Waiting Parents!

Some of my friends waiting for their new adopted kids in Ethiopia received bad news today. The Ethiopian courts close from August to October every year. This is due to constant rain. Recently it has taken a few trips to court to pass. For us it was 5 times and it was gruelling. But we had our referral in July 17th and didn't get submitted to Court until 10/5 finally passing in mid december and traveling at the end of January. But my friends Stacy and John in Rockford are waiting for the arrival of 4 gorgeous children in Addis. The kids have been in the orphanage for a couple of years or more. The paper work was submitted once and kicked out and then submitted again and was missing a document. Now they have to wait until October to be submitted again. So, we need to pray for them and the kids. Waiting for your adopted kids is brutally painful...but I just want to send out some love and words of encouragement to my friends. I know you feel helpless and feel as if the kids will never arrive but God's timing is perfect. It is hard to believe but they will come in the right season, right moment and right second....I remember being so angry when they told me about missing documents, missing signatures etc because you think the paperwork would be carefully looked at but it isn't always that way in 3rd world countries. Anyhow I wanted to repost a post I had up last december. This was right before our 5th time to court. I was physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted and had come to a point of yielding to God believing that as much as I wanted these children to be officially mine I knew they were HIS and had to even be willing to believe that if they didn't come to me God would watch over them...hard to take but it was where I was at.

After the 4th time to court I was learning and practicing how to NOT panic. I decided to train myself not to go to the ‘worst case scenario’ place. And I just really had no other choice. But then just two days before the court date we received an email from the director that sounded discouraging. It said that they were not able to locate the brothers of my kids (this was discovered after our 4th time at court and courts insisted they be sponsored and had to show up to sign something...they ended up being unavailable for adoption living with grandmom) and therefore it was quite possible that we would not pass court on our 5th time. They would have the attorney bring the paperwork proving sponsorship but couldn’t guarantee anything.

I asked all of my family to pray. I had an urgency in my heart. I totally felt as if I was fighting for the lives of these children. The eve before the court date I posted this on my blog:

As I type this is it 4am in Addis. In a few hours a judge will be getting up, having his coffee, reading the paper and then setting off to court. This will be business as usual to him but to our three kids whose fate he holds in his hands it could mean a major life change for the better. Our kids won't know that this is going on. They will be in their classes at Layla House and playing jump rope at break time. All I can say is that by the time we all wake up (and some of you read this) another court date will go by and we will either have passed or have to endure another upcoming date probably 3 weeks into the distance.

I have learned a lot about myself through this journey. I always liked to think of myself as someone who had a lot of faith in God. But I have learned that I don't have nearly enough. I have learned how to force myself not to panic. I have learned to WAIT for God's will to be done even when I feel the need and desire to have the goal accomplished immediately. I have come to realize that even though our three children will be adopted there will be millions of kids in Ethiopia that will still be waiting and may live out their entire lives (probably shortened lives) without parents to tuck them in at night, correct them, hug them, tickle them.

I have spent weeks pleading with God and begging Him in desperation to bring our kids home. But my prayer tonight is different:

"Thank you God for this amazing life. Thank you for this incredible experience. Thank you for the lessons learned. Lord forgive me for having pride in believing I was stronger than I was. Forgive me for forgetting who was in control. Forgive me for believing in what the world was showing me and not holding on to what you had been showing me all along. I have spent many Christmas' asking you for things. I have spent many years asking you to fulfill my desires of worldly success. Lord I bow before you and come to you to ask you to forgive me and allow us to serve You. Allow us to minister to the call that is the closest to your heart, the call to take care of your orphaned children. Mostly Lord with our hands raised high volunteering for this blessed calling we pray that You will truly choose us. In return, we offer our home, our hope, our hearts, love, laughter, family, friends and all we know of YOU to these children (Grace, Ella and Jared). Through You all things are possible. We pray that the Holy Spirit will move the judge tomorrow to knowing that these children have an appointment with God that begins with his “YES” to our case. Mostly Lord we vow to praise You, Love You and honor You regardless of what happens tomorrow. May Your Glorious, all Powerful, Righteous Will be Done! In Jesus name...AMEN!"

The next morning we woke up to an email letting us know that we had passed court and the children were finally ours.

So we had felt like the struggle was over but soon we would know that even though we had won the big battle and the kids were officially ours there would still be another battle to face before the war would be over. We were told we could travel to pick up our children for a January 16th VISA date. This means that we go to the US Embassy with the kids with their passports and get approved for the Visa to bring them permanently into the US. We made flight arrangement. We stayed on the phone for hours trying to figure out a way to use our travel points for hotels. We arranged for my mother and sister to come to babysit. My mother would fly from Chicago. My sister would drive 6 hours with her 5 year old son and spend a week. We collected letters to be delivered to other families. We arranged for people to take care of business. We bought groceries, typed up contact info and arranged for our neighbor to pick up my mom from the airport. And then one and a half days before we are to leave we receive a call from the agency to let us know that we cannot travel afterall. I think my heart sank so deep, I then panicked about money (how were we to pay for two trips if things are non refundable-they were refundable) and then I cried. I cried mostly at the thought that our kids had now been in the orphanage for 13 months and had been orphaned for 4 years. I was sure that they had lost hope, would be devastated etc. After that crying spell I stayed silent for the entire next two days. I wouldn’t talk to my friends or family. It would appear that the Women’s Affair department was understaffed and didn’t happen to have any one in the office during the week that our children’s passports were to be signed. One encouraging adoptive mother wrote me a letter to tell me of the year they were adopting and their case was delayed for weeks because of the fact that the office had run out of manila folders.

So, next plan and new travel date meant we would be traveling on 1/27th. I prepared a note to give to a traveling mother. In it I asked her to encourage my children. I envisioned her greeting my children and pulling their distraught little spirits aside and explaining we would be here soon but to hold on to hope etc. I knew in my heart that my children would be super anxious and depressed over this news. I was happy that my new online friend would be a welcomed shoulder for them to cry on. But before my friend traveled and before I could get her the letters that would offer even more comforting, I received about 15 letters all in Amharic from our kids. Our children wrote to each sibling. The only English phrase on the papers was “I love you more than you love me”. To me, that meant “you must not love me as much as I love you because you are not here yet.” But in reality once the letters were translated I would receive encouraging notes from my children that said “Mom don’t worry. We are fine. We know you will come when it is God’s time.” And “Oh don’t worry about the holidays. We will have plenty of holidays together in the future.” I just couldn’t believe these letters. I quickly changed plans for my visiting friend and said “uh never mind”. I then sent a funny letter, stickers and cards to the kids instead. It amazed me but also made so much sense to me that these 8, 6, and 4 year old children, who have waited in an orphanage for so long, have more composure, faith and poise than their much older mother. But now that I think about it these children have only had God to rely on and have seen Him move repeatedly in their lives.

It amazes me that many of us can have so much composure under the most stressful situations in every other area of our lives. Many adoptive parents have been in the board room with some very shrewd negotiators and held their own. But for some reason being a ‘waiting parent’ can turn the most experienced litigator, stock broker, politician into mush. It is easier to wait on a multi million dollar account than it is to ‘wait’ out the arrival of your 22 month old new daughter in China. Maybe it is the feeling of not being in control of the situation. If we are good students though we will learn. I learned that there are times when I have to fight every natural instinct to try to push to move things along (just like birth). I have learned to force myself to get out of the way of God and just allow Him to be who He is and take control. I have learned that DOUBT is a joy stealer. I have learned that fear comes from a lack of faith. And I have learned that no matter how much I plead, beg, shake my fist, God will firmly stay true to waiting for HIS perfect time, not mine.

And when we finally laid eyes on our adoption papers we would see that the official completion of the adoption was December 25, 2007. God blessed us with the sweetest Christmas gift ever.