Owlhaven » Adoption

Adoption: Our older girls (part 3)

Owlhaven — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:43:34 +0000

On May 15th, 2007, our dossier left for Ethiopia. The next thing we were waiting for was the news that our case had been submitted to the Ethiopian courts. As we waited we were anxious to let our girls get a glimpse of our lives, and to visualize themselves here. So one of the things we did was print off a big picture of them, and then took pictures of our other kids holding the picture in various places around our house.

We had a great time making the pictures, and I think it helped all of us feel closer to each other during the waiting. We were also fortunate to get pictures of the girls from other traveling families. We treasured every scrap of contact that we got. And I think they did too. Here the girls are holding things that we sent them.

In early June we got the wonderful news that our case had been submitted to Ethiopian court. Our court date was June 29th. There are times when cases have to be submitted to court several times, so we were not 100% certain that the girls would be ours after that point. And there was still the little niggling fear that the courts would refuse us, and say a smaller, richer family would be better for the girls. But we just had to wait on God at that point. He’d already opened so many doors with this adoption. We knew that He could open this one as well.

At the end of June we got the wonderful news that our case had passed court and the girls were legally ours. Another week or two of waiting, and we also had a travel date. We’d be leaving to get the girls at the end of July. Now we had to figure out who was going. I’d been to Ethiopia twice already, once with Erika and once with Jared, for our other daughters’ adoptions. But my husband had never been to Ethiopia.

We really wanted for him to be able to go this time, especially since it seemed that with older kids, the more parental involvement in the whole process, the better. Problem was, our youngest daughters were only 2 and 5, and we just didn’t feel good about leaving both of them for more than a week. Finally after going round and round discussing every possibility, we decided that both John and I would travel, and bring our little girls with us. So, 2 kids on a 30 hour trip TO Ethiopia, and FOUR kids on the way back.

It was going to be an adventure.

Together for Adoption

Owlhaven — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:23:58 +0000

I’m sooo excited to be attending the Together for Adoption conference! It’s Sept 30-Oct 2nd in Austin, TX. Are you going? Are you thinking about going? If you live anywhere near Austin, please do–I’d love to meet you there! Turning in your registration before Sept 1st will get you the lower early bird registration rate. To give you more of an idea of what the conference is about, here are the conference ‘tracks’:

Your church and the orphan (how to launch an orphan ministry in your church)
Church-centered international orphan care (how the church can meet the needs of orphans around the world)
Post adoption (Karen Purvis, author of The Connected Child will be talking about attachment, a hugely important adoption issue)
Missional communities and orphan care (church planting, meeting inner city orphan needs)
Orphan care and pre-adoption issues ( for those considering adoption or supporting adoptive families)
College students and the orphan (advocating for orphans on your college campus)
The arts, media, and advocating for the orphan (how photography, music, and writing can be a voice for orphans)
Foster Care (offering foster care, supporting foster families)
Adoption 101 (how to adopt, how to afford it)

And here’s a sampling of some of the actual break-out sessions. You can attend all the sessions in one track, or you can pick and choose sessions that interest you within any of the tracks. I am also attending the pre-conference workshop with Karen Purvis. I’ve read her book and really liked it, so I am looking forward to hearing her speak.

Funny thing: as I was writing this post, my 5 year old came wailing into the house to show me her owie, and I was freshly reminded what a miracle adoption is. Yes, our decision to adopt her met the needs of one orphan. But adoption isn’t really about activism, it’s about family. She’s my daughter. A treasured, precious member of my family. And I can’t even describe what a gift that is.

Back to the conference: I’ll be live-blogging about the event and sharing it with people who aren’t able to attend. There will also be a featured blogger meetup session, so if you are coming, you and I really will have an opportunity to meet.

I’d love to hear from you if you’re coming. Just for fun, I’m also including a linky in this post. If you’re going, will you plug in your blog address? That way we can see who’s going and visit each other ahead of time! If you don’t have a blog, just comment, OK?

Adoption: Our older girls (part 2)

Owlhaven — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 07:40:17 +0000

Our older girls (part 1)

Although John and I were in immediate agreement when considering adopting these 9 and 11 year old girls, the journey had its share of obstacles. Money, amazingly, was not one of them. Between a tax refund and the sale of my first book, God had that covered.

The first big question was whether or not a social worker would approve our moderate home and our moderate income for two more children. At that point we had 5 bedrooms. Since then we’ve added another bedroom. But our initial plan was to have the new girls share a room with their almost-5-year-old sister. The 2-year-old was still sleeping with us at the time. We figured that when the time came, we’d add more bunk beds and put all 4 girls in one room. Question was, would a social worker see that as reasonable? Adding to our concern was the fact that we were going to need to switch homestudy agencies, and get a social worker we’d never worked with.

Next concern: we knew that at least one other family was interested in adopting ‘our’ girls. We’d need to get our paperwork done first if we wanted to be given first consideration of the girls. Our old homestudy agency had been fabulous about doing rapid homestudies. All four of our previous homestudies had been completed in 2-4 weeks, which is practically unheard of in adoption circles. We had no idea if this new agency could get our homestudy done quickly.

Final, biggest, hugest concern: the Ethiopian government was becoming unhappy with large families adopting multiple children. The rule was on the brink of being changed, and we didn’t know if we could get our fingerprints and homestudy and all the other portions of our dossier done in time to be approved under the old laws. But we did know one thing: God was in charge, and He’d already opened crucial doors by blessing us with agreement and money.

And so in April, as soon as we got some basic information from our agency about the girls, we hit the ground running with adoption paperwork. Anyone who’s put together a dossier for an international adoption knows what a daunting prospect it is. Fingerprints and references and doctor’s letters and financial statements, and on and on, all needing to be properly stamped by notaries, the whole thing full of nitpicky details. We jumped into it all, feet first.

We were hoping against hope that our new homestudy agency would be first of all, willing to approve us as an adoptive family, and second, be able to pull together a good homestudy quickly. The answer was a yes on both accounts. We got a wonderful social worker who understood our family, appreciated our strengths, and blessed us with her approval of our dreams. And then she plowed right into the writing of the study. She was so quick and efficient that by early May we had all of our paperwork pulled together, ready to submit to the agency.

We later found out that our paperwork arrived at the agency literally a couple days before the Ethiopian law was changed. If we’d gotten things pulled together even a week later, we would not have been allowed to move forward. But because our paperwork was already complete, our agency was able to count us as an already-in-process family. And we were approved to adopt the girls.

Traveling families blessed us with more pictures of the girls. We sent pictures of our own to them. I was touched to get letters from them as well, one containing a sweet beaded necklace from the older of our new daughters. Always in previous adoptions we’d been expecting babies or toddlers, children too young to understand the way that their life was about to change. But here we were, with these precious kids on the other side of the world, waiting for us, wondering about us just as much as we were wondering about them.

Adoption: Our older girls (part one)

Owlhaven — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:24:17 +0000

People ask now and then about our adoption stories, and I always refer them to the ‘Adoption’ category/tab at the top of the blog. Not too long ago I skimmed through the category myself and realized that although I blogged some about our 12 and 14 year old daughters’ adoption as it was in process, I never really wrote a whole coherent account. So here ya go.
————
Spring break, 2007. We were vacationing on the Oregon coast. One lazy afternoon I was doing a little blog-hopping, and visited the blog of a family who was then in Ethiopia to adopt a couple of kids. On the blog the dad shared a whole gallery of pictures of kids he’d met while he was there.

At that point John and I weren’t really talking about adopting again. We had 8 kids at that point, including 4 adopted, the youngest of whom was only 2 years old. But the pictures of those kids stopped me mid-click. There were a couple of adorable little girls, but one older girl’s picture literally left me with a catch in my throat. Her face looked familiar to me, almost like I was looking at my own child.

I emailed the friend about all three of the girls. Turned out that the two little ones already had families, but the older one didn’t, and she also had a younger sister, also pictured in that web post. My blog friend told me that the sisters were just delightful, that he’d been very impressed with them. In fact, he wished he and his wife could adopt them. But they were already in the midst of adopting two other children.

I brought my computer to John, heart moved, but also totally expecting him to tell me I was nuts for even thinking about adopting again. And I was honestly OK with that possibility. Instead he looked at their pictures, and read the description that my friend had written, and looked at the pictures again. “I wonder what their story is,” he said thoughtfully.

And we began to talk. And talk. With interest. With curiosity. With some caution. But also with a breathtaking amount of peace. Within a day or two, implausibly, amazingly, we’d decided to email the agency and find out more about the girls.

John and I have a great marriage, but we are both hard-headed, independent firstborns. We often reach agreement after an initial time of disagreement. Deciding to adopt our first son in 1998 was the most difficult decision we ever made as a couple. The 2007 adoption discussion was the polar opposite. The peaceful unity we felt immediately, and in the months that followed, was the most amazing thing we’d experienced in our whole marriage. It truly was the peace that passes understanding. I can only think it was God on the move in both our hearts.

(To be continued)

Wanna meet up?

Owlhaven — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:57:46 +0000

Just got done booking a plane ticket and I’m all excited. I’ve been invited to attend the TOGETHER FOR ADOPTION conference September 30th thru October 2nd in Austin, TX. Read here if you want to know more about the vision for this conference, but one big goal is to equip and inspire the church to better meet the needs of orphans. Some of the sessions will be led by Karyn Purvis, the author of The Connected Child, a dynamite book on attachment in adoption. I’m looking forward to hearing her speak.

My job at the conference will be to live-blog the sessions that I attend, to let y’all in on the message as it unfolds, whether you can actually make it to the conference or not. There will be blogger meet-up sessions, to give people a chance to meet the entire Featured Blogger Team. So if you live in or near the great state of Texas and plan to attend the conference, come on over and say hi. You can bet I’ll be thrilled to see you in person!

Sunday

Owlhaven — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:42:19 +0000

Something here is wrong
There are children without homes
But we just move along to take care of our own
There’s so much suffering just outside our door
A cry so deafening
We just can’t ignore

To all the people who are fighting for the broken
All the people who keep holding on to love
All the people who are reaching for the lonely
Keep changing the world

Take a look around
Before the sun goes out
What’s lost can still be found
It’s not too late now
It only takes one spark to make the fire burn
So reach inside your heart and let this be the start

Chorus

I know you see the suffering
How they gone recover when people just look over like they don’t even notice them
Everyone whose focusing on ending all this hopelessness
You can change the world by changing who the world is hoping in

I see the sun coming up
It’s a brighter day
Let’s show the world that love is a better way
So lend a hand join the fight
‘Cause time is ticking away
Keep changing the world

I see you changing the world
Step up!

adoption and faith

Owlhaven — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:18:00 +0000

Whether your heart yearns to adopt, or your heart is being torn by the challenges of adoption, this video is worth watching. I’ve listened to it twice in the past month and found it comforting, challenging, and heartening.

Homes of the broken

Owlhaven — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:21:58 +0000

Dark auditorium, crowded with people rocking out to a Christian rock concert. I’m next to my husband and we’re surrounded by most of our children. Leeland begins singing ‘Follow You’. I love the song. It speaks of gratitude and dedication, and it always reminds me of how much I want to serve, to be used by God in a big way to meet needs around me.

But tonight a familiar phrase in the song twists and jabs my heart in a new way. “Follow you into the homes of the broken” says the song. A cold shard of truth pierces me through.

Broken. I don’t have to go anywhere to find people who have experienced brokenness. They’re here in my own home.

A certain amount of brokenness comes with any adoption. New adoptive parents sometimes deny that truth. We picture ourselves as problem-solvers, bringing kids out of brokenness into a place of healing and stability. That is partially true. But the things that cause kids to need new families are scarring, wounding, heart-breaking things. Even kids adopted as infants will eventually have hard questions, pain that lingers despite our most loving affirmation.

When adopting older kids, the questions are harder, the pain fresher. My words are puny, powerless to diminish the loss my precious children faced before they came to me. In fact my very presence reminds them of the ‘real’ mother they can no longer have. The one they really want. The hurt isn’t their fault or mine. But there are days when the ache of it feels insurmountable. Where shards of brokenness rattle no matter where I step in my home. I can’t fix it for them, no matter how hard I try. I have no idea if my mothering will be tagged as success or failure 10 or 20 years from now.

But as I write this post, I realized that adoption doesn’t define all of the brokenness in my home. Brokenness resides in every heart– in every home –to varying degrees. We are all imperfect people, and not one of us gets through life without scars. The people ministering to the wounded are sometimes almost as scarred as the ones being ministered to.

And yet God says our fragility is somehow all a part of His plan, and that He will sustain us, even in our brokenness. And here’s the really wonderful thing about having my eyes opened, about clearly seeing the brokenness around me, and of realizing that I can’t fix it on my own.

It gets me right where I should have been in the first place. Leaning on an all-powerful God who has the power to fix what I can’t, in myself and in my loved ones. The God in whom resides eternal hope, limitless power, and perfect healing.

^{2 Corinthians 4}“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Hope. Yes. It is there. In HIM. And so we carry on.

Shades of grey

Owlhaven — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:33:50 +0000

When you go into adoption, you tend to do it with best intentions. Such clear goals.

We want another child.

How great it will be to help a kid who needs a family.

For many people it’s exactly that simple. At first.

And really, there’s nothing wrong with that clarity of focus. It makes it easier to take the next step, to move forward to bring a young stranger into your circle.

But the deeper you get into adoption, the longer you are an adoptive family, the more you understand how truly complicated adoption is. How other’s losses are inescapably entwined with your own family’s gain.

Today my Ethiopian daughters and I went thrift-store shopping for Easter dresses. Did quite well, considering I was shopping with girls ages 14, 12, 7, and 5. We came away with dresses they didn’t hate. (Take my word for it: when you have kids who prefer jeans and t-shirts, ‘not-hating’ a dress is a major win.)

On the way home from the shopping trip, a song came on the Christian radio station and my 14 year old started singing along. Three years ago she’d never heard this song. Three years ago she was in Ethiopia, living at a children’s house where evening worship was syncopated with energetic drumming done on a wooden cupboard at the back of the room. I have pictures of her and her sister and her friends lined up, pounding intricate rhythms, all in a row, smiling with the joy of it.

Since witnessing that ebullience, I’ve thought many times that worship at our quiet Lutheran church must seem staid and dull, after the raucous enthusiasm with which she worshipped when younger. I think she’s used to it now. She sings along, participates, even seems to enjoy various songs.

And yet I can’t shake the picture of that girl, that daughter now mine, in the land of her birth, surrounded by friends, singing and drumming in the center of the action. I know that there are advantages to her new life in America. Flush toilets and better education and medical care and a mom and a dad….those are just a few benefits that spring to my mind.

But I mourn the fact that she had to say goodbye to her old life to have this new one.

I’ll never forget that girl on the drum.

And you know what? I don’t want to.

Talking adoption, food and family

Owlhaven — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:35:41 +0000

I’m being a chicken. On Thursday I was interviewed by Mary Byers on Tricia Goyer’s show Living Inspired. I talked — no, I ran at the mouth– for 54 minutes!– about adoption, food, and family. Friday they put up the link to my show — it’s at the top of her right-hand sidebar, the March 18th show.

At least half a dozen times since then I’ve ever-so-casually wandered over there, looked at the little button, hovered over it, almost clicked to listen— and then decided not to subject myself to the pain of listening to myself talking. What if it is terrible? I just don’t want to know.

So here’s the link to the website. And the link to the itunes download. Listen if you want.

Live long and prosper.

The end.