The Waiting Game

As many of you know, and for those of you who don’t, our adoption of Isaac has been put on an indefinite hold. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but it goes a little something like this: the court system in which Isaac’s adoption will be finalized has little experience with international adoption, delaying our initial court date… which is why we were unable to leave for South Africa this past Friday like we had planned.

It’s been a weird two weeks – swaying between feelings of hopelessness, confusion, anger, loneliness, and strangely enough, peace.

Hopeless because there is absolutely nothing we can do about the situation except to pray. And while I believe in the power of prayer, there is a part of me – a BIG part of me - that wishes I had more control. If only there was someone I could call to rectify everything or maybe even paperwork to fill out (Lord knows another document would be the least of our concerns – we’ve mastered the art of proper documentation).

Confusion because our feeble human minds can’t wrap around the fact that we are stuck with one foot out of the door. Why can’t the court process this faster? Why can’t they understand the urgency in getting him home? Why is God making us wait? Why, why, why? All of the confusion leads to bouts of anger – and I’m not sure at exactly who or what.

Loneliness. After 3 empty and barren years, another call to “wait” is painful. We enjoyed those years with each other, our family, and our friends. But there was still a part of me that yearned and ached for my “own” family to begin. Once our adoption process started, the loneliness lifted. But now, with a bedroom fully finished, strollers in the living room, and toys abounding, loneliness has started to creep in again. With no Isaac to sleep in his crib, no Isaac to push in a stroller on a walk, and no Isaac to scatter toys everywhere – it just seems unfair.

But I know that life isn’t about fairness, nor is it only about me and what I think is best. Life doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t work that way. I think Rick Warren says it best: “I don’t have to know why everything happens since I know God is good, He loves me, and life on earth is not the whole story.”

Despite all of the earthly reasons why we should be mad with God and at unrest with His will – we have peace. Though there are days when it seems the darkness will not lift, my heart is assured that God is always good – He is there with me in the sunlight and He is with me in the shadows – He has never failed me. He loves me, He loves Craig, and He loves Isaac. The One who created us will surely take care of us. We take comfort in the knowledge that God will allow us to meet at the right time. And as sad as today is, the day we were supposed to meet our son for the first time, I rejoice in the fact that one day I will forever get to call this child mine.

love to the unloved

A big happy hello to everyone out in internet land! We have recently started a tee-shirt fundraiser to raise support for our travel expenses to/from and in South Africa (it's crazy to think that we have to live there for 6 weeks, but that is another story). The message is simple and quick to the point:

https://www.bonfirefunds.com/fund/craig-and-erins-adoption-fund


Show Love. Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? But in a world where it is now almost virtually impossible to see ‘good’ in the news – it’s pretty hard to believe that it can be that simple. But it is. I promise. It may not always feel easy, but it is pretty darn simple when you get down to it. Loving someone doesn’t require you to dote on them all the time. It doesn’t mean you have to buy things in order to gain their affection. Sometimes loving another individual is easy – you love them and want to show them how much you care for them. Appreciate them. Need them.


But other times – and you know you’ve been there… or are there… - it is hard. And sometimes it feels impossible. But love often times requires you to do the impossible. And sometimes that ‘impossible’ is the person you need to show love to.


Corrie ten Boom, a Christian Holocaust survivor, wrote in The Hiding Place:

                “And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.”

So in a world where tragic events unfold and lives are lost to hate, be that light that shows others that there is still love. There is still promise. And there is still hope. And hope does not disappoint.

a look inside our life

As so many of you know, we began our adoption journey this past June. We celebrated my (Erin) 25^th birthday in July, rejoicing with our family and close friends in the news that we had been accepted into Bethany Christian Service’s International Adoption Program in Ethiopia. That acceptance was only the beginning (duh!) of a very crazy, timely, costly, and exciting journey to our little boy.

That’s right. I said it.

Little boy.

Our little boy.

Our little boy who lives in South Africa.

Now I know what some of you are thinking – or, if you’re like me and occasionally need a world map to help locate specific countries – South Africa is NOT Ethiopia. South Africa isn’t even close to Ethiopia on the beautiful continent of Africa. In fact, it is approximately 3,495 miles from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Johannesburg, South Africa. That’s a long way. It’s especially “far” in Africa, with the lack of quality, efficient, and safe routes to travel by.

My point being this – we are currently in the process of a “concurrent adoption.” Now I’ve tried my best to define this in the simplest of terms and the lovely world wide web hasn’t given me much help. But I will do my best to explain what it is and how we have arrived to where we are.

A concurrent adoption(s) is when a family is en route to adopting children from two separate countries. In our case, we are currently on the wait list for a child(or 2) from Ethiopia, and are proceeding in an adoption of a little boy from South Africa. Most families (who are few and far between) arrive at a concurrent adoption in their personal journey because the wait in one country is projected to be very long. We did not proceed with our adoptions because of the wait in Ethiopia. We chose to concurrently adopt because of one reason…

Him. Our little boy.

The journey that brought us to him is what many people would call crazy. I call it love… we could probably call it crazy love. Because that’s what it is. That is how we feel. We have fallen crazy in love with this little boy. And at some point, we just knew. That’s him! He is ours!

Our journey to him has been an interesting one. And I am prepared to tell you… because I think it’s pretty cool. And crazy.

A few months ago, I noticed an absolutely adorable little boy on Bethany’s Waiting Child list (a list of kids who haven’t been matched with a forever family – usually because of physical and developmental disabilities or because they are an older child). I mean seriously, he was (and is) so stinkin’ cute! At the time, December-ish, I told Craig, “If that little bugger is still on there in 2 years, we are bringing him home!” Craig agreed that if he was still on the waiting list after we brought our child(ren) home from Ethiopia, we would definitely bring him into our growing little family.

Fast forward four months to March. We’ve finished all of our paperwork for Ethiopia and are officially on the waiting list for a referral. We still regularly check the waiting child list, but for some reason in the beginning of March, I could not get over the fact that he was still on this list! How could someone not go crazy over this little schmunchkin! I started to lovingly joke around with Craig and tell him that this boy was ours and we were going to get him first somehow. He would be our “first-born” or “first-home” child. I wasn’t really joking. And Craig was taking me pretty seriously. We began to pray about it and discuss it – this tiny tot encompassed most of, if not all of, my spare thought.

One day, I just knew. I was absolutely convinced. God made it so very clear to me. Even more so the weekend of our adoption party that our best friends threw for us to celebrate how far we had come in our journey. A very good friend of ours gave us a LeapPad as a gift… this is what it looks like:

Sunday morning, the day after our party, our pastor at HVC preached from the book of Matthew, and Craig watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_Lax4zFFoA

Craig told me he had never been so sure of something in his life. That we were going to adopt that little cute, funny, adorable boy who we saw on the waiting list so many months ago. That he no longer had any fears about his future long-term care and no worries about how our other future children would love him.

A few days later, a good friend from work told me that she remembered a mistake in our home study way back in October:

That picture of the LeapPad, that sermon, that video, and that ‘mistake’ all point to him (and Him).

You see, our son’s name on the waiting list was Matthew**. And Matthew has Down Syndrome.

**Matthew is his ‘pseudo-name’ for protection, the name we knew him by, but not his actual name**

We are currently working on completing our paperwork for South Africa – the faster we finish, the faster we can bring him home to us. And bring us to him.