Who Is My Daughter?

Who is my daughter? Where is she? I know she is in China, but where? Is it cold where she is? Is she cold? I really hope she is warm. I hate to be cold. Is she in an orphanage? Does she have loving people to care for her? Does she wonder where her mommy is? Does she even know what a mommy is? Is she in a foster home? Are her foster parents nice to her? Do they hug her and tell her she is special? Is she sick? If so, how sick? Does she have a heart that needs repaired? Does she get winded easily because of it? Does she have to fight to breathe? Does she have a cleft lip that needs to be repaired? Does she struggle to eat because of it? Is she hungry? Oh God, I pray she isn’t hungry. Is she in a hospital? Is she alone? Is she in pain? God, please comfort her if she is. How old is she? Is she walking yet? Did someone celebrate her first steps? Does she giggle with delight? Does it make someone’s heart sing when she does? What makes her giggle? Does she love music? Has she heard music before? Does she like to be outside? Does she get to go outside much? Does she know what love feels like? Does anyone stroke her face and tell her she is loved? I hope so. Does she have chubby baby cheeks? Does someone kiss them? Where is the mother that gave her life? Is she ok? Does she long for her baby girl? Is she awake at night thinking of her? Do we have that in common? Does she wonder about me, like I wonder about her? Can she feel the grace of God easing her pain like I’m praying it will? Comfort her, dear Lord. When will I see our baby girl’s face? Will it be tomorrow or months from now? Will seeing her face make the wait harder? When will I first hold her in my arms? Will she cry? Will she be terrified? Will a caregiver grieve her when she comes home with us? What will she think of her 2 big brothers and her sister? What will she think of Chris and I? How long will it take her to trust us? Will God give me peace from the unrelenting questions in my head? If not, it’s okay.

I have so many questions about my daughter and they can consume my thoughts. At night I lay in bed and the unending questions steal my sleep. I pray for peace from this, but I know it might not be God’s will to relieve me of these questions. I’m thankful for God’s word that offers the only peace from the questions. Thankfully, I do know a few things about my daughter. She is a child of God and he knew her before he formed her in her mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5). God cares about her pain and he knows every tear she cries (Psalm 56:8). God is with her and he is mighty to save! He delights in her and he sings over her (Zephaniah 3:17). God will not leave her as an orphan (John 14:18). He has prepared a family for her and we are blessed to be chosen (Psalm 68:6)!

“The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17

Thank You

We are currently trying to wrap up our Home Study. One of the last things we need is our child abuse clearances from South Carolina. We read (on a China adoption forum) about other families waiting 6 weeks or more to get the clearance form back from South Carolina. Waiting that long would hold up our Home Study for a month or more. Chris decided to call the office and see if he could find someone willing to track down our forms and process them. He found a wonderful lady that went very much out of her way to find our forms and process them. Chris sent her the following email and CCed me on it. I couldn't resist sharing it with you all. I think my husband is so great!

XXXXX,
I just wanted to follow up with you and thank you for helping us on our journey to get our little girl. Your pleasant and helpful attitude is refreshing. Your willingness to take the time to help a family you have never met and likely won’t this side of heaven has been a blessing to my wife, Amy, and I. Thank you for your promptness. I know you had to track it down, when it sounds like you have plenty of piles of documents to work on. May God grant you joy, efficiency, and perseverance with your workload. Your part may not seem glamorous, but for every day you are able to shorten the process, our little girl will spend one less day of her life in an orphanage. Thank you again for taking time out of your day to help us. Thank you even more for speeding the journey of a special needs orphan waiting somewhere in China for a forever family.

With Respect and a great deal of thanks,
Chris & Amy

Isn't that so great! I hope his email blessed her! This was such a great reminder to me to be thankful for all of the people that play a part in this process, big or small.

So many people have and will help us along the way. I hope to be able to personally thank as many of them as possible. Some people will (and already have) helped us in BIG ways. We have the joy of thanking them - even when words seem inadequate for the gratitude we feel. Sadly, many people will help us that we will never be able to personally thank. Someone right now in China is my baby's primary care giver. We most likely will never meet her to look in her eyes and express our gratitude for the love and care she provided to our daughter when we couldn't. I can only pray that God will bless the many people that we will never be able to thank. Our family appreciates all of the help and work and generosity that has already been poured out on us in this journey. As always, we covet your prayers. We sincerely and humbly thank you for praying for us and for your intercessions on our behalf.



I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. Ephesians 1:6

One Less

This is a great video about Matthew West's song One Less. This is Chase's favorite song and the song he sang to our Social Worker during our home visit last month. ENJOY!!!

One Less by Matthew West (The Story Behind The Song) from emicmg on Vimeo.

The Happiest Place on Earth Has Very Little To Do With a Mouse!

When I was in 6th grade my family took a trip to Disney World. I’ll never forget how wonderful it all was! I anticipated the trip for months! The rides, the characters and the magic of Disney made it a trip I’ll never forget. So, with 3 kids in our house, we were excited to start planning our family trip to “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Shortly after Hailey was born we opened a bank account to start saving for the big trip. Even the boys got into the spirit and would contribute to the fund here and there. We were totally on track to go this coming summer. In fact, in January we set our dates and made all the final plans for our much anticipated trip.

We told the boys and, as you can imagine, they were very excited. We were going during Star Wars days, so Disney AND Star Wars – it was every little boys dream!! Then Travis asked, “Will we already have Mei Mei (Chinese for Little Sister) when we go to Disney World?” I explained to both boys that we wouldn’t. We were going to Disney World during the summer and we would be getting Mei Mei in December or January. This trip would just be the 5 of us. This news didn’t go over well AT ALL. Both boys said they didn’t want to go without their Mei Mei. What? Were they really telling me that they didn’t want to go until they had their new sister? Yes, they were and quite adamantly I might add. I explained that we would have to wait at least a year, possibly longer, to go if they wanted to wait and take their Mei Mei. It didn’t matter to them. Without wavering, they insisted that we postpone our trip. Chris and I were surprised. We know they are excited about this adoption, but it amazed us that they didn’t feel right about making this trip without their sister. A little girl half way around the world, who we have never laid eyes on, had already been woven into their hearts as a sister. Let me just say, only God can do that.

Then Travis said something that left us both speechless… He said, “We don’t want to go to Disney World without our Mei Mei and we want you to use our Disney fund to help pay for the adoption. I know we will get to go to Disney World someday, and it will be so much better if we all can go. Besides, I’d rather you use the Disney money to bring home Mei Mei. It’s so much more important. She’s an orphan. She doesn’t have a mom or a dad and she needs us. She needs us to come and get her as soon as we can.” I looked at Chris and we both had tears running down our checks. I couldn’t speak because of the lump in my throat.

My 7 year old son gets God’s heart for the abandoned more than most adults. I’m so thankful for that boy! With surety, he knows he has a sister that we need to bring home and he would sacrifice all he has to get her to our family. He has been to Guatemala twice, so he has seen what poverty looks like. He has played with kids in an orphanage so he knows what an orphan looks like. Is it easier for him to sacrifice because he has seen great need firsthand? Is it because he is young and less entangled by the unfilling trappings of our world? I don’t know why, but I know I can learn a lot from him. I confess, it is really hard for me to let go of the earthly things that so easily entangle me. It’s hard for me to let go of my “Disney World.” I pray that God will help me to be more like Travis. I want to be able to walk away from the thrills of this world without hesitation when God calls me to something more. I’m such a work in progress.

So, the Disney fund is now part of the adoption fund and the summer 2011 Disney trip is officially cancelled. Travis is right; we will eventually make the trip. Maybe it will be in the summer of 2012, but maybe much later. All I know is that one day we will be at the Magic Kingdom and the most magical thing of all will be how God loves me enough that he has adopted me into his heavenly Kingdom. The Happiest Place on Earth will have very little to do with a mouse and so much more to do with being with my wonderful husband and my FOUR beautiful children (wearing mouse ears).

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably. -Walt Disney

China's Orphans

This is a great article about China's orphans.


www.china-adoption-online.com/lwb

Progress Update - Paperwork

I haven’t disappeared; I’ve just been buried under piles of paperwork. A month ago today we filed our application with our placing agency. This past month has been filled with paperwork paperwork paperwork. We have 3 lists we are working off of. Documents that need to go to our placing agency in California, documents to our Home Study agency here in Texas and documents for our Social Worker so that she can prepare our Home Study.

After filing our initial application packet with our placing agency in California we needed to get started on finding a Social Worker here in Texas to do our Home Study. We found a wonderful lady, Jenna, in the Ft. Worth area. So, we needed to do the necessary paperwork for her agency. Her agency will serve as our Home Study agency and handle the work of writing our Home Study and conducting our initial background checks. So, for them we needed to complete a basic application and provide information so they can do background checks on Chris and I in all the places we have lived since we were 18 (16 different addressed for me and 17 for Chris). No, I’m not kidding. Amazingly, even with 4 years in the Army, we have spent most of our time in the great state of Texas, so that simplifies things some. We are sending off our clearance requests to South Carolina this week and luckily since Korea does not maintain a child abuse registry we are not required to send clearance requests to Korea. Can you even begin to imagine how long that might have taken? Thankfully my list for them is complete!!!

Then we have a list of 32 items we need to send to Jenna for our Home Study. These are items like copies of birth certificates, marriage certificate, 1040s, updated immunization record for our cat, medical physicals for each member of the household, reference letters from friends, certificates showing we have each completed our 10 hours of required adoption education, copies of our floor plan, pictures of our family and home, and autobiographies written by Chris and I. Jenna uses these documents and information she obtains from her home visit to write our Home Study. She came to San Antonio on Jan 29th and 30th to conduct our home visit. She was here for about 2 hours each day. She asked us a lot of questions about each other, our home life, our children, the desire to adopt and the way we intend to raise our adopted child. We also discussed the type of child that we are looking to be matched with and what ages, gender and special needs we are open to considering. She toured our home and made sure we had enough space for another child. She also interviewed Chris and I separately and interviewed the boys together. She was impressed that the boys seemed to have a good grasp of what was going on and both seemed very excited about adopting a new sister. Travis told her we listen to KLOVE (the local Christian radio station) and that is where we got the idea to adopt. That’s not quite right, but sweet. Then Chase told her, “When we get our Mei Mei (little sister in Chinese) from China there will be One Less, One Less, One Less, Broken Heart in the World Tonight.” He sang the words that I put in bold and italics. Those are words from Matthew West’s song about adoption called “One Less.” It is one of Chase’s favorite songs and it shows his sweet understanding of the orphan crisis and how our adoption relates to it. She thought it was very cute and we did too. It’s like we live in a musical around here, just breaking into song midsentence! Overall, the home visits went great. Now she is writing her report and we are getting the last of the documents we need to her. The completed Home Study will be one of the documents that will go to China and it is required to be sent to US Customs and Immigration to begin getting our FBI clearances and approval from the US government to adopt an orphan internationally. So, the Home Study is a big deal and it is nice to see the word “DONE!” next to most of the items on that list! Hopefully in about a month the completed Home study will be traveling to Missouri for our FBI clearances and US Immigration application (i800A) to be approved.

Finally we are working on the list of documents we will need to send to our placing agency for our Dossier (fancy word for the collection of documents that will eventually be sent to China). This list includes birth certificates, marriage certificate, employment verification letters, medical forms, police clearance forms, photos, our completed Home Study and our FBI clearance and US approval to adopt an orphan (i800A). All of these documents will need to notarized, then sent to Austin to be certified by the Secretary of State and then to Houston to be authenticated by the Chinese Embassy. THEN, it will we be ready to go to China!

As you can see we are in deep in paperwork. We have made some great progress, but we still have a long way to go. I like what Dory sings in Finding Nemo… Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming… So we are still swimming!!! We are trying to take it one document at a time, one step at a time so we don’t get overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all.

Last week, on the way home from school, Travis was telling me about being nervous to recite something in front of his whole class. Then he said, “It’s kind of silly for me to be nervous about something. I have a verse for that… cast all your anxieties on Him.” Then he said, “I don’t remember where it is in the Bible, but I know it’s there.” I was quite impressed and glad to see that he is relying on the word of God in his daily life. I told him it was okay that he didn’t know where it was exactly, that the important thing is that he knows it’s God’s word and that he can trust that it is true. I explain that it is the very reason we memorize a verse each week so we can hide God’s word in our hearts to help ourselves and others when we need to. Then, out of the blue, Chase says “First Peter 5:7.” And just like that he provides the exact reference to the verse! I was shocked. Each week the boys have to memorize a verse for school. Travis has always been great at this, but Chase struggles with it some. So, I looked back through the calendar and this verse had been one of Travis’ verses four weeks ago (the very week we began this process). It is truly amazing that Chase would remember this! So, I felt like this was a special way for God to reveal a familiar verse to me in a memorable way. So, as we proceed through the lists of required paperwork and anticipate the steps ahead, I’m doing my best to cast my anxieties on the Lord and rest in Him. I’m thankful for his Word and the wonderful ways he chooses to reveal it to us. He is ever present in this process. Even in the mundane and tedious paperwork process, he is never far from us.

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

The Fear Factor

As we began to seriously consider the idea of adopting, the subject of fear came up. Here are a few common adoption fears we had to consider and a few of our own fears that we had to wrestle with.

Could we love an adopted child the same way we loved our biological children?
This is a common question for families considering adoption who already have biological children. We love our kids so deeply that the fear of being Cinderella’s evil step mother to an adopted child creeps into our head. In fact, Mary Beth Chapman Steven Curtis Chapman’s wife), lists this as her greatest fear when they adopted their first daughter from China. I read many things that offered tons of reassurance to people contemplating adoption that they would indeed love an adopted child the same way they loved their biological children. Mary Beth Chapman said this fear in her melted immediately when she took Shohannah into her arms for the first time. I asked Chris early on in this process if he feared that we would love an adopted child differently than the trio we already had. Without hesitation he said “Absolutely not.” I couldn’t have agreed more. Although this is a valid fear for some, this just wasn’t ever a fear of ours.

Isn’t adoption expensive? Are you worried about being able to pay for it?
Yes, adoption can be expensive. Adopting locally through the foster care system can be very inexpensive, but international and some domestic adoptions can really add up. International adoptions can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $55,000, depending on the country. So, are we worried about being able to pay for it? We know that we are doing what God has called us to do, so we know he will provide. He asked for our obedience and now he will supply our needs. In the Bible, God never seems to call the fully equipped instead he chooses to equip the called. In this way, the glory can be given only to him. We have seen it time and again with mission trips. People would sign onto a trip telling Chris that they weren’t sure how they were going to pay for it. God had prompted them to go and in their obedience they had signed up, praying that somehow God would work out the finances. In case after case we have seen people’s trip deficits covered by unexpected funds from unexpected sources, sometimes to the exact dollar! God funds what he favors, and his provisions never fail to amaze us. We are praying for God’s similar provisions in this adoption process. We have a bank account set up to keep track of the inflows and outflows for this adoption. The balance of that account is a far cry from the approx $25,000 - $30,000 we will need to bring our daughter home. We plan to scrimp and save as much as we can so we can boost that balance, but in the end, this is God’s deal and we know he will provide. Maybe a better question is “Are you ever tempted to worry about the finances?” Honestly, I’d have to admit that yes we still worry. We know this is God’s plan and we know this is his timing, but as we look at the timeline of when our payments/expenses are due, it’s hard to not be concerned with how it will all work out. When the worry creeps in, we do our best to refocus our energy on prayer, not panic! We remember that this little girl is God’s treasure and he loves her more than we do. He will complete the good work he has started. We welcome your prayers for God’s financial provisions in this process.

So, those are the 2 most common fears I hear about adopting. Did we have any other fears about this? Well, as a matter of fact, we did. We had 3.

First, as I stated in a prior post, we knew God had made us aware of orphans and was calling us to be a part of their care, but we weren’t sure if he was calling us to adopt or not. As we spent those 5 and half months in prayer about it, we feared we would get it wrong. We so desperately wanted to follow God’s will for our family and not our own desires. We had grown to love the idea of adding to our family through adoption, but was that what God had in mind too? It’s a difficult spot to be in to discern God’s will from our own desires. Sometimes they are the same things, but often they are not. We prayed fervently that God would make his will abundantly clear and thankfully he did.

Secondly, as we were praying about adoption, there were nights that I would go to bed so hopeful that we would one day adopt, only to wake up in a total panic that we might actually do it. So, what was this fear that would cause such a swing in me? One day it hit me – I was scared of having 4 kids! It had nothing to do with the manner in which a new child joined our family - birth or adoption. The idea of 4 kids just seemed to terrify me. We are pretty busy with the 3 we have. Could I do it? Was I up to the challenge of managing the lives of 4 little people? We had long ago abandoned man-on-man defense for a zone defense strategy and little by little we were becoming more outnumbered. I’m sure there will days that being outnumbered 2 to 1 will not be easy, but the idea of 4 kids now brings us more excitement than fear.

Lastly, there was one thing that really scared us… One evening Chris and I discussed how saying yes to adoption would change things. Obviously it would change the structure of our family, but it wasn’t just that. This was about more than a child that needed a home or the enormity of the orphan crisis. It was about a closer relationship God desired with each of us. We knew that God would use this process to pull us closer to the feet of Jesus, instead of the comfortable spectator seats we had grown accustom to occupying. The Bible uses pruning and refining silver as analogies to growing a more beautiful and productive plant or product. Pruning involves cutting off what is dead and refining requires some time in the fire. Both processes are painful, but silver wouldn’t shine brilliantly without the time in the fire, and a tree can’t produce beautiful blooms or useful fruit without cutting off the dead parts of the plant. We knew God wanted to prune/refine our family through this. It’s tough to willing let go of control, to give up the comfort that comes with our complacency. Were we up for the task of dying to ourselves more and becoming more of what God wanted us to be? In some ways it didn’t matter if we were up for it, because it was what God had already set in motion. We knew the outcome of pruning a refining would be wonderful, but we knew this turning point in our lives would start with the pain of pruning and the heat of the fire. That can be a scary position to be in. So here we go. The refining and the pruning have begun. God has started a new work in us. He assures us that his plans for us are good and to prosper us (Jer 29:11) but he never says that are without pain. We are thankful that God has chosen us for this journey – the adoption journey and the journey of drawing closer to him.

And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’ Zechariah 13:9

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. John 15:1-2