Dear Ryann

Hello readers. As you've probably guessed, the adoption opportunity we were pursuing in Chicago has come to a close. There are a lot of unanswered questions and we are struggling to gain closure. All I can say is that the situation got messy and hazy, and in the end, I believe the birth mother just gave up and allowed life to take over. It's the sad reality of a life in poverty. And I wish it weren't so.

Joel and I are doing well despite it all. Although deeply saddened...for us, for the birth mother, for the child...we know it is time to move on and pursue other opportunities. Time will tell when those "other opportunities" will arise. Please continue to pray for us as we wait. Until then, we will seek closure on the last three months in any way we know how. For me it is to write a letter to the baby we thought would be ours. A little girl named, Ryann.

Dear Ryann,

Over the last three months, I have had the honor of getting to know your mother, learning about your strong-willed in-utero personality, dreaming about you, praying for you, and picturing what it would be like to have you as my daughter. To rock you to sleep, to feed you, hold you, and protect you. To give you a life full of love, laughter, and opportunity. But it wasn't meant to be.

Your mother and father are good people. But they have tough lives. I worry that they may not be able to provide for you and your siblings. However, knowing that you will not be separated from them brings me great comfort. They are your flesh and blood and they love you dearly. They are your connection to your roots and your past. A history we would not have been able to provide. And I am thankful you will now have that.

I have had your ultrasound picture pinned up in the kitchen for a couple of months now. While I know the opportunity to adopt you into our family has come to a close, I can't seem to take it down.  It's a reminder to pray for you daily and to keep hoping that you are safe and well. Your chubby little fist made me laugh from the first day I saw it. I imagined you as a feisty little toddler running around our house someday, and it made me smile.  You would have fit in perfectly with all the ladies in my family!  But more importantly, that tightly clenched fist assured me that God created a fight in you...a fight that will hopefully drive you to love deeply, dream wildly, and never let anyone take advantage of you. After all, you are a precious daughter of God no matter who raises you here on earth. I pray you will always know His great love for you.

And even though I will never get to call you "daughter", myself, I will always carry you with me in my heart.

Yours truly,
Holly

"I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."
-2 Corinthians 6:18

Foundation

I had a dream last night. We were at church and there was a video playing, highlighting a group of young African children that we'd be supporting this holiday season. As I was walking out of the sanctuary, I noticed one of these children was hanging onto my arm. A little boy about four years old. I was swinging him along, playfully, as we walked through the atrium. He was wearing blue shorts and a green V-neck sweater...what most school children in Kenya wear. He was telling me a little bit about his life. He said he lived at Foundation Children's Center (or was it Foundation Children's Home?). I just know he called it Foundation. I remember my heart being pulled so strongly to him, knowing that I could love him as my own...that I wanted to love him as my own. And at one point I bent over to look at him and asked enthusiastically, "do you want to be adopted?!" I don't remember exactly what he said. But I know there was a smile. And I know that that's exactly what he wanted. To be adopted. And I knew I could do that.

I don't know what this dream means. Probably nothing. But it's been haunting me since I woke up this morning. I even Googled Foundation Children's Center. It turned up a lot of Children's Foundations and "such-and-such" Foundation for Children, etc. But nothing that quite fit. It's silly, I know. But he was so sweet. And it seemed so right. I guess I'm just longing to be a parent. And more than that, to make a difference in a child's life. I felt like I could make a difference in his. And for the brief moments I spent with him in my dream, the world made sense and my heart was full.

Since my dream, the word "foundation" keeps repeating in my head. Probably a hangover of sorts from my Google searches this morning. But then I came across the verse, below, in a fellow blogger's post (thanks, Jacob!). It's John 17:24. In the verse before it, we read that the Father has loved us, just as He has loved Jesus. And if this is true, then according to verse 24 we were loved before the foundation of the world...before it was ever even created. Before we were thrown into this seemingly chaotic thing called life. It's today's reminder that the God of the universe loves me. That He knows and cares how our adoption story will turn out. Because he crafted it before we ever came to be.

"Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world."
-John 17:24 ESV

The Faith of Friends

When Joel and I were in Kenya this past summer, we had the privilege of attending a worship service at a downtown Nairobi church plant. We had been there before and had loved the vibrancy of both the music and the preaching. This time was no different. There's just something profound about worshiping your God half way around the world, in both English and Swahili, with people you've never met yet share a deep spiritual bond with. I don't think I'll ever tire of it. And if I do, please...someone...slap me. Because it's beautiful and awe-inspiring and makes me want to throw my arms around the world (shout-out to my fellow U2 fans!).

The sermon that day was about Jesus healing the paralytic. You know the one where the four friends carry their paralyzed buddy to a house where Jesus was chillin', doin his thang...healing, teaching and putting the nay-sayers in their places (I seriously love this guy's style). The friends arrive with their buddy on a stretcher only to be blocked by the crowd. Instead of waiting in line, or turning around to go home, these friends managed to climb to the roof of the house, remove the covering over the atrium ceiling, and lower their paralyzed buddy down to Jesus. Upon seeing the shear determination and faith of these friends, Jesus forgave the paralytic of his sins and healed him.

Whenever I've read this passage in the past, I have always focused on the miraculous healing of the paralyzed man and the myriad of emotions he must have felt when he rolled up his mat and walked home. Seldom did I dwell on the role of the friends. But that Sunday in Nairobi, the pastor enthusiastically reminded us that it was the faith of the friends that led to this man's healing. It was their compassion, their perseverance, their love for their suffering friend. But ultimately it was their faith in Jesus. They so deeply believed he could make a difference in this man's life that they scaled the walls and ripped off a roof just to be seen. The paralytic in this story does and says nothing. Nothing! It was not by his faith that Jesus took notice and acted. It was by the faith of his friends. Ah-mazing. Needless to say, I wept through the last 15 minutes of that service. At least. I was so starkly confronted by the fact I have an obligation as a Christ follower that goes beyond understanding: To pray for my friends and loved ones in their times of need, to act boldly on their behalves. And to do so even when especially when I know they are doing nothing to help their own situations. I knew I had failed miserably at this task. I knew I had given up on certain people or situations because I didn't see God intervening in the way I thought He should. It was a defining moment for me.

Fast forward to this past Sunday at my in-laws' church. Different location (by several thousand miles). Different pastor (by about 100 pounds and 10 shades of skin color). Same passage from the Bible. Same basic message. This time I fought back tears because I am the paralyzed friend on the stretcher. I am the one who's grown tired of praying for the same thing day after day. But you, my dear friends and family members. You are the ones carrying me to the roof and lowering me to the feet of Jesus. You are the ones holding me up with compassion, with perseverance, and with faith. And it's because of you this journey through infertility and adoption hasn't crushed my spirit and left me hopeless.

But since they found no way to carry him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down on the stretcher through the roof tiles right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
-Luke 5:19-20

Silence

To be a prospective adoptive parent is to feel lost. Uncertain. In the dark. To be a prospective adoptive parent is to be last. Anxious. Always fearing the worst. I've quickly learned these things in the last five and half weeks, but especially in the last 24 hours. Sure, part of the reason is that I spend far too much time inside my own head. But the other part I know is that this is simply the nature of being on an adoption journey rollercoaster.

In a nutshell, I tried calling the birth mother yesterday to see how her final doctor appointment went. On the other end all I heard was, "the code or number you have dialed is incorrect." Fear and panic struck my heart. Her social worker cannot reach her either. It is likely she simply ran out of money to pay her phone bill. But no one is answering the door at her home, either. We are told it is not uncommon for adoptive mothers to fall out of communication from time to time. And I am once again reminded of the instability of life outside the comfort of mine.

And so here I am. Worrying. Again. I want so desperately to hear something from the birth mother...to find her somehow...to know she's ok. My frail humanity despises this kind of silence. This lack of control. Why? Because it is in this uncontrolled silence where every fear and doubt comes creeping in. Where every worst case scenario has room to play out. And they do. Over and over again.

While I have been saying all along that I am holding this adoption loosely, I have come to realize that there's really no good way to do that. How do you hold a potential daughter's life loosely? How do you not imagine the next days and years of your life with this precious little one in your care? How do you not put the ultrasound photo on your fridge, when it's the only visual reminder that you may have a baby soon? To hold an adoption loosely requires the heart of a robot. I am convinced.

Alas, while I do hope that tomorrow's news will leave me laughing at today's melodrama, there's no way to be certain. Of only one thing I can truly be certain: That God is sovereign. He can trump all fears and doubts if I let Him. And He is not done with this story. Yes. I am certain of that...

"To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation."
-Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Be Counted in Their Legacy

Well, we're only eight days away from baby girl's due date. I laugh at my own use of "only"...silly me. Because "only eight days" feels like 8,000 years. How do pregnant women do this for nine months?! No seriously...how.

As I wait, I've enjoyed spending time in other blogs. I've laughed, I've cried, I've been encouraged. It's really a beautiful thing to read how adoption is molding, teaching, and redeeming families all across the globe. Everyday. In many different ways. But it's not all peaches and butterflies. I've been especially thankful for those bloggers who are not afraid to be raw and honest. Who are not afraid to educate the masses about their experiences with adoption. Sure, they would not change a thing, and they are the first to give God all the praise and glory. But they do not sugar coat. Because life is messy. And adoption can make it even messier...in a beautiful sort of way.

I think this is why the last lines of the blog I shared with you on Tuesday resonated with me so deeply: Challenge: Although not everyone can or should adopt or be foster parents, we all can support those who do. How could we do that today?

Serendipitously, a friend sent me a blog post today that tries to answer that very question. The author is a woman who recently adopted two children from Ethiopia. I love her wit. Her raw and uncensored writing style. Feel free to read the whole post if you have time, but if you don't here are some excerpts I thought may be helpful as you encounter couples and families who have been called to adoption:

Ways to support and speak to adoptive parents before the adoption:

1. Just kind, normal words of encouragement. Not the kind that assume we are one breath away from atheism. Not the kind that attempt to minimize the difficulties and tidy it all up with catchphrases. We don’t actually need for you to fix our wait. We just want you to be our friend and acknowledge that the process is hard and you care about us while we’re hurting. That is GOLD. I was once having lunch with my friend Lynde when AWAA called with more bad news about Ben’s case, and I laid my head down on the table in the middle of Galaxy Café and bawled. Having no idea what to do with such a hot mess, she just cried with me. Thank you for being perfect that day, Lynde.

2. Your questions are welcomed! We don’t mind telling you about the court system in Ethiopia or the in-country requirements in Nicaragua or the rules of the foster system. We’re glad to talk about adoption, and we’re thankful you care. I assure you we didn’t enter adoption lightly, so sharing details of this HUGE PIECE OF OUR LIVES is cathartic. Plus, we want you to know more because we’re all secretly hoping you’ll adopt later. (This is not true.) (Yes it is.)

3. When you say you’re praying for us and our waiting children, and you actually really are, not only does that soothe our troubled souls, but according to Scripture, it activates the heavens. So pray on, dear friends. Pray on. That is always the right thing to say. And please actually do it. We need people to stand in the gap for us when we are too tired and discouraged to keep praying the same words another day.

4. If you can, please become telepathic to determine which days we want to talk about adoption and which days we’d rather you just show up on our doorstep with fresh figs from the Farmer’s Market (thanks, Katie) or kidnap us away in the middle of the day to go see Bridesmaids. Sometimes we need you to make us laugh and remember what it feels like to be carefree for a few hours. If you’re not sure which day we’re having, just pre-buy movie tickets and show up with the figs, and when we answer the door, hold them all up and ask, “Would you like to talk for an hour uninterrupted about waiting for a court date?” We’ll respond to whichever one fits.

Ways you can support adoptive parents after the adoption:

1. Cook for your friends. Put together a meal calendar and recruit every person who even remotely cares about them. We didn’t cook dinners for one solid month, and folks, that may have single handedly saved my sanity. There simply are not words to describe how exhausting and overwhelming those first few weeks are, not to mention the lovely jetlag everyone came home with. And if your friends adopted domestically right up the street, this is all still true, minus the jetlag.

2. If we have them, offer to take our biological kids for an adventure or sleepover. Please believe me: their lives just got WHACKED OUT, and they need a break, but their parents can’t give them one because they are 1.) cleaning up pee and poop all day, 2.) holding screaming children, 3.) spending all their time at doctors’ offices, and 4.) falling asleep in their clothes at 8:15pm. Plus, they are in lockdown mode with the recently adopted, trying to shield them from the trauma that is Walmart.

3. Thank you for getting excited with us over our little victories. I realize it sounds like a very small deal when we tell you our kindergartener is now staying in the same room as the dog, but if you could’ve seen the epic level of freakoutedness this dog caused her for three weeks, you would understand that this is really something. When you encourage us over our incremental progress, it helps. You remind us that we ARE moving forward and these little moments are worth celebrating. If we come to you spazzing out, please remind us where we were a month ago. Force us to acknowledge their gains. Be a cheerleader for the healing process.

4. Come over one night after our kids are asleep and sit with us on our porch. Let me tell you: we are all lonely in those early weeks. We are home, home, home, home, home. Good-bye, date nights. Good-bye, GNO’s. Good-bye, spontaneous anything. Good-bye, church. Good-bye, big public outings. Good-bye, community group. Good-bye, nightlife. So please bring some community to our doorstep. Bring friendship back into our lives. Bring adult conversation and laughter. And bring an expensive bottle of wine.

5. If the shoe fits, tell adopting families how their story is affecting yours. If God has moved in you over the course of our adoption, whether before the airport or after, if you’ve made a change or a decision, if somewhere deep inside a fire was lit, tell us, because it is spiritual water on dry souls. There is nothing more encouraging than finding out God is using our families for greater kingdom work, beautiful things we would never know or see. We gather the holy moments in our hands every day, praying for eyes to see God’s presence, his purposes realized in our story. When you put more holy moments in our hands to meditate on, we are drawn deeper into the Jesus who led us here.

And here's the part I loved the most:

Here’s one last thing: As you watch us struggle and celebrate and cry and flail, we also want you to know that adoption is beautiful, and a thousand times we’ve looked at each other and said, “What if we would’ve said no?” God invited us into something monumental and lovely, and we would’ve missed endless moments of glory had we walked away. We need you during these difficult months of waiting and transitioning, but we also hope you see that we serve a faithful God who heals and actually sets the lonely in families, just like He said He would. And even through the tears and tantrums (ours), we look at our children and marvel that God counted us worthy to raise them. We are humbled. We’ve been gifted with a very holy task, and when you help us rise to the occasion, you have an inheritance in their story; your name will be counted in their legacy.

Yes! On a very personal note, Joel and I have been moved to tears by the ways we have been loved and supported in the last five weeks. "Thank you" cannot begin to express what we feel towards our family and friends. You have all been the epitome of Christ's love. And rest assured, your name will be counted in our baby's legacy.

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
-Galatians 6:2

Adoption is Not Normal

On this beautiful first day of November, instead of reading my words and thoughts on adoption, I'd love for you to read another's. The link below is from a blog my husband follows. I kind of want to hug the woman who wrote it...

Adoption - An Outside View

Please continue to pray for us as we wait for baby girl to arrive. Her due date is quickly approaching and the birth mother is feeling very tired! We have some renewed hope in this adoption going through, but I will leave it at that. Now, all we can do is wait...and trust...

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.
-Isaiah 40:31

An Exercise in Giving Thanks

A thankful heart. I would say on most days this is what I have. I realized fairly early into our infertility that unless I possessed gratitude for the things I did have, the grief would swallow me whole. The anger at God would persist. And I would become a bitter, nasty woman. It sounds funny, but I am thankful for my thankful heart. However, it does fail me at times. I am not perfect. Life is messy. And there are just days, seasons, when I am not thankful. I am discouraged. And I would prefer to wallow in my self pity. That is where I've been the last few days. Let me catch you up...

Sunday 10/16: We have a lovely one-hour phone conversation with the birth mother. We hit it off with her, learn about each other, laugh. Then we ask if she can tell us about the birth father. A man the social worker told us was not at all in the picture, his whereabouts completely unknown. Quite the contrary. Without going into too much detail, I will simply say that he is most definitely still in the picture. And most definitely has no idea about the adoption plans. Suddenly I'm the one needing a Lamaze class.

Monday 10/17: Realizing this changes everything, we get the social workers involved. As suspected, they tell us the birth father indeed needs to be notified. Having been told that he thwarted the birth mother's attempt at putting their second child up for adoption, we are not super excited about this turn of events. And neither is the birth mother. Which is exactly why she didn't want to involve him in the first place. Sadly, our legal system doesn't work that way. And neither do we. The last thing we need is a baby daddy knocking on our door after the adoption has already taken place. Hee-hee-hooooooooo. Hee-hee-hooooooooo.

Wednesday 10/19: The adoption agency sends out a certified letter to the birth father, alerting him to the adoption plans. He can either (1) consent to the adoption, (2) place himself on the putative father registry, which essentially means he wants to be notified when adoption proceedings begin so he can intervene, or (3) do nothing. If he chooses option (3) he will still have 30 days after the baby's birth to come forward and claim paternity. Which, yes, means we risk giving this baby up after several days of loving and caring for her. [This is where Lamaze goes out the window and I just stop breathing altogether].

Thursday 10/20: We drive down to Chi-town to meet the birth mother and her social worker, only to find out the birth mother can't make it anymore. Huh? We still manage to have a delightful meeting with her social worker, which we're actually quite happy about. Oh and did I mention that this meeting took place at a Denny's? Joel and I have enjoyed an ongoing war of words over Denny's for about the last five years. Ha! Proof that God has a sense of humor.

Friday 10/21: My optimism runs out and the weight of the week comes crashing down on my shoulders. Of course right before work. Of course after I put on mascara.

And that is where I've been since Friday. Realizing this has a high chance of not working out. Beginning to grieve the idea of this little girl as our daughter. Forcing myself to let go. Laying in my pool of self-pity. My boo-hoo's and why-me's. It's not fun. And in this season, I admit that I am struggling to be thankful.

But then I see a friend's status on Facebook proclaiming it is exactly 30 days from Thanksgiving. She is going to post one thing she is thankful for each day until then. I'm sure you all have seen this Facebook trend in years past. I know I have. And this year I'm going to do it. It is my exercise in giving thanks. Because I know my thankful heart needs to get whipped back into shape. I have so much to be thankful for. Baby or no baby. And while I believe we all must give ourselves permission to wallow at times, we also need to pull ourselves up by the boot straps and see the good that stands right in front of us. Because it truly is good. And because it all comes from God, the One who made the universe and all that is in it...and still makes time to smile on me.

Thankfulness is "the chief exercise of godliness" in which we ought to engage during the whole of our life.
-Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin's Doctrine of the Christian Life, p. 284

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.
-Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, p. 42