The Significance of a Number

#43! We are officially past the paperwork stage and are now officially waiting. This is such a great feeling! Before Friday, our agency had 42 families in the waiting stage and we joined on as #43. This number will decrease as families receive their referrals and we will get an official new number each month. Each family waiting has a stated preference on the gender and age of child(ren) that best fits their family so we will not necessarily wait for 42 referrals to pass before it is our day.

We are encouraged at this next step in our journey and are so thankful for family and friends for their support and faith. My husband deserves his own special HUGE thank you for putting up with me during this paperwork phase. There was a lot of whining going on in this house and all of it was coming from me! He has been so loving and optimistic and I am forever grateful. God sure knew what he was doing when he put me with this man!

To celebrate, we are going to try, for the first time, a nearby Ethiopian restaurant this upcoming weekend. We have heard great things about the Ethiopian cuisine. It might take some time for the kids to get used to it, so I might try to sneak in a PB&J in my purse just in case! We are looking forward to exploring and learning about the Ethiopian culture in the coming months. Of course, next month, we will post our new number handwritten by the kiddos and proudly displaying the colors of the Ethiopian flag.

MELISSA

Committed......to Adoption

I have thought many times about how to write this post. Can I google for a blog post template for adopting families that have switched countries? It even crossed my mind to start a completely new blog as not to be confusing. In the end, we keep up this blog to be able to share with our friends and family our entire adoption journey, including the really awesome and encouraging times and the hard discouraging times.

So, first, the most wonderful news: we are adopting from Ethiopia!! Our hearts are full and a new excitement has taken over that makes our adoption journey alive. We have chosen a new agency and absolutely love them! From the bottom of my soul, I feel that Ethiopia was where we were supposed to adopt from all along and those years that it has taken for us to get here were just where God wanted us (especially me!) to be. We were being chiseled into the parents and people God needed us to be (of course he is still working on that, I doubt it will ever end!). I feel so at peace it is unbelievable. I have often wondered how I would know if I am going in a direction that God wants. I think one answer to this is peace. A peace that is so strong it overrides the deep fear inside of experiencing the same pain. A peace that allows dreams to be formed again! We are submitting our dossier (note timeline) requesting 1 child or 2 siblings, either gender, aged 3 or under. I don't know the exact wait time....I am not even going to go there! I believe we will have our child or children home in 2014 and we will leave it at that. My arms are aching badly to hold our next child, but I have grown a lot in the past few years and I am bravely waiting.

The much harder news is that we are no longer adopting from Colombia right now. After almost three years of waiting and dreaming it was time to make a change. There have been many tears and questions, such as, is it giving up to move in another direction and how do you know when it is time to walk away from something? We felt continuing to wait in Colombia would be futile persistence....us and the child we wanted to adopt were lost and stuck in the system. Months and months were passing with discouraging news and well, my spirit was getting very weary. We are leaving Colombia now with grace and courage. Though some things in-country have changed since we started the process and I don't know that anyone knows the final direction that will be taken, we still have deep respect for those in Colombia trying to make decisions that would best benefit their process and provide the best homes for orphans. We are leaving Colombia now still thinking about those little faces we saw over and over again on the facebook page of our orphanage and praying for those babies and children living in our orphanage, they are truly the ones who are hurting much worse than we are. They have already experienced an enormous loss and are missing out on the hugs and kisses and love from their forever families. I pray that solutions are found soon for them.

I am ending this post with the fact we are not walking away from our dream of adoption, just our dream of growing our family through adoption from Colombia. Through all of the tears and discussion, it was never a question of should we just stop trying to adopt all together, it was a very easy question of where? The answer took about 1 second because it had always been in our hearts:  Ethiopia....Back in 2010, when we mailed in our paperwork for Colombia, we questioned our decision because it was a hard one, Ethiopia kept coming up in our thoughts and words. Through the past 3 years, we talked many times about proceeding with another adoption after Colombia...from Ethiopia! We even "warned" our home study provider that we would need her again to provide us a home study for Ethiopia. It has been a flame burning that has never left our hearts. We are excited to continue along in our journey to Africa.

MELISSA

Relentless Pursuit

Want to experience anticipation, frustration, excitement, sadness, happiness, despair, joy? Try adoption! Some of these feelings we all experience in any ordinary day, but since we have started the adoption process, these emotional ups and downs have tripled! This week has held quite a bit of sadness but we are ending it with a lot of excitement.

We think some changes are on the way in our adoption journey and I have to remember that any deviation from my expectation is not a failure, but just a bump on the path leading us to our child MEANT FOR US.

God is in relentless pursuit of his wishes for us and we are determined to follow. Updates to come later :)

MELISSA

Hanging on the Christmas Tree

Decorating the Christmas tree is always a special time for our family as we remember and enjoy all of the ornaments we have collected over the years, including an individual picture of Avery and Eli every year and many, many sweet handmade ornaments made by them. This year, I had to look away for a few moments while I unexpectedly had a few tears in my eyes. I really felt the absence of our little one tonight and how I so much wanted them to be with us enjoying this time. As a small gesture to acknowledge them, we said a prayer for them and hung a special ornament on the tree. I hope next year a little hand can hang that very same ornament on the tree him or herself. A note about this ornament. Our church has an annual Advent Christmas night and they sell things made internationally. This ornament was made in Colombia using orange peels. Very sweet and beautifully made. Last year, we purchased a multicultural nativity made in Peru. Many prayers will be needed during this special season. Hanging stockings, lights and so many other things are reminders of the void in our lives and how we yearn to bring our child home.

No new news on the adoption timeline. We hope early 2013 brings news for us and positive movements for Colombian adoptions as a whole.

On a more lighthearted note, we finished the annual Christmas card photo session. Definitely something Michael does not look forward to, as I (so he says) can get a little stressed trying to get that perfect family picture, dog included! So, what's wrong with a few bribes? Anyway, this year lived up to the hype and Eli entertained us the entire time with funny faces....Here's one to enjoy!

MELISSA

 

 

 

Living (Happily) In The Waiting

I was having coffee with a friend recently who is also adopting and I heard myself say "I am so thankful for this wait." What??!! I said it about five times while shaking my head up and down while the reality was sinking in.  It was hitting me for the first time that this wait has made me into a better person...I will never be the same person I was over two years ago...WE, as a family, will be forever stronger. We have learned so many new truths and grown in ways that would have never been possible without an experience such as this. I have learned to still live happily while not having something I want really, really bad. I have learned not to let a delay or rumor send me into a flurry of worry. Our family's priorities have changed. We have learned to appreciate the adoption process in Colombia, including the fact that they require so much detail about us so the best families are found for the children and most recently, the level of research the government performs to make sure a child is truly in need of a home (there is a new mandate declaring that all children available for adoption in Colombia must have had family members contacted to the 6th degree before a child can be relinquished).  We are learning Spanish (slowly but surely, still on CD 1 of Rosetta Stone that we purchased for Christmas!).

There are still valleys and there are times that I want nothing more to cradle and hold our little one in my arms (poor, almost 5 year old, Eli gets held and rocked like a baby way too many times a day!!).
While living happily in the waiting, we are still dreaming, hoping and clinging to trust! "Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God." - Brennan Manning

Instead of craving clarity, lets seek to trust God now and enjoy these blessings he has provided at this time in our lives!

MELISSA

Our Story / Adoption Update

We have always wanted to create a blog to keep family and friends updated with our adoption and post pictures once we travel to Colombia, but Melissa felt she just wasn't creative enough and may be one of the worst bloggers out there! So....it took almost two years, but here's an attempt at joining the blogging world.

Our adoption process didn't start overnight. It has been growing in our hearts for many, many years. We always hoped and prayed for semi-large family and after two (fun!) pregnancies and raising these two beautiful personalities and loves of our lives, it made sense to start our dream of growing our family through adoption. We always knew it would be international adoption and felt called to Latin America, primarily from our love of the culture. We started our research for a country and chose Colombia for many reasons, primarily its stable program and reputation for excellent care of its children. Next, we chose our agency, Gladney Center for Adoption. Not once have we looked back and wondered if we should have chosen a different country or agency. There have definitely been some "bumps in the journey" but we are very much at peace about both choices.

The scavenger hunt began and our dossier (compilation of adoption paperwork) was completed in December 2010. The "plan" (for those of you familiar with the adoption process, you will understand the quotes) was for our dossier to be presented directly to one of three private orphanages (IAPAs) Gladney worked with. Turns out the orphanages wanted to finish some referrals before accepting a new family, so we made the decision to submit our dossier to ICBF (child governing agency in Colombia) so we could be assigned a number and be in the system. We were quickly approved by ICBF with no additional questions asked. For many months after that, we hoped to transfer into a IAPA. Finally, at the end of 2011, our dossier was transferred to Chiquitines, in beautiful, Cali, Colombia. We were (are) THRILLED! This is a well respected, established home and we still only know a small piece of how well they love the children at their facility and we sleep at night not knowing our child yet, but knowing that they are being taken care of and receiving love already. Chiquitines had a few questions for us and after getting the information they needed, we were approved February 9, 2012 for 1 child, 0-35 months, either gender, any race and are now deep into the dreaded wait.

Waiting for a referral is filled with wonder but it is also very, very hard. At Chiquitines, our wait is not based on chronological order, so they choose the family and child that are the best match based on the criteria we selected. So, we could have been matched the day after we were approved (would have loved that!!) or up to 24 months. Average wait is currently 6-12 months. So....based on that average we could be in Colombia before the end of this year. This is our hope and prayer!! We are beyond ready to starting spending every minute with our child and having him or her join our family and hear one more laugh around our house. Our future child has a big sister and brother who absolutely cannot wait a minute longer to share love with their new sibling. The "new baby" is talked about many times a day by them.

For those of you stopping by and reading down to this part of our story, we are so thankful for your support and will need it for months/years to come. We have met, some just on-line, so many wonderful families going through the same process and have been inspired by you all. Thanks be to God that none of us will ever be the same again!

Melissa