We are still waiting. Don't worry, I will let everyone know as soon as we get "the call". We are very very excited for that day. And yet, as excited as I am, I am glad it has not happened yet. I have so much to do! I am totally nesting. I never believed that you could "nest" when you weren't pregnant, but I am nesting for sure! I am trying to get everything ready. The call can come any day.
The List.....
~swing by my brother and sister-in-law's storage to pick their baby stuff left over from the twins------check
~pick up the crib from my sweet friend Anh-------check
~clean and wash the bassinet that I got off Craigslist-------check
~organize Ireland's room to make room for baby-------check
Still to do....
~figure out which kind of cloth diapers to use (there's so many choices!!)
~get cloth diapers and formula
~find some uni-sex baby outfits (poor child has NO CLOTHES yet in this house)
~pray for God to prepare my heart with patience and love, gentleness and self control
~get the house in order
~make freezer meals
~be sure to get homeschooling in order so things will run smoothly when baby comes.
~jump up and down and shout praises to the Lord for all the kindness He has shown to us :-)
No baby....yet.
Update....again.
I think you will be getting a lot of these in the next few weeks and months. As most of you know we just shifted from a very slow international adoption process to a very quick domestic adoption process. We JUST today found out that our current international agency that we have been working with, has agreed to convert our home study from international to domestic. This is huge. We were hopeful in the beginning that they would convert it, but the more we talked to the agency, the more it looked like they would not do it for us. This was told to us by four separate individuals who worked in the agency. My husband looked at me and said "babe, if they won't do it, then we cannot afford to do another homestudy and we will just have to take it as a sign from God that we are to wait longer to adopt and stick with international." Which would mean dropping from South Korea (as we know regardless of which adoption we do, is not a good idea at the moment due to the countries threats of closing the program) and waiting until we qualify for China special needs. My heart sunk. After waiting years just to get to a point to be so close, it hurt to think of having to wait longer. I prayed. Then I finally go a hold of the director of our agency (who happens to sincerely dis-like us :-), and she told me today that she would convert our homestudy........... FOR FREE........ THIS WEEK. It was a MIRACLE. I could say a lot more, but I don't want to put down the agency. Let's just say it was clearly the work of God. Sooooooo the plan is, get the 5% loan we have agreed to get, turn in our money and paperwork to the domestic agency Friday, put together our profile in two weeks, and probably adopt shortly thereafter. I can't believe how fast this is all going. I wouldn't be so excited for the quickness of it all had the lady not told me to prepare to get a child very quickly due to our openness on race and other issues. I was prepared to wait long, and was fine with that. But it is true. So we wait and see. I am picking up my nephews infant carseat that he has outgrown tomorrow, along with some miscellaneous baby things. I have to say, having a 10 and 7 year old sure makes you look around and realize that you have almost nothing for a baby. This should be fun collecting little pieces here and there from friends and family. P.S. if anyone has any good ideas on fund raising to pay off adoption loans, pleas let me know! :-)
updates, updates, updates.
I find it odd and sort of funny that I am in a stage in life that things are changing so much that I am constantly having to update friends and family on the craziness that we call "our life". But I love it anyhow. Apparently God must think I don't like things to be predictable (or he knows I do and likes to throw me for a loop....one of the two ;-) Tonight I will focus the update on the adoption. Later, when I get back from Northern California, I will update the rest of our crazy life and then would love to go back to some topical blogging, The adoption is moving forward, but in a new direction. We received our finalized copy of our Home Study in the mail today ~yay~ and have thus far completed everything needed to move forward in this process. However there is one thing standing in our way. That one thing happens to be very very large. Yup, it's the country of Korea itself. We believe completely that they are shutting down the international adoption program. And rightfully so. They are not a third world county, and have reached the point where they can sustain their own adoptions domestically. They have been talking about this for a few years I guess, but we only knew about it a month after we signed on to adopt from there. Our agency did not tell us anything about it. At all. Not a word. You get my drift. We would soon find out however how truly serious this was. Phone calls to the agency brought no news, they said only "Korea has been threatening this for years, it's not really anything to be concerned about." I believed them.....at first. Now we are getting email updates weekly, about what other families (who are much farther along in the process) are going through. Huge delays (some delays are always to be expected in the adoption process but these were massive), and threats to shut down the whole program. There is much much more to it than that, some of which we are not privileged to discuss, but after much consideration we have decided it is not in anyone's best interest to invest 2 more years, thousands of dollars, and our hearts, to a program that will more than likely shut down right before we are able to actually finalize an adoption from there. We then looked into other countries that our agency offers, and for one reason or another we are not able to do the few they have to offer (several countries are going Hague at the moment and others are having in country turmoil and therefore are temporarily suspended). So we started calling around to other agencies who offered different countries to see if we could switch over to them. I called 6 agencies and every one of them told me that although our home study was just completed, is fully accredited, and legal for use, they would not take our home study as it is their policy to do "their own home studies". As I was calling around and hearing this heartbreaking news, knowing we could not afford to pay for another homestudy only 2 months after paying for the recent one, my heart sank. Then I remembered seeing this adoption agency as I drove down the freeway to see my doctor. I thought for a moment and remembered the name listed on the building. I googled them, gave them a call and asked, without expecting a "yes", if they would take my home study. They asked if it was accredited, I said yes, and they said YES! I told them how wonderful that was and how happy I was to hear that. I then asked "What country programs do you offer for adoptions?". She said "Oh, we don't do international, only domestic." My heart sunk. We had never even considered domestic adoption, and I wasn't sure I was ready to consider it now. I got to talking to the kind lady though and we ended up talking for an hour. I let her know the situation with Korea, our situation with not qualifying for several countries due to age, or travel time or several other reasons. She asked me to come by a week later to come talk about the domestic adoption process and see if I really understood it. I agreed, talked it over with my husband, and went to the meeting a few days ago. We had TONS of questions and they answered them all honestly and openly. We discovered a lot of things we thought wrongly about domestic adoption. For one, we believed that domestic adoption in America was for the rich. Why we thought this, I have no idea. It will end up costing around 10-15 thousand dollars LESS than our Korean adoption would have cost. Secondly, knowing adoption is about so much more than money, we wanted to ask if there was really even a need for us. We had always heard that there was like a 7 year wait list for a baby in America. We assumed that there were all these people who could not have children and only wanted a baby, and wanted one .....well.....primarily white. And since my husband and I were open to children up to 5 and were completely comfortable with children of all the beautiful skin shades of this world, we thought the obvious, and only choice was to do international adoption. The lady informed me that although there are a lot of people wanting to adopt in America, most of them want a healthy, Caucasian newborn, born to a mother with a good medical history. She informed us that there were very few couples who crossed their desks open to children of all races, and of backgrounds with some unknowns. We filled out a questionnaire that asked questions about the baby you would like to adopt. Questions like "what race are you open to?", "would you be willing to adopt a child that is the result of rape?", "do you want a boy or a girl?" . When we answered that we were open to a child of any race, either a boy or girl, and that we were not all that concerned about a child's mothers background, the lady almost teared up. I could not believe her reaction. My thoughts were "How many people are seriously not open to these things??". She answered my unspoken thought the next moment. She said that these were the kind of questionnaires they frame in their office. Jake and I looked at each other thinking "your kidding, right?" We are no hero. We are not even good most of the time. We are selfish, lazy sinners being transformed daily by the power of God and relying on HIS grace to get through each day without falling back into old patterns of sin. BUT, we know the value of a child. That value is not changed by circumstance, color, gender, or abilities. Sooo we told her we were interested and talked about how to start. Here's the crazy part. After we talked about which things to do to get this thing rolling she then said "Normally I ask my clients to get in this paperwork as soon as possible. The sooner your paper work gets on file and your profile gets put out there, the sooner you get matched. BUT since you guys are open to so many variables I would say to hold onto your paperwork until you are absolutely ready to bring home a baby." She said we could be matched within days of posting a profile. W O W. So here we are. Doing a domestic adoption. I never would have thought. Now having said all that, our hopes for helping the least of these are not ending with this adoption. There are so many children in countries sitting in orphanages waiting, that we could not leave it at this. Even though all plans made by man are subject to change, our goal is to adopt a precious baby domestically in America now. Then by the time that child is around 1, my husband and I will BOTH be 30 and will have been married 10 years (two setbacks that work against us with several countries). We hope to then continue our heart for adoption internationally. We should then qualify for several more countries. There's your update. Who would have thought I was going to write a book tonight? sheesh! Other updates to follow soon. Until then, we are off to Northern California for our second vacation in almost 10 years of marriage! We are excited and ready for this break :-)
Makin' Some Jam.
Although I recently gave up sugar (mostly refined sugar: sucrose. still working on giving up the other sugars) and can no longer partake of these beautiful jars of goodness, I am still proud of it. It was a fun time making it. I have a fig tree so it cost me very little to make this. It was yummy! A little on the sweet side for because I forgot to buy the low sugar pectin so I could sweeten the Jam with juice. So I had to add the sugar. It was soooo good on toast in the morning. Since I can no longer enjoy these, I am going to give them away as gifts. Do you all make Jam?
Irelands TEN!
What an amazing week this has been! Ireland, my sweet firstborn turned ten. First she had a tea party with a few of her best girlfriends from church( a big girl one, with mom as hostess/waitress). And then a few days later, on her actual birthday we had a celebration with all our family. That may happen often with many of you, but to us it was a big deal. Jake and I moved away from family when Ireland was only 4 months old. We have been back to visit, and even lived back in California for very short periods throughout these past ten years. But this has been the first time in a long time that all her family (mine and Jake's) has all been together to celebrate her birthday. What a special time it was. Here are some pictures of the tea party, and family birthday party.
The tea party...
And the birthday party...
Going Green?
Recently I have been super inspired by one of my favorite bloggers ( Celee at Miscellaneous Musings) to share what we're doing to go "green". Let me clarify what I believe going Green means. I believe God gave us a beautiful creation, a creation marred by floods and sin, but a creation none the less. He gave us a duty to work and keep the land and animals, therefore I believe in being GREAT managers of that. I completely reject the modern concept of "saving Mother Earth", and also reject all forms of "green movements" that put animals, insects, or land ahead of the lives and safety of humans (notice I said safety, not convenience).
But I am convinced that as we do our best to be resourceful and good stewards of what God has given us, that we will not only shine our light to others, but we will live better, healthier lives.
Having said all of that, here are some very small steps my family and I make to be good stewards of God's creation.....
First, we recycle. We recycle most plastics, glass, and cardboard materials (we also do this for money because every little bit counts ;-). We even recycle foil for money!
Secondly, we practice a "re-using" style of recycling. Here are some ways I am doing this.....
I am trying to use less and less paper towels so, on top of the cloth napkins we already own, I am planning to sew more from this old long pillow sheet, pictured below.
Also, here you can see my homemade BBQ sauce that I am storing in a "recycled" peanut jar.(you save money and at the same time help Creation by not adding more production and waste)
And again, below pictures how I am re-using a plastic butter container for storing more food in the fridge. (never put very hot food or liquids however in most plastics as they can leak chemicals into your food)
One more Re-using idea is simple window coverings. I took two yellow pillowcases that we are no longer using in my sons room, and made them into curtains for my kitchen window. It was an odd shaped window and these fit just perfectly! I am not expecting you to put these in the rooms you entertain the most in, but I think they are perfectly acceptable in a kitchen, bathroom, sun room, or laundry room. The best part is you do not need to be good at sewing! I am not a very good sewer by any means, buy most of us can sew a straight line and make a seam. That is pretty much all I did here. Then I tied them back with some ribbon I had in my ribbon drawer. Like I said these aren't award winners, but they are very functional. I use them frequently at night due to the fact that my kitchen window faces the street (well that, and I happen to do dishes late at night in my pajamas, just sayin')
Air purification. This is something I might file more under the category of saving money, but you could make the case that you are also saving a LOT of plastic and production by skipping the expensive air purifier and buying special plants that Nasa has proven purify your house air almost as good (and in some cases better). Here are a few I picked up at the local nursery free with a coupon. I plan on getting more because only one of these was on the list.
Lastly, buy used. I know not everything can be bought(or should be) used, but there are definitely quite a few things you can. And you don't have to be one of those spectacular, trash to treasure, shabby chic women either. Here is a picture of an old dresser (I think that's what it was, although it seems a bit on the short side) that my husband and I bought at the Salvation Army for 10 dollars. We painted it white, and left the old knobs on instead of buying new ones. We put it in our son's room to hold all his legos. He loves it! It stores beautifully, and we couldn't be more happy with our purchase.
Sigh.
I am sighing right now. I think I have been doing that a lot lately. When I just don't know what to say or think or do, I just let out one big heave of a sigh. In case you don't know what a good sigh is, it's where you exhale emotion. That's my way of thinking about it at least. What does "sighing" have to do with our adoption? Well, it's the only way I can really express how I feel about being rejected as a family for the little guy we were hoping to adopt. The sigh that has been escaping my lips these past few days (along with quite a few tears) says in it's own way "OK Lord. I know you know what your doing. But it hurts anyhow."
I have been thinking a lot lately about how "challenging" things have been lately. I am fully aware that the things I am going through pale in comparison to true suffering. But we all live different lives, and to me, in my own little world, these past 2 years have been difficult.
It seems as though everything that we have done or tried to do has come with great difficulty or trial. I just want to cry out as my old spoiled self used to, "Just make something go right already!"
The ways of God are not man's ways. They certainly are not my ways. I wish often that God would make things different. That He would heal me, that He would heal our marriage, that He would grant me my fertility back. So many things are troublesome, and yet, I know He remains there. He not only remains, but He remains with a plan.
I have no clue what his plan is. I haven't the foggiest idea of why he is allowing the things he is allowing, and in the order he is allowing them. BUT, even with faith as weak as mine is (and it is weak my friends, If I can be honest with you), I CLING to his promises. It is clinging to those promises even as I cry "help my unbelief", that keeps me.
Jesus keeps. That is a phrase that has been stuck in my mind and heart lately. He keeps me from running away from him when I am tempted to rebel. He keeps me from loosing my faith altogether, when thing after thing tests and challenges my faith. He keeps me from relapsing into a life of sin, when I know that apart from his Holy Spirit holding me in check I would run back to the pig pen I once called a life.
Jesus also keeps my marriage. He keeps us together, He keeps us from giving up, and He keeps us from hate. We have wanted to do all those things. We have rebelled, hurt, and fought against this marriage. But by the GRACE of our God and the working power of his Holy Spirit, we have also forgiven, surrendered, loved, and triumphed over evil.
It is my prayer now, as it has been over these difficult past few years, that God will keep me. Keep me safe in his love and in his power.
Now onto the adoption update.....
As I mentioned before, we were told Thursday that we were not selected for the child we had applied to adopt. It was only us and one other family that they had to choose between. And although I knew that Gods will would be done in it, and prayed that I would accept the result, it was still very hard. It felt like a rejection. Not just from my adoption agency and the people in the committee, but also from God. Knowing that was not true, it only took a few hours to get my heart and emotions into alignment with the truth. Perspective is everything. Once my heart got into the right realization that this was not personal, but God's will, it became so much easier to bear. We are now just going to wait. Wait and see if this will all work out, or not. If it does, we should be matched with another child in less than 6 months. Until then I will keep you updated on everything we hear and know.
Prayer.
As you read in the beginning of this post, and frankly in the beginning of a lot of posts over the last 2 years, I am weak. For the longest time I saw this as terribly wrong. I thought, and still sometimes do, that God wants us to walk in victory, strength and great Faith all the days of our Christian life. I figured I would have bumps and bruises and hard times along the way, but I knew I could get through anything with my Faith in my precious Father. Yet somewhere along the way my faith became weak, and harder to see and feel. What do you do when your faith isn't all that strong? When you feel defeated from the moment you wake up? When you foresee more things going wrong, rather than rejoicing in the knowledge that God will work all things together?
My answer is the only thing I have lately, and that is to CLING with all your might to His promises. He will never leave, He will never forsake. He sees your heart, your sin, your thoughts, and your weak faith, and He accepts you anyway. This is where I am at. Some people wake up (and I have been there too) saying "Lord what do you want me to do today? I want to serve you Lord and be mighty in your kingdom!". I think that is a wonderful place to be. I miss being there.
But I wake up saying "Lord hold me together and keep me". And I think that being here is OK too. If God has a purpose in all this, and I know he does, then let His will be done, in and through this.
