celebrate!

tomorrow night we are going to party.

no birthday here.

oh no.

but this girl,

the one whose tenderness will melt you in an instant.

well, she finally is sleeping through the night without a pull-up.

and that, my friends, is cause for celebration.

she wanted to invite friends over. and have presents.

instead, i offered the dinner of her choice.

mac 'n cheese.

(nope, momma can't eat that, and we all eat together at dinner.)

second choice.

homemade pizza

(with my new found love, buffalo mozzerella)

and how about some ice cream? i suggest.

and CAKE! she says.

or maybe brownies?

and CAKE! she grins.

guess whose going to the store tomorrow to buy icing?

today

today, i wish my son was not adopted.

i wish that he was just mine.

today, i wish that everything was right in the world.

i wish that i didn't spend time throughout the month thinking and pondering about what on earth to write to his birthmom for her monthly update, but that instead, i could just savor the moments.

i wish when he smiled, i didn't feel this compulsion to get the perfect picture for her. (do you know how hard it is to capture a newborn smiling??) that instead, i could just soak up the love from that sweet little smile.

today, i wish that i didn't have to organize, print and describe photos or write up our monthly report.

i wish that the waiting for his birthfather's rights to be terminated would be over...not lingering out there, hanging over me, ready ammunition for the enemy to use.

i wish that life were easier. simpler. and as i stood washing the never ending stack of dishes (only to go and fold the never ceasing pile of clothes), i realized why i was wishing all of these things. because i want to be able to handle all of this on my own. i want to be able to somehow manage life. i don't want to live with risk. because when i do, my lack of faith is exposed by the evidence of my mounting fear. in essence, i want to live without God. ugh.

so today. today, i repent. of my selfishness. of my pride. of my laziness. of my attempts to do life on my own. what stupidity. what humanity. that He would come for a wretch as I.

over and over again.

my big girl

i wanted to take a moment and comment on how my big girl is growing up.

here is a list of things that she has learned to do in the last two weeks:

take a shower without any assistance

braid her doll's hair

RIDE A BIKE!!

started piano lessons (listening to her practice is wonderfully entertaining in and of itself)

she even helped me cook dinner last night!

we each had a skillet and made fried rice together.

hers was better.

i love this stage where she is just so ready to learn new things.

and i cannot believe she's about to be seven. wow.

money

having children in any way, shape or form ain't cheap. no surprise there.

since i was in my early teens, i have had a multitude of opportunities to watch God provide for my family and others. i have seen Him put food on the table for us when we were growing up and the construction industry was tanking (funny how history repeats itself). i have seen Him provide money for me to live overseas. i have watched Him over and over provide not only what we needed, but abundantly more than that (hello free trip to Hilton Head!)

back in college, one summer on a beach project, we sang this song. (anybody remember?) "give, and it will come back to you. good measure. pressed down, shaken together and running over. give, and it will come back to you. when you give, give to the Lord." i just remember kevin perryman busting out on that song. anyway, the lyrics (scripture, actually) stuck deep. i have seen them played out over and over. we cannot, ever, outgive God.

so when we started looking at adoption, paying for it was laughable. we by no means had the funds that we needed. we were grateful each day to be able to pay our bills and live debt free. however, we were confidant of one thing. if He had called us to adopt, He would provide what we needed in ALL areas to do it. here are some of the fun ways that He did it. (and is still providing!)

anybody ever heard of southernsavers.com? well, unbeknownst to me, this website was hugely popular. i thought it might just be this little old site with money saving tips that was helping me. so, i contacted Jenny via e-mail to see if i could help her teach workshops. she actually e-mailed me back (which is so funny to me now that i know just how huge her site is), and i started working for her doing the walgreens list and then adding the kroger list. all of the money that i made went into the pot for adoption stuff. but let me pause for a moment and tell you just how kind God is. jenny is the absolute BEST boss in the universe. she gets that family comes first and has been so gracious to me. the Lord knew exactly what i could handle, and a job that i can do in my pj's at home a few hours a week to put some money in the pot far exceeded all of the ways i was brainstorming that we could increase our income. He is good.

even with all of my hours of work, we were barely making a dent in what we needed. i was amazed though (and continue to be) at how each time we reached a financial deadline, God provided. a penny saved here, a dollar earned there...and then there is the beautiful body of Christ.

we had three different families in our church that rallied around us. what i absolutely love about each of them is that they used their gifts and passions to help, AND they listened to the Spirit. all of them came to us wanting to help and with ideas of how they specifically could. one gal hosted a jewelry show and gave us the profits. another couple did a huge fundraiser at their gym and raised a ton. and then dear friends just gave out of their extra--wanting to live out the believers having all things in common.

what made these gifts even more fun is that we applied for a matching grant through an organization called promise686 and these gifts were doubled!!

i have had moments of wondering if we were ever going to make it, and i look back at the last two years, and i think, You are good. so good.

closed, open or semi-open

there is lingo that goes with the adoption world, and this is more of it. allow me a moment to define (at least to the best of my knowledge).

closed adoption-this is where there is no contact between the biological and adopting parents. you might know something about the story surrounding your child, but probably not a ton. this is the typical international adoption, and this is the way that most adoptions were done 30 years ago.

open adoption-there is contact between the biological and adopting parents. there are varying levels of open. there is wide open, "hey come on over to our house!" and open with some boundaries as well, but relationship is happening.

semi-open is somewhere between closed and open. that's about all i know about that.

when we first started this journey, i was all for a closed adoption. i was driven by fear. HUGE fear. i had read one too many novels and seen one too many made for tv movies about the birth mom trying to get her child back. obviously, that is a terrifying thought. i didn't see any good that could come from us having a relationship with our child's biological parents. i thought it would be confusing for the child and that they might be conflicted about who their "real" parents were. because we were adopting internationally, i didn't have to look at my reasons or motivation for wanting a closed adoption. that was just the way that it was going to be.

however, when we moved to domestic adoption, we suddenly had to make a conscious decision about what type of adoption we wanted with the understanding that the biological parents might want something different than what we wanted. so, we had to decide, and then hold that decision with open hands.

one of the things that i am most grateful for is the great training we got from covenant care and for some challenging conversations i had with a dear friend. for the first time, i started to step outside of my fears and begin to think about what it must be like for the biological parents. when we began to think of them as people who were grieving the loss of a child and needed the love of Jesus, everything shifted. i learned how loving them well could help them to heal. we began to see that if we had an open relationship with our child's biological parents, there could be the potential for us to have medical information if we needed it. there wouldn't be this wondering in our child's hearts about who their biological parents were. they could know them. we would still be the ones calling the shots. we would still be the parents. if the relationship became toxic, we could walk away, but we could at least try it.

love began to cast out fear. isn't that what He says that it does?

what has held us through the storms

the last few posts are fairly turbulent, at least, remembering them was for me. it made me stop and ask myself, what held us through those rough waves. i can honestly say that knowing that God was completely in control AND that He knew the child that He had for our family was our sanity in this journey. even now, when we are tempted to give way to fear, remembering who He is holds us fast. He is a strong tower. He is good. that doesn't eliminate pain, but it does remind me that He will use all of the pain to bring beauty. He is not taken by surprise. when i am blind sighted, He is ready and prepared, knowing full well what was coming. when the temptation to just quit sinks in, to stay our happy little family of four, He reminded me that He had called us to this. He would accomplish what He had set out for us.

over and over, i have said that i have no idea how people do this without believing that God is sovereignly in charge of all AND that He is good. how do you ride the waves of life without a firm anchor to hold onto? there is no way that we would have made it this far without Him. He is all that i am not.

our third and final agency!

well, we decided to move forward with domestic adoption. and let me tell you, the scouting for a new agency was intense! i wanted all the cards on the table BEFORE we got started. my sis-in-law made some reconnoissance phone calls on our behalf, and i called several people who had worked with different agencies that had similar parenting beliefs to see how things had gone for them.

we wound up working with covenant care services out of macon, georgia. after about a year of working with them now, i can honestly tell you that they have been everything that our hearts were longing for on this journey. we finally had an advocate. we finally were partnering with an agency who had similar beliefs. when i read their statement of faith, i wept. seriously. wept. it was just so rich and deep and good. i cannot recommend them highly enough.

choosing to move from international to domestic adoption involved some new choices. jon and i had to think through things that we hadn't had to before. what kind of adoption did we want to have? open, semi-open or closed? what race of a child were we open to? and were we really ready to have a baby? whew. more stuff that penetrate through layers of junk in my heart. here we go.

the choice

i don't want to spend any more time on this part of the journey. it was horrible. lots of tears. lots of agonizing. lots of praying. lots of conversations between jon and i. we tried changing how we parented while we were wrestling, and the negative effects on our children were obvious within a very short amount of time. so that was out. that left lying or parting ways.

i hate lying. i was the one in ethics class (the only one, i might add), who said that it was never right to lie. and in all honesty, after the conversation with the director that day, i cried buckets because deep in my heart, i knew we would part ways. i knew that the child that i had dreamed of, prayed for and longed for would not be. but we had to go through the wrestling.

many dear friends advocated lying or being evasive for the sake of saving a child's life. at the end of about three weeks of struggle, jon and i didn't feel like we could do it in good conscience before the Lord. i do not judge others for the decisions that they made in their adoption journeys. it just wasn't where the Lord led us.

in the midst of all of this agony, i started investigating other agencies that would help us continue our journey with adopting from the philippines. in the process of looking, i discovered a piece of information that had not been disclosed to us about the financial requirements. bottom-line, we did not meet those requirements to adopt internationally in 2010 because of the horrific year that jon had in construction the year before. we had no debt, but our income wasn't high enough in 2009. we could submit our application to the philippines working with another agency and hope that they would accept us, but they would have just cause to reject our application. at that point, we were out about $2,000. if we took the next step to send our dossier overseas, we would be out $10,000. it seemed foolish to us to put that much money out there when we didn't meet the guidelines. so after much prayer and many tears, the door to adopting from the philippines was closed.

when i tried to explain to people my grief, the best way i knew to explain it was that it felt like a miscarriage. there was a child that had been growing steadily in my heart that i would never hold. it was a tremendous loss for us.

now, we were faced with a new decision. was this the Lord telling us to stop? was He telling us to wait (until the end of 2010 so that our tax information would meet the criteria for international adoption) or were we to pursue domestic adoption?

enough with the decisions already!

the phone call

in my proactive nature, i decided to call our agency to get their help in navigating what had happened during our first interview. i was thinking that they were our advocates and that i was safe. so, the next afternoon, when the girls were down for their naps, i called.

the first gal i talked to was precious. she totally affirmed me, and i really believed that we were going to make it through this hurdle. then she told me that she wanted me to talk to the director just to make sure that what she was telling me was accurate.

that's when i got blind sighted. the director freaked out. he wasn't okay with the decisions we were making. i was stunned. some of the things he said were directly against Scripture. i mean, totally against what the Word of God says. when i confronted him on his inconsistencies, he didn't have much of a response. i was burning bridges, but unwilling to let the truth of God's Word be twisted. i was crying through most of the conversation because i was so caught off guard. here was the man who i thought had our backs, so to speak, totally telling us that we either had to change the way we parented our children, or their agency would no longer be able to work with us. i was stunned. oh, i said that already, but you get the point.

now, we had to choose. we had three options. we could change. we could lie, or we could walk away.

the first interview

so, where did we leave off? most of our paperwork was done. we were plowing through our dossier (the long list of paperwork needed for the philippines), and our homestudy paperwork was nearly finished as well (including a septic tank inspection). it was time for our first interview with our caseworker. since the agency we were using at that time was out of state, we had contacted a local agency to do the homestudy.

i felt tremendous pressure for these interviews. it felt to me like we were on trial. the verdict would be whether or not we were fit to be parents...which is a weird place to be when you are already parents. if they said, "no" what did that mean about who we are as parents now? i knew the truth that these interviews did not define my worth, but i also knew that they could stop the process for us.

most of you know too that i lay all my cards on the table. i am not good at being evasive or answering questions vaguely. i am horrible at those things. i tell the truth. the whole truth. and there are certain truths that are not spoken out loud in adoption circles. not without consequence. so, i was on pins and needles.

AND, to make matters even more interesting, the girls would be coming with us. jon and i agreed that we would give them no instruction or coercion on what to say or how to answer questions. we did not want them to feel like they needed to hide any part of our family life. there is nothing that they needed to be ashamed of (and there IS nothing that they need to be ashamed of). on the other hand, have you ever been around 2 and 5 year olds? there isn't much of a filter there. and 2 year olds aren't always known for their immense self-control in long meetings where they are to play quietly. just writing this down makes the stress roll over me again! i felt like we were going on trial and that every aspect of our parenting was going to be evaluated in that hour and a half.

now, i should clarify, no one at any point in time had told me that it would be like that. in fact, the opposite information was presented. we were told, "we just want a chance to get to know your family. we are here to help you through this process." however true that might have been, when someone is studying your every word and action and taking copious notes, it's hard not to feel scrutinized because they are indeed scrutinizing.

so we got to the meeting early and waited in this dimly lit swank waiting room. not super child friendly, but oh well. the girls did fine, and we waited to be called in. at last, it was our turn. the atmosphere felt similar to a counseling session with kids. that's the best way i know to explain it. questions were asked, and we did our best to answer them well. the girls were asked questions as well. they did great. we were almost done when the bottom dropped out.

abby was asked a question that she didn't understand. i rephrased it and she shared truthfully information that was not well received. i was (and am) very grateful that the caseworker did not let on to abby that she had said something potentially explosive, but she did look at us and say, "we will definitely be discussing that further in our next meeting."

i remember the conversation with jon in the car on the way home. i remember driving up 85 saying this, "i want an advocate! i feel like the birth mothers have an advocate and the children being adopted have an advocate, but who is fighting for us? who is helping us to wade through all of this!?" it wasn't that i didn't want birth mothers and children to have advocates. i do! they need them desperately. but so did we.

we left that interview knowing that we had a rough road ahead and feeling alone in the journey. not a fun place to end for today, but that's where we were then.

mother's day

it is mother's day. what pressure for the husband to direct and instruct little ones to make it special! my favorite part of this day so far was the sweet hand written "happy mother's day" notes. abby's said, "hppy mother's day." and julia had written all the letters herself, except the "m"'s...because they are too hard for a child who is teaching herself how to write.

abby asked this morning what benjamin was getting me, and then filled in the blank with, "he's getting you the gift we got you too, right?" i feel so immensely grateful this day for the gift of being a mother. for tiny hands to hold. for chubby cheeks to kiss. for long eyelashes framing sparkling eyes. and for sweet, "happy mother's day" unprompted waking me up this morning from four year old lips. this is a gift. and a precious one at that.

one sweet reminder

has it been two weeks since i've written? where have those days gone? oh yeah, the newborn coma phase passed and somebody has been a little needier. and how could i forget, we started back with homeschooling. the days roar by with barely a chance to blink, much less blog.

one fun story while the bottle warms. we got to go to the beach. not just any beach. we got to go to hilton head last weekend. which just happens to be our favorite place to go.

after a hard week of struggling to believe that God would meet our needs financially, He blew my socks off. my parents were planning on going with some friends of theirs, but due to unexpected health issues, their friends had to cancel. so on thursday, mom and dad invited us to join them the next day for four days, three nights at this GORGEOUS resort on the beach with 3 different pools-two heated. all it would cost us was the gas. jon and i talked. were we crazy to venture this kind of trip with a newborn (and while i had a sinus infection)? probably, but then we decided, why not!

oh, and then, when jon told his parents that we were going, they offered to pay for our gas. so our trip would only cost food (which we would have to eat anyway!) what a gift. i think God dumped it into my lap to remind me that He is provider. not just of my needs, but He blesses me far beyond my needs. we were going to try to go to the beach in the fall. it would have cost us more (obviously). where we stayed wasn't on the beach (but within walking distance). we wouldn't have had extra hands to help. the pool wasn't the best (and that was definitely the girls FAVORITE part of this trip). He just gave me more than i would have asked for. so so kind.

so hopefully, this weekend i can get back to telling our story. i just thought i'd let you know where i had been. :)