Little Footsteps

Dear Lord,

2012-02-10T23:00:00.002-06:00

I guess it is just the nature of being in a ministry long enough to see the ebb and flow. But God, we just get a little discouraged every now and then because we pour in as much as we can and sometimes we see so very little in return. I know part of the problem is attempting ministry in our own strength far too often. Juggling work, the girls, and ministry has made survival-mode the daily operating system rather than once in a while during stressful seasons.

Lord, since we can't physically stop all of these things and maintain ...well, paychecks for one... grant us peace that surpasses understanding. And out of the midst of that peace, bring clarity to our plans and purposes. Help us find inroads back into lost territory. Help us make stronger connections where they are only holding by a thin thread. Basically, just help us.

It seems in scripture that Paul was always hopping...even when he was waiting, he was busy writing, encouraging churches hundreds of miles - and years! - away. But he wrote about contentment, peace, the opposite of what you'd expect from someone whose life was in danger more times than he was safe.

So, we soldier on, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We surrender to your leadership, knowing that even the valley is not out of your reach.

Lead us in paths of righteousness for Your name's sake.

Are We There Yet?

2012-02-01T07:49:00.003-06:00

Penalty on the offense.

Holding (a cupcake)

5 pound penalty.

No, I didn't make the goal. In fact, I moved in the opposite direction. Not quite sure how except that perhaps my previous weight loss was overestimated by our inconsistent scale. That's very possible. But I'm still so close. So close that I'm watching the scale every day...sometimes more than once a day.

It's like waiting for that cute boy you just met at the mixer who asked for your number to call. So close. And I just know he's the one.

But then there were chocolate cupcakes at Bible study on Sunday night. And Dr. Pepper. And Cheetos. I have avoided ALL these things for 20 days. If it takes 21 days to form a new habit, then I feel like I need to start all over. I have tracked....even my transgressions....for the entire time. So that's a small victory.

How am I undoing the damage?

Well, for one, I am not excusing myself. I am taking full responsibility. Yes, I did eat the cupcake. And the cheetos. And two cups of Dr. Pepper. Yes, it was delicious. Yes, I ate it like "someone" I know writes checks at the end of the month...."I can make up for this later. The money will be in the account before the check clears." Wow, what a downward spiral that leads to.

Second, it's time to call in reinforcement: Exercise, and LOTS of it. Discipline begets discipine. If I can budget my food, if I can budget for our living expenses, then I should be able to budget time for exercise. It's going to be late at night after my twin two year olds have gone to bed. And on rainy days, I will do some Wii Fit.

Third, we cancelled our satellite provider today. I am done having my brain and energy sucked out of me by Guy Fieri, so tata to TV.

Fourth, I am going to bring my own snack to Bible study....including this week's, which is a SuperBowl party. Fortunately, it is at our house, so I will plan the snack as my meal. I will measure out my portions, using the scanner whenever possible so I can be accurate. And I will weigh before the party starts so I can see how close I am to the goal and not pull what LSU pulled the one time Ole Miss beat them a couple of years ago and think that there was more time left on the clock.

Because there's not.

I have two two-year olds. The fat girl that wears my shoes needs to be able to get down on the floor with them. She needs to be able to ride bikes with them when they're old enough. She needs to not be embarassed to sit at the table with other moms on field trips because she feels self conscious about her weight....thereby imparting a generational lack of self-confidence in her daughters.

The cupcake's not worth it.

I'm here for the playoffs.

3 in 1 day

2012-01-27T23:27:00.001-06:00

I know right?

So blogging has made me a better person. How, you ask? For 1 I used to be kind of shy. I know it doesn't seem that way because I'm willing to bare all my secrets to total strangers on a world wide format. But that's exactly what has made the difference for me.

I have had the most fun leading worship for a group of ladies with first baptist of new orleans. And usually at events like this I become somewhat of a wallflower because I haven't made the connections they have with people in the room. So I find ways to mess around with my guitar or the sound system or I pull away to a reclusive spot so I can "practice", which really means I just want to be alone because I don't know any body.

But this is the first time that I have led worship for a retreat with people I didn't know since I started blogging. Sometimes I still don't know where to go after the initial hi my name is.... but it's getting easier.

Oh and as soon as they hear that I have 2 children adopted from russia all bets are off that anyone else is going to get a word in edgewise. I just spent the last 2 hours on the beach at a bonfire talking about myself. And I was aware that I was talking about myself to complete strangers. I kept apologizing. I kept trying to give them opportunities to speak about themselves. But they kept asking more questions.

I felt selfish taking all the time but at the end of the evening I walked across the highway with these new friends and felt so closely connected to them as we had shared all of our stories... mine most of all.

The first discussion questions of bible study earlier that evening has been very transparent and required a high level of vulnerability from group members. No 1 wanted to go first so I said, " shoot. I'll do it. I blog. Everybody already knows everything about me anyway. I just told the whole world how much I weigh."

And that is what makes me a good person. That and the love of Jesus.

By the way, I used the talk to text feature on my phone to write this blog because I don't have my computer with me. And that last sentence had me saying something about having 11 jesus-es. This app is not calibrated for a southern accent. I sound a little bit like stephen hawking trying to write this blog post.

So as you go to bed tonight, pray for me, for this retreat, for the women who are not getting a chance to share about themselves because now I don't know how to shut up, and pray for stephen hawking because I'm sure he could use it.

I want to remember this!

2012-01-27T10:00:00.002-06:00

Someone wrote this over at Stuff Christians Like as a serious reply to a HILARIOUS!!! post about clapping after people sing in church. You should definitely go read the funny post. But I want this response in my memory banks to pull out as a worship leader when people have the "Should we/Should we not applaud?"

Thank you anonymous person.

I tried to "like" your comment about 60 times. But I could only do it once. Consider me clicking the "Like" button my applause for your comment.

This whole issue of, "It's worship, not a performance," is a false dichotomy. Worship music is a performance: It's a performance to the Lord. Both the musicians, and the people in the pews, are performing. And when we approve of how well the musicians do, both in playing their instruments and in leading the rest of us, there's nothing wrong with showing gratitude by clapping. Since when is gratitude non-Christian?

Sometimes worship music is entertaining. Shouldn't it be? Is God a sadist, who will only be pleased if our worship is something that we don't enjoy? Isn't joy a fruit of the Spirit, and our joy in worship supposed to be a facet of worship? Shouldn't our normal reaction to it be, "I love this"? Followed by clapping?

Yeah, there's a real issue when it becomes me-focused instead of God-focused. But the solution to that problem is not to reject certain forms of worship on the grounds that theymight be self-focused, or that they look to us like they're self-focused. It's to have worship leaders who know who they're performing for, and obviously keep the focus on him alone.

Setting Goals

2012-01-27T09:44:00.002-06:00

This is a repeat of a blog that I wrote over at MyFitnessPal.

Just reflecting on my newest set of little footsteps I need to take.

I know. It's not a catchy title. But it works.

I remember being about ten years old (and 145 or so pounds at the time) and seeing a LARGE woman at the old Delchamps grocery store. I don't know how much she weighed. But I remember thinking to myself: I don't want to be THAT fat when I grow up. I knew I was bigger than other girls my age, but I was also taller. Big-boned, they called me.

My mom battled her weight my whole life - except for all the times that she gave up and ate herself into oblivion with depression. She was a pastor's wife, a job that brings a ridiculous amount of stress along with it - yours and every other family's in the church. She taught me stress eating. She taught me that food is comfort. She taught me that it's okay to eat a bag of microwave popcorn because you "need something salty" only to chase it with a pan of brownies because you "need something sweet, now!"

And somewhere along the way, I became the fat woman from the grocery store. First goal = Epic Fail.

I haven't really beat myself up over this. I have let other people do it, but I always thought I looked pretty good. I think I have a pretty face. I'm tall and muscular. My dad's older sisters and I have a lot in common as far as our looks, personalities, and overall health are concerned. All I have had to complain about is bad knees. And narrow hips, which makes buying pants an issue. Big in the waist means baggy in the butt. And big in the chest means sloppy in the shoulders and armpits for shirts.

Well, 25 years and a few hundred fad diets later, I was tipping the scales at 281. I'll save you the sob story about fertility treatment since all this extra weight was affecting me getting pregnant - according to my doctors and everything I read on PCOS. My mom, not surprisingly, probably had the same issues. But in those days, you didn't talk about it. This explains why my brothers and I are so far spread out. They are 17 and 7 years older than I, and my parents *never* used any sort of birth control. [BTW, if you know my mom....Puh-LEEEZE don't mention this to her. She didn't even use the word "pregnant." She always said "expecting". I said - What? Like a pizza?]

I started with weight watchers, which lost me about 27 pounds. Then something wonderful happened. My husband and I got an adoption referral and spent four weeks between November and December of 2010 in Russia meeting and applying for the adoption of our two sweethearts. I've only gained back 7 of those lost pounds over the last year with them at home - mostly just over the Christmas break. But then I found MFP.

Holy App Store, batman. What a find!

It hasn't realigned the stars or anything. But I can track so much easier. And I'm already seeing results. In 17 DAYS, y'all, I have lost 10.2 pounds. I'm lighter than I've been since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. (That means I'm at 251.2 now.)

When I entered in my weight this morning, MFP reset my calorie goals to match my weightloss,

Hmm. There it is again. Goals.

Well, I didn't set 10 pounds as a goal. My first goal is to be under 250. I wanted to be all excited to go to the doctor and watch the nurse have to move that big 50# weight back a notch from 250. Like a first down in football, I woke up this morning screaming "MOVE THOSE CHAINS, REF!"

[Of course, now it's going to be kind of anticlimactic at the doctor's since they've changed to a digital scale.]

So since that goal is all like so happening on Monday, come heck or high water, what's the next one? I've been working on this one since January of 2010.

Here's the next one:

Size 18. Top and bottom. A misses 18. Not an 18W. Why they use the same numbers for something that is No Where Close to the same size is beyond me. It's aggravating. It makes shopping online a JOKE to those inbetween Plus and Misses shoppers. I'm still a plus shopper. But I'm hoping to be out of that department REAL soon.

And when I'm that size, I'm ordering a silk halter dress from Zulili to wear this summer to the beach at a family reunion.

Just like everything else in my life, I will take little footsteps and get there eventually.

First down and Goal!

Our girls

2012-01-10T14:18:00.003-06:00

They're 29 months old today. I made the comment that next month, they'll hit 30 for the first time.

In the last month, we've already marched into new developmental territory - spiritual development. Things that we've said and done, and more that they've picked up at church, have begun to make an impression. Addie reminds us to pray at supper time. We pray at bedtime. We pray when we see the moon. We prayed last week when they saw a rainbow for the first time. I spotted it first, then daddy. Then we heard a gasp, followed by "WHOA!" from the backseat. We talked about what a rainbow was, and then we thanked God for it. In Addie's words: "Dee Gaa, Tan Too Pitty Bainbow." Anna clasped her hands together and squinted this little funny face, and offered a stout "AMEN!"

Don't that just melt your heart!

In all this spiritual growth that my children are doing, I have come to a realization: Children are mirrors of our habits and souls. If I want my children to be lovers of God, prayer warriors, with thankful hearts, then that's what I need to model for them. Deuteronomy 6 says as much. We are to talk about God and the gospel when they lie down, when they get up, when we eat, when we're driving in the car together. And it's actually easier if you make "GOD-SPEAK" your family norm, rather than compartmentalizing into a 15 minute devotional every few days.

When we got married, I wanted us to do family devotionals. But it didn't fit our personalities. We were private in depth Bible students. But we spoke Gospel to each other all the time. When we got the girls, I thought we would surely start the family devotionals then. And we did for a while. It was sweet, but we had family in the house with us helping with the new transition, and it just didn't always happen. We were still working on meals, because they weren't self-feeding yet. That was a totally new experience. So mealtime prayers didn't happen all the time either. But because of our lifestyle of full time ministry and because of our convictions, we spoke Gospel to each other at home. Now that they are old enough to contribute, though, we are building the family devotional time back in. But they are coming in with some knowledge picked up from Sunday school and discipleship training at church.

This is how last night's devotion looked: We all sat on the couch. Joe held Anna with her blanket and bottle. Addie sat next to me. I read the story of Hannah and Samuel. Then we looked at pictures of people praying. When it was time to pray, I said, "Everybody grab hands."

We just went down the couch in a chain. But Anna started saying, "Addie - hand. Addie - hand."

"Do you want to hold Addie's hand?" I asked. "Yes." So I picked Addie up and put her in my lap, and we all put our hands in the middle, a la football huddle, and took turns praying.

So blessed.

I thought we could get them to sleep right after that. But Addie wanted to look at pictures in the Bible for a little while longer. I had put it on the arm of the couch when we prayed. So she jumped off of me onto her own cushion, crawled over to get the book, and sat down and announced,

"OK, BIBLE...[as if to say: it's on!]" Girl after my own heart.

I repeat - So Blessed!

So, good news...

2012-01-06T11:25:00.000-06:00

I saw a dog today. Have you seen a dog? I bet you have. Why is your coat so big?

...Woops. Slipped into "Elf-isms". Like I've mentioned earlier, we speak in movie quotes around our house.

Anyways, I do have good news. I'm really excited that my song "Son of God" got a little more national airplay during the Christmas season, I just discovered. Here's the thing, though. It's not just a Christmas song. It IS a sweet baby Jesus song, but the chorus gets to Easter. So call your local Christian radio station and request it. I put on my 20x40 list that I'd really like to record again. It would be GREAT if it was at someone else's expense. So let's get together and see if we can make that happen. I want to record songs I have written with and for our youth group so they can sell the CDs as a fundraiser for their summer mission trip. We've kicked around that idea for the last two years.

The other good news is it is winter and spring retreat season, and I have two events coming up. And that's always fun and growth inducing. I'm thankful for a chance to share and to be shared with. People open up so much more away from home and responsibilities. I can't wait to see how my own life is touched through these events.

Lastly, I have a new link for you to check out. Jen Hatmaker is all up in my head, apparently, seeing as how we have both adopted two children in the past year, both hit a wall about Christmas complacency, and both reached a level of disgust with our own locust-like tendency to consume. So here's the link to her thought-provoking experience....expose', really....of what her family went through as they systematically tried to downsize their lifestyle to get to a place where nothing was getting in the way of their obedience to God.

Read, think, reply.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-04T11:05:00.000-06:00

New starts everywhere!

My children have decided they want to potty train.

I started weight-watchers again....but the free version. Try the Food and Fitness logger on WebMD. Same EXACT program. Except even better.

And the biggie: The IRS check finally came.

And I am so glad it didn't come before Christmas. My kids got an overwhelming amount of stuff from friends and family who were happy to celebrate their first holiday with us. Everyone wanted to get them something.

By the way, you've been warned. We are amassing a small pillow pets army. Prepare to be invaded.

I'm glad we didn't have the money to spend a ton on them, because we would have. We would have bought in full-tilt to the marketing genius that is "Black Friday". Instead, the Lord put us through a spiritual and financial gastric bypass, or as I call it "Forced Behavior Modification".

So, now that the money is in, has it or will it change our penny pinching ways any time soon?

NOT BLOODY LIKELY!

In fact, I'm still thinking about selling my car and driving a loaner from the in-laws for a couple of years. And I brought ramen noodles in my lunch today. And I still may put the old TV and a couple of pieces of furniture and our old PS2 and all its games on Craig's list. I have been so confronted with my materialistic ways through all of this. And I'm so thankful for the changes to my heart and lifestyle. I can get by coloring my own hair and giving myself pedis at home. It's not perfect. But in my mind, I replay the last scene of "Schindler's List" where he looks at his ring and his car and wonders why he didn't give those away and free a few more prisoners.

Two years ago, I read the book "Radical" by a seminary friend, David Platt. His big challenge was to live one year at a sacrificial level so you could invest in something of greater Kingdom significance. I didn't really buy into it at the time because we were already investing in the adoption with all our resources, fiscal and otherwise. Now, four days into the new year, I want that kind of lifestyle. I've been talking to a friend who is ready to give up everything and go native in an international mission field. I'm right there with her, from a North American perspective. In fact, after going through Christmas with people's expectations that we were buying out every toy store in a 300 mile radius, and giving in to the "Santa" conspiracy, I think it will be harder to live for an extended period of time as a poor missionary in our home country than in one where everyone is living at that level with you.

Plus, every time people talk about shopping and spending and new this-and-that's, and you pour a bucket of ice-water on the conversation, they may start to get offended at how often you "Jesus-Juke" them.

We have an adequate amount to begin crawling out of the hole that started with travel expenses for three trips to Russia and paying back two adoption loans and has grown to include four months of daycare (we opened a new line of credit for these) and Anna's medical expenses (right now, totaling about $6000). It's a REALLY big hole.

Thankful for a REALLY BIG GOD, and new beginnings.

Our First Christmas Together.

2011-12-30T11:03:00.001-06:00

I'm not counting last year...because I don't remember much. This was the day that I got the stomach virus to end all viruses. I actually held my breath a little this year waiting to see if I would start throwing up again. But no.

So, what have we learned in a year of parenting? I knew a lot about child care and behavior management and discipline....IN THEORY....because I've been a teacher for seven years. I didn't learn a whole lot of new stuff about child development, but it has been fun and rewarding to actually get to watch it happening as they have picked up language, self-help skills, and motor skills. They went from learning how to follow simple directions to learning how to rebel against those directions. That happened faster and with more furor than I had hoped. I thought maybe with our learning curve we could bypass the terrible twos. But now, five months into them, we are in full terror mode. On the one hand, we have the whining of a determined little one who really wants to be able to do the bad things she sees her sister doing. Then we have the other one doing them. I am SO thankful that there are at least some limitations from having to pull both of them down from the ceiling fans, not that we LET them DO that.

But mostly, in the words of "Morris the Moose", I learned, "There are a lot of things I didn't know....that I didn't know" about myself as a parent.

Here they are, in no particular order:

I'm a better parent working than staying at home.
I feel guilty about that fact.
I have a real problem with expectations.
I like one daughter better than the other - but they are both my favorites. It just changes from day to day depending on who woke me up first.
I miss sleep.
I have a real problem with ignorant strangers who act like it's sad that we had to adopt to have children.
I really am glad that I didn't have a natural child after all. Let me explain this one:

There was a brief whisper of a thought in a book I skimmed about adopting and attachment that mentioned a kind of adoption post-partum. I definitely experienced this. The first and third bullets really give some insight as to why. I don't know when it started. But at some point during the first several weeks of not getting to sleep through the night, coupled with some events of Addie rough-housing and not letting me pick her up after she got hurt, I had a moment where she sat on our bed crying from a booboo scare, pitching and rolling to get away from me, I fell apart on the bed next to her begging for her to let me pick her up. I told her that I needed it, whether she did or not. The depth of that need was so great that I knew if I were to give birth to a child at any point in this first year...or maybe the next two or three afterwards...I would feel guilty for every way and time that I didn't FEEL loving toward Addie or Anna.

In addition to what I've learned about me, I have also learned a lot about God during this year. The spiritual applications of God as parent were so OBVIOUS at times that I rolled my eyes at myself every time I thought I needed to blog about it, hence the really big gaps in my blogging timeline.

Here are a few of those. This list is longer, so I may just post a couple as they come to me and fill in later.

Everything 1 Corinthians 13 says about love may be kind of true in the context of marriage, since it is one of the favorite scripture readings at weddings, but it is particularly true of parenting. And knowing that, I am really thankful that it is true of God's love for me. He keeps no record of wrongs. His love can bear all things. His love is patient, kind, pursuing us until we run into His arms with abandon. [This is one of my favorite things about Addie. From the day on the bed months ago, we have grown into a daily routine of her screaming "MOMMY!!!!" at the top of her lungs and making a mad dash for my open arms when I pick her up at preschool or come home from work.]
Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart (Ps. 34:7) is not a prescription for material blessing. It's not an incantation like people have misused the Prayer of Jabez. Rather, it is a statement of the obvious, set in the context of the Old Testament covenant, which I have come to understand as more of a simultaneous event than an If/Then. Right now - delight yourself in the Lord. Period. Whether you get anything personal out of it or not. But just so you know God is faithful in keeping His promises, for the sake of His holiness, He will give you the desires of your heart. - Parenting has taught me that I will give good gifts to my children, even when they don't deserve them, if I know it is going to make them healthy and wise, and if it strengthens their dependence on me as a parent. In fact, when have my children ever done anything to deserve what I've given them? Their babies. They can't earn anything. They don't own anything. I don't need them to, even if they could. I just want them to delight in me. I want them to accept me giving them the desires of their hearts.

Yeah, I was right....There is a lot more to say about this, but it will have to wait. I have two girls waking up from a nap right now.

S'Novium Godom {Happy New Year in Russian}

20 by 40

2011-12-16T14:50:00.001-06:00

I need a storage building off the end of my driveway of about those dimensions to house all the baby and toddler toys and sippy cups that are taking over my house!

But I digress. I got the idea from a friend of a friend's blog (Of course, her list and age are smaller). Here are 20 things I want to do before I'm forty years old. Call it a mid-life bucket list.

1. Become debt free except for my house.
2. Adopt again. The less debt, the more children.
3. Run in a 5 K.
4. Run in a 10 K.
5. Run a half - mara....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry - I couldn't keep a straight face.
6. Go to Hawaii.
7. Record another CD.
8. Learn to play the violin.
9. Drive a convertible....not necessarily own, but maybe rent one for a whole week in the late spring, and drive it until my hairline recedes!
10. Get curtains and blinds for our house.
11. Get my flowerbed to grow, uh, I don't know....FLOWERS?!
12. Take another oil painting class.
13. Take a cake decorating class.
14. Take a photography class.
15. Buy Photoshop.
16. Learn how to operate Photoshop.
17. Still working on #16.
18. Go back to blonde hair.
19. Go to Italy.
20. Manage a blog that makes money and become independently wealthy.

I can think of a lot of things...but not things that can realistically all be done in a year. Because I am a number nerd, I know I have to do 5 items off the list each year to get it all done, and right now, I am working on how and which ones could and couldn't happen in the same year. Like, we could rent the convertible while on vacation in either Italy or Hawaii. I would want to have already run all those races and be in peak physical condition with my blond-headed self before the Hawaii trip, and I would already need to be proficient in photography so I could capture the whole event. And we will need to do this before the next adoption, because I don't want to leave little brother at home after we have just gotten him....

And that is how my brain works! Pity me.

Better yet, pity my husband!

This is a Total Ripoff!

2011-12-14T15:42:00.002-06:00

Meaning - I literally copied and pasted the following. Some people will never follow links to other sites when they are shared and suggested. So I went ahead and "commandC"'d them to bring them over to my page. These works are not my own. They are the work of Jared Wilson....whom I don't know, but whose blog I have been following for the last few months on the topic of Gospel-centrality in our lives and in the church. I had no idea how idolatrous my life was and how a million little good things take the place of what should be the best thing in my life - which is Jesus, and the fact that He died for me, redeemed me, set me apart to serve Him, and gave me faith to trust Him.

For instance....how does the gospel effect my family life, my marriage. Below are two posts from Jared's page on this very topic. I will hyper-link the titles if you want to read them over at his site. Please mull this over during the holiday season, where we will all be spending more time with our families. Let the gospel sweeten our relationships with those closest to us, like water into sweet wine. You know, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes that this was the first of Jesus' miracles. What a clear picture of the gospel: Total change and sweet fellowship.

Five Ways Wives Can Encourage Their Husbands
An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life.
-- Proverbs 31:10-12

1. Praise Him Verbally
Private nagging and public nitpicking are common temptations for wives of husbands who are sinners, by which I mean wives, but a wife ought to know that this is Chinese water torture on his heart. Most men carry around in their souls the question "Do I have what it takes?" The gospel answers this question, "No, but Jesus does, and what's his is yours." This is the only acceptable way to answer in the "negative." When you nitpick and nag, you give mouthpiece to the accuser who wants your husband to know not only does he not have what it takes, he is worthless because of it. So find ways to constructively criticize and help him repent, but more than that, tell him what you like about him, how you find him attractive or admirable, how you respect him or are impressed by him. Outdo him in showing honor (Rom. 12:10).

2. Submit to His Leadership
This is not a call to be a doormat, but in my pastoral experience I encounter many a wife who says she wants her husband to lead her but then makes it clear in some way that this will only occur when she agrees with his decision. There are few things more demoralizing than a demand to lead with no commitment to follow. Instead, if your husband is not leading you into sin, your followship of your husband is a reflection of your trust in God. Peter writes:

For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. (1 Peter 3:5-6)

3. Reject Relational Legalism
If your husband always feels as though he is only in your good graces when he has performed to your standards or met your expectations, he will not see you as his lover, friend, or partner, but as his boss. Do you know how deeply you want to feel approved of despite your flaws, sins, and failures, that your husband would know the real you and love that you? He wants the same thing, even if he never expresses it.

4. Take an Interest
It's not always that your husband doesn't like to talk. It's just that perhaps he's learned that your favorite subjects are things he doesn't have much to say about. Communicating with you in ways that edify and engage you is his command to obey with joy; communicating with him in ways that edify and engage him is yours. This might mean asking him questions about sports or hobbies or movies or power tools. Or maybe it doesn't mean talking but sitting on the couch to watch the game with him or invading his "man cave"* with your presence but not your agenda.

5. Make Love to Him
This is not universally true, but it is generally true: The number one way a husband feels encouraged is when his wife has sex with him. I put it last because it's likely the touchiest point (no pun intended), but it is (again, generally speaking) top of the list. If you're thinking, "Well, for some husbands maybe, but not mine," ask him. For most men, sexual intimacy is directly wired to feelings of encouragement, confidence, approval, attractiveness, and self-esteem. The things that you likely need in order to feel open to sexual intimacy are the things he typically feels afterwards -- closeness, respect, approval. I know it's weird that God set it up that way, but I think he did so that we would serve each other graciously with our bodies, learning to put each other first in a neat little "No, after you" kind of dance. In any event, one of the chief ways -- if not the chief way -- you can build up your husband is by bedding down with him.

Carolyn Mahaney's chapter "Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God: What Every Christian Wife Needs to Know" in the Piper/Taylor book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ is excellent on this subject. You can download the entire book for free here.

Five Ways Husbands Can Sanctify Their Wives

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
-- Ephesians 5:25-27

1. Put Her First
Sacrifice is in view here, as is the understanding of "sanctify" in the sense of "setting apart for special use," as in consecration. Husbands honor their wives not among others, but before and above others.

2. "Gospel" Her
Yes, I know it's not a verb, but you get my meaning here. The passage says Jesus sanctifies the church by "washing" her with the water of the word. The understanding of "sanctify" as "cleanse" is in view here, and a husband who wants to sanctify his wife will share with her the word of God, speak to her the word of God, remind her who she is in Christ, forgive her sins, give her the opportunity to forgive his in word-driven repentance, and in general make sure she is gently, lovingly covered in the Scriptures.

3. Protect Her
Husbands will present their wives in some way to the Lord when that roll is called up yonder as an evidence of their own faithfulness to him. Do we want to be proven true children of God, full of faith in Jesus and his gospel? Then we will show the fruit of faithful husbanding, which is a wife "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." No, we cannot sanctify our wives the way the Spirit does, and no, neither our salvation nor our wife's salvation is contingent upon our perfect husbanding (thank God!), but manhood is responsibility-taking, and this means taking the responsibility to shield our wives from sin and its temptations, accusations, attacks, unnecessary burdens, hurtful expectations and assumptions, and the like. This can mean everything from taking on housework so she gets to rest or go out with friends to warding off or rebuking people who take advantage of her. It also means no verbal, emotional, or physical abuse. It means no pornography or sexual exploitation. It means treating her and ensuring treatment of her that is gentle, loving, and edifying.

4. Serve Her
How did Jesus the King position himself over the church as its head? By becoming its servant, sacrificing to the point of death in loving service to her betterment.

5. Lead Her
This encompasses all of the above and more. Male headship requires repetitious repentance, deep humility, desperate God-reliance, and a high, passionate commitment to the grace of God for the glory of God, not the gratification of self for the glory of self. Lead, don't push. Set an example in speech and conduct. Show yourself flawed but trustworthy but God as failproof. Refuse to make excuses or pass the buck. Shoulder the burdens and take responsibility.

Quote of the day:

2011-12-08T07:54:00.001-06:00

By Sinclair Ferguson, on the subject of God's grace and gospel:

"[T]here is no “thing” that Jesus takes from Himself and then, as it were, hands over to me. There is only Jesus Himself."

And that's enough.

Please visit this site

2011-12-06T11:22:00.001-06:00

Given our desperate financial position this year, and the fact that it is Christmas, we've really had to face some emotions about what we want our children to know about Jesus and about Christmas.

Then I read this. And now, I feel like my family has some big decisions to make, but decisions that will free us, that will make the Gospel the center of our celebration. And the resources at the end of the post (And I'll warn you now, it's LOOOOOONG, so hang in there) could possibly pull another orphan or lost one out of the cycle, if you choose to do some Christmas giving from there.

One of the greatest things I think is having children select gifts from the following categories: Something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read....and something to give. Great ideas for really making Jesus the center of the season.

Please, go read it right now.

Thanks!

Defying Gravity

2011-12-01T11:16:00.001-06:00

Great song...but not the point of this blog.

Actually, I was thinking about a similar song "Gravity: Pulling Heaven Down" by Royal Tailor. It's about how much more amazing God's grace seems in light of our pitiful earthly existence. God came to us, so we celebrate this time of year, because of His desire to redeem us from our sins and circumstances.

I really need heaven to come down right now.

Our situation with the IRS has not improved...AT ALL...and the longer it takes, the bigger and bigger the hole between our income and our outflow gets. As bad as the state of things has been around our house - like, omigosh, I'm an adult, how could I have let this happen kind of bad - there's still something swimming in my abdomen that I can only express through the words of another song

This is "Still is My Soul" by Jill Phillips.

When the storm clouds dark and gray threaten to rain
Still is my soul, Still is my soul
When the waves come crashing in to wash me away
Still is my soul, Still is my soul
When the winter wind starts blowing in
Freezing over every stream
There’s a peace that passes understanding
Flowing like a current beneath
Still is my soul, Still is my soul, Still is my soul
Even when the whole world turns against me and there’s nowhere to hide
Still is my soul, Still is my soul
I know the greatest treasures aren’t found in this life
Still is my soul, Still is my soul
When the trials of this world rise against me
I will face them all unafraid
There’s a peace that passes understanding
Coursing through the blood in my veins
Still is my soul

I'm not totally there...especially when I'm standing at the microwave heating up a cup of hot chocolate, crying my eyes out because this small thing feels like a luxury. And every evil lie that satan can throw at me tells me I'd be so much better off if only...

The voice of God comes back like a breeze in the summer heat, still warm and penetrating in its own right, but a comfort none the less: "He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it."

I know that it is the trials of this life that makes old folks sing songs about heaven with a tear in their eye. And I know it's the deceptive seduction of worldly things that makes people of my generation and younger miss it completely. But Eph. 2 says that already God has seated our spirits in heavenly places. God, teach me what that means. Give me spiritual eyes to see the greater things that this difficult season is going to lead to, to believe in advance what will only make sense in reverse. Help me defy gravity.

Reflection.

2011-11-10T20:53:00.001-06:00

Today, I reflect on -

The feel of ice under my feet.

The smell of overcooked cabbage.

The scratch of that pink V-neck sweater against my neck.

The weight of my snow boots on my feet and the knee pain that followed.

The weightlessness of a dirty faced little girl who cried into my shoulder, confused by the new people who smiled too much, talked too loud, smelled too sweet, and clung too tightly.

The rattled breath of an even littler girl who sat in eerie silence with vacant expressions until her physical discomfort became such that she cried a weak cry that reminded me of a kitten.

Then a subtle shift over the next few days as they got used to seeing our faces, and we got used to seeing theirs. By week's end, we had smiles, hand clapping games, familiar toys that we shared, and on Sunday morning before we left for the airport, we not only had been captivated by their smiles, but we had apparently won their approval as well as Olga curled up on Joe's lap and fell asleep against his barrel chest.

Every time the weather has changed this fall into frosty temperatures I have walked outside, closed my eyes, and imagined the playground equipment that looks like something out of a Grimm brothers fairy tale. I imagine walking out of the airport into that first arctic blast of air.

I remember standing on the canal bridge looking across at the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood and taking in the sad beauty of a church turned museum, ornate and useless, like so many pharisees in Jesus' day, white washed tombs.

As we stood there, marveling at the intricate patterns of thumbnail sized tiles, I was very aware of parallel nature of our journey. Like the name of this blog, our journey to this place at this time for these girls was one of several very tiny footsteps. The Lamp of God's Word gave us only enough light for each paver in the road. Not because God is slow in keeping His promises, or because He is cruel, as though He were a fickle lover leading us along without commitment.

Rather, He knew us so well....knew ME so well....that He knew we'd never believe or buy into the end picture if He told us everything at the beginning. But the obstacles He moved out of the way, one step at a time, revealed His great plan and a grand adventure.

So here we sit, one year removed from that first frightful meeting. How they've changed. How they've become just like us. Clingy. Sweet. Smiley. Loud. Until they fall asleep curled up in our arms.

Meaningful words

2011-10-19T15:10:00.002-05:00

I'm sure....like 98%....that the tantrums we've been having over meals this week has everything to do with medicine turning little tummies inside out, and nothing to do with the fact that they're two and they're discovering they have a voice in this world.

Namely, that voice likes to say "No" ... A LOT! Even when it doesn't make sense.

Me: Anna, do you want a snack?

Anna: ah-no

Me: Anna, do you want to get down from your high chair?

Anna: ah-no

Me: Anna, are you going to eat?

Anna: ah-no

Me: Anna, are you done?

Anna: ah-no

.....Fine. Let's try child #2.

Me: Addie, do you want a snack?

Addie: Snack!

.....followed by violent head turning and spoon slapping and cookie throwing.

At that point, over meaningless non-essential arguments, I am tempted like any parent to make a mountain out of a mole-hill and lose my cool. And I have. Repeatedly.

But I read this today from another adoptive mother, and the post that inspired her comment...Basically, I went on a blogosphere goose-chase because I was so hungry for the encouragement that was feeding my soul at that moment.

Here's the quote that rocked my afternoon:

"It is the words we use that will raise our children out of the mire, healing words of love and belonging and affirmation. Similar words that God took great care to speak over us through Scripture, reminding us that even in our pain and sin, we are loved, adopted, important, valuable. It is not coming unglued over spilled drinks and lost shoes and daily mistakes, choosing not to further injure their little spirits over non-essentials."

Now playing.

2011-10-12T12:42:00.000-05:00

I've got "Close of Autumn" by Caedmon's Call looping on ITunes right now. It's all about the grace of God swelling up around us like a swollen stream.

On this day, I have the movie playing in my mind of the events this time last year when we got the call from our placement agent about AC's disability. There were so many unknowns. Will she function? Will she talk? Will she walk? Will she have seizures? Will she be able to eat? How deep does the brain trauma go?

AC has made some big leaps in her physical development. Our whole goal for the first year was sitting up and crawling. Well, we still have three months to go, and she is now sitting up on her knees, crawling on all fours, sliding off the couch to a standing position (most of the time successfully) and pulling up to standing on some furniture. She has leg braces, and can push a walk-behind toy in the grass or on carpet. She even managed to stay upright when our 75 pounds of hyperactivity, better known as Molly the Lab, tried to sideswipe her while chasing a soccer ball the other day.

Even as we asked those questions last year about her development...to no one in particular, because no one could answer them for sure...we felt that grace of God swirling around us like a small rip current in a stream of white water. It came through the arms and words of faithful friends and family who assured us that they'd walk the road with us.

They have, even when I didn't let them fully know just how hard some of that walk was. If life with the girls has been a journey, and believe me it HAS, then I would say we made our first big turn from "These people feed me" to "This is my family", and now we are at the junction of "Just how far can I go before I get in trouble?" and "I want to do the right thing to make you happy".

And although starting daycare set Addie back a little in terms of her good sleeping routine, we are at that place that I think women who have a painful delivery reach when the pain of their last pregnancy is not as vivid and the children have reached a comfortable independence that makes you get that crazy twinkle in your eye of "How soon until we can do this again?"

Then you wake up at midnight to a pitiful wail and think: Just a little while longer.

Another great one...

2011-09-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

From the same site by Pastor/Author Jared C. Wilson.

Worship is love on its knees.
Missions is love on its feet.

Check the post out here.

I guess I am officially a groupie.

Follow the bouncing link....

2011-09-22T11:20:00.006-05:00

Sometimes, the best thing you can say is what someone else has already said.

This is the best thing I've read in a while. It takes all the pressure off. It frees us to live the life Christ intended by putting all the responsibility on His shoulders.

Two little words.

Enjoy.

Little Foxes...

2011-09-16T12:44:00.000-05:00

I love the verse in Song of Solomon...that I'm too lazy to get up and look up at the moment...where the Shulamite woman tells her listeners to catch those little foxes that ruin the vineyard.

Meaning: Sometimes it's not the really big, glaring, in-your-face kind of sin that keeps you from being an effective tool in God's hands. Sometimes it's the little things that nip away at the fruit. Those sneaky little foxes.

I wrote a song about 12 years ago wherein I talked about that regret that we can sometimes have when our life doesn't exactly turn out the way we had always hoped it would. I look at my life now, and I am almost very satisfied. But the little foxes have been at work, and I got a good look at the damage, and now I'm setting out the traps, by golly!

I love leading worship. I feel like Eric Liddell ("Chariots of Fire") who said, "When I run, I feel God's pleasure," when I am leading worship. I feel like I am pulling out every beautiful gift he ever gave me so I can brag about him to everyone else. I've been desiring to lead more lately, doing retreats or seminars, etc. So this Wednesday night, I videotaped one of our youth services so I could have a demo to send to a speaker or organization who needs a preview for their program.

What I heard as my co-leader was listening to our finished product was a good sound, albeit a very southern-twanged one. But what I saw as I watched the video really broke my own heart. I have allowed poor daily habits - eating two sandwiches when one is plenty, drinking Dr. Pepper when water is better, watching tv when walking 2 miles would be a healthier choice - to keep me stuck in a physical rut.

Our pastor said Sunday, "God created everything, but not everything exists the way God intended it to be." I started asking myself the question before I ever saw that video - Lord, what was your intent for me when you created me? How am I getting in the way of your plan?

I feel - in a spiritual, not just a practical way - that my appearance is getting in the way of my ability to be an effective worship leader. Those who are with me all the time and know my heart may disagree. And they'd be right in their context. But for those who get one service or one weekend, I feel that my appearance needs to be both professional AND unremarkable. Odd? Well, I just mean that I want my look to be so modest and neat, and to resemble Christ, of whom the prophets wrote - There was nothing physically about him that made him stand out. By being so overweight, I believe I am giving people a reason to be distracted in worship. Now, if they continue to let it get in the way of their worship....well, that's on them. It shouldn't continue to be a big deal after the initial shock wears off and they get to know me.

I just know that I want to direct people to Christ without anything getting in the way. I also realize I'm saying this after I've already lost 30 pounds since January of 2010. But we're 20 months removed from then. I've really taken my time, and gained and lost ten of those pounds three times since then. As I watched that video Wednesday night, I took full responsibility for my little foxes. The Lord and I sat down and realistically made a plan that can work around life with two little ones, including time for fitness. I started running in the spring and was really proud of my progress toward being able to run a 5K. In fact, I was almost to that point. I was up to 2 miles.

Then I stopped. And everyone else I knew that was running kept going....and going....and I kept feeling further behind and left out. Then the foxes showed up.

So what now? Well, I have a plan, that I'm keeping between me and God. I think I know what will make me look and feel better and give a better first impression that leaves people reflecting on the wonder of God, rather than wondering how I'm able to carry a guitar over my spare tire. I'm not beating myself up, except to say like Paul that I want to "Beat my body and make it my slave so that when I have run the race, I will not be disqualified."

In other words, I want to outrun the foxes. If there are any of you who want to buddy up with me and start all over on the couch to 5K running plan, comment and let me know. I'm starting tonight.

I just know...

2011-09-01T11:31:00.002-05:00

It's funny. Prayers of faith for others' needs are so much easier to offer than prayers for your own. I think that's why in James 5, it says that the sick should call on someone [else] to pray for them. Maybe it's because God knows our faith often fails us in moments of weakness.

I prayed for someone else last week, and in the prayer, I said, "God, I don't know how you're going to work this situation out. But I just know... I KNOW... that you will."

A big helping of God's love, and a very specific answer to that prayer-in addition to the prayers of others who were also lifting this person up-showed up for her a few days later.

Well, I had one of those faithless days Sunday. It has been a stressful month, with school starting back, taking on extra music lessons after school, seeing the girls so little on certain days of the week, knowing the girls will be starting daycare for the first time this week, and going through a very specific refining process at the moment. It finally became more than I could bear. I received a little more bad news at the start of the church service that morning, and I barely contained myself before the service started.

All I wanted to do was walk out. I had spent time in prayer before church started. Since the girls have been under the weather and were getting in an extra nap, I had a little extra time at home to worship alone, pray about all that was burdening me, and try to leave it all with Him at the house so it wouldn't ride with me to church. But I picked it right back up as I went down the stairs, loaded it into the car with the diaper bag, and it was sitting around my neck for the whole service like a scratchy faux fur stole.

That was my mistake for letting it ruin my worship and steal my joy. I confessed it to God the whole time, but still couldn't lay it down. Then I slept and woke up to a new routine Monday morning, still aware of my same problems. But in that new routine, I had specifically made time to spend with God a priority. And it's funny how God changes your perspective after reading through the "hall of faith" in Hebrews 11.

In case you are curious what the big deal is....I will share, because I'm not the only one going through this struggle. There are several adoptive families having the same dilemma, and we all need some prayers right now, along with adoption ministries that are waiting on us.

We filed our taxes on time, in April, expecting to get our adoption tax credit returned. It was a considerable chunk of money, and we already had ours earmarked for paying on two adoption loans, paying off the credit cards we used for our travel expenses, and having daycare and emergency funds set aside.

It's now September, and we haven't received our refund yet. Several adoptive families' returns had to be reviewed before they could receive their funds. Apparently, there were enough fraudulent cases that the IRS had to be real sticklers about receipts, etc. I get it. But here is the rub...our last letter from them said we would receive our return by August 23. So I had the in-laws come stay with us for this month, and scheduled the girls' entrance into daycare based on the expectation that the funds would be available the first time payment is due.

We did hear from the IRS....after we called them when August 23 came and went without a nod. They didn't approve the full credit amount because our "SIGNED" contract to the adoption agency was not a receipt. So we are waiting to get that receipt from the agency, only to turn around and wait on the IRS to review our file again! So we're looking at another two months of living quite literally hand to mouth.

Am I complaining? Maybe about the IRS, but not about God's sufficiency for our need.

In James 1, He is quite clear about his concern for the orphans and widows. We stepped out on faith to take that challenge, knowing that things would be tight. We got unexpected help in some places, while others would take that as an opportunity to criticize how we make purchases and handle finances.

But I hope and expect our story to end like the widow's at Zeraphath (1 Kings 17). She didn't know where the family's next meal was coming from, and she was willing to take a little step of faith to feed the man of God. God's response was a miraculous supply of flour and oil that Never Ran Out.

I had really been focusing on that check from the IRS to supply our needs. But that's not the government's job.

"MY GOD shall supply all [MY] needs, according to HIS glorious riches in CHRIST JESUS." (Phil 4:19).

I must say, we are learning a new level of resourcefulness and responsibility. I went from my prayers on Sunday being "Supply, supply, supply," to a new prayer: "Lord, let us take these lessons learned in the dark, and remember them in the light." This definitely has been a spiritual battle - because, let's think of what's at stake: Not only do we not get money we need, but we can't forward it on to the adoption ministries who take that money to help future families, which means waiting orphans are going to be waiting even longer....which means the devil is winning, the longer this takes. So pray for the floodgates to break wide open!! Not just for us, but for every family who is waiting.

So, like I told my friend, I don't know HOW God is going to get us through the next two months, but...

Last day of freedom

2011-08-28T07:40:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow morning the girls will start preschool. I'm a little excited for them and also a little nervous. They will definitely benefit from the socialization and learning how to sit and listen to a teacher. The classroom for older children has a rock climbing wall and small indoor trampoline. That has Addie written all over it. They will also work on potty training. We're hoping that the routine of taking naps on a cot will help us with the transition to "big girl" beds. We want to do that by Christmas. The girls are getting so big. And we can't lower Addie's bed anymore. I will post some pictures on Facebook of them on their way on Monday. Addie loves putting on her backpack.

One Liners....Blogs that never made it past the first paragraph.

2011-08-19T11:06:00.007-05:00

January 2009: "Lord, Sometimes I'm bored. Sometimes it feels like you're doing all the exciting things in someone else's life. Can I be trusted with more?"

Answer: February, quit taking fertility medication. March, started looking into building a house. April, emergency surgery for mom. May, raised last bit of money for Joe's mission trip to Honduras. June, Honduras trip. June/July, mom breaks leg, has surgery, goes to rehab unit. July, start building house. August, go back to school. September, file adoption application. October, mom comes home from rehab as we move into new house. November, BREATHE. December, first homestudy interview.

I will NEVER ask that question again!!

June 2010: "Dear Children, I walk into your bedroom every day and say a little prayer that we'll meet soon. I wonder what you'll look like. I wonder if your patent black hair will be straight or wavy. Will your skin be a caramel latte or hot chocolate? Do you want to keep your Nepali names, or do you want to be called things like Anne or Will, like the American children that will want to be your friends?"

Answer: Well, two months later, we knew that they weren't coming from Nepal. They look like our own children....my hair and skin, Joe's cleft chin and birthmarks, both of our propensities for gaining weight!! And they are loud-mouths, just like both of us! I redid their bedrooms when we found out they would be infants. We gave them very American names, mostly chosen from family references, because they are family. They are so a part of us that when I got Anna out of her bed at 4:45 this morning, I could have put her back into her own bed to sleep, but I just wanted to scoop her up next to me and snuggle for the next hour before I had to get up. She slept, I drifted on a cloud of pure happiness.

October 2010: Just a hopeful momma's request for prayer. We got some news today that changes the status of one of the girls from "healthy" to "special needs": Cerebral Palsy. We're not sure of her degree of the disorder and how affected she will be physically and cognitively. We felt unwillingly thrust into an ethical dilemma, much like parents who find out of a deformity while the child is still en utero. If that were the case, would we terminate the pregnancy? Absolutely not! Plus, we are so sure that these are OUR girls, regardless of their abilities or inabilities.

You can continue to pray for Anna. She still doesn't get from laying on the floor to sitting upright on her own at two years old. That upper body balance is a big obstacle to walking. But she does crawl-ish, and just in the last week, she started pushing up from her hands and knees to sitting on her knees. If you have any question about how we feel about her and about our decision to follow through with her adoption, you can read about it here.

June 2011: "I know, I know. It has been a while. Well, I go through phases...moreso now with the girls. Sometimes I really want privacy - Translation: I don't want anyone to know how hard this is sometimes. But mostly, I don't feel like I don't have anything interesting or profound to say."

I would probably attribute the above statement to sleep deprivation.

But I forget sometimes that people don't need profundity. They just need some honesty. It's encouraging to know someone's life isn't perfect.

And even better to know we serve a perfect God.

Another find in the drafts pile...."Mother"

2011-08-19T08:30:00.002-05:00

This is REALLY funny to me now that I have daughters. It doesn't have a real crisp ending, which is probably why I never published it.

"My momma was first runner-up in the Miss Credit pageant, put on by the Hattiesburg Credit Bureau in 1957. The way she puts it, "I would have won if I hadn't been married. After all, it was MISS Credit." I always thought my mother was beautiful, although I never saw her looking the way she looked in that Esther Williams halter style swim suit. In the next seventeen years, she had three babies. One weighed 9 pounds and 12 ounces. The other weighed 12 pounds, 12 ounces. Things didn't exactly go back into place after that second one. I came seven years later - surprise - a whopping 9 pounds and 5 ounces. I guess that makes me the runt.

Since I was the baby and the only girl, I was privy to all kinds of special treatment by my mother. Here are a few things that I have learned from her over the years:

What is a mother, but a partner in crime? People usually describe how their mothers taught them the value of hard work, or of moral uprightness, or faithfulness to one's family. My mother taught me a great, many things like those above. But her most valuable lessons won't be embroidered on a pillow. Things like:

1.) "Don't tell daddy how much this cost. If he asks, tell him it was on sale. That's all he needs to know." Don't think this hasn't caused a little bit of grief in our seven [now ten] years of marriage. Fortunately for me, I married someone who learned a few of the same lessons, so we know how to translate each other's vague descriptions. What happens in vagueness, stays in vagueness.

2.) "The best cure for PMS is skipping school." Refer back to life lesson number one. Those days of skipping school were best spent eating chocolate, preferably brownie batter, and watching movies with Gene Kelly. Nobody can wear white pants like that man.

3.) "If the recipe calls for margarine, use real butter. If it calls for real butter, use twice as much because some yankee probably wrote it." Does this really need an explanation? I lived most of my life in south Mississippi, and after a 2 year hiatus, moved back. It really is the truth. I think it's scriptural, somewhere around the part that says "If a soldier forces you to carry his bag one mile, carry it for him two miles." The butter thing comes next, I'm almost certain.

Proverbs 31 describes the ideal woman, and how her children will rise up and call her blessed. It's true. I have a precious mother. But she's also a little sneaky, and a really good cook. And I want to be just like her.

Unpublished Draft from 2009...

2011-08-15T14:36:00.001-05:00

Updated comments will be in bold.

"I wonder sometimes.

I know Abram, Moses, Esther, Ruth ...awww, heck, most or all of my Old Testament favorites... lived a time of their life in relative obscurity before God moved them into their places of position. There were character flaws to be worked out, and skills to be learned, international time-tables to be set, situations waaaaaaaay bigger than the individuals themselves that had to be orchestrated.

So I wonder - does God have something big for me? Or is this it? Because a lot of people go into teaching because of the retirement. Others for the time off. I'm here because it's better than anything else I could be doing in town, with Joe on church staff right now. I realize that teaching is its own mission field. And I bring spirituals and Christian character into the classroom at every opportunity. But I really thought, back in the days when I was doing a lot of retreat and camp ministries with my music and CD, that itinerate music ministry was going to be my way of life. I miss those days sometimes, but then again, it wasn't steady work that you could live off of, and it meant weekends away from my husband. Still, I miss the influence I was able to have through my music ministry.

Are those days over? I am still overcoming the dry well of songwriting. I took some pictures today of our resurrected pepper plants, and made a little pun about a burning bush. I feel like Moses in exile on the backside of a mountain. I don't think he knew he was called to greatness. I don't really know if I am. I know if I desire that greatness, I can almost be assured I will NOT attain it - because God doesn't seek out the self-assured to carry out His business.

But here's the thing that got that ball rolling: I was reading last night, and reread the scripture about the master who gave his servant a small task, and once that was well completed, the servant was entrusted with more."

This was originally written in early 2009, before my mom had emergency surgery on a septic appendix, only to turn around a month later and break her leg requiring months of inpatient rehab and my brother and I shuffling around the care of my dad. We also started building our house that year, and by December had our adoption paperwork rolling.

When you're on the backside of a mountain, you're not thinking about the long, hard climb back uphill to get to the top of it.

What I have discovered about myself in the meantime is this:

Right there at the end when I felt like the opportunities for leading worship and songwriting had dried up, it is because I forgot the meaning of the word, "Worship". Its root is in the word - "worth". We show honor to people or things of worth.

I had gotten to a rotten place where if the setting wasn't worthy of me, I didn't want to put forth the effort toward a presented opportunity for leading worship. All that time, we still had, and still have, a student ministry that needed worship leadership. But the crowd was small, and we needed a drummer, and blah, blah, blah....EXCUSES!

Having to pull out from working with the youth to give our new daughters time to adjust, I longed for intimacy with Christ. I reached a new level of dependency, and at times, despondency. When the fog lifted, I vowed to the Lord to give Him the honor which He is due, regardless of who was or was not listening. And God sent me a Barnabas, a son (or daughter, rather) of encouragement to share the parts of a consistent worship ministry that can become tedious so our focus stays where it should - lifting up Christ, and lifting up students' hearts to Christ.

I'm still a teacher, at the same school, in the same room. And I haven't had an opportunity to lead worship away from home since before I wrote this original post, not that I'd know how to handle that now with the girls. It really changes everything! But I know the greatest work I could ever be called to is the one we are all challenged with daily....To know God, and to make Him known.

REMAKE: The Tiny Chihuahua

2011-08-05T11:14:00.002-05:00

In the process of going through old posts looking for interesting drafts that never got published, I am finding some great things that were prophecies at the time and I never knew it. Wanted to share some with you now, in light of all that has happened, to draw some attention to how GREAT and AWESOME our God is. He truly does work all things together for the good of them who love Him and are called according to His purposes.

Original date of publication: August 1, 2008

[The Tiny Chihuahua

So, sometimes when I don't exactly have a song to write, I still feel the urge to write something. I needed an outlet. Kinda got out of the blogging a few years ago. It all started with fertility diagnosis and drama. Then we got in on the adoption deal. Then that recently went on sabatical as we made a plan for some more permanent living arrangements. And during that time period, over the last two months, we've actually gotten to start fertility treatment, thanks to a doctor - with adopted children of his own - who listened to our cry for a child.

And here I sit, reopening the old scabs that had healed over as I opened my heart to a new path of international adoption, a new idea, a new set of ups and downs. I had long thought pregnancy was not going to be an option for me, thanks to some bad information, and poor communication between doctors. I made my peace with God and moved on. Then came the downslope of closing our adoption application as we moved in to take care of ailing parents. "Can't ride two horses with one ___." In truth, that wasn't just a downslope. It was like a chihuahua on a newly waxed floor, running, then sliding into a brick wall. Such a big wall. Such a tiny chihuahua.

I knew, I mean, I just knew that this new doctor, for all his faith in not only medicine, but Christ as well, that we were still opening ourselves up to a whole new type of disappointment, pain, and loss. (I know. I'm one of those cheery, "look at the bright side", types. Doesn't it make you sick?) But then again, we haven't really tried. So this has to be done, right?

It makes sense. And it makes sense that God put us on this particular path, wall included, so we would open our heart to adoption. I wouldn't have considered it otherwise. So maybe we will get pregnant. Maybe not. Lord knows. But we will, we WILL, pick up the adoption story, whether we become actual birthparents or not. And on those days, of which there have been three this week, of negative test results, I can still sing out to the Lord:

"Who can satisfy my soul but You? Who alone could comfort me, and love me like You do?"

Lord, on those days when I am just a tiny chihuahua on a waxed floor, comfort me. Love me. Help my soul to find its satisfaction in You, when all I really feel like doing is blaming You for the wall. Turn my blame into thanksgiving.

In Jesus Name.]

08.05.2011 - Interesting side note, the doctor from 2008 mentioned above adopted his children from Russia....and has since returned to Eastern Europe and adopted two more.

Under Construction

2011-07-19T16:01:00.003-05:00

I'm working on a new blog format that will take what has been my subtitle for years....abiding, abandon, adoption....and turn those into tabs. One will be a little insight into my walk with God ("Abiding") that I can share hopefully meaningful thoughts and funny moments. Then "Abandon" will be a tab that looks into what I'm doing/where I'm going in relation to my Worship/Music calling. I am looking over some old songs right now that never got fully developed, and seeing where God takes them now that we've traveled down some new territory. Lastly, "Adoption" will be an archive list of links to our adoption story for those who are beginning the journey for themselves and need: a good cry, a reality check, a good laugh, encouragement, or a word of caution.

I'm doing a little bit of research using the "Next Blog" button to see how others are utilizing multiple pages on their blogs, so it may change a little as it goes through its metamorphosis. But if I'm going to do this, I want to do it well, with focus, so that it means something to someone. I know I'm a better person and a more faithful Christian if I set myself up for accountability by airing my walk with Christ. Like this blog, I too am under construction.

Thank you for your patience.

This Blog

2011-06-21T09:54:00.003-05:00

Okay, I know on my last post, I said that I was going to delete it on June 21....which is today....which is our 6 month anniversary of our effective court order making the girls ours. Tomorrow is our anniversary of the date of actually picking up the girls. It was about 4 in the afternoon.

We had gotten up late that morning - our last morning of actually getting to sleep past 9am, although that was Russia-time, which means it was actually 1am CST, so I don't know if that actually counts as sleeping in. We ate a great breakfast at the restaurant downstairs, our last before the onslaught of the dreaded stomach virus which kept us from eating anything but sour cream and onion Pringles and 7-up for the next five days. (I don't know why the Pringles were the only thing we could keep down. I guess it was just because our bodies needed the salt.)

At any rate, here we sit six months later with our happy, healthy girls. They've gained weight, grown hair, learned to talk, and recognize familiar places away from the house, like church and Del Sol, our favorite cantina. Those girls can put away a beef enchilada and beans like nobody's business.

Joe read that I was going to delete my blog, and he suggested that before I do, I backup all my posts into documents so that I can keep them for our girls and our own memories. They are as important to us as our photos from the trip, which I still have yet to compile into a DVD of our trip. Since there were three trips, we don't have a real "Gotcha" day like some countries where your first meeting is the day you receive your child.

When I got into the files on my blog and started searching where the trip began, I thought I needed to go back further. Then I couldn't decide where to start. Then I couldn't decide whether to backup only the posts that I published, or the drafts also.

Then I decided....at least for now....that I'm keeping the blog.

I may not post as often as I used to, because the girls are getting more active and sleeping less during the day, making for a smaller window of opportunity for writing. But I need more time to go through all the old posts and sort them into devotions that don't have anything to do with adoption, and the adoption posts. It will take time. As I uncover old drafts that didn't make the cut originally, I will share those if there is anything worthwhile.

Thanks for your readership.

Me and blogging

2011-06-12T21:42:00.002-05:00

It has been an on-again, off-again thing. It was all about chronicling a journey toward becoming a mother and hearing the sound of little footsteps running through my house.

Now they are here, and I am falling out of the habit of blogging. So here is where I stand right now: I will make one more post so everyone can know a little bit of how far we've come in the past six months.

That's right....June 21 is our six month anniversary, which happens to coincide with Father's Day very nicely.

But after this last post, I will gracefully take my leave of the blogging universe. Anything that I have to say, I will say it to people I know over on Facebook via "notes". One thing that blogging has taken away from me is actual physical writing in journals. That used to be my primary means of capturing the intimate ways God was speaking to me. Whenever I started spouting them out publicly, I gradually began to feel a little too vulnerable, with everyone knowing my personal struggles and interpretations.

Now that we have the girls, I really want to protect them. Growing up a preacher's kid, I was the butt of sermon illustrations more often than I wish to recount. I don't want that for them. I want them to have some privacy, some anonymity while they figure out who they are. And I don't want people always bringing up TO them, especially when they're older and I'm not around to sanitize, interpret, or protect them, topics related to their adoption.

I have noticed watching the blogs of others who have adopted a similar reaction - lots of writing leading up to the moment, a lot of posting on the first few months of incubation, and then life takes over. Here is where life has taken us.

Addie talks....a LOT. Not always intelligible speech, but from the moment she wakes up, she is running and gibbering. The usable vocabulary right now is mama, dada, baba, nana, baby, juice, dog, ball, peas (this means please, peach yogurt drops, and peas in the garden), and bath. And it seems like we add another usable word every couple of days. She understands everything we're telling her. And she's hearing "NO" a lot more frequently. She's still trying to climb on everything, but she is a lot quicker to sit down immediately. That took some training.

Now she's teaching herself to swim. We got a little inflatable pool - the double ring kind. I filled it up for the first time this weekend, and it only took a little time before she was totally comfortable in the water. I learned to only fill it up to the first ring so she and Anna could sit in it. She likes putting her face under the water. Tonight, we had company for dinner, and after eating (waaaaay too much) we went outside for the boys to kick a soccer ball around in the field. Bugs were carrying us off, so I took the girls around to the backyard, and while I was stripping Anna down to let her cool off in the pool, Addie did her first cannonball in all her clothes. It wasn't really a cannonball, but when she hiked her leg over the inflatable wall, she didn't weigh enough to keep it down, and it bounced her up and over into the pool before she had a chance to get her balance.

Anna is enjoying the pool, also. She is becoming VERY vocal about her opinions. If there is a toy, place, thing that she wants, she starts pointing and whining until you give in or distract her. I can tell now that I will have to hide the pool when it is not in use. I will also have to park on the opposite side of the church on Sundays so she can't see the playground. Last Sunday, I inadvertently started WW3 when I issued a firm "no" to her pointing, grunting, and whining when we exited on that side of the church. She cried as I put her into the carseat, inconsolably in fact. I had personally hurt her feelings. She goes down the small slide without anyone holding her. She holds on to the tire swing while I hang on to her and push. It kills my back, but she loves it. The only thing is I need about two other people with me to take the two girls to the playground. I need a church-nanny. Given Joe's work at the church, he is always tied up with someone or something. Since the fire, he has had to move chairs from the church to a nearby shop for one of the Sunday school classes. And this is camp season for him, so there's always a parent or kid with questions about paperwork, due dates, deposits, fundraisers....We haven't gone to/from church as a family since April. A sweet older lady, near 90 years old, arrived at church the same time as I did with the girls last week, and she got the biggest kick out of holding Addie's hand and helping me walk them to the nursery. We've decided to nix the stroller on Sundays now that Addie is a little taller and a little better about walking beside me. I know Mrs. Martha would gladly be my church-nanny for at least that little walk.

In Anna's other developments, she is now crawling. Not on all fours, but a decent army combat crawl. It is fast and effective. And she is pulling the knees in occasionally. Twice today, I saw her get herself on all fours, but it was on our concrete kitchen floor, and I don't think it was comfortable enough to stay for long. She's still not sitting up on her own, but we're getting closer. She can get up to resting on her elbow. It's tension in her legs and lower back keeping her from getting into a relaxed sitting position. She is talking some, but not as much as Addie. This is normal for twins. We have to speak to her and encourage her to repeat words when it is obvious what or who she wants. And what she wants is to be running alongside Addie.

She is not content crawling, sitting in my lap, or standing up beside something like the coffee table. She wants to be walking around holding on to my hands. 90% of her whining is wanting to be walked around. The only thing is she doesn't need to walk without having to put weight on her legs, or without balancing, something she still won't do. All our work on the exercise ball turns into her game of trust-falling. So I put her down for more crawling practice, and she lays there and whines. The special home educator that's coming out weekly said it may look and sound like cruel punishment, but we've got to encourage her to get up on all fours and help her build that core stability to help her progress toward actual walking.

We'll get there. Like the name says...

little footsteps.

P.S. I will leave this post up until June 21, then this blog will be deleted. Thanks for following our journey. Until next time....

Passing on a great find....

2011-05-17T15:47:00.003-05:00

Thanks to my "next blog" nonsense, I came across something actually great.

It's a blog called "Stitches", written by a group of women, always with a biblical perspective. Here's a recent post that I can totally relate to. If you get kinda hung up trying to follow several blogs at once, they only post on Monday mornings. It's a nice way to start off the week.

Enjoy!

Normal days

2011-05-10T15:19:00.003-05:00

So...I had my first mother's day.

I think people were expecting me to be floating around on a cloud of pink rose petals, but it was just another day. The girls had not slept well for the last few nights, due in part to nasal congesting, but mostly due to the fact that they have decided they are big girls now, and they don't need to nap twice a day. So we are revamping the schedule.

Back to square...well, not exactly one, but back toward the beginning somewhere.

My husband did surprise me with really pretty roses shipped to my school, along with a card and box of chocolates, another card at home, and a steak dinner from the home grill....my favorite restaurant. He covered all the romantic bases. He's good like that.

And he knows that Father's Day is just around the corner.

The girls did not get the memo that it was Mother's Day. Addie has decided to be a little more aggressive with kids in the nursery. We are working on "please" and "thank you", along with sharing toys, but I don't think the other kids in the nursery speak baby sign language, so it's not going very far with them. A yank and a scratch is much more effective. We had a diaper blow-out on the way to church Sunday night, and I had left the diaper bag at home. My poor Anna had to be a hobo-baby and borrow a little boy's tshirt. She had pink cutesy shoes on, a diaper, and a white tshirt with green stripes. I had just had an internal discussion with myself at the house about how I need to carry a change of clothes with me all the time, because they tend to do the blowouts a lot when teething.

The thing that makes me thankful to be a mother, when everything else is falling down around me, is being in that "club" of women who talk about their kids. I missed out on it. I probably looked stoned or bored most of the time when out to dinner with friends who have kids, because I couldn't interject. Somewhere inside, I'd be secretly crying about my plight not being one of them. Then I'd go home, have a little pity party with Jesus, and go on about my business.

But somewhere along the line, my perspective changed.

It USED to irk me...in fact, I've blogged about it...how people would offer to send me home with their kids, so I'd change my mind about needing children in my life. It used to really offend me.

NOW, I understand that they really were just trying to be helpful.

It USED to irk me when people said there was no way we could be prepared for the changes and the difficultly that lay ahead once we brought the girls home.

NOW, I like to turn it around on them and tell them they couldn't handle it either, if they had two at a time.

A friend of mine is going through cancer treatment right now, and she said something really beautiful yesterday about how she misses the normal things of going to work, dealing with problems that she used to want to avoid. She knows she can't go back to those days. She has to step into the present and deal with her new life as a cancer patient. She's praying for grace to understand her "new normal".

I am soooo there.

Next Blog 2

2011-04-20T11:50:00.001-05:00

You clicked it, didn't you?

Next Blog

2011-04-20T11:38:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, for giggles, I hit the button at the top of the screen that says "Next Blog" to see what comes up. Sometimes it is MommyBlogs, mothers telling all about the cutesy things their little dear ones come up with....blah blah blah....makes me sick.

And sometimes it is totally random travel blogs written in Portuguese - I guess. I can't read Portuguese, but I imagine that's what it looks like. Definitely Latin languages.

Today, I got pictures with random captions that probably make sense ONLY to the blogger. The pictures were of food, or comic book characters, or luchadores, or travel tickets....and the titles and captions didn't even seem to fit each other, let alone the pictures.

I don't know what I meant to share by telling you this, other than just to say....Next time you feel the urge to press that "Next Blog" button -- Don't.

Unless you like a little random in your life.

Ambien

So that's it, then?

Month #4

2011-04-13T11:15:00.002-05:00

I wanted to wait until the 21st to write our monthly update, but things are going so well....and next week is going to be StUPiD busy....that I wanted to do it now.

We have forward motion! Anna is preferring to crawl combat style on the floor. She's using only her upper body to pull forward. She kicks her legs at random when she gets really excited, but they're not really serving a propulsion purpose right now. She still wants to stand, and tries to sit up on her own when she rolls over on her side. She can pull up on the crib bumper to sit when she wants to. She's also trying to talk more. Mostly the same words, over and over. She'll get cranked up and start naming everyone in the family, saying, "Mama, dada, baba, papa, nana" until something else gets her attention.

Addie has learned how to climb up on the furniture. Everything is a summit to be achieved, which has wound up into a couple of various bruises and distressed cries coming from the bedroom as she is trying to figure out how to climb out of the crib. She says some of the family names, too. In the line of new words, we hear "ball" and "Jack", her favorite TV character, and I think she has learned "Stop!" That's what it sounds like. She's heard it often enough to know. She's getting a little bossy, and has assumed the role of Anna's babysitter. She is always bringing Anna a bottle or a goldfish. Well, don't "awwww" too soon, because her other full-time job is taking away any toy that we pull out for Anna to use for therapy or interactive play. Twenty-month olds just don't understand: "You'll get a turn in a minute". And that familiar line of, "You've got one just like it in your hands," just doesn't cut it.

The things we're hoping for now are the things that all parents wish their kids would learn - to be caring, to be healthy emotionally, socially, mentally, physically, and to lead them to spiritual knowledge and growth. Now that we are firmly entrenched into our daily routine, with few nightly interruptions, Joe and I have added a Bible devotion and prayer song to our going to bed time. We don't always have Addie's attention, but when we do, she sits in my lap, runs her finger over the page along with mine, and babbles her own version of the story that I'm telling. They smile and bounce their heads with the song, and then everyone gets a hug and a kiss, and it's lights out. It has been good for Joe and I to share this time with them and with each other.

So as to my quest for balance, the Lord has answered that too. We moved a few things around the house to make the bonus room over the garage more conducive for a quiet time, I arranged my morning routine to make time for it, and I started my running program - finally. Since the girls' routine is so firm, it was easy to make 8:30pm my running time. I turn on the security lights outside, and run my mom's long driveway in the dim light.

It's peaceful.

It smells like honeysuckle.

It makes me happy.

It motivates me to run even when it's raining, which I have done twice now.

I'm redoing the third week of training now, given the fact that last week's shocker of the fire threw off everyone's routine. I've lost 11 pounds, my knees quit hurting, my asthma hasn't been an issue, and although each new distance or time benchmark intimidates me all over again, I know I can do it. I just got to the point in both my physical and spiritual life where I knew I was getting lazy and making excuses. I jump from idea to idea, even in my sometimes spastic prayers, to the point that I had to really kick my own butt during week two when the distances got longer. "Come on, now. Just finish something you committed to. Don't take the easy way out." So, I'm still here. I have three more weeks and I should be up to the 5K.

And we'll save that for the next update.

Fires and Revival...

2011-04-11T15:10:00.003-05:00

To be honest, I expected to see a lot of new faces at church yesterday. But I was happy to see the "home folks", with maybe some of their children who had moved off coming to check in on the situation. Worship was very lively, as beauty continues to rise from the ashes. But as our pastor challenged us, we can't waste this opportunity. And we also shouldn't attempt to steal God's glory by making it about us.

In the early chapters of Leviticus, Aaron and his sons are being sanctified for their priestly ministry. Then they officiate their first sacrifice and worship service. God responds by sending fire to show his acceptance of their priestly offering. And Aaron's sons try to catch God's fire. Instead, in that one man-centered act, they catch God's wrath instead.

This serves as a warning to me. Every time I offer up my opinion about what I think the next building should look like and how it should function, and how fast we ought to get moving, I have to stop and ask myself, "Am I trying to steal God's glory, to catch and reign in His fire?"

But still....the questions are being asked. Knees are bending. Hearts are humbling. Revival is coming.

I hope.

News this morning...

2011-04-05T06:04:00.004-05:00

We pray for revival.

We pray for God's refining fire to renew us.

God answers.

These are photos of our church. Above is last night after lightning struck the education building. The fire department worked for hours keeping it contained so it didn't spread to our sanctuary and surrounding businesses.

My next question is: Now what?

I don't mean that in a petulant child kind of way who whines after you've take their toy away, "Now what am I supposed to do?"

I mean that in the expectant movie-goer kind of way who sees the story line come to a head, and it's time for the hero to step in and save the day, "Now what is HE going to do?"

I'm excited. I'm not happy that this happened, but it's so big for our little church family that we are likely to see some Big-God moments. And THAT makes me happy.

Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy,

Set apart for you my master, ready to do your will.

Zero

2011-03-29T15:50:00.003-05:00

Hallelujah! It's almost time to go home for the day!

I've worked ahead on a few lessons and performances, tried to stay motivated on this dreary day where evening thunderstorms threaten to steal my sundown walk, and tried NOT to eat the entire box of SpecialK crackers sitting by my desk.

Well, two outta three ain't bad.

Don't worry. The crackers are safe - ish. My problem today is I'm not very motivated. I'm very easily distracted for some reason, when I have a million things I could and should be doing. Instead, I'm looking at the diet soda can in front of me that says: " 0 cal; 0 carb; 0 sug."

Sug? When did we get so rushed as a society that we didn't have time to put the -ar in sugar?

Just wondering. Now, off to do something useful - er.

God Speaks

2011-03-25T14:06:00.002-05:00

Something is going on in the world this week.

Vision #1: I woke up after a bad night with the girls, and had a vision of myself reading Psalm 6. Of course I had to go look it up right away. It says, "O Lord, do not discipline me in your wrath". I had to confess anger over two screaming banshees at 1:30 this morning....No, it wasn't teething. They had just been used to us getting up with them over the last week or so when it was their teeth. Now it's just habit. Before the discipline came across as "tough love", it was more of just "TOUGH!" As in, "You're awake at 1:30am? Tough. Cry it out and go back to sleep!"

Vision #2: A friend messaged me this morning that God had given her a vision of my face and she was praying for me today. Yeah, because I NEEDED it.

Vision #3: A little girl who has the faith to look into her future and know God has plans for her, enabling her to make a huge life-altering decision. I was very touched by this story. Read it here. And what I love is that the press didn't downplay the role this young girl's relationship with the Lord had on her decision.

Keep speaking, Lord.

Happy Quarter of Year Anniversary....Among others.

2011-03-21T14:30:00.003-05:00

So today, my husband and I celebrate "dating" for ten years. Last week, we celebrated being married for nine. What I love, though, is the fact that we haven't stopped dating in all that time. Even when we were broke. Heck, if it hadn't been for cheap dates like Baskin Robbins, like the very first day we met, we might not be here at all.

Where is here, exactly?

Here is three months in to our little experiment in parenting.

I always have to open the previous month's report to see what our goals were and to see whether we accomplished them or not. This was a month laden with change. It started off with a trip to nanna's in TX for vaccines at the TCH International Adoption Clinic. We had a great visit with the doctor, and we keep getting great reports about the girls and their potential to catch up with the kids their age. We ended that trip with nanna coming back with us so she could set up camp and watch the girls as I started back to work.

I have already blogged about how that has gone for me. As far as the girls go, they are thriving in nanna's care. She is working so hard to get Anna balanced and moving. She has learned to pick up and release objects a lot more. Our local pediatrician even commented on her good fine motor skills, which is great considering she still has that increased muscle tone and likes to keep her hands balled up when she gives a high-five or blows a kiss.

My mother-in-law also talks through everything she does as she is doing it with the girls so they'll hear a variety of words and develop their vocabulary and communication skills. Of course, when I asked my husband to let me sleep in one day during my spring break, we forgot to unplug the monitor and I woke up to "You've got poopoo on your butt, on your butt. You've got poopoo on your butt, on your butt...." (Tune: If you're happy and you know it.) At any rate, Addie has picked up on the volume of sounds and the number of times she tries to talk, but we don't understand her yet. I usually respond with something like, "You're sure? Newton's third law of thermodynamics? Okay. We'll try that." And she seems satisfied. Someone told me at church yesterday to be careful how I respond to the babbling, because she inadvertently agreed to her son's request for a popsicle then didn't deliver, resulting in an all-out tantrum. Dually noted.

We had our first day at the park, and I had that first realization that all real adult conversations are over until my kids are at the age that I can just turn them loose. Addie thinks she's there now, but I followed about two steps behind her the whole time. She loved the slide, they both loved the swing, and I'm on a mission to get two baby swings added to our church playground.

Goals for the next month - for nobody to cut a tooth!!! Geeze! Teething stinks! You can't really discipline a grouchy toddler when they're actually in pain, but how does one differentiate and discourage a pattern of whining for no good reason? When I figure that out, I'm gonna bottle it and sell it. But for now, I will take any good mama tips for teething/whining.

Seriously, though, my goals for the next month are to find some balance in my own life and to channel frustrations away from the girls, even when they are the source. My scripture reading this morning took me to a selection of Psalms about God holding our hand. I got the image of water trickling from your forehead to your nose, dropping down to your chin onto your neck, and you get the picture....As a parent, I want the love of God to trickle down from my hand that reaches up, across my shoulders and neck, down the arm that is stretched out to my daughters. I have felt myself stuck in the physical/immediate path of least resistance just grappling with the huge changes of the last three months. Almost like an ice skater who has tucked in very tightly, balancing and spinning on one foot. But now, it's time to open out gracefully, slow down the spin, put the other foot down, and enjoy the ride.

Take your time...but hurry it up...

2011-03-09T14:13:00.002-06:00

My heart skipped a little this morning.

I got an email from Christian World Adoption (cwa.org) that they are eagerly seeking people who want to adopt from Russia, especially little boys.

** There it goes again.

Things are going fairly smoothly with the country, and although the process is lengthy and expensive with the required three trips, etc., it is predictable and reliable. You definitely can't say that about every international adoption country.

I see a little boy with a long bowl-cut, shorts and gym mat shoes walking through the playroom to exercise class at the end of a line of toddlers. I know it is way too soon to be seriously talking about going back for little brother, but it's not too soon to be thinking about him. Our plan (Lord willing) is to go back when the girls move from car seats to boosters.

I pass this little tidbit along not to tell you OUR plans, but to encourage you to make some plans of your own. If you have been riding the fence about adopting internationally, let me just say - IT CAN BE DONE! Financial obstacles can be overcome by persistence (Buy a t-shirt, btw), research, sacrifice, and the grace of God. If you are feeling God's gentle push to tilt you over the fence into this territory, let me tell you as one who has walked there that you definitely don't want to go into it without God's leadership. But you also would be STUPID to resist Him on the basis of your own logic/justifications about why it's not the right time, you don't have the right house, you're not sure if you could afford it.

Go to www.cwa.org to learn more.

Hang on little brother, we're coming.

So? How's it going?

2011-03-03T15:11:00.002-06:00

This is the first week back at work. It hasn't been too bad. I'm doubly blessed. My mom lives behind us, and she walks over daily to get her "baby fix" as she calls it. While there, she usually helps with dishes or other little things I haven't had a chance to get to. She knows how I like my tshirts folded. (It's the little things in life.) Also, I'm blessed because my mother-in-law has moved in for the remainder of this school year to help with the girls. Save your mother-in-law jokes, because mine is awesome. She and my mother get along like old friends. And she has totally respected the routine of play, sleep, eating, and therapy that we have worked so hard to establish with the girls, and they are benefitting from it because they seem well adjusted with me being gone so long at a time. She's retired from 35 years as a preschool teacher in a rough school district in southeast Texas, so she has seen it all. Anna's challenges only tempt her to achieve greater strides in her development.

My biggest fear was that the girls would be so non-chalant about the changing of the guard that they would see this as, "Oh. She's just another caretaker. This is just another orphanage with less babies." And after the first day of things going so well, I actually had wanted to see them upset and disrupted. I needed to know they missed me.

I know. I'm sick. I'm seeking medical help. Someday.

Then came Tuesday. When I got home that day, they cried for me and then didn't want me when I came over to pick them up. I tried to rock them to sleep, and they didn't want it. But when I put them down, they cried like I had hurt their feelings. It was such a bad afternoon that I tucked my head under the sheets and cried as I prayed myself to sleep. I hear that happens. A lot.

Wednesday was a little better. They were still very clingy, but without the wailing. I am expecting today to be better still.

As for our doctor's visit last week in Houston, we started vaccines and had some developmental assessment done. She assessed Anna at 9 months old physically and between 13 and 18 months cognitively and with language. She assessed Addie at 21 months physically and cognitively, and 13 to 18 months with language. We feel that's pretty accurate. We're still waiting to start our physical and occupational therapy with the school district, but it will start in the next few weeks.

Oh, and their baby dedication will be this Sunday. We have some sweet little dresses that came from the Philippines that some friends gave us. I think that's God's funny little way of bringing everything from 2007's first jump into exploring adoption from the Philippines and what we actually brought home full circle.

And I'll probably cry some more.

Two Months In

2011-02-22T08:36:00.002-06:00

So, today is the 2month "Gotcha" anniversary. Last month, I shared some things we hoped to achieve in the next 30 days, such as words and Anna sitting up on her own. Here's what we have accomplished.

Anna said "Dada" about two days after that 1 month post. She and Addie have both been saying syllables since we picked them up. But this was a word with intention. She knows who dada is, and she will reach out for him when she says it. Yesterday, he was tilling up a patch of ground for our garden this summer. I carried her out of the house to go see him. She just about jumped out of my arms, and started bouncing up and down saying "Dada! Dada!" She also says "Mama" when she's crying. I don't hear it as often, though.

Addie says mama and dada, and a whole bunch of other syllables all day long. She's very vocal, but hers still don't seem to have identity connected to them. She knows who everyone is. The only things I know she understands what she is saying is when she is ready to get down from the high chair after eating. We've taught her the signs for "all done" and "more", because mealtimes were so difficult in the beginning. She said "aah daah" and does the sign when she's ready to get down. No more crying fits when we try to keep feeding her past her full button.

Speaking of feeding, self-feeding is in, spoon feeding is SOOO last month. Neither girl will eat from our spoon unless they have something to feed themselves. This means quartered vienna sausages, cheerios, quartered banana pieces, diced pears, peas and carrots from a can....we've found a lot of things they like. I tried making meatballs out of ground ham and sweet potatoes, but when Addie discovered how mushy they were, they became floor spackle. If Anna doesn't like what she's been served, she will drop it over the edge of her tray onto the floor, so she only gets little servings at a time. Favorite thing to do at mealtime: push down on the edge of the cheerios to make them pop off of the tray and out of the kitchen into the living room.

We also solved some of the waking up in the middle of the night problems. They were getting hungry. We did snacks of yogurt just before bedtime, first. Then we moved dinner time to an hour later, moving it gradually. Last night, they ate at 6pm with us eating at the same time. It was really pleasant. They ate their sausage and cheerios while we ate, then we'd lean over to feed them butternut squash. After we had both finished eating, I gave them a little yogurt for dessert. They slept from 8pm to 6am. Awesome!

I also have gone backwards to giving them bottles at naptime or bedtime, as opposed to sippy cups. Although we were using the soft tipped sippy's anyway, there's something soothing about a bottle. I looked back at one of the attachment books yesterday to see what it had to say about emotional development, because Addie's still not a snuggler, and it recommended bottle feeding. I did it with Anna while she was sick to keep more liquids in her, because she didn't have to bite down as hard as on the bigger tip of the sippy cup. And it made her much more content to let me rock her longer. So I tried it with Addie yesterday....huge improvement almost immediately. The book said "It's probably a good idea to stop when they are adolescents, because they're just too long. But other than that, as long as they are soothed by it, it is appropriate to bottle feed your toddler."

Did Anna start sitting up on her own? She can't lift herself from the floor into a sitting position, but she will hold one for a long period of time if we sit her up. She is attempting to balance herself to keep from falling over. This is a HUGE improvement. She has also figured out how to push herself backwards in the walker. She prefers standing or sitting to laying down. And she has also worked her way rolling out of their bedroom, through the hallway, to the baby gate, and has pulled herself over the 2" lip into the living room. It's not crawling, but it's pretty dang close. It's effective, at any rate. She can entertain herself a lot better now, getting to toys she wants.

They're addicted to Nick Jr. I know the whole day's line up of programs from 7am to 9pm. It's sad, I know. They don't watch all the shows, but they will look up every time they hear the voice of Moose A. Moose, who comes on in between each program. I fully expect them to be using words like "fragile" and "debonair", matching shapes, writing poems, and raising small animals by next month.

Maybe.

A New Season

2011-02-14T14:10:00.002-06:00

I'm feeling very nostalgic today. As we tiptoe around spring's arrival, it seems like the girls have been here for a long time now. We've almost made our way out of winter. The sad thing is this means it is time for me to go back to work. I looked forward to this during that first long, difficult, and very cold month. We couldn't go play outside very much. We didn't have a daily routine for naps and such. None of us slept through the night. But all that has changed, and now they are so much fun, and it is easier (relatively) to get things done around the house. I hate to leave all the fun with the weather turning off so pleasant.

Pray for an easy transition into what will be life as we know it for the next couple of months, until this school year ends. We have family coming to visit in March and April, and then we're out for May, so it should go quickly. I have one more week home, then we all go to Houston for doctor's visits, and a visit to Nanna Peggy's house. The next Monday, I'm back in the saddle. The good news is - no more writing lessons for a substitute. That's so much harder than writing out my own lessons. The bad news is - change to a schedule that has worked so well. But the other good news is - it's only for a couple of months, until summer.

New Month Resolution

2011-01-31T20:40:00.002-06:00

Since I missed out on making a new year's resolution, I'm starting today. Since we've gotten our daytime routine down, it is time for me to do some of my own conditioning. All of my friends at church started a couch-to-5K club, and they started while we were in Russia. It's supposed to take six weeks, and I'm a month behind them in training. I also recouped from the toll that Russian stomach bug took on our last trip....to put it delicately. Sneaking in a meal when you can, as fast as you can, because one or both girls will pitch a fit if they see you eating when they are not....all this means you don't eat well. The healthy meal you planned for gets half-eaten because of someone vying for attention. So you try to make up for it while they are napping, which means quick to eat convenience food. Or you are so stressed out from nap times getting off kilter that you never have both of them asleep at the same time, which means you wait until they're both down for the night. Then you stuff your face with comfort food, because it makes you feel "better". While chasing the girls has made me more active and kept the junk food wave somewhat at bay, I'm not what I could be. Definitely not where I should be.

I haven't really gotten to hear a sermon lately. I've been to church, but I spent the sermon time wrangling kids. But last night, on the way home, I heard four preachers having a round-table discussion on self-control. Here's where I got blasted between the eyes:

"Self control doesn't just mean walking away from a temptation, or stopping when you've had enough. It means mastery of something that wants to control YOU. It means laying something good down so you can pick up something better."

I thought about that as I ate a whole box of macaroni and cheese for dinner.

....pause for sigh....

So this morning, I signed back on to the Weight Watcher's website for the first time since September, just before all this crazy travel started. I got on my iCalendar and plotted out what the school day is going to look like when I go back to work, and I factored in 45 minutes of exercise time on 4 weekdays, with hopefully time for more on Saturday/Sunday. In essence, I made a plan. I also had my first real Quiet Time, since both girls went down for a morning nap at the same time, something we haven't done in a few days. I started the book, "Praying the Names of God" by Ann Spangler, because it's short sections, but packed with meat. And it lends itself naturally to real interaction with the Lord through deep looks into His character. This week is "Elohim", which is the name of God mentioned in Genesis 1, at creation. My prayer this week is to become the person God created me to be, and to likewise do my part in helping my girls become who God created them to be.

Oh, and as for this 5K thing....It terrifies me. Running makes me afraid. I'm afraid of having an asthma attack. I'm afraid of knee pain. I'm afraid of the time commitment. And I'm afraid I will like it. I can walk a 5K now. I can ride 16 miles in an afternoon on my bike. But I am afraid to run. It totally intimidates me. But I owe it to myself, and to the girls, to try. I've got friends doing it who are starting from ground zero, like me. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks, by the way, to those who have been contributing both here, and at the church, to our last stretch of funds owed to the agency. Our prayer for everyone who has helped us along the way is that God will restore to them ten times what they have given us. He does that kind of thing, you know. We really, sincerely, deeply, truly appreciate every gift, every prayer, every meal, every thing you have done for us.

Blessings.

The learning curve

2011-01-30T21:35:00.003-06:00

I come from a long line of paranoid pessimists. As for myself, I'm pretty laid back, and a touch on the ADD/easily distracted side. I don't always see danger that is in front of me. But I have two toddlers now. This is not good. So in addition to things I am learning about my girls' personalities, I'm also learning a few things about child safety and behavior.

Even if you think the barrier of pillows you have built on the bed is an impenetrable fortress, it isn't.
Just when you think the baby moved out of the way so you could take a step, she moves again and is right under your feet. Someone's going down. Her, or you.
Anything picked up in the grass looks like food.
Pouring water over your face in the bathtub with a 32oz. cup isn't "cute". It's dangerous if you don't know to exhale.
Make sure you hear the "click" of the door you don't want opened.
While it is fun to blow spit bubbles, it is even MORE fun to blow snot bubbles.

Addie is slowly learning what the word "no" means, and that the pantry is off limits. But she now thinks it is off limits to everyone. If I go in for a box of cereal, or a loaf of bread, I have two seconds to turn around and slip out before she closes me up inside. She also loves perusing our video collection. She's been told no so many times about pulling movies out, that she now pulls them out and pushes them right back in. And she always picks out the same ones....the Matrix trilogy. Why? It's right there on the same shelf as Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and Nacho Libre, whose cases are much more colorful and interesting. Well, two of the three do star Jack Black.

Anna has turned on the charm. She said DaDa for the first time on Thursday, and got such a freak out that Addie tried to say it, too. And she has said it a few times since then. On Friday, I went walking with my mother. Mom asked the girls, "Who can say DaDa?" And they both said it on cue. They know it means something, because we freak out every time they say it. They look at us when they say it, too, because they're waiting for the reaction. Anna also likes to mock me when I sneeze. It's too cute. Like, I could seriously die from cuteness.

My latest lesson that I am trying to learn is how to discipline this little snake-charmer. She gets a real charge out of swatting at my face when I'm holding her. Sometimes, it really hurts. It scratches. I clipped her nails today quite a bit, but I can still feel the little nails scraping by my skin leaving it more chaffed than anything. I don't spank her hand, because that's only retaliating, really. It's not teaching her to stop. So I have started catching her hand and saying, "NO!" She thinks it's hilarious!! She tosses her head back and laughs so hard I have to really fight busting out laughing myself. I asked Joe today, "How do you combat this? It's too precious!" Of course, I said it in a drill sergeant voice, because I didn't want her to know I approved. It was kind of funny in its paradoxicalness....and yes, that is a word, because my auto-correct didn't highlight it for me to change.

And now you know something new, too.

History repeating itself.

2011-01-26T09:35:00.004-06:00

If you haven't seen "Bill Cosby: Himself", in all its brown and orange velour glory, you need to make that your only activity for the weekend. Otherwise, the following will not make any sense to you.

Me: "Addie, what are you doing?"

Addie: "I was getting a leaf for you."

Me: "I don't want the leaf."

Addie: "Can I have it?"

The next ten minutes were composed of me digging said leaf out of her mouth while trying to avoid getting bit.

TSHIRT SALE!!!!

2011-01-24T09:43:00.002-06:00

I have six boxes of tshirts of all three designs sitting in my dining room. We've completed the adoption, with a small balance left to pay. I'd love to move these last hundred or so shirts and close out our account with the agency. So they are going on sale!!!!

$15 for short sleeve, and $20 for long. FREE shipping! Kids and Adult sizes are the same price.

They all say, "Loved". I can't think of a more fun Valentine's Day gift. Let someone know they are special not only to you, but to their heavenly father as well.

"I have called you by name. You are mine." Isaiah 43:1

Happy _____??? Or: What kind of a milestone is this anyway?

2011-01-22T09:59:00.003-06:00

Today marks one month of having the girls. We picked them up at about 4pm, December 22 from the baby home. This was the first time that we got to dress them. I saw Addie's little birthmark on her hip for the first time....just like the one on Joe's hip. We discovered that they both have HUGE outies.

Since then, we have made other discoveries about the girls that have made life more interesting, fulfilling, chaotic...take your pick.

Anna likes to eat. She's put on three pounds in four weeks. We're up to 17lbs.
Addie likes to move. She's eaten the same amount but has only gained one pound. Up to 18lbs. The gap is filling in.
They get jealous when I hold the other one.
They play bashful with daddy until it's time for him to go to work, and then it's smiles, waves, blowing kisses.
They both like to stick their fingers in MY mouth. I keep trimming their nails, but the inside of my bottom lip is shredded.
Addie isn't afraid of anything. I had to pull her back from getting into the kennel with our 65lb yellow lab. She sticks her hands right in Molly's mouth, and lets her gnaw all over her little fingers. And today, she climbed up into the window sill to see Molly playing outside. She fell. She got back in it.
Anna doesn't always want to be held, but she also doesn't always want to be on the floor to play. And whichever you are choosing for her, you're picking the wrong one. She is just so frustrated that she can't crawl yet. But, bless her heart, she's trying. She'll either pull her knees up, or post up on her arms, just not both ends at the same time.
They love our afternoon walk in the stroller. Molly gets clipped to the right side of the stroller and helps pull us up the hills in my neighborhood. You can often hear me telling her to "mush". "White Fang" was one of my favorite books as a kid.
Heaven help us if we ever cross paths with a rabbit.

Things we are hoping for in the next month:

Moving the girls back into sleeping in the same room. They have such a good routine now, I hate to mess with it. But since they have that routine, it shouldn't be too bad.
A physical therapy/occupational therapy plan for Anna. Goal: to be sitting up independently in the next four weeks.
To hear a few discernible words or phrases. They understand us now, but they're still just communicating in baby-talk. This is a frustrating time for any child. They know what they want, but can't get the message across by anything other than crying.
Paying off our balance to our adoption agency - see the ticker at the side. Feel free to help with this.
More attaching with Daddy. I'm still the favored parent right now, which is normal. They didn't see many men in the baby home. We close out each day with playing on the floor until it's time for PJs. That's daddy's time to snuggle, tickle, and cuddle each girl.

....Nap time's over. Time to rouse the family. Even the dog has been napping in the sunshine on the back porch. Lucky dog.

The Sanctity of Human Life

2011-01-18T09:48:00.006-06:00

This Sunday, January 23, is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday for Southern Baptist Churches. While it is something we recognize, and something we advocate for other people to respond to and make moral choices accordingly, the moment of choice is very rarely in our own hands.

I had that moment.

I was outside playing with the dog, and my husband, Joe, was doing housework on Monday, October 11 last year when the home phone rang. We're digital people, and the home phone number only rings once in a while, usually with a prerecorded political message on the other end. But on this day, Joe opened the back door and handed me the second handset as he held the first, and said, "It's our adoption agent, Mary."

Mary went on to say how glad she was to catch us both at home on a weekday. She had news that she wanted to be able to give us together, and it wasn't going to be good news.

My heart stopped. On August 10, we accepted a referral for a set of twin girls in Russia that were a year old. In fact, we had all of our paperwork at the agency office being apostilled and translated to send to Russia by the end of that very week. We were only about three weeks from traveling to St. Petersburg to meet them for the first time. At this point in the process, it was still possible for a Russian family's request to adopt to trump our referral and take away this opportunity. I waited for this to be the next words out of Mary's mouth.

Instead, she said, "The girls were taken to a pediatrician for check ups. Olga checked out fine. But Diana is still so behind developmentally that they did some further tests with her, and they think she has cerebral palsy. There's no way of knowing as young as she is how severe this is going to be, and how it is going to affect her in the long run. Take some time. Take a week to think about it, to talk to pediatricians or specialists. Talk to your social worker. And then you can let us know what you want to do."

"What do you mean? What we want to do?"

"You can ask for a new referral if you want to wait for another set of siblings. Or you can just take Olga. The Ministry of Education will probably separate the girls' registrations so at least Olga will have a chance at a normal life, because a Russian family will not adopt a child with special needs. Or you can take them both."

My interpretation of what she was saying was that if the girls were going to get to stay together, we were their only chance for this. Otherwise, they would be separated. I asked what kind of care Diana could possibly receive with her needs. My thoughts, based on 20/20 reports on orphanages, were that she would be stuck in a crib with little stimulation, little therapy, little chance at normalcy.

As a teacher, I had seen varying spectrums of children with CP, from the mildest to the most severe. And I loved those children. They loved my room, because they got to hold instruments, squeal and squeak and wiggle. I have even square danced with a little girl in a motorized wheelchair. I knew that we could do something to help Diana beyond anything they could do at the orphanage, as positively as our agent put things. She told me not to feel guilty if we chose to only take Olga, because Diana would get great care, "Of course, nothing compares to what would happen if she were with a family."

So here was our moment of choice. Take the healthy one, take them both, or wait for a new referral.

Mary hung up and left us with our thoughts. Joe and I sat on the couch, and I cried while he prayed for the courage to do what we knew in our hearts was right by God's Word and by our own convictions. Had we been pregnant and heard this news, we'd see that pregnancy through and love that child and provide everything she needed to thrive to her fullest potential. Our decision was made immediately. The prayers and thoughts that came after that phone call with Mary were for courage, for provision, for understanding of people who would be involved in her care.

We called the babysitter we had lined up and informed her. We called our friends who would be their guardians in the event something happened to us. We called our pastor and his wife to come over and pray with us. We had such a support network that we only had to let people know to pray, and the peace that we were seeking guarded our hearts from any doubts that began to creep in.

After four weeks of visits, court appointments, and paperwork being filled out in Russia, we came back to our hotel room in Moscow after our exit interview at the U.S. Embassy. It was nap time for the girls, and I held a sleepy Russian princess in my arms. Diana, now Anna Claire, nestled into the crook of my elbow and pulled her little balled up hand to her face as she closed her eyes to sleep. I sat by the window watching snow fall, and let the tears flow freely. Joe walked over and touched my shoulder.

"Is everything okay?"

"We could have missed this."

But by the grace of God, the prayers of His people, and the guidance of His Word, we didn't. We jumped in courageously to accept the chance to love a little girl who may take more effort, more money, more time, and more patience to raise because we believed her life, like the life of all children, of all senior adults, of all marginalized people, is precious to her Heavenly Father. And she's pretty precious to us too.

Being Home

2011-01-14T21:20:00.002-06:00

First, a little advertisement: We heard back from the last grant agency. The grant was awarded, but not for the total amount we requested. We're $3000 short of having all our fees paid to our adopting agency, so I'm going to update the last ChipIn widget for this last amount if you'd like to give.

BONUS!! - I still have plenty of the red and gray T-Shirts left, and lots of kids' sizes in the red, and also a royal blue version for boys. We're going to give them all the special concert pricing of $15 for short sleeve and $20 for long....that's for kids and adult sizes!! Add $5 for delivery, and that's still less than the current online price. Arrange a pick-up and save even more!!!! Those red shirts with the "loved" logo on the front would look great on Valentine's Day. Pick one up for your sweetie!

........

Now, on to more important matters...

We're home. I'm home from work for a few weeks to help get the girls adjusted. I think the biggest adjustment has been to having me all day long. Their schedule prior to leaving the baby home was 3 workers in 3 daily shifts, plus 3 doctors....so 12 caregivers in all. They adjust to being carted around and introduced to new people really well. They love the dog, and who can blame them. But now that we're home, not being hauled through airports or bounced around from hotel to Nanna's house to here, I think the fact that this is the new reality is sinking in with some difficulty. They are aware of the changes now.

Before, the day was marked by the changes in shift workers. One set meant bedtime through breakfast. The next set meant second breakfast [Yes, really, second breakfast. No, they're not hobbits, although they are quite small.], lunch, and naptime. The third set meant snack, exercise, supper, and bathtime. Meals were served with the children facing away from the caregivers so it was impersonal and over quickly. We have had the most struggle with sleeping through the night and with meals.

My brother lives a couple of houses down from us. He said he can always tell the kind of night we've had if the lights are on when he gets up to go work out in the mornings.

This week has been deceptive from the outside. The lights off in the morning are not a sign of an all-clear in the night. Rather, Addie has been waking up after only sleeping about four hours, then wanting to play for two more hours before going back down. Once asleep, she'll make it all the way to 6:30am. Meaning, she's still only sleeping about seven hours a night. I know that's not enough. The fine print on the prescription cough medicine she has been taking says, "May cause excitability in children." Great. Well, we're going to try a night without and see how it goes.

So what has to happen next? Immunizations, getting SSNs and American birth certificates, and somehow getting them used to our new routine. So far, they've been skipping a second breakfast for a morning nap. Addie's crying keeps Anna awake as well, so they need to catch up a little.

How you can pray for us:

1. Pray that we can raise the last $3000 with the tshirts and a few final donations.

2. Pray that the girls adjust to our new schedule and start sleeping through the night. Pray especially for Addie, as the adjustment seems to be harder on her. Bad habits and an independent streak from being on her own in the orphanage are starting to surface. She's attaching, but on her own terms. I guess that's okay, but some things she does or doesn't do worry me.

3. Pray for me, that I won't personalize and take ownership of every little quirky behavior or difficulty with the girls as a sign of my own inadequacy or failure as a parent. I had really high expectations about how awesome I was going to be at parenting, only to have spent the last six or so nights arm wrestling a toddler who is bent on resisting our help until she's desperate for it. It's very disheartening at times.

4. Pray for Joe, because he had to go back to work earlier on so I could stay home. When I go back to work, he's going to take his time with the girls. He spends every possible minute with them that he can, but he wants the time to bond with them like I'm getting right now. He'll have his chance, and it's good this way, because the girls will have a long period of time with us as their only caregivers before we have to do much babysitting during the workday. Pray that his bonding with the girls doesn't wait for then, but that it happens right now, with all the time he gets to play with and help feed and care for them.

Now, off to bed....

Cross your fingers.

The Journey Home - 3

2011-01-08T06:22:00.002-06:00

I didn't realize it has been so long since the last update. As far as you know, we're still stuck in Moscow.

Well, here's how the last of the trip went. On the 29th, we went to the Embassy to sign some forms, answer some questions, and get our last packet of entry paperwork that we would need at Immigration in NYC. It pretty much ate up the whole day. And it was super cold with almost white-out condition snow. The girls loved that initial blast when we left the hotel. Sitting in the Embassy waiting area for two hours was more than they could take. But we weren't alone. There were several families in there with us. Most had toddlers. We didn't have the youngest by age, but because the girls were so preemie, they were the smallest. Other families had stayed during the 10-day post-court waiting period and were seriously strung out and ready to head home. Our agency had told us from watching other families go through this that coming home in between would be the best thing for us all. I didn't believe it at the time, but seeing them at the Embassy office, I saw the wisdom in that advice.

So how did we celebrate completing the enormous paper trail? We ate dinner. We finally all felt well enough to order room service and eat. We got pizza, french fries, and borsch. The servings were larger than we expected, so there were a lot of left overs, plus one slice of pizza after you haven't eaten anything but a nutrigrain bar in five days is very filling. Still, it was glorious to eat again.

On Thursday, the 30th, the sun came out. This was the first time we saw sunlight and blue sky in two weeks. It was also our sightseeing day. We got to see Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral in all its splendor. Cold does not begin to describe the temperatures. I couldn't find my long john pants in the suitcase that morning, so I just had jeans on. My legs stung from the cold. On top, I had a cami, a base shirt, a long sleeve tee shirt, a sweater, and a fleece jacket liner inside of the waterproof topcoat. Outside of that, I had a baby carrier with Addie tucked inside with all kinds of clothes on. Joe was dressed similarly with Anna in tow.

That afternoon, we left the girls with Nanna in the hotel and walked across the street from the hotel to Starbucks. I know, right? And it was so familiar and beautiful that I almost cried. I was so ready to be home. We went to the market and picked up the last few jars of baby food we would need for the trip home in the event there were more airport problems. All that week, our driver had warned us that all kinds of flights were being cancelled in and out of Moscow. He said fights were breaking out in line and that the airport was overcrowded with people that had been stuck. We were preparing for the worst.

Because of that, we arrived at the airport on Friday almost four hours early. It was almost empty. We looked at the departure screen, and only two flights were cancelled. **whoosh** Open door courtesy of One Awesome Heavenly Father. Our next expected difficulty would be at JFK, which was also having problems with heavy snow earlier in the week. Our flight from Moscow arrived early. The wait coming through Immigration was long, but fluid. We had to reprint our boarding passes for the flight home because they got misplaced on the last plane, but other than that, our flight wasn't cancelled. Our gate wasn't changed. We had three hours to sit at a food court, eat a chicken sandwich and drink a Dr. Pepper, feed the girls, play drums on the table with baby spoons, walk through a toy store, and fall asleep just before boarding the last flight. The girls slept almost the whole way to Houston on our last flight. It was great. I learned that if you fold down the tray table, it is just the right size to help bear the weight of a floppy sleeping infant.

We were met at baggage claim by my in-laws who were driving us back to Port Arthur. Thanks to all that sleep the girls got on the flight, they did not want to sleep when we got back to Nanna's house. This began our continuing struggle with the US time difference. Oh what fun....NOT! They're still not sleeping the way I'd like them to. But the last two days have been the best so far. Last night, we had to drive Addie around in her carseat for about 15 minutes to get her to fall asleep. But the girls slept through the whole night, only waking up at 4am. We got up and ate an early breakfast, and they both went back down at 6am to get the rest of their sleep out.

I think the best thing God put into kids as a communication technique is the sleepy little rub of the eyes. As soon as I see it, I start rocking and singing, and it is usually a short amount of time before I get that sleepy yawn and feel their little bodies relax in my arms. It makes all the travel struggles, the heart stopping moments of fear, the stomach virus while stuck in a hotel room, and the fundraising worth it.

The Journey Home - 2

2010-12-28T11:36:00.002-06:00

We woke up after Nanna arrived feeling much refreshed. Even the girls could tell we were all on the mend. Their attitudes perked up even. Feeding times went much smoother with an extra set of hands mixing and wiping while Joe and I did the feeding. And we had a second room to retreat to when housekeeping came, so we finally got a little of the yogurt-in-the-carpet smell out of the room. Enough to not get sick again. We still didn't eat anything.

Monday morning, we started preparing for check out. It took a long time, because Joe and I were still so weak. Bending over and lifting luggage was difficult. And he and his mother had to go back to the airport because her luggage finally came the day we were about to leave. Another near-miss. This was the day that we would load all of our gear up, and take the overnight train from St. Pete's to Moscow for our exit interviews and doctor's visit.

Before I get much further, dismiss any romantic notion you may have about train travel in Europe. This was not the Hogwart's Express. It was a Cold War remnant. I'm pretty sure I heard the word Chernobyl while on the train. We had a berth all to ourselves, which sounded pretty swank at first. But then we actually got to the train station late and had to run to avoid missing the train. Our translator, who picked up our tickets, shoved them at the boarding agent's face at our car, showed her all our passports, then handed us the tickets and put us in our car .... with all our luggage. There was no checking luggage. Didn't they know we were going to have five carry on bags, four large suitcases, three grown ups, two babies, ... and if we hadn't had to run, I wouldn't have had to leave behind my partridge in the pear tree.

Somehow, because my husband is still an Eagle Scout at heart (although I didn't know there was a badge to earn for "packing an infinite amount of junk in a finite amount of space") he managed to make it all fit and still leave three of the four bunks open for us to sleep - ehhh - on. Just as we were squeezing ourselves into the room, the ticket agent came around and asked to see tickets. We handed her the same tickets our translator had waved at her earlier. She snapped and tore and handed us our stubs, and moved on. She came back after we had been moving for about ten minutes. She showed her pieces of the stubs. There were four of them. Then she held up five fingers. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!! My stomach dropped.

We pulled out our tickets. King, J. King, J. King, P. King, A. ... searching ... searching ... I showed her who all the tickets were for. The A was Addie's. There wasn't a ticket for Anna. I looked up confused. She pointed to the two babies, then held up one finger, then two.

Inner monologue: "What is she asking me for? One ticket for two babies? Are they two years old or one year old? Is this like flying, where you pay lap fare for an infant? Do we have to buy one more ticket?"

I pointed at both girls. I held up two fingers. I held up one finger. I made a baby rocking motion. I don't know. I was just so scared that some of the nightmares I had been having in the past two weeks since court were about to start coming true. I started praying inwardly for peace. She just made a confused look with her face, sniffed, snorted a little, held up one finger then left. Not very long after that, the train lurched one last time and got very quiet.

OH DEAR LORD, ARE WE STOPPING?!!

As it turns out, no. [I haven't ridden a train since I was in kindergarten in Mrs. Thomas' class. The big event was to ride from Hattiesburg to Laurel on the Amtrak. Our parents met us at the station afterward. Mine took me to lunch at McDonald's. Then I got purple velcro sneakers from Sears at Sawmill Square Mall.] I didn't remember that once trains get up to speed, all that lurching and noise subsided for a steady, soft click-click-clicking. I couldn't hear the clicking for the pounding of my heart in my ears. I thought they were about to make us leave the train, or stop at a nearby station for another ticket. I kept waiting for that moment. But it never came. Whatever I said with my fingers, I either got the combination right....or I confused her even more, enough that she was willing to let it slide.

Once we could all calm down enough to think about sleep, we settled into our bunks, dressed in what looked to be unsanitary bed linens and a horse blanket. We all threw our horse blankets into crevices and crannies so the girls wouldn't get fingers pinched or feet stuck in their sleep. I still shudder when I think about the condition of the pillow cases. We covered them up with the sheets we were provided. Those at least looked a little cleaner.

Anna slept great in our Eddie Bauer infant travel bed. It folds up to the size of a laptop bag. So she got uninterrupted sleep. In fact, we were all awake before her this morning, and when she realized the party had started without her, she yawned, put her hands up to her face, pulled them away and said "taa daah" with a big smile. Addie, on the other hand, had to be under my arm all night so she wouldn't try to get down and tear all the linens and packaged breakfasts off the fold down dining table. Needless to say, I didn't sleep at all. And she didn't sleep that well.

We got to Moscow early, only to spend all morning doing the "Hurry Up and Wait" dance. You know this one? We ran to the vehicles because it was snowing really heavy and we didn't want the kids out in the wet cold for very long. Then we first went to the Russian medical clinic to have the children examined by another doctor that would sign off on their U.S. Embassy paperwork. We had to get there early so the driver could get the forms to the Embassy before 11am, the point at which they take no more new files for the day. Missing this window would mean filing on Wednesday, and making it by the skin of our teeth to have all our documents ready in time for our flight home.

Well, the doctor was late. Something about freezing rain, a fallen tree and blocked driveway. Okay, no problem. We were traveling at that point with another US couple who also adopted siblings, a real rarity to have two sets in one group. This created another problem that led to more waiting. Not enough copies of all of the paperwork. They had all of theirs. But we didn't have all of ours. So our new driver was going through all our documents as fast as possible, tying up the clinic's copying machine making new copies of whatever was missing. Another US couple from a different agency had all their ducks in a row, so they got in ahead of us. Then the clinic officially opened for the actual Russian guests for the day. We had to give up our seats in the waiting area. (Call me sensitive, but that actually hurt my feelings.) All the other US couples had come and gone, and we alone were left.

Finally, we got in to see the doctor for what must have been the most cursory exam ever. I was thankful because at least we got to strip the girls down to their pampers for a little while. They had been so overdressed for the bad weather on arrival, but because we kept thinking we were about to go in, we didn't want to start getting them out of the baby backpacks and coveralls. They both had a heat rash by the time we got in there. Other than that, and suggestions about therapies to start with Anna, they got a clean bill of health.

We signed papers we hadn't even had time to fill out because they hadn't been copied earlier, and the driver promised to finish filling it all in for us. We bolted out of the clinic and held our breath that we'd get to the Embassy on time.

Parked finally, I remember looking up at the clock in the car at 11:16am and hoping the U.S. government wouldn't once again be our only real roadblock in adopting. Apparently not, because he came back a little while later with our invitation to have our interview tomorrow at 2pm.

Every step in the process is its own little Ebenezer, its "stone of remembering", as doors that look to be on their way shut leave just enough room for us to slip through. Just one day had enough emotional ups and downs that my mother-in-law uttered the statement that I think has become my new motto.

"This is not for sissies."

No, it's not. It's for a really BIG God.

The Journey Home - 1

2010-12-28T10:40:00.002-06:00

I have so many days to catch everyone up on. Sorry if it seems I'm putting in several posts at once, but this way you can start here and know where you left off so you can keep up with our story about picking up the girls to bring them home.

The last thing I shared was about our Christmas Vacation that was becoming eerily similar to the Griswold fiasco in the film of the same name. Since that post, -on Christmas Day, coincidentally - I came down with the same stomach virus. Things went from bad to worse in a hurry. If there was an upside, it was that Joe had almost stopped throwing up when I started, and that his mother was due in St. Pete's that same day. The girls were all out of sorts because they had only seen Joe in passing, and sometimes at mealtime as he tried to spoon food into Addie - who can shovel it in pretty fast - before he'd have to excuse himself to throw up because the smell of her baby food triggered the gag reflex again. Once he had to do everything for them by himself because I was laying down with a cold rag praying for mercy, it took them all a while to get reacquainted.

That afternoon, he had to leave to go get their visas and pick him mother up at the airport. So I was sick and alone with the girls. He came back earlier than expected (a blessing for me) because her flight had been delayed....then delayed....then she was delayed coming through customs because her bags had not made the last flight. So our fears were peaked when an hour after the new flight was supposed to have landed, the driver called and said she didn't get off the plane. He waited while we called home, called the travel agent, called home again, called the St. Pete's airport - that was not helpful at ALL - then called the travel agent again, then called the connecting airline. Finally, we got confirmation that she had been ON the flight. So we waited to see what the holdup was at the airport. They again were unhelpful. Two hours after that flight had landed, she found our driver. She had been filling out lost-and-found paperwork for her luggage that somehow got her into a customs security office filling out four forms - that it turns out she didn't need.

By the time she got to the room, we were exhausted. I went straight to bed. And I lounged around the next day while she backed Joe up. We tried to keep all the primary contact with the girls like we've been told to do by our social worker, only using her as an extra set of hands but not the ones to feed, soothe, and change a diaper. But after such a rough couple of days, we slid into letting her help a little bit more. And it was so good of her to understand the role we were needing her to take. Those girls are just so precious and huggable and giggly and ticklish and sweet that you immediately fall in love with them.

I just want to say in closing: This probably happens to everyone who's about to be a parent for the first time, or who's about to have their second child while the first is still an infant. Everyone says, "Just wait. Everything is going to change. You don't know the meaning of the word [choose one: tired, dirty, cranky, busy, broke, strung out, crazy....] until you have had to go through _____[some personal experience that was really, really bad-but still an exception and not the rule]______ with your own kids." And then they either jokingly or not suggest you practice with their kids.

Well, in response to that, I would like to say:

-Begin Rant-

There is no American parenting experience quite like that of having both parents down with a stomach virus while stuck in a hotel room in a country where you can't get a bucket of ice, while trying to care for two infants, one of whom is immobile and cannot sit unsupported, neither of whom speaks your language or knows you as a trustworthy adult and loving caregiver. All you have is food you can't eat, water you are dying for but know you can't keep down, the smell of baby food and spit up reeking around you because you can't pull up the strength long enough to leave the room for 30 minutes for housekeeping to come change sheets and clean the bathroom. You have food and utensils the infants are not accustomed to, and no high chair which means wrangling the acrobat while propping up the marionette, trying anything possible to get them to eat something that you bought for them, because Lord knows - you're not getting out anytime soon. This leads to gas, tears, diaper explosions - or worse: Not! And then the drool kicks in and you realize - Holy Cow, they're Teething Too?! And there is no neighbor, no friend, no Mamaw, no one you can call in for relief for two days. Anything we have to go through from here on out will be gravy compared to what we have endured this week, because at least we will be home, with US doctors and nearby friends and family, ice and filtered water that comes out of a magical silver box called a refrigerator, filled with food options for gassy or picky children! And let's not forget the coffee pot!

-End Rant-

Joe and I pondered the rationale behind people making those comments about preparing for parenthood to disrupt what was a formerly peaceful existence. It's not very encouraging. I wouldn't even say that it is in step with Ephesians 4: 29, being good for the building up of others, giving grace to all who hear. What's the point of it then, really? To give those new parents the head's up that it's going to be hard? I think we're all aware of that. To quote a conversation one of my friends and I had this week - every sane parent has that moment when they look up in the midst of trauma with their kids and wonder why they didn't just get a dog. Then is it to just mess with them, poking fun, commiserating? Okay, I guess for most folks.

But when you've sat through years of childlessness, quiet mealtimes, boring Saturdays, clean kitchens...well, maybe not that last part...you'd gladly give up all that "peace" for the "pieces": of cookie ground into the carpet, of Barbie's body clogging the toilet, of cake that stick to their faces on their next birthday, of dog food that get taste tested, of kleenex left in a pocket getting picked out of the lint trap after wiping snotty face after snotty face.

And I can't wait for you to see their little faces.

Random Thoughts...

2010-12-28T10:26:00.002-06:00

I just paid $4 for a 12oz can of Dr. Pepper that was imported from Belgium. God Bless Belgium!

Planning our New Years Eve arrival party menu: Good old American food - Thin crust pizza, Rotel dip and tortilla chips, and $1 2Liters of Dr. Pepper and Diet DP with Ice, Ice, Baby! This hotel doesn't even have an ice machine for the public. That's how rare it is for people to drink things with ice here.

So, I too got the stomach virus, hence the preoccupation with food and drink and ice. Days without incident - 2. Days without nausea - 0.

Here's what I've eaten in the last 6 days:

2 nutrigrain bars

3 servings of sour cream and onion pringles

1 granola bar

2 packs of nabs

2 pouches of chicken ramen noodles

half of an apple

It's the apple that turned the tide and put me on the mend. It's true what they say, I guess.

If I needed a jumpstart to kicking back in on my WeightWatchers regiment, I got it.

Chance I'll be able to consume the desired amounts of homey goodness like we're planning, given this week's adventures in keeping anything on our stomachs - 30%.

Chance I'm gonna TRY - 110%.

Christmas Vacation...

2010-12-24T10:30:00.002-06:00

My family knows this movie inside and out. One year, my oldest brother threatened to print off the script and just have us act the whole thing at the dinner table that Christmas. We quoted from it REDICULOUSLY. To the point that my two and a half year old niece (who's 19 now) started quoting the dinner table scene when she heard someone on a Christian radio station we were listening to say, "Blessing".

Only the true believers will know what comes next.

My point about that movie and my Christmas vacation is that they both had all the makings of a truly magical experience. Snow, decorations, unexpected family....

But they have also had the pitfalls of such high expectations. For Clark Griswold, it was overloaded fuses, redneck cousins, a rottweiler, and a couple of episodes with fire.

Ours: A mean stomach virus. Here we are in Russia, with the girls in a hotel room. And rather than playing and smiling and cooing and curling up in the bed, I am corralling the two girls by myself and trying to keep them out of Joe's wake. I don't know if he picked it up in the US and brought it with him, or if he got it at the baby home the day we came to pick them up. Our translator called us today to apologize for not checking in on us yesterday. Apparently, she got it too.

I hesitated even posting anything about it, because everybody wants updates on how wonderful motherhood is, and how beautiful St. Petersburg looks in the snow and lights.

Honestly, I've been too tired to notice. My only reason for writing now is to elicit prayer support from anyone that might read this. Joe is sick in his heart because he can't get down and play with the girls, or help me. We had great plans about walking in the snow about a block to a neat little European cafe that serves meat pies and napoleons for lunch, with the girls in their baby backpacks bundled up like baby Jesus.

Pray that in the last few days we have here, I'll get to enjoy being the mother to these little girls, and more so, for Joe to get to enjoy being their father. He's been too sick, and I've been too worn out.

Hallelujah!

Holy Crap!

Where's the Tylenol?!

The Journey of A Thousand Steps...

2010-12-19T22:00:00.004-06:00

Is nearing its completion. Below is the copy of my very first post on this website. I just reread it, and it is crazy to me how God answered all of the questions that were in my heart.

What you ought to know is, when we first started this journey, I wasn't ready. We went through three interviews, spaced through about six months, and I chickened out. I really needed to try through medical intervention to get pregnant. We did that for about nine months until March of 2009, when God told me that it was really time to stop.

And now here we are.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Little Footsteps.

It's about the little one whose footsteps we are anxiously awaiting to hear, and about our own little steps in the international adoption process.

This is going to be a long, LONG journey, not to mention an expensive one. But worth it.

Already, at this point of just finishing the initial application, we've already had to make a decision about what country, what age, and siblings-yes or no. We've also had to come to terms with a few things.

One, this child will not be coming from my womb. I had to get okay with that. Well, better than just okay. I had to be sure that in my heart, adoption was such a strong desire that it was not just a "Plan B", because my danged ovaries didn't work.

Also, all my life, I wanted to be pregnant and have a baby. My husband isn't primarily the nurturing type. And I'm not too dependent on anybody, but dadgummit, I'd like to be pampered a little bit. I thought, for longer than a weekend or anniversary, I might get waited on hand and foot without any expectation. And there was the question - will I feel like this child is mine? Will I be able to bond in the way that I'd throw myself in front of a bus for a child? Well, yes. I teach school, and I'd do that for (most of) my students. I can't see any child get hurt and not take action. But would we be able to bond like mother and child with it already being a year or so old?

This leads to my second big leap of faith, this child will not be a newborn. There are all kinds of questions about the child's physical and emotional history that I just will not be able to get answers to.

My husband, the Eagle Scout adventurer, got to a place of acceptance with these facts faster than I have. In fact, the impetus to adopt really started with him. Originally, we held it off in the distance, like our late 30's if we still had not gotten pregnant. And we would extinguish every avenue for natural childbirth that we felt was ethically acceptable for us before we considered this road. But God had other plans for us, including a major heart change. Isn't that His way?

Therefore, convinced of the special burden and relationship God has with orphans and abandoned persons, and convinced of our role in being the hands and feet of God in the world, we answered a call to pursue an orphaned or abandoned child to bring into our home and our waiting arms. I daydream about paint colors and names. I price flights to Asia, and plan fundraisers. And I think about how soon until we begin the process all over again for our second child, if we don't get siblings this first time through.

And in my mind, I hear a tiny voice and little footsteps, and see beautiful almond shaped eyes shining under black hair looking up with expectation, waiting to be held.

How could this possibly be a Plan B?

"This is it.....

2010-12-19T21:08:00.003-06:00

Don't get scared now."

McCauly Culkin said this in "Home Alone" just before the bad guys started breaking into his house. It's ironic, because he was - well - home alone. We're saying it because this is the last time we're ever going to be alone.

Just before we left the house, Joe gave a little speech.

"Dear house, we'd like to thank you for this past year of peace and quiet. Thank you for the tranquility you brought to our lives, being our haven from this hectic world. But, house, this is the last time any of us are going to see any of that. We'd just like to apologize now for the throw-up, temper tantrums, and toys strewn everywhere. It's been great, and it's all about to change."

We've had dreams this week about something going wrong, or being surprised by new information when we get to Russia. Joe dreamed there was a triplet. I dreamed we left one of them behind, and we'd have to wait six months before we could go back and get her. We've been on edge ever since. Even right now, we're sitting at Joe's mom's house with all the family in the office, talking about paperwork, visas, tickets....Oh, good Lord! There's just so much to handle. I'm so nervous.

So, in case you were wondering, here's the prayer list for this trip.

Travel to and from the airport at really weird times of day for the family who are serving as chaufeurs.
Health for Joe and I. He's getting over his sinus infections, picked up from the previous trip. I woke up feeling it coming on this morning. I was so loopy during church this morning.
Travel safety and health for my mother-in-law, who is coming a few days later to help us on the trip home. She will be traveling by herself, and she hasn't been on a plane in a while.
Health for the girls, and that they sleep most of the way home.
Ideas of creative ways to spend our time in the hotel with the girls. We have a few days of nothing to do but wait on passports to be processed so they can leave the country with us.
To receive favorable word from the last couple of grant agencies that we are waiting on. While you may think we have successfully raised all of our funds because the girls are coming home, this is not quite the case. We have just been blessed with a patient adoption agency who is giving us a little more time to raise/pay the last $7500. Because our process from referral to final trip went about four times faster than normal, we went faster than some of these grant agencies process applications. Some of them only do it once a year.
That we budgeted the right amount for this trip. They tell us how much cash to bring, and how much to expect to spend on the rooms, etc. So far, things have come out less expensive than we were told to anticipate. We really need this to happen one more time.
That somewhere in the midst of all this, we get - and TAKE - the chance to worship together as a family, praising God for everything He has done to bring this plan together.

Once we register their passports in the new names we have given them, we will be happy to report with pictures of the girls. Keep watching for updates.

And thank you.

Questions I am asking myself right now.

2010-12-14T12:01:00.002-06:00

Will Doritos fingerprints stain my keyboard or touchpad?

Why is -10degrees in St. Petersburg more bearable than +29degrees in Mississippi? And no, it doesn't have anything to do with the warmth of a mother's heart or any of that nonsense. It is just a different kind of cold.

Does my dog remember me? Because this has not been a good month of quality time for her.

Similarly, is my dog mad at me?

How long until Monday gets here and we can get on a plane to go see my babies again? Ala, Charlie Brown: "Aaaaaaargh!"

Why does my mother-in-law get to fly over PARIS, but we have to go through Amsterdam?

Why did I think Doritos would be a satisfying lunch?

The end.

..So what DOES a youth minister do?..

2010-12-10T18:21:00.002-06:00

I have slept four hours. And true to form, I'm awake in the middle of the night. But before I wrestle and try to get back to sleep, I read through my post from earlier.

I really shouldn't write when I'm THAT tired. I left out some important details.

Here's why that exchange with the judge was so difficult for Joe. What he really does would be lost on the judge, and on the national understanding that - to quote our driver - "religion is for grannies".

When the judge didn't respond when he told her he taught the Bible, I don't know what she was thinking. But I would guess that she thought he told the Bible stories. Maybe she was thinking - (Okay, how many of those can there be? Is there a need for such a profession that would make it stable?) Actually, because they have NO previously acquired knowledge of such things, I know the last question is probably close to being accurate.

So, in case she's reading this, or in case you are also wondering what a youth minister does, let me fill you in from the wife's perspective what she sees her husband doing.

The youth minister is a counselor with an open door, listening to stories from students about broken hearts, college and career plans, persecution at school, difficulty standing for Christ in the face of intense temptation, understanding their parents' discipline, losses that keep them from being able to talk to God, victories that remind them that God is talking to them.

The youth minister runs interference between parents and their prodigal children, and between children and their prodigal parents. He is a search party, helping them scan the horizon for the one who hasn't yet turned his heart toward home. And in the event that neither child nor parent are looking for each other, he is the neutral ground, the messenger, the interpreter.

The youth minister is a shoulder to grieving children who have lost grandparents, parents, siblings. He knows that when the phone rings at 2am, nothing good is ever on the other end. He stands at a funeral and says words that parents can't work up the strength of breath and the coordination of speech to say about how this child was loved, how his passing leaves a void, how only God can give the grace to help them continue living.

The youth minister's home is a haven for the student who has wandered too far, burned too many bridges to return home. It is a playground for the groups of students who rush in quickly, sing and play loudly, eat voraciously, clean up after themselves minimally, and leave slowly. The youth minister's weekend is consumed with activities, service projects, mentoring, and fellowship.

The youth minister lives a difficult balance between being totally accessible, yet guarding his time for his family. And somewhere in there guarding a little time just for himself. He shares his home and family with the students. He shares the love of his heart and his listening ear with his family, and with his students. He shares his leadership with his family, and with his students.

And yes, he teaches the Bible. But he doesn't just tell the stories. He teaches the application of the truth of those stories. Truth about who our God is...and MAN have we gotten to know him a lot better this year. Truth about who we are. Truth about how far off the mark we are as individuals, and how as a society, we keep spiraling further and further away. And maybe by reaching the students when they are young, we can put an end to it, or at least slow it down to the point that when one of our children, or our children's children are standing in court and also serving as ministers of the gospel, the judge won't have to ask, "And what do you do?"

I started writing that exchange with the judge last night as an attempt at humor. But the more I think about it, it actually makes me sad. After traveling to such a secular country, I don't take for granted how blessed we are as a country to have freedom to worship. Russia is free to do it now, but because it has been so many years where religious practices were illegal, they are out of the habit, and there is no church leadership. And it breaks my heart how often we throw that freedom away, because I know just a few weeks ago I didn't appreciate it.

Point of Grace had a song in the late '90s that I haven't heard since then, "God Forbid". The words come to mind in the background setting of a people who have lost all touch with God, turning His churches into museums. They have the form of godliness but are denying the power.

The more I know your power, Lord
The more I'm mindful
How casually we speak and sing your name
How often we have come to you
With no fear or wonder
And called upon you only for what we stand to gain

God forbid, that I find you so familiar
That I think of you as less than who you are
God forbid, that I should speak of you at all
Without a humble reverence in my heart
God forbid

So, what does a youth minister do? A youth minister takes students to summer camp where they learn to be God's servants, and in the process he hears a testimony from a woman who adopted a little girl from China. And in listening to her story, he realizes that God is telling him to become a father to abandoned children. And because he is a man of God, he responds obediently. And in less than ten days, he will be holding those children in his arms.

And I will be right there by his side, because that's what a youth minister's wife does.

Two Days Worth

2010-12-10T11:31:00.004-06:00

Sorry, folks at home. I haven't done as well with the time change this trip. I have slept during every car ride to and from the baby house. By the time we get back to the room, I'm dragging. And then we both wake up in the middle of the night and fight to get back to sleep, only to finally be awakened by the unwelcome sounding of my alarm.

Today, Joe has already gone to bed. (He didn't sleep in the car.) I'm willing myself to stay up at least one more hour before hitting the sack for the night (at 8:30pm) which means Joe should be updating his status in about six hours (at 2:30am). So be on the lookout.

Now..here's Thursday's update: Court Proceedings.

We were supposed to be the first family on the docket Thursday. But the court secretary had double booked the courtroom with another family. Since they got there first, we had to wait. We had about thirty minutes of mentally preparing, going over answers to questions we thought might be asked. Then, I saw the doctor from the baby house get out some medical files she would need to present to the court, get out her cell phone to make a call, and jot down some notes. She was talking loud, at a fast rate, and seemed pretty worked up about whatever she was trying to get worked out. It's so unnerving to sit around all these people whose expressions you can't read, knowing that they are talking either about you or about the children, but not catching even a word of it. I figured if there were any surprises left, we'd hear them out in the courtroom.

The court appointment was formal, routine, with much of it read or quoted by rote through our translator. She has done this for twenty years. We made our petition to adopt. We were questioned about our decision, about our work...We planned some answers to these questions, but focused more on things that would relate to our actual interactions with the girls. Things that just had to do with us, not so much.

Judge: What do you do?

Joe: I work for a church.

Judge: What do you do there?

Joe: I'm responsible for children and teenagers, from birth to 18 years old.

[Now, at this point, every person in America who has ever attended church or known anyone who has ever been involved in a children's or youth ministry would nod their heads and go, "Oh..." and that would be the end of it.]

Judge: Yes, but what do you do?

Joe: Teach, plan activities....

Judge: What do you teach?

Joe: The Bible?

Judge: (silence...looking for more of an answer)

Joe: ...How to be respectful...compassionate...

After our court appearance, we spoke to the other couple going to court with our agency - the husband of which happens to also be a minister - and Joe prepped him for the question. Our translator also said something to him, asking him to be specific about the nature of his work if he is asked.

Next, we were asked about our readiness to disrupt a perfectly good marriage and quiet lifestyle with two children. They very rarely have couples coming to adopt two. I mentioned that I'm responsible for classes of 30 children at a time with no problems, and I'm not scared at all about having two children. The judge said, "Yes, but the other children you can send home. These are yours. If one cries, they will both cry. And you are the only mother."

Because Joe told me to keep my answers short and sweet, I didn't go into my life story about how I've always wanted to be a mother, how I've always sought out children, worked with children, kept them, taught them, played with them...I didn't tell her how my heart would be completely broken inside of me if I never had the opportunity to be a mother. How my life has been too peaceful, my house too clean, my modus too self centered. How I long for chocolate fingerprints to stain my white cabinets, how I long to find Barbie's head stopping up the bathroom sink, how I want my peaceful Saturday morning sleep to be disrupted by children hopping in the bed begging me to make pancakes. I could have, but I didn't. They were on a schedule.

After we got through the lifestyle questions about me and Joe, they heard reports from the baby house doctor and social worker, and a representative from the Ministry of Education-which was responsible for reviewing our home study, references, and our background information. We got stellar reviews from all of them. Then the doctor went into her full spiel about the health of the girls. While we consider Addie healthy, she does have a couple of conditions related to being born prematurely that needed to be shared in court. Then they got in to Anna Claire's health report. The doctor painted it in a positive light, stating that this girl needed to be adopted by us so that she could get proper treatment, and gave her an optimistic prognosis under our care.

From there, the judge spent the rest of the time counseling us about the difficulty of taking on this challenge with her, while also caring for the other girl. She asked us about twenty times in all if we were really ready for this. I don't know how many ways to say yes, but we kept saying it. Then she deferred to her chambers to make her decision in private. She came back about two minutes later, having approved our petition.

The decision of the court will be effective in just a few days. We have just enough time to fly home, wash clothes, make our final travel arrangements, pack for bringing ourselves and the girls home, perform a Christmas musical, and trade the jeep in on a family sized vehicle that can hold two car seats and a stroller, and in the event she needs it in the future, any kind of mobility equipment for Anna Claire. It will be a full week.

We had another great visit with the girls last night, and then "Monica" blew in. The trip from baby house to hotel usually takes about thirty minutes. Last night, it took just over an hour because the snow impaired visibility. Of course, I slept through all of it. Today, everything was more difficult. The roads were covered with a thick gray slush that reminded me of the gulf coast sand when it is wet. The sides of the road had snow piled so high that when we parked for lunch, I stepped into a drift that was up to my knee. But it was so soft and miraculous.

Speaking of miraculous, we spent our afternoon during the girls' nap time touring the Winter Palace - The Hermitage. It is renowned for its art collection, rivaling the Louvre. I saw with my own eyes paintings by Da Vinci, Matisse, Monet, Rembrandt, Picasso...all the classics. I didn't think myself to be an art lover, but you can't argue with the greatness of some of these pieces. It was amazing.

Both visits with the girls today, as well as the one last night, consisted of several rounds of Peek-a-boo, lots of giggles and smiles, pretending to fly, and more gas. Since we figured out what it looks like when Anna Claire's about to blow (pun intended), and since we figured out how to hold her so she's comfortable and can move the air around, she hasn't cried or whimpered once in three visits.

She's already so much like her daddy.

One more day. Start praying now for the weather and the trip home. I didn't arrange for a substitute on Monday. I have to hit the ground running because I did it again - I have another musical scheduled for Tuesday. Joe and I both have a lot to do this next week, because the next trip will last a little longer, and we will have the girls with us. There will be no time for the two of us to recover on our own. Pray also for those last two grants we are waiting to hear back from. We passed through the first round of approval from one of them, and it went on to the regional committee to decide how much of our grant request they can approve. We still have a balance of $7500 due to our agency, which is the amount we requested. Pray for approval, both from this agency, and from another which will be reviewing our application this month and notifying us in January, so we might put that surplus toward paying back some of our adoption loans.

Thanks for all the prayers and supportive comments. Not much longer!!!

Anna Claire's Apple Cart

2010-12-08T09:44:00.002-06:00

....is very sensitive. That child will get in one comfortable position, or engaged in one activity, or linked to one person, and if you change it at all....here come the waterworks. We had the longest period of a comfortable position tonight with her. It was lying sideways in my arms with one of her arms and legs over mine, and one arm and leg hanging down the other side of my arms. As soon as we got into that position, she got quiet. She relaxed. And she started passing gas.

I've got to get better at reading these signs. Yesterday, I kept thinking she was teething. This morning, she must have been hungry. Then tonight....it was definitely gas.

Addie wasn't quite herself tonight. She wasn't ill or anything. Just quiet and clingy. She wouldn't let Joe put her down hardly at all. She was laying the same way Anna Claire was. And she would clap her hands, with some difficulty with one over Joe's massive arm and one under, and she would make little noises that sounded like she was singing or humming. It was too cute. So we stood, the four of us, for a while just looking at each other. We rocked back and forth, made silly sounds and faces with the girls, and just let them learn to grow comfortable laying there in our arms.

What I'm hoping for on this trip is for Anna Claire to look forward to coming to us, rather than looking forward to going back to the caretaker. For her sake, I want to know she trusts us and will be happy with us. I don't want to start our relationship with her out of coercion: "Well, kid. You're ours now. Might as well get used to it. You're stuck with us." I wish we could communicate better so I could know exactly what she wants when she starts crying like that. Is she hurting, scared, hot, hungry?

How do you people do it?

For the next day of this trip

Continue to pray that we'll recover from the time change, and that we stay physically feeling well the whole time. We slept a decent number of hours last night - 7. But we didn't sleep the right ones. We got up at 4am. And now, Joe's taking a nap, and my logic says to fight the nap and just stay awake until 9pm so I can sleep all the way through the night. Joe's plan is to wake up at 8pm from his nap, eat a little ramen soup in the room for supper, then go back down around 11pm. I tried this last time and when it came time to lay down for real, I couldn't fall asleep.
Pray for bonding to continue and intensify with both girls, especially Anna Claire. Pray that we'll know how to move her around so she's comfortable and can respond to us positively.
Pray that we don't say anything stupid during our court visit tomorrow. There are only a couple of questions that we need to carefully word our answers to. One of them is: Do you attend church? What kind? Are you a fanatical believer, or moderate? Well, in American terms - moderate I guess. But our moderate would be over the top fanatical here, because of the lack of spiritually minded people. Still, I really wrestled with this question when it was asked by our court coach at lunch today. I have always heard pastors use that invitation quote - "If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" I just never thought it would actually happen! The other questions will be to judge if we have adequately weighed the consequences of adopting a special needs child, and mainly the question - "Why?"

Okay. No more fighting it. I'm going down for a 50 minute nap. Cross your fingers.

Trip 2

2010-12-07T19:42:00.002-06:00

To start, the actual flights to get here could not have gone better. The price to check an extra bag was not as expensive as we had thought, so we got rid of some of our carry-on pieces and were able to bullet through loading on and off the planes. Also, none of the flights were totally full. We got to spread out and have plenty of elbow room. I have to say, though, that my least favorite thing in the world is when the person in front of me decides to lean all the way back while I have my tray down, or worse - while I'm reading! So as spread out as one can get, it's still not enough to be really comfortable. But things could have been way worse.

I didn't sleep at all on the transatlantic flight. I tried. I really did. Instead, I ended up catching up on my prayerlife. Mostly, I was praying for the family with the baby that was sitting about ten rows ahead of us. They were struggling, and I knew it would be us soon enough. It took a while, but they all finally calmed down. Speaking of babies on flights - on our first flight out of NOLA, there were TWO sets of twins. One set was about the age of our girls, so it was interesting to see how the family dealt with them and all their gear getting them on and off the flight. And all I have to say about that is .... This is going to be fun.

When we left New Orleans, it was a brisk 32 degrees with clear skies. When we landed in St. Petersburg, it was a balmy 32 degrees with gray skies. And snow already piled everywhere. Yet again, we brought the warm front. It hasn't really snowed since we got here. We think it snowed while we were sleeping, but it's hard to tell. Everything was already white.

As tired as we were, when our translator asked if we wanted to go by the baby home on the way to the hotel, we immediately said "Yes!" We had talked on Sunday about how we probably wouldn't, because we'd be so dirty and tired and .... All of that went out the window once we were actually in St. Petersburg.

The director at the baby home gave us a big hug when we got there. She just seems like the most pleasant person. And the caretakers were happy to see us. We got to walk into their small group area to see Addie walking totally independently, playing with the other children. She seemed to recognize Joe right away. She toddled toward us with a shy smile, but she got cut in front of by a little blonde headed boy with Down's who beat her to him. But it was enough for us to see that spark of memory there. Anna Claire was just waking up from her nap, and getting dressed when we came in, so we didn't get to see her in the group. They brought her out to us.

I guess because we had been on the plane, they made us wear surgical face masks. Addie had already seen our natural faces, so she wasn't freaked out when she saw us putting them on. Anna Claire on the other hand didn't get to see us without the masks. She was freaked out. She started off shocked, and that melted into crying and/or whimpering. But the good news is she isn't sick and croupy this time. I tried to soothe her as much as she'd let me. They kept the girls' toys we had brought, and brought those out to us. The director said Wednesday, they will bring out some toys and show us some of the things that Anna Claire has been doing with toys. They've been trying to work with her on her muscle coordination.

It was a short visit of only maybe 30 minutes. We handed the girls back, and started to walk out. As we turned the corner to exit the gate, we ran up on the older group of 3 year olds walking outside in the snow. They saw us and all went, "Oh..." And then a couple of them at a time starting looking at me and at the female translator, saying, "Mama." They kept calling as we walked out the gate to our car.

Holy Cow! How is a woman supposed to respond to that?!

I know now why people who go into orphan adoption originally thinking that they are just going to bring one child home end up going back until they have twelve kids. Because that's what I immediately wanted to do.

Now, here's the stuff everyone is going to want to know. We talked with our agency representative who will take us through the court logistics last night. She said she doesn't expect that the judge will waive our ten day waiting period. They discussed Anna Claire's physical condition with the judge, and also with the director. She said that a week ago, a family adopted a child in a wheel chair, and their waiting period wasn't even waived. The director wouldn't sign off on anything stating that she thought Anna Claire would need any kind of immediate surgery - the only kind of thing they will waive for these days. Anna Claire's follow up visits have all come back with favorable reports, recommending massage therapy, physical therapy, and love and attention. But nothing medically invasive.

So once court is over with, we know we will be coming home without the girls. But that's okay, because we will be better prepared for the final trip. Also, it will be easier to make travel arrangements for Nanna Peggy, who will be meeting us in Moscow to help get them through the long flight home. And that trip will be over Christmas break. We will be home with them on December 31.

Now it is off to breakfast, since we woke up at 4:00am. No pickled herring!

Taking it all in - HOLY COW!

2010-11-30T15:11:00.002-06:00

Okay...I just posted our last update a week ago, and guess what -

We already have a court date - December 9. We are going back about three weeks ahead of what is the average wait for a court date, because they are trying to get us home with the girls before Russian government offices close everything down for their holiday break. So as of December 9 - they will be officially ours, and we will have them in our keeping by Christmas.

There is a ten day waiting period where we have to come home following court without the girls, but lightning could always strike, having the judge waive those ten days so we can get home with little AC so she can start physical therapy. It's all up to the judge and how severe he or she believes her condition to be. We have been asking for prayer that we wouldn't have to make a third trip to bring the girls home, because we anticipated getting stuck over the long holiday break. But now, we will have them by Christmas either way. If you are one of the ones praying for that breakthrough, you can keep it up to keep us from having to pay for an extra plane ticket. I'd miss one of my musicals, but I'm already missing one performance anyway, so what's one more.

How have the finances done lately? Well, we still are asking for prayer regarding a couple of grants out there that will go only toward our adoption agency fees. About $7500 worth. But all of our travel has been covered.

Did you catch that?

All.

Even if we have to make that third trip.

It's done.

God's awesome. And in second place, grandmothers.

And that pretty much sums it up.

In Sunday school this week, we talked about spiritual warfare. Baptists are kinda all over the place, and nowhere at the same time, when it comes to this subject. You never know how or IF it will be addressed, and which scriptures will be used or misused in the process.

We were in Ephesians 6, which describes the Christian position as one of standing, maintaining ground in the face of an unseen and uncontainable offense. The Sunday school teacher cross referenced a story I had not read before in 2 Kings 6, in which Elisha is about to be attacked by an enemy king's army because his prophecies keep alerting the Israelites to the king's schemes. Elisha's assistant is scared, and Elisha prays for God to open the assistant's eyes so he can see their unseen help in this battle. He saw hillsides covered with strong men in fiery chariots.

In Daniel 9, Daniel has an encounter with an angel telling him God has heard his prayer after he had been praying for 21 days. Why didn't he get that answer on day one? As the angel put it, that unseen enemy was creating obstacles to the angel's arrival, and it took reinforcement (20 extra days of prayer and another angel) to overpower the enemy so he could meet with Daniel.

Both of these stories struck me during the lesson, because at times, I have felt like the assistant - not understanding the fullness of God's power surrounding me in times of difficulty. I needed God to open my eyes to his overpowering presence with me, surrounding me on every side. I have also felt like Daniel - waiting and waiting for something to happen. But did I realize like Daniel apparently did that I needed to keep praying when the answer didn't materialize right away? Or did I give up too quickly?

I wrote a song ten years ago that contained these words: "But I never knew you then the way I know you know. Could I have ever learned to pray if you hadn't let me fall down?"

I didn't, and still don't, mean that God let me fall into sin so I would call out on him. But I do think that when he leads us in paths of righteousness, sometimes those paths lead through the valley of the shadow of death. Scripture tells us this. And it tells us why - FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. I never knew the power of God to answer prayer until I had something I wanted as much as I wanted to be a mother. This has been a journey 9 years in the making. I know there are others who have walked this road longer than I have. A precious friend adopted her daughter after she and her husband tried conceiving then waited for a referral for 15 years. But I also know she'd say the same thing about our God. She knows him so much better now, and there's no question that their daughter was hand-selected for them by God.

I can't wait to get the girls home so I can post their precious faces on here for long-distance family and friends to see. Until then, keep us in your prayers. Here's the list:

Health and safety flying.
Room in our suitcases for everything we need to bring
Remembering everything we need to bring
Packing everything we might need in the event the waiting period is waived
Time to have a particular test needed for our paperwork done.
That we don't have to make a third trip
Time to write lesson plans, and a set of "Holy Cow" plans in case the waiting period is waived.
The health of the girls for the trip home. If either one of them is half as sick as they were on the last trip, the airplane ride with that much sinus fluid will be excruciating.
Finances for medical fees. We had to have a battery of tests run for our court documents, and the total bill came to right around $1200. We'd like to have nothing hanging, because we'll be needing to take the girls right away when we get home.
Time to reflect and praise God for everything he's been doing on our behalf. I really want to write some more songs out of this, but haven't had the time.
For God to extend SERIOUS blessings on some folks who have really sacrificed on our behalf.

Here we go!

Taking it all in - Our last day in St. Pete's

2010-11-21T14:02:00.002-06:00

Sorry you had to wait so long for this. It took a little while to feel like a human again. I had to get a few days of antibiotic in me. Everything seems to be back to normal, as far as health and sleeping routines go. Joe is in a waking up early kick, but I don't think it will survive the holidays. At any rate, I now have the time and presence of mind to fill in on the last few things I wanted to share about our trip for St. Petersburg to meet the girls.

On our last morning, we had time before our plane left to drop by the baby home and see the girls one more time. I was so glad we did, too, because Anna Claire was feeling better. She actually wanted to be set down on the rug so she could play. I want to get back to her so soon so I can see her in her best mood.

Addie was doing her usual cruising around the playroom. Joe sat her on one of the big stuffed toys, a lion. She grabbed the mane with both hands and started rocking on it like a horse. We have some bouncy riding toys that I know she's going to wear out as soon as she gets home. After a little time playing, she boosted herself up on Joe's legs, grabbed his fingers and stood up. She walked in to lay her head on his stomach. Joe rubbed her back for a minute, then picked her up and moved up to the couch. After a little while shifting around, she got comfortable and fell asleep on his chest.

I may not speak Russian, but "Awww" is pretty much a universal. The caregivers cooed when they saw her asleep on Joe's chest and Anna Claire grinning and playing on the floor. We couldn't have imagined ending the week any better. We are very blessed to know our babies are in good hands.

That being said, as every day passes, I miss them more and more. We will know when we are travelling back to Russia for our court date in about two more weeks. At that point, we also hope to know whether we can expect to pack for three days or thirteen. If the latter, it means the girls are coming home on trip #2. If not, we will have to wait until the middle of January to travel back and bring them home. We're asking EVERYONE we know to pray that we can bring them back on trip #2. We really want to get Anna Claire home to be seen by some doctors and to start therapy so we can assess her condition and stage of development.

Financially, we are VERY close to being done. We need $7000 to have all fees covered. It is hard to know until we hear about court what to expect for our last bit of travel. We still have a couple of grant applications that will not be reviewed until later in December. Pray that we get a favorable response from them to cover those last fees so we can use the gifts we have received personally to cover all of our travel. We are still accepting donations through Chip-In, and we have a few more tshirts left. I'm placing one more order this week. Time to buy some very special Christmas presents!

Thanks for all the prayers and support, especially from our church family. We have felt so uplifted through all of this. We can't wait to bring the girls home to such loving friends.

JK

Taking it all in - ...Hang on...

2010-11-16T15:09:00.002-06:00

Sorry for the lack of updates on the last visit and the trip home. To sum it up...I got AC's crud. I ran fever on the leg of the flight. Joe prayed me through that first flight. The second one was better for me, worse for him. He started throwing up again. I just had a runny nose. On the last flight, we both were able to rest a little. We made it to our house by 2am, and were in bed by 3am. My precious in-laws got to our house early on Saturday and cleaned it for us so all we had to do when we got home was crawl into bed. They were even at the airport at midnight to pick us up.

I was at school for part of the day on Monday, working on my musical with the kids. We had our first performance earlier today. It went great. If you don't have plans tonight, you should definitely make the second performance. It starts at 6:15. And once this performance is over with, I will start returning some of those phone calls from friends who are waiting on pins and needles for the full report.

So at this point, we're still catching up on sleep, getting over illnesses of unknown origin, and waiting with anticipation to find out when we get to go back. We should know in about three weeks. Joe's preaching this Sunday. I'll sing if I'm up to it. We will definitely have a slide show with video for everyone to see. So be there!

Taking it all in - 5

2010-11-13T11:47:00.002-06:00

Thank you so much for your prayers on AC's behalf. She did sound better today. But she still sounds like she has a long way to go. I also felt better, emotionally. So many of you mommas who were feeling it with me prayed for my comfort. God sent it through an IMB missionary who shares a mutual friend in Texas. I spoke with him on the phone today to fill him in on how the trip went and to see if he needed us to bring anything from the states when we return in a few weeks. I mentioned how sick the girls had been, and how no one seemed very concerned about it because they always get the croup when the weather changes. He said, "Yep. They do. Not much you can do about it." While that doesn't sound very encouraging, it actually was to hear an American...heck, a southerner...say that.

How do I wrap up the experiences of this week? Well, I will say that whatever my expectations were, none of them were really met the way I thought they would be. The sightseeing we did during lunch and the girls' nap time was amazing. Our baby of a country doesn't have the scope and magnitude of historical treasures this place has. It's an amazing country. And our driver/translator was a great tour guide.

As far as my expectations of how things would go with the girls - I expected the shell shocked faces of the first meeting. I didn't expect Adeline to fall in step with us as fast as she did. I expected dissatisfaction with the way things were done in the baby home-like the way I thought they weren't treating the girls' colds. What I didn't expect was the degree of care the girls do receive. When the caretakers came at the end of each visit to pick up the girls, they came in smiling and talking and cooing, and the girls practically lept into their arms. This is a good thing. It means they have made attachments. They each have an emotional center that has been getting its needs met. This means that once they come home with us, they will recognize and respond to loving touch, eye contact, all the things that make being a parent so worthwhile.

I expected something like the baby home looked from the outside - desolate, gated, poor by all appearances. I didn't expect well kept playground equipment in the back, including strollers for all the crawlers. I didn't expect the color and the toys in the music room. I didn't expect them to have daily physical exercise and music lessons. Did you know a 15month old could learn a choreographed dance? Neither did I. But Adeline can do it. And you should have seen the little boys and girls of the two-three year old group walking through in their gym shorts, tshirts, leggings, and slippers walking to the room where they would exercise. They all looked like little gymnasts. The little boy on the end walked through and greeted us like he was an adult. It was so cute.

The driver/translator handles a lot of our agency's documentation and administration on the Russian end of things. He said not long after they made us aware of AC's special needs, our agency had a second, independent evaluation from a western trained physician. His forecast was very positive the driver kept saying. He said the doctor was quite confident that with therapy and special attention that she would be able to overcome her challenges. Right now, she seems to be about 7 months old in her psychomotor development - that stage just before crawling. If she had been feeling better, we would have seen just how far she is from being able to do that. Adeline seems to be right on target for her biological age (had she not been premature) by US standards. Russians expect a little more of their children, it seems.

Tomorrow will be our last visit. Pray us through, and all the way home.

Taking it all in - 4

2010-11-12T10:35:00.001-06:00

Helpless.

That’s how I felt today. We didn’t see “Adeline” for most of the morning. She had been taken to the doctor for a routine check-up. I find it ironic in Russia’s specialist driven medical practices that a healthy child would be taken to see a highly specialized physician for no known problem, but the kind of croup she and “Anna Claire” have been fighting the whole time we have been here are just chalked up to changes in the weather. The exact words are – this is of no concern.

Well, dangit, I’m concerned. AC wheezed and gasped and gargled all morning and evening. She could only last about 20 minutes of playtime before she started flopping over exhausted, even too exhausted to cry. But she gave it a valiant effort. I felt better for her when she was crying, because she was at least sucking in big gulps of air. I asked our translator to ask the director of the baby home about her cough. He said all Russian babies get this. She would get medication if she started running fever. I was so mad and sad that I couldn’t do something. In the states, she would have already been to a pediatrician, if not the E.R., for a breathing treatment.

I don’t have any great spiritual revelation about this moment, other than this: Standing in the music room of the baby home, trying to soothe her, I started crying that I couldn’t do something else. I wanted to pitch an almighty fit. “Alright, you Russians may be used to this cold weather and head and chest colds and everything else in the word. You may be used to pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps because the government doesn’t hand out anything to you. But she’s just a baby. And she’s drowning in her own mucous because she can’t cough it up! Don’t impose your stoic ideologies on her. Help her!” In that moment, I knew I was her momma. And as kind as their caretakers are, they live by a different set of standards. These children are taught to develop a high pain tolerance, because that makes them easier to care for in the baby home.

Each day leaving both girls gets harder and harder, but today, especially AC.

I am praying and asking for major prayer intervention on their behalf. Adeline has it too, but she’s so mobile and up and running that it’s not settling in her chest the way it is in AC’s. As someone who has suffered through several asthma attacks as a child and adult, as well as pneumonia and bronchitis, I am desperate for her relief.

Taking it all in - 3

2010-11-11T23:50:00.001-06:00

Midnight in St. Petersburg is 4pm at home, and my body knows it. The four hours I have been asleep already are apparently enough to wake back up. I’m going to type this while it is fresh on my mind, because who knows what I am going to feel like tomorrow.
My prayers while we have been in Russia have been shopping lists in length and intimacy.
“Let us arrive on time.”
“Let us arrive ALIVE.”
“Heal Joe.”
“Heal Anna Claire’s cold.”
“Let me go back to sleep.”

And since the last prayer wasn’t answered right away, I took the time to draw in a little deeper in prayer. It went something like this:

Lord, we’re here. You did it. I can’t thank you enough. I know I haven’t pushed in my prayers past the point of distraction by all that’s going on around us to really worship you for all you have been doing, but I want to right now. I don’t want my girls to grow up seeing me having the “form of religion but denying its power (2 Tim. 3:5).” If they’re going to find you, they’ll have to see how I know you and found you.

-And then God opened up my eyes for the first time as a mother to allow me to see a glimpse of his heart as our Father. –

Lord, I want the girls to accept me. I want them to know the love I want to shower on them, the plans I have for their lives. I want them to trust in me, and accept my invitation into an intimate relationship. In this moment, I am reminded of your call to my heart to come, to fall back on your grace. You want me to accept your plan for my life and live in the intimate relationship that only you can offer, full of the riches that are at your disposal.

- When people talk about the spiritual nature of adoption, they usually do so from an obedience standpoint (James 1:27), or from child’s point of view: the acceptance of us by God as his children (John 14:18). But God started giving me a glimpse of adoption from the parent’s point of view. There is so much I can and want to do for these girls. I just want them to know that, so I am pursuing them tenderly.

There is another family from Sweden visiting a little boy this week who looks to be about 4 years old. He is what we in the south would call a “live wire”, a “handful”. He’s quiet, but fast. He zips away from the mother in the playroom and hides among the stuffed animals, not unlike E.T. He keeps coming over to the donut shaped table where we sit with the girls, and gets into “Adeline’s” game of “Pick up the toy I dropped…again.” He climbs under the table into the donut hole and starts messing with our camera bag and backpack of toys. The other mother comes over, says something that I’m sure means , “No, get out of there.” And then she leans over our stuff and picks him up out of the center of the table. He doesn’t cry. He’s smiling, but he is having none of it! His feet are kicking, and he is running in midair. She tries to turn it into a game, but as soon as she releases him, he is off again and back at our table.

You can tell that mother wants the same thing we want. She wants that little boy to know she would love to be his mother. She wants to wrap her arms around him and shower him with affection. She wants to be a part of his silly games, rather than just a spectator. She wants him to trust her, to accept her offer of salvation from this place. At his age, he is about to move from the baby home into a home with older preschool age children. He will be the smallest and most vulnerable, and there will be less contact with loving caregivers in the children’s home, because the children will be expected to be somewhat independent and self sufficient.

In my heart, I start talking to this little boy. “Go with her. She looks like a nice lady. Play with her. All she wants to do is put her arms around you and love you in a way you have never even known existed.”

And somewhere in St. Petersburg, at 12:41am, God is saying the same things to me. Even now, even after having been a follower of Christ for 28 years, I know there is a depth that he and I have never traversed. I didn’t know it was there. Maybe it is ground we tread before when I was younger and less distracted and more vulnerable and aware of my need of that intimacy. Maybe it is new territory. Regardless of what he has in store for me next, I want to be in it. I want to be in Him. I want to fall into his arms. I want him to lead me. I want to accept the depths of his love I never even knew existed.

P.S. Thanks for the prayers. Joe woke up feeling 100% better. Pray for stamina, because I only slept 4 hours last night. I feel alright, but I want it to stay that way. And keep praying for Anna Claire.

Taking it all in - 2

2010-11-11T09:45:00.002-06:00

Thursday – Joe and I are beginning to feel the ick of foreign travel in our bodies. We recuperated easily enough from the jet lag…ish. Meaning, we took a nap Wednesday evening, then couldn’t get to sleep until 2am St. Pete’s time. And then Joe woke up at 4:30am. He’s already gone to bed for the night, and it’s only 6:15pm. I hope he sleeps for 12 hours.

Trip #3/4 to the baby home was a smashing success. “Adeline” was in a very playful and happy mood. She giggled when we tickled her. Joe walked her around the playroom, and she made a game of kicking the squishy cube. Joe’s excited about his little soccer player. Or she could also become a carpenter. She discovered that rattle + wooden table = lots of noise (fun). Her other game of the day was…I’m going to drop my toy and see if I can get daddy to pick it up. Over and over and over again. One of the caretakers got her to do a dance for us. She’s not behind a US baby by much at this point. And I’m not even sure that she’s too far behind in size. She has been trying to walk independently, and has a few facial bruises from falling in the baby room. She prefers to walk while holding on to a hand…Joe’s.

“Anna Claire” was a happy baby as well. It will take some therapy to get her as mobile as her sister, but she will bear weight on her legs, and she will reach out for objects with both hands. She keeps her thumbs tucked in most of the time. But I got her to hold a racquetball today, and she had to use her thumb to keep it in her hand. I laid her on the floor for a while to see how she supported herself, but that nasty chest congestion is really getting in the way. Pray that this clears up. At home, she’d be on a round of antibiotics and breathing treatments. Here, the doctor’s suggestion was an old wives’ trick to force her to cough: push a spoon down on her tongue. She kicked her right leg, trying to flip herself from her back to her stomach. She got winded and started crying. I just let her cry, because I was hoping she’d get into a coughing spell and move some of that congestion.

Best part of the day: When “Anna Claire” got really cranked up crying, I held her in one arm and had “Adeline” in the other. This time, “Adeline” reached over and said something to her in baby talk, trying to soothe her. It was so sweet. Both of them were very vocal today. Hopefully the video camera picked it up. Ba, ma, pa, da and little tongue clicks all day long. And they would bounce and shake their heads and make little faces for us.

What we need: “Anna Claire” needs healing from the chest congestion…Pronto! And Joe needs healing from the traveler’s funk. His head and his stomach have bothered him all day. Today, he avoided the pickled herring, but something turned his guts inside out. Our after-lunch trip to the girls today was mostly just me. Joe stood by a window trying to get some fresh air. He threw up twice at the baby home, which neither one of us was very happy about. He’s resting comfortably now. Pray that he wakes up fully restored. If not, he's getting another day or half-day to rest at the hotel while I go see the girls by myself. Lastly, as the days go on, it IS hard to leave the girls in the home. Pray that we are prepared for our trip home. It’ll be here before you know it. I would like us to both be well in body and mind for that return trip, because we’ll have to hit the ground running.

But for now, I want time to crawl.

Taking it all in - 1

2010-11-10T13:11:00.002-06:00

First of all, I know you're going to want photos.

Well, you're going to have to wait. We took a bunch. We can show them to people individually. But nothing is going to be posted on the worldwide evil that is the internet.

(Just kidding internet. I love you. Wanna be friends again?)

I will post some of the things we have seen and interesting places we have been. Then again, we haven't been anywhere. We've just ridden by at a RIDICULOUS speed! Remember that scene of the Bourne Supremacy where the two cars are driving through tunnels, zipping in and out of traffic and it lasts for 19 minutes? Yeah? Well, they ALL drive that way. And here's why. They still have a "trolley" of sorts, with the trolley tracks in between the two directions of traffic. If there's no trolley on the tracks, drivers use it....first come, first served. We were staring into headlights several times on the ride home tonight.

Here's the Play-by-Play up to this point. I will fill in details as we get home and process everything.

Monday morning, we made the first flight with a couple of hours to spare. Security wasn't that big a deal. Touched down in DC in plenty of time for the next flight. Found out we had been bumped up into a better seating class - THANKS, M.S. the most awesome travel agent in the world! - for the transatlantic part of our trip. Not that it mattered, because it was still uncomfortable trying to sleep on that trip. Then I remembered that I was trying to fall asleep at 8pm local time, and trying to wake up at 1am. The DC flight left late and arrived in Frankfurt about thirty minutes behind schedule. We only had an hour to make our connection in Frankfurt to begin with, so we started sweating, wondering if we could make it or not. We, along with one other passenger, had to make the connection so they had some airline employees waiting for us when we got off of the plane. We walked onto the tarmac, got on a bus, rode underneath the airport, came out on the other side, went through security again, walked back out on the tarmac, and made the flight with about ten minutes to spare.

We got to St. Pete's at 1pm their time on Tuesday, which was 4am CST. Our driver/translator met us at the airport and took us to a very nice Courtyard hotel. We ended up getting a cheaper rate than we had been told to expect, because it is a brand new hotel and they are drumming up business. Only downside to that is the electricity has been flickering on and off, and our magnetic key card decides not to work about every other time we try to use it. Monday was a long day. We slept it off for an hour, took showers, then met with our contact who would lead us through the official ministry business Wednesday. After that, we ate supper at a German restaurant in the hotel. Oh, and it's VIENNESE schnitzel, not WIENER. And it's Delicious!!! We ate and went back to sleep at 8:30pm.

Wednesday was the big day! We woke up at 6am, ate a great breakfast that included crepes and pastries and preserved fruit for me. Joe had a mushroom and bacon omlette, with a side dish of olives, gouda, and pickled herring. I didn't know what real maple syrup tasted like until today. A little bitter, but yummy. Not the corn syrup confection I had always known. Joe has been feeling "iffy" on his stomach today. I say skip the herring tomorrow.

We first went to the Russian children's ministry to officially receive our referral and sign our acceptance of it so we could go see the girls. From there, we went to the baby home and got our first meeting with the girls. It went great. We held them and talked and sang to them. They were shell shocked. It took a long time before either one of them grinned or relaxed. We brought these soft 5" cubes that had rattles or that crinkly paper stuff inside. They liked those the best. "Adeline" would mimic things that Joe did with the cube. If he scratched it, she would scratch it. If he shook it, she would shake it. She did this later with the rattles. We got it on video. "Anna Claire" grinned for Joe several times. They both reached a finger up to touch his little bit of facial hair.

I didn't get big smiles out of either one of them. In fact, they both tuned up to cry a couple of times. One would start, then the other would get a pouty face, and then it was duelling twins. They have the funniest way of crying when there's nothing wrong. It is a classic "wah". One would do it, then the other, then back again. It wasn't a full on scream. And they were easily soothed and distracted with another toy out of the magic blue bag of goodness that we brought with us. We did get a full on scream from "Anna Claire" by the end of the day. Both of the girls were sick. Chest congestion, snotty nose. Typical baby stuff. I am not convinced "Anna Claire" didn't have a fever when we handed them back over to the baby home staff.

Everyone probably thinks, "Wow, that must have been so hard to give them back at the end of the day." Well, yes, but the atmosphere in the baby home was very positive. It is a nice place. Very clean. Very friendly staff. The girls smiled quickly for them. I hated that they are sick and I couldn't do anything for them. I hated that there are about 20 other children in their age group in the home who probably have the same bug, and they're just sharing it around the way US kids do in school. But knowing how tired we were still (we got back to the hotel and took a two hour nap), and how much we needed alone time to process how everything in our life just changed, it was nice to know how well taken care of they are.

Best moment of the day: Like I said, Joe was able to get "Anna Claire" to smile a lot. The four of us had been sitting together for a photo on the floor, and I took "Anna Claire" who had started to get fussy so I could walk her around. When she realized I had taken her away from Joe, she started pitchin' a fit! I walked her back over to where he was, and she lurched backwards in my arms, reaching out to him. He gave her one of his big fingers and kissed her forehead. So there the four of us stood, Joe holding "Adeline", me holding "Anna Claire", and "Anna Claire" holding on to Joe's finger for dear life.

A family is born.

Why Giving Is Important...

2010-11-03T13:00:00.003-05:00

We received notification that we were denied a grant today. Bummer.

Want to know why? Because, as recorded on the application, we had not already received 50% of funds needed to complete the adoption. This grant agency includes funds needed for travel as the adoption's total amount.

I scratch my head and think....."They're not giving us money because...we don't have money? If we had more money...they'd give us even more money?" I know they need assurance that once they invest in our adoption, that we won't have to back out because we can't get the rest of our funding, thereby losing their investment that could have gone to a more prepared couple. I get it. But it's still hard to be turned down for something that's so important.

The GOOD news is that we can reapply with this grant agency three more times. As our financial status changes, we can update our original application and request another review. Immanuel Baptist Church of Hattiesburg, MS is taking up a love offering for us this month. The collection day is Sunday, November 14. If you have been hanging on to a gift, or just forgetting to give, or maybe hadn't made your mind up about whether you even could give or not, PLEASE send your gift by November 14. That will give us time over the Thanksgiving holidays to update our grant application for this particular agency showing them that we have raised the necessary funds that warrant their approval of our grant.

Here is what we have raised and spent so far:

Homestudy fee $1950 [paid]

Application fee $275 [paid]

Document fee $9900 [paid $9000 - still owe $900]

International fee $10,000 [owed immediately]

Agency fee $10,000 [owed at time of final trip - estimated time January]

Travel first trip $6800 [paid]

Travel second trip $5500 [owed in 8 weeks]

Travel third trip $11500 [owed in 10 weeks]

I'm already amazed at what the Lord has done for us. I know He'll come through for the rest of this journey. It's just getting to that place in the middle of the journey where things aren't coming as easily as they did at the beginning, and with it being near the holiday season, people are saving up to buy gifts for their own children. So might I suggest....

For that relative whose name you drew and who you don't know well enough to get a really thoughtful gift....because you know it has happened to all of us....how about donating the $20 or $50 you would have spent buying them a "because I had to" gift toward the adoption instead, giving them a really nice Christmas card that said,

"Because you are my family and I love you -

This year, in your honor, I donated a financial gift

to help two orphans come home to a loving family of their own.

Merry Christmas"

Because there's room in our Inn....

Counting the days.

2010-10-30T20:06:00.002-05:00

We are just days from our first visit with our babies! We have been so blessed by friends, family, and even strangers stepping into the gap for us with financial blessings and prayers. There have been a few times recently that, to quote my husband, "God has been answering our prayers like we're the only thing on His mind."

We had our doctor's visit, I've got my lessons planned for my sub, and we have made some headway on the mother-in-law bonus room. And we have our first baby shower scheduled at my husband's home church over Thanksgiving break. That's exciting. We did a little registering for gifts at Target, but I'm not sure how much we need for their stage of development. So we mostly registered for crib sheets and developmental toys. I don't know anything about bottle flow and feedings and diapers. I just know we're going to need to do it.

I'm starting to have dreams about babies and travel and adoption. Last night I was trying to adopt a little blonde headed boy ... in Honduras or Mexico? I was speaking Spanish in my dream. So I ate Taco Bell for lunch.

As far as the trip and the planning goes, we're in that stretch of the run where you know the end is a reasonable distance away, but you are just running out of steam because you expended so much energy in the excitement at the start of the race. Pray for steam. Pray for time to get everything done, and a little time to do NOTHING - because that's lacking these days. And pray for some Barnabases...Barnabi?? Sons of encouragement to come along beside us and help with some things we just can't do right now. Like....does anybody want to help me paint/make props for a musical that is going to happen about 33 hours after we get home?

For now, I'm taking advantage of one of those quiet moments, and I'm going to go back to watching (disappointing) college football (I'm an Ole Miss and Longhorns fan). The highlight of that endeavor is seeing interestingly costumed characters in the stands. What about a giant penguin suit screams "Go Sooners"?

I'm just sayin'.

Praise in the Park Update

2010-10-24T14:55:00.002-05:00

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth Saturday. We had a great time getting to meet so many folks. And a few of those were definitely Divine Appointments. Met the father of a little girl with special needs who is defying all her diagnoses and doing things they said she wouldn't be able to do. Go, baby, Go!

I also sold a shirt to a woman who was adopted at birth, and had a great story to tell about how that blessed her life, and how God blessed her parents for being obedient.

I counseled with a young lady who is excited about the day when she and her new husband begin looking into expanding their family with adoption.

And a local adoption ministry in our area set up a booth 20 feet from ours, and I got to meet a lot of adoptive parents who live just blocks from me and had great advice for traveling in Russia, traveling with a new baby, and adjusting at home.

It was a great time. So how did we do with our fund raising? We did well. We cleared a couple hundred more dollars in sales, and also got some direct donations. One of the little boys from the church took a coin jar and stood in the thoroughfare looking a LOT like Tiny Tim. He would sing "Jesus Loves Me" just a little off key really softly, then say in this precious plaintive voice - "Please give to orphans". Was he successful? Heck, he alone took in about $150.

I highly recommend working with 9 year olds if you need to do some fundraising. The kid charm factor works wonders!

The other update is - We got our travel approval. It will happen this month. How we are going to do that and put carpet in the house and complete the mother-in-law 3/4 bath upstairs...I don't know. But it will happen. All three of those things need to happen. We had to plan for some modifications to the house to prepare to bring home a child who may have some difficultly walking or crawling, and to make it easier for my in-laws to come stay and help with childcare through the end of this school year.

God is doing something awesome in our own lives but also in the lives of our friends as they see God answering their prayers. So let me keep you updated on how to pray for us.

Pray for more divine appointments - both the encouraging kind and the preparation/reality check kind - with parents and doctors in the specialty that we need. We can't post about what that is, but God knows and BOY is He listening!!!

Pray for finances specific to our travel. Russia is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive. I asked one of the parents about this yesterday. I thought our agency was padding things a little bit so we could be prepared with extra. He said, "No, it's really that expensive. You'll pay $3 for a 8oz. coke bottle."

Pray for time to complete all of the following: Writing lesson plans for about the next three weeks, just so I don't fall behind; A day Joe and I can go together to get blood panels and chest xrays done to bring with us to Russia; The house stuff; Fall festival at church; Finding a local psychologist that can administer a particular test for our paperwork and not charge us a fortune to do it; and stuff that I'm probably forgetting.

And pray for a little time to have some peace.

Another mountain moved!

2010-10-16T19:39:00.002-05:00

That's right. $14,000 worth of mountain.

How?

Well, what do you usually find between two mountains? A valley. We faced some challenges this week that really made us dig down in prayer. Those closest to us know what those challenges are, but we cannot post those things specifically on the internet at this juncture. You'll just have to wait until our babies come home.

But the good news is....They're coming home. And we are closer and closer to the goal than ever.
So where does that leave us for our expenses and fees?

We only have $10,000 more to raise, plus our travel. That's all.

We still have plenty of tshirts for sale. You will want to place your order this week, because we're hoping to sell out of everything next weekend at Praise in the Park in Lucedale.

For the time being: Pray for us. Pray for smooth travel planning. We should know about travel in the next week or two. Pray for the girls and our first meeting together. I can't wait to see them face to face for the first time. Pray that God will prepare us for all the changes and difficulty and surprises we have ahead of us. And pray for that last $10,000 to get an answer, along with our travel.

You are
loved.

Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?

2010-10-06T14:05:00.003-05:00

That was God moving one of them.

A big one.

A $10,000 one.

That much closer to the goal.

PLUS, we heard for SURE from a grant agency that will guarantee to match anything we raise between now and January, which is when we should be coming home with our children. Since it has been a while since we posted our fee schedule for this journey, here's a little refresher with how God has answered and moved to this point.

1. Document fees - $9975. Paid (almost all of it) two weeks ago, thanks to gifts and tshirt sales, and children giving us their piggy banks.....seriously.

2. Trip #1 to Russia - Estimated $5000. Still working on that. 24% there.

3. Referral acceptance - $17,000 due around the same time as Trip #1. Awarded a $10,000 loan toward that amount. 60% there.

4. Trip #2 to Russia - Estimated $8750.

5. Final payment to agency - $17,000 due around the same time as Trip #2. ----This will come from match $ and other grants to be awarded....God willing.

The tshirts will go a long way toward the travel costs. Pray that we will move the last of our inventory when we go to "Praise in the Park" in Lucedale, MS in a couple of weeks. And we hope to hear from a few other grant agencies between now and the end of the year. Some wait until December to review that year's applicants. We know we have a commitment from one particular agency to match what we raise apart form any other loan or grant.

That means YOUR GIFT will eventually be doubled. As money gets donated through ChipIn, or given to us directly, or given to the church in our name, we turn it all over to the church so there's a record in and out that we can show the "One Chance Foundation" - by author Karen Kingsbury, so they can match it for us.

For now, we're moving right along.

Little steps.

Lovely little footsteps.

Painting Class

2010-10-01T09:27:00.002-05:00

It did not disappoint. I had a blast. I have to say, though, the crowd - a few steps above me on the food chain - were still very gracious. There was a LOT of self-deprecating humor flying around the room.

Mine started before I sat down. I could not adjust my smock to go over my head. In disgust, I hung my head and said, "This is for children."

But other than that, and the fact that I kept knocking things over and had paint EVERYWHERE, I was made for this. I watched our instructor, who managed to not get a single speck of paint on her baby-pink, perfectly manicured, oval nails. Of course, she looked like a quarterback, because she had gray streaks of oil paint above and below her cheekbones. But a precious quarterback.

I will definitely be going back. Next month is "Lemon on a blue table cloth," which my husband misheard as "women on a blue table cloth". I think he may sign up with me.

Here's the end result.

Dinner table questions

2010-09-30T14:09:00.004-05:00

When my friends sit down with their daughters at dinner, they take turns going around the table and asking, "What was your favorite thing about today? What was your least favorite thing about today?"

Here are mine.

My least favorite thing about the day - so far (it is early afternoon, after all) is walking back to the house from Molly's kennel knowing it will be late tonight before I'm home to let her out to run and play around the yard. She looks at me with those big brown eyes and her ears perked up with the tiniest bit of optimism. "Maybe she'll turn around. Maybe I won't be stuck here all day." And then I go in the house, look out the back door, and she jumps to reach the latch on the gate. It breaks my heart every day. I mean - Look at this face.

My favorite thing about the day - so far - is walking back to the house this morning and SEEING MY BREATH FOR THE FIRST TIME OF THE FALL!!!! Always exciting. And I feel a little better for Molly, because if she has to stay cooped in the pen all day, at least she has BEAUTIFUL weather to do it in, plenty of toys, water, food, and holes to dig. I swear at the rate she's going, we'll be able to walk straight through to Russia.

And one final question - What am I looking forward to today? This evening, I will be going to an oil painting class with an old friend. I'm excited about the class. But I'm excited about going with Her. Everyone needs a "tell it like it is, and make it FUNNY" friend. She is mine. This is going to be hysterical. Me, her, and a bunch of amateur arteeests in a very pretentious town.

This should be an historic evening.

I'll save it for tomorrow's dinner table.

Why does this always happen to me?

2010-09-29T07:49:00.003-05:00

Just as soon as I publish something and make it headline news, the parameters change and I look like I can't make my mind up.

Yesterday, the teachers in my district were invited to a huge consignment sale. Now, normally I favor a little shop run by a friend of mine - "Banana Peel", so initially I didn't want to go. But given the scope of this mammajamma sale, I was able to find what I had been wanting. Cheap but cute matching bedding. Amy Coe pink butterflies - two complete sets. I got blankets, bumpers, crib skirts, even an accent pillow - all for $40.

I know it's not a big deal.

But it's a big deal.

The ChipIn has been changed to reflect our small second goal. It's still showing contributions that were made with the first goal of $10,000. Those will stay there until we get to the end date of this second goal - the amount of which is officially $5000 plus what was already in the till. Now, very small donations will make a bigger difference on the percent of goal reached. Just another way I want you to know how much I appreciate all you do for us.

Thanks,

TShirts and Travel

2010-09-28T11:58:00.003-05:00

They're flying out the door. I'm so excited about the feedback and support we are getting through tshirt sales. We've already had to order a second batch just to meet demand. Make sure you click the link "Loved Tees" above to view all three styles. Available in a variety of sizes and sleeve lengths. Don't see what you need available? Just email and ask for it. I had someone this week ask for royal blue shirts for her nephews because "they have the prettiest blue eyes." How do you say no to that?

The next immediate need is going to be for our travel to Russia for the first trip. We're estimating a need of about $5000 for this. If you have bonus miles, we can use them!!! Those are transferrable within airline partners. Also, if you have Marriott points, we can use those also. All of this will help bring down the cost of that first trip. I've decided to redo the ChipIn widget to show our little goals rather than the big one. When you make a small contribution, I want you to know just how BIG it is in the grand scheme of things.

Now, let's talk "Baby Bedding". While we had evacuated for Hurricane Rita in 2005 from Port Arthur, we spent a few weeks just before we came home just north of Houston in The Woodlands. There, I bought some discontinued baby bedding from PotteryBarn Kids. "Chamois Lambie". I still have it, in the package, with the tags. And now I don't know what to do. Do I try to sell it by consignment? Do I try to get something that will coordinate? Do I try to find a used matching set on Ebay? I haven't been able to make up my mind about the thing - mostly because baby bedding is so ridiculously expensive. I have bought king size sets with more pieces for less money. I think the baby bedding manufacturers and distributors prey on emotional women in a time of weakness and/or indulgence. (Uh Oh? Have I let the cat out of the bag on that one? If I'm not here tomorrow, the Capitol got me first.)

And then Friday evening, a friend said, "When you look back, you won't think - Gosh! I wish I had spent more money on matching bedding!" True....but I still haven't decided what to do. I think I'm waiting for time to force my hand.

Speaking of time....Here's where things stand, now that we have sent the contract and first payment in.

Paperwork will be translated into Russian, documents compiled, and mailed to Russia for review.
Paperwork is reviewed in Russia. Second week of October if they're quick about it. Fourth week if not.
Receive invitation to travel - about two weeks from the time the paperwork is reviewed.
Travel as soon as invitation is received.

So this means, our first trip to Russia to see our babies will possibly be as early as the end of October. More likely it will be the first or second week of November. We're going to set October 31 as the target for the $4500. If tshirt sales continue as they have been, they may account for at least half of that. Just remember - Christmas is around the corner.

In November, we will feature one final design in short and long sleeves. Help us decide on a color choice. Here are some options.

Brown w/ Pink print
Purple w/ White Print
Dark pink w/ White Print
Navy w/ White Print
Royal Blue w/White Print
Other

Post a comment with your choice. Or make two choices. We might make one in a masculine color and one in a more feminine color.

Finally.....P.S. Sorry so long winded today.....

How God is moving in all of this: I was very blessed by a young lady who took two novelty store giant baby bottles and emptied her piggy bank to fill them for us. I am daily humbled by the sources that God is using to help meet our needs, by the daughters who pray for us around their dinner table, by the mothers who are explaining to their sons the dream that God has put in our hearts. I am so very, very blessed.

Thanks to all of you. Keep up the prayers.

Dear God,

2010-09-22T14:54:00.002-05:00

How are you? I'm good. Thanks for helping my sore throat go away. Thanks for Benadryl and a good night's sleep.

Today was an okay day. I struggled with my classes, though. It's hard sometimes when I know what I want the class to look like, and they just don't get it. I thought this would be a good week, even in spite of a little cold. I give the kids direction, and then tell them they can have some freedom inside of those boundaries. And from there, things go pear-shaped.

They either limit themselves within those confines and never explore what I wanted them to in the music they're hearing, OR they forget the boundaries are there, and they create total bedlam. Why can't they see that the freedom I give them is a gift, and the boundaries I set are for their good and to help their activity make sense?

Dear God,

Is this how you feel?

...

My other life

2010-09-17T11:20:00.002-05:00

Our heads have been buried in paperwork so much as of late that I've had a hard time remembering things I used to do for fun when I had the time. I pass by a box of craft paints on the steps up to what used to be the rec room. It's now a guest bedroom for the soon to be nanna and paw paw. I used to paint. I used to make my own Christmas cards. What else did I do?... Hmm. Write music. Blog about things other than paperwork. I think I used to go running.

...HA! I just laughed so hard I snorted! I have never been a runner. I have run, but more out of a sense of "I wonder if I could make it to the mailbox without slowing down?"

Back to the point..I need some time to get back a little of myself, which for me means time for creativity. I also find that even though I have spent a lot of time praying about things we need from God, I haven't spent as much time just enjoying Him. So what is the remedy.

Well, according to Revelation 2, a letter written to the budding church of Ephesus, who had gotten really busy but had lost themselves and their passion in the process, their path back looked like this:

1. Remember. It wasn't always this way. Retrace your steps to the place where things were good.

2. Repent. At what point did things start to veer off course? That is the point of turning around, adjusting the course, giving control of the vehicle back to God.

3. Redo. Start over.

To me, this is the great attraction of the gospel of Christ versus other world religions. Other religions say "Start from where you are and work really hard to make up for your own failures. It's up to you. If you are one of the fortunate ones, you may find what you're looking for, a happy ending." Christ says, "Start from where I am, and I'll forgive your failures. It's up to me. If you are one of the unfortunate ones, I will give you what you are looking for, a new beginning."

I can't think of many situations in life that these three steps won't correct. Diet gone south? (I can relate.) Remember what you were doing when it worked. Repent - turn back to that plan. Redo those things. Bad relationship? Debt piling up? "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9

You know, I remembered something else I used to do...counsel from scripture.

Mmm.

It's good to be back.

Sneak Peek

2010-09-15T07:53:00.004-05:00

This is a sample of one tshirt design that will be available for a donation. I had them printed in short sleeve and long sleeve. This one is adult sizes only right now. I do have kids' sized designs that will be available, too.

I'm picking up an order of printed shirts on Wednesday of next week and I will get some "models" to display them.

I am also in the process of adding a page to the blog dedicated just to the tshirt sales. But right now, you can order yours by leaving your order in a comment, and paying by clicking the ChipIn widget. Just make sure that on ChipIn you leave your correct shipping address.

Print design is on the back, with the USSR hammer and sickle on the front pocket area.

Prices for this shirt are:

Long Sleeve - $26.95

Short Sleeve - $22.95

Price includes shipping. If you live in the area, you know where to find me. Buy yours directly and save the cost of shipping.

2010-09-11T08:14:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting at the PIT airport, ready to go home and relax (do laundry). We left early from the hotel, anticipating heavy traffic, a few missed turns, 30 minutes to wait in line and turn in the rental car, then a long line and thorough search going through myriad security checkpoints. The onlý thing that actually happened out of all those were the few missed turns. Blame it on the GPS!

We still made it on time to the airport. Security was not nearly what I thought it should have been today. Maybe we don't fit any kind of profile, so we didn't get the full effect of things. There were several security officials all over the place at the one main checkpoint. But we walked through rather quickly. I guess I don't have any major fears other than the usuals about flying and the cleanliness of escalator hand rails.

So what's next? Well, we got a lot of papers signed and turned in yesterday. We got an overwhelming amount of information about the adoption and court process in Russia. It is meant by design to be very intimidating and discouraging. The faint of heart need not apply. That said, if we can get our homestudy submitted by the first monthly round of reviews (Russua does 2 reviews a month) we can be traveling as early as October! After that, things will depend on holiday office closings. Russia celebrates Christmas late and long. Meaning nothing will be going on from December 30 to January 10. If we can get to court before December 15, we'll be home with children by New Years. If not, then we'll have to come home after court and make a third trip back to Russia to get girls and visas after their holiday break.

It's all about timing and money and time off from work.

Well, we're getting ready to board.

2010-09-09T20:50:00.000-05:00

I've only been speechless a couple of times in my life. Words usually come easily. But wrapping my mind around the fact that God has picked out two dear little girls for me, and that He is answering so many prayers, some of which I have been praying since I was little more than a child myself...well, as the Psalmist said, "such knowledge is too wonderful for me."

So rather than trying to give voice to the many emotions and expectations of the coming months, I will make it a practical update:

We're in Pittsburg for our interview/paper exchange with the new agency. Our social worker from MS is in Nepal and will have a meeting at the Embassy in a few hours that will determine how soon the adoptive families he is escourting can come home. Pray for favor for his meeting, because we need him home to sign off on our update and other letters to Russia. And they've already been in Nepal longer than expected. I know they're all ready to return with their new children.

We will be flying home on 9/11 which puts a knot in my stomach every now and then. But we're not flying into a major hub or over a major city, so I'm not too worried...today. Pray for traveling mercies.

We raised just over half of the first $10,000. That was in about three weeks. I don't know if you have started filling baby bottles yet, but I have been told they fit great in a cupholder, which is a convenient place to catch loose change. We'll find out the timeline for exactly when all these funds will be due and I will pass that along to our supporters and prayer warriors.

Keep us and the process in your prayers. Big day tomorrow.

NEW WEB ADDRESS

2010-09-03T09:06:00.002-05:00

If you have a bookmark for the blog...and I know you do...please update it with the new domain name. Or just click the link and save a new bookmark. The new address is www.lovelylittlefootsteps.com .

Also, check back in a few days because I will be adding a few things to it. We have some new teeshirt designs for the adoption, and I am going to try to set up a page where you can view and purchase them online through paypal.

We travel to Pittsburg to hand off our dossier paperwork in a week. We're so blessed with great friends who continue to give sacrificially to make this first leg of the journey possible. Continue to pray that God will multiply the gift like the fish and loaves so we can have everything we need. And buy your tickets now for Praise In The Park . I will be there with Tracy Lewis at her ministry booth with teeshirts for sale.

God bless.

Fundraising update: Baby Bottle Challenge

2010-09-01T22:11:00.006-05:00

The widget has changed.

Our first big push...which didn't look like much on here, but was actually better in person...has now turned in to the second big push. Don't get discouraged by the amount or the time frame. Lord knows I have spent a lot of time praying against that discouragement.

One thing that has been frustrating is the amount of detail that grant and adoption loan ministries or businesses want. I have been worn thin these past few weeks filling out tons of applications, making copies, saying the same thing a thousand different ways because everyone phrases the questions a little differently. There are only two places on the kitchen table right now to sit and eat because of the paperwork.

Worth it? No question. But whew! What a load!

One thing we have discovered is that the amount of help available isn't really equal to the amount that adoptions cost. Sometimes I feel like that's unfair. Insurance covers large amounts of a natural birth, except for some part of a deductible. Our bank, our credit union, our mortgage company don't make special offerings for adoption - which is StUpId on their part, because with the federal tax credit, they can guarantee being repaid.

Sometimes, I feel judged....mostly by myself....like I am not worthy to do this because I can't just throw the money down in cash myself. But I don't know many people who just laid all the money down in cash to have their own babies. Of the ones that had children without insurance, they still worked out a payment plan with their doctor and hospital. We don't get that option. The agencies don't grant too many waivers or finance options for this process. And depending on your country, the number of times you travel, the length of time you travel, and the number of children you are adopting, costs can vary greatly.

If you were curious, and since I have had to put this information on every form I have just filled out....Our adoption with this new agency will cost a grand total of $45,000 NOT including travel. Our travel for two trips totalling 5 weeks in country should round it out to $57,000. This is a huge hike from our previous agency. Nepal had decreased fees, shorter time in country, and one trip as opposed to two. Where does the $45,000 go? Most of it goes to the US agency for placement expenses and their administrative fees. They do include all of the paperwork, like visa applications and so forth. Those were little things that were nickel and diming us with the first agency....not in a bad way. But some of those things we have already had to pay for. This is a little like salt in the wound. $17,000 will actually go to Russia to pay their fees and make a donation to the orphanage that houses our daughters right now.

All we can do at this point is apply, apply, apply for everything that we can find. And of course we pray, pray, pray. We have been doing this all along the way, and hopefully this blog is a daily confirmation that God is answering. We will have tshirts for sale in coming weeks. I had great Nepal designs, but I'm having to tweak things a bit for our new country and referral....especially with what we know about the girls.

In the meantime, if you've already given and can't make a sacrificial gift, or if you are one of those hard hit by trying economic times, then try this for us. We call it the Baby Bottle Challenge:

Get a pack of baby bottles, and start saving your loose change. Empty your pockets, look in your couch cushions, under the floormats of your car.....and fill those bottles. Fill one for every member in your household if you can. Let your children help you. Put a couple up at your places of business for friends to fill. Statistics show the average baby bottle will hold about $20 in loose change. It will add up quickly. We will let you know of a drop off day for those bottles in coming weeks. But for now, start saving.

And pray, pray, pray.

The Great Isolation....

2010-08-31T14:02:00.003-05:00

ScottyB - You called it right!

Me and ScottyB [as opposed to Me and Bobby McGee] had a discussion Sunday night about the single greatest threat to the Great Commission.

The easy answer is - Sin: meaning the sin of believers who refuse to be obedient. But the deeper answer is why they refuse - A desire for isolation.

Jesus said "Go". An isolated heart says "Stay". Jesus said "Make disciples". The isolated heart says "Make friends, but don't get messy". Jesus said "Teach them to observe everything I have commanded you." The isolated heart says "Make suggestions that are comfortable and convenient and make people good citizens....but don't legislate morality."

It was easy for me to say - Yeah, some people do this, but not everybody. I know I get that way sometimes. But is the isolated Christian life really a universal problem?

Then today I read this:

"Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgement. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion." Prov. 18:1-2.

Ahhh. When people are isolated, they don't have any accountability. They don't have anyone to say - "I don't think that's what the Bible says."

I don't know what I'm going to do with this nugget of truth yet. I just know that it exists. And because I don't want to isolate myself and seek my own understandings and opinions, I want to put it out there and see what happens with it.

L8R

A Whole Lotta Nuthin'

2010-08-25T11:33:00.002-05:00

I understand how the amounts of that fee schedule could seem imposing to anyone looking on from the outside. I know how unlikely it seems that we will ever be able to raise that much support. Aside from the worldly wisdom of home equity loans, grants, rich relatives, and corporate gifts, we still have something in the back pocket that puts favor on our side.

Have you met my God?

He seems to incline toward creating something out of nothing.

Barren womb? Meet Isaac.

Thirsty desert wanderer? Check out this boulder-turned-water fountain!

Hungry desert wandered? Try the Kellogg's Manna-Flakes!

Impenetrable fortress? No match for the Invisible Army and the Hebrew Jazz Ensemble!

Forgot to pack a lunch? Fish -n- Chips!

Wedding reception faux pas? Try the Vintner's Reserve.

....Got the drift?

As overwhelmed as I feel sometimes at the expense of adopting, I am even more so by the expense of NOT adopting. The wars of kingdoms are often fought against children first. Look at Pharaoh's decree against Hebrew sons. Herod tried the same thing at the time of Jesus' birth. Sons of God threaten the Evil One's kingdom, and he attacks children.

I follow the blog of a family I met through the Nepal program. They were one of the few to get their referral before things shut down. Now they are raising their funds for their trip. In the most recent post, they shared a letter from a long distance family of friends who was making a huge sacrifice on their behalf. The husband had received a retirement cash-out as he was laid off and in search of a new career. The family had accumulated some debt in between the time his last job ended and that check came in. They had planned on paying off that debt with part of the money and making up their monthly deficiency with the rest. After seeing the need of their friends, the adoptive parents, they decided to take out only what they needed to make their ends meet and give the rest toward the adoption.

In their own words, the wife wrote:

M and I agree that if the option is to pay off our credit card or help you get your little boy.....we choose choice B.

We still need to hit our first milestone of $10,000 by September 1 - which is a week away! We are closer to the target than the ChipIn widget indicates, because of local gifts from church friends. But we are still a good 60% or more from the goal. This amount is due to accept our referral. Maybe you have an option A in front of you for some cash you have lying around....not that many people do these days. The family giving the gift didn't really have it lying around either. But as we established earlier, God delights in creating something out of nothing. Sometimes we fill ourselves with so much that we leave no "nothing" for Him to fill.

Well, I got a whole lotta nuthin' just waiting for Him.

The Cost of Adoption

2010-08-23T09:24:00.002-05:00

INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE GROUP

BREAKDOWN OF ADOPTION FEE SCHEDULE

Non-Refundable Agency Application Fee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $275

(Includes review of home study, interview with clients, assemble dossier documents.)

Document Preparation Fee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9,225

(Submitted upon signing agency Service Agreement. Includes review, notarization,

apostilles, translation and legalization expenses of all documents for dossier, notarization of documents by foreign country, translation and preparation of documents for American Embassy, transfer of documents to foreign country, translation, legalization and transfer of post adoption reports. Please note: This fee also includes additional costs related to processing expenses for changes to your documents (if required by Russia) during the process of your adoption.)

International Agency Expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15,000

(Submitted upon acceptance of a referral. Includes all international administrative and adoption related expenses, administrative and operational expenses of foreign program,

salaries and expenses of foreign employees, preparation of documents for court, expenses of obtaining child’s documents in foreign country (decrees, birth certificates, passport), coordination of all aspects of adoption in foreign country including invitation to travel and visa, coordination of travel for family while in foreign country, interaction with foreign officials, court, etc., interaction with American Embassy on behalf of family, including registration fee with Russian Embassy, confirmation of cable receipt, appointments for visa interview, etc., arrangements for pre-immigration physical exam.)

Agency Fee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10,000

(Submitted approximately 30 days prior to travel. Includes agency operational and administrative costs, communication with client (telephone, fax, postage, Federal Express), communication with baby homes, foreign officials and employees; overall coordination and monitoring of entire adoption process in U.S. and foreign country, educational programs and materials, arrangements for travel to and within foreign country, arrangements for drivers and translators, extensive post-adoption services, education, and information adoption and medical issues, organization of reunions for adopted children and family.)

Russian Travel Expenses - Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$11,500

Includes airfare for two roundtrips for two adults, visas for adults and children, lapfare for two infants, all Russian accommodations, translators, drivers.

Filling two empty bedrooms with brown eyed girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Priceless

This post is so you can know how to pray specifically and how to give specifically. We're asking that all donations be routed through Immanuel Baptist Church of Hattiesburg, MS. From there, we can direct it to one of a few grant agencies that will match all gifts received.

Thank you.

God Moments

2010-08-20T14:08:00.002-05:00

In times of ginormous change, like that from Nepal to Russia, doubts begin to creep in: "God, is that you?" "If this is the destination, why didn't we start out in this direction?" "Am I so ambivalent or oblivious to the will of God that I couldn't see this coming and already be prepared?"

I have had a little of these, but more than doubt, I have received confirmation upon confirmation that this is the way it was always meant to be.

Back in March of 2009, when my devotion pointed us away from fertility treatment and back toward adoption, one of the passages that day came from Psalm 121.

"I will lift my eyes unto the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth."

In my wisdom (please try to control your laughter), I thought that was a "sign" for Nepal - home of the Himalayas and Mount Everest. You can't find a higher hill than that. All along the way, this verse drove me on until I saw the help of the Lord. Every door that needed to open as we completed our homestudy was opened. Every obstacle that needed to be bound was bound. And when it looked months ago like the closing of Nepal might happen, we never once received a peace to leave the path. If we had, we would have already switched programs and missed this opportunity.

As a little, "See, I told you so" from the Lord, on Tuesday night we announced our referral to our church family. Among the well-wishers and the surrogate grandmothers who couldn't wait to see our little ones, one of our deacons handed Joe a wad of cash. When we got away from the church that night, I counted it.

$121.

God is awesome!

Russian Angel Fund is up and running!!

2010-08-19T09:20:00.000-05:00

2010-07-16T19:06:00.002-05:00

Our agency has seen a few referrals coming through in the last couple of weeks. They're excited. We're excited. And the ball just keeps on bouncing along. Now that all of the paperwork has been done for almost two months, we're just sitting here twiddling our thumbs. I wish I had waited on the bedding, now that I know we're getting one boy and one girl. Everything I see that's more cutesy girly or fun plaid for little boys, I wish I had just fought the urge to nest a little bit longer. We've started buying baby books with pictures and words, and we spend lots of time walking through the toy department in stores. But it's getting hard to contain the excitement. Time to take up a hobby.

Well, we know it won't be yardwork!

Speaking of, last weekend I helped my husband install a new blade spindle, the drive belt, and three new blades for our riding mower. The worst part of the whole thing was using a garden spade to scrape and scoop out molded, compacted grass clippings that haven't been discharging when I have mowed for the last four weeks. But other than that, it wasn't bad. I felt right proud of myself for my contribution to the job.

The weight watchers attempt is moving right along, but I still haven't added in the exercise factor yet. I am half a pound away from 15 lost. I have slowed down to a little over a pound a week, but it's a pound in the right direction. Kind of like waiting for a referral, you just get up and make decisions and live each day, knowing that it is bringing you closer to the goal. I think Christ understood the gradual nature of our becoming more like Him than WE do sometimes. He told us to daily take up our cross. He told us through Paul to forget what is behind and press on toward the goal. So, we're pressing on.

Congratulations to the waiting families who are finding out more about their new little bundles of joy. We can't wait to join you!!

And we still have kittens if anyone is interested in some strange looking, hard to capture, feral barn cats.

Steps forward

2010-07-05T09:02:00.004-05:00

I read an interesting article yesterday that gave me a lot of peace of mind. I have been praying and have had friends praying about the lack of stability of Nepal's government and the questions that some international investigations have raised about their adoption practices. The undersecretary to the Ministry for Women and Children and Social Welfare in Nepal (MWCSW) has accused the Hague secretariat who oversees international adoption protocol of working against Nepal, rather than working with them to overcome what they see as weaknesses. There was an annual meeting in the Netherlands where countries were reviewed for their practices, and Nepal was not present because they were not properly invited. Despite their absence, the committee and secretariat discussed their policies and procedures, not giving them the opportunity to hear or clear up any questions raised. According to the Hague's own procedures for how they oversee other countries' business, this should not have happened. Nepal is calling for a technical foul for several reasons.

The whole documentary that raised questions about them in the first place was filmed and shown without proper approval and oversight from their Ministry of Information and Communication. They could not speak to verify or deny any of the allegations raised in the film, or to background check any of the sources contacted in the film.
The Hague convention should not have discussed this documentary as any indication of Nepal's adoption procedures without having a representative from MWCSW present.
The Hague convention should have properly invited Nepal to the annual review or not discussed their case

In their own words:

The Ministry had nominated an official to participate in the said program, but due to not receiving a confirmation letter from the Permanent Bureau of Hague Conference on Private Internation Law, the Ministry was unable to participate in the program. The Permanent Bureau had not sent a program schedule as well, but the Ministry came to know about the schedule through Terre des hommes Foundation in Nepal.

The documentary "Paper Orphan" was in the schedule, which was prepared without legal permission of the concerned authority of Goverment of Nepal. Thus, this was illegally prepared by the Joseph Aguettant, Terre des hommes Foundation in Nepal. The documentary has presented the events of 15 years back, which does not reflect the present reality of inter country adoption of Nepal. The Ministry has reformed the old process and made new Terms and Conditions of Inter Country Adoption in 2008.

In connection with the above background, the Ministry has become very serious and started investigation in this regard.

Nepal has already signed the Hague Convention and is in the process to ratify it. Recently the Ministry has formed a High Level Committee to recommend the Goverment of Nepal to address the Hague Convention. The Committee will also suggest to review the existing law relating to inter country adoption system in Nepal.

The Ministry would like to request the Hague Secretariat, diplomatic missions and other stakeholders to work in collaboration for the best interest of the child.

There's more to this, but I'm not an expert in international law. If you want to know more, go to the PEAR website to read the article. A disclaimer, tho, PEAR shares a lot of ties with Unicef, and if you read the BaptistPress article about how Unicef set up the relief workers in Haiti to make them look like kidnappers (they've all been released and acquitted of all charges....hmmm), then you know you have to take all of their reports suspiciously. But when PEAR is reporting that Nepal wants help and wants fairness and openness in their international adoption proceedings, then it's safe to say the report is accurate.

Wait Watching

2010-06-25T15:52:00.002-05:00

Well, our dossier has been registered with the Ministry of Women and Children's Services in Nepal. It is all a matter of time until we get that most exciting phone call.

So how are we spending our time?

Well, I am unsuccessfully doing a lot of yardwork. And really upping the chance that I'll wind up with some kind of melanoma later in life. [I know I shouldn't joke about that because my church friend some seven years my junior had surgery to remove a larger section in her neck over a year ago.] Still, fat that is tan looks better than fat that is white.

Speaking of....I am four weeks in on Weight Watchers. I know I made big vows to myself last summer, but serious weight loss takes serious time and planning until it becomes your new way of living and thinking. So this was the best time. And it's working. Down 12 pounds! That's almost a sack of dog food! I had to pick one of those up at Wally World today, and it was kinda neat to think....I'm not carrying this around on my knees anymore. On the scale, 12 pounds doesn't look like a lot compared to my long range goal of 100 total pounds. But when you pick up an extra 12 or 15 pounds in the grocery store and tote it around for ten minutes trying to find the other person who walked off with the FREAKING BUGGY...sorry....well, it is a nice tactile motivation. Maybe in a couple more months, I'll have lost a Sam'sClub size bag of dog food.

The other thing we're doing is watching the WorldCup. I like soccer. I've never played, but the rules don't seem too complicated. We're watching our DVR of the USA/Algeria game that put the US in the sweet 16.

Sure, we know how it ends. But anything is a good distraction from the happy anxiety of waiting for that phone call.

Happy Summer!

Curse You, Cub Cadet!!

2010-06-15T14:46:00.003-05:00

I should avoid lawnmowers.

Today, I mowed about 3 acres. Actually, it was probably a little more than that. But before it could all begin, I had the chore of locating and making sure all four of the little shop kittens at mama's house were out of danger. There are three that look like they all walked into the same paint palette of white, orange, and grey. Then there's one that looks just like the old mama cat, grey and brown brindle. Walking up to the shop I saw a new solid orange kitten. So now there are FIVE of them. I stomped my feet, knocked around on the chassis and tried to make sure all the kittens were properly warned before I got on the mower to crank it up. I saw a streak of white and orange fly out from under it and a little tail tuck under the toolbox just as I sat down.

Okay, ready for action.

Last week, I learned that if I forget to release the parking brake, the mower will shut itself off when I take the handles out of the neutral position. This week, I vowed to not miss a step in cranking and pulling it out of the shop. I pulled the choke. I cranked.

Nothing.

Oh, yeah. It won't crank if the parking brake isn't on. Check parking brake.

The engine revved to life. I pushed the throttle forward, pushed the choke back down, and just as I reached down to release the parking brake....

Kitten number SIX!

Don't worry. This doesn't have a terrible ending. But I have to tell you that my biggest fear at that moment was having to fish out kitten giblets from the mower. The kitten was trying to figure a way to squeeze itself through the little holes where the blade height is adjusted. It was frantically swatting a little dark grey paw out at me through the openings. Of course, I immediately shut off the mower and jumped up to see if the kitten was alright. I got down on my hands and knees to see where exactly it was hiding. After a few minutes of blindly reaching around the engine and under the seat, I found a fuzzy little head, then felt not-so-fuzzy little teeth tearing into my thumb as I tried to latch on and pull it out. The kitten was still alive and hissing at me.

I found an old work glove so I could go in a little more forcefully and wrangle the kitten out of its hiding place. What I SHOULD have been worried about were not kitten teeth, but a brown recluse spider hiding in that nasty glove. I gave it a good shake first, and everything seemed fine. I went back into the hole under the seat for the kitten and got a good grasp on it, but the kitten slipped out of my hands and found its way off of the back of the mower, tucking under the same toolbox as kitten number 5.

I succeeded in pulling the mower out without incident, and finished all the mowing I had planned on. But with one error. I didn't put the push mower that I killed two Saturdays ago back into the shop. It has now been raining for two hours straight. If there was a chance to save that mower, I have just ruined it.

Me and mowers do not mix.

Movement!

2010-06-12T10:52:00.002-05:00

Our agency has had two families from last year's set of applicants matched. Whoop!

Our paperwork is in Nepal NOW!

Our social worker didn't call yesterday, which means our visa paperwork must have made it from the US office to the Embassy in Nepal.

We did find out that children are not registered in Nepal in their sibling groups. They are registered individually. This means we will still get two children, but it is more likely that they will be unrelated. And we can know for sure that we will receive one boy and one girl. Whoop Whoop!!

How to pray:

Well, since things seem to be going so well and so quickly, all things considered, pray that we are able to raise the funds in time. We have some grant agencies to work with, as well as what we are asking from friends and family. The thing about those grants is that they look to MATCH what has already come in. So the more we can raise on our own, the more available to us by grants - up to the amount that we need. The big total is $32,000. That's travel and post-entry paperwork included.

Also, pray for the Nepali government. Still rocky. The Prime Minister has promised to step down once their new constitution is voted on and ratified. None of that should affect us, but the region is a little hostile right now between political parties. Pray that there is no militant movement in Nepal from any side.

Thanks for all you do to keep lifting us up to the Father.

Obituary of a Saturday.

2010-06-05T14:42:00.002-05:00

Today, I killed a snail.

Then I found a snake, and sat on top of the tool box in the back of someone's truck while I sent 14 year old boys to kill it.

I threatened to kill the boys if they came near me with said snake.

Then we got home and I tried mowing the grass in my mom's dog pen.

Today, I killed a lawn mower.