Tag: Adoption Page 15 of 23

Wish There Was More to Tell You

On July 20, 2011

People keep asking me about something.

What is it again?

Oh….that would be Lily.

Not that I’ve really been thinking about her. Very much.

I haven’t really had much to tell you. I promise, if I did, I would be shouting it from the roof tops. I would probably even use CAPITAL LETTERS.

We’ve just been waiting.

Social worker in Mwanza told us she sent the police report. I keep calling the social worker down here (we’ll call her Mrs. A) to see if she has received it. Yesterday and today I made the hour drive to go see her in person. Yesterday, no luck…she wasn’t there. But today we talked.

She hasn’t received it. But she also explained in detail to me the many layers of bureaucracy that must happen before she receives the letter. Apparently the procedure changed in the last year, so things are going differently than with our previous adoptions. Once that police report gets down to Dar, it goes through at least three other desks (for a stamp, a signature, a glance…) before it actually gets to Mrs. A. And apparently there is pretty much no way to trace it until it appears on Mrs. A’s desk.

So our police report could be in three possible different places. Or four, if you count the Mwanza social worker’s desk, since we still don’t have irrefutable proof that she mailed it. Or five, if you count the post office, stuck behind a wall somewhere.

Once Mrs. A gets it, she will write the final-final-final letter which allows us to go pick up Lily. But she will write it by hand, someone else will type it (if there is power that day), and then it will go back through three other desks for signing and stamping before we can receive it.

It exhausts me just thinking about it.

I so much want to bring Lily home before August 8th. Because that week, we plan to go on vacation to our favorite beach house. And it’s the very last week before Gil starts teacher meetings, and two weeks before Grace starts kindergarten. I so desperately want us to have that week together as a family before we all split up again.

Will you pray? I know so many already are, and it means so much.

It seems impossible. But we are trusting God is in control, and we wait for His will.

Waiting for that Straight Path

By Amy Medina

On July 11, 2011

In Other

Camp was amazing, as it always is. Every year as we are getting ready, we say we won’t ever do it again, and then afterwards we admit that it’s worth all the stress and fuss and hassle. Kids opening up in conversation who never do at school. Kids singing worship songs who usually sit with their arms crossed at school. So much laughter. So many forever memories bonding us together with our students. The Facebook posts the day they get home: “Camp was the best week of my life!” And of course, the addtional ministry to the team of teenagers from the States who come to put on the camp. Seeing their eyes opened; their lives changed. And we know we’ll do it again.

My days were spent taking care of the First Aid campers. Making arrangments with the kitchen staff. Making sure the rooms got cleaned. Spending time on the beach talking with students. Watching for Grace and Josiah’s little heads, making sure they didn’t get lost in the shuffle. They never did, of course, since they were being loved on by 50 teenagers.

But my nights. I would put my kids to bed and wait for them to fall asleep. And then I was Jacob, wrestling with God.

The police report just needed a cover letter and an envelope with a stamp. A week after the social worker got it, she told us she mailed it. Ten days after that, we found out that it had yet to be mailed.

Two more weeks, wasted.

And so I wrestled in the darkness of that little cabin at the beach. Dark moments of doubt. And worry.

Worry….because every day that passes, our little girl inches closer to the age of 3, which is the “magic” age psychologists say by which time a child must make a permanent attachment or risk attachment disorder.

Worry…because every week that passes, our chances diminish of the adoption being finalized in time for us to visit home next summer.

Worry…because every month that passes is a greater assurance that our home assignment plans will be screwed up two years from now. Lily will not receive American citizenship until she has lived with us for exactly two years…not a day less. Thus every day that passes is another day we will have to push back our home assignment.

And I hear her scream.

This is not a good plan! I told my God. I don’t like your timing! We were not supposed to wait this long; we already went through this with Grace, why are you making us go through this again? Don’t you see my carefully laid out plans? Don’t you understand that my plan is the best one?

Lean not on your own understanding.

Lean not on your own understanding.

You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies–though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God’s] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is. (Jean-Pierre de Caussade, quoted by Ann Voskamp)

God showed up in both Grace and Josiah’s adoptions. I’m waiting with expectation for how He will show up in Lily’s.

Cheer up if your world is crashing at the moment and you are abiding in Christ’s will. Tomorrow or next year will look completely different. We see but middles. … The eyes of faith are more reliable than the eyes of sight. (Andree Seu)

In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

And then it happened!

By Amy Medina

On June 20, 2011

In Other

The text message came about 11:00 this morning: The social worker has received your police report!

Finally, finally, after all these weeks! Blessed, blessed news!

There is still one more step. The police report gets sent down to Dar, and then we wait to receive one final letter from social welfare telling us we can bring her home. With Grace and Josiah, that only took a week or two. We have friends who waited eight. You just never know.

BUT the exciting part today is that now we can introduce her to you. The police report was the key, because that’s the letter that releases her for adoption. Up until that report, it’s just speculation.

Anyway, what am I wasting time for? You want to meet her!

So here she is:

Her name is Lilly Zawadi Clement. Her mother, Zawadi Clement, died two hours after she was born, and no one ever came to claim the baby or the body. She was a premie and stayed in the hospital a number of weeks. Now she is almost 2 1/2 years old.

We are going to keep her name but spell it Lily. This was an endless debate between Gil and me, because I really like the significance of giving any adopted child a new name when she enters a family. But she does already know her name, and Gil and I both really like the name Lily, so Gil won out in the end. She will one day be Lily Zawadi Medina.

And there was great joy in the Medina household!

Waiting.

By Amy Medina

On June 20, 2011

In Other

There’s something I didn’t tell you about that visit to my daughter’s orphanage.

I told you about that second day, when I held her for three hours and she wouldn’t let me put her down without screaming.

But I didn’t tell you about when I left.

I knew she would cry when I put her down. So I figured, Okay, I’ll hand her off to one of the other volunteers when I leave. She’ll go from one attention-source to another, and that should pacify her.

But it didn’t. The attention I had lavished on her for 24 hours must have made more of an impact than I thought. Because when I left, and passed her on to a volunteer, she didn’t stop screaming.

She screamed and screamed and screamed….for me. And I turned my back on her and walked away.

And as I have waited for her….one week…two, three,…seven, I keep hearing her scream.

I have been reading this book these days, the one everyone is reading.

There’s a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what is all means.

I won’t shield God from my anguish by claiming He’s not involved in the ache of this world and Satan prowls but he’s a lion on a leash and the God who governs all can be shouted at when I bruise, and I can cry and I can howl and He embraces the David-hearts who pound hard on His heart with their grief and I can moan deep that He did this–and He did.

All is grace only because all can transfigure.

(Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts)

Dear Amy H. up at Forever Angels is doing the best she can. The days when she tells me that she hopes it will be Today, those are actually the worst days. I check my phone every ten minutes to see if she has written; and as the day passes with No Word, the waiting suffocates my heart.

But I wait. And every day I want her more, and every day I must wait longer.

And learn. And trust. And grow. And remind myself that I don’t want the change the ending, because God is writing the story.

Wanting to Buy a Little Pink Toothbrush

By Amy Medina

On May 18, 2011

In Other

Monday is our grocery shopping day. As we passed the shampoo, toothpaste, lotion….I paused and examined the children’s toothbrushes. I almost said to the kids, “Let’s pick one out for your sister!”

But I stopped. Too soon, I told myself. Don’t let your heart go. Don’t start planning…yet. In the past few weeks, I’ve thought about going through all of Grace’s stored-up clothes to see what I have in stock for our new little one. I’ve thought about buying her a dresser. Or getting new bibs or cleaning off the pack n’ play. But I haven’t. Because we still don’t have a due date.

Recently we talked with some friends who are interested in Tanzanian adoption. “It’s important to remember,” I told them, “that you must get used to disappointment.”

Today was one of those days. For the past two and half weeks, we’ve been waiting on a police report. The social worker in Mwanza is supposed to send a letter (it’s always about the letters!) to the local police requesting a letter from them which states that the child has been relinquished and is thus available for foster care. Amy H., the director of Forever Angels, told me that the social worker said she made this request of the police the very day after I visited.

So we’ve been waiting for the police report. To get sent to the social worker. Which then gets sent down to the main office in Dar es Salaam. During the past week and a half, Amy kept telling me that the social worker was out of the office at a funeral, and apparently no one else in the office could do anything without her there. But I wasn’t terribly concerned since really, it was the police were who supposed to be writing a letter at this point. Amy was checking daily (she is amazingly persistent) and finally, today, the social worker was back.

She sent me a text. I was so excited to see it was from her. Had the police report been sent?

No. In fact, Amy was sorry to say, the social worker had not even made the request from the police yet (despite telling us she had). She said that the social worker was writing it that very moment (I’m sure Amy made sure of that…I can imagine her, standing over her shoulder until it was done), but that still means that absolutely nothing has happened these past two and a half weeks.

So basically that means there is no way we will have her by the end of May. Maybe by the end of June.

Today, I am tired of being disappointed and feeling rather sorry for myself. I will get over it. I’ve been through this enough times now, and seen so many delays and so many miracles, to know that God is in control of both.

But I’m glad I didn’t buy the toothbrush….yet.