Morning Sickness? Bring it on.

Morning sickness.  Blah!  Bet you never expected to see that topic addressed in an adoption blog, did you?  But here it is, large as life and just as frustrating.  For those who have been pregnant and experienced the joys of morning sickness, you know exactly what I mean.  That sick, pit-like feeling in your low belly that just makes you want to curl up and sleeping for the rest of your baby's gestational months.  That feeling you get when you smell something odd or taste something awful and you can't get to the bathroom or kitchen sink fast enough.  For me, with Sophie, it was any form of no-longer-cold milk - I simply couldn't go anywhere near it for about three months.  With Ellie I was spitting into a bottle for the first five months of my pregnancy and sucking on peppermints for the other four.  I mean, honestly, it is a miracle the sweet thing wasn't born with pink and white stripes on her skin things were so bad.  And I will tell you what, this past weekend I had all those same old feelings - well all but the spitting, thank goodness!

Here's where it started... You know that lesson that we try so hard to instill in our children, the one where we try to convince them the world does not actually revolve around them?  That it is "not all about you"?  Well, a few days ago I was rudely reminded that when it comes to this whole fund-raising/adoption thing it really is all about me.  Not me per se, but our family, our journey, our goals, our priorities.  Not that others aren't interested or willing to help, but they definitely aren't as fixated on the situation as we are and definitely don't spend every waking hour wondering about and praying for how things will turn out.  And that my friends, is what I was so vividly reminded of, in the same subtle way one might be clubbed over the head in a mugging mind you.  And yes, it left me feeling sick.  Nauseous.  Empty.  Small.  Vulnerable. And stinging from a wound that the others involved probably never even realized they had inflicted.  But all the same it had happened and now I was suffering through it and just hoping to survive until the sick feeling abated, at least a little bit.

I spent the better part of that morning and afternoon wishing that I could simply crawl under a rock, go back to sleep and turn back the clock.  I felt awful.   I hadn't intended to be overbearing.  I had surely never meant to address our needs to the point of annoyance for others.  And I certainly did not want to feel slighted by someone else's disinterest, but this was all I could think about.  My stomach would simply not settle.  How could I apologize?  How could I set things right?  How could I make someone else see things from my point of view just long enough for them to understand the motivation behind my actions, the implications of their choices and the impact of their words.  I was hurt, yes, but more so I was focused on how I had created the situation in the first place.  And I just felt sick.  Sucker punched.  Gut wrenchingly crushed and I was left with nothing but prayer.  Simple prayer for forgiveness for my own prideful actions that caused such responses to my efforts.  Prayer that God alone knew that I had only the best of intentions and my sole motivation was what was best for Jack.  Prayer that I would do better next time.

Then, about 4 o'clock, something clicked in my brain.  Remember that lesson I mentioned earlier?  The "not all about you" one?  Yep, even at 38 it is still true.  Even I am not the center of the universe. This wasn't all about me.  I had done it again!  That rotting feeling in my gut was just what it felt like, a sucker punch.  A well-aimed, perfectly timed, miraculously delivered direct hit sent by the devil to knock the wind out of my sails and the motivation out of my step.  And stupid me, I fell for it.  Again!  Hook, line, and sinker!  How arrogant of me to think everyone else's choices hinged upon something I had done or said or had not done or said.  I suddenly realized I had wasted my entire day beating myself up over decisions I had made in good faith and amidst a lot of prayer.  I hadn't created a situation that put myself above the interests of others, I had created a situation where I was shouting the faithfulness of God my Father from the mountaintops and the one who was offended and annoyed was Satan himself.  And at the very moment of this realization he was sitting back on his haunches laughing his fool-head off at me because I was blindly taking his insults to heart and packing up my toys to go home.  Really?!  How do I fall for this time and time again?  You would think that someday I might actually learn.  But apparently not so much.  Ugh!

In 1 Timothy 1:15 Paul writes, "The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  And I am the foremost of sinners."  If Paul was the "foremost of sinners", then what in all of God's great world am I?  On the long list of sins out there, where is the box to check for failing to ignore the devil's lead?  Or how about, unwillingness to trust in stressful situations?  Pushing my own timetable and not waiting for the Lord's timing?  Believing that I am in control of things?  If Paul is foremost of sinners, I must be standing on his head because I certainly am not any further down the totem pole.  Anyone following my journey through just this past couple months has seen me fall and question in the most ridiculous of situations, completely blind for moments to the guiding hand of He who is faithful beyond our wildest imagination.  I'd like to say that each of these battles has been God's way of helping me stay focused on Him, but that again might be a bit arrogant - as if He has nothing better to do than teach me lessons.  I think it is much more likely that these struggles are merely my way of being human in situations where complete faithfulness would be the better choice.

So, I know, morning sickness isn't the typical adoption blog topic, but I am fairly certain this isn't the typical adoption blog anyway.  I mean, really, who purposefully sits down to write a blog that will hang their dirty laundry out there for everyone to see?  Who wants the world to know that they screwed up? Again!  Certainly not me, but then again maybe that is why I was led to start writing this blog in the first place.  Stumblings of faith are not undiscussed because they don't happen - they are not discussed because they are simply that, stumblings.  I am not proud of the fact that I let the devil eat away at my innermost feelings for the majority of my day, but I am proud of the fact that despite this, and all the other stumbles, I am forgiven and my Heavenly Father loves me all the same. 

John 14:15-18 states:  "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."  Maybe that's the real adoption story here.  Jack is the focus of so much of our family's life right now, but long before he was the tiniest blip of our radar screen we were each grafted into the body of Christ and adopted as heirs of the kingdom.  "For He chose us in Him before creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.  In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will - to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves." (Eph. 1:4-6)

Will I screw up again?  Oh, definitely.  Most likely before I even get this blog proofread and posted, but that doesn't mean I will give up the fight.  Let the devil punch me, let him try his hardest to shove me off course.  Might he win a skirmish here and there?  Probably.  And I am sure this is not the last taste of morning sickness I will experience in this journey, but I also know that despite my daily battles "..the victory belongs to the Lord." (Proverbs 21:31)  So, as one of my favorite Steven Curtis Chapman songs says - "I didn't come lookin' for trouble, and I don't want to fight needlessly... But if it's gonna make me grow stronger then... Bring it on!"

Two months? That's crazy!

Wow, what a week!  Can't believe it has been four days since I've slept in my own bed.  I am happy to report that Jolene is finally out of the hospital and her hand is healing nicely, but I am SO behind on all I need to be doing at home.  Ugh!

That said, however, I am happy to report that despite the detour to the emergency room and pediatric ward we made progress on Jack's adoption this week.  One of the biggest hurdles for any adoption is the home study.  For those unfamiliar, this is a document created by a licensed social worker to provide an "overall summary" of our lives.  It contains all sorts of information from family history to health reports, employment and salary information, introductions of children in the home, a description of living conditions, etc.  Basically everything anyone would ever want to know about any part of our lives all wrapped up in a notarized legal document.  In other words, lots of fun.  Ha!

Well, in order to help the social worker construct this important piece of literature we have to jump through a lot of hoops and gather a lot of information - and that is where we made a lot of progress this week.  I spent last week getting things organized, and on Monday my mother was gracious enough to hang out with Jolene at the hospital while Dan and I visited our friendly local notary - a woman who knows us well by now.  This venture out also allowed me the time to ready several things for mailing which my father was gracious enough to deliver to the post office for us.  In all, we were able to mail off three sets of finger print cards - one set for police reports, one set of the Maryland child abuse registry, and one set for the FBI child abuse registry.  We also over-nighted a large packet of paperwork to our home study agency, American World Adoption, which included job letters, a financial statement, California child abuse registry forms, fire inspection approval, a sanitation inspection form, and the final $800 we owed them thanks to our bake sale success and the generous donations of friends and family.  Thanks again if you were willing to buy me lunch for this.  :)

At this point we are still waiting for a few of our "sent out" forms to be returned to us, but we should be able to move on to the much needed social worker visits required.  We will have to have a total of four visits, one of which we completed by attending our orientation meeting a couple weeks ago.  Please pray that America World will quickly match us with a social worker and that this social worker will join us in our desire to move forward as quickly as possible.  As we already have our pre-approval from China, our timeline for bringing Jack home is very much dependent on the amount of time it takes for our home study to be completed.  We still have to jump through the dossier hoops (putting together even more paperwork for actual submission to China), but the home study is the most involved piece of the puzzle.

So, for now, we wait.  Sigh.  And we pray.  Hurray!  I still find myself daily awestruck by the way God's hand has moved this process right along.  To think, just two months ago today I was sitting in China looking at a little boy in a far away orphanage with no idea that he would forever be in my heart as my son.  Now, that same little boy is "officially" matched to our family, has planted himself in our hearts, and has his picture hanging on the front of my microwave oven.  What a truly fantastic story of Jesus' love for us and for Jack.  Thank you again to all who are supporting us, lifting us up in prayer, and following along with us on this journey.  Tomorrow we shall continue on it!

$500 – One string attached…

One of my favorite stories from my childhood is that of Barrington Bunny.  It is a short story found in a small anthology entitled The Way of the Wolf.  For those unfamiliar with Barrington, it is the story of a rabbit who delivers gifts to other animals in the forest on Christmas Eve simply because they are his family.  And with each gift he leaves a note reading, “A gift.  A free gift.  No strings attached.”  At the end of the story, Barrington gives the ultimate gift as he lays down his life in order to rescue a tiny mouse lost in a terrible blizzard.  Barrington’s final gift is the same as the others, a free gift, no strings attached.  And no one notices, except the silver wolf that stands guard over his body throughout Christmas Day.

One of my favorite stories as an adult is that of what I call “Jolene’s $500”.  Many of you have heard me tell this story, or perhaps even read it via Show Hope when our family’s adoption story was featured in one of their posts.  For years I have relayed its details in an effort to convince people that money should never be the reason a family turns away from adoption.  In 2002, when we made the decision to pursue an international adoption, we literally had $500 in hand that we could apply toward the process - a process we knew full well would cost somewhere near $20,000 to complete.  We did not know where the money would come from – we had ideas for fundraisers, we had family and friends supporting us, and we even had two full-time jobs providing good paychecks, but we had no guarantees.  What we did have was our faith in God and our measly $500.  And, by God’s grace and awesome provision, a little over two years later we returned home from China with our beautiful new daughter and exactly $500 in cash.  No joke.  Jolene’s $500, still in our possession, right down to the last cent.

About two years ago, with much joy, Dan and I decided to take that $500 and give it to another family just beginning their adoption journey.  A couple much like we had been, embarking on a new and costly adventure, trusting the Lord to provide the funds.  The day I gave our friends the check they tried to tell me it was too much, that it was too generous.  I assured them that the amount was just right, reminded them that it was Jolene’s $500, and simply asked that in return they someday pay it forward by helping another family with another adoption.  They agreed.  And this week that family did just that.  After much prayer and consideration this family followed their hearts and donated Jolene’s $500 toward Jack’s adoption.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think that someday that money would be coming back to US.   But here it is again, making its way into yet another adoption story.  A miracle unto itself.  A gift.  A free gift.  But with one string attached.

I will openly admit, I was elated to receive this very generous donation.   The very morning it arrived our adoption fund had dwindled to a mere $28, and we have yet to raise all $800 we need to pay the rest of our home study fees.  But even more than just being appreciative, I am now even more anxious to complete this adoption and bring Jack home so that we may be directed to the next recipients of Jolene’s $500.  What I thought was simply a gift toward one family’s journey has now somehow turned into a journey of a new kind.  This money has taken on a life of its own.  I can only imagine that in ten years there will be multiple families recalling the story of how “Jolene’s $500” appeared in their journey, just at the right time.  A gift.  A free gift.  With just one string attached.  When you accept the money, you commit to a future of paying it forward.  A future of helping to care for orphans.

Strange as it may seem, the part of Barrington Bunny’s story that has always captivated my imagination is not the bunny itself.  It is the silver wolf who comes to stand over Barrington’s frozen body, standing still throughout the day without saying a word.  Standing in reverence, in support, and in love.  I can’t really explain what it is I like about this image, but perhaps it is how I imagine God to be.  Ever-present.  Ever-watchful.  A bulwark of strength.  And yet a quiet protector attending our every need while the rest of the world is too caught up in its own excitement to notice the sacrifices one might make for another.  When Barrington Bunny snuggled tightly around that tiny little mouse his thoughts were not on what he would gain by his actions.  He chose to protect that little mouse because he has been blessed by his Creator with a gift and it was his to share as he wished.  

I pray that this be our choice as well.  Dan and I have been greatly blessed by our Creator.  We have house and home, family and friends, children who love us and a son who is waiting to join us.  He has provided for this adoption so far, and though my head may be tempted to worry and doubt when that adoption fund balance begins to run low, my heart knows His strength and His ever –present protection is always in its place.  This week has been proof-positive of as much, and I continue to be awestruck by the miracles and provisions rained upon us as we trust Him.  Our Heavenly Father loves and provides for His children, granting gifts just as we need them.  Free gifts, no strings attached.

                

I invite you to read the story of Barrington Bunny and I pray that it touches you as it has me for many years.  http://www.angelfire.com/music/lefantome/bunny.html

For a walk down memory lane, you can read our Show Hope adoption testimony at -

http://members.shaohannahshope.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Landingpage_Shipley

Ultimate Girl's Night Out!

Bring your best girls and come enjoy the Ultimate Girl's Night Out!  

This is a great opportunity to have a little GIRL time while helping our adoption efforts. And there are online possibilities for those out of the area as well.

WHEN:     Friday, November 12th
                         6:00 - 9:30 p.m.    (doors open at 6, movie begins at 7:30)

WHERE:   St. Paul's Lutheran Church - gymnasium
                           308 Oak Manor Drive, Glen Burnie, MD  21061

TICKET PRICE:   $15 per person

WHAT:    Door prizes, give-aways, popcorn, movie and a huge jump start on your holiday shopping!

                Movie: 

Shopping:  The following home business representatives have confirmed their attendance.  We are hoping to get confirmation from a few more too!

Tupperware (online sales window also)

Scentsy

Avon (online sales window also)

Premier Design

Tastefully Simple

Uppercase Living

Creative Memories (online sales window only)

At Home America

Mary Kay

Arbonne

ChickaBee Designs

Stampin' Up! (online sales window only)

*All vendors will be contributing at least one door prize!

Proceeds from the evening will go toward the homestudy and agency expenses for our adoption.  What better way to spend an evening than spending time with your girlfriends and helping to bring home our son from China?  It's a win, win situation!!

TO PURCHASE TICKETS:

ONLINE - Use the Ultimate Girl's Night Out! BUY NOW button located at the top left of this blog page to make payment via PayPal.  Be sure to click on "Special instructions to seller" before checking out and submit your name and address.  Tickets will be mailed directly to you once payment is received.  Tickets may be held as "will call" if you prefer, simply note this with your name in "special instructions to seller".  (To buy more than one ticket, you will need to use the DONATE button with the correct dollar amount - be sure to include name and address in "Special instructions to seller" box.)

IN PERSON - Contact Deborah Shipley by email at dndship@comcast.net, by phone at 410-674-2863 or in person to place ticket order.  Payment may be made by cash, check (or by credit card online).  Tickets will be hand delivered or mailed per your preference.  Tickets may be held as "will call" if you prefer.

10% of all proceeds will be donated to Show Hope, a movement for orphans (www.showhope.org).

This Week in Adoption World...

So, this week has been a bit crazy.  A lot of little things have happened, but no red-letter days.  I did want to check in real quick though and keep everyone updated on the happenings since last post.  Even though it has been relatively quiet announcement-wise, we have been quite busy working on behind the scene adoption work.  So, here is the week in a nutshell…

Saturday (10/2) - Jolene and I set up our virtual bake sale after the Saturday evening service at church.  Only raised $17, but that was seventeen more than we had before.

Sunday (10/3) - We again set up our virtual bake sale after services at church.  This time we were able to raise $391, definitely a big boost to our total sales.

Monday (10/4) – Spent the evening, and on into the wee hours of the morning, finalizing paperwork due to our homestudy agency on Tuesday.  We finished up autobiographies, filled out financial statements, budget information, listed everywhere we have lived since age 18, and much, much more.

Tuesday (10/5) – Dan and I attended our orientation meeting at the America World Adoption offices in northern Virginia.  This provided us a chance to turn in a lot of the homestudy paperwork we had already completed as well as pick up some new things to complete.  It also serves as our first homestudy “visit” which marks one other thing-to-do off our list.  This was also the day I put out my Buy-Me-Lunch-Or-Donate-$5 campaign on facebook.  A huge thank you to all who answered my plea – I was able to add over $100 of donations toward paying that debt.  That, on top of calculating that our bake sale brought in a total of $3089 in sales and donations, made Tuesday a very GREAT day!

Wednesday (10/6) – I was able to drop off 155 items at a local consignment sale – thanks to some very generous donors.  I was able to list for sale all of my own maternity clothes, but that would never have been enough to make any “real” money.  I am still waiting on a total for my sales, as the sale ended today at noon, but as of last night my commission looked to be about $139.  I was honestly hoping for more, but as we are still putting together the final $800 we owe on our homestudy fees, I will gladly thank the Lord for whatever profit He provides.  I’ll have to let you know what that turns out to be.  Wednesday was also the day we were able to mail in our CCAI agreement paperwork, putting ourselves officially into the waiting family system.  Thanks to our great bake sale success we were able to pay the needed $2050 fee in full as well as submit an additional $500 towards our next fee.  (For those curious, all of this money was submitted via bake sale checks made out directly to CCAI so we were not able to apply the overage to our homestudy fees which go through America World Adoption.)

Thursday (10/7) –  I spent four hours volunteering at the consignment sale in order to earn a higher return on my sales.  I have to admit, I got really excited whenever I saw someone with one of my items heading for the cash register.

Friday (10/8) – We spent the afternoon working on homestudy paperwork.  I was able to schedule our home fire inspection and spent a good amount of time trying to track down the right people to do a sanitation inspection.  We also worked on filling in blanks for background checks, fingerprint cards, child abuse registry checks, etc.  Never a dull moment.

Saturday (10/9) – This morning we put together our DONATE button, located on this here blog thing.  Why, you ask?  Because we are standing on the threshold of being official Show Hope T-shirt sellers.  Yep, we just have to get the order form organized to reflect our own family’s information and we will hit the streets – or churches, blogs and facebook as the case may be.  If you are interested in Showing Hope with a shirt, be sure to watch for my next blog – sales coming very soon!  This afternoon, I worked my final four hours of volunteer time at the consignment sale.  Like I said, I still don’t know how my final profits look, but it was good for me to work today.  Most of what I consigned was donated to me so I had marked almost everything to be donated at the end of the sale.  As I spent four hours sorting “donate” from “non-donate” items, it served as a good gut check for me.  Several times I would catch myself moving some item that I had consigned to the bottom donate rack thinking “maybe I should try to sell this somewhere else” only to remind myself that God is faithful.  I didn’t need to un-donate things because of worrisome thoughts about having enough money.  No matter how many dollars I earned from the sale, it is that much more than we had before.  That many more forms we can pay to submit, that many more copies we can afford to make, that much more postage we can afford to pay for getting paperwork to the right offices around the country.  Un-donate.?  Nope.  Trust and obey?  Absolutely!

So, there you have it.  Our week in review.  Like I said, not much to shout from the rooftops (though that bake sale total is pretty AWESOME!), but definitely a week of moving right along.  I hope to blog a more personal report in the very near future, but for now I will sign off here.  Thank you again for supporting us in this journey – we couldn’t do it without you!

A Labor of Love

So I was hanging my maternity clothes the other day, getting them ready to sell at an upcoming consignment sale.  The mission - sell as much as I can to earn as much as I can to pay as much of the homestudy fee as we can.  The feeling - a little bit of sorrow, a little bit of whimsy and a whole bunch of nostalgia.

I don't think I ever really realized how much I enjoyed being pregnant while I was actually pregnant.  I don't know, maybe I did and it is just that I have forgotten, but either way I was surprised by the good feelings and happy thoughts that played through my head as I smoothed, and hung, and adjusted each piece.  Remembering a favorite shirt, a super comfy pair of pants, that outfit I was wearing when, at 8 months pregnant, my co-workers made fun of me for "finally" looking a little bit pregnant that day.  A fun trip down memory lane, of course, but an easy one too.

As I made each piece hang just right on its hanger I couldn't help but smile over this pregnancy too.  The "paper pregnancy" it is called in the adoption world.  That time you spend filling out forms, getting things notarized, shuffling envelopes from one government office to the next.  All of the planning and answering of life-analyzing questions: "What was your childhood like?", "How much money do you make?", "What type of parent are you?".  In some ways it seems so ridiculous.  No one has to jump through all of these hoops to have a biological child.  No one is sitting in the obstetrician's office critiquing the life of the soon-to-be parents filing through.  And yet, here in the adoption world, every aspect of the adoptive family's life is scrutinized as if under a microscope, each person's history picked apart with a fine-toothed comb.  And yet the whole thing just makes me smile.

You see, I've been here before.  I've done the paper pregnancy thing already and much like being physically pregnant it too brings with it a wash of nostalgia.  Sweet memories which, thankfully, help to drown out the voices of the not-so-sweet ones.  Wonderful results which help to portray the delays and frustrations of the waiting process in a now more humorous light.  Stories which can be shared with other adoptive families, sometimes easing anxiety, sometimes providing a listening ear or comforting shoulder, and hopefully more often than not relaying the goodness with which God provides the perfect answers in His perfect time.

You see, I've been here before, and just as my physical pregnancies each played out in their own ways, so do the paper ones.  And this one is no different.  I have had to stop using the word amazing to describe what God has done in the few short weeks we've been on this journey.  Amazing just doesn't cut it anymore.  It doesn't work.  God  provided the means for us to locate the son He hand-picked for us in a matter of hours.  He has provided all of the funds we have needed to pay so far through His goodness and the graciousness of friends we didn't even know a mere six weeks ago.  Two weeks ago we launched a virtual bake sale to raise as much as we could to cover the $2050 agency fee we will be paying next week.  Tonight we are a mere $220 shy of raising the full amount.  And that is with three or four "sellers" having yet to relay their sale numbers.  And this morning it was confirmed that we will have three opportunities this weekend to bring our need before our church body, giving us the opportunity to raise funds for our $2084 homestudy fee also due this week.  See what I mean?  Amazing?  No.  That word just isn't the right one anymore.  It's not big enough.  Not "God" enough.  What I need is a word that means dumbfounded, flabbergasted, grateful, satisfied, knew-you-could, Praise-the-Lord and you-were-right all rolled up in one.  And amazing just doesn't do it.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not really sure where we go from here.  Everything has gone so smoothly so far a little bit of me is still waiting for the bad news.  But with everyday that passes, that little bit gets a little smaller.  There is no doubt here.  This is God's plan.  And God is in control.  The awesome, life-offering, all-controlling, omnipotent King has set this all in motion and it is certainly not for us to question how, when or why.  So, for now, I will throw my amazing word into the wind and simply sit back and wait for what He will bestow on us next.  Do I expect this journey to be all daisies and roses?  No, I have yet to see any pregnancy, paper or physical, that is.  But I certainly know we have the best gardener in charge so I plan to smell as many of those roses as I can.  Do I still struggle daily with letting go of the little things and trusting He will come through as He promised.  Yes, in all honesty I do.  I know He's going to do it, I know His plan is in motion, but that doesn't stop me from being me.  And it doesn't stop Him from laughing at me while He makes me wait and work on my patience, but the good news is I am learning to laugh with Him and that is definitely worth the struggle.

So tomorrow I will go back to hanging up clothes and preparing for the consignment sale.  I will prepare my poster and table so I am ready for church and presenting our message to a new group of friends.  And I will most likely spend a good amount of time glancing out the front window watching for the little white truck to go by so I can see what wonders the Lord has brought in the mail.  For this is a labor of love.  A time of watching and waiting, a time of preparing for a lifetime of joy with our son.  A time to focus on Him and follow His lead.  And a time for rejoicing "for the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly."  Psalm 84:11