Waiting...

Last week was hard.  It all started on Saturday, July 16^th.  I went to see Harry Potter with two of my closest  friends Susan and Elaine…my faux sisters as I call them.  Afterwards we went to Starbucks and I gave them the reports from Jonah’s speech therapist.  They looked over them and translated the translation of the reports.  They were in English but some things don’t translate correctly and even if they did, I don’t know all the terms.  Thankfully God has given me some very talented and knowledgeable friends.  Susan is a speech therapist and Elaine is a teacher.  Between the two of them they were able to look at the reports and tell me what they mean.  The two reports that they looked at were about six months apart.  The first one had me a little concerned.  It said he was somewhat behind.  He was not expressing himself very well and (the part that broke my heart) he was playing parallel to other children and not with them.  Then they went to the next report and he had shown great improvement.  He was playing with the other kids.  He was on track with almost all of his speech and the places he was behind in are not that big of a concern.  I was so thankful for my friends when I left…love them!

As soon as I got in the car I started getting emotional.  It was something about hearing my friends talk about him like they knew him that made him feel more a part of my life.  It felt great!  Then I started thinking about Harry Potter.  I told B that I was not going to put this part in the blog because I feel like a complete dork…but here goes!  I have always loved fantasy.  The unbelievable.  The stories.  LOVE IT ALL!  Well I was thinking about the story of Harry Potter and how he was called “The boy who lived!”  It hit me…this little boy…my little boy…is the boy who lived!!!  There are many, many reasons why he should not even be alive.  I will have to talk about all of them in another post.  He has overcome all odds.  And yet here he is and God is giving him to me!  I was so overcome with emotion.  God has given me this wonderful story.  Better than fantasy movies haha!  Better than anything I could have ever written myself.  I don’t think I have ever felt God’s love like I did at that moment.  I praised Him!  When I got home I was shaking.  It was incredible.

So now to tell you why it was so hard.  I’m done with waiting!  Honestly we have been very blessed in our timeline.  Yes, we waited a LONG time to adopt, but the process has gone fairly quickly…well quicker than others.  I REALLY don’t want to wait any longer and it is killing me.  I told B one night that I was tired of waiting.  He said he understood but it is just not time to go get him yet.  God’s timing is perfect (yes, I tell myself that every day).  He has planned this all so well.

So, Friday the 22^nd came around.  B was talking that morning about how it had been eight weeks since we turned in our paper work to HK.  Oh and we recently  found out that we are waiting on another approval that we didn’t really know we were waiting on.  I emailed our social worker to find out how we could make contact with him and she said not until after we get matching approval.  WHAT?!?!  What is that?  Well the HK adoption office has to get our paper and Jonah’s and “match” us together.  Argh…so we would wait for that.  So back to Friday.  I prayed throughout the day that I would hear from God.  I just wanted something to know that He was there and that He was handling things.  Yes, I know this, but I just wanted Him to show me.  He didn’t have to…He never HAS to…but He DID!!  I was checking my email all day just to see if there was something from our social worker.  I got home from work and right before we went out I checked it one more time.  There it was!  An email!  It did not confirm matching approval.  It just said that the adoption office had no further questions on us.  They are just waiting to get his information.  I started jumping up and down.  B didn’t know what was going on and said “explain yourself!”  Haha!  I heard from God!  What an answer…an immediate answer.  HE IS SO FAITHFUL!!

Recently I was talking to two close friends (God has given me so many great people in my life) about what they thought it meant to wait on the Lord.  One of them, Natalie (Tia as Jonah will call her), said something like this “You wait on the Lord because you know and have faith that He WILL move!”  Wow…so true.  Isn’t it amazing to worship and serve THE LIVING GOD?!!!!

So I will wait. I will wait upon the Lord.  For I know this season of waiting will come to an end.  Time is speeding past us.  God is living and moving.  “Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord!”

Katie    

Why China

I have talked a little about this in other posts but here are more details.  I always knew I wanted to adopt internationally.  However, B did not always know this!  I mentioned it to him when we first (beginning of 2007) started seriously talking about adoption and he ended that discussion quickly.  I just started praying that God would soften his heart and decided I wouldn’t bring up the international thing again.  I wanted it to be his decision for our family.  He is the head of the house and things always work better when I step down and let him make decisions.  So I waited for him to come to the same conclusion I did.  That happened on September 3^rd, 2007…the day Jonah was born.  We were flying back from visiting friends and some of their friends had adopted Chinese daughters and God used them to speak to B’s heart. 

In order to adopt from China both potential parents have to be 30 years old.  So we knew we had three years before we could adopt.  This was actually a good time line for us.  My parents had just moved to another country for three years so they would be back for support around that time.  Don’t get me wrong…waiting that long was still hard. 

When we started looking at adoption agencies, we decided to go to an intro class given by the agency we ended up using.  They just went through the basics of each country they worked with.  When they showed the pictures of all the kids I wanted every one of them and so did B.  He was fine looking into other countries (amazing since he was so closed to it before).  I still felt a tug towards China.  One thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want the wait time to be a factor in our decision.  I didn’t want us to choose another country simply because we would get a child faster.  As we prayed about it I definitely felt like we were supposed to adopt from China and choosing any other country would be disobeying God.  So we decided to wait.

We went into the China program in the fall of 2010.  We took our time filling out the paper work and taking all the necessary steps.  In January of 2011, we got a call that there was a little boy in Hong Kong.  The Hong Kong program is completely different from the China program.  We could have gone into this program when we first started talking about it and already have a child by now.  That was not God’s plan though.  If we had done that this little boy would not be ours.  He was a new born and was not in the system yet.  Craziness!  Of course we had to pray about this little boy before we absolutely said yes.  We had just been so sure that we were supposed to adopt from CHINA!  We didn’t pray long though.  The wait time was NOT an issue anymore and we felt drawn to him.

So that is how we got where we are now!  This whole time God has been giving us a heart for Chinese people…here and there!

Katie

I tried to load some other pictures from our last trip to China, but the blog site isn't working correctly.  Maybe next time.

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I decided if I ever own an adoption agency I will give all the parents name tags that read "Hi my name is _____ and I'm being attacked by the devil." And maybe design a t-shirt with that on the front and on the back it would say "Just sayin." Because I have found that when you sign up for adoption you are one of the devils favorite targets. Katie and I discussed this from the very beginning. In some ways adoption is like international missions. We obviously want to raise our children in an environment that will be Gospel-heavy. And probably most of our children will be international. So I think that qualifies for international missions. All that to say I know missionaries are high on the target list too.

So even going into this knowing there would be some tom-foolery thrown at us from little d, I was a little surprised to be surprised when it started showing up. It started out very ambiguous. I was just in a bad mood. I kept thinking it was just a bad day or it would pass or whatever. But over the last few weeks things got a little more specific. I think it was around Father's Day when things started getting weird. That was a completely strange day for me. Am I a dad yet? A few people told me Happy Fathers Day. But I definitely felt more like a son than anything else. We only have one picture. Should I feel like a dad already? I haven't decided what his life-verse should be. We're not even sure how to pronounce his Chinese name.

At that point I started getting really mad at the process and how open the time frame is. For example, we could make the trip during July, or it could be 8 or 9 months from now. And I started getting kind of annoyed talking about all of it, which I felt really bad about. Shouldn't my face light up when I talk about a boy who will be my child? Instead in most cases I would shut down and just not want to talk about it at all.

This is bad I know, but I like to resolve problems before I want to talk about it much. I think that is called dealing with things on your own. Katie is all too familiar with me doing that, but I think I have gotten better. I'm working on it. But I realized I can't resolve this situation. And even more I don't want to try to resolve this on my own. This confusion and frustration and whatever else is all part of it. And Katie, who is everything lovely and graceful, is tracking along side me the whole time. If you ever want to know more about mercy and compassion, get to know my wife.

The whole time all that has been going on we've had a number of family and friends going through some very difficult events.
Some of our friends have:
lost their Dad
lost a family member to suicide
been dealing with cancer themselves
been dealing with family members with cancer
In addition to that we just know a lot of people who are really hurting for various reasons right now. So in light of that I really have to get perspective and realize how many blessings God has given me and Katie. Even in weird darkness and confusion, I have so much to be thankful for.

I know this verse is true and I cling to it often: Psalm 18:28 For it is you who light my lamp; the Lord my God lightens my darkness.