adoption update

as much as i would like my post about deer safety to remain on top for awhile, i couldn't wait to share a few adoption updates. we received a letter from CIS (citizenship and immigration services) yesterday saying that we should receive our fingerprint appointments in the next 15-30 days. the letter also said that based on our filing date with them (the filing date is when they received our i-600a and $830), they should be able to process and approve our homestudy in 30 days from whenever our homestudy is submitted to them for approval. this was huge news to us because we had been preparing for it to take up to 4 months. at this point, i don't see our homestudy being submitted until mid-november or december, so i think it's still safe to say we're aiming to send our dossier in january.

we are still in a bit of a stalemate concerning our homestudy documents. we have every document we need, but are now waiting until jamie receives his first paycheck so we can record on our financial statement his income after tax deductions. i'm ready to get these documents out of my hands, but jamie reminded me this morning that our social worker may not even write our homestudy until after we've had our second meeting with her, which will be whenever we get our fingerprints done. SO, please pray that the fingerprint appointments are sooner rather than later, and that when she has all of our documents, our social worker gets our homestudy done ASAP.

in other good news, we sent fees to CWA today. finally. we sent $1900 for our first agency fee, and also went ahead and paid a $600 translation fee (they have to translate all our documents before they get sent to ethiopia). this leaves us owing 3 major fees before we can send our dossier: $7500 to ethiopia, $2500 second agency fee, and $2500 unrelated child fee. i have not found proof of any fees related to adopting 2 children in any of our paperwork, so i'm wondering if our friend who told us about that was mistaken. as of now, we plan to use our $8000 homebuyer's tax credit to pay the ethiopia fee. so before january, we need to fundraise $4500. we're having a yard sale on oct. 24th, and also just got word that the chick-fil-a near us is going to do a fundraising night for us where a percentage of their profits will be donated to our adoption account. we are praising jesus for this and continuing to be bold in asking for provision.

most days, i feel like noah building the ark. i can imagine that noah must have told his friends that building the ark was quite an exhausting task. and i'm sure their replies must have been: "well, you're the one who chose to build this boat for no reason," not understanding that noah had received a calling from God that literally saved his life. i have had one too many people tell me that we're "choosing" to do what we're doing and thus shouldn't expect people to help us financially. and it's true, if we had started this adoption at a time when we had all the money to pay for it, we wouldn't need anybody's help -- including God's. i say that because i think God calls us to do things when we're not at all prepared to do them so that we have no choice but to rely on him. sometimes, i don't particularly like when people say "God called me to do this" or "God told me to do that" because i think plenty of terrible things have happened in our world because God "called" someone to do something. but in our case, i have no other way to describe our adoption than a calling on our life. and personally, i don't think we have much of a choice but to obey.

a little serious, a little funny

it seems as though everybody i know in the blog world has written a post about why they love fall, which has inspired me to write my own post about fall. but this post will not be about why i love this season. don't get me wrong: fall is my favorite season of the year because of how delightfully full my soul fills when there's a twinkle of cool crispness in the air. but there is one thing about fall that makes my soul cringe:

i hate deer. in fact, i have an irrational fear of them. and for everything i love about fall, deer are the one black mark against this season, for it is during fall that deer become more active (due to mating season and new food patterns) and thus more likely to run out in front of you while you're happily driving down the road. personally, i'm flabbergasted when a person hits a deer and worries more about if the deer is OK than about how they just walked away from a collision that could have caused serious injury or even death. if i ever hit and kill a deer, i won't feel guilty that the deer died and i lived.

because of my irrational fear of deer, i have been known to google things such as "avoiding a deer collision" and "what to do if you're going to hit a deer." so in honor of fall, here are a few things you should know:

1. deer are most active between 6pm and 6am, especially in the hours right around sunset and sunrise.

2. you should always be vigilant in areas where a deer sign is posted. they don't make those signs bright yellow with a big leaping deer in the middle for nothing.

3. i take #2 a bit further and remain vigilant on every single road that looks like it'd be a prime deer-hitting spot. if there are woods or fields on the sides of the road, you might not be safe. and when i say vigilant, what i mean is that you should always be looking out for deer, always prepared that one could run across the road at any minute, and perhaps driving at a reduced speed just in case. oh, and bright lights are good too.

4. deer tend to travel in groups, so if you see one, there are probably others. therefore, if a deer runs out in front of you, wait until you are sure there aren't more coming before you continue on your journey.

5. if you are going to hit a deer (ie, one is in the middle of the road, blinded by your headlights (ie, lauren's greatest fear ever)), DO NOT SWERVE. you may get yourself into an even more serious accident by losing control of your car. in other words, just hit the deer.

6. if you hit a deer, move your car to the side of the road and call the police. do not mess with the deer, even if you think it's dead. deer have been known to suddenly resurrect and charge.

the irony of all of this is that in the 2 months we've been living in this house, i have had deer run out in front of me 3 times on the main road our neighborhood sits off of. earlier this week, we had to stop suddenly because one deer ran out, and then another, and then another. and it's only the beginning of fall...

the finances of adoption

i had a friend ask me recently: "why can't you just talk about your adoption without talking about money?" as i've thought about that question, i've realized something my pastor said about americans and money is quite true: americans are much more open about their sex lives than about their checkbooks. this, of course, is played out all the time on television, but i'm pretty sure it's playing out in almost all of my relationships. my friends and i can talk about all the intimates of life...just not money. it's not wired in our brains that we should be open about money. it's rude to ask somebody how much they paid for their house or their car or their new dress. and i guess some people think it's rude when i'm honest about how much it actually costs to adopt. why is that? why are we so secretive about money?

my intent here is not to answer that question, because i've got a lot of theories, many of which most people probably wouldn't want to hear. but i do want to make something clear: you can't really talk about adoption without talking about money. now, obviously, money is not at all the most important part of the adoption process. it is a means to an end, the end being our children. we cannot get to our children without money. that is the reality. it is one of the greatest struggles every adoptive family faces. right now, my friend leigh and her husband gray are in the midst of this battle. they have $8000 to raise in the next couple of months for their adoption (if you want to help them financially, go enter their amazing giveaway). they have to talk about the money because it is the one thing, barring the paperwork, that is separating them from their daughter. so when an adoptive family talks about money, it has nothing to do with making others feel guilted into giving to them; rather, it has all to do with them communicating to the world what it's going to take for them to get to their child.

so where does fundraising fit in? well, unless they just happen to have $20,000 lying around, fundraising is about the only choice an adoptive family has for getting the funds they need. i wish more people could understand that fundraising is not about us asking people to give us money. even though the money goes to us, it's really going to our children. it's not about lauren and jamie, or leigh and gray, or any adoptive parents. it's about the children and getting them home. it's about MG, liam and elijah, and every other orphan who needs a family. that is where the money goes. do i think fundraising is fun? of course not, because people ask me questions like "why can't you talk about adoption without talking about money?" but i think it's our only hope.

i do wish we could all talk more about money, though i think there's certainly something to be said about jesus telling us not to let our right hand know what our left hand is doing. adoption is shaking up our world, especially in regards to money. we are learning not to be dependent on it for our happiness or security. we are learning that the terrified feeling we feel when looking at our budget is exactly where God wants us. and we are learning that there is always room for repentance every time we think we've got it all figured out.

hesed

well, i must admit that these days, blogging is more a tool of procrastination than anything else. like right now, i should be researching for my master's thesis that's due at the end of the semester. but instead, here i am. i'm pretty excited about our new blog header -- much thanks to jessi, who is friends with my blog friend leigh and also my friend staci bacon:) my favorite part of the design is the 4 africas going across and how they represent our journey. and if you can't read the verse around the border, it comes from one of my favorite passages in the bible: "we know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." (romans 8:22-23)

OK, and onto the real reason i wanted to write...hesed. hesed is the hebrew word for lovingkindness. our pastor has been talking about it the last few weeks at church as he's been preaching through ruth. he made an incredibly powerful analogy to demonstrate the meaning of hesed. when it's winter time and his children get out of the bathtub shivering, he always puts a warm towel on top of them. the towel provides warmth and comfort to the children, but the towel itself gets nothing in return; instead, the towel actually becomes wet and cold even as it helps the children become warm. this is hesed. it is what ruth showed naomi when she went into the fields to glean, compromising her own dignity and security. and it is what jesus did for the world -- first, when he left the glories of heaven to dwell among humans on earth and second, when he went to the cross. like a towel for a shivering child in winter, jesus laid himself over us, taking all of our despair, sin, and brokenness in exchange for hope and redemption. so this week, i'm wondering how i'm going to show hesed. whose towel am i going to be?

change is coming!

last week, i blogged about my friend leigh's giveaway to benefit her adoption. this is the second week of the giveaway, and she's got some more great prizes. right now, she's got a giveaway that she's calling "fall accessories" that consists of 4 different clutches, 3 pairs of earrings, 2 necklaces, and a cocktail ring. if you enter and win that giveway, you win ALL those accessories. i would definitely be entering that one if i wasn't trying to win the baby-related stuff :) if you want a chance to win, visit http://bringingourbabyhome-onedayatatime.blogspot.com/ and donate through the paypal account. entries are $5 each, and you get a free entry if you purchase 5 entries. she's got directions on the blog...all you have to do is be willing to spare a few bucks to help bring a baby girl home to her parents.

on that note, i'm excited to say that our blog is going to get a bit of a makeover, hence the change. leigh told me before the giveaway started that she has a friend who enjoys designing blog headers donate her services to the giveaway. i knew then that i had to win that prize. if you've ever seen a blog that is well-designed and aesthetically appealing, you might not be surprised that i'm willing to bet those blogs have higher readership. now, i'm not trying to increase our readership because i think i have great things to say. however, i do want more people to hear our story and thus hear about the wonderful journey of adoption. and something tells me people might stick around our blog a little more if it wasn't...well, ugly. and with this new blog header comes, for me, a bit of a renewal in my blogging. i'm really trying to be better about not making my blog my pulpit (even though i think a good rant is healthy sometimes). but seriously, this blog is about our story and about how God is using adoption to shake up our lives, and i want people to hear about that.

OK, and a few updates:

jamie goes back to work in t-minus 8 days.
we finally got our medical exams for our homestudy. we are still waiting to send our documents because our social worker hasn't answered 2 important questions that i need before i send everything (i'm a little annoyed about this...)
we attended a weekend discovery class about our church and absolutely LOVED it. it was heavy on theology, which jamie and i enjoyed. this is the first time in a very, very long time that i have been excited about being apart of a church. i might blog about that soon, about our awesome church that is and how we're being challenged.
i am swimming in a sea of schoolwork. that speaks for itself.
we are enjoying our fall TV lineup: football (for jamie), the biggest loser, glee, and the office.

another adoption update

i have a hard time going too many days without blogging. clearly that's the case since it's just been 3 days since my last post. but we've had a couple of minor things happen on the adoption front that i wanted to share because every mundane detail is important to us and one step closer to our babies. first, we did get our USCIS fee and I-600A form sent off last week. we are now waiting for a fingerprinting appointment at the CIS office in charlotte. second, we are finally getting our medical exams done for our homestudy! our friend cecilie, who is finishing up her med school residency at a clinic here in WS, has been trying to get us into her clinic free of charge. it looks like we're still going to have to pay the co-pay for our visit, but at least we won't owe a huge bill just for having someone listen to our heart beats and sign a sheet of paper saying we're healthy enough to raise children. the medical exams are the very last thing we need for our homestudy. we'll send all of our papers off to our social worker (hopefully by the beginning of next week), and she'll write our homestudy. third, and this is a huge finally, we are going to pay our first fee to CWA. we have been waiting forever to pay this fee. thanks to some generous friends, $700 was knocked off our first fee. we are so grateful to those who are helping us pay this fee, as those dollars are dollars we don't have to find elsewhere.

speaking of dollars, we found out yesterday that we might have overlooked an additional fee for adopting a second child. this doesn't at all affect our decision to request 2 children, but it does knock us back on our behinds again as far as money goes. everytime we think we've found a solution for funding most of our adoption, we find out about another fee. just recently, we decided we'd live without furniture indefinitely so we could use our new homebuyer's tax credit to pay all the fees associated with sending our dossier off to ethiopia. but now that we're looking at an additional fee that must be submitted with all the other dossier fees, we're going to have to get creative with finding the money. there are actually many wonderful non-profits that provide grants and interest-free loans to adoptive families. the only drawback to those is that your homestudy must be complete before you can apply, and then it can take a couple of months for the money to actually become available to you once you've been approved. so for the sake of getting our dossier sent ASAP, it looks like we'll be trying to have a yard sale (if we can find enough stuff to sale) and maybe even calling local businesses (chick-fil-a has been suggested to me) to see if they'd be willing to donate a percentage of profits to our cause.

one last thing -- awhile back, we did a little Q&A on here about our decision to adopt. one of the questions i wish we'd answered is "but don't you want to have your own kids?" i promise that all adoptive parents, especially those of us who have chosen to adopt before having (or for some, instead of having) biological children, have heard this question at least once since telling people they decided to adopt. of course, what the questioner usually means is "but don't you want to have biological children?" for most people, this is just a matter of semantics, but i bring it up to say that this is one of those times where language is really important. the question is totally OK since most adoptive families would readily agree with me that natural birth and adoption are 2 equally beautiful and wonderful ways of building a family. it's the language of "your own kids" that adoptive families find hurtful, especially since adoption has become (in some circles) a controversial issue. i read recently on a blog a comment from a reader who said she believed adoption should only be "in addition to" biological children rather than as a "replacement" for biological children. this girl was quite adament that adoption is an inferior way of building a family. i've even heard people say they didn't believe someone could love "someone else's" child as much as "their own" children. but something tells me these people have never seen the fierce love an adoptive family has for their children, even if their children aren't even home yet. i love my sons as if they were in my womb. from the day we decided to adopt, i loved my children as my own. so when somebody asks me "but don't you want to have your own kids?" i can only respond "yes, and i already do."

help this family!

this is not another long post about healthcare, though i would like to thank my brother-in-law, steve, for providing an alternative opinion to my little vent. i probably should have been more clear in yesterday's post that i don't support rushing into a plan just for the sake of having reform, so i think caution is key. basically, my post came from an annoyance with the number of people i've heard (or seen on facebook) who just seem so callous to any reform at all. for me, health care is a right to life issue, and we have to figure out a way to make sure all people have access to it.

the REAL reason i'm writing today, however, is to give a great, big plug to my blog friend (soon-to-be-in-real-life friend) leigh's giveaway! i found leigh's blog on the blog of a friend of a friend (the blog world is so convoluted and crazy like that) after noticing the title "one day at a time." i had this little inkling that she might be taking "one day at a time" because she was adopting...and i was right! leigh and her husband are adopting a little girl from...ETHIOPIA! this is providence at its best, let me tell you. anyway, leigh is my fundraising inspiration, and this giveaway she's doing is worth checking out. she's had a bunch of cute stuff donated to her that she's giving away through something like a raffle. she'll post a few things every monday for the next few weeks, and you buy entries for $5 that you can put towards whatever item you want. she'll then draw winners towards the end of the week. and hey, even if you don't win, you'll be helping bring her sweet daughter, MG, home. so check it out at http://bringingourbabyhome-onedayatatime.blogspot.com/