United we wait.

August 13, 2015 – a Thursday. Ok, so it’s been a while. This summer has lended itself to new adventures and also a new heartache. Apparently, the point of blogging is to share what’s on your heart. However, I can hardly bare it, must less share it. Perhaps, I am not meant to be a blogger. If so, I can live with that. 

Here is an update – still vague – on what’s been going on. We are still simply waiting for circumstances to change in order for us to bring our daughter home. The one we have been praying for and dreaming of for so long. The one that my youngest son cries for at least two times a week. He says that she will never get here and that it takes too long.  I know how he feels. That sweet girl. That’s the one. See, why would anyone want to read about this? Cradling my five year old while he is crying for his sister is just HARD. 

OK, so while we were (still are) waiting, another little angel came to our attention. This sweet child was the picture of a person in dire need. We were told that she was abandoned by her parents. She was being raised, sort of, by guardians that were on their deathbed. This sweet child had one piece of clothing, no bed, no shoes on her feet. It was tragic. So, we prayed for this child and pursued her. 

On a side note, I must say that we have been impressed with the way that the private investigators in Uganda can find information. I mean this in a most respectful way. Word of mouth seems to rule over there; however, the private investigators that we have hired can most assuredly find out information. This is important in an adoption, as both the Ugandan government and the US government want to assure that the child is a certified orphan. We, as people who care, also want to assure that we are bringing home a child who needs us. 

Long story short, when everyone really thought that we were at the point where we could order another private investigation, a mother showed up – Praise God! This child is not an orphan! This was a surprise but we were thrilled for the little girl. In an amazing turn of events, the mother agreed to give her child up for adoption, but when the child was deemed ready to first go into the orphanage (she needed medical assistance), her guardians had hidden her! She was nowhere to be found. It is a strong and long-held belief in Uganda that Westerners adopt children  and then use them for body parts. Awful, right? Well, the guardians were afraid that this was the case and therefore they hid the child. So, this case is closed. There is nothing that we can do for that precious person now except to pray for her. We know that God loves her more than we ever could. Her life is completely in His hands. I mean, all of our lives are in His hands. But, this child needed extended medical care, critical vitamins, shoes; things that she might never receive at this point. We cling to the fact that God loves her more. We are physically unable to even reach out to her at this point. Case closed. Please, pray for this child and the countless children like her. We know that the Lord loves His children. When you can see pictures of his most innocent ones in such desperate situations it will change you. It is my belief that we need this hurt, this ache in our everyday American lives. We need to pray for the least of these. 

Back to our “first” daughter, we are still waiting. We have the privilege to sponsor her while we pray, wait and hope for her situation to change so that we may adopt her. I received the news that she was not immediately available for adoption on my birthday. I received many of your birthday wishes and congratulatory notes, and I thank you. However, I was physically and emotionally unable to thank anyone, forgive me. My heart was hurting too much. This was the closest that I have ever come to feeling what it is like to lose a child. Parents who have lost a child: I have no doubt that your pain is far, far worse. I am certainly not trying to say my pain was harder to push through than anyone else’s. My point is only that IT HURT. It still hurts but we are moving through it. Our high points are the fact that we can sponsor her. We still receive pictures of her when we ask for them. In fact, I could not bear to ask for a picture until about three months had past. When we received an update photo of our Sister, we were all overcome with joy! Yes, she is growing and getting older without us. But, she is growing, thriving in fact, fed, cared for, well, happy, safe. What more could we ask for? We chose to wait on God’s perfect timing – even though we do not understand. We chose to believe that there is a reason that we may never understand for why this is taking so long. And, so we wait, as painful as it is, with our heads held high. We hold on to His promise that we will bring Sister home one day. 

There is not a day that goes by that we do not pray for Sister. We think about  her, talk about her, the boys play in her room….. Everything is ready for her, we are just waiting on her.

We are hopeful that we might hear some news regarding her situation this month. We are fully aware that it may not be the news that we wish to hear, but at this point hearing news is welcome. It is important to us that Sister knows (to the best her young mind can comprehend) that we love her and are waiting on her. She will receive a few gifts from us this month, including a new My Little Pony doll and some sweet little sandals.

Prayer requests: Please, pray for all of the needy children in the world. There are so many children that will never even have the chance to be adopted or sponsored. They need our prayers – desperately.  Would you  please pray for these children?

Please, pray and ask God if He would have you do something about this crisis. Can you sponsor a child with a monthly gift? Can you foster or adopt? Can you support those who bring such children into their home? Can you pray for them? 

Please, pray for a favorable response regarding our Sister. We are ALL ready to bring this child home. We are grateful for the opportunity to sponsor her, but are looking forward to having her here with us. Waiting on God is so hard. We know there is a reason and we will be obedient, but this is tough. 

Please, pray for our family. My boys’ hearts ache for their Sister. It is hard to explain why this process is taking so long. It is so difficult to comfort them about this. We continue to tell them that this is all in God’s hands and that when they see Him move that it is something that they will never forget. Please, lift them up in your prayers. Please, pray that their hearts will stay focused on God and what He has in store for them. Please, pray for protection against the enemy as time can make us grow weary. Please, pray for the Big O and I. Pray that we can parent our children well. Pray that we continue to stand firm and wait patiently together. Please, pray that we can bring our daughter home soon. 

Thank you for joining us on this most harrowing journey. We all had thought that she would be at home with us now. Yet, we still wait. United we wait. 

Hopefully waiting

May 25, 2015 – a Monday. Oh, I have needed to write for so long. Waiting, waiting, waiting. What does this feel like? It is boring. Sometimes it feels like you are forgotten.  Often, it is lonely. I call our adoption agent every 2-3 weeks just to “check in”. She knows that we are here and that we are still waiting on a placement; however, I do this for me and she is gracious enough to share her time. It is hard. We still pray for Sister and our probable other Sister. The boys get confused; things are weird, just so hard to explain. However, I can say that while this is still painful, and I still cry, it is getting easier. 

Recently, it was explained to us how we can begin sponsoring our first Sister! We are excited about this as it is SOMETHING that we can do for her. We are also waiting to see where she will stay. The wonderful Baby Home that she is currently in is a temporary option at this point. We are waiting and watching – I hate to be vague again; however, we still are unable to share too much information about this at this point. So, that is movement, I guess.

Now, we are waiting on another placement – this means another sweet child to love on. This is hard but also something to look forward to. Another little one to love, another hope, another heartbreak, another chance……..just a big ball of emotions.

There have been many times during this past month that I have told God, “I do not like this.” There have been times that I have questioned why He would allow this to happen. It is great that a family can be potentially reunited but why does this have to hurt so much? Is He aware of empty I feel? How awful this pain is? I feel certain that He does. He knows.  I am reminded that this pain is small in comparison to how Jesus must have felt after being rejected by so many who claimed to love him, as he hung on that cross. It keeps me close to Him. He who knows, who understands – that is where I put my trust. He comforts me as no human can. Oh, yes, He knows. 

As often as I tell him that I do not like this, I feel him responding to me, telling me simply, “I know.” You see, we do not have to like our circumstances, but we must trust Him through the storm. This God of ours is into character-building as much as He is into any other good thing that he does. He is molding our characters to look more like His Son – and this is no easy task, I assure you.  

And, so we wait. Patiently waiting on news and a photo that will capture our hearts again. Fully hoping to bring a precious person home, knowing that circumstances could dictate a different ending again. We wait. Heads held high. Hearts joyful. Enjoying every day while anxiously awaiting THAT day when the daydreaming of our girl begins anew. 

Thank you for praying for our family and our Ugandan daughters. We are so thankful.

Hope Deferred

April 30, 2015 – a Thursday. It’s been just over a year since we began this journey. So, while the waiting part takes forever, it also has not really been that long. Today we received answered prayer. I have been praying for God to make it obvious as to what will happen next. 

Today, we learned that there are too many unknowns in play at this time to further pursue our little girl. We have asked our lawyer in Uganda to try to assist in setting her up with an international aid organization so that we may sponsor her. She is our Ugandan daughter – legal or not. We want to care for her as best as we can while being so far apart. This does not mean that she will not be ours one day, but for today, she is not. 

I feel kind of numb. A great advantage, I am sure, is that we may have known this was coming. After reading her case report, we identified a few red flags ourselves. We are so grateful to our adoption agent and our Ugandan lawyer for looking out for the best interest of our sweet girl and our family. It was something that no one could have known until that report – the one that I had waited so long for – was in our hands. 

Praises: that our girl is still being so well taken care of and that she is too young to understand the situation that she is in at this time. We are grateful to work with such an ethical adoption agency and to have a lawyer with such high standards to represent us.

We are thankful that God has walked us through this, step by step; allowing us to process and grieve, yet still give us hope. We are astounded by all the prayers and well-wishes that people send our way. Those of you who have reached out to us, to say that you are praying or to encourage us, this helps! I am usually crying on the other side of the screen but they are tears of thanksgiving and appreciation. We can feel your prayers and God uses them to carry us through. He is carrying us once again. We are doing better than we should be at this time. 

It is our hope to sponsor our daughter in order to insure that she can continue to receive nourishment, access to medicine and an education. We do not know what the future holds; perhaps one day we can bring her home. Maybe not. But, we will hope this great hope anyway. We love her and want her to know it. 

As far as our adoption process, our agency is looking to match us with another little girl who is in need of a family. Our family was only approved to adopt one child. So, when they see little girls who meet our profile they also look to see if they have siblings. If siblings are there, we are not qualified. I truly LOVE how our agency fights to keep families together. Yet, it is a bummer to hear of children who need a home and we cannot offer one. I was told that the one child thing had to do with the fact that our Little Olaf has Cystic Fibrosis, a special need, and adopting one extra may be a lot more work than I could imagine. However, we were promised that if we adopted one child and later wanted another, we could. 

What’s next? Come on, you know the answer, we will WAIT. We will pray for a match to come our way in God’s perfect timing. All of the hoop jumping has been done at this point. Once a match is identified, we will order another social report to try to learn any background information that we can. What happens if this happens again? We will grieve and sponsor another. If not, we will bring home another precious daughter. 

Painful? Yes. Worth it? Yes. For some reason God planned for us to take this path.  We do not know how it will end, but we choose to trust Him. 

Here is the song that is helping me through this right now. It is called, “Shoulders” by For King & Contry. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfiYWaeAcRw

Change of Course

April 19, 2015 – a Sunday. Ok, here is a big one. For several reasons, I must be vague in this post: this story is not over, it involves the lives of others which should be kept private and we do not know what will happen in the future. So, here we go.

Our family suffered a huge blow two weeks ago. After waiting on a court date and waiting to get our hands on the Private Investigator’s report, it came. I opened up my email one morning while getting  our boys ready for school and there it was. I could hardly pull myself away. It all came down to the fact that our daughter may not be adoptable after all. Here’s the vague part – family has been identified and they may not want to proceed with the adoption. Our first reaction was shock. This was not planned or expected.

Secondly, I fought to rejoice in the fact that our little girl is not an orphan! Praise God! The downfall of this of course is how much it physically hurt. For two days, I did all I could to just breathe. I was so thankful that my boys were in school so that I had more personal time to grieve, cry, pray, cry, pray, cry and pray. 

We reached out to a few people asking, begging really, for prayer. We needed to grieve the fact that we may never bring our daughter home. Or, that we may not bring her home yet. We have waited so long, jumped through all of the national and international hoops and all we want was to have her join our crazy family. This type of news can really take your breath away. 

We know that having people pray for us help immensely. I was able to insure that my boys were properly loved and taken care of while still dealing with my grief. It also helped once the Big O and I made time to talk about it all. At first, we both just went through the motions of staying busy and processing the information. This type of thing will work for a while, but will not bring people closer. We took time after a few days to communicate and comfort one another. It truly helps us both to heal and makes us stronger. 

So, what’s the plan now? Well, we have two plans that have been put into motion simultaneously. First, we are doing a double-check to insure that the facts that we were presented with still stand. And, if so (which is probably likely), we have asked our lawyer in Uganda to help that family enroll her in a reputable international organization so that we may sponsor her. Our hearts are invested now. We want her to have every possible thing she may need – medication, food, an education. It pains us greatly to think that she may never physically join our family; however, we are trusting God and will do everything we can to parent her from afar. 

Option two is for our kind adoption agent to go ahead and find another placement for us. This step is hard for obvious reasons, I think. We love our daughter! We do not want to simply choose another. However, leaning into God and searching for His plan for our lives has told us many things. 1- He saw this and He deemed us able to walk through this. We can trust Him. 2- He loves our little girl even more than we do and knows what is best for her.  3- When this news came down I felt very strongly that we whispered the word “Sponsor” to me. I didn’t want to, no way! We want to bring her home. But, He is the one in charge here. 4- We are grateful that He has used us in something way bigger than ourselves. Our Lord allowed us to witness something that could reunite a family (vague again – sorry). And, he did it using people who have never met one another, all thousands of miles away – incredible! 5- As my husband and I have started saying during our hard days or difficult moments, “this sucks”. It hurts. Our hearts were sad. (They are still sad but the last two weeks were brutal). However, we are trusting that our God knows this too and has a plan. We must rejoice in the fact that we allowed our hearts to open, we loved with abandon, without reservations. This is pure love.

 

Will our agent find another precious person for us? I am sure she will. I also have no doubt that we will be able to sponsor our daughter. We will not give up hope of bringing her here until God closes all of the doors that would make this possible. Or, perhaps we just need to wait right now. Ah, wait. Here we go with that patience again. God has done much to aid us in strengthening that muscle this past year but it does not mean that I have to like it. Ugh- more waiting. 

So, what can you do? If you are a person of faith, please pray for us. We are only human and this process is mentally and emotionally draining. Please, pray that we have enduring patience, please pray for our daughter and please pray that God’s plan for her life will come to fruition. If we only get a small piece of knowing her through sponsorship then we chose to be at peace with that if this is God’s will for us. 

This trial also reminded me of the many friends that we have who sponsor children overseas. I believe that God wants you to be praying for these precious people as you pray for your own children. Giving money in order to aid these children is a tremendous gift but please do not forget to pray for them. 

Anyway, we are healing and just want to do what our Lord calls us to do. So, we will continue to love this sweet child. Perhaps, she will come home with us, perhaps another child will. But, still, we will love, even when it hurts. 

Here is a song that describes our feelings right now. Enjoy!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfosSggwQS0