when society permits the destruction of innocent life in the womb: the same utilitarian approach applied to our vulnerable unborn brothers and sisters will increasingly be applied after birth” (bold mine).

When society hardens its heart to life in the womb up to birth, when it begins to classify whose lives are worth living based on productivity or perceived quality, it mirrors the darkest chapters of history like Nazi Germany. I don’t use this comparison lightly.

The Aktion T4 program in Nazi Germany began with physicians and bureaucrats. They framed the systematic killing of a quarter million of the disabled and medically fragile as a matter of “compassion and efficiency.” Today, we see a disturbing echo of this moral reasoning. When the state provides the means for death based on a doctor’s assessment of a “grievous and irremediable” condition, it affirms the idea that a life with a disability or chronic illness is a life of lesser value.

The Canadian Warning

Canada’s MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) program serves as a grim case study of how quickly safeguards can erode. Since legalization in 2016, nearly 100,000 people have been euthanized. While the public was assured that this would be an exceptional measure for the dying, it doesn’t match up with reality.

Eligibility was expanded in 2021 to include people with chronic illnesses, disabilities and, pending parliamentary review, potentially individuals with certain mental health conditions. The criteria continue to loosen, giving doctors authority to choose death for their patients based on their own assumptions of the value of life. Most chilling of all is at least 428 cases of non-compliant euthanasia deaths according to the Chief Coroner of Ontario. I remember skimming an article of such a case where a nursing home patient who didn’t want to die was overruled by her adult child and her spouse. The elderly woman fought a needle going into her arm.

The case of Kiano Vafaeian is also tragic. At just 26 years old, Vafaeian—who was blind and living with Type 1 diabetes—was euthanized in December 2025. His family argues that the system failed him, accusing the law of “killing the disabled and vulnerable” who are struggling with depression rather than a terminal diagnosis. When the solution to the challenges of disability or mental health is a lethal injection, the medical establishment has fully abandoned its Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm”—if it ever took one in the first place.

The Poverty of Choice

Perhaps the most alarming development is social factors as drivers for assisted suicide. Reports from the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario have highlighted cases where death was either offered to or chosen by various people not because of physical pain, but because of hospital overcrowding, homelessness, fear and isolation. One man sought euthanasia because he was lonely; another sought it to avoid the indignity of a lack of social support.

This is the “slippery slope” in action. When assisted suicide is an option, it becomes the cheapest “treatment” for complex social problems. For the poor and marginalized, the “right to die” can quickly transform into a “duty to die” to relieve the burden on the state or the healthcare system. The Ontario Coroner’s report explicitly warned that the poor are at high risk of coercion, suggesting that social neglect is being “solved” with state-sanctioned death.

In climate activism, such as at the World Economic Forum, population growth is a crisis. When high-profile researchers argue that having children is a “climate crime” and advocate for aggressive family planning to lower fertility, they reinforce a worldview where human beings are viewed as carbon-emitting liabilities rather than individuals with the inherent dignity God gives them. Or, when influential and dangerous people such as Yuval Noah Harari of the WEF states, “The most important question in twenty-first-century economics may well be what to do with all the superfluous (unnecessary, useless) people” because of Artificial Intelligence, will we see a tragic rise in euthanasia?

A Call for Protection

As of April 2026, 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have authorized assisted suicide. While these states currently maintain safeguards, history and the Canadian experience suggest these boundaries are rarely permanent. Once the principle is established that a doctor can intentionally end a patient’s life, the definition of who “qualifies” inevitably expands.

True compassion does not lie in providing a lethal dose of poison to a lonely man or a depressed youth. It lies in addressing the root causes of their suffering—improving palliative care, expanding mental health support, and ensuring that no one feels they have to choose death because they lack a home or a community. To protect the most vulnerable among us, we must reject the utilitarian classification of human life and reaffirm that every life is worthy of protection, from conception to natural death. The church must speak out because if we don’t believe euthanasia can turn into a doctor’s whim for our depressed neighbor, our bipolar cousin or even someone with the “wrong” political affiliation or race, we’re naïve.

At five years old, I was dressed like a clown, placed into the windowless back of a van by my teachers, and brought to what must have been some sort of asylum. I was to cheer up the sick. Except that the sick terrified me. An old woman with a plastic face and jet-black hair that fanned out across her pillow beckoned me towards her. With a crooked index finger, she summoned me to her bedside with a piece of candy. I refused, thinking if I ate it, I’d catch whatever horrible disease she had.

Then I was led to a smaller room where a boy lay sleeping on a bed. I was told to cheer him up, then the teacher left the room. Not knowing what to do, I began to sing, staring at a window high above near the ceiling I couldn’t escape from. It was no use. The boy didn’t wake up. But the experience at the asylum was a trauma. I’ve had a fear of all things medical since.

But I’ve dealt with stomach issues since I was a teenager, eventually diagnosed with IBS. It also happens to be one of the potential symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Raised as I was by alcoholic parents and an abusive parochial school makes me familiar with the disorder. Having IBS and two ulcers made me familiar with gastroenterologists. A common procedure they do is an endoscopy where they drop a camera down through your mouth into your gut.

If you’ve been to a doctor recently, you know they will schedule your appointments a year…even two years in advance.

The last endoscopy I had was during a February with a new doctor. I hadn’t had one in years. After my procedure was over and I had a follow up consult with the doctor, he told me I had pre-cancerous cells in my stomach. These cells, he explained, could lead to stomach cancer and do not go away. Then he scheduled me for another appointment the following year.

The news was unsettling. I prayed, but I still obsessed. As the months ticked down to a new February and appointment, what was going on inside my stomach was always in the back of my mind. My older sister had been diagnosed with jaw cancer. What she’s been through with surgery, a permanently misshapen face, chemotherapy and radiation, speech therapy and a feeding tube is not for the faint of heart. None of us are exempt from suffering.

As the day of my new consult rolled around, I had trouble concentrating on much of anything. The next endoscopy was scheduled for weeks after. I thought great, so much time to get through!

But during those weeks of waiting, I simply threw myself on the mercies of God. One Scripture verse I clung to is from Psalm 103:1-2 which says, Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget none of His benefits; Who forgives all of my sins and heals all of my diseases. I also spoke to my stomach and digestive system, commanding every unhealthy cell to leave in the mighty, healing name of Jesus!

After I awoke from the procedure my doctor didn’t tell me much, except that a bunch of samples of my stomach had been sent to pathology. He scheduled my post-endoscopy follow up for more than three weeks later.

The morning of the follow up I felt a bit rattled. I played an assortment of praise and worship songs on my phone and sang aloud to them while I got ready to go, and also in the car for the forty-five-minute drive to the office.

Finally, when the doctor was ready to see me, I know that I appeared calm but didn’t feel it. I remembered a meme I had recently posted that said, “Fear is what if. Faith is even if. I thought, you posted it girl, now live by it. The doctor pulled up my records on his computer.

Every sample he took of my stomach came back negative for disease! But when he saw that the pre-cancerous cells were gone, he couldn’t seem to get over it. These were the same cells he told me would never go away. He repeated a few times that it was amazing and fantastic. He said, “It’s like you turned back time.” With my husband by my side, we gave all glory to God who is so merciful, and to prayer. Though he didn’t respond, I’d like to think we planted a seed in my doctor of Indian descent.

I was still so shocked when we left, that I began to cry—tears of gratitude to God— in the parking lot.

When trials turn into triumphs, it’s the Lord. When healing baffles doctors, it’s the Lord. When the Lord gives us a testimony, He wants us to share it. Praise the Lord! Thanks for reading.

It was a day like any other. My young daughter, about six years old at the time, was hanging out with me while I made the bed in the master bedroom. I don’t recall the specific question she asked, but I remember my answer—an offhand remark rooted in my identity: “Because I’m your mother.”

Olivia’s head tilted, “You are?”

She wasn’t being defiant. Her words sounded curious. My heart did a slow, heavy sink into my stomach. For a few seconds I wondered if she was toying with me but her dark eyes remained wide and earnest.

“Of course I am,” I answered, my voice sounding thinner than I liked.

“You are my mother?” she repeated.

In the world of transracial adoption, there’s little doubt by the tender age of three or four years old that you don’t resemble your parents. My husband and I addressed the question, “Where do I come from?” before our adopted children could even talk. But there were times like these when we were caught off guard by something they asked or said. Frankly, in that moment, I felt a jab of inadequacy. I was the woman who held her through night terrors, the woman who knew exactly how she liked her toast, yet it seemed like I was being called out as a substitute by a small, gentle judge.

My mind raced back to two previous incidents. Over the summer I invited a friend and her daughter of Olivia’s age to swim in our pool. While the four of us perched on the coping surrounding the water, the little girl asked, “Are you Olivia’s real mother?” After an initial sting I felt for my daughter, my mind searched for an age-appropriate but truthful response. But before I could speak up, the mother scolded her daughter with, “We don’t ask about things like that.” But I wanted to talk about it. I felt both children deserved an honest answer, instead of one being chastised, and the other ignored. But the mom was insistent to silence any conversation, as though her daughter had broken some cardinal rule of adoption-speak.

It was a missed opportunity to bring that five-year old’s question into the light and explain how God sometimes forms families.

Then there was the breakfast breakdown. While preparing school lunches one morning, I heard Olivia’s characteristic low whine when she cries. When I whirled around to see what was wrong, there she sat at the table, her face practically in her cereal bowl. She cried out in tears, “My own mother didn’t even want me!”

I swooped in then, frantic for a rescue mission of words while my identity as her mother took a hit. I tried to reassure her that her biological mother did in fact want her, loved her and must have gone through terrible pain to have to give her up. Did it help? I’m not sure. Olivia is reserved, a quiet well of emotion difficult to draw from. She’s always been different from our son, who claimed his place in our family with a boisterous, unquestioning confidence.

Back in the bedroom, the silence was stretching too long. I decided to pivot. I couldn’t bridge the biological gap in a single conversation, but I could try and make light of the situation.

“Well,” I said, putting down the pillow, “I changed your diapers. I made your bottles. I rocked you to sleep. I love you to the moon and back. Yes, I’m your mother.” I leaned in close to her, a mischievous tone to my voice, “In fact, I’m so real, you should pinch me to make sure.”

She hesitated, then reached out and gave my arm a quick, sharp pinch.

“Ouch!” I yelped, hamming it up. “See? I’m real, I’m here, and I’m yours.”

Olivia let out a bright, sparkling laugh, and the tension evaporated. The topic was dismissed, replaced by a request for a snack, but the echo of longing and belonging remained in the room.

I’ve come to realize that as an adoptive parent, my feelings have to take a backseat to her reality. She carries a primal wound—a sense of abandonment by the woman who gave her life—and that sometimes translates into a skepticism of the woman who is raising her. It is not a rejection of me; she’s negotiating with her own history.

There are steps we adoptive parents can take are to ensure our children see themselves reflected in the world. We can participate in adoption support groups, culture camps, celebrations of our children’s ethnicities and make friends with other families who have interracially adopted. We can make sure our kids have someone with whom they feel safe discussing issues surrounding their abandonment and adoption.

As to what the future holds for Olivia in terms of her feelings and issues surrounding her adoption, I cannot know. But I do know that every time she pinches me to see if I’m real, I’ll be there to tell her that I am. I’ll keep showing up, holding the space for the mother she lost and the mother she has, until she finally feels she doesn’t have to ask anymore.

A young woman was taking a drive, her boyfriend at the wheel. Maybe she was coaxed into the car with the promise of going someplace nice. A drive to the beach perhaps, to watch a sunset.

Instead, I can’t imagine the shock, fear and betrayal she must have felt as her boyfriend thrust abortion pills in her face and demanded she take them. In the confines of the car, where he may have been dangerously speeding, or had a weapon, or threatened to harm one of her family members, she succumbed to swallowing the deadly pills. As soon as she was able, she tried to throw them up but it was too late. Her baby was already dead.

Then there’s “Catherine” whose planned gender reveal party turned into tragedy. As she was preparing to celebrate, her mother told her she would kick her out of the house if she didn’t have an abortion. The mother obtained abortion pills from Dr. Margaret Carpenter from New York, notorious for violating prolife state laws and mailing pills to states that have protected life like Catherine’s state of Louisiana.

Catherine had to be at least ten weeks pregnant to know if she were carrying a boy or a girl. Potentially up to eighteen weeks if she relied on an ultrasound instead of a blood test to verify her baby’s sex. Rather than a party, she ended up with a visit to an emergency room. And mom ended up with a dead grandchild whose murder she was complicit in.

Letitia James, the attorney general in New York is protecting this doctor from any accountability or prosecution.

60% of abortions are now chemical abortions. They accounted for 63% of all U.S. abortions in 2023, up from 53% in 2020. This trend has continued through 2025-2026 as telehealth and “shield law” mailing services expanded. (The Guttmacher Institute, 2024 Report).

The “shield law” applies to blue state abortion clinics that are shielded from liability for mailing these pills to other states where abortion isn’t legal, post-Dobbs. Thousands of these pills per month now flood states that prohibit or restrict abortion.

Tragically, of these so-called “medication abortions,” 30–50% of women report coercion. A peer-reviewed study of over 1,000 women found that nearly 70% of those who had abortions described them as coerced, pressured, or inconsistent with their own values. Specifically, 45% reported “substantial” or “high” levels of pressure from others. (The Charlotte Lozier Institute / Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, study by Dr. David Reardon, et al).

Seven-hundred out of a thousand women aborted their babies and regretted it because it wasn’t the choice they wanted to make.

Four-hundred-and-fifty women and teens felt extreme pressure to kill their babies.

Sadly, many of these women say if they had financial stability or emotional support, they would be inclined to keep their babies.

The US Postal Service has become a rolling abortion clinic.

Many of these chemical abortion sites offer bulk discounts for abortion pills. Who would buy these pills in bulk?

Pimps, child traffickers, pedophiles, incestuous criminals and other abusers of women and girls.

The FDA needs to reverse back to safeguards for women.

The FDA approved chemical abortion pills in the early 2000’s. Over the years safety measures have eroded. The Biden administration, after the reversal of the Dobbs decision told the FDA to make abortion as widely available as possible. It reversed the requirement of obtaining these pills from a doctor and instead made them available through the mail. These pills put 1 in 25 women in the emergency room, a 300% increase in abortion related hospitalizations. (Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology).

The FDA circumvents the necessity for a woman to see a doctor before being prescribed abortion pills. But women need informed consent. The FDA doesn’t care if there are complications short of death.

There’s no regulation of these pills.

That’s medical malpractice.

The risks for chemical abortions can be deadly. Without a doctor’s visit, and an ultrasound, a woman can’t know if she has an ectopic pregnancy with a baby growing inside her fallopian tube, which can be life-threatening.

Research shows that many women miscalculate their last menstrual period. Taking the pills later in pregnancy significantly increases the risk of an “incomplete abortion,” where fetal tissue remains in the uterus, leading to severe infection (sepsis) or hemorrhage. Or, the woman or teen might go into labor and deliver a baby into the toilet. This can cause a lifetime of trauma. And, not to be grotesque, but our septic systems aren’t designed for the disposal of little human beings.

Says one woman who took the abortion pill and expelled the baby in her bathroom:

“I didn’t realize I would be looking at the eyes and fingers of my baby.”

She is now prolife.

LifeNews.com March 12, 2026

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) took to the podium Wednesday, March 11 in the Senate Judiciary hearing room to deliver a clear message: the abortion pill mifepristone isn’t just risky — it’s “inherently dangerous.” And it’s up to Congress to regulate it.

At a press conference, the Missouri senator unveiled his new legislation, the Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act. This bill seeks to strip mifepristone — the drug responsible for the majority of U.S. abortions — of its longstanding approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Hawley didn’t hold back, blasting the FDA for letting mail-order shipments flood the country, wiping out state-level protections for the unborn and leaving women to face severe complications like heavy bleeding, sepsis, and worse — commonly without any real medical oversight. “It is time for Congress to do something about this racket,” he declared. “And it is a racket. It is time for Congress to ban the use of mifepristone for abortion, and it is time for Congress to give the victims — the survivors — … the right to recover.”