Good, True and Beautiful

A Big Leap

2011-10-09T18:49:15Z

If you need to catch up, feel free to click over and read part 1, part 2, or part 3 of this story.

——————–

When you start the adoption process, one of the first questions to answer is “what route to adoption” you want to take. As far as I understand, there are three options to consider – domestic infant adoption, international adoption, and foster care adoption. The reason you make this decision up-front is that the process and paperwork for each paths is radically different.

We were faced with the looming reality that if we wanted to follow our hearts and adopt the two children in Haiti we would have our work cut out for us. BIG TIME. We basically would have to start all over again. The first time we did our paperwork the application process took 6 months. This time we would have six weeks in which we would need to secure:

- two original copies of our Birth Certificates (the Long Form Versions that people seemed to be so obsessed about in national politics)

- two original copies of our Marriage License

- a Power of Attorney authorizing our attorney in Haiti to act on our behalf

- a letter to the director of the Haitian Social Services requesting permission to adopt

- two letters of reference

- criminal background checks for anyone in our home over the age of 18 (which involves fingerprinting).

- a letter from our bank stating that we were customers in good standing

- a letter from our employer stating that we were employees in good standing

- a letter from our CPA saying we were solvent (heh)

- letters from our healthcare providers outlining the health status of all members of our household, including tests for tuberculosis

- a letter from a licensed psychologist stating that we were mentally stable

- an international homestudy written by a certified social worker. This document alone requires about five million pieces of information including financial records, new sets of reference letters, more medical exams, and a completely distinct set of fingerprints (apparently once was not enough).

And then I read on:

Every piece of information needed to be signed in front of a notary. In New York, where we live, each notarized document then needed to be certified by the County Clerk who had issued that notary. Then the certified forms need to receive an apostille from the Secretary of State who issues the notary/certification

(an apostille is like an internationally valid notary. It is a system set up through the Hague through which countries can be assured of a document’s legitimacy. Who knew?).

Once the our documents receive an apostille, they then need to be translated into French (the official language of Haiti) and then the notarize, certified, apostilled, translated documents need to be reviewed by the Haitian Consulate. If they “pass muster” the Consular adds their own special certification to each document.

Then, and only then, would we be able to submit our dossier and start our adoption journey.

Just writing that all down takes my breath away… and somehow we were supposed to get it all pulled together so that it could be ready as soon as the little girl was born.

Impossible! (said with an indignant French accent).

We had a lot of work to do and very little time to do it in. We needed to start YESTERDAY. We didn’t have any time to think about it for a few weeks. We didn’t have any extra time to do more research. We had to get started NOW.

But was this the right choice? Were we supposed to go down this path? Were we CRAZY to give up on all the work that we had invested already?

Honestly, we had no idea, and we struggled with the pressure to make a decision quickly. The Nature Family tends to be analytical and methodical – problem solvers, ruminators, talking it through-ers. And it didn’t seem like the analytical option was open to us.

And so we decided… not to decide. We would keep both options in play as long as we could. We wouldn’t change anything with our domestic adoption application, but we would start to pull together the paperwork for our Haitian Dossier. If the domestic adoption came through, we would be out the time and money we had invested in our dossier, but we would have a new child to soften the blow. If nothing happened with our domestic adoption and the dossier was ready to go, we would submit it and put our domestic adoption on hold. We were going to play “both sides of the field” as long as possible and pray for clarity through the process.

And so my work began.

Phone Calls and Google Searches, Express Mail and e-mails. Folders and Photocopies, with sticky notes everywhere. Sign this, mail that, stamp here, email this… I was on a mission to get it all done.

One week into the process and I had birth certificates and bank statements. Two weeks into the process I had medical exams, tax forms and background checks. Three weeks into the process our homestudy was scheduled and our reference letters were written. It was coming together!

And then the phone rang….

For the last twelve months, the sound of my telephone has caused my heart to miss a beat. The thought would fly into my head “Maybe it’s the agency?!” and I would RUN to answer it, only to be disappointed when the caller id showed someone else’s number. I have prayed and begged and hoped that the adoption agency would call us… and this time they did.

There is a birth mom in New Jersey who looked over profiles and would like to interview some families in person. Congratulations! You were one of the families she was interested in. When can you be in the office next week?

“Wow!” I said, “that’s great.”

“Whatever time is convenient for her.”

“sure, we’re really excited.”

“thanks for the call.”

And I hung up the phone with my heart in my feet.

Somehow during the previous three weeks we had reached a decision. Through the hard work of creating our dossier we had started the process of falling in love. We had committed ourselves, our hearts, our minds, our spirits, to those two young children in Haiti. We WANTED them to be part of our family. Our HOPES and VISION for the future included these two little people. We were no longer uncertain about what direction we should head – we KNEW our hearts were in a little crèche a fifteen hundred miles south. And in all good conscience we couldn’t meet with a Birth Mother in New Jersey knowing that we wouldn’t be able to say yes to her.

And so it was on a cold and rainy morning that I placed a call to the Domestic Adoption agency. My hands were shaking and my voice cracked a few times, but I told them about our change of directions. I told her that we needed more time to pursue the new opportunity we had discovered. And I told her that we couldn’t meet with the BirthMom in New Jersey when our hearts were in Haiti.

It was the hardest phone call of my life, but the decision was made.

We’re going for it.

the big decision

2011-10-09T18:44:05Z

If you need to catch up, feel free to click over and read part 1 and part 2 of this story.

——————–

Adoption is one of the most important things I have ever considered doing.

It obviously has all the incredible-ness of parenthood, with an extra big dose of humility, honor, and effort. The challenge, as we saw it, was to choose between two very good and honorable options. To continue on the clear and well defined path of domestic infant adoption, or take a hard turn onto the uncharted and unfamiliar path of adopting in Haiti. In the context of our circumstances, we realized we were being faced with a HUGE decision with significant implications, and not a lot of time.

The first choice required patience and perseverance. The second choice would require a tremendous amount of hard work and money, plus patience and perseverance!

In most circumstances we can discern the difference between good and bad, godly and un-godly, selfish or selfless. Should I ignore my laundry pile for another day? Selfish. Should I eat that third brownie? Baaaad. Should I wear white shoes after Labor Day? Un-Godly.

Heh. Just kidding.

In this case, it seemed like we had two equally good and godly options before us, and we had to choose between them. We called our close friends and asked for their counsel. We prayed and prayed and prayed. And I posted this on Facebook:

(By the way, if you ever need lots of friends and family to call you, post a message on Facebook asking for prayers about good, important, scary decisions but don’t go into any details. The phone won’t stop ringing for days. A close childhood friend will even call from vacation to make sure everyone is okay. Hey Kim!)

Throughout all these long and convoluted discussion, there was one thing that Nature Boy said which really resonated with me. He said “when you are trying to discern God’s will, look to see what your talents are (what God has blessed you with, the things that you are really good at) and then you look at where the NEED is. Where those two things intersect is where God wants you to be (I think he heard that in a sermon by Alistair Begg, but don’t quote me on it).

Several times during the last ten months our domestic adoption agency had told us that American Birth Moms were looking at hundreds of family profiles when they were making their decisions… they shared that to encourage us so that we didn’t lose heart after being passed over so often. At the time I thought it was a really good thing that Birth Moms had so many options to look over. However, that reality made for a striking contrast to the situation in Haiti.

In Haiti there were hundreds of children waiting for families. It seemed like the need was in Haiti.

And our talent? Well, Nature Boy said that I was good at pulling together paperwork (hee hee! thanks Babe).

So after a long weekend talking through lots of considerations – Where would they sleep? How many car seats would fit in our car? Wait a second, 3 kids under four?! – we decided to contact our domestic adoption agency, fill them in on the opportunity in Haiti, and see if we could work with them to pursue it.

My hands were shaking as I dialed the number on Monday morning. In just three short days I had gone from having no interest in an international adoption to desperately hoping that we might be able to convert our situation and adopt in Haiti. Our social worker answered the phone and I proceeded to update her on everything that had transpired over the last few weeks (think of all the information in these blog posts and add a whole lot of nervous rambling and a big dose of desperation. It wasn’t very coherent).

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was probably 15 minutes, I finally came to the BIG question:

Is it possible to take our domestic application and homestudy and convert it into an international application and homestudy?

And the answer came back: No.

Ugh. Total and absolute deflation.

No, she said. No, you can’t convert your homestudy. No, you can’t work with our agency to adopt in Haiti. No, you wouldn’t be able to get it all done on time. No. No. No.

Bummer. Darn it. Shoot. That was not the answer I wanted.

I called Nature Boy at work and filled him in on what I learned. All the excitement and hope and anticipation that we had allowed to build up over the weekend was gone – we hit a big dead end. Disqualified before we even got off the blocks. And now that it was out of our reach, I wanted it even more!

There I stood, folding my laundry, feeling sorry for myself and the disappointment of dashed hopes, when a thought popped into my head….

WHY No? Why wouldn’t it be possible? Why can’t this work?

And within ten seconds I was in front of my laptop doing what I do best… Googling my way to motherhood.

—-

Our story continues

What would you do?

2011-09-30T20:55:16Z

If you need to catch up, you will want to read the first part of our story here.

For the last two years, as we felt that God’s plan for our family included adoption, I have had a vision of a little girl with brown skin. I had no idea if that was just my heart wishing for a daughter, or a true vision (like the kind in the Bible), but it’s been there the whole time. Time after time we would get phone calls from our domestic adoption agency asking us if they could show “our profile” to a mom who was considering adoption. And every. single. time. the woman was pregnant with a little boy. Not once did they ask us about an African-American baby girl…. but still this sense I had kept lingering.

So there I am, standing in my family room, speaking with an incredible, inspiring woman (think Mother Theresa in Haiti), and learning about a little girl who could potentially become our daughter.

“Would we consider adopting her?”

The first thought I had was “YES, YES, YES! A thousand times, YES!” In that moment nothing seemed more obvious or simple. We’ll just adopt a child from Haiti!

Ha!

Then I hung up the phone and reality settled in…. Nothing about this new scenario made any sense.

Adopting internationally is hard.

Adopting internationally is expensive.

Adopting internationally from HAITI is very, very unpredictable.

We realized almost immediately that we wouldn’t be able to pursue both adoption scenarios… our domestic homestudy requires that we be the family that they describe. No new additions, no change of address, no change of jobs. The homestudy needs to be consistent with our circumstances. So we couldn’t just add a new baby to the equation and expect that they wouldn’t notice!

We would have to walk away from all the money we had invested in our domestic adoption (almost $9,000). And the money we have been saving to pay for the remaining cost of our domestic adoption will barely cover half of the new expenses we would have to incur.

On top of all that, we would have learn an entirely new process all by ourselves. No placing agency to hold our hand every step along the way. And the entire application had to be translated into French!

Yet despite all these realities, there was one more factor which made all of those hesitations seem like it might be worth it…

a little boy with beautiful brown eyes who has stolen our heart.

You see, not only do we have the chance to adopt a little girl, we have the chance to adopt a toddler boy too! And that just seemed like it might be too good to be true….

You can continue reading about our story here

a little update on some BIG happenings…

2011-09-29T17:54:18Z

A very good friend of our family – Allen, the pastor who leads my parent’s church – spent a week in Haiti last July. He has visited Haiti many times in his life, but he was there this time as a part of a pastoral training/teaching team, helping local ministers and church leaders.

More than anyone one I know, Allen is the type of person who walks his talk. Whether it’s giving generously, offering wise counsel, or raising his children, this is a man I really admire.

During a break from his training, he set out one evening to explore Montrouis, a small city about 90 miles north of Port-au-Prince. He was walking through the streets, praying and sharing the good message of Christ, when he stumbled upon some Americans in a fenced courtyard.

After introducing himself he was surprised to learn that the Americans were part of a crèche, Haiti’s version of an orphanage/adoption agency. They welcomed him in and began to tell him about their mission and the hope they had for the children to find Christian homes in the United States. As he was walking, he says he “tangibly felt God leading him through the halls” and the profound sense that God was saying to him:

“These Children are PRECIOUS to me.”

He told me that he had never been more aware of the Holy Spirit’s leading than in that moment (which is saying A LOT).

As you might imagine, he returned to New York incredibly excited about what he had seen and heard from God. He shared his pictures with his church and encouraged his entire congregation to pray sincerely about adoption. In the book of James it says ‘Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.’ And since Allen is a man of God he takes those words very seriously!

After his sermon my sister called to fill us in on what Allen shared. Obviously adoption is very close to our hearts and we’ve been pursuing the adoption of our next child for almost two years. We eat, think, and pray adoption all the time! So when she said “maybe you should look into that?” and I laughed. We had already chosen our adoption path… we are fully approved for our domestic infant adoption and we were just “waiting for the phone call” to tell us our child was born. We had thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours invested in our domestic adoption. It wasn’t the time to change our minds.

Out of respect and a little curiosity, I sent a brief email to the director of the crèche asking about the work she was doing and explaining our situation. She replied and kindly outlined the long and intense process involved with international adoptions, the significant hurdles and expenses that it would entail, and the incompatibility of our domestic approval with the Haitian process (all of the things that made me very grateful that we had decided to pursue a domestic adoption instead!).

And so, with the click of an email and the satisfaction of a plan well made, I politely put it behind me. We chose our path, we just have to wait, we could get a call tomorrow… Just be patient.

The funny thing was though, Nature Boy couldn’t seem to get Haiti out of his mind…

He kept asking me questions about how the international process worked. He wanted to re-read the emails and look at the information again. He just couldn’t seem to shake it off.

I reminded (sometimes more nicely than others) that we had “chosen our path” for domestic adoption and that we couldn’t change course to go international. I reminded him about how much money we had invested already and that we couldn’t get a refund. And I reminded him that international adoptions are HARD and SCARY and COMPLICATED. We just need to be patient for a little while longer.

And that’s where we were… Nature Boy wondering if we might be able to adopt from Haiti and me redirecting him back to the clear path we had chosen. A few days would go by, and then he’d ask “can I see that Facebook page again?” Jeesh!

About three weeks later, as my extended family was on vacation together, I received a new email from the Creche Director saying that she was very interested in speaking with me. Apparently there was a little girl who was due to be born this fall and her birth-mama had decided to place her for adoption.

Despite the fact that newborn children are often the simplest adoptions to place, there didn’t seem to be an obvious family ready for her. Several families seemed to be available and then for one reason or another weren’t able to follow through. She had been praying about it, and despite the fact that it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, she kept thinking about us.

And so, she wondered, would we pray about whether we were supposed to adopt this little girl?

And in that moment, my world turned upside down…

Our story continues here.

Oh Golly, is this a Funny one…

2011-09-15T19:38:22Z

If you need a good chuckle check this out…

I literally laughed out loud. SO Fun. Tell your friends!

(If you can’t see the video click here)

Portrait of My Boy

2011-06-28T14:52:16Z

Boogers. Mud. Boy.

My Mama’s Heart is filled to overflowing.

Life is GOOD.

Why God Made Puddles

2011-06-27T21:18:00Z

Such a poor, deprived child. The only thing he has to play with is the puddle.

Miserable, isn’t he?

Tweeting about WordPress! (and win a new Blog Design)

2011-05-17T13:18:37Z

There is this little book I’ve been working on for a while…. A little how to guide about moving to WordPress that I might have mentioned a time or two twenty.

I’m nothing if not repetitive.

Unfortunately, last week the relevance of my little-99-page-How-to-Guide spiked because Blogger decided to take an unexpected vacation.

{Or was it a stay-cation? You know, with gas prices up and all… }

The problem, of course, was that Google forgot to tell the bloggers who USE Blogger that they were taking a little hiatus.

Ooops. I guess all those jokes about breaking the internet could true? Maybe?

Mom… what button did you press?

Fortunately, Google fixed the snafu quickly (in less than three days) and Blogger-land is back to normal. Except for the few thousand people who are suddenly thinking WordPress might be a little more attractive.

Amazing how our little blogs become so important to us, huh?

All of that is a very rambling explanation to explain why you will be finding me on a Twitter Party next week (Thursday, May 26) answering questions about WordPress.

You are welcome to join in if you have questions about WordPress.

Or even if you want to wish me a Happy 40th Birthday (yes, it’s true. How’d that happen?!)

Or if you would like to win a FREE BLOG DESIGN!

Sorry, was I yelling? Didn’t mean to… just thought you’d like to know.

You’ll want to RSVP for the party and then follow hashtag #blogelina on Thursday May 26 at 9 PM EST.

You have to participate to win… so I hope to see you there!

How to Make a Cross out of Palm Branches

2011-04-15T18:55:28Z

I knew this would come in handy… How to make a Cross out of Palm Branches

{Let’s see if the Little Man is a bit more reverential this year!}

Hey There!

2011-03-28T19:25:18Z

Well Long Time, No Talk!

Or write.

Or type.

Not quite sure what happened to February, or even March for that matter. Seems like I blinked and it’s almost April.

Lots of good things. So much to fill you in on. So many posts rumbling around in my head.

My little man turns three this week.

And proof that miracles still happen, his birthday cake actually looked like a train. Instead of a blob of icing.

Adoption Update: Our new baby isn’t here yet. But might be tomorrow. Or the next day. Or maybe July.

Hurry up and wait. Wait and then hurry up. It’s that whole patience thing.

It’s good. All good. Busy. But good.

Oh yeah… I wrote a book. It’s almost ready for prime time. Let me know if you want to take it for a test drive.