perspective change

Over the past two months waiting on the adoption has been getting harder.  Currently we are 11 on the boys wait list and 18 on the girls wait list, we have not seen much movement in the past several of months.  I intellectually understand that there are a lot of reasons it feels harder but it does not make it easier.  Some of it has to do with my hopes that it would be finalized over the summer, and now that is looking more like a hail mary pass than a potential reality. It is also hard when you realize that your current situation is so different than the expectations we had when we began. We started with the expected wait time for a referral to be 6-9 months, currently we are on our 17th month waiting.  There have been a lot of changes in Ethiopia since we started, so I understand why it is slower but it can still be hard.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I need to have a different understanding of time.  My perspective of time revolves around my human understanding and experience.  God operates on an eternal understandings of time.  The bible says, "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."  God has a different perspective and I want to understand His better.

I really do believe God is in control.  I know that He cares about our emotions through this process.  I also believe that He has a different perspective.  He is working out a lot more details in this process than I will ever understand.  I don't know what He is doing in Ethiopia to prepare the adoption.  I don't know what God is doing in Ruston with Leland's career or with Chi Alpha to help prepare our transition.  I don't know what God is doing inside of us, to prepare us to be parents.  God's plans are much larger than mine...so I am sure He is working all the circumstances to His plans.

creating space

Not much has changed with the adoption in the past couple of months, we are still waiting on the list. Leland keeps telling me we are getting close but it still feels like a distant future.

Lately, Leland and I have been cleaning out the house. One of our bedrooms, we call the room of boxes. It has been full of different boxes since we moved to Louisiana three and a half years ago. We have always know that the room of boxes will eventually become a baby room.

The past six months Leland has been working on moving things into his office/train room. On January 2nd, we decided to attack the problem together. I knew that we could not remove the things from the room of boxes without getting rid of things in other parts of the house. So I attacked the guest bedroom closet.

While I was working in the guest bedroom I had an interesting thought I wanted to share. I was thinking about how we are working to prepare a space for a child we have never met. We don't know their name, gender, or even their age when they will come to the states. But we are very willing and excited to create space in our house for them. It will be their home.

Then I started to think about Jesus when he said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. My Father's house has plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going." John 14:1-4

Jesus left Earth, preparing a place for us at His Father's house and will come back for us. I have thought about this before but as I am cleaning out my own house I could not help thinking about it again. I could not help but think about how Jesus is making a perfect place for us with Him. I don't know what it looks like but I can only imagine. He is making preparations for us in our new forever home.

As Leland and I are preparing for our child to be a part of our family, I could not help but feel I was getting a glimpse of God's heart in the process.

while we wait

When we first transitioned to the wait list, our case manage encouraged us to stay busy while we wait. It is good advice because waiting can be hard. It seems like all you do is wait. You honestly don't have a clear understanding of when the waiting is going to come to an end.

My emotions and thoughts during this process have such a huge extreme. Sometimes I feel like we are never going to get off the wait list and the adoption process does not feel very real. Sometimes I think it is going to come to an end quickly. Currently, I can't imagine all the changes in our lives.

I generally embrace the life in the present and trust that God has the ability to prepare me for the future. I really believe that if I do what God has asked me to do, He can order the future. I am not going to change my approach to life but sometimes I wonder how we are going to do it.

What will our life look like as a family?
How do we continue to do what God has for us at Louisiana Tech and be a family?
How will we keep the house cleaned, the laundry done and everyone feed?
What does God have for us?

I don't have the answers to the questions but I trust God through the process. I also think they are normal questions for people to ask.

Here is a picture of how we have been doing while "keeping busy". It is the group picture from the Chi Alpha Fall Breakaway...we have amazing students at Tech.

FBI clearance again?

This upcoming month is going to be pretty busy for us with the adoption. We are needing to update our home study. The length a home study stays valid depends on your state of residence. Louisiana is only valid for one year, so we are back getting documentation, letters of references, and the FBI clearance again. If you wrote a reference for us the first time, watch out...you will probably be getting a phone call soon. I am hoping that some of them go smoother the second time around, since I am pretty busy with Chi Alpha.

We also got some new numbers on the wait list. We are 34 on the girl's list and 23 on the boy's list...so we are moving up that and working our way through paperwork. I now have gained another appreciation of moving up the list, less paperwork has to get re done.

how is it July already?

I find when summer finally comes, it flies by. I am not sure where the month of June went because it is already July. I know the month of June was jammed packed with a lot of different activities.

I started the month in San Francisco working with the SF Rescue Mission. I took five Chi Alpha students and it was a wonderful trip. I love serving the inner city and the people in the Tenderloin. I was grateful for the opportunity to go back.

Leland visited Kansas with his dad at the beginning of the month. They visited the area his dad grew up and took lots of pictures. It was a great time for Leland to just enjoy the open prairie and time with his dad.

In June, I also celebrated the one year anniversary of injuring my arms. The past year I have struggle with tendinitis in both of arms and I know this is not a normal thing to celebrate. Leland and I have had many up and downs through it all. It has definitely not been fun to struggle with pain but I can definitely see the blessings because of how God has worked in my life. I have learned to set limits for myself and ask for help. Leland has been an amazing support for me through all of this. We long for a time when I go back to "normal"... but for now we enjoy the progress. We also come up with creative ways to help reduce the possibility injuring myself.

One of the things we have done to help me gain mobility was selling the Vibe. I enjoyed the Vibe and had a lot of fun driving it. The only problem we had with the Vibe was that it hurt for me to drive. We made the hard decision to replace the Vibe with the Vue. The process of finding a car was definitely not fun. The car shopping journey ended in a different direction than expected but it has been amazing to see change in my mobility. We recognize that it is the perfect car for us, because it is so easy for me to drive.

Finally, I thought it might be good to share our latest numbers on the wait list. The list moves slower than we would like but we know that God is in control. We also know that the wait is worth it. We are 41 on the girls list and 29 on the boys list. For now we only have numbers to understand our process in the adoption, eventually a child will have a permanent family and it will be all worth it.

keeping busy

When we first got on the wait list for the adoption, we were told to keep busy. Our adoption agency said the waiting can be challenging if it is your primary focus. Things move at their own pace and it is a continual reminder that we are not in control.

As the school year is coming to a close, I am reminded that our adoption agency contacted me at the beginning of the years first major event to tell me that they had all our paperwork. It was during that event they encouraged me to keep busy. I was thinking, I am at an event where we are feeding 300 people...I think I can keep busy.

I am always amazed how fast the school years fly by. The seniors have graduated and the students are gone for the summer. And I am writing an update to inform you about the wait list numbers.

We are 31 on the boys list and 41 on the girls list.

At times the wait list is moving slower than we would like but we are okay keeping busy with what God has asked us to do while we wait.

adoption update

Many people have been asking us how things are going with the adoption and if there are any changes. I am sorry it has taken us so long to respond and post another blog.

The truth is that nothing has really changed with Ethiopian adoption. Ethiopian adoption is still moving forward as it was before they made the statement they were going to reduce their cases to 5 a day. Ethiopia does not operate like the United States, at times official statements will be made and not implemented. Fortunately, this appears to be the case here.

This is exciting because it means that children are still being placed with families. The process has slowed down some but there is no concrete definition of how long it will take. It is an answer to prayer and it is exciting to see things move forward.

Right now we are 46 on the girls list and 33 on the boys list. We have no idea how long it will be until we get a referral. We know that we are on God's timeline. Thank you for loving us along this journey.