Five

Five

 

It’s funny to think, when we started the process to bring our little girl home, Oliver (our youngest) was barely 2. We chose an age range of 0-2 based on the fact that we wanted her to be the same age as Ollie or younger. Oliver turns 5 in just 2 ½ months. Yikes. It really puts into perspective how long and tough this process has been.

 

Today, the Mister and I spoke with our social worker and decided to up our acceptance age to 5. It’s something we do at about this time each year. We don’t care if she’s a baby or a kindergartener. We just want her home. We received an update from our agency today – turns out there are over 120 families waiting to bring their kiddos home. Of those, only 15 are open to kiddos up to 5. It’s exciting for us because it means out wait may not be as long as the “norm” since we’re okay with the fact that she won’t be a baby.

 

Of course, adopting an older child brings its own set of challenges – but we’re confided that with God’s help, we can do this. Since she’ll be older, she’ll have memories – both good and bad. Maybe of her parents, siblings, family members…. Good memories that KC and I will do our hardest to keep alive. She may speak Amharic and not a word of English – but getting a dictionary and learning some key words and phrases now won’t hurt us one bit.

 

We’ll continue to take classes and read bookoos of books – to make sure we’re as ready as we can possibly be. Our International Coordinator is praying alongside us that we’ll be matched sooner rather than later. Even she realizes what a battle this has been! Haha!

 

So even though things have been quiet on the adoption-front, we could still use your prayers. As the holidays are coming up, this is one more Christmas without my little girl. So please forgive me if I seem overly emotional during Christmas dinner. Pray for our family. Pray for the children still waiting for their families and the families still waiting for their children.

 

This has been a long and hard journey (a unique one as well!). One that has been filled with many tears – both of joy and sadness. And I’m sure that won’t change any time soon. <3

 

  

  

The worst 4 letter word ever

Wait. That is the worst 4 letter word ever. I honestly do not think that I am exaggerating that. For serious. The hardest thing anyone can tell me to do is wait. And it feels like that’s all the last 3 years have been about:

 

I lost my job – gotta find a new one.

Wait.

We want to have a third child.

Wait.

We’re going to adopt!

Wait.

KC’s looking for a new job.

Wait.

We’re looking to buy a house.

Wait.

We found a house and everything looks great!

Wait.

 

Waiting is hard. And going along with the ‘waiting’ theme of our life, is the ‘ you’ve got to fight really, really hard’ and then ‘wait’.

 

KC and I were talking about this today. I sometimes feel like that’s all we do is wait and fight and wait some more. You see a lot of people that are like 1, 2, 3 and done! And we’re over here all 1, 2, 3, 4, Q, pony, G, purple, 5, redo 2, 6, 7, do-the-hokey-pokey annnnnnddddddd done. Go ahead and laugh. I had to after I typed it! Now don’t take this as me being all Debbie Downer. Because I’m not, really. I love that God still does things differently with us. KC and I knew that our life would look different than a lot of our family and friends – and it most certainly does.

 

But sometimes, it’d be nice to have something happen smoothly – no bumps or delays or do overs. KC and I are praying about some big stuff (how can it get bigger than adopting AND buying a house? Trust me, it can. Haha!), and we know we just have to wait for a clear answer. And to be honest, sometimes I’m afraid that His answer won’t be what I want. I’d have to say 95% of the time, I’m like ‘okay God, no biggie, I’ll just do something else’. But guys, this one is a biggie to me.

 

I know God has this. I know that a lot of aspects of this are out of my control, like so many things in our life. But I’m in this season of ‘just wait’, and while I’m learning and growing, I feel like it’s been like this for a while. I’m ready to do something more.

 

Do you ever feel that way? Like you have something pressing on your heart and you’re ready to go and dive into the deep? How do you deal with waiting for a clear answer from God?  <3 

  

Struggle can be Beautiful

Yep, you read that right. If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know how true that is in mine and KC’s lives. I stumbled across a quote the other day, and it’s been lingering in my head for quite some time:

 

“One day in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful”

 

Now, whatever Freud meant by that is his business. But it meant something great to me – it confirmed what I’ve been talking about and sharing with anyone who will listen. Those years of struggle turned me into who I am today: strong and beautiful. Now, before you jump off this blog because you think I’m self-centered or arrogant, I don’t mean physically. Lol.

 

I’m able to look at myself in a completely new light because of what I’ve been through. I’m able to look at God and others differently because of the battles I’ve fought and the lessons I’ve learned and the lessons I’ve missed. I’m able to see that some battles left me scarred. Those are the ones that I missed the point of, that I missed the lessons behind; most stubbornly I might add.

 

And then there are those battles that left me stronger, more encouraged than ever. Those are the ones when I rapidly surrendered to God. Those are the ones that helped me bloom in my relationship with Him.

 

We live in a broken world. We are going to have hard times; moments where we’re not sure if we’re going to make it.  We’ve all had more than our fair share of those moments.

 

But now that I’m through that season, I can look back and see how important and how vital those moments were to me as a Christ follower; how vital they were to my character. When someone you only interact with occasionally comes up and tells you that “You have the most beautiful smile. No matter when I see you, you’re just glowing with joy. You make everyone around you happy”, it does something to you. You realize that if that same person would have seen you a few years ago, as you were stubbornly trudging day to day, they wouldn’t be able to say that. But I was able to smile, and tell them that it was only by the grace of God that I am who I am today.

 

So yes, those years of struggle are some of the most beautiful. I’m sure some of you reading this could very well be in the midst of a fierce battle all your own. You’re wondering how you’ll ever make it through.

 

I just want you to know, you will. But submit yourself to God. Let him guide you through it. Don’t fight Him – keep Him close at your side as you FIGHT your way through. Let Him lead you – chances are, the more stubborn you are, the harder it will be to fight.

 

Keep your eyes open. You’ll learn something that will most likely come in handy when you face your next battle. God is great like that. We may live in a broken world, but God will give us guidance and “cheat codes” to make it through. Keep your eyes on Him – and you’ll be able to look back on what you’ve gone through and realize that it too, was beautiful.  <3  

 

 

And now, we wait...

If you've seen my Facebook, you know what's been going on the last couple of weeks. But, if you haven't, here we go:

A few weeks ago, we finally completed our Dossier and got to send it to Little Rock (our capital) to be State Sealed. We got it back and mailed it off to our International Coordinator in Michigan to be reviewed. Well, it turns out that our worker in Little Rock got our Dossier authenticated not state sealed. Boo. I mean, really BOOOOOO! So off to Little Rock from Michigan it went - round two.

So about a week later, it was back in Michigan, state sealed and all ready to go to Washington D.C. to be authenticated at the US Embassy. It was mailed to D.C. on August 1st.

During this time, we found out that our wait time starts immediately after our Dossier gets to Ethiopia. We were stoked to hear this! We thought it would be another 3-6 weeks! So this was definitely uplifting news.

Fast forward to today. We got an email from our International Coordinator that our Dossier was back from D.C. and would be sent via their weekly DHL mailing to Ethiopia TOMORROW!! If it would've come back on Friday afternoon or Monday, we would have had to wait until the following Friday for it to be mailed to Ethiopia. So thank you Lord for giving us this perfect timing.

So now, we wait. Now, we are just waiting to be matched with our little girl. It could be 3 months, it could be 18, it could be 24. We know it'll happen when it happens. And we are A-OK with this. It's giving us more time to spend being a family of four and getting her room ready and preparing work for my loooong leave to be home with her.

To put it simply, we cannot wait to meet her. But it's been 3 years already, I'm sure a few more months won't kill us.   :))