Love

Thank you all for your kind words and comments both on here and on facebook. For those of you who I hadn't updated before now...particularly all my long-distance buddies, I'm sorry! It wasn't intentional. It was sort of the same "stuck" feeling that I mentioned in my last post...I don't know if that makes sense. Anyway, I saw a mini-documentary today that I can't get out of my head and thought it was pertinent to post here since I was on the topic of contentment. I must warn you, you will probably need tissues, but there is a rare and precious purity of love that shines so clearly in this story... don't miss it!



Here is the site where this story is posted: the-story-of-ian-larissa 

The winter of my discontent

   It's been a while and so much has happened and at the same time nothing has happened. Those in the adoption world know exactly what I mean.  Every time I tried to write an update, I got stuck in the middle of my post and deleted it.
   By now many of you know that we lost our first referral. On March 13, we found out that the little precious boy who captured our hearts in the last post had been picked up at the orphanage by his birthmother. I don't know any of the details, but I am assuming something in her situation changed and she is able to care for him. We had not yet passed court so thankfully, it wasn't a messy mess.
Here is where I always get stuck...trying to explain how I feel about this. On one hand, praise the Lord!! He's with his birth mama who wants him and can care for him. Yes! Yes! That is where he should be. And this is what I will tell you if you ask me about it. No tears, just clasped, hopeful hands as I explain.
   And then I go home and sometimes look more like my 3 year old son when he's been told, "No!" (Picture lower lip pouting out so far you could catch a gutter's worth of rain) or like my 5 year old daughter when she feels wronged (picture arms folded across her chest whilst stomping up the stairs). On my days of lesser patience, I say "this is not how it was supposed to happen"...not just this. All of it.
   We started paperwork in the Spring of 2010 for Rwanda. 2 years. Stomp, stomp, tantrum. Our fingerprints are expiring (don't get me started again on the fingerprints...do you remember what happened the last time?) and soon our home study will be expiring. Update this, update that. Saying bad things as I try to navigate the USCIS website. (Seriously, how do immigrants navigate this tangled web when English isn't their first language?)
HOWEVER,
even in the midst of my discontent, God's been whispering to my heart. I recently read a blog post that is full of encouragement about waiting and I wanted to share it with you. Here's the site.

My favorite verses from the post are Habakkuk 2:2-3

And then God answered: "Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what's coming. It aches for the coming--it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time."

I love these verses because 1. even when our journey looks twisty and bumpy as if we took several wrong turns, the end of the journey (which is really just the beginning of being together with our child) happens at the time it was always meant to. 2. The "write it down" part reminds me to look for ways that God is at work along the way instead of focusing only on the goal. We are "living stones" and we can testify that God never leaves us (or our kids) alone while we wait and that He is at work even while we wait.

Exhale. I'm glad that God loves us even in our 5 year-old state of selfishness. Another adoptive mom from my agency's google group said that there is something so important about this season of waiting. God has something for us here.

My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. Psalm 130:6

the day we've been waiting for

On Monday evening we were contacted by our program director to see if we were interested in a 6 month old little boy. My heart started racing and I ran downstairs to tell my husband who was playing with our kids in the basement. Grinning from ear to ear, he said, "I think this is our boy." He gathered the kids up and we explained that they were going to have a brother. My five year old, Talia, started jumping up and down and grinning from ear to ear. Both kids were excited!
"Well, did you say yes?"Chris asked.  Not yet! I ran back upstairs and wrote back, "yes, yes, yes, yes!" And a few minutes later the picture came. We gathered around the computer. I think I stopped breathing for a second....because this is the moment that you dream about and dream about since the day that you open up your heart to the idea of adoption. *exhale* "Oh, he's so beautiful," we both said at the same time. I printed out the picture and immediately Talia asked if she could have it. She carried it around with her for the rest of the evening and even propped it up next to her stuffed animals at bedtime. She is so excited...I caught her laying there staring at it with a big smile on her face. *so precious*

So that's our news! I know there are a lot more steps to complete and a lot more time to wait. But I'm just taking time to be joyful and thankful to the Lord. I'm so appreciative of the community of adoptive families that I've come to know online. Everyone celebrates one another with every completed step. And so to all my friends still waiting...I'm praying that your referral day is around the corner.

I can't show the photo here on my blog, but besides being adorable, he looks very healthy...even has a bit of baby chunker thighs goin' on. He's got a soft halo of baby fuzz for hair. And now we join the ranks of those waiting through the court process, and then the I600 and lots of stuff in between that I should read up on. Hopefully it will be shorter rather than longer in the given 6-12 month timeline from this point. But I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for the latter.

no referral yet

I wish that I had an adoption update for you...the only update is that we are still holding strong at #1 on the waiting list. It's been a little harder the past couple weeks. I realized recently that it has been two years since the tug on our hearts to start this adoption journey. The funny thing is that we held off on starting the process right away because at that time our youngest was not yet one year old and we were afraid that he and our new one would be too close in age! Now I'm starting to feel like they will be too far apart! (not really...I think it will be a good spread. Maybe God's timing has something to do with preserving my sanity. hah!) Seriously though, a verse that has become very dear to me in this process is Proverbs 19:21 which says,

Many plans are in a man's mind, but it is the Lord's purpose for him that will stand.

So we are waiting for the day that the Lord has planned with great anticipation. :)

I was just down at my parents for a brief visit with the kids and at the church they attend, tomorrow is Orphan Sunday (the day when as a church they are bringing awareness to the way in which we, as a body of believers, can be involved in the care of vulnerable children around the world and here at home). This video is a promo video being used...I really like the words they have chosen to explain the impetus for reaching out to love others (in this case the children): God defended us, adopted us, rescued us, sought us, found us, loved us. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). And when we love others we make God's heart visible. And that's what it's about...whether you are adopting or not. Just love.



Orphan Sunday 2011 from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.

halloween

This year we went trick-or-treating for the first time. Our kids were excited, but a little nervous! They are both a bit afraid of the dark and it didn't help that there were spooky sightings all around. We approached one house that had this scary skeletal looking guy on the door and our kids let out a collective "whoa" when we walked up. But it was still more fun than scary and the kiddos had a blast.

Ben had a costume parade at his preschool earlier that day. He was sooooo cute.

Ben's first field trip

Ben is in preschool a few mornings a week now and he loves it! His class went on a field trip this past Monday to a local farm where they got to pick out pumpkins and go in a corn maze and get a tractor hay ride.

 These goats were lined up waiting for the kids to feed them. hahaha!

blog reboot

Ta-Da!

Well helloooo. Decided it was about time for an update. (It's only been, what, 6 months?) The biggest update is that we are #1 on our agency's waiting list for a referral. Some of you who were checking my adoption blog already know this. I've decided to go back to being a one blog blogger. I have a hard enough time keeping one updated let alone two. My other blog charges a small fee for the password feature that is needing to be renewed. And I don't really want to...so I've decided to join the public ranks again. I've updated the adoption timeline to catch some of you up.

So hopefully any day now I will have good news for you on the adoption front. It has been a loooong road. I can't believe that we made the decision to adopt 2 years ago. But, like I have said before, we are trusting that God is directing our steps and that this has always been the plan.

Jeremiah 10:23 - O Lord [pleads Jeremiah in the name of the people], I know that [the determination of] the way of a man is not in himself; it is not in man [even in a strong man or in a man at his best] to direct his [own] steps.