3 Month Survival Guide

I started this post on March 25th, our 3 month mark.  Today is July 7th, two weeks past our six month mark.  That fact is enough to sum up productivity at this point in my life.  C'est la vie.  Or more apropros это жизнь.

This is what I wrote:
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March 25th marked 3 months since we disembarked an airplane from Ukraine, on Christmas Day, after a 6 1/2 week stay, with a new daughter, a new family, a new life. So how are we? What's it like? Those are really hard questions to answer. You are never going to get a simple, "fine", "good", "she's great", "we're great", "everything's great" from me, no matter how much you want it ;) Sorry, no can do. Today though, she's great. We're great. Everything's great. 

Three weeks ago also marked the turning of a much anticipated corner in the "adjustment". Man, I hate that word. I am as sick of using it myself as I am of hearing it. We need a new word to describe it that doesn't reek of The Bachelor or American Idol like "journey", or infer apocalypse like "aftermath". I'm still working on it. Give me a few minutes. It's on the tip of my tongue. While we are far from standing on the summit, we have achieved a new plateau that's much higher up than we were before. It's allowing us to take off our packs and enjoy the view for hours, even days at a time. There is no recipe or manual for this. But recalling other's experiences in a dark moment can pluck you from a narrow ledge.

So it's been on my heart to write about how we got ourselves and five emotional, exhausted and grieving kids through the worst of the awkward, chaotic, painful, heart numbing work of the early days. I'll be honest, though, that part of my motivation in taking time out to write this is that I want you to join the movement. I have a personal interest in wanting the world orphan problem eradicated. I want it gone. It's as disgusting as the problem of abortion in our generation. If I didn't believe in a God that sent His Son to die on the cross, I would say it's unforgivable. Every year 2.1 million MORE children are orphaned. Babies, all of them. Every 16 year old that is aging out of a system that's failed them, is a baby at heart. A baby like a photo of one that I saw in a garbage can recently.

If reading our story makes you feel guilty, if seeing pictures of orphans makes you feel bad, I encourage you to not look away.  That's the Holy Spirit convicting you to move.  Your are called by Christ to care for the orphans whether or not you are called to adopt.  If you need ideas, write to me.  I have a few.

Okay,  climbing down off my soapbox...high horse, whatever.

The idea after nearly 7 weeks away was to come home and have our Christmas staycation.  We, for obvious reasons, had no desire to leave home again.  And contrary to the opinions of romantics looking at snowy pictures, Ukraine was not at all Christmassy for us.  Like, at alllll.  I have heard a lot of people talking about the miracle of us landing on Christmas Day.  But in the interest of full disclosure, it was not at all Christmassy for us.  Like at alllll.
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We will never know what else I was going to say.  I think it was about the strict schedule we had to maintain for several months after one fairly disastrous week home.  Instead of a restful time, we had to hug our children day in and day our with structure.  It really truly helped them.  It helped me too, but it also wore me clean out.  Again I felt like I was experiencing clinical exhaustion.

Around the three month mark, I had the thought one day that everything was going to be okay.  And I started this post.  

But fairly soon after, Liza had some distressing news from Ukraine regarding her sister.  And in one phone call, we left that plateau and took a nosedive.  For about six weeks, I had to drag myself out of bed every morning.  She was unhappy and let everybody know it.  Every.  single.  day.   I felt like I had single handedly ruined my family's lives.  Everyone of us was struggling.  Their meltdowns were pointing at me.  Our firstborn didn't want to share her bedroom.  The younger three took it in turns to feel jealous.  Our bonding had come to a screeching halt.  Not for the first time Tom and I looked at each other with the "what have we done" stare.

...Then just like that, we got past it.  We drove to the NCHE homeschool conference in Winston Salem, had an amazing, uplifting time and the oppression of dread began to lift.  I stopped verbalizing my doubts with "God, where are you in this?" and praised instead, "God, only you". And now here we are...past the six month mark, with a second Ukrainian in the house.  We are hosting 7 year old B for six weeks with the same program that brought Liza last summer.



It may not be the last time the 'what have we done" stare flashes before our eyes along with the comfortable life we left behind.  But that loss pales in comparison to the gain of looking into the eyes of an orphan who has just realized for the first time that they are loved.

"I love my life.  I love you so much, Mommy." ~ Liza, 7/6/13

The thirsty pray for water, the hungry beg for bread, the desperate cry for mercy; 

Run to Him Run to Him 

The broken wait for healing, the orphans long for home, the slaves all cry for freedom 

There is hope, there is hope. 

We are, we are the visible invisible 

We are the flesh and bone of your redeeming love 

We are your kingdom unshakable 

Jesus Christ alive in us, the visible invisible. 

Your songs will wake the sleeper 

Your truth will wake the dead 

Your Gospel reign like fire, to the ends, to the ends

We are, we are the visible invisible 

We are the flesh and bone of your redeeming love 

We are your kingdom unshakable 

Jesus Christ alive in us, the visible invisible.

And the love of God will rise in us, rise in us 

And the light of God will shine, shine thru us 

And the love of God will rise in us, rise in us 

And the light of God will shine, shine thru us 

We are the visible invisible 

We are the flesh and bone of your redeeming love 

Jesus Christ alive in us, the visible invisible (Christa Wells "Visible Invisible)

How Liza's Story Became Alona's

Some of you have been praying diligently for Alona since we first asked for help finding her a home.  For those of you who don't know, Alona is our Liza's best friend from her orphanage in Ukraine.  Thursday, January 31st, Liza had gone to work with Tom.  He posted this status on Facebook at 9:15am Friday morning about an exchange he had with her at his office:

February 1 via mobile

Mercy and Liza came to work with me yesterday. During a brief pause and staring out the window, Liza said "I miss Alona". Alona is her 15 year old best friend who is still at the orphanage. I said, "who knows? Maybe she will be adopted too and come live in America like you?" Liza said, "Daddy, it is too late for her. I know this. She is 15. When she turns 16, no one can adopt her and she must leave school". I said, "then we need to be asking God to find her a family before she turns 16 in July." She folded her hands and bowed her head. Then looked up at me and nodded as if to say "go ahead and pray, I'm waiting." So the three of us prayed for Alona there in the middle of my office. Please join us in praying for her to find a family before July. –t

He had called me not long afterward and told me he thought we needed to do something.  So I sat down and began to write this post with pictures of Alona from our time there http://myfarawayhome.blogspot.com/2013/02/alona.html .
Thanks to our many supporters, it was viewed fourteen hundred twenty nine times in just a few days.

Friday, February 1st at 2:42pm I got an email from the sister-in-law of a friend of ours here in Raleigh.  The email asked for any information we could share about Alona so that they might pray for her, "if nothing else"; that they had followed some of our story of adopting Liza; that they have four daughters ranging in age from 6 months to 5 years; that "We don't feel equipped to adopt a teenager, but we are willing to do so if that is God's will for us. We know that God does not call the equipped, but equips those He calls."  In the course of writing back and forth, she mentioned that all their daughter's names start with the letter "A".  Coincidence if you want to call it that and if you don't know that Liza's birthday is the exact date of our wedding; that we celebrated our 16th anniversary together with her on her 16th birthday in Ukraine.  Me, I have another name for it.

I didn't actually post the blog on Facebook until 3:46pm.  You see, God already had this covered.  This story was already well underway.

We didn't tell Liza anything beyond the fact that we had posted Alona's pictures and that many, many people had gone to look at them.  We were still floored that she had prayed to the God who she believed wouldn't answer because of her past mistakes.  But every few hours, she would ask.  "What news Alona?"

Super Bowl Sunday, February 3rd, we were at friends' house to watch the game (being the country bumpkins we are with no live t.v.)  Liza, bored out of her ever lovin' mind was sitting next to me on the couch, not even interested in the commercials we Americans are so proud of.  My phone dinged.   "I wanted to let you know that we have sent an email to Angel's Haven about starting the adoption process.  Please pray for us as we start this adventure!"

February 3 via mobile at 10:16pm I posted this, but couldn't explain it just yet.  “We got some pretty cool news tonight. Might be able to share it soon. But on the way home from the game, Liza said, "I believe in God." :-) R

After she read those words, Liza buried her head behind my shoulder and cried.  She could not believe that the God of the Universe heard her prayers.  From that day on, Liza's struggle with survivors guilt disappeared.  She has told me several times since, "God listens."Alona now speaks with her new family every Saturday on the phone with an interpreter, a sweet, Christian, Ukrainian woman who visits the orphanage every weekend.  She now knows that she has a hope and a future.If you are feeling like an orphan whose Father does not hear your cries, please believe me when I tell you that He does.  Just as He heard the pleas of these orphaned children, in the middle of nowhere, in a forgotten country, He hears YOU.  Talk to Him again tonight.  Right now.  And believe that He is writing your story, too.   

If the waiting was hard...

I'm about to have a real honest moment here. I know you guys are used to it, but I really do try hard to curb it. This blog (I've linked below) was written about my heart by a woman who knows. And I am weeping as I sit here. If you are our friend, if you have and want to continue to support us, you will read this. 

For us. 

For Liza.

For our four other kids.

For everyone you've ever known who has or is or will adopt.

As a favor.

An act of love.

*Because I can count on one hand the people who have truly helped us through the first two months home.* I wish I could say i was exaggerating. I know in good part it is a lack of knowledge and understanding. Adoption is not going away. You need to know how to navigate other's adoptions. My family is not the only one you will help by reading this.

Right this moment Tom is with Liza at church dealing with the fall out of us making her go to hold babies in a nursery as a means of socialization. And it's not pretty. Contrary to popular opinion, my life long home-schooled kids are not in need of socialization. This orphan of 16 years who lived in a dorm with 300 other children and counts only ONE as a friend, IS. She is terrified of everyone. Tom & I can't do this job alone. We need friends and family who are willing to walk this hard, lonely road, hand in hand with us, when it is not pretty, and really, painfully uncomfortable.

~Reagan 

excerpt: "#6. Please do not disappear. If I thought the waiting stage was hard, it does not even hold the barest candle to what comes after the airport. Not. The. Barest. Candle. Never have I felt so isolated and petrified. Never have I been so overwhelmed and exhausted. We need you after the airport way more than we ever needed you before. I know you’re scared of us, what with our dirty hair and wild eyes and mystery children we’re keeping behind closed doors so they don’t freak out more than they already have, but please find ways to stick around. Call. Email. Check in. Post on our Facebook walls. Send us funny cards. Keep this behavior up for longer than six days."


http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/11/02/how-to-be-the-village

http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/09/06/after-the-airport

Have Your Eyes Open Til It Comes

“Little hands on a June evening, as the stars are coming out.  He wants to capture fireflies, but he doesn’t know how.  Tears run faster than those little feet ‘til Daddy says…”

Last Saturday night I remember having the conscious thought that I felt great; that I’d been supernaturally energetic and productive over these first six weeks home.  Literally within the hour I barely wanted to lift my arms.  Sunday morning I woke still overcome with fatigue.  I sat with my coffee at the computer and turned on this new video of my older sister, Christa.  It’s a song she has been in the studio recording for her new album.

“Trust me, we can catch the light if we keep our eyes open when it comes.”

The tears started and I knew I needed to see my family.  I still couldn’t tell you why, but I cried the rest of the day.  Maybe courage has side effects.  Maybe it’s the trying to be strong all the time that makes us weak.  Tom moved some small mountains that very morning to make it possible for the kids and I to leave on Wednesday.  By Monday, over dinner with a sweet friend, night my ears started to hurt.  Wednesday morning it was in my chest.  But I drove the children nine hours through wind and rain anyway; over the Tennessee River and through the Appalachian woods to Grandma’s house outside of Nashville.

“Maybe you sailed in with a bright vision and you lost it on the way."

l literally drove to Nashville because I wanted my Mom to make dinner for me.  I love to cook, I have an amazing kitchen and am perfectly capable of cooking anything I want at any time.  With extensive food restrictions, though, it has become one of my love languages to have someone else think through the complexities of my diet.  Adopting an older child is different in so many ways from giving birth or adopting a baby.  One way is that there are no baby showers or volunteers for a few weeks of meals.  It’s not like we’re dealing with the sleeplessness of infancy or the more obvious aspects of recovery.  We are burning it at both ends having younger, energetic children that are awake early in the morning and two needy teenagers that are awake well into the night.  Your child's name isn't added to the list when the church makes birth announcements.  She was born sixteen years ago.  And we weren't there.  It can feel like the joy stopped at the welcome home and the rest is all "adjustment".  "How's the adjustment going?"  With a teenager, a strict schedule and boundaries and heart-to-hearts and awareness are absolutely necessary. Still, when the dust has settled from a long and arduous labor, it is just the beginning of our new life, as new parents, to a new child.  I have wanted someone else to care for us as much as I ever did after giving birth.

“Maybe you felt a little blindness would lessen the pain.  Trust me, you can catch the light if you keep your eyes open ‘til it comes.”

About halfway there, Liza came to the conclusion that she’s not a fan of long drives.  She took the "Are we there yet?” syndrome to a whole new level.  In Russian.  “Yet? Yet? Yet? Yet? Is it that one?  The next one?  The other one?”  I have no idea what orphan daydreamed scenarios she has played in her mind about visiting grandparents.  It is just evident that she had come up with a few.  When we took the first curve on Beasley’s Bend aka "the curly road", she said, in perfect English, “You’re not serious.”  Two minutes later she was past the long hours, the leg cramps and the nausea.  Two little nephews were sitting on big rocks at the end of the long gravel drive waiting for us.  We honked all the way to the front door.  She yelled out the window, to whomever lay behind the walls, “Hey everybody, we’re here!”

“You have heard of a strange figure visiting the poor.  He gave His own body, to ransom their souls.”

This was just where we needed to be.  As sick as I was the entire trip, it was tonic for my soul.  Though we missed our home during our time in Ukraine, it is a constant reminder of the man who built it and his loss.  We miss him terribly every day.  And even though things are going really, really well at home by all standards of adjustment, we needed some TLC.  My older sister was in town recording her album; four of her children with her.  My younger sister came out from the city to stay with her three littles.  My parent's house has never been a place to get a good nap.  It’s a place to get a good hug and a healthy dose of chaos.  My Dad calls it the zoo.

“It seems too good to be true, but you haven’t found it false."

"I believe that there is a light coming, to find you with your eyes open.” 

We had a Valentine’s Day hunt on their 72 acres. Each granddaughter woke to a rose on the breakfast table.  Three of the children wrote clues and mapped out the course.  We walked out the back door, me, my dad, 10 kids and 2 dogs.  We drove the four-wheeler too fast down the hills.  We crossed bridges.   We descended into ravines.  We visited the cliffs.  We walked barefoot in the creek.  We skipped rocks.  We laughed.  We fell down.  We helped each other back up.  We discovered treasure (and I don’t mean the bags of candy waiting at the end).

 "Just have your eyes open til it comes.”

 

  

Liza had an unforgettable first visit.  She and our 14 year old, October, got to visit to one of the colleges where my little sister teaches art.  They participated in a painting class before she delivered them to our older sister at the music studio.  Coolest aunts on the planet.  We picked Tom up at the airport and went to dinner with old friends, one of whom was possibly our biggest prayer warrior, Tara, and the other was Tiffany (of Plumb) whose fans helped spread the word of our difficulties in Philly in November.  

On our last day, the amazing Jen Wood, http://www.jenwoodphotography.com, drove more than an hour out to the boondocks for an all day photo shoot with us.  As a gift.  We've known each other since college days and though we rarely see each other, she'd followed our story and prayed for us all along the way.  She had written to us in January to say that God was speaking to her about telling our story in pictures.  These are kind of images, like a great song, that one is helplessly riveted by. She worked with each of our kids tell the camera who they are...even when that meant jumping on a trampoline all the while.

Just before our time ran out, Liza had her first driving lesson with Daddy...on Papa's four wheeler wagon!  Not quite rested, but more than replenished, we headed home.

Every day brings new challenges and every day brings new gifts whether you have a new child or not.  During this time, we all sometimes feel like we can't find a solitary comfort that feels "normal".  Even my favorite burger joint closed down last week.  I am nothing if not a creature of habit.  It's really a silly thing to have an emotion about.  It's another change to get used to.  Then God writes us precious moments that feed the hunger, like tonight, when Liza said she needed something..."for her soul."  We talked a little over a late dinner and as she headed to bed I asked if she'd had an idea what she was needing.  I wanted to help but I didn't know how.

 She turned and said, "уже (already)...You."  

"Trust me, you can catch the light if you keep your eyes open til it comes.  Have your eyes open.  Have your eyes open when it comes."

Comfort or Conviction

"Daddy, I'm scared..."

"I'm right here."

"...but I'm scared..."

"We just want you to try."

That could be the start to any number of conversations we have with Liza, or God has with me on any given day.  We have many fears.

"Is it okay?"
"Is what okay?"

"Driving at night?...I'm scared."

This time it was on our one day ski trip to Beech Mountain.  She had never skied before.  The night before she was saying that she wasn't going to.  So we let her say it, knowing now, that she often rethinks those decisions based in fear.  On the way up the mountain in the morning, we told her we just wanted her to try; that she could stop any time she wanted.  "But I'm scared."  The tone of her voice and the quizzical look on her face asked, "Why would I ever do something that scares me???"  We said, "We know you are.  Everyone is scared the first time.  But we'll be right beside you."  She didn't argue.  She stood in line and waited to be equipped.

Does that sound familiar at all?  You've probably heard the expression, "God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called."  Think about it this way: Why would you gather the equipment for something you never planned to do?  How many people go out and buy boots and skis and poles and goggles when they've never even conceived of a ski trip?  Liza certainly would not have come up with this idea on her own.  Her parents did.  I certainly would never have conceived of adopting from Ukraine on my own.  My Father did.  It wasn't until she got in that line that we began to fit the equipment to her.  As it wasn't until I trusted Him that He began to equip me to go.  Sure I owned some wool socks.  But that doesn't make a person ready to jump on a chair lift to the top of the Alps.  In the beginning I looked a little like Liza on the J lift.  Confused and terrified.  The lift operator walking beside her is saying, "Don't pull it; let it pull you."

 The four kids, that we've raised since birth, put on their boots, picked up their skis and got on the slopes without looking back.  Our nine year old son we had to repeatedly chase down and tell him to not be QUITE so brave.  Even the two girls who were walking outside to a snowboard lesson with a group of strangers, did so without any hand holding.  They know, because they have experienced, the promise of "I'll be right here beside you."

 In the end, she quit after an hour.  More to the point, she quit after one good fall.  Nobody has ever said to her, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."  But that's for next time.  For now, we are working on, "Just try."  Which she did.  The rest of the day and night, we praised her for her courage, because she's also never heard her parents say, I'm proud of you."  And we are.  So very, very proud.

 Things around here have been improving by leaps and bounds.  She is very much the sponge we often refer to small children as being.  She watches our reactions, praises and disappointments very closely.  Now when she wakes in the morning, she smiles as me because we told her that her countenance affects others.  When she hurts someone's feelings, she says, "I'm sorry" because we told her that everyone makes mistakes; and everyone needs forgiveness.  She has had dark days and we worried that she had been too fragile a flower to transplant.

But now the signs of life are greener every day.  She's going to be okay.  She has realized that not everything that looks scary, really is.

The are many moments when we really believe we have stumbled upon a hidden passage to the child at heart.  That maybe, though we missed those years, we haven't missed the girl.  The scars will always be there to remind her where and what she came from, but they will be just that; memories of wounds that have been healed by the Grace of God.

"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and does not do it, sins." James 4:17.  This tells us that there are, indeed, sins of omission.  So the next time you are faced with the choice of personal comfort or personal conviction, CHOOSE CONVICTION.  Not everyone is called to the same challenges, like adoption, but everyone will be called upon to face their fears and trust the Father.  Get in line.  Get equipped.

...even when you can't see where it will lead.