groundspeed

Why Not Adopt?

Um, so this is that soap-box post I previously warned you about...

There are ample reason not to adopt, but I think the majority of Christian families who don’t adopt or become foster parents don't because it doesn’t occur to them or because if it does occur to them it seems too.. hard? inconvenient? expensive? (Yup, I'm singling out Christian families on this one. It's the only group I have a right to pick on.) If a couple can have kids biologically, or if other medical concerns don’t stand in the way, why bother with adoption, right?  And I know the Bible tells us to be fruitful and multiply but with a global population of almost 6.9 billion can we all agree that this mission has been accomplished?  So can we also agree that the Biblical mandate need not really be on our list for reasons to birth a kid?  BUT we also know that pure religion is to look after orphans…

So why not adopt? (Because personally I don't think it's too hard, inconvenient, or expensive for God.)

To adopt or foster parent is to step off the American Dream trajectory of marriage, house, fence, 2.3 kids, theme park or cruise ship vacations, automatic draft set up to add money to the kiddos’ college plan and our 401ks or IRAs, retirement to a beach house where we can sit on the front porch and watch grandbabies play in the sand. These are all great things.  Things that some of us feel entitled to. 

Word hard.  Prosper.  Pay tithe, but after that, what’s mine is mine, right? 

I will never forget one of our foster parent training classes where we had to throw out slang terms for genitalia and watch our instructor write them on the white board in front of us all in an effort to A. desensitize us to the language a foster child might bring into our home and B. to make sure we all knew what the heck he/she might be talking about!  At these same classes we were warned about tempers, aggression and given ideas for talking down escalating tempers, redirecting aggression. We were asked how we’d feel about Little Johnny dropping an F bomb in his preschool Sunday school class, or better yet teaching that word to our own Little Sally or Henry.  Oh yes, signing up to foster parent is stepping off the trajectory. It’s saying what’s mine is yours, Foster Son and if you destroy it, I understand that it’s not the State’s responsibility to reimburse my losses.  (Woo-hoo!)

Those were just the training class scenarios.  When we become foster parents and started talking to other foster parents the stories got even more uh, interesting? Colorful? Sad?  Yes, all of those things.

Why would anyone want to step into that mess?

Because messes can be beautiful. 

Because when we are selfless and sacrificing we are most like Jesus. 

Because we have to acknowledge that our desire for the perfect family is idolatry when it stands in the way of an imperfect family that God may want for you.  Because the upbringing of the kids who may already be living in our home being just-so is not the ultimate goal especially if it is at the expense of other kids being prostituted, shaken, burned, left in filth, neglected for days at a time without food and left to forage in their home which, by the way, isn't a home but a storage unit… (Yup, thinking about a specific story on that one). 

When we realize that clinging to one dream, one vision of family, could mean the perpetuation of these things happening to thousands of children (between 9 and 10 thousand kids removed from their homes each year just in the state of Florida), maybe, just maybe it’s time to loosen our stubborn grip on our culture’s idyllic family picture.  And maybe it’s time to loosen that grip on our stuff (that we don't want broken or that we want to still be able to afford to buy) and even our kids who will have to take this bumpy journey with us.  (Because, believe it or not, if God calls you to adopt or foster, he can take care of your kids.)

Loosening our grip on these things is not committing to anything.  It’s simply letting go and asking, what if?  Should we be considering adoption?  It may mean acknowledging that when you started your family you never asked God about His vision for your family.  Maybe when you finally ask this, He’ll talk to you about cutting back on the sports/dance whirlwind to free up time to serve your community together as a family, maybe He’ll show a vision of peace that involves less slamming doors and yelling and then you can get started on how to achieve that, or maybe (and here's the one I'm rooting for!) He’ll tell you that it’s time to add to your family again through adoption.  

Is foster parenting or adoption the only way to help orphans?  Nope.  But it’s the way I’m most interested in talking about right now.  It’s the way I want the next generation of parents to be so mindful of that adoption is not an after-though but a priority. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard, “Well maybe after I have ‘my own’ kids…”)  How incredible would it be if the next generation of parents, when deciding to have kids, prays, “Alright God... biological?  Adoption? What’s the plan?” That the next generation of parents would recognize that international adoption is expensive so instead of spending that wedding gift money on a plasma TV they invest it in a short term CD reserved for adoption costs.  They would know that international adoption involves travel so it might be a better idea to adopt before ever trying to get pregnant. After all, traveling with young kids or traveling while arranging for young kids to stay home can be very hard.

See? Look?  Without kids in tow, a February Russia trip to meet orphans is totally doable:

(That would be Kevin by a fountain near the Volga River)

And my hope for the next generation of parents is that they learn these things not from Angelina Jolie, Madonna or Sheryl Crow but rather from their church family because adoption will have grown so common in church culture.  Can't you hear the conversations in the church hallways? You mean now that the Jones' are empty nesters they aren't taking up golf, but have started foster parent training?  You mean now that the Peterson's have all their kids in school, Mrs. P isn't going back to work, but is starting paperwork to adopt from the Ukraine?  Did you hear that the Smith's are expecting?  A four year old boy and his 6 year old sister through the foster/adopt program!  Who's that with the Green's? Their newest daughter from China!

(A girl can dream.)

Speaking Out Against Bullying

From 7^th through 12^th grade I attended an art magnet school, a school full of kids who, had they gone elsewhere, would have been ripe picking for bullies, but because we were all doing our art thing there together there was no bullying.  When two of the guys switched from the theater department to dance there were no outcries of “gay” or “faggot.”  If anything there was appreciation because we all knew the dance department needed more guys. 

For a few years, part of our annual Spirit Week (like homecoming but at our art school we didn’t really have any sports to rally around, so instead it was a spirit competition between the art departments), included a “Gender Bender Day.”  It was a staple until one year, a member of the local press on campus for a reason that had nothing to do with Spirit Week, snapped a shot of a male student in a dress that made the front page of the local section.  The idea that there was something wrong with Gender Bender Day hadn’t occurred to any of us, not even yours truly who was known for being a bit of a Jesus Freak (this was also around the time of this DC Talk song). But a community outcry ended Gender Bender Day for good.  I don’t remember the letters to the editor that poured in and I didn’t hear the calls received by the administration but I imagine they were from bullies tearing into what was clearly a school filled with homosexuals that they didn’t want to fund with their tax dollars.  It was an eye opener for an artistic environment previously oblivious to the scrutiny and judgment of the outside world.

Gender Bender Day, while it lasted, was all in good fun, and not a leftist plot to confuse an entire student body into embracing a homosexual lifestyle, but this is not to say we didn’t have gays and gay couples and even gay couples at prom.  But I still can’t recall any bullying.  Since high school, a higher proportion of my high school friends (vs elementary or college) have become openly gay, but I think the hesitation to “come out” had less to do with fear of peers than it had to do with the fact that they were still discovering who they were and how their sexuality fit into that understanding.  At my art school I experienced a tolerant environment focused on a love for the arts that carried over into love and respect for each other.

Did I experience this same love at youth group?  Well yes, I did, because even though I was one of those weirdo art school kids, I was pretty enough (as in, I got rid of the ridiculous Sally Jesse Raphael glasses and started wearing contacts just in time!), I must have dressed well enough, I had all the Sunday school answers, I could sing and I had the lead in one of our youth musicals, oh, and I’m straight, so all that considered, yup, easy to fit in.

But would an openly gay teen (or even one experiencing sexual confusion) have felt the love as I did?  I want to give my fellow youth groupers the benefit of the doubt.  Most of them really had a sincere passion for the Lord, a faith of their own and not their parents’, but a newbie would not have had to walk very far through the doors before he heard someone use the word “fag” or “gay” in a derogatory way. Making fun of homosexuals in this way was the norm. I appreciate Anderson Cooper now drawing attention to the fact that using the word “gay” to mean “lame” is not ok. Hopefully he will have much better luck at getting this message across then I did, 15 years ago, with the guys of my youth group. 

So I may have had it easy, ridiculously easy, through middle and high school, but we have seen a rash of teens who didn't have it so easy and completely gave up hope.  A rash of teens who did not turn to an understanding adult and certainly not to a Christian in their life because what he was facing would have been condemned by many of the adults and certainly the Christians.  But bullying is not ok no matter what group is the target. Christians, no matter what their theology concerning homosexuality, should be adding their voice to the public chorus loudly speaking against bullying and homophobia.  I’ve read some great posts by believers here and here.  I’ve seen high school friends “donate their status” on facebook to speak out against the almost 90% of LGBT who have experienced harassment and other friends have posted one of the “It Gets Better” PSAs.  But those I personally know from the church community have been silent. 

I can’t be silent.  I’m a mother.  I have a son with a disability, a likely candidate for bullying.  And I am a Christian who can't stand for any component of our society to feel so hopeless suicide is their only solution.

When I first heard in the news the story of Tyler Clementi, a college freshmen and violinist, who had committed suicide because his roommate had invaded his privacy and “outed” him to the world, I cried.  Artists pick up their pens, put on their ballet shoes, tune their instruments, step on the stage, sing in their concert choirs every day trying to make sense of a passion from within, a passion the rest of the world seems dead to. Artists use these passions to bring music, literature, theater, and dance to breath life into our culture only to have that culture turn on them, belittle their existence on Twitter or Youtube.   It’s too much.  It’s enough. 

To all you bullies out there, grow up.

To all those struggling with bullies out there, in the words of Kurt from last week’s Glee, “I wanna hold your hand.”

Speaking of Glee, it’s about to start on the east coast so I’ll let you get to that.  (I’m at church while this posts, so I won’t get to join the fun till a little later.)

Considering Adoption

A close friend is in the process of having her 4th child.  It's a boy and they already know his name.  (This could be anybody's news right?)  It could, until I add, he is ten years old and currently lives in St. Petersburg, Russia.

This friend has two biological kiddos who are younger then their newest son and an adopted daughter (from America) who is older. 

I love my friends family.  Not because her husband is our Edward Jones rep.  Not because when we lived in Longview we had anytime access to their pool.  (Although these are good things!)  I love this family because they seek God's picture of what their family should look like.  They do not take for granted what their family should be based upon American cultural norms.  

And this friend, who has a passion for adoption sent me a link, and I proceeded to post this link on facebook, and this link generated a lot of discussion and got reposted a few more times.

I want to keep this adoption discussion going.  In the works are some blogs about:
*Why YOU (whoever you are) should consider adopting. (Expect some soap-boxing in this one, and some David Platt-esque American church criticism.  If that's a problem, maybe skip this blog next week.)
*Saying "No." The two hardest decisions Kevin and I have ever made and what you can still do even if you say "No" to adopting.
*Adoption options and how to get started.   
*Any other adoption related ideas that may get generated as I get started on those...

In the meantime, I'd like to leave you with some weekend adoption reading/viewing:

Reality is a Weighty Thing

Civil Forum on Orphans and Adoption

James 1:27 and the Church
 
Get reading.  Get Considering.  Get Praying. 

That Tennessee Nurse and All My Thoughts Thereafter

About a month ago when I read about Torry Hansen, the Tennessee nurse who sent her adopted son on a plane back to Russia, what bothered me as much as how she treated her son was what she did to the already tenuous state of Russian international adoptions.  I didn't follow it closely but I knew it was safe to assume that Russia would put an immediate halt to in-process adoptions. And they did.

Adoptions disrupt. It's a sad reality but it happens and there are ways to do it correctly. Even if Hansen was at her wit's end, it's hard for me to believe that a woman who was still savvy enough to hire a Russian escort for her son (once he arrived in Russia, he made the international flight alone), wasn't capable of finding a better, kinder alternative for a son she'd previously committed to parent.  If other parents had discovered this Montana ranch, why hadn't she?  If other parents can discuss these things with their caseworkers, take Reactive Attachment Disorder seminars, and seek support for difficult placements why couldn't she?

In the letter Hansen sent with the boy she wrote, "I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues..." Seriously?  Yes and we were told that Kaden had a deviated septum and all sorts of medical gobblygook that meant nothing whatsoever. When we got him stateside we took him to the doctor and began the very expensive process of figuring out Kaden's true medical problems and set to work fixing them.  (Haven't you heard the great adenoid surgery debacle story of December 2005 - it's fabulous...)  Did we send Russia a bill because they'd misled us about Kaden's medical history.  Uh, no, we did not.  

What we sent to Russia were our post-placement reports filled with stories of all we were doing for Kaden attached to all the required colored copies of photos of our growing boy.  We did this for years not because if we didn't we could have lost our son, but because it helped ensure Russia will continue to allow foreign adoptions.  Doing post placement reports helps enable more kids to get out of those orphanages.  With the color copies, the apostilles, and the shipping it cost me around $30 a report, and I think I had to do them five times.  Thank you, Torry Hansen, for undoing all of my efforts and all of the efforts of thousands of other families.  We'll all be sending you a bill for $150.

Unless her American adoption agency blatantly lied to her, I cannot imagine Hansen didn't have some idea that the son she was going to adopt, a son who did not speak her language, who had been institutionalized, whose birth mother was a known alcoholic (so who knows about her drinking practices back during pregnancy), was going to have some bumps in his transition process into her family.  And indeed, perhaps his issues proved too much. Maybe she got in over her head.  I don't fault her for the disruption, but the manner of the disruption was deplorable.

And that's a ridiculously long segue into some news I received from the agency we used for Kaden's adoption. Russia has reopened adoptions.

From an email:

CWA is delighted to once again offer the opportunity to adopt from Russia. Based on the current process, we feel this is a good time to accept new families to begin their adoption of a boy of any age, of a girl age 5 years and older, or of siblings age 1-10 years old. For sibling groups families need to be open to bringing children home up to 10 years old. The realistic youngest age at referral for a boy is 11-12 months and up. The realistic age at referral for a girl is 5 years and older.

You can read complete information about CWA's Russia Adoption Program here:
http://www.cwa.org/russia-adoption.htm 

Therefore, we are once again accepting applications for Russia from families wanting a boy of any age or a girl age 5 or older. We are also accepting applications from families wanting to adopt siblings age 1-10 years old.

So. That’s the current status of Russian adoptions.  And there’s my two cents on the Hansen story.

But what’s REALLY bothered me since that whole thing is this Slate piece.  The author sympathizes with Hansen and I can accept that.  She works to shed light on how complicated it is to bring home a child you are supposed to love, but then reality strikes and this little person you'd fantasized snuggling over bedtime stories with and pushing on the playground swing is actually this rage-filled tyrant who doesn't want anything to do with you.  I appreciate that perspective because adoptive parents-to-be need to hear it.  What I can't handle is how pessimistic she remains about the whole process.  She writes, "The problem is that the harm has already been done. Even the best adoption parent is just the clean-up crew." 

EXCUSE ME?!

I am not JUST the clean-up crew.  This line really, really, really bothers me.  Like, to where I've fantasized about meeting this author, KJ Dell'Antonia, at a party and she's wearing a light color and I've got a glass of red wine and Oops!  Well, oh well.  I mean, you're so good at being the clean-up crew.  Go to town...

But the odds of that scenario are just so minute! Instead, I internet stalked her and she has a blog and she wrote this follow-up post which has such a different tone and some lovely lines, that I've begrudgingly developed a fuller picture.  See:

...because I DID read the books and I DID think about what we were doing and I DID think I was prepared-that she was really screaming about being taken away from everything she'd ever known and loved-she knows, in short, that there were moments when all she needed was comfort and I put her down and I walked away. Those were most emphatically not some loving moments.

And she knows that I don't do that anymore.    

So what I think is that that's part of our story.

What Dell'Antonia is addressing here is the fact that most readers of the Slate piece were appalled to think that her daughter would someday read her words entitled, I Did Not Love My Adopted Child.  I guess all those people are just nicer than me because I was just too busy being offended to worry about her daughter. The Slate piece WITH her blog serving as a companion manage to create a more satisfying bottom line - adoption can suck, but do it anyway.  That, I can get behind.  But if adoption can suck, and even if adoptive parents aren't JUST the clean-up crew but still are, in SOME aspects, the clean-up crew, why adopt?

Maybe before she adopted Torry Hansen was always considered to be a really nice person, but then, becoming an adoptive mother of a child she could not handle pushed her over the edge and suddenly, for about a week this past April, she was everybody's favorite person to hate.  (And I do mean EVERYBODY, because this was international news.)  Why would anyone risk that?! 

A few weeks ago I was at lunch with a friend and she asked me if I would do anything different in terms of how we added to our family.  She was mostly talking about Blue because I think this particular friend is scared of Blue's hellion antics and she marvels how I let him in my house much less read him bedtime stories and let him give me sloppy wet kisses at night.  I said my only regret was that I hated being at Blue's trial at the start of my 9th month of pregnancy with Toby.  I could have used a little more breathing room between all that.  It was hard to go from the stress of trial to the stress of my first newborn but my 3rd kid.  Crazy hard.  And I just wish I could have had some more friggin' downtime! 

I know my answer surprised her.  She knows I bemoan how different Kaden and I are.  How difficult his follower, people-pleaser personality is for me to parent.  Add to that his continued language issues so I STILL feel like I don't really KNOW my son.  Kaden is often hard for me to enjoy.  She knows that.  And Blue. Blue is Blue and he makes my scream and shout and pop blood vessels and think about kicking walls.  (I've never kicked a wall.)  She knows that too.  And Toby. Toby is very often the best and worst part of my day. Toby's diagnosis still overwhelms me.  Toby's smile and giggles are currently my favorite thing in the whole world, but he's also the reason I'm tired all the time and so dang crabby and irritable, so although I love him, 87% of the time I don't particularly like myself, and of course I'm acutely aware of how interconnected that all is, TOBY. 

But at the end of the day, if Kaden struggles with language his whole life and one day I look at my 30 year-old-son and I think, I still don't know you, well, I'm still glad we got him out of that orphanage, fattened him up, got his adenoids and tonsils out, taught him about loving Jesus, the Gators, good food, and more.  And I know it's a 50/50 shot Blue will either be in prison or The President but either way he's mine and I wouldn't have it any other way.  Ditto for Toby no matter where his symptoms take us or science doesn't.

And I don't say that because I'm committed to being their clean-up crew.  I say that because I'm committed to seeing them into the stages of their lives when they understand their first year or so and figure out how it is part of them but certainly not the sum of them.

I know I'm late to the table for this Hansen/Russian adoption discussion, but really there is no end to the fact that we all need to be discussing that adoption is hard but more of us have to do it.  Kids need homes. Messy kids who require lots of clean-up need homes.  But I promise, unlike the picture Dell'Antonia paints in the slate piece (but not her blog) it's not just about the clean up.  

Yesterday, Blue, Toby and I were out and about at lunchtime and I did something I NEVER do.  I let Blue pick our lunch stop and therefor ended up lunching at McDonald's.  (Or Old McDonald's as Blue stubbornly calls it.) As we ate, I know the table next to us was delighting in the cuteness that is Toby and at down times the lady at the register maintained a conversation via hand waving with Blue.  Then we played outside.  I sat at the base of the plaything and Blue bolted up then yelled down, "I'm in my spaceship.  It's punching you!" And sure enough the spaceship thing really did look like a boxing glove and I marveled yet again how that boy notices EVERYTHING.  Meanwhile Toby was crawling over me and pulling up on other things he could reach.  He'd crawl in and out of the shadows and you could SEE his thoughts, why is it so hot to touch there but not here? And in that moment (in McDonald's of all places!) I really loved my life. 

And this morning I attended a kindergartner's Young Authors Party where the class read their books to an audience of their peers and a few parents. And I heard Kaden read his story, "A boy and a dog."  It goes like this:
There was a boy at the park.
There was a dog there also.
They played together.
They had fun at the park.

Does it bother this MFA fiction grad that my son missed the class assigned task of adding conflict to his story? No. 

My Russian born son wrote a conflict-free story that is absolutely true to the experiences of his life now.  It was a joy to hear.  

You have to get through the messes to get to the joys.  That's parenting, regardless of the adoption aspect.

Anything Else?

At the end of everyone's blog interviews I asked, "Anything else?"  Some had extra comments, some didn't. I didn't, but I've been thinking a lot more on this and now I do. And it's my blog so I can be delayed like that! (Na-ne-na-ne-boo-boo!)

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti I linked to a blog of a family that was in the process of getting their adoption-in-process son out.  I've followed that blog some since (and yes, they got their boy home!) and there was one post that stayed with me awhile.  In this post she addresses some of the controversy around getting Haitian orphans out and then she addressed a blog reader's comment that was pretty scathingly anti-adoption.  But, if you can get past the anger in this (anonymous!) person's comments, he has a point.

Here's the first part of that comment:

A story on NBC News tonight about a U.S. couple adopting some Haitian children really bothered me. It was pretty much a fluff and feel-good story, featuring the happy and smiling (white) couple hugging and playing with their cute-as-a-button little (black) Haitian boys, talking about how thrilled they were to finally get the children out of Haiti. 

They'd started adoption proceedings before the earthquake, from an earlier visit to Haiti when they had picked the kids out at an orphanage.All sort of sweet and warm-and-fuzzy sounding, until the newsreader came to the real kicker -- the boys' mother is alive, she only gave them up to the orphanage because she was too poor to feed them.And there was the American woman, waxing all emotional about how wonderful it was for the boys' mother to make such a "noble sacrifice" of giving up her children so the boys "could have a better life."That's where my head exploded. Excuse me? 

What the hell kind of f-ing phony compassion is it to just swoop in and and grab up some children and haul them thousands of miles away because their mother was so impoverished that she had to give them up? Wouldn't REAL compassion be doing something for the mother so that she COULD afford to keep her own babies? 

Kevin and I had many conversations about how yes, we were saving Blue's life but what about his birth mom?  (In Kaden's case birth mom is unknown.)  We admitted that if we were really committed to the "least of these" we would have offered her the chance of living with us too.  Blue's birth mom is borderline mentally handicapped and collects disability as her only income.  Not only was she not financially capable of taking care of Blue, she just wasn't up to the task as made evident by the fact that Blue, was her FOURTH child to be taken into state custody. If she is ever to get on her feet, she needs a stable guardian of her own and to stop running in the circles she's always run in.  So yes, we were there for Blue. But who was there for birth mom? 

If we had continued to live in Texas there is no doubt that we would have tried harder to help Blue's birth mom, but our calling was to move to Florida and serve with MFI, and for reasons I won't go into in this post, we decided it best to cut all communicative cords with birth mom. Even so, we recognize that while adoption is a blessing in so many circumstances, it is still a complicated solution.

Now back to international adoptions... If every American who adopted internationally took the many thousands that adoption cost them and pumped it into the economy of the country (ok maybe not China, that's another story) then would there be so many Russian/Guatemalan/Ethiopian/Haitian orphans?  Look at this week's news and you've got eight Americans being released from Haiti, eight Americans who believed they were helping Haitian families by splitting them apart (illegally at that!).  If this church was so committed to helping the impoverished of Haiti why build their orphanage in the DR? Why not build it in Haiti?  And why allow kids to come who still have families?  Why not staff this orphanage (and pay a fair wage!) with the people who were so poor they were willing to hand their kids off to strange Americans? Should the goal be to have nice orphanages or should the goal should be to eliminate their need?

While we were in Russia visiting Kaden there was another orphan who had a daily visitor - his birth mom who couldn't afford to keep him.  What would the money we'd spent to adopt Kaden have done for her and her son?  

We have obeyed God's call to take care of orphans, yes, but are we doing anything to make it so parents
don't have to abandon their children in the first place?  What are we doing about this? Admittedly not as much, BUT... We sponsor a child through Compassion International, a child who lives with his family.  And we sponsored lunches for a child for one year at a school in Kenya that our Longview church has partnered with. And we've given up a lot for Kevin to pursue his dream to fly in a missions capacity.  He's a missionary who acts in a supportive role to other missionaries who do much to help Haitian and Dominican families.

So, what does all of the above have to do with the blog series from this past week?  

This: if God calls us to adopt again we will, or if He changes my mind about having another biological child we will, but if He doesn't, that doesn't mean we won't be adding to our family.  Perhaps we'll sponsor another child through Compassion.  Or perhaps we'll meet a single mom locally who needs some help keeping things together and we'll be able to befriend her so that her children will never end up in foster care. Maybe, down the road, one of our kids will befriend someone being raised by grandparents and we'll be able to fill a void in that child's life.  

I may sometimes use the word "done," but no matter how many kids we have living under our roof, I hope we are always looking for ways to expand our family and our family's love.  

Super Bowl Menu

Appetizers:
home-made salsa and organic blue corn tortilla chips
shrimp cocktail

Main Course:
Vegetarian Black Bean Chili  The recipe recommends serving over Quinoa which will be a first for our family but we're trying it!

Dessert: some of us (not Kevin, he's been hard-core healthy these days) are having ice cream but we bought a small container so there will be no leftovers.  

It's all about the food but I am rooting for the Saints.

Also interested to see the post-game reaction to the Focus on the Family Tim Tebow commercial.  If the one aired during the game is anything like the pre-game one, (which I've seen online and it is so vague, it's difficult to figure out what it's even about) I think the whole to-do about it will be deflated quickly.