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.

           

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 !  

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.

Month 4 DTE Update

As school went into full swing this month we have been one crazy busy family. We had fun with my cousin Ray and his wife Dessa and thier hansome 10 month old son Baby Ray, so sweet to see the kids play with him. Of course Kellsie was in heaven! I am grateful for the rain we have this weekend and the peace in our home that only a rainstorm and baking cookies seems to bring. 

When you check out the numbers this month you will see it has been really slow for referrals in our agency, only 5 this month so our numbers barely changed a little this month...with the exception of the last number! But, what that doesn't show is the 20 children that passed court and the 20 children that came home this month. It was so exciting to watch week after week as families announced their new children's beautiful faces and celebrated forever families being made. There is some more great news about a referral (not ours but amazingly awesome!) but it will have to wait until the next post, man I can't wait to share with you!!!   

So here are our numbers this month:






For an Infant Boy

        For a Toddler Boy

    For Siblings ( There are only a few families open to a child above six so this one is still kinda tricky)

 For a Boy over 48 months! And this is the best part

We are Number........

For a Boy age five or six!!!!!!

Can I get an Amen!!!!

So how does this happen....well some numbers go down because a family receives a referral and some numbers go up because a family changes their request (for example changes request from 0-2 to 0-4 ) or announces themselves on the America World Yahoo group that maintains an "uunofficial-official waiting list" and have a DTE (dossier to Ethiopia) date before ours.   

So how much longer? Lord knows! and I wish he would tell me! but really only God knows. It could be a week from now or it still could be months from today. Whatever the time frame is, we continue to wait, learn, enjoy the way our family is right now and know that somewhere out there we have a son (or two) and we dream.

Time slips away....



This is not my official "DTE update" but I am thinking of time lines. I am so thankful that we have such supportive friends and family. It warms my heart when each one of you ask how our adoption is going and our movement. It is depressing sad to say that our agency has had no referrals in August so I have nothing to report as of today. However, please keep asking and acknowledging our process. Not a hour day goes by that I don't obsess think about our future Ethiopian child(ren) and pray for them so it feels so good to know that you are thinking about it too!

Since there is no movement in the adoption front I thought I would share with you what we have been doing to keep from going crazywith anticipation ourselves busy.

I enjoyed the month of July off and then returned back to Lebanon High School August 1st. I Love watching how my awkward freshman become confident sophomores, my sophomores getting it in gear and going into juniors and my juniors awed and the possibilities they now have as seniors and then meeting all my new freshman and their families. As a counselor in the schools I have such a unique relationships with teens in our community, I am so thankful God placed me there!

Geno is still hard at work and finished up teaching a class with some new solders. He started running this summer and I have to brag and say....I have one HOT hubbie who can run a 5k in under 23 minutes! Oh yea....We also celebrated our 9th year of marriage. Man does time slip away!

Our three homegrown kids continue to do just that...GROW! Kellsie finally learned how to swim, Jacob spent some good time with his mom and Saria had a great time running cross country and actually ran a half marathon. Yes- my 13 year old daughter ran over 13.1 miles! Oh yea....


 

And I just calculated I have five years left until Jacob and Saria are ready to go out into the world themselves and Kellsie will be their age...wow time really slips away!

DTE 3 Month Mark

 

We hit our third month of DTE. I have to say this past month has had a lot of emotional up and downs. The struggle of the unknown is very hard for me. I know God is doing a work on our hearts. Starting out we knew our wait was going to be at least 12 months if not longer of waiting, however since we have upped our age range and added the possibility of a sibling it has moved us up in those areas and made this wait be unpredictable and feel forever longer. 

Its actually really ironic because one among the many reasons we choose international adoption is there is a timeline and a waiting list. You are matched with a child thru a very lengthy process but in the type of domestic adoption we were looking into you wait for a birth mother to choose you so there is no waiting list, just she chooses you or not. Somehow I thought we would have more control in that....haha! I know God just gave a smirk because he is the one who matches us in the first place....and here we are now adopting thru Ethiopia with such a broad range we could have one child who is five or two siblings age one and ten!

Here is the latest breakdown of our numbers.....

     Infant Boy

  Boy Age 18-47 months


 Siblings under the age of 10
                          (Out of those nine we are the only family that is open all the 
                                            way up to one child age 10 and age 5).

  One Boy age 48 months and up 
                                   (Out of those 5 only 6 are requesting boys so we
                                               are really #6 in line for a child 48 months and only
                                               2 families are open to a five or six year old so we are
                                               really #2 for a five or six year old).


So when you start looking at siblings and older children as you can see, the need is much greater HUGE for those children to have forever families. Thank you for loving on us this month and always asking about our adoption process. I may not always have news on movement but it is so nice to have you ask about it !

To help keep sanity in our house, I am back to reading a few verses and meditating on them in the morning and limiting myself to electronic media ( I really may have an obsession with the waiting child list for our agency) and finding things to do to occupy my time like fun adventures with the kids and organizing.

Late night ramblings....

I love VBS...I hate 105 degree weather....I miss my BFF Ashlee who now joins me in being in her 30's and has kept me grounded for over 15 years....I hope that I can be a better mom each and every day....I have a hard time letting go of people and giving up on them....Chocolate and Krista's Island Paradise makes me happy....I want to be Jesus with skin on to everyone and not just the people society says are important....Mosquitoes are hell on Earth....Spice flavors the world...I wish my children appreciated their American Pleasures more....I wish I appreciated my American Pleasures more...I want to know who are child(ren) are and wish desperately I could know who and when they will join us....