We're Off!

Today one journey ends and another one begins. We leave in just a few hours for Ethiopia. We will be in transit about 40 hours and have had almost no sleep. Good times!

I have not been blogging for about a week. Can you guess why?! Things have been crazy around here. We had our last "we-don't-need-a-sitter-date-night" on Saturday and slept until 9 in the AM quiet (knowing it may be 18 years - if we are lucky - before that happens again). This has been a crazy week of procuring "mom shoes" (thanks for your concern...mission accomplished...the final verdict was Simple and Keen), getting typhoid and malaria meds, finding dollar bills printed after 2002, taking doggy to Grandma and Grandpa's, gathering up way too many documents for our embassy visit, reviewing our Amharic cheatsheet (as long we were are talking about eating and going potty, we are in pretty good shape...other topics are outside the boundaries of our vocabulary!) and the list, as you can imagine, goes on. We are now almost ready to go - at least with regard to the many logistical details to be dealt with. I'm not sure if anyone can ever be "ready" to say to two toddlers "Hi. You don't know us. We're going to be your parents now. Hope you don't mind that we're white and probably look kind of strange to you. Want to get on a plane together for the next 40 hours?" Apparently we gave up sanity for Lent.

I've been thinking a lot about my dad's question "What have you learned from this?" As I said on Jericho Day (or Victory Day or Hallelujah Day - take your pick), that feels like such a DEEP question but it seems like one that is so important to answer. More than anything, I do hope we learned something from what was such a LONG and often EXHAUSTING journey. (I have a feeling that was a primer for parenthood). Someday maybe I'll sit down in my spare time (as the mom of 2 toddlers I've heard I'll have TONS of this) to write a book about this for the little ladies. For now, here are the Cliff Notes. Oprah has a thing in her magazine called "Things I Know for Sure". Here are mine:

1. Miracles happen. I know because I witnessed one. If I hadn't, my daughters would not be coming home in time for Easter. For intellectual people, this is no small thing. I don't like fantasy movies (except for maybe Twilight...please don't tell) because I can't get past the fact that they are not real. Maybe there is a parallel there with my faith. This experience allowed me to SEE that God IS real. I think I have lived a Christian life of choosing to believe that God is real but for an intellectual there is an element of "fantasy" there because your empirical knowledge of God is somewhat limited. Maybe like doubting Thomas, I just needed tangible evidence that God was real. I now have evidence that God and His promises are true. That's incredibly significant for me and perhaps makes the additional days of waiting worth it. I've thought often of a quote my friend Leah sent me from a Beth Moore Bible Study during our time of waiting: "When something comes so easily to others and not to us, we often feel frustration. But it might be that you are the one chosen to see the supernatural. Maybe you are not picked on, but picked out to see the glory of God."


2. Prayer works. We both made the effort through vigilant prayer and fasting to intercede for our daughters and God was faithful. We learned a huge lesson from this about what faith needs to look like and what it can do. That too was very significant. In Streams in Desert (you know by now that I love this book), the author reminds us of this: "The land of God's promises is open before us, and it is His will for us to possess it. We measure off the territory with the feet of obedient faith and faithful obedience, thereby claiming and appropriating it as our own. How many of us have ever taken possession of the promises of God in the name of Christ? The land of His promises is a magnificent territory for faith to claim by marching across its length and breadth, but faith has yet to do so." In my life this was all too true. I had never been so desperate that I needed to claim God's promises as my own and act in response to those promises. I learned through this process what it means when we are told that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen" (Heb. 11:1). In this adoption, I was forced into a place where I had only the assurance of God's promises to carry me through. I learned that that alone is enough.

3. Be prepared to do battle for your children. Through this, God has shown me that as an adoptive parent you need to be prepared to do battle in prayer for your family. Adoption puts you on the "front lines" in a fight against injustice, poverty, and apathy - things that break God's heart. By choosing adoption, you are making a very open statement (particularly if your adoption is a transracial one) to those you encounter about the transcendent love and grace of God. The enemy cannot allow that. Nothing is more attractive to a hurting world than the hope that maybe, just maybe, God does care. By choosing as a family to bring orphans into your home, you are choosing to show the world that God does care and there is great evangelical power in that (provided that you are purposeful about directing any praise received back to God rather than taking the "you're-such-a-good-person-just-like-the-Angelina-Jolie" comments and using them to pat yourself on the back). My "labor" with my girls was a labor of intercession and I feel that that was training for a life of covering them and our family with prayer.

So, I guess that's the short of what I have learned. Dad, did that answer your question? The learning continues and we look forward with anticipation to the life that awaits us around this bend. Thanks to the armor of God - and some snappy Mom Shoes - I think we've got a shot at this.

We would appreciate your prayers once again as we go to get the little ladies. Here's what we need prayer for:

FOR EDEN and JUNIA:
Please pray that God would give them courage and strength. This has the potential to be an absolutely terrifying experience for them. Pray that God grants them peace.

Pray also for that the bonding process goes smoothly. Pray that they are drawn to us and feel safe with us. We have lots of "snake charmer" toys that we hope will fascinate them enough to make them like us!

Pray that the girls receive their visas without any problems or delays.

FOR US:
Pray that God would keep us safe and healthy and equip us with what we need for this journey. We too will need courage and strength. This has the potential to be terrifying of us too (maybe more so than for the girls!).

Pray also for that LONG flight home that we will all survive and live to tell the tale.

Lastly, Pray that we are able to transition effectively back to work when we get home. Being gone from work always causes things to pile up which can add stress to an already stressful situation.


Thank you for sharing in our journey.

"Blessed be the Lord,
Because He heard the voice of my supplications!
The Lord is my strength and my shield,
My heart trusted in Him and I am helped;
Therefore my heart greatly rejoices,
And with my song I will praise Him."

Psalm 28:6-8