The phone stopped

Every year around this week, I have a stressful week, life seems overwhelming, usually find myself lying alone on the bed thinking its hopeless!  I usually think are the kids unusually wild or naughty?  Is the house ALWAYS needing this much done?  Can I never find the right hobby to satisfy me...?  Then it occurs to me every year, this is the week we lost my mom.  Perhaps that even unconsciously speaks to my heart.  Its a weird thing I don't even remember its coming but every year its the worst week and then it hits me what day it is.  We were close my mom was proud of her children and a little over protective, which in my teen years I thought was a lot, but now as a mom can laugh!  Even after I moved out she and I would call each other all throughout the day.  If Alex or AJ did something funny I would call her to let her know, if she saw something funny on TV or wanted to see if we could come to a family gathering she would call me.  Its been 9 years since she has gone.  I realized today my phone went silent after that.  Not for lack of callers, but for me.  I stopped calling to let people know whats going on believing they have their own families or lives, believing no one cared about the details as much as she did.  Not wanting to burden others who were trying to make dinner or get the kids to bed.  Over time I myself filled the house and so long talks on the phone are almost impossible without many interruptions and lots of background noise (although I do love email!) I think on some level its one reason I love facebook.  I can post the cute things or the stuff I want to tell and I can keep connected.  I really am at peace with her passing, knowing where she is now and knowing that there is no more cancer or pain.  My sadness and grumpiness isn't for her missing anything because eternity isn't missing anything, its for me and the calls I miss!  But I learned something the other day, we make the mistake that we are humans living a temporary spiritual experience during our lives, instead we are spiritual beings who are living a temporary human experience....temporary....I can handle that....means we will be reunited someday :)

Adoption Fundraising!

Adoption is expensive, homestudys are over a thousand dollars, we have to budget 2 trips to Bulgaria and then their is fees everywhere agency fees, fees for the immigration paperwork, fees for the Bulgarian government.  When we were having an adoption fundraiser garage sale for our Liberian adoptions, a woman wrote a nasty email to us addressing that if we can't afford to adopt we shouldn't be adopting.....I am here to prove that yes it works.  Had I listened and thought we can't afford it...Hannah JD and Zeke would still be orphaned, Zeke was so sick when he came home I am sure he would be a statistic of kids in Liberia who do not make it until their 5th birthday.  The parasites in JD's stomach would have caused severe malnutrition.  God has provided each penny when needed for our adoptions, many times through angels who have joined us in this journey.  I know these days EVERYONE is fundraising for something and EVERYONE needs a donation, but I have put this in God's hands and Rosie will come home with every penny, this I am sure of :)  I am sure if I could post Rosie's picture you would look into her sweet brown eyes and agree with us no matter the cost she deserves a family to love her!  So if you want to join us through the purchase of a t-shirt or coffee see the links on the right of this page.  Even if you cannot buy anything we would greatly appreciate prayers!!  Lets storm heaven on Rosie's behalf :)

Counting the Cost

What would you do if you knew a young girl was in grave danger of being taken by traffickers and sold into a life of prostitution?  How would you react if you saw a 12 year old girl in your neighborhood being grabbed by a stranger on the street or watch a man slip something into a young girls drink and took her with him?  What if it was a friend's child who was sexually assaulted?  What if you found a homeless child hiding out in your backyard?  What if it was your child?  Who would protect them if you could not?  Where would they go without you?  Most children age out of European orphanages around 16.  They are literally sent out into the world with nothing and no one. Statistics show that 90% of children who age out end up involved in crime, prostitution, addiction or give into suicide.  It breaks my heart to think about it.  I think about my children who just were blessed to be born to parents who wanted them, to parents who were not in poverty, to parents who were not in a country where we were forced to give them up, that their mother was not a drug addict, to a father who did not abuse or exploit them.   Does that make them more worthy for life then anyone else?  Do they deserve love and protection more then the child sitting in an institution waiting for someone, anyone to notice them?  Adoption has been difficult at times adjusting to new normals, dealing with broken hearts and paying every last official who needs to be paid to process the adoption.  But how much more did my Savior pay for my adoption?  How much pain or tears were spent on my behalf as Jesus hung on the cross for me. Redemption on my behalf.....adoption into His family.  Redemption is expensive, it cost Him his life, Redemption is messy, the thorns in His crown, Redemption is painful, every strike on his back.  Redemption is beautiful a new name, Redemption is everlasting eternal home, Redemption is loving and never looking back.  Adoption to me is a small scale example of redemption, but not just for our children, but for me.  It has changed me, shaped me and molded me.  It has stretched me in ways I didn't imagine and it has formed in me a passion.  Today we finished our homestudy visit, one step closer to bringing our Rosie home.  One more step in the messy, expensive, sometimes trying process to bring a little girl into the safety of her daddy's arms, to protect her from traffickers to keep her from poverty and to make sure she knows she is loved and wanted. 

Chasing papers!

I remember my first thoughts of adoption.  You choose a child and that same child a few weeks later was placed in your arms, happily ever after.... HA!  Was I snookered!!  Adoptions take a lot longer then a few weeks, there are homestudies, paperwork, fingerprints, paperwork, fundraising, paperwork.... months of waiting.....get the picture LOTS of paperwork.  Everyone needs a paper or a form!  I applied for a passport today even if I don't end up traveling the dossier requires a copy of it.  I made appointments for physicals for Randy and I both the homestudy provider needs a form from that and the country requires a letter of health.  Then I found all 7 kids need a physical for the homestudy, not a big deal as they get them yearly, however they have to have been seen within the last 2 months....insurance pays for 1 a year....they had them in Oct and Aug so not quite a year but more then 2 months.  So I have to figure that one out.  Wasn't such a big deal when scheduling 2 kids, but scheduling 7 is always interesting!  I am terrible about gathering things, not because I am slow but because it stresses me out knowing Rosie is waiting on me!  I can say oh I need to get to that, but I imagine if it was Alex or Hannah sitting in a far away place without a home today, how hard would I work to bring them safely into our home!  Please pray for all our paperwork to go smoothly and quickly so we can bring Rosie home as soon as possible!

We have a match....and a leak....

Lets start with the good news....we have a match!!  Number 8 is on her way in the form of a 12 year old girl.  She will squeeze in between Alex and AJ's ages.  She is currently in the 6th grade in Bulgaria and living at an orphanage.  She is a beautiful girl and has an adorable laugh in a video we saw.  So we got the good news that we are officially matched, so we have 6 months to gather all the homestudy and dossier and INS stuff (hopefully done WAY before that) and then soon we will be invited to visit her in Bulgaria, after that visit they will proceed with the court to finalize the adoption and then we go again to bring her home.  So exciting!!  Just as we were getting all the paperwork together and remembering what a cumbersome process adoptions are, we saw a mysterious what I though shadow in the living room.  Randy came in the house a few minutes later and I showed him and he headed up to the bathroom above said spot and found its source, underneath a sink into a cabinet....into a bathroom floor, into a hallway, into my bedroom in which we had a sticky door lately and had assumed it was from the humid weather.....down the floorboards into the ceiling and by the time he had water shut off the ceiling started to cave in every so much and the dripping became faster.......  So needless to say by the next day we had people in our house tearing up floors and ceilings, giant dehumidifiers and fans running extremely loudly.  I was sleeping on the couch and Randy in his office on an air mattress and so the chaos continued.  We had them drying out the floors for 3 days continuously....that is until last night while sleeping on the couch in the whirlwind of noise at 3:30 it went silent, which woke me up.  A random power outage, no storm no wind..... Then I started to think about a power surge when it came up with all this equipment in the house and then I started to think about all the what ifs in a fire.  Then the lights came on machines rumbled and all was good except now I was wired and unable to sleep.  Thankfully God is good and the machines left today, so we have a few days of peace until they come to replace floors, ceilings and paint walls....thank you for home insurance!!  So now back to paperwork, passport application, home visits and the one thing I am freaking out about....how to get a notarized doctors letter!!  Everyone says there is always a notary on staff and there never is and then its all awkwardy and what not......  It will be worth it when our newest girl leaves behind a life alone and the dangers that come with a pretty girl aging out without a family and joins a forever family with first Christmas's and birthdays and hugs and graduations!  God is good all the time!

God's in the details

As I type I am sitting here trying to decide if I am cold or hot, having a fever on a school day can make a girl tired! Its days like today I realize how God is in the details and how I am reminded to take everything, every moment to Him alone. For someone like me who likes to just get it all done and be in a regular routine I often forget to trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding. Its spring which means wrapping up the school year, preparing for the next, planning some fun summer things and hopefully making progress in our adoption. In all those areas I always think I have it figured out and then we get another curve ball where I can choose to get flustered and distracted or I can choose to see God once again telling me to trust him. In our house I am constantly telling the kids that I can be trusted with what they need. Some of our children from more chaotic backgrounds tend to have a hard time believing that. To me it seems so easy to accept, everyday its provided therefore they can believe I will provide tomorrow. They usually need to see it or at least get constant reminders that it will still come again. For some they have lived with the reality that those who are expected to provide don't always come through. However from my adult perspective, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am not like those who have let them down and that my promises are trustworthy. Its hard for me though to make them believe me due to their previous experiences. It hit me today that I am no different. In the past I have placed me sense of trust in worldly things that have let me down, that didn't provide for my innermost needs. I wrongly placed me hopes in those things temporary, as my children had in their orphanages and foster homes instead of whats eternal. I find now how that has tainted my own faith. As I look at my children and know they can forever trust my love and provision, my Father in heaven looks at me and says the same. Like my children I wrongly put God in the role of those things that had replaced him in my past and hold back the faith I could put in him because I fear that I may miss something or lose something or hurt. However I am learning that He can be trusted with it all, with all my thoughts, my fears, my anxieties. I can trust that his way may not look like my way but it is He who knows best, His ways are not tainted by the world or by sin like mine. His ways are perfect and I can rest in that as I pray my children can rest in knowing they can be children and rest in me to provide their needs. When they rest in that they will realize the blessings that come from simply being loved....and so can I.

Waiting

I have sometimes heard people say and have even had the thought myself, when I meet God someday I have some questions or I am going to find out the whys.... Randomly I was thinking about this the other day in a quiet moment in the car after dropping my daughter off at her music lesson. I began to think about that and thought ....really... we will enter heaven and we will be coherent and unaweinspired (not sure if I just made up that word..) to ask God a whats up with that question? I thought about my mom that I lost a few years back and thought if I knew I could spend time with her today even if I knew I could spend many times with her, being apart from her from so long I would not begin with ...so mom what was up with that time you didn't let me.... or what were you thinking when you let me wear... I would embrace her, I would probably collapse into her as I did as a child. I would take it all in, I would tell her about my children, the grandchildren she didn't get the privlidge to meet on this side. I would tell her about my accomplishes in life. Not list off the things I didn't get, didn't have or didn't think was fair. I would value each precious minute we had. I would want to hear her laughter and see her eyes crinkle up when she smiled. Remember I only spent 25 years with her and I have only been apart from her for some years. Then I turned my thought to my Jesus, He who has known me since he formed me in his mind. He who has walked by my side for my last 33 years. He who has saved my body and my soul. He whom I haven't had to privledge to sit with in heaven. How much more will I be ready to fall at his feet to collapse into Him as His child. To breathe in the scent of God and revele in his beautiful light. How I will want to tell him how I spent my days and see him beam when we speak of His children whom he gave me to love. Let this be what spurs my days on, doing the right thing, leaving what I sometimes want for me for what will make Him smile. Thankful for the waiting arms.