What a Difference a Few Hours Can Make

T got a call from our adoption coordinator this afternoon to inform us that during the investigation to have K transferred to the Pastor's care, that they were able to find a birth relative that was willing to care for her. It is hard to explain the emotion, but I think, overall, I am very happy for her. She will be able to remain with birth relatives and be well taken care of. In addition, I have to believe, that had we not started this process to adopt her, the investigation to find her relatives would not have taken place and she would have been stuck in that orphanage for an extended period of time. I believe God has his hand in all this and as often as I think I am controlling the situation, he lets me know, more often than not, that he is truly in charge, and our daughter will come to us when the time is right. I had my eyes opened last week at work when I was beating my head against a wall trying and trying to get this project I was working on to move forward. When I finally took a step back, I found a fatal flaw in the engineering design that would have rendered the project pretty much useless. Try as I may to force it, God let me struggle for awhile and in the end, it was for the betterment of all that I couldn't get the project moving forward and the design will be corrected. Our daughter is out there, we just don't know her yet.

The Democratic Republic of Guatemalopia!

The word is out and we are officially in the process of becoming a family of 5! We are adopting a little girl . She is about two and a half and we are currently waiting for her to be transfered to the care of a Pastor who will foster her with his family until we can go and get her. We will be busy in the next month finishing the basement so we can move the office down there and start decorating her room. I am also having fun learing about cornrows, braids, twists, etc. It has only been about a month since we decided to move forward with a third adoption, and things are moving very fast! A bit different than our other 2 adoptions where there was more waiting than moving! We are very excited about finally having a daughter and can't wait to meet her!

How low can you go..

Ok. really how high! Its cold (not much motivation to get outside to run). Its the holidays, so you I'm grazing all the time. So just how many pounds will there be to shed once the holidays are over. Gosh I hope its less than 10! I think I'm going to be one of those millions of folks that will have exercise and weight loss as a new years goal.

The Rules

The boys and I spent a nice weekend together while papa was down in Texas at a surprise 40th birthday party. We had a great time at Spanish class yesterday, playing in the snow and fun at a Christmas party with our Guatemala play group. I imagined with Papa, the enforcer gone, the boys would try to push the limits with me so I was a bit shocked when I caught them playing on the stairs yeterday:

Mama to E1 "Boys...What's rule number one???"
E1 to Mama "Always listen to mama????"
Mama (in a bit of shock at the response) to E1 "Ahhh...that's pretty good E, but I was thinking of the rule about not playing on the stairs!"

With the exception of E2 breaking his fall onto the ceramic tile with his face yesterday (tooth into lip, blood everywhere) and a large scratch on his nose from WWF smackdown with his new 4 year old girlfriend, we are all in one piece...so far! and the cats, dog and fish have all been feed as well and medicine given and the house is still in some semblance of order, I even learned how to use a beader on Friday....I know, I can't believe it either!

The Will of God, the Will of Me and the Intercessors

My goodness, that is a mouthful! There seems to be a theme in my life in the past few weeks with various friend and associates who are trying to follow the path that God has laid out for them but are getting tangled up in the will they have for their own lives. To add to the challenge, a good friend gave me a reading last week about the role of the intercessor. It goes on to describe Agabus, who received word from God that Paul would be beaten if he went to Jerusalem to proclaim the word of God. Agabus assumed this meant that Paul was not to go to Jerusalem, but here comes the "Ahhhh Haaaa" moment, Agabus was an intercessor not a leader, God calls intercessors to the role of seeing, but calls leaders to the role of interpreting actions. Paul knew that God meant for him to go and proclaim his word in Jerusalem knowing he would be beaten. It is confirmed in Acts where Jesus comments "Take Courage! As you have testified about Me in Jerusalem, you must also testify in Rome". Beyond the often difficult time many of us have discerning God's will in our life is the added challenge that input we may receive from the people we contact may be in the form of an intercessor as opposed to a leader. While we need the information to create a complete picture of the situation, we have to discern how this information will help us to know the actions that are necessary to fulfill Gods will for our lives. While I can comprehend in my head and try as I may to understand that God has a plan for all of us, I struggle with being patient and allowing that will to manifest itself, especially when I see the pain my friends are going through when a situation seems to remain stagnant and unresolved which just seems to prolong the hurt.

All Things Guatemalopia

We are so blessed that the Ethiopian community in Chicago is so supportive of us as adoptive parents that they put together a wonderful string of cultural classes for us adoptive parents and kids, but I start to get concerned when our little Guatemalteco starts telling everyone he is from Ethiopia! That being said, we were so excited when we heard that the Guatemalan adoptive parents group had combined forces with Casa Guatemala to put on a Christmas party at Mayan Essance, the fair trade store in Chicago, complete with homemade Guatemalan food that was fantastic, a Mayan prayer and a performacne by Marimba Ixchel. Even though it was so packed that you could barely move, the food was out of this WORLD! There were so many things I had never tried before and would really like to learn how to make. E1 and E2 cut a rug to the marimba music to the delight of everyone around us. It was a wonderful afternoon and we so look forward to some combined Guatemalan Community and Adoptive Parent get togethers in the future!

Its just one of those things..

You get a commercial jingle stuck in your head. Maybe something your heard on the radio, on the mp3 players. Sometimes its just flat out annoying that you can't seem to get it out of your head.

As I listen to the local Holiday station, I'm just mesmerized by that Trans-Siberian Orchestra song, "Christmas Canon". I don't normally post about the same thing so close together, but as I'm working tonight, its on the radio again. My head just fills with such a variety of things. I would say Good, Bad, and others but that's just not quite accurate.

I would like to leave something deeply profound about the topic, but I'll just say this. Lately when I hear that song, I'm just filled with hope, but also regret over my own personal missed opportunities to effect change, but also thanksgiving at being healthy and having more time and inevitably more opportunities to bring about change. Hmm.. sounds like "Christmas Story" like... not really intended though..

This night, we pray
Our Lives, will show
This dream, he had
Each child, still knows

Peace

In Katie's Words

"We have had one of those really great days when I can't stop praising Jesus for this life. The girls are on holiday from school (thank goodness because almost all of them have had the chicken pox!). Today I managed to clip all of their 140 fingernails and 140 toenails, file them and paint them. On a quick trip to the pharmacy I found surgical gloves almost small enough to fit my child-sized hands. During nap time I got to sneak in a long, quiet run. Chocolate chip cookies are in the oven. I feel so full and so very blessed.

But as I sit down, content, something is weighs heavy on my heart. Something that I have been milling over for some time, unwilling to write about it because my words seem too inadequate to describe the ache I feel. However, I know that this is urgent. An emergency. And as adequate as my words may be, maybe I should at least try.

It started a few months ago when my great friends Mike and Suzanne were here to adopt their daughter. In finding out she had HIV, they were obviously broken. Mike made a statement that stirred something within me. He said, "I guess you know that children are out there suffering. You know that children are sick, this sick. But it is different when it is your child. It's just different." And it is. I don't mean this blog to criticize you in any way, Mike, because what you said was true for me too. It is different when it is my child. I spend countless nights awake with dying, or at least critically sick, children. I love them and I cuddle them. I sponge bath them and give them their medicine and wipe up their vomit. I hold them and pray over them and tell them how special they are and how Jesus loves them. My heart really does hurt for them. But it doesn't hurt the way it hurts when I think one of my own children is close to death. It doesn't hurt the way it does when Sumini's fever just won't go down or when Patricia is up all night coughing with her third case of pneumonia in three months. It doesn't hurt the way it does when Margaret's teeth run into Agnes's eyebrow and I can see her bone, and then watch in terror as the doctor stitches it up WITHOUT anesthetic. Somehow, when it is my children, there is a bit more urgency, a bit more panic. There is a bit more frustration at the lack of medical care we can receive here and a bit more google searching of what to do. I am not saying that I am proud of this. I am just letting you know that it isn't just you I have held several children as they died of inadequate medical care. It was horrible and I grieve and cried, but I promise you that I wasn't as devastated as I would have been had it been one of my daughters. Its ugly, but its true.

Its just different when its your child who's suffering. But should it be? This is what I have been struggling with. I believe that this is a normal human reaction. I also believe it is WRONG. I believe that each human on the planet is God's child, perfectly made and beloved and cherished by Him. I believe that His heart hurts like mine does, even more than mine does, when my baby is hurting for EACH and every one of the hurting, dying, starving, crying children in our world at this moment. So I HAVE to believe that if my heart was truly seeking to be aligned with the heart of God, that I would have to hurt for each of these children as well. But sometimes, I forget. Sometimes I'm busy. Sometimes hurting for my very own children just feels like enough. I believe that the world says that this is ok. And I believe it is wrong. And this keeps me up at night.

Angelina is seven years old and barely weighs 15 pounds. You remember that picture that was made popular in the 1980's during the famine in Ethiopia of that little girl (who looked like a bag of bones) curled up next to a vulture? That girl doesn't look nearly as sick as Angelina. Her mother has not had any food to give her in over four months. When Angelina musters enough energy to let out a cry of hunger (she is far to weak to walk or even hold her head up on her own), her mother gives her some locally brewed alcohol to keep her quiet. For four months, keeping her a little drunk has actually probably been what is keeping her alive. The dirt floor where she has been laying her whole life accumulating bedsores is covered in waste, animal and human. Jiggers burrow deep into her little feet causing them to crack and bleed. She is naked, filthy, and cold. It is far worse than appalling.

I bet right now at this moment your heart is sad for her. Is it as sad as it would be if Angelina were your daughter? Angelina is God's daughter. His heart aches for this perfect, wonderfully made child of His. Her circumstances do not surprise Him, but I have no doubt that they grieve Him tremendously.

And it's not just children, because we are all children in His eyes. Grace is maybe 60 years old but looks to be pushing 100. She can't weigh more than 85 pounds. Grace is a mother to six children, but 4 have died of AIDS and the other two have deserted her for a better life. She lives in a 4 by 4 foot room that is pitch black, but she doesn't mind; in addition to being to weak to walk, Grace is blind. She NEVER has any visitors. At night her bones ache against the hard dirt floor and her feeble body shivers with cold. A cough racks her body and her stomach rumbles in hunger making sleep impossible.

Its sad, huh? How sad though? Sad enough that we want to do sometime about it? Sad enough that we will remember Grace tonight as we snuggle down into our beds or next month as we pay the bills? Maybe. But maybe not. Because it hurts, but it doesn't hurt that much. It doesn't hurt the way it would if Grace was your grandmother all alone there in the dark. It does for God. Because Grace is His.

As I snuggle both these sweet girls, as I kiss their cheeks, as I spoon Pediasure into Angelina's little mouth or watch Grace rejoice over the gift of a scraggly old blanket, I allow the tears to fall. The tears that hurt for these people as if they were my family. Because they are my family. And it SHOULD hurt. It shouldn't be different. I desire for it to never again be different.

We are the body of Christ. But do we know what that means? Do we long for our brothers and sisters to be comfortable and fed and well? Do we long for it enough that we are uncomfortable under our blankets at night or eating our pancakes in the morning? Do we feel the hurt that God feels as He watches the body of Christ sit back and allow these precious children of his to perish? Maybe sometimes. But sometimes, we are too busy, or we forget, or hurting for our own children is enough. We are the body of Christ. We need to hurt. We need to react. Their needs to be the same urgency and panic and frustration and desperation as if these were our own children. They are God's children.

Heavenly Father,
Thank you for Angelina. Thank you for Grace. Thank you for creating them perfectly in your image, your precious, beloved children. Thank you for your beautiful plan for their lives and thank you for bringing them into mine. Thank you that they are YOURS. Help me to hurt. Not just a little, but the way you hurt when your children are overlooked and perishing. me to never be too busy or too comfortable to remember the people who suffer. Help me to never stop desiring to do something about it. Lord help us to remember that as the body of Christ, this is our responsibility. Thank you for loving us, even when we forget. I never, never want to forget again."

If you are not following Katie's blog, I invite you to start. She is an amazing woman. http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/

Do you see what I see...

A light.. A light.. shinning (not yet) so bright..

I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It will only be a short duration until the next tunnel, but I think I might catch a break on having to "work" over my use it or lose it vacation in the next couple of weeks. Yeah! Maybe I can restart up the work on the basement. Get those bunk beds for E1 and E2 built. Maybe I could catch up on tv. Oh oh OH!!! I know.. I could sleep. I have forgotten what that is like....

A new Classic?

This night, we pray
Our Lives, will show
This dream, he had
Each child, still knows

Amen to that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cP26ndrmtg