Surrendering to the Unknown

A few weeks ago, we were one step away from finishing our paperwork to being able to travel to Haiti and meet Asheley, the 3.5 year old little girl we were referred, for the first time. We then got the call where you just know what they are about to tell you is going to be hard. My caseworker said in a trembling voice, "Asheley's birth mother returned to the orphanage yesterday and picked her up". I knew from when she first said hello that either something terrible had happened to Asheley or that she was no longer adoptable. My heart sunk, but almost instantly, I felt peace.

I mentioned in the earlier post, peace has been the theme of this twist of events going from Ethiopia to Haiti. It has been strange to the point of knowing that it wasn't going to all end up the way you might think. Asheley means harmony, which I find so amazing in that this little girl who was dropped into our hearts has taught us more about peace than any other time in our lives.

An hour after hearing the news, the tears came for me. It felt good to mourn. We had pictured her at our dinner table; the kids asked me to print a life size head of her and put her at our empty chair at the table (but I didn't :)). It was strange to have sort of an adoption miscarriage as someone coined the phrase. Thankfully, we had not met her as I know people who have met children and then lose them to death and to other circumstances. We are thrilled for her that she will get to be with her birth mother now.

I imagine getting to heaven and seeing that little face I never got to meet and seeing all the prayers we have prayed for her. It will be a wild reunion one day to see the tapestry that God has weaved for her.

So where does that leave us? We did not lose our place on the Ethiopia waiting list. We are number 49 for girl and 18 for siblings. We got on the list at #111 so it should be another year I am thinking. It should be faster for Haiti thankfully (or we will see of course). We are thinking we will get off the siblings list at some point unless we feel like God is calling us to two, but for now we are set on one.

As you can tell, I have been missing from the blogging world for a year and my last post was about entering the Life Coaching world. I spent the last year taking classes to get certified to be a Life Coach. After getting my Masters in Counseling years ago, I realized that I love working with people, but in particular coaching them instead of counseling them. I love seeing a person have those "Ah Hah" moments that they discovered on their own; hence why I named my business All About the Process. I am excited to launch my business and have now begun to post to my new blog at www.allabouttheprocess.com. Hopefully, I will continue to post here as well about our adoption process, but the rest of life will be on my new website. I find it ironic that I named my business "All About the Process" in light of every sphere of my life, including adoption!

From August 2012…

It has only been a year since I updated since NOTHING has happened until now…

As you can see from the phone in the fridge, I was a little distracted by the twist of events...

As Andy and I have waited in the past year, adoption has been on the backburner of our minds. We have known the process is long, and our expectations have been met peacefully. At various times, our agency sends pictures of children and often you wonder, “Could that be our next child?”, but then the next moment you think, “nah, I don’t think so.” Well, a few weeks ago, they emailed about a little girl in Haiti, and it caught my attention.

I then showed it to Andy, and it caught his attention too. It is hard to describe to people because you are always asked, “How do you know this is your child?” All I can say is your heart is pricked in a strange way that you take the next step.

The next step was to inquire. So we chatted about how she was 3.5 and spoke Creole. One year younger than Sydney…. Not a baby, but a 3.5 year old. Both Andy and I felt a huge peace about it. Peace was the word that kept surfacing. Not an emotional high and not numbness, just peace. (It just so happens that her name means harmony).

We waited about a week and only talked maybe once or twice about it. So we went to “Back to School Night” and right in the midst of the headmaster’s talk, my phone rang and I saw the area code was from Oregon where our agency is based. My heart skipped a beat because I just knew.

I grabbed Andy and we found a little office in the school where we heard them say, we have matched you with this little one.

So there you have it, 18 months into this process, we are switching countries. We started this process the day after the Haiti earthquake when Andy’s heart was opened and he said, “I think we could do one more”. Haiti’s adoptions were then closed due to the earthquake. Crazy how life brings you back to a place you were once.

Our times of prayer during these past weeks, God has been so gracious to lead us to the Scripture “He who believes in Him, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (It just so happens that the name of her orphanage has a lot to do with this name, Rivers of Hope). What we are learning through this part of our journey is just to be open so that His living water can flow through us. We are finding much joy in just being with the Lord and following him each step. John 7:37 was the next verse we kept seeing, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me.” So, we have surrendered to this turn.

The process will take another 12-18 months before we bring her home. It requires three trips. The adoption laws in Haiti change on Oct. 1rst so we will know more then about when we go and meet her. We are thinking it will be November.

I have already had many obstacles in the past few weeks to getting all of this finalized, but I have been clinging to the image of how many obstacles are in a river…. Those obstacles are indifferent to the river if you focus on the source of the river.

My hope lies there.