Category: Adoption Page 8 of 9

How’s It Going? Part 2

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On September 14, 2011

In Adoption

If those of you in California hear a child screaming in the far distance, it’s probably Lily.  That kid has unbelievably loud vocal cords.  So if you hear her, say a prayer for me.

If I tell her that she’s had enough milk for now, she throws herself to the ground and screams.

If I tell her it’s time to go and she does not want to go, well….screaming.

If we are at school and my hands are full so I can’t pick her up, she turns herself into jelly-legs and makes herself a puddle on the sidewalk.  I pick her up by the arm and drag her along, forcing her to walk, and she screams.  I’m sure every student on campus thinks I am torturing the child. 

And then there’s World War III, which has broken out between Josiah and Lily.  If he just “happens” to bump into her (which “accidentally” happens multiple times a day), screaming ensues.  Then Josiah gets punished and he tries to compete with her in volume.  In the last couple of days, she has attempted to retaliate by coming at him with her teeth.  I discovered I have a vampire child. 

All three of my children are in major transition right now.  Grace loves school but comes home exhausted and emotional, Lily is adjusting to…..everything, and Josiah…well, Josiah tells me every day, “I don’t love my sister.  I want a brother.”  And once again I explain that a brother wouldn’t be any different and that he must show love even if he doesn’t feel it.

Of course, it’s not all bad.  It’s a delight to see her discover things for the first time.  Her joy in taking a bubble bath.  The way that she asks me all day long, “What is dat?”  The hug she gave me yesterday which for the first time, felt personal, and not just because I was the closest person around to give it.  Amusement from watching her turn down hotdogs and chips because she’s never had them before (But the girl can wolf down a PB&J!)  Hearing from a friend about how Josiah tenderly cared for her in the back row while I was speaking in assembly on Monday.  Her complete love affair with shoes and sunglasses. 

She is a typical two-year-old in so many ways.  I know that the tantrums are totally normal for her age.  And I realize that she used to be in a place that was completely child-friendly and had very clear boundaries, so she was rarely told, “Don’t touch that.”  She had a schedule she was familiar with, she ate food she had grown up on, and she rarely, if ever, went to new places.  Now she is being bombarded with new places and people and experiences, yet she is being given all kinds of new restrictions.  And the sinful two-year-old within her does not like those restrictions! 

The hardest part for me is disciplining her when we don’t have a relationship.  It kind of feels like disciplining someone else’s kid–of course she isn’t going to respond well!  Two-year-olds are trying to gain independence from their caregivers, and she has that instinct, yet she is pulling away from something that has never really been established in her life.  I constantly beg God for wisdom.  When she cries, is she just being stubborn and need to be disciplined?  Is she grieving and need to be comforted?  Is she afraid and need reassurance?  When does she need grace and when does she need law? 

It’s not easy.  But I’m guessing that bringing home a newborn isn’t easy either.  Is it worth it?  No question.  Would I do it again?  I’m already thinking about it. 

Her big brother just did something silly and Lily giggled.  He said, “Mommy, I like to make my baby sister laugh!”

Of course it’s worth it. 

One Less Orphan

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On August 24, 2011

In Adoption

We’ll start with these for today.  Lots more will come later.  🙂

Chosen

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On April 26, 2011

In Adoption

We stared at pictures of little girls and prayed all week.  I had emailed the orphanage director with some questions about the children, but due to an email mix-up, we weren’t in communication with her until last night, when we returned from Kenya. 

We knew there were three children at Forever Angels that met our specifications (girl, about 2 years old) who were available to adopt.  We narrowed it down to two, mostly based on age.

Long about Thursday I asked Gil who he was leaning towards.  He told me.  She was the same one on my mind. 

But it was torturous thinking, honestly.  I read this post by the orphanage director on Friday.  She wrote about how on that day, they had to transfer two of their beautiful four-year-olds to another orphanage, since Forever Angels only cares for babies and toddlers.  Both these little girls were available for adoption.  No one took them.  Now, most likely, they will spend their whole childhood in an orphanage. 

So though I was leaning towards one child in particular as being the best fit for our family, I was haunted by the faces of the others, who could very likely never join families.  One child to gain a life of hugs, bedtime stories, an excellent education, a brother and sister, grandparents, and cousins, Disneyland, ticklefests, and toys she will always call her own, and the other child never truly belonging to anyone. 

Some people have asked us why we are choosing a toddler this time, instead of a baby.  The simple answer to that is that the older a child gets, the less likely he or she will be chosen.  Since we’ve already had a baby girl and a baby boy, we decided to choose the oldest child we could and still preserve the “birth order” in our family. 

We’d pretty much made our choice, and then last night we heard from the orphanage director.  She told us that one of the two little girls we were considering is being pursued for adoption by one of her Tanzanian staff members. 

But not the one we had chosen.

Praise the Lord!  Not only can we rejoice in the little girl who will join our family, but we can rejoice that the other little one will get a family as well.  Just as it should be. 

Now….not to disappoint anyone…but we’re still not revealing her identity.  There is still a lot of paperwork to be done, and things can go wrong.  We’re not even telling our kids who she is until we are as sure as we can be that we will be bringing her home.  However, if you want to go through all 49 profiles on the website and try to figure it out, go for it!  My mom did, actually (of course), and interestingly enough, God put on her heart the same little girl we had chosen. 

And when will we bring her home?  Well, when we were at this point with Grace, it took another 4 months (which was very unusual).  With Josiah, it took another 6 weeks.  It has been a lot faster for some people, but we’ve learned not to get our hopes up too high.  We’re hoping for a month.  Soon!

Orphans and Former Orphans

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On April 15, 2011

In Adoption

Service Emphasis Week (SEW) has got to be one of the very best things about HOPAC.  This year secondary students spread out all over Tanzania on 17 different teams…to build water filters, run kids’ camps, teach English, serve disabled people, teach computer classes…and the list goes on. 

Gil led the team that went to Agape Children’s Village in Morogoro, a city about 3 hours from here.  So the kids and I joined him, and we took 12 HOPAC students to serve the 28 kids there for 5 days. 

Love these trips.  The students step up.  In leadership.  In love.  In service.  The kids shower their adoration on these teenagers who are willing to give of themselves to them.  It’s beautiful to watch.

Visiting orphanages is not a new thing for me.  But visiting them with my two children, who were once orphans, was quite a profound experience.  In each child’s face, I saw the faces of my children.  Neither of my children came from this orphanage, but if they had not been adopted, they would have grown up much the same way.

I often imagined Grace there, as a resident, not a visitor.   Her head shaved, instead of full of braids and beads.  Eating ugali with her hands instead of a spoon.  Her eyes with a yellow tinge from malnutrition or too many bouts of malaria.  Speaking only Swahili.  Helping to wash her clothes by hand, making her little bed in the morning, and putting away her meager possessions. 

Would she still be as full of life?  As confident as she is now?  As gregarious?  Would she love to laugh as much as she does in our family?  How different would she be without a mama, her Daddy, her brother?  How would her mind be different without the plethora of experiences she has had…if her whole life revolved around three buildings and a nearby school?  

She would be such a different person that I don’t know if I would recognize her.  Yet that person could have been, if not for the sovereign hand of God in her life.  And millions of children in Tanzania are living that life.  The differences are stark. 

And yet….what would I be like, had I not been adopted into His family?

God’s Sovereignty in the Lives of Two Little Girls

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On November 10, 2010

In Adoption

October 12, 2005 email prayer update:

Many of you know that we have been interested in adoption in Tanzania for a long time. This last Sunday, we met with an American lawyer here in Dar es Salaam who has helped numerous families with Tanzanian adoptions. She warned us that the process would be long and arduous, that it would take at least a year to get a baby in our home, and another year to finalize the adoption.

That was Sunday. Then came Tuesday, when we were driving to meet the lawyer to turn in our application. She called us on the way and said, “Uh, I have a baby I want you to meet. She’s available for immediate foster care and then adoption.” We arrived and she immediately placed a one-month old baby in Gil’s arms.

After we picked ourselves up off the floor and our heads stopped spinning around, the lawyer explained that this baby was an exception to the rule, because she had not been turned over to a government orphanage. Thus, her family could hand her over to us immediately, and we could go through the process of becoming foster parents and then adoptive parents while we were caring for her.

This process has more risk than the “long-way” of getting a baby from an orphanage, because the family could change their minds and want the baby back before the adoption is complete. But the baby’s mother has died, the father is nowhere to be found, and the remaining relatives are very poor. They have adamantly expressed that they want the baby to be adopted.  She is currently being cared for by a middle-aged (white) South African woman who loves her, but wants her to have a good family.

What does this mean? We have a significant decision to make within the next couple of days! If we decide to take her, as soon as we have received written consent from the family, she would be in our home–as soon as two weeks from now.

October 14, 2005 email prayer update:

To update you: We have decided to move forward with the process of getting this baby! We’re not getting our hopes too high yet. This Sunday, at 3:00, we will meet with the baby’s uncle, who represents the family.

Then, on Tuesday (hypothetically), the uncle, the baby, the lawyer, and us will go to meet Miss Moyo, the regional social worker.

Once all these consents are done with, we will shortly be able to take the baby into our home! She will not be legally adopted for a number of months. So please also pray that the family does not change their mind before the adoption is complete. We are trusting God with this, but we still want to pray about it!

October 16, 2005 email prayer update:

Unfortunately, the meeting this afternoon with the baby’s relatives did not go well. Adoption is a very foreign process in Tanzania; in fact, there isn’t even a word in Kiswahili that is an exact translation. The woman who rescued this baby and is fostering her is not Tanzanian, and even though she thought the family had made it clear they wanted the baby to be adopted, we found out today that isn’t true.

The uncles were very clear about the fact that they did not want to relinquish rights to this baby; they only wanted someone to care for her for a while. Unfortunately, in Tanzanian culture it is more acceptable to let a child live in an orphanage for her whole life than to have her be adopted by another family.

We are, of course, very disappointed. But we are thankful that this came out before we had taken this child into our home, named her, and had our hearts set on her. We prayed that God would make this very clear to us, and He has answered that prayer.

————————————————————-

We were crushed, of course.  I cried a lot that day.  It felt the same way as my miscarriage.

 

That baby’s name was Lisabel.  For a week I thought she would be my Grace.  But she was not.  My Grace was not born until January 2006.  And I did not bring her home until November 2006.

But Lisabel’s story did not end there.  The woman who had taken her in as a starving infant (a white South African lady whose children were grown), though she wanted her adopted into a good family, had then cared for her for 4 weeks and was not willing to give Lisabel back into the terrible situation from which she had come.  So she kept her, even though she knew that the uncles did not want her adopted.  After about two years of this, she finally, finally, finally convinced them to let her adopt Lisabel, and it even came down to the very last wire in the court room. 

During the last five years, we have run into Lisabel and her adoptive mother twice, very briefly.  It was always strange to see the little girl who, for a week, I thought would be my daughter. 

So who would have thought, that out of all the roads in this city of 5 million people, Lisabel and her mother would be living on the same road as us.  And who would have thought that out of the thousands of pre-schools in this city, and even the dozen or so on this road, that Lisabel would be going to the same pre-school as my Grace. 

And now they are best friends.

Sometimes the ways of God make me a bit dizzy.

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