Monday, December 30, 2013
Last Update of 2013
My original intent was to write my final update of the year on New Year's Eve. However, tomorrow is going to be a busy day and I'm pretty sure if I wait, it would be New Year's Day or later before I get this up. So 1 hr. before New Year's Eve will have to do. :)
December 5th- Get a call from my Dr. office saying my re-done ear tube letter will be complete and notarized by December 12.
December 11th- Emailed our social worker to see if there's been any progress on our home study, just curious if she has any news.
December 12th- Hear back from our social worker saying she's received our home study, but cannot mail it out until Monday. I was a little confused because I wasn't sure if she had just gotten it from her supervisor and still needed to send it to the state for approval.
Also, completely forgot about my ear tube letter, and as I'm writing this, I still haven't picked it up...it's been that kind of month. Plus, our Dr. office is really not on the way to anything, so it'll be a special trip.
December 13th- I emailed our social worker for clarification, but she's not in the office on Friday's so I know I won't hear anything until the following week.
December 16th- We emailed a scanned copy of our I-800 form to our case worker so she can double check it for us (we want to get it right the first time). She emails back and says everything looks good.
December 17th- We get the email we've been waiting for...oh, for months! Our social worker emailed to let us know original, notarized copies of our home study were in the mail on their way to us (Hooray!)! Also found out that she was sending a copy to the state to have it certified for our agency, that saves us one trip to the capitol, her having it certified for us. :)
December 19th- After being gone all day I come home to a note from our mail carrier telling me there's a certified envelope waiting for me at the post office...Gah!
December 20th- Run to the post office to pick up the certified envelope with our home study in it on my way to school to help with our oldest's Christmas party.
December 21st- E runs out to get 2 cashier's checks. One to cover the processing fee for our I-800 form and another to cover the cost of us all being fingerprinted, yet again, at a later date. This next time it'll be for the FBI.
December 22nd- Put the finishing touches on our I-800 form, basically we all sign where we need to sign (E, myself, and my in-laws). I make sure we have the correct number of copies of the other documents we need to mail with our I-800 form.
December 23rd- First day of Christmas vacation for the kids. I and 4 of the kids trek over to the post office. Of course it being only days before Christmas there's a few people there, and my kids, upon entering the building, suddenly can't keep their hands off of each other or select post office merchandise. Even though they got strict instructions before entering the post office that they were supposed to stand right by me, and touch NOTHING! So, what could've been a 3 minute deal turned into a bit longer. Thankfully I double checked all the documents that needed to accompany our home study and I-800 form to USCIS to apply for immigration approval for our daughter. Somehow everything made it into an envelope, I addressed it, paid, and we made it out the door in one piece, and my children didn't bump into any of the elderly people at the post office. Yeah... I've been praying that God gets all those documents and cashier's checks into the right hands, because, well, I was a little distracted.
All that aside, we were so happy to get everything off for immigration approval before Christmas!
Now we wait, some more. Immigration Approval can take 2-3 months to get, and that's the final document we need to complete our dossier. So we're praying if it's God's will it won't take the full 90 days, but we'll get approval sooner.
December 28th- Email family pictures to our case worker for approval before I print them out. These pictures will be included in our dossier. She said they were great! :)
December 2013 was insane, really. There's no other way to describe it. The weird thing is, almost none of the insanity was adoption related. December is busy, no matter what's going on, there's just extra stuff. Programs and parties, cookie exchanges, shopping, decorating, attempting to get Christmas cards out (we succeeded this year!), and that's just Christmas related. Nevermind just the day to day craziness. And our oldest son is on the school basketball team, so now we are trying to find a new normal that includes basketball games twice-ish a week. We didn't do so good this month, we're adjusting, and, well, there were a few other things going on. Hopefully, January's new basketball normal will be a little more, um, normal. :)
Looking back, and still having vivid memories of this month, I know God carried me through most of it. This month was exhausting, and I had a few days where honestly, I was relying on the Lord moment by moment just to make it through the day. I'm so thankful for how He met me. Things didn't magically get better, but He gave me the strength to keep going.
As 2013 is coming to a close, I'm very thankful! Thankful for where God has brought us, what He's done in us, what He's done for us. I'm thankful that through the trials and storms of this past year He has been a refuge. He's not ever left us. He has been and still is faithful.
If you think of us, please pray for us. Please pray for our daughter. Please pray that if it's God's will our immigration approval will happen sooner then later and that all the details will be taken care of. Please pray that we continue to trust God's timing.
Happy New Year!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
6 Month Update
It's hard to believe that tomorrow will bring us into the last month of 2013! This year has gone by so fast! This past month was pretty quiet adoption-wise, so this update will be short-ish. :)
The past 2 years now for the month of November, I've tried to do "30-days of thanks" on Facebook. I know that some people think it's cheesy, but for me, I love how it makes me more conscious of all the many, many things I have to be thankful for. And with the adoption news being next to nothing for close to a month, sharing something(s) that I'm thankful for daily was great for helping keep a right perspective. It's easy, at least in my case, sometimes to get tunnel vision with adoption, and keeping an attitude of thankfulness, helped to widen my vision. :)
November 1st- 6 months ago we contracted with our agency.
November 13th- Go to the clinic to pick-up my ear tube letter. Everything looked great, except it was not on clinic letterhead. It needs to be re-done on clinic letterhead, so I'm waiting for a copy of my letter on clinic letterhead.
November 19th- Decide to email our social worker to find out if there's any news. Hear back that she's just waiting on background checks to come in, the new ones we just did in October and my step-mom-in-laws.
E and I call her to find out if she thinks it'd be a good idea to call our local sheriff's department to see if we can speed things up, she says, yes.
I call our sheriff's department and get transferred to the lady who is doing the background checks. I asked her if she could give me any kind of timeline as to how soon she might be able to get to them. She looks through her pile and ours were the 2nd stack of papers on her pile. She told me that she'd have them finished in the next 15 min. and would email the results to our social worker as soon as she finished (Yay!!).
I also get an email from the woman who takes care of a lot of the background check stuff at the agency our social worker, works at, saying she had just received the final bit of information on my step-mom-in-law (out-of-state background check), and everything is clear and good to go. She'll get the information to our social worker the next day.
November 21st- We get an email from our social worker saying she had just sent an updated copy of our home study to our adoption agency to look over.
I emailed the lady who reads over all the home studies for China at our agency asking her if she could give me an idea of how long it might take before we'd hear anything. She emailed me back within 10 minutes letting me know that she was actually reading through our home study when my email came through, and she'd be finished in the next 30 min. and would let me know. Within the hour she let me know our agency had officially approved our home study and that she'd given our social worker the go-ahead to finalize our home study (Hooray!).
An hour or so later we got an email from our social worker saying she'd gotten approval from our agency. She sent our home study to her supervisor for approval and once her supervisor approves it, she'll send the home study to the state for approval. Once the state approves things we'll get the hard copy of our home study.
The 21st was very exciting for us! Our home study is so close to being finished now. After almost a month of hearing nothing, we finally received news, exciting news! The most time consuming portion of our dossier is so close to being complete. I'm not sure when we'll be holding the hard copies in our hands, but we're hoping it's really, really soon! Up next (after we get our hard copies) we apply for Immigration Approval, which unfortunately can take 2-3 months to get. So the sooner we get our hard copies the better. :)
Heading into December as much as I wish we were further along in the process, I am thankful for how God is teaching us through all of this. I'm thankful that even on the hardest days, He's teaching me to be thankful even when there's pain. If you think of us please pray for us, we still have a long way to go, and while we would like for things to be moving along quicker, we also don't want to get a head of God's timing. Pray for patience for us, and that we continue to trust Him no matter what things may look like from day to day.
If you have been praying, thank you! Thank you so much!
Happy Thanksgiving!
The past 2 years now for the month of November, I've tried to do "30-days of thanks" on Facebook. I know that some people think it's cheesy, but for me, I love how it makes me more conscious of all the many, many things I have to be thankful for. And with the adoption news being next to nothing for close to a month, sharing something(s) that I'm thankful for daily was great for helping keep a right perspective. It's easy, at least in my case, sometimes to get tunnel vision with adoption, and keeping an attitude of thankfulness, helped to widen my vision. :)
November 1st- 6 months ago we contracted with our agency.
November 13th- Go to the clinic to pick-up my ear tube letter. Everything looked great, except it was not on clinic letterhead. It needs to be re-done on clinic letterhead, so I'm waiting for a copy of my letter on clinic letterhead.
November 19th- Decide to email our social worker to find out if there's any news. Hear back that she's just waiting on background checks to come in, the new ones we just did in October and my step-mom-in-laws.
E and I call her to find out if she thinks it'd be a good idea to call our local sheriff's department to see if we can speed things up, she says, yes.
I call our sheriff's department and get transferred to the lady who is doing the background checks. I asked her if she could give me any kind of timeline as to how soon she might be able to get to them. She looks through her pile and ours were the 2nd stack of papers on her pile. She told me that she'd have them finished in the next 15 min. and would email the results to our social worker as soon as she finished (Yay!!).
I also get an email from the woman who takes care of a lot of the background check stuff at the agency our social worker, works at, saying she had just received the final bit of information on my step-mom-in-law (out-of-state background check), and everything is clear and good to go. She'll get the information to our social worker the next day.
November 21st- We get an email from our social worker saying she had just sent an updated copy of our home study to our adoption agency to look over.
I emailed the lady who reads over all the home studies for China at our agency asking her if she could give me an idea of how long it might take before we'd hear anything. She emailed me back within 10 minutes letting me know that she was actually reading through our home study when my email came through, and she'd be finished in the next 30 min. and would let me know. Within the hour she let me know our agency had officially approved our home study and that she'd given our social worker the go-ahead to finalize our home study (Hooray!).
An hour or so later we got an email from our social worker saying she'd gotten approval from our agency. She sent our home study to her supervisor for approval and once her supervisor approves it, she'll send the home study to the state for approval. Once the state approves things we'll get the hard copy of our home study.
The 21st was very exciting for us! Our home study is so close to being finished now. After almost a month of hearing nothing, we finally received news, exciting news! The most time consuming portion of our dossier is so close to being complete. I'm not sure when we'll be holding the hard copies in our hands, but we're hoping it's really, really soon! Up next (after we get our hard copies) we apply for Immigration Approval, which unfortunately can take 2-3 months to get. So the sooner we get our hard copies the better. :)
Heading into December as much as I wish we were further along in the process, I am thankful for how God is teaching us through all of this. I'm thankful that even on the hardest days, He's teaching me to be thankful even when there's pain. If you think of us please pray for us, we still have a long way to go, and while we would like for things to be moving along quicker, we also don't want to get a head of God's timing. Pray for patience for us, and that we continue to trust Him no matter what things may look like from day to day.
If you have been praying, thank you! Thank you so much!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Quiet-ish Moments
I'm not exactly sure what direction this post is going to take. Over the past week or 2 I've had 2-4 different ideas for blog topics swimming around my head. I'd think of a topic and somehow as I began writing the post in my head it would take a turn and I'd decide that I should maybe make the one topic into 2 topics, otherwise the post would get too long or maybe too confusing. However, I'm pretty sure this post won't have much to do with my latest ideas. :)
When I type out my monthly updates or any other blog post I try and wait until I have some down time, alone time, quiet time...basically a time when I'll be least likely to be interrupted. With 5 kiddos, that doesn't happen very often. I should rephrase that, ideal time for me to blog would be early in the morning or at night when the kids are in bed, but those are typically not my best intelligible sentence making times of the day. :) And I'm writing this when I probably should be trying to sleep, but it so rarely happens that I'm the last or only one up at night these days, so you've been warned. If there are parts of this that make no sense, you know why.
This post I think is mainly for me. A way to write out how I'm feeling, so I can look back and remember a year from now where I was at, what I was thinking.
The past couple weeks have been not the easiest parenting-wise. Dealing with attitude issues, addressing school related issues (i.e. homework not always complete, not reading as much as one should be), bathroom issues, and other normal child-related issues. Add into the mix all of us getting some form of sickness (colds, sinus infections, ear infections, strep throat) all within a 2 week period and there's plenty of days I'm left feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.
My 2 youngest kids are a small 2-man wrecking crew. They can wreak havoc in any room in a matter of minutes. If they're out of eyeshot for too long, it usually doesn't end well. And lately we've been dealing with some newer ways they've come up with to make life interesting. For example, the 3 year-old is newly potty trained (Yay!). Monday, we were getting ready to leave to pick the older kids up from school and he decides that it'd be fun to take a cape that he has on a pair of pajamas and use that instead of going to the bathroom. So minutes before we need to leave, I've got a wet mess to clean-up. Then once we were at school I was meeting with one of my older boys teachers to finish up our conference from parent/teacher conferences and the 3 year-old had an accident in the classroom on the carpet. Accidents happen, I just felt bad it happened on the carpet, but was very thankful I had an extra set of clothes along.
Later that night when I was getting ready for bed, I had be out food shopping so my husband got the kids to bed. We usually snuggle our little ones in our bed before they fall asleep. Well, apparently at one point the 3 year-old, although we don't know for sure if it was him or his sister or maybe both together, were left alone in our room for a time. I was going to climb into bed and noticed white streaks all over the sheets. Thankfully my small children are not good at covering their tracks so I figured out right away after seeing my deodorant laying on the bed that he/she/they decided to deodorize our sheets...yeah. After the earlier events of the day this was par for the course, and I was too tired to care, so I flipped my pillow over to the untouched side and went to bed figuring there were worse things I could wake-up smelling like. :)
Why am writing all this out? Well, I'm slowing coming to a realization.
Often times when I'm having days like this, and we end out in public somewhere, well really many times when I'm out somewhere with my kids, I get the comment a lot, "wow, you've got your hands full." And I know that most of the time it's because people may not know what to say to me because I have 5 kids and not a lot of families have that many kids these days. For the most part the comment usually doesn't bother me. I get it, I have a lot of kids, and when someone said it to me yesterday, I literally had my hands full (my purse, a bag with books in it, a coat or 2, and a child) but lately it's been harder to hear that.
I take things very personally when it comes to my family. By that I mean, when I see failures in an area, I'm really good at blaming myself. I mean logically if my child fails his social studies test it's my fault. When my son forgets his lunch and adamantly tells the office ladies he cannot get hot lunch and when the school calls (about the missing lunch) and finds out our phone number changed and I forgot to let them know so they had to call my cell phone, in my mind the school thinks I'm a delinquent parent. Or when my child pees on his pajama cape, clearly I'm doing something wrong. I know these seem extreme and as I'm writing them now, I'm finding more humor in them then I originally did. But that's how I roll, instead of remembering in the first place that there are failures in life, because I remember most things for 5 sometimes 6 people other then myself, I'm bound to forget things now and then, and well, life is messy, and when your potty training your kiddo life can get even messier for a while, I blame myself.
On these days that are harder then normal, more emotionally draining then normal, especially when there's many consecutive days like that, it's so easy for me to question our choosing to adopt. So easy. And I've had a lot of days like that recently. Wondering how it's all going to work. Realizing we truly are crazy. :)
And it's days like that I'm so thankful that God made it clear that our adopting is part of His plan for our family. He has sent us on an adventure that's going to take us literally to the other side of the world.
I know that I'll have many more days to come where I wonder why God has led us to adopt, why He would think to entrust us with another child? It leaves me speechless sometimes...
The past couple weeks have been harder, and sickness has played a part, but for the past 5 days in the midst of all the extra craziness and questioning how we're going to do this all with 6 little people, my heart has been aching. My heart has been hurting, my heart is missing her, my arms are aching to hold her, my eyes are wishing we had a picture, my mother's heart is aching for my daughter.
I'm thankful for that ache. It brings me to tears.
But it reminds me to pray. It reminds me to trust. It reminds me to savor the moments we have as a family of 7. It reminds me of all God has done in my heart so far.
I'm realizing that our hands will be much more full, our life is going to be even more crazy, and the day-to-day is going to get harder for a while, but she is worth it.
When I type out my monthly updates or any other blog post I try and wait until I have some down time, alone time, quiet time...basically a time when I'll be least likely to be interrupted. With 5 kiddos, that doesn't happen very often. I should rephrase that, ideal time for me to blog would be early in the morning or at night when the kids are in bed, but those are typically not my best intelligible sentence making times of the day. :) And I'm writing this when I probably should be trying to sleep, but it so rarely happens that I'm the last or only one up at night these days, so you've been warned. If there are parts of this that make no sense, you know why.
This post I think is mainly for me. A way to write out how I'm feeling, so I can look back and remember a year from now where I was at, what I was thinking.
The past couple weeks have been not the easiest parenting-wise. Dealing with attitude issues, addressing school related issues (i.e. homework not always complete, not reading as much as one should be), bathroom issues, and other normal child-related issues. Add into the mix all of us getting some form of sickness (colds, sinus infections, ear infections, strep throat) all within a 2 week period and there's plenty of days I'm left feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.
My 2 youngest kids are a small 2-man wrecking crew. They can wreak havoc in any room in a matter of minutes. If they're out of eyeshot for too long, it usually doesn't end well. And lately we've been dealing with some newer ways they've come up with to make life interesting. For example, the 3 year-old is newly potty trained (Yay!). Monday, we were getting ready to leave to pick the older kids up from school and he decides that it'd be fun to take a cape that he has on a pair of pajamas and use that instead of going to the bathroom. So minutes before we need to leave, I've got a wet mess to clean-up. Then once we were at school I was meeting with one of my older boys teachers to finish up our conference from parent/teacher conferences and the 3 year-old had an accident in the classroom on the carpet. Accidents happen, I just felt bad it happened on the carpet, but was very thankful I had an extra set of clothes along.
Later that night when I was getting ready for bed, I had be out food shopping so my husband got the kids to bed. We usually snuggle our little ones in our bed before they fall asleep. Well, apparently at one point the 3 year-old, although we don't know for sure if it was him or his sister or maybe both together, were left alone in our room for a time. I was going to climb into bed and noticed white streaks all over the sheets. Thankfully my small children are not good at covering their tracks so I figured out right away after seeing my deodorant laying on the bed that he/she/they decided to deodorize our sheets...yeah. After the earlier events of the day this was par for the course, and I was too tired to care, so I flipped my pillow over to the untouched side and went to bed figuring there were worse things I could wake-up smelling like. :)
Why am writing all this out? Well, I'm slowing coming to a realization.
Often times when I'm having days like this, and we end out in public somewhere, well really many times when I'm out somewhere with my kids, I get the comment a lot, "wow, you've got your hands full." And I know that most of the time it's because people may not know what to say to me because I have 5 kids and not a lot of families have that many kids these days. For the most part the comment usually doesn't bother me. I get it, I have a lot of kids, and when someone said it to me yesterday, I literally had my hands full (my purse, a bag with books in it, a coat or 2, and a child) but lately it's been harder to hear that.
I take things very personally when it comes to my family. By that I mean, when I see failures in an area, I'm really good at blaming myself. I mean logically if my child fails his social studies test it's my fault. When my son forgets his lunch and adamantly tells the office ladies he cannot get hot lunch and when the school calls (about the missing lunch) and finds out our phone number changed and I forgot to let them know so they had to call my cell phone, in my mind the school thinks I'm a delinquent parent. Or when my child pees on his pajama cape, clearly I'm doing something wrong. I know these seem extreme and as I'm writing them now, I'm finding more humor in them then I originally did. But that's how I roll, instead of remembering in the first place that there are failures in life, because I remember most things for 5 sometimes 6 people other then myself, I'm bound to forget things now and then, and well, life is messy, and when your potty training your kiddo life can get even messier for a while, I blame myself.
On these days that are harder then normal, more emotionally draining then normal, especially when there's many consecutive days like that, it's so easy for me to question our choosing to adopt. So easy. And I've had a lot of days like that recently. Wondering how it's all going to work. Realizing we truly are crazy. :)
And it's days like that I'm so thankful that God made it clear that our adopting is part of His plan for our family. He has sent us on an adventure that's going to take us literally to the other side of the world.
I know that I'll have many more days to come where I wonder why God has led us to adopt, why He would think to entrust us with another child? It leaves me speechless sometimes...
The past couple weeks have been harder, and sickness has played a part, but for the past 5 days in the midst of all the extra craziness and questioning how we're going to do this all with 6 little people, my heart has been aching. My heart has been hurting, my heart is missing her, my arms are aching to hold her, my eyes are wishing we had a picture, my mother's heart is aching for my daughter.
I'm thankful for that ache. It brings me to tears.
But it reminds me to pray. It reminds me to trust. It reminds me to savor the moments we have as a family of 7. It reminds me of all God has done in my heart so far.
I'm realizing that our hands will be much more full, our life is going to be even more crazy, and the day-to-day is going to get harder for a while, but she is worth it.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Month In Review
The end of the month is here once again. When I started making notes and kind of reviewing all that we've done this month for our adoption...it was busy, very busy...I knew it was busy, but thinking it all through and writing it down made me tired. :)
Earlier this week I was thinking about how my update for this month is nothing like what I thought this update would look like.
When I wrote September's update we had just seen the rough draft of our home study, I was on cloud 9, thinking that things would really start moving, well, moving as much as any part in adoption moves...slower then you want usually. But in my head the biggest, hardest part of the dossier was going to soon be complete and November's update would be about how we had sent in all of our documents for Immigration Approval, we had all the rest of our dossier papers just sitting and waiting for Immigration Approval to come back, and, well, that didn't happen...at all.
Sitting and typing now, with this month's storm behind me I'm seeing how God is truly causing us to trust Him in ways we've not trusted Him before. And that our trusting Him is also refining us, and the refining we're going through is hard and painful at times, but He's teaching us, growing us, and drawing us closer to Him.
At one point this month, when I was at my lowest (I had a couple very hard, discouraging days), my husband said to me, "It's possible these delays are not just about our daughter, they could be so that God can refine us as parents to the children we already have."
That really hit home.
I remember having another conversation earlier in the month telling my husband how sick I was of paperwork, how ready to be done I was, because adoption related things easily take up so much of my time, that I felt like my kids were just getting "leftovers" from me. And I don't want that.
I know that I have so far to go as a mom, there are days that I feel like a complete failure, and still wonder why God called us to adopt. Feeling inadequate some days to parent the children we have, and then knowing we'll be adding someone new, who at first will likely be harder to parent for a while for a number of reasons...
I come back to the fact that, I have to trust Him, and I have to believe Him.
He is more then able to give us the wisdom and strength to raise our children, and another one...He is able! It's when I'm relying on myself completely that I so easily see my shortcomings, but God is greater then my shortcomings. Hallelujah!
And that was a long rabbit trail, that I'm not sure made sense. :) So let's move on to the update.
October 1st- Pick up fixed psych evaluation letters (there was an issue with the dates).
October 4th- I dropped paperwork off at our local sheriff's department to have local background checks run on us.
E had a couple job related letters for our dossier notarized.
I was working on our financial form for our adoption agency. There was an area that we had to fill out that hadn't been listed on the form for our social worker. This area would change some numbers around and everything. needs. to. match. It was a Friday night, and I was afraid that this would mess some things up because our social worker would have to change numbers around, and I wasn't really able to get a hold of anyone because it was Friday night. Long story short, I had a meltdown...
I know there were a few factors that played a part, but I was in our bedroom sobbing, wondering if we had missed God's timing? How was this all going to work out? Not good. I was a mess.
God is so good though! He met me in that low-tear-filled place.
I was also texting with E during all of this and when I mentioned I was afraid we had missed God's timing, he was encouraging me and texted back, "sometimes God's will isn't convenient." So true.
October 5th-I was doing much better. The fog had cleared, and I realized that what seemed like a huge mountain the night before really wasn't anything to be worried about. Part of my meltdown was stress related. We were pushing and running around trying to get a lot of papers finished and notarized by October 8. E was going to the state capitol for work and we wanted to drop off as much as we could to have things state certified. We had a few documents that needed to be authenticated in Washington D.C. before December or they would expire and would need to have them re-done or re-printed.
October 7th- I go back to the sheriff's department to pick-up our notarized background check letters. I run to UPS to get a pre-paid label so when our documents are state certified they can mail them back to us. E and I met with a friend who is a notary to get the last few documents we wanted to have ready to be state certified notarized.
October 8th- E takes documents (a good chunk of our dossier) to be state certified. Get an email from someone at our social worker's agency saying that there was some paperwork she sent my step-mom-in-law to be filled out. She was wondering where that was at because that paperwork had to be processed in order to finish her FBI background check. And the home study cannot be finalized without it. We get working on that.
October 11th- Our documents arrive from the capitol state certified!!!
Later in the afternoon I stop at E's office to make copies of everything we just had certified so we can mail it to our case worker and she can then send if off to D.C. to be authenticated. While I was making copies I noticed that 2 of the documents we not notarized correctly (there was some info. missing). I really believe it was the Lord that helped me to notice that because we had already looked over the documents and technically they shouldn't have been certified because they weren't notarized properly. Had we not caught the mistake, they would've been sent back from D.C. to be re-done correctly, and that would've cost time and money. I was thanking God for noticing that.
October 12th- E runs the 2 documents to our notary friend so she can fill in the missing information. He made it to her house an hour or 2 before she and her family we're leaving for vacation for 2 weeks, out of the country.
October 15th- Mail all of the dossier paperwork we have done (there's still more) and state certified to our case worker!! Also mail the paperwork my step-mom-in-law needed to fill out so her background check could be finished.
October 16th- Our social worker sends us an email with follow-up questions our adoption agency sent her. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, however, there were a couple of things that kind of made us go, "Really?!" Just an example, my husband's parents adopted and fostered kids when he was growing up. We now needed to have my father-in-law fill out release forms for all of the agencies he worked with. Thankfully there were only 2 agencies, so that made things easy, but getting info. from release forms takes time...another delay.
October 17th- Find out from our social worker that the fingerprinting and release forms we filled out for background checks in May, were set to expire mid-November and we had to re-do those ASAP. More delays...
October 22nd- Bi-weekly phone call with our case worker. Find out I need to get another document from my Dr. Before she explained what it was, she told me, "You're going to think this is crazy."
Because my doctor wrote on my medical form under the "Surgeries/medications" portion of my medical form that I had ear tubes as a child, I now need to get a letter from my Dr., notarized, on clinic letterhead stating that the ear tube surgeries I had as a child will not hinder my parenting abilities when we adopt our daughter.
Let that one sink in...
We did laugh. :) So I'm now waiting on my ear tube letter. :)
October 23rd- E goes to the sheriff's department to be fingerprinted again. And also, he drops off a sample of our well water to be tested, to make sure it's safe to drink. That was one of the things in the follow-up email.
October 25th- I go to the sheriff's department with my father-in-law, step-mom-in-law, and all 5 kids (No school that day) to be fingerprinted again. We may be on a first name basis with the people at the sheriff's department by the time this adoption is complete. :)
I mail the fingerprint cards, new release forms and a few other documents to our social worker on the way home.
October 26th- Our water results come in the mail, and our water is safe to drink. I scan the letter and email it to our social worker right away. The ball is back in her court as far as stuff for the home study, we've gotten her all the new information she needed including answering all the follow-up questions from our adoption agency.
This was a long, busy month. I'm sorry this post got so long, but this is how I'm documenting our adventure for our family, and if I don't put details in now, I'll forget.
I don't know what will happen in November with our adoption process, only God knows that, and as much as I want to be further along in this process, as much as I'm wishing we already knew who our daughter is, we are trusting His timing. Some days it's easier then others, but there is a peace that comes with trusting Him.
Earlier this week I was thinking about how my update for this month is nothing like what I thought this update would look like.
When I wrote September's update we had just seen the rough draft of our home study, I was on cloud 9, thinking that things would really start moving, well, moving as much as any part in adoption moves...slower then you want usually. But in my head the biggest, hardest part of the dossier was going to soon be complete and November's update would be about how we had sent in all of our documents for Immigration Approval, we had all the rest of our dossier papers just sitting and waiting for Immigration Approval to come back, and, well, that didn't happen...at all.
Sitting and typing now, with this month's storm behind me I'm seeing how God is truly causing us to trust Him in ways we've not trusted Him before. And that our trusting Him is also refining us, and the refining we're going through is hard and painful at times, but He's teaching us, growing us, and drawing us closer to Him.
At one point this month, when I was at my lowest (I had a couple very hard, discouraging days), my husband said to me, "It's possible these delays are not just about our daughter, they could be so that God can refine us as parents to the children we already have."
That really hit home.
I remember having another conversation earlier in the month telling my husband how sick I was of paperwork, how ready to be done I was, because adoption related things easily take up so much of my time, that I felt like my kids were just getting "leftovers" from me. And I don't want that.
I know that I have so far to go as a mom, there are days that I feel like a complete failure, and still wonder why God called us to adopt. Feeling inadequate some days to parent the children we have, and then knowing we'll be adding someone new, who at first will likely be harder to parent for a while for a number of reasons...
I come back to the fact that, I have to trust Him, and I have to believe Him.
He is more then able to give us the wisdom and strength to raise our children, and another one...He is able! It's when I'm relying on myself completely that I so easily see my shortcomings, but God is greater then my shortcomings. Hallelujah!
And that was a long rabbit trail, that I'm not sure made sense. :) So let's move on to the update.
October 1st- Pick up fixed psych evaluation letters (there was an issue with the dates).
October 4th- I dropped paperwork off at our local sheriff's department to have local background checks run on us.
E had a couple job related letters for our dossier notarized.
I was working on our financial form for our adoption agency. There was an area that we had to fill out that hadn't been listed on the form for our social worker. This area would change some numbers around and everything. needs. to. match. It was a Friday night, and I was afraid that this would mess some things up because our social worker would have to change numbers around, and I wasn't really able to get a hold of anyone because it was Friday night. Long story short, I had a meltdown...
I know there were a few factors that played a part, but I was in our bedroom sobbing, wondering if we had missed God's timing? How was this all going to work out? Not good. I was a mess.
God is so good though! He met me in that low-tear-filled place.
I was also texting with E during all of this and when I mentioned I was afraid we had missed God's timing, he was encouraging me and texted back, "sometimes God's will isn't convenient." So true.
October 5th-I was doing much better. The fog had cleared, and I realized that what seemed like a huge mountain the night before really wasn't anything to be worried about. Part of my meltdown was stress related. We were pushing and running around trying to get a lot of papers finished and notarized by October 8. E was going to the state capitol for work and we wanted to drop off as much as we could to have things state certified. We had a few documents that needed to be authenticated in Washington D.C. before December or they would expire and would need to have them re-done or re-printed.
October 7th- I go back to the sheriff's department to pick-up our notarized background check letters. I run to UPS to get a pre-paid label so when our documents are state certified they can mail them back to us. E and I met with a friend who is a notary to get the last few documents we wanted to have ready to be state certified notarized.
October 8th- E takes documents (a good chunk of our dossier) to be state certified. Get an email from someone at our social worker's agency saying that there was some paperwork she sent my step-mom-in-law to be filled out. She was wondering where that was at because that paperwork had to be processed in order to finish her FBI background check. And the home study cannot be finalized without it. We get working on that.
October 11th- Our documents arrive from the capitol state certified!!!
Later in the afternoon I stop at E's office to make copies of everything we just had certified so we can mail it to our case worker and she can then send if off to D.C. to be authenticated. While I was making copies I noticed that 2 of the documents we not notarized correctly (there was some info. missing). I really believe it was the Lord that helped me to notice that because we had already looked over the documents and technically they shouldn't have been certified because they weren't notarized properly. Had we not caught the mistake, they would've been sent back from D.C. to be re-done correctly, and that would've cost time and money. I was thanking God for noticing that.
October 12th- E runs the 2 documents to our notary friend so she can fill in the missing information. He made it to her house an hour or 2 before she and her family we're leaving for vacation for 2 weeks, out of the country.
October 15th- Mail all of the dossier paperwork we have done (there's still more) and state certified to our case worker!! Also mail the paperwork my step-mom-in-law needed to fill out so her background check could be finished.
October 16th- Our social worker sends us an email with follow-up questions our adoption agency sent her. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, however, there were a couple of things that kind of made us go, "Really?!" Just an example, my husband's parents adopted and fostered kids when he was growing up. We now needed to have my father-in-law fill out release forms for all of the agencies he worked with. Thankfully there were only 2 agencies, so that made things easy, but getting info. from release forms takes time...another delay.
October 17th- Find out from our social worker that the fingerprinting and release forms we filled out for background checks in May, were set to expire mid-November and we had to re-do those ASAP. More delays...
October 22nd- Bi-weekly phone call with our case worker. Find out I need to get another document from my Dr. Before she explained what it was, she told me, "You're going to think this is crazy."
Because my doctor wrote on my medical form under the "Surgeries/medications" portion of my medical form that I had ear tubes as a child, I now need to get a letter from my Dr., notarized, on clinic letterhead stating that the ear tube surgeries I had as a child will not hinder my parenting abilities when we adopt our daughter.
Let that one sink in...
We did laugh. :) So I'm now waiting on my ear tube letter. :)
October 23rd- E goes to the sheriff's department to be fingerprinted again. And also, he drops off a sample of our well water to be tested, to make sure it's safe to drink. That was one of the things in the follow-up email.
October 25th- I go to the sheriff's department with my father-in-law, step-mom-in-law, and all 5 kids (No school that day) to be fingerprinted again. We may be on a first name basis with the people at the sheriff's department by the time this adoption is complete. :)
I mail the fingerprint cards, new release forms and a few other documents to our social worker on the way home.
October 26th- Our water results come in the mail, and our water is safe to drink. I scan the letter and email it to our social worker right away. The ball is back in her court as far as stuff for the home study, we've gotten her all the new information she needed including answering all the follow-up questions from our adoption agency.
This was a long, busy month. I'm sorry this post got so long, but this is how I'm documenting our adventure for our family, and if I don't put details in now, I'll forget.
I don't know what will happen in November with our adoption process, only God knows that, and as much as I want to be further along in this process, as much as I'm wishing we already knew who our daughter is, we are trusting His timing. Some days it's easier then others, but there is a peace that comes with trusting Him.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Appointments, Paperwork, and Delays
Time for another update. :) Since starting these in May, each month has gone by so quickly. Adoption related things add a lot of extra to any given day, but also the day-to-day keeps us plenty busy. September, however, didn't seem to go as fast. Each month has brought different hardships and joys, but September was a hard month emotionally. More delays we didn't foresee (can we ever foresee them?) and missing our little girl terribly. As always though, we come back to the same place, we have to trust Him.
We have to trust His timing (which can involve delays), we have to trust Him to love, keep, protect, watch over, and sustain our daughter, we have to trust that He knows far better then we do, that He can already see the end of this journey. And with each delay, frustration, tear, heart ache, victory, and joy He's weaving a beautiful tapestry out of this story of ours. Our trusting Him, our putting one foot in front of the other on days it'd be so much easier to stop or just plain give up, is part of how He is teaching us and creating a testimony to bring Him glory. Honestly, I believe that we won't even know the half of all the tiny details He is orchestrating and moving and sewing together until this particular journey is complete...but it's very possible we will never know all the how's and why's on this side of eternity...
Let's get this update started. :)
September 3rd- E and J2 go in for updated physicals for the home study. J2's form gets filled out and sent home. I send a new medical form in to be redone (China allows no mistakes on their forms).
September 5th- J3 goes in for his updated physical. My father-in-law has an appointment for an updated physical. Everything is time sensitive...everything. J3's medical form is filled out and comes home with us.
Oh, side note, the sickness I mentioned most of us having in August's update, yeah, find out it was most likely some form of pneumonia...good times. :)
September 6th- Our oldest celebrates his birthday in a low-key way. Thankfully he was back at school, but we were all still recovering. Special dinner and a movie at home it was. Truth be told, I was thankful for doing it low-key this year.
September 10th- E picks up his medical form (his and mine need to be notarized because our medical forms are part of the dossier).
September 11th- My father-in-law's completed medical form comes in the mail.
September 13th- Get a call from my doctor, the dates were signed wrong when she was having my medical form notarized. Can I send her a new form? I email her a link so she can print out a new medical form.
September 14th- My notarized medical form arrives in the mail.
Another side note. :) I am so thankful for our doctors!! They have been awesome! Filling out forms, re-filling out forms. No complaints, they've been great about everything, apologizing if things have to be re-done or if mistakes were made. I just can't express how wonderful they've been, it's been amazing!!
September 18th- Email from our social worker saying she's got a problem with our financial forms, some numbers weren't working out. Another delay... Also have a conference call with our case worker to discuss the financial forms (what does she need from us vs. what our social worker needs). All the financial forms/info. have to match between the home study, our dossier, and even letters. We need to get this right the first time.
September 19th- Conference call with our social worker to fill her in on what our case worker needs and how does that affect what she needs. Also during this call we find out our background checks will expire next May (Background checks expire? Who knew? We do now.) and she recommends just re-doing them now (that means making appointments for 4 people to be fingerprinted, it's not hard, it's just another thing we have to re-do, another delay, sigh). The rest of that day I was pretty discouraged. That was a day that I had to remind myself probably close to 100 times that, God is in control, I need to trust Him, He's not surprised by this...
September 24th- One of my bi-weekly calls with our case worker. I bring her up to date on everything and mention the new background checks. She stops me and tells me that if we can wait, if the background checks do not need to be done right now, that she recommends we wait. Wait until all our paperwork is done and we're waiting for a picture of a little girl to be sent to us. Wait until there are less pressing things to be done. Wait. As simple as that conversation was, it was exactly what I needed to hear, it encouraged me, and I so needed it!
September 26th- We email copies of our revamped financial form to our social worker. I also mention that if waiting on new background checks is ok with her, we are choosing to wait.
September 30th- Receive an email from our social worker with an attachment of a rough draft of our home study!!! Can we read through it make any corrections and send it back ASAP. We've been waiting for this for months! So exciting!! Finishing our home study, finishes a big chunk of our paperwork for our dossier.
As I'm writing this tonight, there's lots more paperwork to fill out, and get ready, but I feel "lighter" then I have in a while, I feel like there really is a light at the end of this dark tunnel, and even though the light is dim, it's there and I can see it! God is good!
We have to trust His timing (which can involve delays), we have to trust Him to love, keep, protect, watch over, and sustain our daughter, we have to trust that He knows far better then we do, that He can already see the end of this journey. And with each delay, frustration, tear, heart ache, victory, and joy He's weaving a beautiful tapestry out of this story of ours. Our trusting Him, our putting one foot in front of the other on days it'd be so much easier to stop or just plain give up, is part of how He is teaching us and creating a testimony to bring Him glory. Honestly, I believe that we won't even know the half of all the tiny details He is orchestrating and moving and sewing together until this particular journey is complete...but it's very possible we will never know all the how's and why's on this side of eternity...
Let's get this update started. :)
September 3rd- E and J2 go in for updated physicals for the home study. J2's form gets filled out and sent home. I send a new medical form in to be redone (China allows no mistakes on their forms).
September 5th- J3 goes in for his updated physical. My father-in-law has an appointment for an updated physical. Everything is time sensitive...everything. J3's medical form is filled out and comes home with us.
Oh, side note, the sickness I mentioned most of us having in August's update, yeah, find out it was most likely some form of pneumonia...good times. :)
September 6th- Our oldest celebrates his birthday in a low-key way. Thankfully he was back at school, but we were all still recovering. Special dinner and a movie at home it was. Truth be told, I was thankful for doing it low-key this year.
September 10th- E picks up his medical form (his and mine need to be notarized because our medical forms are part of the dossier).
September 11th- My father-in-law's completed medical form comes in the mail.
September 13th- Get a call from my doctor, the dates were signed wrong when she was having my medical form notarized. Can I send her a new form? I email her a link so she can print out a new medical form.
September 14th- My notarized medical form arrives in the mail.
Another side note. :) I am so thankful for our doctors!! They have been awesome! Filling out forms, re-filling out forms. No complaints, they've been great about everything, apologizing if things have to be re-done or if mistakes were made. I just can't express how wonderful they've been, it's been amazing!!
September 18th- Email from our social worker saying she's got a problem with our financial forms, some numbers weren't working out. Another delay... Also have a conference call with our case worker to discuss the financial forms (what does she need from us vs. what our social worker needs). All the financial forms/info. have to match between the home study, our dossier, and even letters. We need to get this right the first time.
September 19th- Conference call with our social worker to fill her in on what our case worker needs and how does that affect what she needs. Also during this call we find out our background checks will expire next May (Background checks expire? Who knew? We do now.) and she recommends just re-doing them now (that means making appointments for 4 people to be fingerprinted, it's not hard, it's just another thing we have to re-do, another delay, sigh). The rest of that day I was pretty discouraged. That was a day that I had to remind myself probably close to 100 times that, God is in control, I need to trust Him, He's not surprised by this...
September 24th- One of my bi-weekly calls with our case worker. I bring her up to date on everything and mention the new background checks. She stops me and tells me that if we can wait, if the background checks do not need to be done right now, that she recommends we wait. Wait until all our paperwork is done and we're waiting for a picture of a little girl to be sent to us. Wait until there are less pressing things to be done. Wait. As simple as that conversation was, it was exactly what I needed to hear, it encouraged me, and I so needed it!
September 26th- We email copies of our revamped financial form to our social worker. I also mention that if waiting on new background checks is ok with her, we are choosing to wait.
September 30th- Receive an email from our social worker with an attachment of a rough draft of our home study!!! Can we read through it make any corrections and send it back ASAP. We've been waiting for this for months! So exciting!! Finishing our home study, finishes a big chunk of our paperwork for our dossier.
As I'm writing this tonight, there's lots more paperwork to fill out, and get ready, but I feel "lighter" then I have in a while, I feel like there really is a light at the end of this dark tunnel, and even though the light is dim, it's there and I can see it! God is good!
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Some Days Are Harder Then Others
Today is hard. The day is still new, but my heart is heavy.
Outside, the sky is clear and blue, the sun is shining. It's September but it feels like a mid-summer day...hot, humid, breezy. There are cicadas "chirping", I can hear lawnmowers going...looking out the windows, it's a beautiful day.
But...
My heart and mind are thousands of miles away.
My heart is aching for my (our) daughter/sister who's missing.
It's not just aching, like you miss a friend or family member who lives out-of-state. This is an ache that I'm not sure I can find words to accurately describe. It's an ache that makes it hard to breathe, an ache that makes me want to sit in a corner and cry..but it's more, my heart, hurts, deeply. It's the ache of a mother's heart who's missing her daughter.
It's a pain I've never experienced.
And, for now, there's no "quick fix", no real way to dull that pain or make it go away.
There's a part of me that wants to "run" from this pain, to distract myself, to find something that will lessen this ache, and I'm sure I could find something to distract me enough to "help" but I don't think that's what I'm supposed to do.
Sunday at church, I was thinking about our daughter (she's never, ever far from my thoughts) and praying for her, and missing her, and close to tears, but I stopped myself from crying (there were some other things I was thinking about related to her). As I was fighting the tears, at one point, God came with His gentle whisperings...
I believe He was telling me that I need to allow myself to feel this ache, this hurt, no matter how hard or deep it is, I need to experience this pain.
This ache and pain will be for a season.
Joy will come.
Joy overflowing!
Today is hard, very hard. Thankfully, everyday is not like this. I miss her daily, but there are days that come, like today where it's almost unbearable...
But even in this pain, this I-miss-her-so-much-it-hurts-to-breathe...I am thankful.
So thankful.
We still don't know her name, we still have no picture, yet my heart is wrecked in a beautiful way. And only God could have brought my heart to this place.
So for now, I wait, I pray, I cry, I miss, I ache, I seek comfort from the One who knows my daughter, I trust, and I allow myself to live through this pain, until my tears are turned into tears of joy; joy overflowing.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Month In Review
It's hard to believe another month has come and gone...ok, maybe not that hard. Our summer flew by at warp speed, so it's more summer being almost over that's hard to believe. :)
This month's adoption update won't be too "exciting" because not a whole lot happened. With E and the older boys needing new physicals and updated medical forms, we kind of took the month off, wanting to really soak up the last few weeks of summer. And there's been a summer cold circling the house that I managed to avoid until we got back from vacation, so I spent this past month with a cold. With this cold I was still able to function, but my energy was gone, I did what I had to do to get through the day (i.e..drinking way too much coffee) but there wasn't a whole lot of leftover energy, for anything else. This week we have some weird flu bug going through the house too, only 1 of the 5 kids is still standing. The oldest I had to pick-up early from his 1st day of school because he was sick and now today only 1 of the 3 oldest made it back to school for their 2nd day. Seriously?! I have some version of whatever the kids have, body aches, and cough, but thankfully, I have no fever (the kids have fevers). I'm pretty much over being sick. I've got things to do, like laundry, cleaning the house, feeding my family, now driving and picking up kids from school, attempting to exercise, making sure I shower several times a week, helping kids with school projects (yes, already), many other things I can't think of at the moment, oh yeah, and adoption related paperwork...ain't nobody got time to be sick!
Sorry, it's been a hard-ish month. Moving on, here's the update.
July 30th- Get an email from our social worker informing us that we had 2 more education courses to complete. Apparently these classes have been added to the education requirements in the past year...at least that's what it sounds like. Anyway, bummed that we've got more education to work on, purchase the classes and then put them off.
August 13th-Find out that now my father-in-law needs to have another physical and a new medical form filled out. His medical form was fine when we started but now because of delays with E and the older boys, the 6-month window that physicals need to be within has closed. Very discouraging.
August 20th- E goes in for his 2nd to last psych evaluation (paperwork appointment)
August 23rd- Our oldest goes in for his physical and has a new medical form filled out.
August 23rd- Had to document this, because to me it's kind of a big deal. E and I had a date night at Lambeau field and got to watch the Packer game in person! So. Much. Fun!
August 25th- We had our last professional family photo shoot as a family of 7. Got some pre-adoption pictures in there, and looking at some of the preview pictures, I'm so excited with how they're turning out!
August 27th- E has his final psych evaluation. Gets verbal confirmation that he's competent to adopt. Now we wait for the paperwork from our psychologist.
August 28th- Finish our education, for real this time, we are done (at least we better be). :)
August 29th- Our tiny peep's 3rd birthday!! Poor kid is sick on his birthday. :( However, I'm so excited to see him become a big brother this next year!
Another month has come and gone and now as we head into September, with fall fast approaching, though our bodies are tired and our emotions a little bit too, we are still trusting the One Who holds all our tomorrows. Believing that His timing is perfect through every delay and set back. Someday we may understand why these delays came when they did or we may not, but these last few days I've been resting (or at least trying to) in the fact that God sees the end from the beginning, and He will be faithful to bring us to the end of each leg or chapter of our journey.
This month's adoption update won't be too "exciting" because not a whole lot happened. With E and the older boys needing new physicals and updated medical forms, we kind of took the month off, wanting to really soak up the last few weeks of summer. And there's been a summer cold circling the house that I managed to avoid until we got back from vacation, so I spent this past month with a cold. With this cold I was still able to function, but my energy was gone, I did what I had to do to get through the day (i.e..drinking way too much coffee) but there wasn't a whole lot of leftover energy, for anything else. This week we have some weird flu bug going through the house too, only 1 of the 5 kids is still standing. The oldest I had to pick-up early from his 1st day of school because he was sick and now today only 1 of the 3 oldest made it back to school for their 2nd day. Seriously?! I have some version of whatever the kids have, body aches, and cough, but thankfully, I have no fever (the kids have fevers). I'm pretty much over being sick. I've got things to do, like laundry, cleaning the house, feeding my family, now driving and picking up kids from school, attempting to exercise, making sure I shower several times a week, helping kids with school projects (yes, already), many other things I can't think of at the moment, oh yeah, and adoption related paperwork...ain't nobody got time to be sick!
Sorry, it's been a hard-ish month. Moving on, here's the update.
July 30th- Get an email from our social worker informing us that we had 2 more education courses to complete. Apparently these classes have been added to the education requirements in the past year...at least that's what it sounds like. Anyway, bummed that we've got more education to work on, purchase the classes and then put them off.
August 13th-Find out that now my father-in-law needs to have another physical and a new medical form filled out. His medical form was fine when we started but now because of delays with E and the older boys, the 6-month window that physicals need to be within has closed. Very discouraging.
August 20th- E goes in for his 2nd to last psych evaluation (paperwork appointment)
August 23rd- Our oldest goes in for his physical and has a new medical form filled out.
August 23rd- Had to document this, because to me it's kind of a big deal. E and I had a date night at Lambeau field and got to watch the Packer game in person! So. Much. Fun!
August 25th- We had our last professional family photo shoot as a family of 7. Got some pre-adoption pictures in there, and looking at some of the preview pictures, I'm so excited with how they're turning out!
August 27th- E has his final psych evaluation. Gets verbal confirmation that he's competent to adopt. Now we wait for the paperwork from our psychologist.
August 28th- Finish our education, for real this time, we are done (at least we better be). :)
August 29th- Our tiny peep's 3rd birthday!! Poor kid is sick on his birthday. :( However, I'm so excited to see him become a big brother this next year!
Another month has come and gone and now as we head into September, with fall fast approaching, though our bodies are tired and our emotions a little bit too, we are still trusting the One Who holds all our tomorrows. Believing that His timing is perfect through every delay and set back. Someday we may understand why these delays came when they did or we may not, but these last few days I've been resting (or at least trying to) in the fact that God sees the end from the beginning, and He will be faithful to bring us to the end of each leg or chapter of our journey.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Only God
I think sometimes in my life when I know God is at work and I know that there's a "big" testimony coming down the bend I get so focused on the ending that I miss, brush past, or don't fully allow the "smaller" testimonies to sink in. Or I simply don't see them until the "big" ending has taken place...and I regret that. Often times if I would take a step back and look for the "smaller" workings that God is doing, I would realize that those "small" workings are actually "big" too. And by seeing and acknowledging each working that God is doing, I am then able to use those times as "remembering stones" for when the journey again, gets hard. I can look back and see where my heart was, at the beginning and, where my heart is now, at the somewhere-almost-maybe-getting-close-to-the-middle of this adoption adventure of ours.
Having conversations with friends over the past few weeks it's almost scary to me that I didn't realize how "big" my heart being where it is today is. That I actually might have brushed it off as "small" or just "one of those things" that happens during adoption.
I was talking last night at our boys back-to-school picnic with a mom friend who has children in 2 of my boys classes. She is an adoptive mom herself. Our conversation last night, for me, was so refreshing. We shared things with each other and cried together...it was one of those conversations that unless we had both been through it or in my case she is on the other side and I'm going through it, the conversation would not have been possible. The minutes we spent together, between answering kids, keeping an eye on kids, and a few other interruptions were so precious.
I share last nights conversation because after that the magnitude of where my heart is now, hit me.
Before we started our adoption journey, whenever the subject would come up, one of the biggest reasons/fears in my heart and mind for not adopting was that I wasn't sure I could love a child that hadn't grown inside of me. That is all I know. All of our children, I "knew" for a number of months before they were even born. Would I be able to love another child, "not of my flesh" the same way? If there was even the slightest possibility of that answer being, no, I would not adopt. I couldn't adopt that wouldn't be fair to the child.
As we began our journey because of how God had so changed my heart towards adoption, how we believed He was asking us to step out in faith, how we knew that we needed to trust Him with every part of this journey, that question or fear sort of faded a bit. It took a back seat to paperwork, physicals, evaluations, semi-intrusive interviews, education, and many other adoption related "to-dos".
Since moving forward with our adoption as the months have passed I would have a day here and there where I felt like someone was missing. Our daughter is missing. She's not here. If she has already been born, she's on the other side of the world. Our family is not complete right now. As the days have gone on, that feeling has become an ache, an ache in my heart. I don't know what she looks like, I don't know her name, but I'm her mother and I miss her.
I miss her?
How can I miss her? I've never met her. How can I miss her? I don't know what she looks like, I don't know her name.
Last month we were on vacation. It was wonderful! A full week of non-adoption related, well, anything. Our goal was to relax and have fun. And we did.
However, on our anniversary (July 25). I was walking in and out of shops, mostly browsing. E had taken the kids to go run around at a park since browsing in semi-pricy shops really isn't their thing. And paying for broken items I don't want isn't really my thing. :)
I was alone, able to walk leisurely through shops. I walked into one shop and it wasn't anything in particular, but all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of the store fighting, with all I had in me to keep myself from crying. I don't like crying in front of people, but there I was in the middle of this store with tears running down my face. Me, trying to wipe them away quickly, and get-it together. I managed to pull myself together enough to purchase something, but for the rest of the day I was never far from tears. That ache in my heart for the daughter we don't know yet, had gone from and ache, to a deep hurt. I'm not even sure how to describe it, except to say, that it hurt to not know who she is. It hurt to not have her with me. It hurt to not have her in my arms.
It hurt.
I've done so before, but I spent that day praying for her, asking God to protect her, to love on her, to let her know she's so very loved...
Loved? She's loved! We don't know her name. We don't know who she is. But she's loved, more then she could know!
My testimony right now is, Only God!
Only God could take one of my biggest concerns/questions/fears about adoption and silence it before we even know her name, before we even know her face, before she's even in our arms.
I know myself and I know there's no way I could work up these feeling by myself. I could try, and might even succeed, but they wouldn't last.
I could never work up an ache in my heart so deep that sometimes it's hard to breathe, I miss her so much. I can't, there's no way.
Only God.
Having conversations with friends over the past few weeks it's almost scary to me that I didn't realize how "big" my heart being where it is today is. That I actually might have brushed it off as "small" or just "one of those things" that happens during adoption.
I was talking last night at our boys back-to-school picnic with a mom friend who has children in 2 of my boys classes. She is an adoptive mom herself. Our conversation last night, for me, was so refreshing. We shared things with each other and cried together...it was one of those conversations that unless we had both been through it or in my case she is on the other side and I'm going through it, the conversation would not have been possible. The minutes we spent together, between answering kids, keeping an eye on kids, and a few other interruptions were so precious.
I share last nights conversation because after that the magnitude of where my heart is now, hit me.
Before we started our adoption journey, whenever the subject would come up, one of the biggest reasons/fears in my heart and mind for not adopting was that I wasn't sure I could love a child that hadn't grown inside of me. That is all I know. All of our children, I "knew" for a number of months before they were even born. Would I be able to love another child, "not of my flesh" the same way? If there was even the slightest possibility of that answer being, no, I would not adopt. I couldn't adopt that wouldn't be fair to the child.
As we began our journey because of how God had so changed my heart towards adoption, how we believed He was asking us to step out in faith, how we knew that we needed to trust Him with every part of this journey, that question or fear sort of faded a bit. It took a back seat to paperwork, physicals, evaluations, semi-intrusive interviews, education, and many other adoption related "to-dos".
Since moving forward with our adoption as the months have passed I would have a day here and there where I felt like someone was missing. Our daughter is missing. She's not here. If she has already been born, she's on the other side of the world. Our family is not complete right now. As the days have gone on, that feeling has become an ache, an ache in my heart. I don't know what she looks like, I don't know her name, but I'm her mother and I miss her.
I miss her?
How can I miss her? I've never met her. How can I miss her? I don't know what she looks like, I don't know her name.
Last month we were on vacation. It was wonderful! A full week of non-adoption related, well, anything. Our goal was to relax and have fun. And we did.
However, on our anniversary (July 25). I was walking in and out of shops, mostly browsing. E had taken the kids to go run around at a park since browsing in semi-pricy shops really isn't their thing. And paying for broken items I don't want isn't really my thing. :)
I was alone, able to walk leisurely through shops. I walked into one shop and it wasn't anything in particular, but all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of the store fighting, with all I had in me to keep myself from crying. I don't like crying in front of people, but there I was in the middle of this store with tears running down my face. Me, trying to wipe them away quickly, and get-it together. I managed to pull myself together enough to purchase something, but for the rest of the day I was never far from tears. That ache in my heart for the daughter we don't know yet, had gone from and ache, to a deep hurt. I'm not even sure how to describe it, except to say, that it hurt to not know who she is. It hurt to not have her with me. It hurt to not have her in my arms.
It hurt.
I've done so before, but I spent that day praying for her, asking God to protect her, to love on her, to let her know she's so very loved...
Loved? She's loved! We don't know her name. We don't know who she is. But she's loved, more then she could know!
My testimony right now is, Only God!
Only God could take one of my biggest concerns/questions/fears about adoption and silence it before we even know her name, before we even know her face, before she's even in our arms.
I know myself and I know there's no way I could work up these feeling by myself. I could try, and might even succeed, but they wouldn't last.
I could never work up an ache in my heart so deep that sometimes it's hard to breathe, I miss her so much. I can't, there's no way.
Only God.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Lessons In The Storm
A few weeks ago we had a storm come through our area. I am one of those people who love summer storms, although I do prefer day storms to night storms. My kids, however, don't care for storms whether they come during the day or the night. My two youngest especially don't like storms. The other night when this storm came, there were 2 extra (small) people in our bed. :) Normally if the kids are not with us when a storm comes there can be tears, looks and/or questions of concern, and if it happens to be at night requests for a campout in Dad and Mom's room.
The storm continued and I remember after one particularly bright flash of lighting, thinking "oh, boy, the thunder is going to be really loud this time." and sort of bracing myself for the littles' responses. The thunder was loud, really loud, it was the kind that you can almost feel traveling from somewhere above the house down into the ground.
The thunder came and went, and my room remained silent...
I half sat up in bed and looked over, and as another flash of lightning illuminated the bedroom I saw my 2 smallest children, the ones most afraid of storms, soundly sleeping.
The last huge, deep rumble of thunder didn't bother them in the least. As I sat there looking at them for the next few seconds, it was in that time I heard the Lord's gentle whisperings.
I love those whisperings, so gentle, but so profound at times, and most often in my case they come at the most interesting times. :) It was less then a minute of the Father speaking to my heart, but what He spoke was not only a revelation in a sense to me, it was also equipping me for things to come (though I didn't know that yet).
I remember looking at my sleeping children and wondering how it was that through this storm they were able to sleep so contentedly? I thought of this verse in Matthew 8:24 "Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping." My first thoughts were, "well, Jesus is God, of course He can sleep through a storm." As I was still looking at my kids so soundly sleeping, the Lord began His whisperings...
My smallest ones, who are so afraid of storms were able to sleep so peacefully because they knew they were and felt completely safe. They trust that being with me or their dad makes them safe, and they no longer need to fear the storm.
A smile crossed my face, another flash or 2 of lightning illuminated the room, and then I heard...
"That's how I want you to trust Me through life's storms."
It took me a moment to soak that in.
It's one thing to have a head knowledge of how to handle something, it's quite another thing when God speaks it directly to your heart, and that head knowledge becomes heart knowledge!
That was it, a few moments of tender whisperings.
I laid awake for a while after thinking, wanting to almost re-live those moments a few times over so as not to forget them anytime soon.
As days went on I was still thinking about that night, and asking the Lord questions and Him answering me, and again without my realizing it, He was equipping me for my own storms that were coming.
Much to my surprise, though looking back now, I really shouldn't have been surprised, a "life storm" blew in, I think less then a week after this night.
This storm, at it's peak had the potential to bring our adoption plans to a complete stop for close to 2 years. In the midst of this I remember crying out to the Lord, not understanding what was going on, or how the timing of things made sense. He reminded me of my children sleeping through the storm. Was I going to trust Him no matter the outcome? Was I going to believe that He is still in control? Was I going to be able to rest in this? My hesitant answer was "yes". However, I don't think I was able to rest until the storm was over.
The storm was fierce but short. And when it was over, I was lamenting over my reaction, feeling that my reaction was not what it should've been. And the Lord, again whispering, answered me...
"You came to Me." "You trusted Me with what you had."
I began to understand more. It wasn't so much how I initially reacted, though I want to work on that, that God was working on, it was my reaction, my living through the storm.
He's showing me the importance of keeping my eyes on Him, crying out to Him...sometimes over and over and over concerning the same thing.
He's showing me that regardless of what I'm feeling, whether I understand, or even if I'm afraid, if I can trust Him completely (or as much as I know how), and believe that He's in control no matter what...
Rest will come in the storm.
I know that what I'm sharing is not new, but it's an area that God is working on me in a new way.
Adoption is a storm...much of it is, and though I'm a work in progress, I'm learning to rest in the storm.
"He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed." Psalm 107:29
Monday, July 29, 2013
Month In Review
Wow. Another month (and some days) has come and gone since I last updated. This past month seemed even crazier then previous months, if that's possible. I think because we had family in towns staying with us, and that alone brings more busy days, more get-togethers, and us wanting to focus more on our out-of-town family then do paperwork.
This past month we had appointments, but the reading/education stuff is what really consumed a lot of time, I mean, a lot of hours, if I had to give a rough estimate, I'd say that I spent close to 20 hours, maybe more on education classes we had to finish, along with an educational binder and reading through the handbook to get our foster license. I love to read, but this was not "fun" or "relaxing" reading...I thought my head would explode a couple times from all the information I was cramming in there. I am thankful for a lot of the education! Lots of it is very eye-opening and it's good to begin thinking from our adopted daughter's point of view. There's lots more, but that might best be saved for another post at another time. :)
Here's our month in review (plus a couple non-adoption items)...
June 28th- My last appointment with our psychologist. Verbal confirmation that I'm mentally competent to adopt, and I don't have a drug problem (still waiting on the written statement). :)
July 3rd- E and I head 3 hours north to meet with our social worker. 4 hours of talking and being interviewed was exhausting, but we made it through. We also set-up our next meeting with our social worker.
July 9th- Our family staying with us, left to go home.
July 10th- E and I have TB skin tests done.
July 11th- Receive an email from our social worker saying that 3 of the boys and E's medical forms are not good. Their last physicals were more then 6 months ago, so the forms need to be re-done. I set-up Dr. appointments for the 3 oldest boys and E (the earliest they could get them in is a month-and-a-half from now).
This was hard news to receive because this will delay our home study being completed. We must apply for immigration approval and be approved before we can send our dossier to China. We cannot apply for immigration approval until our home study is complete, and once we do apply it can take 2-3 months to get approval. Anyway, this was not the best of days, but I'm so thankful for the Lord's gentle reminders. All throughout the day after receiving this news any time I started to get upset the Lord gently reminded me to trust Him, that He's still in control. He wasn't surprised by this, and part of trusting Him, is believing that He has a reason for this delay.
July 12th- E and I have our TB skin tests read (they were negative, we passed).
July 17th- Last day of summer school. Couple of boys are a little bit thrilled about that. ;)
July 18th- E and I take another 3 hour trip north to visit with our social worker again. 3-ish hours of talking and interviewing...this time was easier, though, thankfully!
In order to prepare for our July 18th visit we had a checklist of things we had to finish, complete, get from others. The biggest part was our education. I pushed hard to get the education finished because aside from needing to for both our home study and dossier, we were leaving for vacation on July 20th and I didn't want to be working on education stuff on vacation. By God's grace and a couple of late nights we got everything finished, and that felt wonderful!! I know as the time to meet our precious daughter draws nearer we'll be reviewing some things (lots of information in a short amount of time, makes for material to be forgotten), and I'm thankful we'll have the resources available to do so.
July 20-28th- Glorious vacation! It was wonderful to get away for a week, to say we needed a vacation is an understatement! :)
July 25th- E and I celebrated our 14th anniversary!!
This was another busy, crazy, hard month, but God has been faithful to bring us through! As I'm writing this my thoughts are turning to school prep wondering where the summer went? The kids start school in a little less then a month. I'm hoping with these few weeks of summer left we'll be able to breathe a little bit, relax a little more and enjoy the last days of summer...after all this could be our last full summer as a family of 7, and that is scary, but, oh, so exciting!! :)
This past month we had appointments, but the reading/education stuff is what really consumed a lot of time, I mean, a lot of hours, if I had to give a rough estimate, I'd say that I spent close to 20 hours, maybe more on education classes we had to finish, along with an educational binder and reading through the handbook to get our foster license. I love to read, but this was not "fun" or "relaxing" reading...I thought my head would explode a couple times from all the information I was cramming in there. I am thankful for a lot of the education! Lots of it is very eye-opening and it's good to begin thinking from our adopted daughter's point of view. There's lots more, but that might best be saved for another post at another time. :)
Here's our month in review (plus a couple non-adoption items)...
June 28th- My last appointment with our psychologist. Verbal confirmation that I'm mentally competent to adopt, and I don't have a drug problem (still waiting on the written statement). :)
July 3rd- E and I head 3 hours north to meet with our social worker. 4 hours of talking and being interviewed was exhausting, but we made it through. We also set-up our next meeting with our social worker.
July 9th- Our family staying with us, left to go home.
July 10th- E and I have TB skin tests done.
July 11th- Receive an email from our social worker saying that 3 of the boys and E's medical forms are not good. Their last physicals were more then 6 months ago, so the forms need to be re-done. I set-up Dr. appointments for the 3 oldest boys and E (the earliest they could get them in is a month-and-a-half from now).
This was hard news to receive because this will delay our home study being completed. We must apply for immigration approval and be approved before we can send our dossier to China. We cannot apply for immigration approval until our home study is complete, and once we do apply it can take 2-3 months to get approval. Anyway, this was not the best of days, but I'm so thankful for the Lord's gentle reminders. All throughout the day after receiving this news any time I started to get upset the Lord gently reminded me to trust Him, that He's still in control. He wasn't surprised by this, and part of trusting Him, is believing that He has a reason for this delay.
July 12th- E and I have our TB skin tests read (they were negative, we passed).
July 17th- Last day of summer school. Couple of boys are a little bit thrilled about that. ;)
July 18th- E and I take another 3 hour trip north to visit with our social worker again. 3-ish hours of talking and interviewing...this time was easier, though, thankfully!
In order to prepare for our July 18th visit we had a checklist of things we had to finish, complete, get from others. The biggest part was our education. I pushed hard to get the education finished because aside from needing to for both our home study and dossier, we were leaving for vacation on July 20th and I didn't want to be working on education stuff on vacation. By God's grace and a couple of late nights we got everything finished, and that felt wonderful!! I know as the time to meet our precious daughter draws nearer we'll be reviewing some things (lots of information in a short amount of time, makes for material to be forgotten), and I'm thankful we'll have the resources available to do so.
July 20-28th- Glorious vacation! It was wonderful to get away for a week, to say we needed a vacation is an understatement! :)
July 25th- E and I celebrated our 14th anniversary!!
This was another busy, crazy, hard month, but God has been faithful to bring us through! As I'm writing this my thoughts are turning to school prep wondering where the summer went? The kids start school in a little less then a month. I'm hoping with these few weeks of summer left we'll be able to breathe a little bit, relax a little more and enjoy the last days of summer...after all this could be our last full summer as a family of 7, and that is scary, but, oh, so exciting!! :)
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Monthly Update
This update is coming a little later then I had hoped/planned, but adoption stuff aside, this past month has pretty much been non-stop crazy. My last update had us heading into the last month of school for the older kids, and that brings a special kind of crazy/busyness to the table. So we had that going on, friends came in from out of town for a few weeks, we had a birthday to celebrate, and the week after school got out we had family come in from out-of-state to stay for 5 weeks (they're still here). That's a little sample of the non-adoption related events happening here, and add in adoption stuff, and well, this is one of those days I'm thankful to be standing or functioning at all. I will admit I've had way too much coffee lately, but there's a tiny Asian peep waiting for us in China, so I do what I need to do. :)
Here we go...
May 14th- 1st of several Dr. appointments we went to in order to have medical forms filled out for everyone (a couple of us missed our physicals last year).
May 21st- Another Dr. appointment. Dropped off older kid's and E's medical forms to be filled out by their Dr. Also picked up medical form from previous Dr. appt. and watched as she filled out the form for the small person being seen today.
May 23rd- E and I apply for our passports. I still don't understand why you can't smile for your passport picture...not very flattering, and it was humid and had rained that morning so my hair was a little Frodo-esque...good times.
May 24th- Appointment with a nurse to catch one of the kids up on their vaccines.
May 28th- Time for my Dr. appointment and blood work (I haven't had that much blood taken since I had blood drawn at my first pre-natal appt. with our last baby). Picked up the older kids completed medical forms.
May 30th- E went in for blood work so his medical form could be completed.
May 31st- My first appointment with our psychologist. E and I need psych evaluations for our dossier.
June 3rd- E goes in for more blood work because the lab mixed something up the first time and they didn't draw enough blood.
June 6th- E's Dr. hand delivers (to our front door) E's filled-out and notarized medical form because he felt bad about the mix-up with the lab. Love our doctors!
June 7th- E's first appointment with our psychologist.
June 11th- We meet our social worker who came out to do the walk-through portion of our home study. She also interviewed our kids and E's dad and step-mom.
June 11th- Set-up our next meeting with our social worker.
June 14th- I have my paper work appointment (filling out questionnaires) at our psychologist's office.
June 17th- Our Passports Arrive!! :)
June 18th- My completed, notarized medical form arrives in the mail.
Also, mixed into as many of these nights, as we were physically able, are hours of education we've completed. The education portion is going slowest for us right now, simply because with everything else going on it's hard to find free nights and free nights where we're both awake enough to retain the information we're learning. But it's getting done, slow and steady is better then nothing at all.
This past month was hard. Very busy and stressful at times. Emotionally and physically draining. Just an overall hard month.
Again, I know, months from now I will probably look back and think this was the "easy" part, but this was not that month! :)
Thank you for those who have been praying for us!! Please continue to pray!! We have a long way to go, but as each item on our adoption to-do list is crossed off it brings us one step closer to meeting our daughter, and that, some days, is what gets me through!
Here we go...
May 14th- 1st of several Dr. appointments we went to in order to have medical forms filled out for everyone (a couple of us missed our physicals last year).
May 21st- Another Dr. appointment. Dropped off older kid's and E's medical forms to be filled out by their Dr. Also picked up medical form from previous Dr. appt. and watched as she filled out the form for the small person being seen today.
May 23rd- E and I apply for our passports. I still don't understand why you can't smile for your passport picture...not very flattering, and it was humid and had rained that morning so my hair was a little Frodo-esque...good times.
May 24th- Appointment with a nurse to catch one of the kids up on their vaccines.
May 28th- Time for my Dr. appointment and blood work (I haven't had that much blood taken since I had blood drawn at my first pre-natal appt. with our last baby). Picked up the older kids completed medical forms.
May 30th- E went in for blood work so his medical form could be completed.
May 31st- My first appointment with our psychologist. E and I need psych evaluations for our dossier.
June 3rd- E goes in for more blood work because the lab mixed something up the first time and they didn't draw enough blood.
June 6th- E's Dr. hand delivers (to our front door) E's filled-out and notarized medical form because he felt bad about the mix-up with the lab. Love our doctors!
June 7th- E's first appointment with our psychologist.
June 11th- We meet our social worker who came out to do the walk-through portion of our home study. She also interviewed our kids and E's dad and step-mom.
June 11th- Set-up our next meeting with our social worker.
June 14th- I have my paper work appointment (filling out questionnaires) at our psychologist's office.
June 17th- Our Passports Arrive!! :)
June 18th- My completed, notarized medical form arrives in the mail.
Also, mixed into as many of these nights, as we were physically able, are hours of education we've completed. The education portion is going slowest for us right now, simply because with everything else going on it's hard to find free nights and free nights where we're both awake enough to retain the information we're learning. But it's getting done, slow and steady is better then nothing at all.
This past month was hard. Very busy and stressful at times. Emotionally and physically draining. Just an overall hard month.
Again, I know, months from now I will probably look back and think this was the "easy" part, but this was not that month! :)
Thank you for those who have been praying for us!! Please continue to pray!! We have a long way to go, but as each item on our adoption to-do list is crossed off it brings us one step closer to meeting our daughter, and that, some days, is what gets me through!
Friday, May 10, 2013
I Thought I Was Busy Before...
This past month has been busy, I think I even used the words "crazy busy" when talking to someone recently. We are pretty busy people and with 5 kids even when there's nothing going on, on a given day, we're busy. :) I wanted to post a run-down of the adoption related things we've done this past month kind of as an update and so I don't forget. :)
April 8th- Submitted our formal application online with All God's Children International. (AGCI)
April 9th- Our application was approved. (Yay!!)
April 12th- We received our Orientation packet in the mail from AGCI.
April 18th- Had our Orientation phone call with AGCI.
April 23rd- Met with a friend who's a notary to have our orientation paperwork and contract for AGCI notarized. Mailed contract and other paperwork to AGCI.
April 26th- We (me, my husband and in-laws) went to be fingerprinted.
May 1st- Officially contracted with AGCI and set-up a date for our dossier phone call.
May 1st- Mailed the 1st round of paperwork (formal application, fingerprint cards and other info) to our social worker (she works at a different agency).
May 7th- Schedule the walk-through portion of our home study.
May 8th- Receive login info. to access our dossier information.
May 9th- Sit down with a big cup of coffee and read through the dossier information. Stop mid-way through to give my brain a rest because there's a lot of information and lots of details to remember!
May 9th- Have our dossier call with our case worker from AGCI. She explains the dossier process, we ask a few questions, end the call and I feel like my head is going to explode! :)
May 9th- More paperwork arrives in the mail from our social worker to fill out.
That's a look at the adoption-related things we've been up to. There's been plenty more going on, but I thought I'd focus on the adoption side. :)
Now we have more paperwork to do then I ever thought possible, I am overwhelmed right now, but I plan on making a detailed to-do list today or tomorrow to help break the tasks down.
A sweet friend who's done this and is just now on the other side keeps reminding me that, "If God has lead you to this, He will bring you through this."
If you think of us please pray! I'm sure at some point in our adventure I'll be remembering these days of paperwork as "easy" days, but today is not that day. :)
Thank you if you have been praying for us! Please continue to do so, it's greatly appreciated!!
April 8th- Submitted our formal application online with All God's Children International. (AGCI)
April 9th- Our application was approved. (Yay!!)
April 12th- We received our Orientation packet in the mail from AGCI.
April 18th- Had our Orientation phone call with AGCI.
April 23rd- Met with a friend who's a notary to have our orientation paperwork and contract for AGCI notarized. Mailed contract and other paperwork to AGCI.
April 26th- We (me, my husband and in-laws) went to be fingerprinted.
May 1st- Officially contracted with AGCI and set-up a date for our dossier phone call.
May 1st- Mailed the 1st round of paperwork (formal application, fingerprint cards and other info) to our social worker (she works at a different agency).
May 7th- Schedule the walk-through portion of our home study.
May 8th- Receive login info. to access our dossier information.
May 9th- Sit down with a big cup of coffee and read through the dossier information. Stop mid-way through to give my brain a rest because there's a lot of information and lots of details to remember!
May 9th- Have our dossier call with our case worker from AGCI. She explains the dossier process, we ask a few questions, end the call and I feel like my head is going to explode! :)
May 9th- More paperwork arrives in the mail from our social worker to fill out.
That's a look at the adoption-related things we've been up to. There's been plenty more going on, but I thought I'd focus on the adoption side. :)
Now we have more paperwork to do then I ever thought possible, I am overwhelmed right now, but I plan on making a detailed to-do list today or tomorrow to help break the tasks down.
A sweet friend who's done this and is just now on the other side keeps reminding me that, "If God has lead you to this, He will bring you through this."
If you think of us please pray! I'm sure at some point in our adventure I'll be remembering these days of paperwork as "easy" days, but today is not that day. :)
Thank you if you have been praying for us! Please continue to do so, it's greatly appreciated!!
Thursday, April 18, 2013
New Adventure
"An adventure is an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome."
-Quote on Wikipedia
This definition of adventure pretty accurately describes what our family is embarking on. We are in the beginning of an adventure, a great adventure even. If given a subtitle it might read something like this...
Our Family's Newest Adventure
A story of pain, loss, surrender, tears, faith, trust and redemption...
I'm pretty sure I could come up with a few more descriptive words, but for now we'll leave it at that. While we are just beginning this adventure every word of the sub-title is true. However, there's a story behind each descriptive words, more then one actually, that in the coming months I'm hoping to share.
For now I want to share about our adventure!!
If you've read them, my 2 previous posts, Like a Rose and Stepping Out of the Boat were a little bit of background information.
This adventure we've begun is exciting (and scary), for us it is bold (which some might perceive as crazy), there are parts of our adventure that will be risky (but worth it), and while we are certain of the final outcome, we know there will be uncertainties along the way.
God has caused an area of our hearts to blossom and we're so excited!!
By God's grace we are going to adopt a little girl from China!!! :)
We are still in the very begining stages, but we're so excited (very overwhelmed) but so so excited!!
Adoption is our new adventure and I'm looking forward to seeing how each chapter will play out!
Buckle-up friends, and please come on this adventure with us...
-Quote on Wikipedia
This definition of adventure pretty accurately describes what our family is embarking on. We are in the beginning of an adventure, a great adventure even. If given a subtitle it might read something like this...
Our Family's Newest Adventure
A story of pain, loss, surrender, tears, faith, trust and redemption...
I'm pretty sure I could come up with a few more descriptive words, but for now we'll leave it at that. While we are just beginning this adventure every word of the sub-title is true. However, there's a story behind each descriptive words, more then one actually, that in the coming months I'm hoping to share.
For now I want to share about our adventure!!
If you've read them, my 2 previous posts, Like a Rose and Stepping Out of the Boat were a little bit of background information.
This adventure we've begun is exciting (and scary), for us it is bold (which some might perceive as crazy), there are parts of our adventure that will be risky (but worth it), and while we are certain of the final outcome, we know there will be uncertainties along the way.
God has caused an area of our hearts to blossom and we're so excited!!
By God's grace we are going to adopt a little girl from China!!! :)
We are still in the very begining stages, but we're so excited (very overwhelmed) but so so excited!!
Adoption is our new adventure and I'm looking forward to seeing how each chapter will play out!
Buckle-up friends, and please come on this adventure with us...
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Stepping Out of the Boat
In my head this post has had a couple different titles. The title I'm using came to me one night when I was reading my Bible, I don't even remember what I was reading at the time, but the story in Matthew 14:22-33 came to mind. I sat for a few minutes just thinking and then I decided to read this passage of scripture.
Matthew 14:22-33 is the story of Jesus walking on the water. And the story of Peter walking on water too.
I started thinking about Peter and just his personality that we see through scripture. He seems to be an impulsive, doesn't-always-think-before-speaking, prideful, maybe a little harsh, bold kind of man. However, he also seemed to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy, he's pretty much the same no matter who he's with. And he also seems to be a man who lives his faith "out loud" (if that makes sense?). Peter is a lot of things and most of the time the lesson we're learning from him is what not to do (think about it). In this story I see him differently...
A number of years ago I was listening to a sermon my brother-in-law gave. I couldn't tell you the title or what it was even about, but there's one sentence that's stuck with me all these years. My brother-in-law was talking about Matthew 14:22-33 at this point in his sermon. He was talking about how Peter usually gets kind of a bad wrap, since we tend to focus more on his negative qualities. Anyway, he continues talking about Peter and then in reference to this passage says,
"But Peter got out of the boat."
It struck me then the way it does even as I'm writing this.
He got out of the boat.
Peter may have impulsively asked Jesus to call him to come and regardless of the reason, Peter had faith enough to get out of the boat and because of that faith, Peter walked on water.
We are at a place in our lives where we believe Jesus is calling us.
Our boat is safe, it's "easy", it's familiar, it's normal, it's what we know. Our boat is our comfort zone.
By faith we are choosing to step out of our boat.
Matthew 14:22-33 is the story of Jesus walking on the water. And the story of Peter walking on water too.
I started thinking about Peter and just his personality that we see through scripture. He seems to be an impulsive, doesn't-always-think-before-speaking, prideful, maybe a little harsh, bold kind of man. However, he also seemed to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy, he's pretty much the same no matter who he's with. And he also seems to be a man who lives his faith "out loud" (if that makes sense?). Peter is a lot of things and most of the time the lesson we're learning from him is what not to do (think about it). In this story I see him differently...
A number of years ago I was listening to a sermon my brother-in-law gave. I couldn't tell you the title or what it was even about, but there's one sentence that's stuck with me all these years. My brother-in-law was talking about Matthew 14:22-33 at this point in his sermon. He was talking about how Peter usually gets kind of a bad wrap, since we tend to focus more on his negative qualities. Anyway, he continues talking about Peter and then in reference to this passage says,
"But Peter got out of the boat."
It struck me then the way it does even as I'm writing this.
He got out of the boat.
Peter may have impulsively asked Jesus to call him to come and regardless of the reason, Peter had faith enough to get out of the boat and because of that faith, Peter walked on water.
We are at a place in our lives where we believe Jesus is calling us.
Our boat is safe, it's "easy", it's familiar, it's normal, it's what we know. Our boat is our comfort zone.
By faith we are choosing to step out of our boat.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Like a Rose
I've been trying to decide how to start this, I know in my head what I want to say or how this post should "sound" but getting the words from my brain onto "paper" don't always translate the way I want. We'll see how this goes...
There have been some things the Lord has been working on in my heart, to give an exact starting date would be hard. The more I think about what has taken place, the more I realize this has been years in the making.
To explain what God has done in my heart I would liken it to a rose. A rose bud. If you look at a rose bud the petals are closed very tight, sometimes you can't even see the color of the petals because green leaves surround the bud. The rose bud is tightly closed and if you were to pry or force the petals open before they're ready you would dramatically change the appearance. What you would end up with may resemble a rose, but it would not be a thing of beauty.
However, given time and care that rose bud will slowly start to open. With continued patience and care that tightly closed rose bud will blossom into a beautiful, fragrant rose.
My heart pertaining to a certain matter was that rose bud. Tightly and securely closed, in fact I'm sure my heart looked like a rose with green leaves still covering the bud. When it came to this topic, discussion, possibility I had every intention of keeping that bud closed forever. My arguments were valid, my reasoning sound, in fact I'd be willing to bet I could find many people who would agree that keeping my bud, just that, a bud, was maybe even the "wise" thing to do.
And yet, the Gardener of my heart, the One who tends to and cares for my rose buds, though He would never force a single bud open, His desire was to see that rose bud bloom.
My Gardener is patient, so very patient.
Over the years this matter would come up and while I may not have admitted with my mouth, my heart was closed, that rose bud would not be allowed to open.
At times I could feel gentle tuggings at my heart, I didn't want to budge. Aside from my arguments and sound reasoning, I knew there would be a cost involved and I wasn't willing to open myself up to what those costs could mean.
Not quite a year and a half ago this matter, topic, discussion, possibility was again brought up, but this time, differently, instead of a gentle tug, it was now, would you consider this?
I was faced with a decision.
Would I choose to keep my rose bud, safely, comfortably, familiarly closed tight?
Or
Would I choose to allow my heart's Gardener to tend for, care for, and speak to my heart, in turn causing my rose bud to bloom?
I believe that if I had chosen the 1st option, my rose bud would be allowed to stay closed. I believe I would miss out on seeing God move in amazing ways, but I don't believe God forces us to do anything, we have a free will, we are allowed to make our own decisions, and had I chose #1 I wouldn't be writing this. :)
I chose #2, not very willingly, but I chose to pray for God's will to be done, that if this huge undertaking were His will, that He would show me, beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was His will.
I prayed, hoping that just praying would be satisfactory.
I prayed hoping that we wouldn't really be called to do what I had been closed to all these years.
I prayed...not my will but Yours.
I prayed for the Lord to change my heart if this was His will.
I prayed...
I allowed the Sunlight to shine on my rose bud, I allowed my tears, even, to water it, and it began to open...slowly, but it began to open.
There's so much more to the story of my rose bud that I'll share at another time, soon hopefully.
This post is a testimony of how if we are willing and open, God can change the desires of our heart. It can be a slow and sometimes painful process, but God is so patient, He waited for me.
And as I'm writing this, my rose bud is in full bloom, it looks like a rose is supposed to look. And with that rose has come great joy!!
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