Welcome. With much love, care, research, and prayer, I move onto Part 2 in a three-part series on adoption ethics. If you haven’t read Part 1, go do that. In this installment, we’re discussing ethical orphan care WITHIN adoption, and Part 3 will involve orphan care OUTSIDE of adoption.
 
First of all, let’s make some room. The response to Part 1 was so inspiring from the Christian community. Your commitment to due diligence, to the search for truth, to the orphan, to first families and second families was a marvel. I was proud of us. In a movement with such deep investment and high emotions, it is no small thing to embrace scrutiny and evaluation.
 
Room: Should we shut down adoption and invest our energies elsewhere? Emphatically, NO. I am not anti-adoption; I am anti-unethical-adoption. So many children are true orphans, have no chance at reunification, or would be in danger with their first family, and adoption is their last chance. Similarly, many first parents relinquish their kids as an act of courage and selflessness, having soberly weighed their options, landing on adoption in their child’s best interest. We applaud these moms; they are to be commended. There will always be children who genuinely need a family, and adoption is a beautiful story of redemption in those cases.

Here are the real numbers: Around the world, there are an estimated 153 million orphans who have only lost one parent (“single-orphaned”). Obviously, not all these children need adopted. Most single parents raise children valiantly in their own community and extended family. There are about 18 million orphans who have lost both parents (“double orphaned”) and are living in orphanages or on the streets. So again, I am pro-family: first families when possible, and second families when they are not.

Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff: As my friend Ryan at AWAA so perfectly put it: “If there are bad actors coercing people, paying bribes, etc., then we should not call this ‘adoption’ but ‘trafficking’. When thieves run into a bank, point a gun and steal money, we don’t call that a bank withdrawal; it’s a robbery. Our response shouldn’t be to close banks or criticize all bankers but to step up bank security. In the same way, criminal activity should be described as such and not as adoption.” (<---- Exactly. This goes to my point in Part 1 that trafficking is not a God-endorsed franchise and shouldn't receive the same assessment as adoption. Let us step up bank security, because we should clamp down on less-frequent robberies instead of imagining that banks never attract thieves.)
 
Room: Should we stop adopting babies? No! Again, there are certainly babies who are either abandoned or willfully relinquished, and the less time they languish in an institution, THE BETTER. You are no villain, Baby Adopter, and many adoptive parents choose a baby to keep birth order intact or remove her from an institution early to diminish long-term effects.
 
It is simply this: the line for adoptable healthy babies is very long, and every last one of them will be chosen, even those not born yet. In the meantime, tens of thousands of older kids are waiting right this second. Unicef reports approximately 95% of orphans over the age of 5. So if our motivation includes mitigating the orphan crisis, then we need more parents willing to adopt older kids, sick kids, and sibling groups, including here and abroad.
 
Room: Adoption is as complicated as the number of people, countries, stories, and processes involved. There is no one story. What is true for China is different in Guatemala. What is happening in Ethiopia has no relevance for domestic foster care. The best we can do in a public forum like this is take a high view of adoption and insist on ethical practices, transparency, and a commitment to help and not hurt. While your personal adoption may be completely legitimate, as a community, we still must guard against systemic weak links and refuse to discredit obvious failure within the movement.
 
Room: Are all agencies corrupted? FOR THE LOVE. They most certainly are not. Plenty of agencies have impeccable reputations and unimpeachable staffs. They don’t deserve to all be painted with the same brush. While there are deplorable brokers supplying the pipeline illegally, unethically or even naively, it would be terribly unfair and unwise to lump them all together.
 
For you in serious research mode, may I point you to a series at My Fascinating Life describing best practices between the people who make decisions about the adoptability of a child, those who benefit from adoption, and those who oversee the entire process. It is a lengthy two-part series but well worth the energy, a fantastic exegesis on structural ethics. (Note: in this series, “adoption beneficiaries” includes agencies, but to be clear: I am not implying sinister motives, as no social workers or agency employees I know are rolling up in their Bentleys. We all love these kids and families. It is simply a designation for which side of the wall we are on.)
 
[Much thanks to the agency workers, nonprofit leaders, missionaries, and adoptive parents who have contributed to the following info. Especially grateful to Ryan Hanlon through my agency, America World, for his expertise. We burned up the internet in discussion last week, as my first email from him after Part 1 was something like “WTHHHHHHHHH???” and ended 73 emails later with some of the best material that follows. Let me tell you: when people get together who love children, love birth families and adoptive families, love community development, and love adoption, we are a powerful tribe for good.]
 
For those considering adoption, let’s discuss due diligence. Internationally, perhaps the primary consideration is which country. Why? Certain countries lend themselves to a more transparent process with less room for corruption. Others facilitate adoptions with virtually NO oversight by a child welfare authority, and the U.S. government has a limited role, so there is almost no process for verifying practices as ethical, which isn’t to say that they are corrupt, it’s to say that nobody has a clue if they’re corrupt.
 
PAPs (prospective adoptive parents) must research the adoption process in a country, specifically how a child is determined to be available for international adoption. Call multiple agencies, read the DOS website, talk to adoptive families that have gone through the process. In general, Hague Convention Countries have more safeguards in place than non-Convention countries (exceptions apply). In general, the more the foreign country’s government controls the process (especially the matching process) instead of an agency, attorney or orphanage, there is less room for corruption. Although frustrating, the slower and more thorough a country is, the better. If they place a premium on reunification and in-country placements and insist on exhaustive investigations to approve an international placement, we say AMEN and commit to wait.  
 
Second, with such enormous trust placed in agencies as mediators, this is no place for naivety. Once you’ve chosen a country, next find an agency with best practices in that country, because an agency has different levels of experience, staffing, knowledge and resources in every country they work, even if they run multiple programs.
 
Although this varies from country to country, some general questions to ask of agencies:
 

• Are you licensed and accredited both here and in the other country? (You might think this was obvious, but you would be wrong.)
• Has your license ever been suspended in country X? Any other country?
• Can you recommend other agencies that work in the same country? (This speaks volumes, including their reputation with other sound agencies.)
• Can you provide references of families who have adopted from your agency from the same country? (Not foolproof, because anyone can assemble a band of cheerleaders, but it’s a start. This list should be lengthy.)
• How long have you been working in country X? (Pilot programs give me serious pause; it is simply not proven, and this is no place for naive optimism.)
• How many adoptions do you facilitate each year? (Beware of astronomical numbers.)
• How many of the kids you place from county X are infants? How many have special needs? How many are older? 
• Can we see a copy of a recent audited financial statement? Annual report? 
• How does the referral process work?
• Do any of your staff get paid on a per adoption basis? If no, then how are they paid?
• What are the common reasons children are available for adoption in country X? 
• Will the children likely have living birth parents? If so, are we allowed to interact with them? What will we learn from them?
• Can we use an independent or second translator when talking to birth parents? (This diminishes the possibility of selective mistranslation by an orphanage employee and allows you to ask difficult and pressing questions about what they actually understand about international adoption. What have they been promised? Are they under the impression that this is temporary? Were they approached about adoption or did they relinquish voluntarily? Etc…)
• Who in country X determines that the children are appropriate for adoption?
• Does your agency interact with the birth parents? 
• Do you have initiatives in place for reunification or first family development, not associated with adoption revenue?
• For domestic adoption:  What does the birth parent get from your agency? Who is providing counseling? What options are presented by your agency?  

Red flags for PAPs:
 

• When you ask questions, do you feel shut down, disrespected, bullied, or discouraged? I asked my agency hard questions and got pages and pages of immediate, thorough responses. If you are discouraged from talking to other families, researching, asking difficult questions, or investigating, RUN.
  
• Are other adoptive families with concerns are painted as lunatics or troublemakers?
• Does correspondence lean too heavily on emotional propaganda and "rescue" rhetoric, as opposed to professionalism and an obvious commitment to best practices?
• An agency that offers something different than other agencies.
• An agency that only does infant adoptions or promises lots of babies.
• An agency that offers the same thing for much less money. 
• An agency that offers the same thing as other agencies in much less time. 
• An agency that claims to have special connections or processes in country.
• If you hear the word “expedited,” run for the hills. That is not a thing. That is corruption.
• Payments without receipts (common in Eastern European adoptions).
• “In general, if it smells fishy, don’t eat it…” Ryan Hanlon, folks. We cannot allow Baby or Child Fever to overtake our instincts. If your gut senses a red flag, YOU ARE PROBABLY RIGHT. 

Red flags for agencies in terms of in-country partners:

• Seeing the same situation in lots of kids’ paperwork (e.g. all the kids are abandoned or all the kids have parents’ deceased; or the same police officer signed off on the abandonment recognition, or the same hospital worker or social worker, etc. is involved in all the cases.)
• An orphanage partner who wants money off the books.
• An orphanage partner who can provide much more than anyone else.
• In-country staff or partners who prevent international staff from accessing or communicating with any relevant parties.
• Not experiencing the same challenges as other agencies (unless the reasons are obvious). 

I would heavily discourage independent adoptions. I know they are faster and smoother and maybe the only possibility in certain countries, but we want more oversight, not less in international adoption. The more people, systems, and organization in place, the higher the accountability, and I cannot stress this enough: we want the highest possible accountability here. If adoptions are not possible through formal channels, there is probably a reason. This ball is in our court, PAPs. Of the few things we can control, this is one.
 
This post is infinity long, and I’ve left out so much. Note: you cannot take one blog as your guide. You must do your own research, suss out the truth, ask, study, investigate, Google, dig, push, insist on clarity. Agencies operating above board will welcome your questions, because we all want the same thing: first family preservation if possible, and families for truly orphaned children when it isn’t. Adoption is an answer to a tragedy that has already happened, but may it never be the impetus for one that hasn’t.
 
In Part 3, we will discuss orphan care outside of adoption, and I can hardly wait. Thank you for sharing your stories this last week. I’ve treasured them, prayed for you, asked God to infuse us all with courage and humility, and begged for His kingdom to come.


What can you add? The power in our collective conversation here cannot be overstated. What have you learned? What have I omitted?  Thank you in advance for filling in gaps with foster and domestic scenarios. So grateful for you.

When I was in college, a guy drank a bottle of hot sauce for $100. He was sick for four days. That sauce came out everywhere; both ends, pores, night sweats. He had to buy expensive medicine to help repair the lining of his stomach, you guys. No matter. Because 1.) the bragging rights, and 2.) the $100.
 
For the love.
 
I’m wading into difficult adoption territory today, a space wrought with defensiveness and Big Feelings and confusion. Let’s cover this conversation with grace and truth and move gently through it together, beginning with Part One today.
 
Disclaimer up front: There are so many children who are truly orphaned, with the numbers skewed toward older kids and sick kids. This is a real crisis. There are also adoption agencies with impeccable ethics both here and abroad. Plenty of adoptive families went in eyes wide open, prioritizing transparency and thoroughness. This is not an all-bad or all-good scenario, but a little yeast leavens the entire batch, and no decent parent I know wants to be complicit in corrupt adoptions. This conversation deserves its place among believers.
 
We can begin here: Sometimes when you wave a $100 in front of someone, he or she will do anything to get it, even something knowingly harmful. Let’s stipulate that rich Americans flooding impoverished countries with millions of dollars to adopt its children will absolutely garner attention. Money has always been a magnet for corruption. While there are obviously lots of true orphans, without question, that much cash flow will generate some “created orphans” to satisfy demand, especially for babies.
 
Now three years after our first steps, I’m connected to people living in all sorts of impoverished countries, and the word on the street is not good. There is the Christian adoption narrative we use over here, including inflated statistics, words like rescue and saving, and plenty of emotional ammunition (me = guilty), then there is the in-country story, which is something altogether different.
 
I so want this to not be true, but I keep hearing it over and over in Ethiopia, Haiti, Uganda, Congo, everywhere. The missionaries and locals are saying something very disturbing: so often vulnerable birth moms are coerced and misled, families are manipulated and deceived, children are flat out bought. International adoption is Big Business. I’ve read emails describing orphanage directors who paid $20 for birth certificates and $75 to take a baby right out of his mother’s hands. Paperwork is falsified and birth families are told their children are going to school, to triage while they stabilize, to receive health care then return home.

There are very real orphans all over the earth, but most of us don’t pursue the kids there are; we pursue the kids we want, and these countries know the score. Older kids stay on waiting children lists, while the baby line is hundreds deep. It doesn’t take long for opportunists to figure this out.
 
I’ve heard of too many devastated birth parents, shocked and confused their children were adopted to another family. Basic investigations have uncovered entire communities picked through for their children, like door-to-door salesmen. I’m not hearing enough about prioritizing birth families and empowering them to raise their own children, not even from well-meaning adoptive parents. Isn’t that what we want? Shouldn’t intact families be our highest goal? Shouldn’t we want for birth families exactly what we want for our own, if it is possible?
 
But birth families are not prioritized; adopters are. The system is geared to make us happy, to keep us coming. There is this silent belief that kids are better off with us, period. We say, “God chose this child for me. She is mine. She was always meant to be mine.” No. Our children were meant for their birth families, the way every child ever born is. God did not intend these children for my wealthy home and accidentally put them in Ethiopian wombs. Does God not weep for birth moms who were tricked? Who were coerced? Who were so vulnerable? Were their children gifts for us and not them? This perspective insidiously tricks us into overvaluing our "rights" and devaluing first families or reunification efforts.
 
With much of the adoption pipeline supplied by corruption and confusion, we cannot possibly claim God’s sovereignty. We need to call it what it is: an injustice God would never endorse. It is time to stop participating in the type of adoption that encourages able-bodied parents to give up their children or get pregnant to supply a baby for a paycheck. We cannot be complicit in what amounts to trafficking.
 
When we began the process, Brandon and I assumed we were adopting kids with no parents. We were shocked to discover most kids in our pipeline had one or both living parents, including our two. Without sharing too much of their stories, I’ll tell you that both kids could be raised by able-bodied birth parents or extended family. That doesn’t change the fact that they were both relinquished, Ben in an orphanage nearly three years when we met him at age 8, but we are haunted by the possibility that some simple development and intervention could’ve prevented them from ever entering the system.
 
“It’s too complicated.” “They cannot handle their own kids.” “They are too poor.” “Life is too unstable there.” These are the arguments we bandy around about birth parents. Frankly, this is an easy pill to swallow and goes down in seconds without much consideration. Just like that, I’ve severed the biological tie and discredited the argument for reunification.
 
Yet people working in impoverished countries tell me something totally different. My friends, Troy and Tara Livesay, work in maternal care in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. By every statistic and standard, it is a hot mess. Yet at Heartline, their organization that offers prenatal care, safe birthing facilities, and parenting and child development classes for vulnerable moms, their numbers disclose something astonishing: Out of roughly 300 births – and I’m talking very poor women, some raped, some teenagers, some single moms, extremely disadvantaged – only ONE birth mom has ever relinquished her baby. As Tara told me, “If our small, simple operation has virtually a 100% success rate, we are not trying hard enough for birth families.”
 
What would happen if we reallocated a percentage of the millions we spend on adoption toward community development? What if we prioritized first families and supported initiatives that train, empower, and equip them to parent? This would absolutely be Orphan Prevention, not to mention grief prevention, loss prevention, abandonment prevention, trauma prevention, broken family prevention. What if we asked important questions about supply and demand here, and broadened our definition of orphan care to include prevention and First Family empowerment?
 
Adoptive parents are so precious to me; this community is dear. I only feel safe raising these disturbing concerns because I know our hearts. You would not sit one of us down and discover evil motives or a calculated rejection of birth moms. The opposite is true, in fact. These are some of the best people I’ve ever known. This is no attack; rather it’s grabbing hands with my community and humbly acknowledging that where there is a lot of smoke, there is some fire, and none of us endorse international pyromania.

When the critics are primarily adult adoptees, misled first families, locals and missionaries, in-country nonprofits, and developing countries in general, we should listen.

I simply believe it is time to take our good hearts and add our good minds. Adoption is the worst place to enter armed with nothing but good intentions. Rather than get swept up in emotional jargon and moving videos, we must move forward soberly, carefully, thoroughly, setting any agenda aside and working like hell to protect children, birth families, communities, and the kingdom.
 
Dear Ones, again, adoption is complicated and nuanced, and corruption does not apply to every situation obviously. There are clearly scenarios dripping with abuse, neglect, total abandonment, and bad parents, which exist in every country. Orphans are real and some kids really need families, and I personally know scads of your above-board stories. So many of our kids had no option for reunification or extended family or in-country adoption. 

Discussing unethical adoptions, I am not saying always; I am saying sometimes, and if there is a sometimes in the mix, then we must go on high alert. We have to. We cannot simply hope we have no part in the sometimes…
 
…we must insist on the never.
 
 
In Part Two, I’ll get down to the nitty gritty: What do we do? What questions do we ask? What are the red flags? How do we evaluate our agencies, since we must place so much trust in their integrity? How do we refuse complicity in unethical practices?

[Image courtesy of Free.Digital.Photos.net]

This thing has happened lately, and every single time it leaves me bumbling and fumbling and overwhelmed. A male pastor, in his 60s at least, attends a conference I’m teaching at, finds me afterward, and says something like:

“I am so moved by what you said. Will you pray for me?”

“I read a book you wrote, and it has changed our entire church because it changed me.”

“What do you think I should do about _______? How should I lead?”

Then, normally pretty composed, I get choked up and awkward and over-emote and act weirdly inappropriate like try to hold their hand or put my head on their shoulder. Not at all creepy.

I cannot explain how this moves me. First of all, the girl thing. These leaders are from a generation where women did not preach or speak at pastors’ conferences or advise men spiritually or write books they read. Men were at the helm, and women simply didn’t have a seat at the table. This paradigm comprised the majority of their ministry careers, unlike the young bucks who are more accustomed to leading alongside women.

The humility of these men my dad’s age, offering me gracious respect with teachable spirits just leaves me undone. I am so challenged by their humility and can’t help but contrast my fire and flash. This deference to the kingdom, treasuring it through whomever it rises, resisting the instinct to elevate an authority dispute, has changed me. Ironically, it hasn’t made me power drunk and proud like the fear rhetoric suggests but more tender, softer, bowed by humility, committed to imitating my brothers in Christ. (It also makes me want to hold their hands evidently. I don’t know. Thank you for understanding.) ............


Read the rest over at A Deeper Story... (Comments go over there too! So happy to join the Deeper Story writing team!)

Before there were any books or blogs or conferences or studies, I used to be a teacher. I know. Petrifying. I taught 4th grade for three years and 1st grade for one. And then I had a bunch of babies and can’t remember the next six years.
 
I was a very average elementary teacher who totally loved my students. And also? Sincerely sorry about all that homework, 4th grade parents. I wasn’t a mother yet. I figured you had nothing to do but complete my exhaustive weekly social studies packets utilizing your children’s higher level thinking skills and research techniques, because what every ten-year-old needs is five hours a week of additional geography work. I’m certain now you wished me dead. Bless it. (Several students have contacted me and they are all I’m an accountant now and I’m like um, do you mean an accountant for your high school math team? and they’re like I’m almost 30 and I’m all what exactly the heck just happened?)
 
Though I’ve switched to the fake job I currently have, I will never forget my classroom years, and I have a few things I want to tell you, Teachers Everywhere.
 
First of all, I’ve calculated your earnings by adding your classroom hours, pre- and post-school hours, conferences and phone calls, weekend work, after-hours grading, professional development requirements, lesson planning, team meetings, extracurricular clubs and teams, parent correspondence, district level seminars, and material preparation, and I believe you make approximately 19 cents an hour.
 
And then people say, yeah but teachers get three months off for summer, and then we all clutch our guts and die laughing because WHATEVER, MAN. Like teachers leave on the last day of school and just show up on the first with a miraculously prepared classroom and a month’s worth of lesson plans. But seriously, thanks for the laugh.

The amount of work and energy you pour into your work and our children is so astonishing, it is a crime that you don’t all make 150K a year. Since you couldn’t possibly do it for the money, we can only assume you love your job and love our kids. Can you understand how much we appreciate you?
 
You are doing far more than teaching our kids the building blocks of knowledge and learning; you are helping us raise our children. You provide a second environment in which they have to practice respect, obedience, teamwork, diligence. We tell them take initiative on your work and they are like this house is a drag, and then they come home from school and say I’m starting this project early because Mrs. Pulis says to take initiative, and we wonder if you have magic powers or if our children are just willfully obtuse. The answer is…yes.
 

That high standard you set for our kids? We freaking love it. Thank you. Thank you for insisting on kindness and respect, excellence and persistence. Thank you for sometimes saying, “This is junky work and you can do better. See you at recess.” BOOM. All day long, teachers. We stand behind you. Thanks for requiring their best.
 
And let me tell you something else: I’ve always had kids who mostly eased through school, but now I have two ESL kiddos and my heart for you has grown forty sizes bigger. My littles went to school with virtually no English, and I am telling you: we wouldn’t have made it through that first year without you, and I know what it cost. I can’t count how many papers came home last year with this stamp:

Don’t imagine I don’t know exactly what that means. Teachers, when you instruct our kids that struggle, I know you have, yet again, patiently pulled up a seat next to their desks, 24 other kids still in the room, and kindly helped them toward mastery. I know you modify, adapt, adjust for their success, which takes so much time and energy. Children with emotional or physical challenges, kids with language barriers and personal turmoil, those who struggle to learn and retain, test and succeed, they require so much of you in the midst of your regular responsibilities, and your patient attentiveness cannot possibly be overcelebrated. As a mom whose children blossomed under the weight of your investment, I could throw myself at your feet and weep with gratitude.
 
It’s one thing to have parents who sort of have to love you; it’s another to have a teacher affirm your goodness all year long. You know our kids come home and repeat every kind word you deliver, right? I close my eyes and thank God that another safe adult is building health into my children, especially since two of my kids have been subjected to such unsafe grown-ups. Your consistent presence is deeply healing for so many hurt kids. Your words are life-giving.

We know your task is incredibly difficult. Be creative and innovative…but also teach to this test, which by the way, your pay and security depends on. Challenge your gifted kids…aaaand modify for those with developmental delays. Keep all those parents happy! (<--- This alone should double your salary.) Use this new model, no this new one, now this new one. Surprise! We changed the entire district database. Please forfeit your Saturday for training. Stay on top of classroom communication. Attend all ARD/IEP/ESL evaluations for your students.
 
And oh, you do so much more. Serve on this additional committee. Volunteer to sponsor the Junior Class. Guess what you’re doing this weekend? Prom chaperone. You lead Destination Imagination Teams; it only takes 100 hours of your life. You coach, lead, sponsor, direct. You put on plays and programs, award ceremonies and graduations. You come early and stay late for the students who couldn’t get it, didn’t finish it, need your one-on-one help. You wear bandanas and paint your faces for Field Day. You are rock stars.
 
Administrators, we see and love you too. When you sat down with me holding your legal pads and pens, ready to learn how to care best for my incoming Ethiopians, and you wrote down every word I said and agreed to counter-intuitive requests like please don’t hold their hands at first and please don’t let them over-attach to you, you nodded and simply said…absolutely. I will never forget that. You are for us, for our kids, for our families, for our teachers, and we adore you.
 
You are amazing, Teachers and Administrators. From the bottom of my heart, I want you to hear it:
 
Thank you.
 
You are so loved, so important. Your work impacts kids for the rest of their lives. I am 38-years-old and still talking about Mrs. Palmer, Mr. Stranathan, Mrs. Thomas, Dr. Russell, Dr. Lyles. You don’t get the credit you deserve, so I am standing up today, applauding you, cherishing your investment in the next generation, in my kids. I see the incredible amount of work you do, and I am forever grateful. You are heroes; there is no lesser designation.
 
Please remember when you are grading papers at 10:30pm on Sunday night, or pinning another incredible idea to your Teacher Board, or writing our kids another encouraging note, or throwing a party because they survived the latest standardized test, we see you, we appreciate you, and we freaking love you.
 
BRAVO.

Your life matters so much and your legacy will go on long after you’re done teaching. You are sending out visionaries, thinkers, activists, and leaders into the world, and we owe you a debt of gratitude that we can never repay.
 
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! We honor you.
 
~
 
Have a teacher who needs to hear this applause? Send this to them. Teachers everywhere deserve this credit. Have a story about a teacher who altered the course of your life or your child’s life? Tell us. Are you a teacher? Take it in, because you are WONDERFUL.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make toffee. Again. The first attempt, despite scant instructions and just three ingredients, emerged like a sheet of sand and made me resort to violence and hatred.
 
Round two: sand again. $&*%!!!!
 
So I consulted the interwebs to discover the error of my ways. Let me condense the instruction I received:
 
Keep stirring. Stir constantly. Stir occasionally. Don’t stir once it boils. The temperature is too hot. It’s not hot enough. Too hot, too fast. Oops, too long. Keep a steady boil. NOT A ROLLING BOIL, YOU MORON. Use a whisk. Use a spatula. Use a wooden spoon. Recalibrate your candy thermometer. Don’t use a candy thermometer. Pour immediate at 285 degrees. Drop toffee into ice water and it should be brittle. Oops, while you were doing that it reached 286 degrees. Dump contents. Don’t cook if there is rain within 500 miles. 12 minutes exactly. 7 and a half minutes. 4 minutes and not a second more. If it separates, add water. If it separates, keep stirring. If it separates, turn the heat down. If it separates, turn the heat up. If it separates, I’m sorry to tell you, but your life is in shambles.

This inspired a new Toffee Doctrine I’d like to discuss today, catalyzed by a Facebook comment of unusual depth: “Girl, sometimes the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.” And I bowed my head and said amen.
 
There is something to be said for hard work, diligence, for pushing through obstacles and emerging victorious. Heaven forbid we’re people for whom failure is a chronic deal-breaker. Some best things are won through perseverance, and there is simply no other path. Often triumph is seized on the 77th try, and every last effort in Attempts #1-76 was worth it, and not only do we emerge successful, but the false starts and failures became our greatest teachers, and no amount of instruction could replace them.
 
But there is another narrative to consider, which doesn’t smack of the Protestant Work Ethic we champion or provide a lovely headline, but it is no less essential to health, and confusing the two approaches is not only dangerous but destructive. Help a sister out, Kenny Rogers:
 
You got to know when to hold ‘em…know when to fold ‘em.
 
I recently discussed this with my 7th grade daughter. (Fact: 7th grade exists as an evolutionary natural selection process to weed out any tender, confident, precious traits from the adolescent species. Eat or be eaten, kids.) This has been a Challenging Friend Year, and she found herself on the outside, and I don’t even have to tell you what that means because we are all 7th Grade Survivors, am I right?
 
After a year of working and crying and trying again and crying and taking a different approach and crying more, I finally said, “Baby, some things are precious and worth the work it takes to keep them alive. Plenty of good things require hard work. But some things are too hard, and it’s time to cut bait.”
 
There is a tipping point when the work becomes exhausting beyond measure, useless. You can’t pour antidote into a vat of poison forever and expect it to transform into something safe, something healthy. In some cases, poison is poison, and the only sane answer is to move on.
 
Relationships, careers, churches, friendships, expectations, roles, tasks, organizations – these structures and connections can be the most life-giving elements on earth. They can lend meaning and purpose and belonging like nothing else. Within them, we find our tribes and passions, we come to life.
 
But anything that powerful has a downside, for they are the same things that can drain us dry and leave us for dead. When an endless amount of work and blood and sweat and tears leaves a situation or relationship or even an ambition (Perfect Mom, Size 4 Human, Person Who Has It All Together) as unhealthy as it ever was, when there is virtually no redemption, when the red flags have frantically waved for too long unheeded, the alarm bells receding into white noise after sustained disregard, sometimes the healthiest possible response is to walk away.
 
Assessing a circumstance as worthy of the toil is a discarded skill. Our culture doesn’t value safe boundaries like it should. We hold private disdain for the one who quit, the one who pulled out, drew a line in the sand, the one who said no more. We secretly wonder if they shouldn’t have tried harder, stayed longer, if this isn’t an indicator of their flimsy loyalty. Surely we would’ve done better in their shoes.
 
Locked in a toxic relationship or career or ambition or community, the levels of unhealth and spiritual pollution can murder everything tender and Christlike in us, and a watching world is not always privy to those private kill shots. It can destroy our hope, optimism, gentleness. We can lose our heart and lose our way. And here is the key: we can pour an endless amount of energy into the chasm, and it will never matter.
 
There is a time to put redemption in the hands of God where it belongs and walk away before you destroy your spirit on the altar of Futile Diligence. Not every battle has a winner; sometimes it is all losers, carnage everywhere. When healthy options exist, and there is a safer alternative right…over…there, often the bravest thing we can do is stop fighting for something that will never, ever be well.

Walk away gracefully; we need not fire parting shots over the bow. That only creates more losers, and you're better than that. Take your dignity and self-respect and precious humanity, and be proud of the way you handled yourself one year from now. You don't need to be proven right; much more is at stake than validation. You'll never regret being gracious, but you might deeply regret burning a bridge that might one day be safe enough to venture back over.
 
It is not ungodly to evaluate critically; it is the wisest thing we can do. Reaching a point where you say “enough” to a toxic environment is not cowardly – it is so very brave. It will free you up to expend your energy in worthy ways, protecting you and maybe even your people from brutal coping mechanisms. (Do we really want to teach our children that “identifying with your captor” is the best way? When all we do is defend our imprisoner, it’s time to take a hard look in the mirror.)
 
What is the tipping point? There is no formula here and I can’t give one. This requires honest self-evaluation, safe and wise counselors, the close leadership of the Holy Spirit, a sobering assessment of reality. Ask, “Is the juice worth the squeeze here?" and sometimes it is. You might discover signs of life and possibility rising up through the efforts, or the task at hand is simply too worthy to abandon, regardless. There may be necessary work left to do, and it’s too soon to assess. Or maybe the Spirit holds you in place for unclear reasons, which you may or may not ever know, but you will find peace in obedience and continue to listen for marching orders.
 
But the Toffee Doctrine bears adherence too: you got to know when to fold ‘em - for your health, your heart, purpose, family, your precious life. Certain goals are unattainable, and the means will never actually reach the end. And so often if you just turn a quarter degree, you’ll discover a healthier version just within reach. You’ll find the underlying value intact in a context that fits like a glove. You’ll hear yourself say, “Oh! I didn’t know it could be like this!” The toffee is still good elsewhere; maybe just need to rethink how you get it.

As for me, homemade is out, store bought is in. Now everyone is happy, the kitchen is no longer a war zone, and I know what I’m having with my coffee tomorrow morning. But there was that one recipe involving a microwave…

Someone stop me before I jump back into the crazy.
 
~
 
If your instinct is to counter with all the times we must stay the course, I’d ask you to carefully reread the blog and notice I already did that. My advice is for scenarios in which walking away is the right and necessary thing to do. My aim is not to lead a revolution of irresponsible quitters but of discerning disciples.
 
How are you struggling? Or when did you walk away for the greater good?