Disciples of all the nations

Wow. Were to begin? God is moving around here, for sure. Moving as in 20 bracelets sold at church this morning. Can you believe that??? Our church worship has brought me to tears many times over the last few months. Tears for a child that isn’t here yet. Tears for a child that in this very moment is dealing with a tragic separation from her mother. She’s never going to be the same. She’ll forever be separated from her land, her culture, her people. She’s not going to grow up with her God-designed family because of the consequence of sin. BUT fortunately God has mercy on his people and will bring her home with us, someday. During worship this morning I remembered that God is in those places too. They don’t know it and she doesn’t know it, but God (welcomed or not) is in that orphanage. Every single day I beg Him to put a peace in her tiny heart. To bless her with an ounce of hope. She doesn’t yet know what or who it is, but she will. Someday I’ll tell her how we all prayed diligently for her. For now, it’s so comforting to know that God is there. I also wondered this morning, if anyone was leading worship in her orphanage. Surely there’s a Christian orphanage in Ethiopia, right? But there are roughly 4.3 million orphans in Ethiopia as well. I cried thinking about those lost children and lost caregivers. Maybe one day I’ll be able to lead worship in an Ethiopian orphanage. You know, because I’m a super talent singer and musician.  You see, our journey won’t be over after the adoption. God tells us to make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19) and he doesn’t want us to do that just once. So we pray that God is glorified through our adoption and lives are forever changed. Then we’ll do the next thing he asks, even if it involves leading worship in orphanages! God is also moving in the area of compassion. I consider myself to be a compassionate person, but this week has opened my eyes to another area where I needed to show more mercy. You see, every time I post about adoption on the blog, facebook, or our gofundme site, I’m basically begging for money. Do you know how hard it is to beg for money? It’s incredibly hard. I don’t like to ask for help, much less beg for money. I feel like the girl on the street corner with a cardboard sign, praying someone will have pity on me. I know, I know, many of you think she should get a job or give up drugs, or go to a shelter/safe house. Consider this: do you REALLY think she likes begging for money? She has no pride, no self-esteem, and no hope for her future. Even if it is a drug or alcohol problem, do you actually think she would choose that over a normal, middle class lifestyle? There are the few who abuse the system, I get that. Even then, why do they do it? My guess is they don’t know the love of Christ. They don’t have a Savior leading them away from lying, cheating, stealing, or addiction. Of course, begging for your support in our adoption journey is nothing like the problems of those on the streets. But if you think it’s easy to beg for money, you’re dead wrong. God is moving in me to have even more compassion for those begging on the streets. It’s not my position to judge why they’re begging, it’s my position to love them and let that love lead them to Christ. Thank you, thank you, to all of you who are sharing our story, buying bracelets, and donating. Thank you even more to those of you who are interceding for us in prayer. This fight isn’t about money; it’s about uniting an abandoned child with her forever family. It’s about being part of something bigger than each of us and fulfilling our role in a chain reaction that reaches to all the nations.

Ouch

I just sat down to review the next steps in our journey and they're going to be painful.Painful as in about $4,000. That means I need to sell 267 bracelets folks. Which at 30 minutes a bracelet, is 8,010 hours of work. That would be 334 days if I made 2 bracelets an hour for 24 hours without stopping. That's not going to happen. Not even close. But have no fear, I'm an idealist. I love dreaming up the impossible. And if I can't come up with something, I'll recruit bracelet makers. :)Please join us in praying for God's hand to move and for hearts to be open to our cause. Now, let's see what else is going on around here... Hayes: His vocabulary has exploded in the last week. It honestly is the most adorable thing to listen as he proudly points at something and says the word. He calls all other things "bink". I have no idea where that came from but he asks for bink, referes to bink, and has conversations about bink all of the time. Of the words he does know, they all end in T. Moont. Ament. Downt. He calls Aisley "sissy" and thinks she hung the moont. She's become somewhat annoyed by that in the last day or two though. Hayes is everything boy and loves to play vroom vrooms, dig in the dirt, play basketball, ride bikes (trike), drive his sister's barbie jeep into the deep, dark corners of the backyard, run around with sticks, and especially show you his amazing running and jumping skills. He still sucks his thumb most of the time and for now, goes to bed quite easily. That was not the case for the month of July, however. At bedtime he loves to review the names of my facial features (because now he know chint), give butterfly kisses, eskimo kisses, and make fish faces. His bedtime routine takes all of 2 minutes. He will pat the pillow beside his bed and say "night night, Momma. Night night" and it takes every ounce of me not to crawl in beside him and squeeze that sweet boy all night. He is a chunky, ornery, smelly, ball of precious energy that I can't get enough of. He also has an odd obsession with hats. Today he wore his dad's large sombrero, a princess helmet, and a cowboy hat, for much of the day. Not all at once, obviously. That boy loves bath time. Say the word and he'll drop everything run to the bath tub and be inside with the water running before I even hit the door. With all close and both shoes on, of course. He is sure to meet every passerby with a loud and cheerful hello, doesn't know a stranger, and will settle in anyone's lap if they are willing to read him a story. He adores his pets and any other animal he runs into. Hayes is also growing more fearful of heights by the day. Don't dare throw that boy up in the air, he'll be sure to make you regret it. Elmo is his favorite T.V show and his favorite toys are animals, tractors, cars, choo choos, and puzzles. His favorite songs are Twinkle Little Star and If you're Happy and You Know it. Ask him where Jesus lives and he'll point to his heart. He sure melts mine. Aisley: Oh my, this girl warms my heart. Now, some of what I'll say about her at this stage may seem negative, but it's not. I love and adore this child with my whole being, but I do need to document how she tortures us, just for future reference. :)My sweet Aisley prays all of the time and I love it. We pray over our meals, anytime we hear sirens or see ANY vehicle with lights on top-whether they are the water meter reader, electric company, or an emergency vehicle, and even if the lights are off. She's very much into princess stuff, dress up, playing barbies and babies, and anything girlie. She's super bossy and sassy, and drags her poor brother around dressing him up in butterfly headbands and clip-on earrings. She learned to read and spell her 1st word this summer: Z-O-O. She writes her first name and struggles with the S and E. She wishes her new sister was already here and calls orphans "orphadivers". This is really weird to me, is that like orphan and cadiver? Or maybe scubadiver? I'm going with that one...Aisley LOVES to sing and twirl and put on shows. With the windows open now, our neightbors are getting an earful!Her favorite color is pink. Someday she wants a car with pink and white polka dots, just like her favorite leggings. She refuses to go to sleep and comes downstairs every few minutes insisting that she just can't fall asleep. She's not much for digging in dirt, freaks out if her brother touches her with dirty hands, and refuses to touch random fuzz on the floor because it's "gross". She really is a demanding,prissy, drama queen, and I couldn't love her more. Aisley's favorite song is Matt Redman's 10,000 Reasons and she only knows this part "Bless the Lord, Oh my soul, Oo-oo-oh my soul". Her favorite movie is My Little Pony, she still carries her tattered, old lovie pony around, and she asks me all of the time when she'll get to be a grown up. Too soon, my love, too soon. Carey:He just returned from our neighbor's front porch where he's been sipping beverages for an hour. I could hear our neightbor's amazing laugh through the windows. He has the kind of laugh that makes you laugh when you hear it, even from across the street. I love to hear Mark laugh and I'm so grateful for awesome neighbors to laugh with. Carey performed surgery on 40 mice last week. He did 40 mouse transplant surgeries. Crazy, huh? He said that after doing surgery on a teeny, tiny mouse, humans should be easy. Right, except that there are 15 other people in the room with humans and we actually care that they live. I didn't mention that part to him though. I'll let him enjoy his no pressure, one-on-one mouse surgeries for a few years. He deserves that much. Sometime I'll fill y'all in on the crazy crap they have for these mice. Seriously high-tech stuff for lab mice these days. Back to Carey, he doesn't do any of his old stuff anymore. No watching football, studying at coffee shops, or going to the gym. If he sits, he sleeps. If he sits with the kids around, they crawl all over him while he sleeps. His favorite color is still green. He doesn't have a favorite movie because he hasn't seen one in ages, and his favorite song is Twinkle Little Star too. Because Hayes makes sure of it. He's given up all OCD tendancies for pure survival mode and just prays he'll keep his hair. :) Me: I'm not very exciting. I spend lots of time running circles around two cute kiddos, avoiding laundry, and walking dogs. This summer consisted of swimming pools, sprinkler parties, and parks. I garden when I can, craft when I can, and facebook too often. My favorite color is turquoise, I don't watch t.v. or movies, and my favorite song is anything not on that blasted toddler CD. I have to regain musical authority in my car before my theme song becomes Farmer and the Dale. That just can't happen. There you have it. Complete updates on all four of us. My, aren't we fascinating!

faithfulness, humility, and the lack thereof....

My sweet, sweet Aisley is starting to ask those challenging questions: who made God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Where do they live? Where do angels live? What do they do? Can just die when you die so we can go to heaven together? Can we just not talk about dying anymore and talk about ring-around-the roses instead? (She explained that talking about dying makes her feel worried and nervous.) I wasn’t prepared for these questions. I really thought I’d have 2 more years until this type of conversation came about. Lastly she asked if our orphan from Africa is growing in my belly. Now this is all so funny and cute until I have to explain the sad, sad, truth. How do you teach a 4 year old that her baby brother or sister is going to be born of another mother and then some tragic event will cause her to be permanently separated from her birthparents? I’m guilty of shielding my kids from the cruel realities of the world and sugarcoating life to avoid the “hard stuff”. Isn’t it that only natural? But now it’s important for her to understand in her own little way, what her sibling will have to experience before getting to come home. This also means that I have to step out of my comfort zone and face what my child could be experiencing right now. Pray for her early years, will you? Earlier this week Carey and I began to really explore fundraising options. I realized just how difficult raising money for adoption will be. It’s extremely hard to announce to people that our family has made a decision to adopt, but we are totally and completely reliant on their financial assistance. It’s hard to put pride aside and ask for help. It’s hard to face the possibility of rejection when someone doesn’t share this vision with us and just says no. And it’s hard to imagine and risk failure. What if we can’t raise the money? We won’t be able to bring our child home, to save her from her miserable orphanage and bring her into our loving home? And how do you give back the money you have earned? What if you’ve already paid the adoption agency and can’t get a refund, how will your donors feel when there’s no adoption and no reimbursement? This is a way that God is humbling me and growing my faith. I believe this is one of many ways He’ll grow us through our adoption journey and we’re grateful that each of you are in this with us.

Against all odds

By the grace of God our adoption application was APPROVED! It wasn't pretty. It was downright embarrassing. As I looked over it last night I was reminded again that we would need divine intervention for any of this to work out. I’m happy to say that it can only be God’s will for us to move forward because no one in their right mind would have approved us. Thanks to each one of you who prayed on our behalf and are traveling this road with us. We’re going to need you!

Bracelet Fundraiser

My dear, sweet, and so very talented friend Brooke, offered to photograph our fundraising bracelet! Didn't she do an amazing job? Makes ya just have to have one, huh?

Click on the bracelet to the left to enter my Etsy shop and buy a few to give as gifts. All sales go directly to our adoption fund.

Wanna watch our fund-o-meter reach $20,000? Click the donation link to the left and follow our story as God moves people to bring our baby home!

Wow. Weren't those precious? Checkout more of Brooke's work and thank her for being part of our adoption community! http://www.facebook.com/brookejagomullins#!/BrookeMullinsPhotography

Here goes nothin!

Yikes! The application is in and paid for! So exciting and so much pressure. This morning I realized that I'll be living in fear of rejection for the next 2 years. We'll just say 2 years, but we all know that we only have 1 year and 10 months for this to work. Not that I'm counting or anything. I feel that many people are asking "what about the two kids you already have? What about Aisley and Hayes?". That's an easy one. Aisly is super excited to have a sister to play with and Hayes couldn't care less. Living out what God has asked us to do will allow Him to teach them so many lessons that we couldn't teach them. Plus, what would it say about who God is and our faith if we didn't follow this calling? If we didn't do this we would be telling our kids that it's ok to ignore God's prompting if it's hard or uncomfortable. We might as well say that we don't believe God's plan is better or that we don't have the faith to trust Him. Even if we "fail" at this attempt to adopt, Aisley and Hayes will see that following God's command is a priority, takes faith, and that God is in control. These are things I want to model to my kids. Alright, moving on. The next step is to wait about a week to see if our application is approved. If it's not approved, then we'll take a step back, pay off debt and pray. Our next opportunity to adopt won't be for 7-9 years, so we'll have lots of time to adjust. If we are approved, then we will viciously attack fundraising so that we can pay the $20,000 worth of fees. If we are approved, please pray for our fundraising events. It will take divine intervention and God moving hearts in big ways to raise that kind of money. Praying will be the best way to support our family.

Adoption or bust!

Have you ever felt like you were supposed to do something? Something that you wouldn’t ordinarily do because it is a little uncomfortable or maybe even risky? Did you try to run and hide? Pretend you didn’t notice? Convince the voice in your head that it’s totally not the right time for that? That’s exactly how our adoption story begins. The Holy Spirit started at me last January. Maybe earlier, I just didn’t listen. But January is when I could no long ignore Him. Now, most of you know how stubborn I am. So I’m fortunate to love a patient and merciful God who is the maker of all hardheaded and dense beings…like me. God loves to teach me lessons in persistence and because I have a tendency to say NO Way, He lovingly and deliberately beats me over the head with the same idea until I finally surrender. The lesson I’ve learned and am still learning? God is far more persistent and strong-willed than I could ever be. So a series of events continued to occur for many months before Carey and I sat down and seriously considered adoption. We were finally ready to check out the whole adoption thing and jump in. But there were many stumbling blocks: cost of adoption, positive net worth (umm…so doctors can’t adopt until they’re like 60 then?) not to mention the restriction of certain mental health medications (this would be a good time to admit Carey and I aren’t as sane and perfect as we seem. What??? You never ONCE thought that about us? Humph!) and lastly, there’s a travel requirement that isn’t exactly resident-friendly. We are required to go to Ethiopia twice towards the end of the process. 1st trip is an appearance in court and to meet your child. 2nd trip is to actually bring that baby home for good! You’re usually not given a whole lot of notice before these two trips and we knew that would be an issue once Carey is out of the research years and in the role of Chief Resident (yay!). So basically, the odds were stacked against us and the only logical thing to do was to pay off all bad debt and see if any agency would listen to us plea about student loans. I think that plan actually satisfied Carey, who was not exactly in the position during his “80 hour” work weeks (yeah, right) to mentally or emotionally prepare for adoption. I however, was not satisfied. Go figure. I need to check with several agencies to make sure there was no way of beginning now. Sadly, they confirmed my fear and gave Carey many months to adjust and prepare for adoption. Isn’t it nice how great God’s timing is? So I tried to drop the subject and wait patiently. And by that I mean, I only mentioned it a few times a week instead of a few times an hour.  After starting to feel really discouraged, one day Carey finally said (totally out of the blue without any prompting or pouting from me) that he felt led and ready to begin the process. So we crunched numbers and glanced over the timeline and prayed, prayed, and prayed some more. He picked up as many moonlighting shifts as possible and we went back through our list of agencies. We set a goal to pay off credit cards and then try again. But I didn’t feel at peace about waiting this time. I couldn’t escape the sense that I needed to look deeper, try harder. My heart began to break for this child I know is over there waiting for her Momma. It started to become very real that my baby is huddled on a mat with 2 other kids without knowing that we’re coming. My baby goes through her day not being held, kissed, read to, loved on, or cherished. And that my friend, was just too much for this Momma and Daddy to bear. The Holy Spirit really did a number on us that time. Just broke our hearts. So I researched more and out of the clear blue sky, an agency I hadn’t seen before popped up! Just like magic! The agency fit our desires of being a Christian agency and held the appropriate credentials we insist upon. I thought, “Ok. This is it. This is the last thing I can do and if we’re rejected, then we’ll just have to wait another 9 years.” On Friday I wrote the executive director the shortest and most open email I could about our situation. I resisted the urge to beg, plea, and cry to him to accept us and give us our baby (because he’s got her locked up in the closet just waiting to be released, obviously)! And I started counting the minutes until he would be back in the office and respond to my message. Sunday we went to church and I cried, of course, for this baby girl and her suffering. I checked my email without much hope of a response and OH MY GOODNESS!!! There in my inbox was a message from the agency. I would’ve fallen over if I hadn’t been sitting. I know my heart skipped a beat and my stomach flew to my throat. This was it. This would determine our adoption story. “I think you can begin [the adoption process] now. Given your husband’s earning potential I think we could approve you in one of several programs.” I couldn’t talk. I could only get out gasps of air and weird sounds. I was prepared for rejection. I was prepared to wait 9 years when we were more stable. I was prepared to be told to pay off all bad debt and try again later, like all of the other agencies told us. Amazing isn’t it, how just a little encouragement restores your hope? We came home and Carey immediately started filling out the application and looking over details. We had been praying and hoping to know why God put this desire in our hearts, especially if we would have to wait so long to begin the process. Now we’re thrown to the opposite side of the car as this rollercoaster makes a sudden turn and begins the uphill climb. We went from being forced to take our time and apply later, which would give us lots of time to save and fundraise, to start now with no time to save and fundraise. As much faith as it’s going to take to round up the money, I much prefer to begin our journey now and get this baby home. So that’s it, that’s the beginning of our adoption story. We have every intention of displaying all of the process, emotion, and work that makes our story, right here on the blog. Please know that we want to be totally open about this so that our friends and family live this journey with us. It’s important to have your support and encouragement and even more important that you start to build a bond with our future child. You are thousands of miles away, but she needs you just as much as she needs us. You are her grandparents and great-grandparents. Her cousins, aunts, uncles, and neighbors. Most importantly, you are her prayer warriors and her village. Just as your love and care for Aisley and Hayes, you are beginning to love and care for her. While we will do so, so, much fundraising through our blog, family and friends don’t feel guilted into giving. All we ask is that you will support our journey through encouragement and prayers. We’ll leave the rest up to God!