The Lord is not Slow...

Wow.  It’s been almost two months since I last posted.  And these months have been insane.  Pretty sure we’ve experienced every human emotion, sometimes simultaneously.  Why?

Well remember in June how I told you that there was a teens tiny chance that we might not have to wait until the end of the summer for investigations to be completed?   That if they were completed sooner that maybe we’d get to travel this summer?  To be honest, I only half-heartedly prayed this would be the case.  But, 48 hours after our living relative interview at the embassy, we received an email that our investigation was complete!  We had visa appointments in July, which meant we would be traveling in July to pick up our children!  Wahoo!

We booked a hotel room.  We booked plane flights.  We furiously packed.  And packed.  And weighed bags and repacked.  We scurried around finding perfect money newer than 2006 with no creases, marks, or tears.  (Because few places accept credit cards and apparently, they only like perfect US money.)  We hosted missionaries to the Congo who helped us pack and prepare for life in Kinshasa.  We gathered groupons and gift cards for Henry and Grace to take with them to our friends who were keeping them.  

And then about 48 hours from the time we were supposed to leave we heard devastating news:  Charlie’s passport application had been lost by the passport issuing office and so, obviously, the kids had missed their visa appointment.  We were suddenly forced to decide to push back our tickets and pay change fees and the difference in fares or cancel them all together, pay fines and get partial refunds. We tried to push back our hotel reservations, but always knowing there was no real way to know when exactly his passport would be issued.  Or if the embassy would be able to reschedule our appointment in a timely manner.  We were one of the first appointments scheduled for our agency under the new immigration policies, so to some degree, all of us were swimming in unchartered waters.  And the water was deep, dark, and churning.  

To say we were sad and angry would be an understatement.  There was a sense of us reliving every miscarriage and the loss of Emma Sloan all over again.  Because you should just know that waiting adoptive Mommas are so very much like pregnant women in their emotional (in)stability. But not only are we wrecks,  we are loony while also under intense financial strain.  So much fun for everyone!  (Bonus points are that you can drink while waiting during adoption.  And you should.)  

Henry and Grace even buckled under the weight of our grief.  I oscillated between snapping at everyone and crying out of sadness and shame.  We tried to find someone to blame: each other, our agency, the system, the embassy, the Congo, God.  At one point, Sloan awoke to the sound of me crying and cussing while in the shower.  He asked, “Ummm…is there someone in there with you?”  I replied, “I’m yelling at God.  Sure, there are bureaucratic delays, but ultimately He is in charge.”  Sloan said, “Okay, well maybe lay off the f-bombs when praying.  You’re a grocery cart and a pint of booze away from being a hobo.”  

But in the end, we knew the truth:  there was no one culprit behind our delay—this was just life in a fallen world, bureaucracy was slow and orphans got the short end of the stick.  

But this was God’s plan for our family, and He would derive glory in our delay.  I delved into the Psalms.  Ever grateful for David’s words which were f-bomb free but still spoke my heart.  Psalm 22 was ever on the tip of my tongue:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest…Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help… I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.  My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.

And in the midst of David’s distress, David ends the psalm in the future tense, knowing that one day God’s people will proclaim He has done it!  So while I was upset with God’s tarrying, I knew He would bring my kids home.  

But when?

After much delay, we FINALLY got Charlie’s passport.  So then it was time to re-appproach the embassy and ask for another appointment.  During this time, we continued to beg God for patience.  If there was a verse on patience in the Bible, I was clinging to it, thinking if I just prayed the right prayer, God would make me okay with these delays.  That if I just trusted Him enough I’d be all zen and peaceful and could return to business as usual, complaining about my first world problems like too much rain and forgetting my grocery bags as opposed to yearning for my children languishing in an orphanage.    That if I could just learn the lesson that God was trying to teach me, all would be well and we could proceed.

But then God gave me 2 Peter 3:9.  At first glance, I kinda dismissed it.  Perhaps God was not trying to teach me about myself.  (Wait?  You mean it isn’t about me?)  Perhaps it was not my own impatience God was trying to reveal, but rather, His own patience with me.  That I can and should continue to pray Come quickly, Lord Jesus!  Hasten the day when my faith becomes sight and there is no more death or mourning or tears or orphans!  However, I should also realize that He tarries not because He is forgetful or distracted or angry with me or stuck on Candy Crush level 208 (for the love, people!), but because He is patient and He is not done.  He is waiting so that more of us can experience forever in His fullness.  His love is so great, it empowers Him to wait for us.  

Y’all I can’t even comprehend that.  Love so big it is pleased to wait? 

So we wait.  Not because we are pleased to do so, but because we really have no other choice.  We have new visa appointments for next week.  We hope to travel mid-September.  About 2 months after we first thought.  But I do get to be here for Henry’s first day of Kindergarten

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How can you be praying?

-For no more hiccups in our process.  For the embassy appointments to go well and for our visas to be issued quickly.

-For the next steps in country to happen quickly. 

-For our new travel plans to be able to happen:  I am planning on travelling solo and then Sloan will follow up about 12 days later and then we will all fly home together, thereby maximizing Sloan’s PTO stateside.

-For me to figure out how to divvy up our supplies.  Before I had everything split evenly between 5 bags.  Now I have to basically put every necessity in 3 or pay loads in extra baggage fees.  So that’s 100 lbs less!

-For Charlie and Mollie’s health.  Charlie has lost some weight and has begun to ask for us.  Our boy misses us and is ready to come home to us! 

-For us to continue to trust God to provide for us.  Each delay has had both emotional and financial cost.  The changing of the plane tickets cost $1600.  So basically the entire amount raised during our CFA fundraiser. 

Quick Adoption Update

The past few weeks have found me in a place I never thought I’d be—chatting with Senator’s aides, writing letters to Congress people, planning a trip to DC to march for a cause.  But this is the fate of a waiting adoptive parent.  You find yourself doing all you can to shorten the distance between you and your kids. 

Oh, and I’ve been on some conference calls.  Major props to working folks like my husband who have to endure large conference calls everyday.  Oh my word.  And large conference calls with waiting adoptive parents means that at least one person doesn’t have their phone on mute.  Most likely this person will be in a windtunnel located inside the Playland at a McDonald’s.  I can find no other reasonable explanation for the constant chatter and babble of small children in the background. 

So what did all of these efforts produce?  Some news that was both encouraging and discouraging at the same time.  We now know that there is no way we will travel this summer.  The US Embassy in DRC does investigations of all adoptions to insure each adoption is done ethically.  This is a good thing.  No, a great thing.  But because of the sequester and the rise in adoptions in the DRC, the embassy is understaffed and under-budgeted to handle the case load in a timely manner.  So we wait.  We knew that because our kids are not originally from the capitol of DRC, that our investigations would take longer.  The DRC is one third the size of the US.  It’s not like the investigators can just hop in a Humvee and trot off to where our kids are from.  It’s 1000 miles away.  But….we do now know that the investigators have scheduled a trip to our kids' hometown to do our investigation and the investigations of other kids from that area.  (Which is a huge praise and one of the things we were lobbying for!  Hurrah!)  However, the investigators won’t be heading out to our region until the end of the summer.  (Sad trombone)  Please pray that nothing thwarts these plans.  Any changes in politics or rebel uprisings could make this trip a no go.   So while three months isn’t THAT long in the US, it seems like an eternity in the tumultuous landscape of the Congo.  

(Why long investigations?  International adoption is frought with controversy and corruption because where there are big-hearted Westerners with money, there are folks willing to take advantage of that.   And while I have entered into the conversation about ethical adoptions in other arenas, community building in 3^rd world countries and the oh so important need for family preservation initiatives, I don’t want this post to go down that rabbit trail.  So if you want to enter that conversation, I suggest you go here, to Jen Hatmaker’s most recent blog post, to discuss that.  Please hear me when I say I am thankful for the extra lengths the Embassy is going to to insure ethical adoptions.  I just wish they had more resources with which to do them.  Hence the lobbying and the march.)

This means that we will most likely travel to pick up our kids in the fall.  Perhaps October?  And we will now need to be in country for 2-3 weeks rather than just 1 week as we had first thought.  Which makes finding childcare for Henry and Grace a bit stickier during the school year and also triples the cost of the trip.  The wait also adds to our expense as we pay for our kids’ living expenses.  And I don’t want to complain about those costs.  Because the transition house where Charlie and Mollie are is great.  But it isn’t a family.  It isn’t our family.  

Sometimes at night I hear Henry talking to Charlie.  Telling him how he misses him.  “Oh Charlie, I will teach you how to make the bed.  Yours will be the bottom bunk.  It’ll be easier to make than my top bunk.”  “Charlie, I’m really too old for this train table, but I told mom to keep it in our room for you.  I will build you tracks and you can play trains.  Did you know there is a Charlie train?  And a Henry train?  There’s even a Molly train.  Poor Grace, she doesn’t have her own train.”  

I hear this and I cry.

Most days, I’m able to go through the day without breaking down.  I trust that God’s timing is perfect and that He is with them in the Congo.  But other days?  Like Mother’s day?  Sweet Moses.  I was completely blindsided by grief.  It was like it was pissed I’d been ignoring it so long and just full on attacked me.  

So that was awesome. 

I’m trying to see the bright side of the delay.  We have the summer.  I don’t have to worry about getting an email or a letter from USCIS or my case worker saying “It’s time to go.”  I can just love on Henry and Grace.  Sloan and I can go on loads of date nights.  We can finish prepping the kids rooms and maybe unpack the last few boxes.  I can relax at the pool.  I can go to the gym and drop the kids off in childcare.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll go crazy and finally paint the family room bathroom and dining room.  You know, since I’ve got a coupon for paint and all.

Please pray for us to have continued patience.  For us to trust in God to provide for all of our needs.  For the health and safety for Charlie and Mollie and all of the kids with them in Kinshasha.  For me to not obsess over other people’s adoption timelines.  For me to celebrate with my friends at their airport moments when they bring home their kids before we bring home ours, despite them starting their journeys after us.  For there to be no impediments in the rest of our process.  For us to figure out childcare.  For this Momma’s heart who longs to see and smell and hold and kiss her two youngest children. 

Remind me that Jesus sees my hurt and hurts alongside me.  Remind me that God understands a parent's ache for a child in harm's way.  Don't give me churchy platitudes.  Just give me Jesus. 

Why International?

A friend recently asked why we chose international adoption over adopting out of the US foster care system.  Now usually when someone asks me this, it gets my cackles us.  Because the question is typically accompanied with a sneer of judgment from a complete stranger as if to say “Why do you not want to help American kids?”  {Sidebar: one time this nurse at MCV when Grace was teeny tiny and being checked by the specialists said to me, "Oh, I am so glad you decided to help out one of our own kids.  I don't see why so many help those foreign kids when there are kids here to love."  I said, "Um, it's only 9am and I can guarantee that is the most ignorant thing I will hear all day.  Can we please be seen by another nurse?"  Yeah, her jaw dropped and I think Sloan tried to hide under the sink.  But she left the room and we didn't get another nurse but a very apologetic doctor.  My quick wit may get me in trouble A LOT, but don't mess with me where my kids are concerned.  Cause I ain't afraid to cut somebody.}  However, this friend asked it simply to understand, as in she wanted to know how God lead us.  So I will answer.  But get comfortable, because this answer is kinda long.  It was not a decision we took lightly.

For starters, I will say that typically there are two reasons people adopt:  1. to grow a family and, 2. to provide a family.  Sure the latter achieves the former, but the motivation is different.  We adopted Grace to grow our family.  Jesus parlayed that adoption into a passion to see more of His heart for the orphan.  And here we are pining for two Congolese kids.

Initially, we did look into adopting out of foster care.  We have friends who are foster parents.  Sloan has mentored a young man who aged out of foster care and is now in college.  So it isn’t a world that is foreign to us.  The goal of the foster care system is to keep biological families intact.  Sometimes this is a glorious thing.  Parents are able to get their lives together while their kids get a break from the brokenness by being placed in a foster family.  But more often, it is a legal ping pong where there are no winners.  Case workers get frustrated at the judicial system and kids get shuffled.  Foster parents’ hearts get broken.  Kids never seem to have the chance to settle into the security of a permanent home because the next court date may mean they go back into foster care or back to their biological parent.  Therefore, the children who have done this dance back and forth until a judge finally says to the biological parent “Okay, that’s enough, your parental rights are being revoked” are typically much older.  And the state revoking a parent’s right to raise their child shouldn’t be taken lightly.  It’s a big deal.  It’s a broken solution to brokenness.  

For this, I am ever so grateful that Grace’s birthmom made an adoption plan for her.  That she had the courage to put her children’s lives before her own.  She relinquished her rights.  No judicial fight.  Grace and the twins were free to be loved.  Do I sometimes wish that we had known about the twins so they could’ve been placed with us?  Of course.  But I’m grateful to know and love their Momma via facebook.  Apparently, the vanilla versions of Grace have similar laughs and giggles and ridiculous temper tantrums.  

But typically, the children available for outright adoption from the foster care system are older.  They’ve been in the system awhile.  And these families DO need homes.  We simply felt that because Henry and Grace are so young and particularly unable to fend for themselves, it didn’t seem right to put them with an older sibling who, through no fault of his or her own, may hurt them.  A lot of these kids are troubled because no one gets tossed around like that without effect.  They need a family that can love them without abandon or reservation.  Does that make sense?  And through conversations I’ve had with case workers who work in the foster care system, they understand that tweens and teenagers are not the best fit for a family with preschoolers.  Also, when we went to AdoptUSKids to search for how many kids fit our age parameters and were free and clear to adopt, there were 17.  We looked at their profiles and made inquiries, but none of them seemed to fit.

And as to why international?  Because while the US foster care system has serious flaws, the neediness is different and we were drawn to stepping into that need.  I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

Today we got confirmation that Charlie and Mollie have been moved to our agency’s transition house.  Transition House is the term our agency uses to denote the fact that our kids will learn to transition to things that will prepare them for their new lives.  They will be shown our picture and be told about us.  And for possibly the first time in their lives they will live in a home with beds.  With indoor plumbing.  With electricity.  With daily meals.  With access to clean drinking water.  With 24 hour armed guards.  They even have a little swing set and a soccer goal in the front yard of the gated house.  Our agency has a rep in country right now and she took the kids ice cream today.  Seriously, compared with other African orphanages, it is like they are at Disneyland.  

My kids live in a country where close to half of the children die before age 5 due to malnutrition, malaria, and other things that no one dies from in a first world country.  They live in a country where kids not much older than Henry are brainwashed and roped into militia.  Where kids work tirelessly so we can enjoy our cell phones and chocolate.  Where 24 hour armed guards are needed.  Because there are folks coming into orphanages and trying to kidnap kids who have already been adopted to farm out to all of us well-meaning Westerners.  It is scary stuff.  

So yes, kids in the US foster care system need families.  But so do the other 145 million orphans on this planet.  I don’t see why so many like to act like it is a competition between which kids are the neediest.  Where you are born shouldn’t determine whether or not you get to live and be loved.

That’s the long answer.  

The short answer?  Um…we are adopting from the Congo because that’s where our kids are. 

Nesting

I’ve spent most of today organizing Mollie’s room.  Half organizing, half nesting, half sorting and prepping hand-me downs for a consignment sale.  Yes.  That’s three halves.  That’s how busy I’ve been.

I think, perhaps, for the adoptive mother, nesting is integral to the adoption process.  Even more so for the international adoptive parent with a photo of a child a world away.  With a biological pregnancy, a woman nests as she imagines her family growing.  She envisions the snuggle time as she selects bedding, imagines the click clack of tiny church shoes in the foyer as she hangs smocked dresses on small pink hangers.  These dreams are coupled with the inner kicks and nudges she feels as her little one grows safely inside her.

I nest not only because I dream of our family in the future, but because I long to be close to Charles and Mollie.  To feel the nudge and flutter of them growing.  I long to know they are safe and warm.  To hear their heartbeats or see them flicker on a screen.

I don’t even know if they’ve eaten today.  I chuckle at the irony that I’ve hemmed and hawed at the pros and cons of putting Mollie in a crib versus putting her straight into a twin.  But y’all, right now they are most likely sleeping on the floor.  Perhaps even a dirt floor. I will literally have to teach my three year old son to use a pillow. Does it really matter that he will be on the bottom bunk?  

I stay up every night until midnight to pray.  Not because I’m super spiritual.  But because at midnight on the east coast it is 7am in Lumbumbashi.  And in that quiet darkness, I feel as though they are right here.  I close my eyes and if I lay still enough (and Sloan isn’t snoring too loudly), it’s almost as though I can hear them waking up.  Charlie all grumpy and wanting to go back to sleep and Molls bright eyed and bushy tailed, playing in the satin sheets I’ve bought for her.

I pray for their days.  I pray that they will eat more than once.  I pray for clean water.  I pray they’ll receive the care packages we’ve sent.  I pray that they’ll get to eat meat this week.  I pray that their foster mother will be loving and kind.  I pray that they will be told Jesus loves them and that their parents are coming for them.  I pray that God will introduce us to them in their dreams so that we won’t be strangers when we first meet.  I pray that God will bind up their memories of the Congo in a tender place so that when they’re ready to remember, it won’t be lost.  That they’ll always remember what their first mother smelled like.  That I will know how to foster a love of their country, but that I won’t force it upon them.  I pray that I will be patient with them and they with me.  I pray for Henry and Grace to understand that for awhile, we will need to focus just on Charles and Mollie.  I pray for them to share, be kind, and to be patient with them as they learn English.  I pray that Charlie and Mollie learn English quickly.  

So as we gear up to fundraise some more, know this:  yes, yes, we certainly would like to invite you to join us on our adoption journey.  And we are expecting God to go before us and provide financially for this adoption.  But each tshirt sold, wreath wrapped, frame painted is how I tell my children I love them.  It’s my proverbial pregnant tummy rub; it’s all I got.  

For now.