Getting Over Ourselves, Part 3

In the not-too-distant past, I was enslaved by hypochondria. For anyone who’s suffered with it, you know that slavery is the appropriate term. Every day I woke up to a shadow of dread, my thoughts consumed with the multitude of diseases that were surely eating away my life minute by minute. On the bad days, I was obsessed with sudden killers (heart attacks, blood clots, etc.). The so-called good days involved subtler enemies like cancer or lupus. I spent hours on the internet every day looking up symptoms, which of course led me to more health problems I hadn’t yet imagined. Fear gripped me so tightly I could barely bring myself to speak to my children or perform basic household duties. I didn’t want to make plans for more than a few days in advance, because I was certain I wouldn’t be around to see them come to fruition. And all because of nothing more than a persistent headache or a twinge of joint pain.

I recognized my problem, so for the most part I stayed away from the doctor’s office. I knew I was a hypochondriac, and I was ashamed of myself. I also realized that my fears were rooted in something deeper, and the only way to ever be free of them was to dig deep and uncover the malignant source. I sought counseling from someone at my church, and that was the beginning of a long journey to healing that I haven’t yet completed.

During the beginning stages of recovery, I saw one of my worst fears play out in the life of my good friend. A wife and mother of two, beautiful and vibrant in her early 30s, she was suddenly diagnosed with lymphoma. Not just early stage, we-caught-it-in-plenty-of-time lymphoma. This was stage 4, spread throughout her body.

When she called to give me the news, I burst into tears. She comforted me. While I begged God to spare her life and asked him why? why? why?, she prayed for opportunities to glorify God and looked forward to her chemo treatments because she knew that sitting in a chair for several hours would give her lots of time to tell other cancer patients about Jesus.

I marveled at her strength, and also cringed at it, because the light of her faith illuminated the ugly weakness of my own. I remember talking to my mother about it. “I don’t understand how she can be so at peace with this,” I said. “If it ever happened to me, I don’t think I’d survive the fear, let alone the cancer. How can you prepare yourself for something like that?”

My mom’s response sounded simple, but I’m beginning to realize how profound it really was. “You can’t store up faith. God gives us what we need when we need it. His grace is the reason she’s so strong.”

Our small group has been working through John Piper’s study Battling Unbelief, which is all about our faith in God’s grace and its implications in our lives as His children. In spite of the less than exciting presentation (John Piper using overheads during a seminar), the content is fantastic. In a recent lesson, he repeated my mother’s words almost verbatim. This is how he explained it:

Matthew 6:34 says, “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Lamentations 3:22-23 says “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Put those verses together, and what do you have?

According to Piper, it’s an equation. If your problems today are four times more than what you can handle, God’s grace is going to give you at least four times more strength, sanity, courage, etc. than you have...today.

In other words, when your newly adopted child suddenly hates you (again) and goes back to loving every stranger she meets, and the anger and hurt is at a raging boil that makes you want to scream and cry and hit something all at once, and all you can think about is how easy and natural it was to have a healthy, loving relationship with your biological kids…that’s not the time to think about the months and years ahead and wonder how things will ever change or question whether or not you’re going to survive.

When it’s 11:00 on Friday morning and your inbox is still refusing to ding with that long-awaited message, when the weight of waiting is suffocating and you can’t remember what life was like when you didn’t have to live every day in limbo, and your hope for a happy ending is fading with each minute that ticks past a foreign country’s office hours…that’s not the time to wonder how you’re going to make it to Monday, or how you’ll survive if that email never comes.

You’re at the end of your rope, and tomorrow promises more of the same. So take a breath and remember this: There will be a new rope tomorrow. Each day dawns with its own lifeline.

My friend is still with us, and by God’s amazing grace she’s now cancer-free and still passionate about sharing Jesus.

My hypochondria is no longer a daily torment, but rather an enemy I’ve learned how to fight. Our skirmishes are still more frequent than I’d like, but by God’s grace I’m becoming skilled in battle.

Some days my daughter won’t look me in the eye and spends all her energy wooing strangers or finding ways to be destructive, and I spend all my energy trying not to quit. But when she woke up sick and coughing early this morning, by God’s grace I found the strength to rise from bed and comfort her, this child for whom love is still a mystery.

To God be the glory. Great things He has done.

Great things He will do again.

Getting Over Ourselves, Part 2

Snapshot: Three years ago, in September 2008, I was recovering from a life-changing, eight-hour panic attack that left me physically, emotionally, and spiritually broken. I was scared to sleep in my bed. Scared to take a shower. Scared to feed my kids. Scared to pray. I was questioning my health, my sanity, and my salvation. Realizing I’d built my life’s foundations on answers to questions I’d never actually asked. My world had come apart, and I didn’t have a clue how to begin putting it back together.

Snapshot: A spring evening, 2009. The moment my husband walked through our front door, I dropped my knife and a half-sliced potato onto the cutting board, asked him to watch the kids, and escaped the house. Speedwalking a mile through the rain helped the panic subside a little faster, but the familiar aftermath of fatigue and hopelessness followed me all the way to the cemetery, where I sank to the wet ground and sobbed into my drawn-up knees. When my tears were spent and my clothes soaked through, the only prayer I could form was, “I need you. Please…rescue me.” I walked home slowly, wet and chilled, my eyes on the pavement as I envisioned Jesus’ sandaled feet striding with mine.

Snapshot: On the morning of May 10, 2011, I stood outside of a government building in Kigali, Rwanda praying that on this day the battle for our referral would at last come to an end. As we kept vigil in that courtyard, I recited aloud Moses’ words to the Israelites on the banks of the Red Sea. “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today… The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:13-14). At 4:15 that afternoon, I held my daughter for the first time.

Snapshot: On the afternoon of June 3, 2011, twelve days after returning from Africa, I locked the bathroom door, turned on a hot shower, and climbed into my bathtub confessional for a good, long, soul-searching cry. The next day I wrote this to my long-suffering friend Allie:

“I was in the shower talking to God about all of this [depression, guilt, anger, shame, etc.]…and an image popped into my head. I told Him I felt like Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, after he'd been turned into a dragon and desperately wanted to peel off that hideous skin. That's where I went wrong, where I've been going wrong for the past month. I tried so hard to change my attitude, cheer up, focus on good things, snap out of it. I tried. Me, myself, and I. I even asked God to help me do it. But until yesterday I didn't fall on my face and say, "I can't do it. Please, please, please do it for me. It has to be all You. Only You can tear away this filthy, putrid, suffocating skin and set me free."

Where am I going with this? Two years ago my earthly father wisely stated that God is always working in us to achieve our surrender (to Him) of something we hold too dear. I don’t know if you see the connection, but these four snapshots of my life reflect the birthing pains of an education in surrender.

I’m currently enrolled in a lifelong course called “Surrendering My Powerlessness to an All-Powerful God,” and this is what I’m learning:

I cannot do it. Any of it.

But…BUT…He can.

And yet, inexplicably, I struggle to remember this lesson no matter how many times I take the class. I’m constantly pouring my limited energy into finding my solutions to my problems, and the result is always the same: I’m exhausted, alone, and defeated facing the mountains of discouragement, irritability, challenging relationships, overwhelming schedules, parenting struggles, spiritual dryness, and financial concerns.

I need to get over myself. Again, and again, and again.

I’ve tried to be The Little Engine Who Could. I’ve tried to climb every mountain through sheer force of will, puffing, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…” Guess what. It never works. I strive and strive and strive until I’m all strived out, with nothing but an overheated boiler to show for it.

I’ve also tried to be The Little Engine Who Could…With Help. Arming myself with poor theology, out-of-context Scriptural promises, and a few Christianese pep talks, I’ve chugged away with “I know we can, I know we can, I think we can, I’m…pretty sure we can…” Same result.

In every hard-fought battle of my life, it's only when I acknowledge that I'm The Little Engine Who Can’t that I actually make any headway. When I trade in my positive-thinking and self-confidence for humility and surrender, my mantra changes to, “I know I can’t, I know HE can!”

And isn’t that the way of the Savior? An ark for the flood. A dry seabed for the escaping Israelites. A sacrificial Lamb for the sin-stained world. How He loves to save us when we cannot save ourselves!

We don’t always see it. Sometimes He parts the waters, and sometimes (more often) He makes us swim. Or, as Scott Krippayne brilliantly sings, “Sometimes He calms the storm, and other times He calms His child.”

Why one methodology and not the other? How we love to bog ourselves down with that question. Truly, it’s one only He can answer in full, but I’m finding that my questions are more easily put to rest when I remind myself of His endgame: the increase of His glory.

Think about this: When the blue gate of Home of Hope finally opened to Tim and I, and we held Avivah for the first time, a lot of people rejoiced. God was glorified as His children praised Him for answered prayers and the powerful evidence of His hand in our adoption. He was glorified in His faithfulness and mercy. But that wasn’t the beginning of the story, and it’s certainly not the end. Before that appointed moment, there was the grueling wait. And before the wait, there was the refining process of preparing our hearts to consider adoption.

Each step of our journey brought us higher by first bringing us lower. Being forced to swim the sea showed us our weakness and caused us to reach in surrender for His strong hand. In that He was glorified. Each time we acknowledged that there needed to be more of Him and less of us, He was glorified. Each time we said, “Lord, not our will but yours be done,” He was glorified.

He is glorified in jars of clay. He is glorified in weakness. He is glorified in The Little Engine Who Can't.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15: 5

This is Lesson #1 in living for His glory. Stay tuned for Lesson #2…

Getting Over Ourselves, Part 1

On Saturday I went to a picnic for adoptive families. One of the moms asked me how long it had taken us to bring Avivah home, and I told her we’d waited almost exactly two years. Her response? “Wow, that was quick, then!”

My initial instinct was, of course, to contradict her with, “No, actually it was the longest two years of my life, and I have the gray hairs and ulcer to prove it.” I refrained, because in her arms she cradled her beautiful baby girl who’d come home from China six weeks earlier. A child for whom she’d waited five years.

She wins, right? Surely her wait was harder because it was far longer than my own. And surely my adoption experience with Avivah—with all its lies, betrayals, confrontation, and drama—was harder than another mother’s two-year process that went smoothly and as expected from beginning to end (if such a thing exists).

Maybe I’ve been watching too many episodes of Numbers on Netflix, but I can’t help wondering if Charlie Eppes could come up with an algorithm for classifying the degree of hardship suffered in each person’s adoption experience. He could factor in waiting times, paperwork snafus, dashed expectations, personality types, travel issues, financial burdens, physical health, marital conflict, and spiritual maturity to come up with highly accurate ratings of our individual angst. Wouldn’t that be great? Being able to point to a definitive number would really save us time. I mean, if I’m a 27 and you’re a 34 on the Adoption Misery Scale, enough said, right? You win. Why even bother telling each other our stories?

I hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm by now. And I hope you know that the point I’m trying to make is an admonition to myself more than anyone else. In this matter I am the worst of sinners, though I know I’m not alone. It seems we’ve created a culture of comparison. I recognize it running rampant in the adoption community, and I despise what it does to our relationships. I have a friend whose heart is breaking a little more every day as she waits for a slow-moving government to process the final paperwork so she can bring home her little girl. Her pain is real and crushing, but she apologizes for it because her experience has been so “short and smooth” compared to mine.

I have other friends who nearly lost their referred children to illness before they ever had a chance to meet them. Another who received a referral and fell in long-distance love with her son only to learn that he had died suddenly of sickness that probably could have been defeated with a common antibiotic and adequate nutrition. And I know of some who sailed through the paperwork and waiting only to discover that being home with their children feels more like a nightmare than a dream come true. Then there’s me, still worn out from the labor of waiting, still processing three traumatic weeks in Africa, and still struggling to make sense of a little thing called post-adoption depression.

In the past 79 days since my last blog post, I’ve spent most of my time waffling between three unpleasant emotional states: feeling sorry for myself, angry at myself, or ashamed of myself. Occasionally I’m capable of achieving all three at once, and it was last week during one of those unfortunate meltdowns that my husband suggested I go away for a few days. Alone. Just me and Jesus.

Those plans are in the works, but in the meantime I’ve had to settle for an afternoon at Panera and a few really long showers. And after all the crying, complaining, repenting, praying, journaling, and thinking, this is what I’ve realized:

It’s time to get over myself.

In typical American fashion we’re forgetting that life isn’t about us. Adoption isn’t the be-all, end-all of significant life choices. It’s a thing we do, not who we are. Is it hard? Absolutely. Life is hard. But no matter how hard it is, the degree of difficulty doesn’t matter. It’s completely irrelevant.

We’re missing the bottom line. God didn’t breathe life into us so we could rescue a child, advocate for a worthy cause, or perform some great act of sacrifice or service. His beautiful, complicated, perfect architecture of our lives has one supreme objective: Glory. His, not ours. Whatever else we do, if we’re not pointing to and applauding who He is—His power, grace, faithfulness, mercy, and holiness—we’re wasting our time, because God isn’t glorfied by circumstances or external results, but by the internal posture of our hearts.

Suffering algorithms. Degrees of difficulty. Failure, pain, and death. That’s one side of the coin. The other is prettier, dressed with victory, healing, success, and dreams come true. But like all coins, regardless of how different each side appears, they both have the same value: the opportunity to bring glory to God every moment of every day.

So. How do we do that? When it’s 4:30 p.m. and the kids are breaking their toys (or each other) and the dog is underfoot while you try to throw together a passably healthy meal from the sparse contents of a refrigerator you no longer have the time or energy to restock, and you’re wondering what your life is about and how getting a steam burn from broccoli al dente can possibly have any kind of eternal significance, where’s the glory?

I’ll give you a hint: I haven’t figured it out yet. But I have some thoughts, which I’ll share soon in Part 2. For now, I have veggies to steam and a grocery list to write.

Stay tuned…

let's chew on this...

After about a week in Africa, I developed an intense craving for ice-cold milk.
The funny thing about this is that I hardly ever drink milk at home. I have the occasional glass with a piece of cake or spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough (yum…talk about a craving), but it’s far from a daily staple of my diet.

I also found myself fantasizing about chomping through a nice big bag of peanut M&Ms. No surprise there - they’re my all-time favorite candy. And I was dumb enough not to bring any with me, thinking that junk food was the last thing deserving of space in our luggage (a decision I kicked myself for at the end of many a chocolate-worthy, frustration-filled day). As a consolation I tracked down a KitKat…and discovered that the familiar wrapper and logo can sometimes house a very foreign African product. Same goes with the Milky Way (it should have been packaged as a 3 Musketeers).

Unfortunately, my milk craving was never satisfied in Africa (in desperation I tried the boxed stuff and just about lost my lunch), but not so the peanut M&Ms. On one of our last nights in Rwanda our wonderful friends and fellow travelers, Dillon and Adrienne Stengel, spotted a tiny packet of the heavenly treats in a shop and bought them for me. When Dillon delivered them to our hotel room as a surprise, his big smile said he knew exactly how precious was the treasure he carried in that little brown bag.

Did you know that African peanut M&Ms have a matte rather than glossy finish, and the colors aren’t as bright, but (praise the Lord) they taste exactly like American M&Ms? There probably weren’t more than fifteen little nuggets of deliciousness in that package, but every one of them tasted like a long-anticipated luxury.

Fast forward one month. We’d been home from Africa for almost four weeks (during which I’d had enough peanut M&Ms to more than make up for missing them overseas), and I rushed into the grocery store to buy hot dogs for a Father’s Day get-together. I didn’t have time to spare, but I ended up standing in front of that meat cooler for at least five minutes before finally digging out my cell phone and calling for back-up. Which dogs should I buy? I needed someone to make the decision for me. Smoked? Original? Bun-length? All beef? Four to a package, or five? The ones on sale, or the expensive ones? What was the difference, anyway? There were too many options, and trying to sort through them to make the best decision was more than I could handle. It brought me to tears.

I had a similar experience at Walmart last week. All I wanted was a box of raisin bran for Avivah. I pushed my cart into the cereal aisle and spotted it right away. Raisin Bran (the brand) next to the generic raisin bran that was way cheaper. I grabbed the generic and started to roll, until my eyes caught another box of raisin bran a little farther down the aisle. It looked like the exact same box, but it was about $.80 cheaper. I picked it up, compared the boxes. What was I missing?

And then I saw the others. A whole shelf of raisin brans. Original. Extra raisins. Crunchy. Generic. Organic. Big boxes. Small boxes. The selection was a Dr. Seuss book waiting to happen.

These two odd, post-Africa shopping experiences have made me ask myself how much of my time and energy is spent making decisions about things that DO NOT MATTER. Every time I go shopping, I have to sort through the options for almost every product on my list (brand, size, price, variation, quality, etc.). If I want to be frugal, I can’t just grab the first thing I see and go with it. I wonder how many cumulative hours I’ve spent in the aisles doing price comparisons alone.

I know from my experience with the peanut M&Ms that limited options can lead to deeper appreciation and decreased pickiness. And I know from my unsatisfied craving for cold, unboxed cow’s milk that options can also be beautiful things. So I’m not saying I’m ready to live without them, or even that I think we should.

What I’m asking myself is this: how do I live an eternally focused life in a culture that is constantly trying to distract me with non-essential issues?

For example, on Hulu the other day (yeah, yeah...I know) I saw an ad for a new prescription medication that makes your eyelashes grow. Really? I’m the first person to admit my eyelashes could use some help, but up to this point I haven’t lost any sleep over them. Am I going to look back on my life when I’m eighty and say, “Gee whiz, I sure am glad I marched myself to the doc and spent that time and money on the eyelash cream. It changed my whole life.”

Will I say that about my Netflix subscription? My affinity for Starbucks’ peppermint mochas? My perfectly coordinated summer wardrobe? My peanut M&Ms? (gulp)

Now, here’s the next question: If the most Christ-centered, eternally significant life does not call for those things, does that mean it’s wrong to indulge in them?

I’m not preaching here, I’m asking. I don’t know what to do with this question or the potential answers I’ve wrestled with over the past two years since I started thinking about it.

All I know for certain is that life felt simpler for those three weeks in Africa when my options were limited. Want to watch TV? The only English-speaking channel on Rwandan television is airing an advanced chemistry class, so have at it! I did. I also grew to be satisfied with surviving all day on a single CLIF bar while waiting for paperwork at government offices, and wearing my clothes more than once between washings. I didn’t stress out about having a bad hair day or smelling a little funky after a day spent in buildings without AC. Part of it was that I had few choices. The other part was that I was too focused on my mission to waste brain power and emotional energy on the insignificant stuff of life.

And that brings me to another question. What is my life focus? Does this dilemma of mine stem from lack of vision rather than exposure to too many options that satiate my wordly wants?

I don’t expect to answer these questions in a single blog post. I’m just putting them out there and asking you to ponder them with me. Adoption got me started wrestling with these things, and I have to wonder if God is going to use it as a catalyst to something even more life-changing than I first imagined.

Wherever He leads me, I will follow.

I just hope it’s someplace with peanut M&Ms.

decompressing

I’ve been pondering my next blog post for far too long, and since I haven’t come up with the brilliant new addition I’ve been hoping for, I decided it was time to just sit down and tell you all what’s been on my mind.

Today we’ve officially been home with Avivah for one month. Life with our little girl is at times full of fun and fulfillment, other times frustration and confusion. I am in awe of all God did to bring our precious child home, and I am in awe of how desperately I need Him every day to help me decipher the complexities of my new daughter and train my heart to respond in the way she needs.

Okay, now that the homefront update is out of the way, I want to talk about our time in Africa. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet (hence my hours of pondering and lack of posts). So much of what happened there involves procedural details and specific officials, and I know that a public forum is not the appropriate place to share those experiences.

I’ll say this: it was painful and exhausting, beautiful and life-changing. I found myself battling emotions I didn’t expect (still dealing with that) and looking at myself and my life through new lenses that made me ever more aware of my need for the truth proclaimed in the title of this blog.

I still haven’t processed all I saw and did in Africa, but I have a sense that my time there was not the end of our adoption process, but rather the beginning of something much bigger. Something that goes far beyond adoption, and far beyond me.

I remember with such clarity the moment I climbed the stairs to board our flight out of Kigali. It was 1:30 a.m. and the air was cool and damp. I paused at the top of the steps, just before ducking into the plane, and drew a deep breath, thinking, This might be the last time I breathe the air of Rwanda. Avivah was strapped into the Ergo, her warm body limp against my chest as she slept, but I had the urge to wake her and make her take notice. “We’re leaving your birthplace, child. You might never see this place again.” I looked out at the city lights blanketing the hills and tried to stuff down the pain of that thought. This isn’t right, my heart lamented. We can’t leave like this. Not in darkness. Not without more time to say goodbye.

The irony wasn’t lost to me even in that moment. We had prayed for miracles for two weeks, and on that last day we had seen God move more than one mountain to get us on our flight as scheduled. But my heart still ached to stay, not only for myself but for my poor daughter, who had only met us three separate times during visiting hours at the orphanage. The day we left Kigali was the first day she left the orphanage. Her first night with us would be spent in the Ergo on a crowded flight to Addis. We had every legal document in hand, but leaving that way, under the cover of darkness while she slept unaware on my (a stranger’s) chest…it felt like we were stealing her. Or stealing something from her.

The remorse over our departure never went away. In fact, it’s intensified. I want to go back. I feel like I left something there, or missed something, and I have to return to find it. I don’t know what to do with that sensation, so I’m trying to find the balance between holding it at a distance so it doesn’t drive me crazy, and keeping my eyes on it just in case God has a related plan brewing sooner rather than later.

I also have a feeling that as I continue to decompress from our travels and adjust to life with Avivah, I’m going to need to do more writing to stay sane. Hence the new banner and subtitle to the blog, and the new look. It’s time for the next chapter. I hope you’ll all turn the page with me.

the other side

First off, I want to apologize for the lack of posts while we were in Africa. For two years I planned to be a blogging queen during our big trip, but it wasn't meant to be. Internet access was horrible where we stayed in Rwanda, and once we got to Ethiopia we couldn't even access Blogger. Ironically, Ethiopia would have been the best place to blog since we had lots of downtime. Rwanda, on the other hand, was IN-SANE. Even if we'd had reliable internet, I doubt I would have found the time or energy to write more than I did!

We've been home for a little over a week now, and almost every day I've been telling myself to get online and post something, anything! It always drove me crazy to follow (stalk) other traveling families' blogs only to have them fall off the face of the earth upon returning home. Well, now I understand.

It's different than I expected, being home. Beautiful, miraculous, exhausting, and difficult in ways I never anticipated. I love my daughter, but I don't know her. I'm scared of doing this badly, I'm thrilled to have the chance to do it at all. I look back on the waiting with relief that it's over and sadness that a unique chapter in my life has closed. I miss the familiarity of the past in spite of its pain, and struggle with guilt that such feelings could consume even a fraction of my heart when such an incredible blessing is sitting right in front of me after so many dark nights and days when I believed she would never come.

It's life, not a fairy tale, but life is far sweeter. There are tantrums, sleepless nights, and poop-up-the-back diapers, but there are also giggles, goodnight kisses, and an endless appreciation for anything I cook. Tiny hands exploring my face, arms reaching up to be held, a head lolling on my shoulder in sleep. These are the things that tell me it will be okay. The old adventure, the one I despised but learned to navigate, is over. This new one...the one that scares the bejeebers out of me...well, I'll get through it the same way I got through the last one: one step at a time, not on my own two feet, but in the arms of the One who knows where He's going. Embraced by grace.

Introducing...

Avivah Ingabire McLennan

Avivah: [Ah-VEE-vah] Hebrew, meaning "springtime." Chosen for the significance of:

• The coming of spring after perpetual winter when "Aslan is on the move."
• Steven Curtis Chapman's song "Spring is Coming," which gave us hope through a long winter of waiting.
• The fact that we began our adoption and she was born in springtime of 2009 (we made our final decision to adopt 2 days after her estimated birthdate), she arrived at the orphanage in springtime of 2010, and we were united with her in springtime of 2011.

Ingabire: [Een-GAH-bee-day] Kinyarwanda, meaning "gift." Together with Avivah, her name means "Springtime Gift."

"Gotcha" Moment

Beautiful Eyes!

Daddy's Girl

First Grin

The Appointed Moment

Today, we received our referral for a precious little girl. Hours later, the blue gates opened and we met our daughter for the first time. The prayers of many...YOUR prayers...were answered with a resounding "YES."

I wish I could capture the beauty of those first moments, but words are insufficient. I will say that as Tim and I waited in the courtyard of the orphanage for our daughter's appearance, all I could think was, "We finally made it, and God carried us all the way."

I hope to be able to post some pictures in the coming days. For now, this photo communicates a fraction of the joy we felt upon our first sighting of our little girl.

Arriving

May 2, 2011

We took off from Entebbe (Uganda) about 20 minutes ago. All I see below us are thick clouds, but we should be landing in Rwanda in about 15 minutes. I can already feel our plane beginning to descend.

All of a sudden I am flooded with emotion. Is this really happening? When we drop below the clouds I’ll see my child’s birth country for the first time with my own eyes. This beautiful land I’ve dreamed and prayed for…the place I’ve been so eager to reach for two years.

I’ve doubted God’s calling us here so many times. Every hiccup in the process, every extra month of waiting, every frustrating miscommunication or deception…they’ve all led me to ask, “Is God really for us in this?” There’s always been a part of me that doubted we’d reach this final destination, and the more I wanted it, the more I doubted. The gift of God’s “yes” in this just seems too lavish. I am undeserving. But He is the giver of good and perfect gifts – lavish gifts – and I am underserving of all of them, most especially the gift of the cross.

We’re dropping into the clouds now. In many ways we’ve been here for months, but this time I can see patches of green far below – the color of new life.

Rwanda. We are here at last.

I am overcome.

Rwanda, here we come!!!

Dear readers, the time has finally come! It is with a mixture of excitement, relief, and trepidation that I share the news that we will be flying to Rwanda in just three days!

Some of you may be scratching your heads and wondering how this happened. Just a few weeks ago I was bemoaning our long wait and my poor response to it. Let me assure you, this news is not as sudden as it seems (at least to us), we simply didn't feel comfortable saying anything until our trip was certain.

No, we have not received our referral. Yes, we're traveling without it. (Our non-objection letter did finally pop up in our spam folder last week!) Unfortunately, I cannot share all the details surrounding this decision, but I do want to emphasize one very important point: Our situation is unique. The Ministry is clear on this point - families are not to show up on their doorstep without a referral. However, because of our unusual case, we have their consent to do just that, and we are hopeful that we will be meeting our precious little mystery boy or girl sometime next week!

I want to repeat this, because it's important: MIGEPROF knows we're coming. We're not breaking any rules or trying to force anyone's hand. We hesitated to share our news here partly because we were concerned someone might assume that our decision to travel without a referral means that they should, too. Please, if you're still waiting, I know it's excruciating, but please don't travel without MIGEPROF's consent or invitation because of us.

May 18 will mark the 2-year anniversary of when we began this adoption journey. Back then, we didn't expect to celebrate even our 1-year anniversary without a new child in our home! I'm thankful that God conceals the future, because I'm not sure I would have had the courage to begin this journey if I'd known how long it would take or how hard it would be. There are still many unknowns ahead of us, but we are praising Him for bringing us this far and trusting His faithfulness in the weeks, months, and lifetime to come!

waiting poorly

I haven’t written lately, not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I don’t know how to say it and because, even if I did, I cannot or should not say it on a public forum.

For those of you who are wondering: no, we haven’t heard anything from Rwanda. Tomorrow will be our 16-month DTR anniversary. Next month will be two years since we started the journey. I don’t think I need to say anything else about that. You get it.

I went for a walk tonight to fight off the demons. My heart was laden with a burden that’s grown so familiar I can no longer remember what it feels like to be free of it. I plugged myself into my ipod, hoping the combination of exercise and worship music would generate a chemical miracle and somehow erase the strain of what has already been a very long week of waiting.

As I walked, I prayed. Mostly I prayed for forgiveness. I thought about all the women who have suffered a lifetime of infertility, all the failed adoptions and broken dreams. I thought of people in Japan who have lost their loved ones, their homes, their neighborhoods, and so much more. I thought of death row inmates who would do anything to erase the sins of their past and have a second chance, but instead are facing a future that can be counted in the number of breaths they have left. I thought of all the things I could have to complain about and don’t. My burden should seem so insignificant compared to these things. Truly, what right have I to feel such frustration and despair? I’m merely waiting, and such a relatively short wait at that.

Yet my Seussian side tells me that pain is pain, no matter how small. Would it be right to scoff at my friend’s devastation over her first miscarriage if I had already experienced three of them? Does the God of the universe, who sees the most vile, despicable acts of humanity, fail to have compassion on the newly grieving widow simply because He knows the devastation of those who have lived through genocide and lost everyone they love? Is suffering a competition?

These are the jumbled thoughts playing out in my head tonight. I want to wait well, to have perspective, to take advantage of this opportunity to grow through my trials. I’ve gotta say…I feel like an absolute failure. I have not waited well. There have been seasons of surrender, certainly, but overall I’ve been whiny, self-absorbed, impatient, easily discouraged, and inconsistent in prayer. I’ve been a worrier, not a warrior. I’m so so so tired of me me me. Hence my prayers for forgiveness. And my fresh appreciation for the fact that adoption is about grace - in this case grace shown to an undeserving mother who is most definitely "the weak leading the strong." (I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that my kids have it together better than I do right now.)

As I was walking tonight, I watched the trees with their beautiful blossoming buds. When I finished pondering the havoc those lovely blooms would soon wreak on my sinuses, I observed how the branches appeared to be reaching to heaven, pointing to God for the world to see. Always pointing up, no matter the season. Blooming or barren, those trees are about their Maker.

I want to be a tree.

That's all.

An all-over-the-place post

Stress is a funny thing. You don't always know you're feeling it until it's more than you can take. It's all around us, there's no way to avoid it entirely, and even if you could you wouldn't necessarily want to because it's often caused by good things like laughing children and fun evenings with friends.

Two and a half years ago stress dealt me a blow I'll never forget. Too many years of overextending myself resulted in serious burnout and the unpleasant symptoms that go along with it, like panic attacks and general anxiety. Over the course of the following months I made serious efforts to reduce the stress in my life, and those changes played a major role in my healing.

And then we decided to adopt. In light of my recent struggles, I was afraid of introducing the stress of adoption into the mix. It took a lot of prayer and discussion to convince me to take that leap of faith, and in His faithfulness God has provided me with every bit of emotional stamina I've needed since the day we signed our adoption application.

That doesn't mean it's been easy. I praise God for sustaining me, but it would be dishonest to say He's enabled me to soar like the eagle every step of the journey. I've done a lot more walking (or crawling) than flying.

Waiting has become a second skin, but no matter how thoroughly it envelopes me or how familiar it feels, the fit will never be comfortable. Sometimes the weight is unbearable. Other times I barely notice it, but even then, under the radar, it slowly saps my strength and transmits that dim but steady hum of stress.

I am so weary tonight. The best words I know to describe this sensation are Bilbo Baggins' in The Fellowship of the Rings. "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter, scraped over too much bread."

My heart is divided. I long for deliverance, but I also long for what I know to be far better - whatever God has planned. Perhaps this is why He lets the stretching continue. Perhaps it's the surest path to true submission.

Do you hear what I hear?

I have this friend. She's amazing...so compassionate, generous, wise, etc. The kind of friend you know without a doubt will be there for you in a pinch, no matter what kind of mess you've gotten yourself into. The kind of friend everyone should have.

The only problem is, she calls me at the most inconvenient moments. I feel horrible, but I'm always having to come up with excuses. "I'll call you back," "I already have plans," "I'm running late, gotta go!" To make matters worse, whenever we do actually have a conversation, I hang up realizing that all I did was tell her about my problems, my needs, my concerns, me, me, me. You get the picture.

Maybe I talk about myself so much because when I don't, the conversation feels so awkward. She's one of those people who doesn't mind letting the quiet moments stretch. I sit there listening to the silence and I don't know what to do with myself. The longer she goes without saying anything, the more I inwardly cringe. The suspense is worse than the final act of a Bourne film. So I let my mind wander...or I turn into a chatterbox.

By now you probably know who I'm talking about, and it isn't really a girlfriend. I'm writing this post in the aftermath of yet another "me myself and I" prayer time, in which I threw my requests at God as if He were a waiter jotting down orders.

Why is it so hard to "listen" to God? I know He's not silent. All I have to do is look around at nature or open my Bible to know that. But I also know that it's hard to hear Him when I'm running around like a schizophrenic chicken trying to do...well, everything. I mean, who else is going to do the dishes, cook the meals, wash the clothes, teach the kids, listen to the husband, counsel the friend, move the furniture, buy the groceries, pay the bills, fill up the gas tank, do the Bible study homework, change the Facebook status, send the text messages, take the bath, read the novel, update the scrapbook, bake the cookies, change the blog background, research the baby names, play the Webkinz games, watch the shows, check the forecast, eat the chocolate, and solve all the world's problems?

I've forgotten how to be still, that's the issue. The other day my four-year-old son was trying to tell me something while I was typing an email. "Yeah...uh-huh...that's good, buddy," I mumbled without listening to a word he'd said. Suddenly I felt his sticky little fingers on my cheeks, and with alarming strength he forced my face away from the screen. With his big blue eyes only inches from mine, he pleaded, "Mommy, I neeeeeeed to tell you something."

And I neeeeeeeed to listen. To my son, yes, but much more so to God. Earlier this month my friend Allie gave me the book Sacred Waiting by David Timms. I'm only two chapters into it, and I've already had several "ouch, that's a little too close to home" moments. Here's one of them:

In the mist of our mad scramble--what we bravely but vainly call the "good life"--we find ourselves harboring deep-seated impatience with God. We have little time to nurture a relationship with Him and generally feel that He should run at least as fast as we do. If we have a problem right now, then right now would be a good time for the Lord to step in and deal with it. We squeeze in a quick prayer request while changing lanes in rush-hour traffic and expect the Lord to fire back a quick answer, preferably a positive one. All the while we're rushing Him and rushing past Him.

How much guidance and wisdom have I forfeited by trying to rush through the last 21 months of waiting for our adoption? I've been so busy figuring out what to do - how to make the time productive, how to keep my mind busy, how to hold onto my sanity - that I've neglected the most important thing. I've been Martha when I should have been Mary, choosing the "better part" of sitting at His feet to - you guessed it - LISTEN.

The Rwandan adoption community is tight, and I love that. Just knowing my Rwanda Mamas are always standing by to encourage me is like carrying around a big hug in my pocket, ready to grab onto whenever I need it. It's so much easier to jump online or grab the phone and seek their comfort, advice, or companionship than to carve out some time to have a conversation with my Best Friend, who is the type that doesn't mind letting the quiet moments stretch.

Nevertheless, in His presence is where I know I'll find daily bread, living water, and rest for my soul. Not to mention the guidance and wisdom I so desperately need. If I can only learn to listen.

Re-entering the blogosphere

I haven't written much on this blog for the past several months, mostly because I haven't known what to say. Last fall I was in a dark place, logging more hours in "the pit" than I care to remember. Since that time my heart has navigated the changing tides of surrender, hope, frustration, cynicism, compassion, excitement, gratitude, disillusionment, peace, and longing. No, I'm not a mental case. I'm a waiting mom.

The details of our adoption haven't changed much. We're still waiting for our approval (DTR 14 months on Valentine's Day), though we now have hope that it could arrive very soon! In early January we updated our home study and jumped the hurdles required for new USCIS paperwork. Tomorrow Tim and I will be getting our vaccinations for eventually traveling to Rwanda, and then, once our extended I-171H arrives, we'll be good to go for another year.

I'm not sure what to tell you about my blogosphere hibernation this winter. The details above tell you a little about what I did, but not about what happened. That vital part of the story is internal, and I haven't sorted it all out yet, at least not enough to share on this blog. I can tell you that God's ways are not only higher than mine, they're galaxies upon galaxies removed from my pitiful, short-sighted schemes. The past three months have taught me a lot about His bigness. (I don't like the sound of that word, but it's the only one that seems to fit.)

When we began this journey, I thought it was about a child. Or maybe about a child and the portrait adoption paints of God's grace to us through Jesus. But lately I've realized that's only scratching the surface. God is up to something much bigger than us, and much bigger than a poignant analogy. He's after eternal, worldwide, revolutionary change. He's after glory.

But that is yet another topic for another time. For now I just want to say hello, I'm back, and thanks for not un-following me this winter! :)

My theme song for 2011...