Hindsight Being 20/20 Part Two

We are home.

We survived.

We walked straight into loving arms.

Overwhelmed with emotion.

Safe and sound.

Exhausted.

We arrived at Raleigh Durham Airport on December 25th at 8pm.   Liza had some more tears upon meeting our welcome home party & took a walk to baggage claim with my Mom to get her bearings.  We have been sleeping in our own beds for the last twelve nights.  These most recent days are a blur in our memories, though the overall package looks like you could tie it up with a neat bow and say, "See? All better now."  A few people have said that.  We are looking back through the fog of exhaustion, relief, grief, excitement, tension, celebration and a general sense of being lost in time and realize Liza will not be the only one who needs to heal.  Our other kids were positively heroic during this time.  They are big people in little bodies.  We are so proud of them yet we worry about them, too.  They have made many more sacrifices in their young lives than most adults ever do.

After keeping all of us on a cruel schedule to avoid having our days and nights mixed indefinitely, we are finally taking today to just sleep.  Liza has been in bed for nearly 12 hours now.  As we well know, listening to a foreign language 24/7 is exhausting.  Our first week home was shockingly turbulent.  So we started back to (home)schooling earlier than planned last Wednesday and it has made a world of difference.  All children need structure even when they fight against it.  The order and predictability has been like a big hug to our slightly traumatized psyches.

Rewind:
We last caught up with you after we arrived in Kyiv on Thursday, December 20th on the overnight train from Crimea.  We were welcomed by the Little Lambs ministry to orphans to stay in their offices for the duration of our time in Ukraine.  We felt oppression lifting but it was by no means the end of the story.  By the time we got off the train I had a terrible cold and a developing cough.  We were holding our breath waiting for the passport to arrive in Simferopol the next day, Friday 12/21.

 Stepping out in faith that our prayers would be answered, we bought tickets home on Saturday 12.22 for my parents and had Golden Rule Travel Agency working on moving the rest of our tickets to Christmas Day.  We wanted my parents to spend a normal Christmas with my sister, Christa, and her family in Raleigh.  They have done more for us than we could ever write down in a blog.  Saying goodbye, even for a few days, was going to be sad.  We had been split up on the way over and were going to be split up on the way back.  As we were walking home from lunch on Friday, we stopped for a snowball fight.  Twenty glorious, uninhibited minutes later, we got an email from the travel agency as we happened past WiFi.  It said they had managed to get us all seats on the the same flights home on Christmas Day!  We were all smiles and hugs and were ready to celebrate as the phone rang literally a minute later.  Tom's words to me as he closed the email and answered the call, "Good news and now for more good news!"  We had such hope in that moment.  Hope, which becomes a luxury on such occasions.

Olga was on the other end, "The passport did not arrive."  [record scratching; the music in our heads & the smiles in our hearts vanished].  As we had been loading our bags into the taxi in Simferopol, it had begun to snow.  As our train was pulling out of the station that snow turned to sleet.  Overnight most of Crimea was iced over and the mail was not being delivered.   We emailed the travel agency back (which was by now past business hours in the U.S. on the Friday before Christmas) and found out that it would cost us *again* to delay the tickets back to their original date of 12/28.  Now we could only afford to reassign Tom's and Liza's.  I was coming home on Christmas Day *without* my love and my daughter.  Two groups had turned into three.

Tom and I agonized over the following hours, unable to sleep and I unable to breath without a quickly diminishing medicine supply.  Flying for 24 hours on my own with four exhausted and emotional children and a crushed spirit on the worst Christmas of our lives was my all consuming thought. We were barely functioning at that point.  Not showering, barely eating, watching back to back movies on the laptop as Christmas ticked by.  The sweet man helping me at Golden Rule, Davy, managed to release Tom and Liza's seats without a charge.  (That part is a long story on it's own, but divinely inspired as well).  He also asked if I wanted to still "hold" their seats without repurchasing them.  I was sitting at the desk crying, Tom was on the bunk next to me staring at the wall, and I answered, "Yes.  Because I still believe in miracles."

My parents left the next morning at 3:30am after staying awake all night.  They both turned 66 years old in Ukraine and they traveled for 28 hours from Kyiv to Frankfurt to Toronto to Raleigh.   I didn't want to get out of bed that day.  They had taken such good care of us for 6 weeks and I did not know how I could do the rest without them.  I must sound like the biggest baby in the world.  Maybe I am spoiled. I have parents who literally cross oceans and continents to be with their daughter.  Though, maybe that's why I can cross oceans and language barriers for mine.

It was Saturday, 3 days before Christmas.  We were sleeping apart in twin bunk beds.  We hadn't the means to bake cookies or pies or turkeys.  My parents were gone.  We had no tree.  No gifts to wrap.  No friends to invite.  Little incentive to move around.  It was easier to pretend it wasn't Christmas at all than to try to manufacture enthusiasm.  But we finally managed to get everyone out of their pajamas and out to lunch.  We went for the 3rd or 4th time to a restaurant with an English menu.  It was lit up with Christmas; had a white tree with colored lights and the Maroon 5 Christmas album playing.  It made us feel even more homesick.  And then the phone rang.

The passport came.  Olga had it in her hand in Simferopol.  She was going to put it on the next train.  It would arrive Sunday morning 12.23.  We would be able to go to the embassy on Christmas Eve...and fly out on Christmas morning.

All of us.  Together.

We got back on e-mail (our only means of communicating with the travel agency on a different time zone).  We asked for Tom and Liza to be moved back to our flights.  They had only recently been mandatorily re-released.  Davy got them on all our flights but the last one.  We would be together all the way to Washington D.C. and then have to leave without them for home.  They would have to sit at Dulles for 7 hours arriving home after 11pm Christmas night.  I'm sorry for being a brat, but that just wasn't good enough.  We did not come this far to give up on the last mile.  "God, you're just going to have to get us those tickets.  I am not going home without them.  I am so done with this mess.  I am so tired of holding my breath.  No more cliffhangers."

In the mean time, we decided a Christmas gift was in order.  We paid for one night at the Hyatt Kyiv so we could sleep in a nice bed, take a real shower and swim.  So Saturday afternoon, our friend Losha, drove us across town to our hotel getaway.  We had 18 hours of R&R.  It was as amazing as the view from our window of St. Sophia's Cathedral.

As for my requests, God acquiesced with part of it.  We got in and out of the embassy like a breeze on Christmas Eve.  We were packed by dinner.  Left for Boryspil Airport at 3:30am.  Our youngest, 8 years old, could barely walk by himself.  But the girls were positively giddy.  Tom was cool hand Luke.  I was a bundle of raw nerves.

We were dropped off at the wrong terminal.   We found that out after standing in line for 15 minutes.  The right one was a mile away by bus.  With five children towing backpacks and suitcases on wheels, we ran (literally) back out into the snow and onto the slowest moving shuttle on planet Earth.  We got on the flight and proceeded to sit on the tarmac for 90 minutes due to a scratch on the fuselage and their need to "document" this event.  A scratch?  Are you people for real?  We were flying to Frankfurt and then on to D.C.  The problem with timing international flights is that often when you miss one, you are sometimes stuck for at least another day.  So knowing this, I am embarrassed to say, that I had my first panic attack in 10 years.  The second in my whole life.  My heart rate went through the roof.  I was sweating.  I was crying silently.  And I thought, "This is it.  I have finally snapped.  We are not leaving this country today.  I am not going to get my babies home today."

We did take off eventually.  We landed and took off again from Frankfurt with little trouble outside of empty bellies.  Lufthansa & United would still not give us seats for Liza & Tom on the last leg.  All seven of us were able to sit next to at least one family member on our 9 hour leg from 5:30 am to 2:30 pm EST .  None of us slept, but overall it was a good flight.  When we touched down on U.S. soil, I nearly wept.  I have never been so glad to be an American in all my life, though we forgot to speak English at customs.  We kept saying "Spasibo" and "Do Svidanya".

Liza and Tom were off the plane last.  The other 4 kids and I were waiting, facing them as they came.  I had the camera poised.  She knew that when she landed on U.S. soil she was officially American.  It turned out to be a difficult moment for her.  It was another step in the permanence of leaving her homeland and she was grieving it.  As I snapped the picture of her first steps in America, I realized she was crying.

Tom filled out our customs form while we stood in line and the pen exploded in his hand.  He turned over our sealed immigration papers with a stained black hand and stood back watching while the officer pulled the wrong paperwork out of the envelope.  Yep.  You heard me.  We were stunned as we saw a photograph of a 5 year old girl with brown hair attached to the documents.  He was a very nice man who told us not to worry but that the U.S. Embassy in Kiev had switched our paperwork with another family's.  They had landed at O'Hare an hour before we landed in D.C. with Liza's immigration papers.  We might have looked a little unstable as we began to laugh.  No, I'm pretty sure we looked unglued.

We were mildly alarmed in truth, but after a 45 minute interview and an appointment to go to Charlotte International Airport in January, we were released and had 2 hours to kill before our next flight.  We again went to the desk to ask for seats for Tom and Liza.  One.  We could have one for Liza.  That sounds like a huge praise unless you're Tom.  I could not imagine getting off that last plane, now WITH her and a welcome home party, without the hero of the story.  How incredibly anticlimactic.

We waited.  We prayed.  I threatened God with never speaking to Him again.  (I know.  You don't have to say anything.  I know how that sounds).  The minutes dwindled away with the lining of our stomachs.  Tom was looking increasingly distressed at the thought of being abandoned on the side of the road at the tail end of an ultra-marathon.  Minutes to go.  He walks our son to the bathroom.  "Mountain, Thomas!"  I knocked over my drink and a child jumping out of my seat.  I ran, like a spaz, to the desk.  A United rep handed me a boarding pass with Tom's name on it.  I took it and ran away again, afraid they would change their minds.  And I held it up in triumph as Tom made his way back to me, 60 seconds before boarding.

You know that part where I told God no more cliffhangers?  One of a thousand morals to this story: don't tell God stuff.  It doesn't work.

We sat on the tarmac for an hour after our departure time.  They said they forgot to schedule a team to load the baggage.  Really?

We landed and were welcomed and overcome with gratitude & relief and surrounded with love & support.  My Mom had a turkey in our oven.  My dad has assembled Liza's first bike  (bought by another friend) and covered it up in the garage.  They had scoured the bathrooms and lit the tree, a tree which had been donated by Homewood Nursery upon hearing our story from a friend.  My sister & her husband set it up and her kids had wrapped all our gifts for our children.  Our friends added to our small, belated celebration with gifts of their own under our tree.   There was an enormous welcome home sign from our Open Door Taekwondo family hanging and Christmas music playing and candles burning and dogs barking and fresh eggs calling our names...We slept in our own beds for the first time in 46 days.

When we woke up the next morning, a storm had knocked out the power.

I tell you that to prove there is no movie ending here.  No matter how hard I try, I can't convince certain members of our audience of that fact.  This is just life.  There is no clear ending of one journey and beginning of another when you are living it and not just spectating.  It is so easy to put a soundtrack to someone else's life and circumstances.  Liza was not awe inspired by her first Christmas.  She hasn't ridden her new bike yet because she is afraid.  She uses her new iPod to tune out.  We had to keep the dogs away from her because she was terrified.  These kids do not walk into their new lives with a lack of burdens.  The first week was incredibly disappointing and difficult.  We hope that our story brings attention to older child adoption.  We want others to be inspired to adopt an older child.  Just not through illusions and romanticized notions.  Our life and our story is as full of hardship as it is slow motion beauty.  We see both.  But not once in our experience has the camera paused to let us add music and special effects.  It's hard.  It's so worth it.  It's exquisite.  And it's hard.

Some people are on their journeys longer than we were.  Most have done it without their children and their parents.  Others have struggled more with finances and health than we did.  I can't say why the spiritual battles and the cards were stacked against us.  I can't whether it was getting out of the starting gate as we did (with stolen passports) or the oppression & laws specific to the country & region, or the complication of separating siblings, or the unexpected involvement of the birth mother, or the shocking death of a friend, or God's big plans for Liza's future...that made it an uphill battle.  We can't promise, if you go down this road, that it will be simple.  We have just tried to tell the story as honestly as possible so that the lessons that were written between the lines by the Master Author Himself would be plain for all to see.  You never know what your story will be when you embark.

I am no longer certain that hindsight is 20/20 and I can't predict the future.  We are just one family, putting one foot in front of the other, doing hard things and waiting on God.  Put on your armor and go get one of these babies with your eyes wide open.