Music to My Ears

Our daughter might be learning these songs as we wait....




It makes me smile!

Please Pray...

   Honestly we are in a really weird position regarding Uganda.  We just got a small update on what is going on at the baby home there. Could you please pray for some important decisions to be made there about our hope-to-be daughter?  Please pray for her birthmother.  Pray for God-infused wisdom and clarity.  Now is a crucial time.  It will determine if we can adopt her, or not.  We just want what is best for her.  Thank you.  I hope to have more information shortly (which is relative, I know, so we'll see).

I Choose You

     When Mark and I got married we very intentionally put the word "choose" in our vows.  We wanted to declare that out of all the people we could have chosen, we chose each other to love... no matter what.  We wanted to say that love is a choice, not a feeling.  Regardless of what we feel about each other, we are committed to that person, we are committed to loving each other in the way that God has loved us.

     How does this relate to adoption?  Adoption, in the same way, is about choosing to love someone... no matter what.  Just like finding our future spouse, falling in love, and filling out paperwork to make our marriage official, so we find our future child*, fall in love through pictures and updates, and fill out paperwork to make this "marriage," called adoption, official.

     The glue that holds our marriage together is not feelings.  It is a strong commitment, a choice, to love that person, even when they don't seem loveable.  Adoption is tough.  It will not be easy to learn to live with this new child in our life.  But it was hard learning to live with my new husband!  God takes a strange man, puts him into my life, and then I have to learn how to live and love him.  In the same way, God has picked out a strange child, will put them into my life, and I will learn to live and love them.  I am not saying this in a bad way, just that it will be different than the previous norm.  And that it IS possible to love the person that starts out as a stranger.

     Some people will say that giving birth to a child is natural, and falling in love with that biological child is natural.  But then when that child is older, they say things like, "well, I'm stuck with him, I don't have a choice." or "I guess she's stuck with us as her parents.  She didn't have a choice."  How can you say that about a child?  You always have the choice to love that child... no matter what.  Maybe those who only give birth to children may never truly understand the concept of loving a child by choice.  Or maybe they have a glimpse of what it means, through their experience with marriage.   But our very first child will be coming to us because we choose to have them in our life, and because God had chosen them for our family.

     I want our child to know that they are chosen... they are loved... no matter what.  I think it almost makes sense to make the same kind of commitment to your child that you do for your spouse.  Here's part of what we vowed to each other, written out for our child:

     Dear Child, as we commit to being your parents, we choose to love you in every 

circumstance that we face, no matter what our financial status or social standing, and 

regardless of your physical, mental, or emotional state.  We choose to be loyal to you, 

to serve you – putting your interests before our own - to honor and respect you, speaking 

good of you and not evil.  We choose to provide for your physical and spiritual well-being, 

to the best of our ability, in God’s strength, until we are separated by death.

(We have not made this official commitment or anything, I was just thinking about what it would 

be like if we did)

     I just want to mention that it doesn't take being blood-related to love someone.  My husband 

and I are not blood-related (thank goodness!), and we love each other.  Love for our adopted 

child will not be any less than love for a biologically-related child.  Love doesn't mean that we 

have to look alike.  Our skin will always be white, our child's skin will always be brown.  My 

legs will always be a bit longer than Mark's, and His nose will always be bigger than mine!  

We still choose to love each other!

      As I think about what lies ahead for our family and the challenges to come, I am encouraged to apply my commitment of love to my child.  This stranger-child may not like our family at first.  This child may want to try everything they can to fight and run away from anything scary... including someone that may want to love them.  This child may not love me back for the first couple of months, maybe not for a couple of years.  But remember, love isn't just a feeling.

     This causes me to pause and consider the amazing love of my Heavenly Father.  He is a Father who has chosen me for His family.  I did not love Him at first.  He chose me when I was hating Him.  He chose to love me... no matter what.

     I am one of God's elect "who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood" (1 Peter 1:2 ).

     He has adopted me into His family, He has made me His child, He has called me by His name.   

How Great The Father's Love For Us!

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)

What an example to follow as we choose to love our child in the many years to come.... no matter what!


     *I am using the singular of child for ease of writing.  But we will hopefully be adopting children, not just one child.

Happy 6 Months!

Our daughter in Uganda just celebrated her 6-month birthday last week.  We wish we could be there to celebrate with her!  So, I decided to make a sign for her (of course, I am not showing you her name yet).

I also got her a strawberry cake.  I hope she likes strawberry!  Mark was still on his "long vacation" so he celebrated over Skype with me.

Then I went to have dinner with some friends, and they helped me celebrate her 6 months as well.

Hopefully she will be able to see these pictures years from now and now that we loved her and thought of her when she was only 6 months old.  We are looking forward to celebrating the big 1 year birthday!  It may not be in our arms, but we will hopefully soon after get to hold her.  And hopefully, by this time next year, she will be enjoying her new family!  We are thankful for all those who are praying for her to come home quickly!

God Answers!

Wow!  Thank you guys for praying!  I got our FBI Clearance in the mail today!!!!  So, now the paperwork phase for our homestudy is complete!

Everything needs to be mailed in, and assembled, verified, copied, etc. still, but we are on our way there!

What happens next?
-Our homestudy agency should provide us several copies of our homestudy.
-One copy will be included in a Dossier that will be sent to Uganda, and also one for the Dossier sent to the DRC.
-Our paperwork for the Dossiers is almost done.  Prior to submitting it we will need to include the approval from the USCIS (US Citizen and Immigration Services).  So please pray that it arrives in a timely manner!
-Once Dossiers are submitted we start the waiting game again.

Timelines (Estimated):
For Uganda- agency information says that we should expect to travel within 6-9 months after Dossier submission and Child Referral (We already have the referral).  This is only their basic estimate and may happen faster or slower.

For the Democratic Republic of Congo- agency information says that the average wait time for a referral of a child is 0-12 months once the Dossier is submitted.  We hope zero, but we'll see.  After the referral it will be another 6-9 months until we would expect to travel.  This is only their basic estimate and may happen faster or slower.

I am getting excited that this is all coming together!!

Getting the Nursery Ready

Sneak Peak:  

So, excitement is building for these little ones to arrive.  Of course, that means we have to have a place ready for them to stay!  So, I had my eye on a particular nursery bedding set online that was set at a good price.  Can you tell I am practical?  In fact it was so good that I felt like it was easy enough to go ahead a purchase so we could get started on decorating.  Can you tell I am a super planner?

This is the set I picked.....

Please excuse the cheesy cloud walls and bees floating behind.  We are not going to do that!  It is a neutral yellow, so it would work for a baby boy as well as a baby girl.  It even has colored polka dots on the reverse.

It comes with a nice quilt.  It has pink it it that could be brought out with girl accessories, and it has blue that could be highlighted with boy accessories.

Then, I got this super cute wall art to go with it:

You can arrange it how you want to.  It's a stick-on decor, so it is not harming our "rental" walls.  Plus, it can be taken down and moved to our next destination.

Our nursery walls are currently a yellow-tan color, but we could paint the walls in our next home any color to match with this wall art.

Finally, this is a picture of the crib I really like so far.  I haven't purchased it, since I have had an offer for purchasing it.  But it is a 4-in-1 crib:

It turns into a toddler bed.

And also a headboard for a full size bed.

This way the furniture can grow with the child!  (By the way, all the pics of the bedding are with a whilte crib.  White seems to be the popular color now.  But I think we will stick with a dark wood color, like the one I picked out above).

I just thought I would share with you the fun news, and so you can see what our children's room is somewhat going to look like.

I can't wait to start organizing and decorating the room!

Get Organized!

So, I have been collecting a lot of paperwork!  I have Three adoptions worth of paperwork, from Three different countries, with Three different agencies!  My tiny little file folder was bursting at the seams!

And I had more paperwork that wouldn't fit into this, waiting to be filed!

So I went to the local store and bought a pretty, and Large, file folder.  I wanted it to be able to hold the A4 size paper that the UK uses.

Then I decided on categories for my 19 files, 

and found that they looked best labeled with a label maker.

Then came the sorting of paperwork (This is near the beginning, the pile ended up getting bigger!)

And Voila!  It was all complete.

In case you are wondering what categories I used, here are some of them:

-Supplies

-To Do

-Homestudy

-Dossier

-Referral

-Travel

-Background Checks

-Birth Certificates and Marriage License

-Adoption Education

-Post Placement

-Fundraising

It feels much better to have everything in one place now!