Sunday, December 16, 2012

An outpouring from my heart





My heart is raw. The past two weeks have been very
difficult for me.  I started this blog as a way to share our journey with family, friends and other adoptive families so I want to be honest here and share my heart, pretty or not.

This past week we changed our request back to one child. It was a long time coming and something we really struggled with. A day later in our agency, there was a referral for a sibling set and then a few days later another sibling set referral, both were within our age ranges. To be honest, this was hard. I wish I could say that I was praising God and celebrating for these families, sending them heart felt words of encouragement. But I wasn't.....I was sad and angry and hurt. Knowing that if we had not changed our request we would have two new sons right now was difficult. Yes, I have three amazing wonderful children in my home who I love and cherish- but in that moment I missed our Ethiopian child(ren). My heart sank. I felt like we had lost something, we had missed it.

To say adoption is easy is a lie. This is tough stuff and I mean gut wrenching, pain in your heart, earth shattering longing like you would never believe hard. Seriously- hard stuff people.

But out of this pain and hurt, I get to see how much God loves me. If we love this child so much before we even know them, how much more does our heavenly creator who adopted us! I can place my trust in God and know that he has plans for us. The boys that I cried over and missed were never really mine, they were intended for their new families and have been heavenly matched.
Now, can I say this every moment of every day? Nope- some time I just want to throw up my hands and run back to the days before I felt that half my heart was missing. Back to the days where I had hidden the knowledge about oorphans and hunger, extreme poverty and AIDS. Back to the days when I thought three was just fine with me. No constant e-mail checking, cyber stalking other adoptive parent blogs, or constant research on race or health or behavioral interventions.... But then, no one said life was going to be easy, pain free or boring. Our child is out there somewhere and he is waiting for us too!  


Saturday, November 17, 2012

A little quiet time

Today my boys are out hunting, I have one girl asleep and another enjoying her own coveted tv time. In this quiet time I am reflecting on all the things I am thankful for and am just amazed at all I have. We really have so much in America and sometimes we forget how much we really do have. I have jumped on the facebook bandwagon and writing things that I am thankful for and I know I am not even skimming the surface.  How do you encompass an entire life and everything in it into 30 days? I am at a loss...

This moring was the Christmas parade in Lebanon. I was able to enjoy it with a gppd friend and lots of little children. It made me think about this Christmas and all the shopping that is to come But. this year I am choosing to focus on how I can incorporate fair trade products in my shopping and my ability to give to others. (So friends and family- be prepared because you may get some not-so traditional gift this year!)

In my midst of seeking for fare trade I have found many different shopping sites. Here are a few:

The Brave Collection sells beautiful jewelry that helps support survivors of the sex trade in Cambodia. www.thebravecollection.com




  You can help African children get shoes, and help people create jobs for themselves through learning how to make shoes. www.solehope.com/

Buy the Change USA sells goods created by women in the developing world who were victims. Their mission is to encourage consumers to buy goods that support undervalued women.
www.buythechangeusa.com



  We create opportunities for artisans in developing countries to earn income by bringing their products and stories to our markets through long-term, fair trading relationships.http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/

Umoja Women’s Shop sells traditional, glass-beaded jewelry made by women from Umoja, Kenya who have escaped abusive lives in favor of a violence-free community in Umoja. All the color combinations are preserved from their ceremonial jewelry.
www.umojawomen.net


Shop With MeaningConnecting shoppers with products that support causes.
                                           http://shopwithmeaning.org/

Bajalia sells authentic handmade products war-torn countries. All products -- women’s accessories, shawls, wall art, handmade paper, baskets, and more --  are fair trade.
www.bajalia.com


Or you can go to one of my fellow adoptive momma's boards and check out over 200 stores! http://pinterest.com/abeautiful_mess/shopping-with-a-purpose/

And, if you (and by you I mean I) really can't say goodbye to Target, GAP or Sephora then there is an amazing website called Pure Charity that you can go throught ot purchase items straight for the store and a percentage of each of your purchases goes to charity and the amazing part is- YOU get to pick the Charity! How cool is that! www.purecharity.com


So....Happy Christmas Shopping!!!

Sunday, November 11, 2012

DTE Update and some Fall Fun




So I completely missed our 6 months DTE update and we are almost to our 7th. I think I was wallowing in a little in denial over not being matched with our new child(ren) yet and I thought somehow if I didn't post then we may get "The Call".

A few months ago Gene and I really felt even more at peace about raising our age range and together decided if we had not received our referral by 6 months then we would feel comfortable increasing our age range to 0-7. So a few weeks ago we sent in an e-mail to our coordinator and up-ed the age (again). Now, you may be thinking "You started off this journey requesting 0-2 and now your 0-7, in a Joey from Blossom voice: Whoaw- big jump! " 
And yes, you would be correct! For those of you that know me really well, you know I love babies and would love to have like a million of them another one. However, God gave me this amazing husband that has really had his fill of the baby days. In the amazing way that God does things, he has helped both of us acknowledge that He has a plan for us better than our own...

So, trusting in him, we know that we continue to leave our age range open, knowing that he will give us the child (or children) that are for us. So with that, here are the numbers, knowing that God is the ultimate mathematician...


  For an Infant Boy

    For an Toddler boy

   For Siblings (still hard to predict given the variety of  
                                                  ages and gender)

                 For a boy child age 4 or older.

(Want to know where we get these numbers- see the post DTE month 4)

So we continue to pray, study, prepare and celebrate with each referral that creates a forever family! (More to post on a specific family soon!)



While we wait, we decided to take some nice fall family pictures. Enjoy!



We heart Ethiopia!



Can you believe we got the two big ones to hold our hands!



Love this man!



Wherever you go...I will follow



Our three home grown



Off on an adventure

         

Friday, October 12, 2012

Polio, MMR and Hepatitus


Gene and I had the pleasure of a fun date night in Springfield a few weeks ago and we shared it by injecting live deadly virusis into our bodies.....

                                            Hep A, Polio and Yellow Fever for Geno!

                                (I think the virus may already be active in that crazy face!)  

                               Hepatitis A and B, MMR, Polio and Yellow Fever for Amanda


                      That HEP A/B combo stung like a.....(this is a family blog people!)


    Our Battle Scars also known as band-aids....

Although our insurance did not cover our "Ethiopia Travel Vacines" we did have a very nice nurse that allowed us to be in the city limits according to our rental properties so that we could pay $600 instead of $800.

Now please understand, I am just to thankful that we live in a place that we can access vacines and modern medicine and technology. Let me share with you what I have learned about the health of the developing world....

For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
      640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
      400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
      270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)

Love Life and Lollipops- Dirty Water

Worldwide: 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
          (Anup Shah, Poverty Facts and Stats, Global Issues, Updated: September 20, 2010)


So How can you Help???




        
    
                      http://www.charitywater.org/

          
                   

Sunday, September 23, 2012

A year in passing....


    A year ago, on the 20th of this month we officially were accepted in to AWAA Ethiopia Program. We had planned to have infant home by the Summer of 2013 and I am ashamed to admit we just thought the idea of adopting an orphan was kind of a good deed mixed with wanting to add to our family. We felt God calling us and so if we are " christian enough" we could do it and if God adopted us, it's what we are supose to do, right?
      I mean, I'v birthed two babies and raised a son, this would just make us "the modern family"  and why not just try adoption for a spin....[rolling eyes at myeslf now ]...little did I know how much God was going to work in both of our hearts thru this journey. 

   First, those were all naive but decent reasons to start our process but once we started preparing we realized adoption is so much more than that for us. Adoption is about giving a child a forever family that loves them unconditionally expecting nothing in return. It is the way God loves us. International adoption is about an immediate band- aid fix to bleeding orphan epidemic that is a result of poverty and desperation. Ethiopain adoption is about honoring a birth country and a culture that is thousands of years older than mine. It's about learning and sharing and showing respect to a country that is kind and proud but has suffered pain and hunger for much too long.  
  
   I have poured over my bible this year and found verse after verse of following God's will and trusting in him. Prov. 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Romans 8:25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Hebrews 4:16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of neec.



 So we started opening our eyes and listening to our hearts seeing Adoption as what it truly is. We began to research ways of making a difference in the lives of these children and their families. We began sharing what we were learning with our friends (thank you for still being my friends!) and with our family. We dug deeper into why God called us to adopt and our pre-concieved ideas and how they lined up with reality. All this time we still thought an infant, and then....


two boys and a choir that forever changed our family. God used these children to open a part of us that was so afraid and scared. We read and prayed and researched and prayed some more. We saw the need for older children and sibling adoption and changed our request to reflect that.

Our friends and family joined us in our fundraiser and orphan awareness event, showering us with so much love and support.


So now we continue to learn and grown and prepare. Knowing an idea of what lies ahead and where our child comes from. Remembering that we have been called by God to Look after the Orphans and the Widows in their distress (James 1:27) and for us that mean to adopt. Focusing not on ourselves and fufilling our own desires but reminded that this journey is about our child and what they need.

           

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Coffee with Karyn and other memories from Empowered to Connect




My adoption buddy Erin and I packed up and traveled to Nashville, TN for a two day conference on connecting to children from hard places. My brain has completely turned to mush as I try to process all the great things that I learned at Empowered to Connect. I'll spare a few of you and make a separate blog post about what all was covered.  


Dr. Karyn Purvis (my new bestie- but more about that in a minute) is the author of The Connected Child and has done years of brain research to aide families and therapists to have a deeper connection and create attachment in children coming from traumatic backgrounds. If you have an adopted child or are a foster care parent, this is a MUST read! 



Now, if I haven't lost you yet in this entry, let me tell you this was also an amazing weekend to connect with other adoptive families.

 

Here are all the AWAA girls that attended the conference. We all ate together for a yummy dinner and shared our stories then met for lunch to process all that we had learned. So nice to have that community of believers and fellow adoptive mom's to share with.

Now.....I do have to say, Dr. Purvis and I are like best buds since we had coffee together. Some Debby Downers nay sayers people may comment and call our "breakfast date" with Dr. Purvis aka my buddy Karyn a simple hello, but I am here to say it was so much more :) Erin and I were having coffee and Dr. Purvis walks by in our hotel lobby, stops and says hi to us (I happened to be wearing a Show Hope Shirt!) and asks us about our adoption. I somehow blurted out that I loved her and told my husband I wanted to marry her  .  We were able to have a few minutes to talk with her and ask her some questions. She is an awesome woman and recovering from breast cancer. She is such a great impact in vunerable children and thier lives- will you please pray for her recovery?


We headed back home late Saturday night and had a great time....until my darn throat problem surfaced and poor Erin spent the next 7 hours driving thur the dark in the rain listening to me throw-up and spit while I tried to breath through my choking, stopping every hour to get me a new barf bag. Two more hours later, a change of clothes and an ER trip with my husband, I got a soft muscles relaxer and barium x-ray made me a better Amanda. Now I just sounds like Kermit the Frog and our car will never be the same! Ahhhh, the memories, Erin Jay- you are heaven sent !  



Tuesday, September 11, 2012

I have died every day, Waiting for you...

Darlin' don't be afraid
I have loved you for a thousand years....I'll love you for a thousand more.

Today was hard.

A compelation of a lot of things and events but I was breaking today. I miss our child(ren) and this song wrapped up exactly what I feel.