Learning to Be Thankful

Everyone who read Kristie's post from last week knows what a hard time we had two Mondays ago as we attempted to apply for passports for our bio kids and to get our medical forms notarized at the doctors' office. If you have not yet read about this, you really should, partially because I am not going to revisit those events in detail, and partially because it is an excellent blow-by-blow account of how that day unfolded. I don't think that I have ever been through a day quite like that before, and even though it was extremely trying, I'm grateful that we went through it all. And that's not something that I would have said that Monday evening. Allow me to explain.

As the number of roadblocks continued to pile up, I became increasingly frustrated with the way that the day was going. It seemed that at every turn we were being prevented from accomplishing what we had set out to do, and I was getting angry. By the end of the day, I had became rather irritable and a bit withdrawn, convinced that my frustration was justifiable. Looking back over everything that happened, however, I don't think that it was. Monday wasn't the first time in the past few weeks that we have encountered opposition in our efforts to bring Mikaela home as soon as possible. The obstacles might have been more intense and more numerous on that particular day—though perhaps they seemed to be more intense because of how many things happened within those eight hours—but we had already been through several roadblocks by the time Monday morning dawned. In fact, we had to overcome a few more obstacles later in the week, and that got me thinking about how I was handling myself. As far as we can tell, the opposition that we have felt since we began Mikaela's adoption six weeks ago has been satanic in origin. This makes sense, as we are seeking to follow God's lead onto a path full of potential setbacks and dangers that we cannot foresee, all for the sake of rescuing a little girl from a poor orphanage and from life in an institution, a life lived outside of a covenant family and thus perhaps a life spent without ever having heard the Gospel. When I considered more carefully what all this meant, I realized that I had been wrong to stay so frustrated with how frequent the setbacks had become. In Acts 5:41 we read that the disciples rejoiced that they had been persecuted because of the Name of the Lord. Not only had these disciples been told to cease their preaching of the Gospel, but they had been beaten for sharing the wonderfully Good News of salvation through Jesus. And their response was not anger or frustration or withdrawing inside themselves to avoid feeling more pain. No, it was to spend every day, both in the temple and in various houses, proclaiming the very thing for which they had just been beaten—the Gospel. They continued to follow God's command to spread the message of Jesus Christ, no matter what it might cost them, and they did it joyfully.

When I take a moment to compare their situation with ours, I cannot help but feel a bit foolish for reacting the way that I did. Even though both we and those early followers faced opposition, their situation was much more dire than ours. The danger of physical harm was obviously present for those men, and it takes no great leap to imagine that the threat of death was not far off, either. Such persecution of Christians was common at numerous points in the first several centuries A.D., and given what happens to Steven at the end of the seventh chapter, the possibility that they could be killed for what they were doing might well have occurred to them. And yet, in spite of that, they pressed on in open defiance of the command given them by the religious officials and continued to obey the Lord, apparently either without fear or with so much joy as to overshadow their fear almost completely. In our situation, we were merely faced with having to run all over town as we had to clear one hurdle after another. There was never any threat of physical danger, and certainly not of martyrdom, in this, and yet I responded with anger and not joy. The day was frustrating, and I will not deny that, though my frustration should have given way to the joy of being in God's service. Rescuing a child from a desperate situation is one way in which the cosmic war between the forces of the Lord and the forces of Satan is being played out in the world around us. Although the war's outcome has been decided, the battles between now and the end are ongoing and fierce, and it is a privilege and an honor to serve the Commander of the heavenly armies in some small way as He works to redeem His creation, and I thank Him for enlisting me. Soli Deo Gloria.

An awful Monday

Wow, it seems like we aren't very good at this blogging thing. Either we are so busy that we don't have time to write, or things are so calm that there is nothing to write about. Monday was certainly a day to write about, and this is the first opportunity we have had.

Monday was one of those days when nothing seemed to go right at all. We had two tasks to accomplish in addition to our daily routine. We wanted to apply for Josiah's and Gabriela's passports, and we wanted to get our medical forms notarized by our doctors. We thought we could accomplish those two things and still get some work done in the morning and Greg would still be able to teach most of his Latin class in the afternoon. We left our apartment about 9:00 in the morning to drop our computers off at my parents' house and pick Josiah up, because he had spent Sunday night with them. Once we got to my parents' house, we realized that we had left the passport applications and birth certificates at home. We were a little frustrated, but the post office is pretty close to our apartment, so we didn't think it would be a big deal. After getting Josiah ready to go, we drove back to our apartment and picked up the applications. When we got to the post office, we were encouraged to see that the lines weren't as long as we had expected. We waited for a few minutes, and both kids behaved perfectly. Gabriela slept the whole time, and Josiah chattered at us, and smiled and waved at the other people in the post office. Everything seemed to be going so well. When we got up to the counter, the postal worker looked through our application and said that everything looked good, but we needed copies of our driver's licenses. There had to be a copy of the front and back of each license for each application. We asked if we could make copies at the post office, and he directed us to the copier. It cost 15 cents per copy, and the machine only took change. We couldn't find any change, but we did find a 1 dollar bill and a 20 dollar bill after digging through the car and all our pockets and wallets. By this point, the line was a lot longer, but Greg went and stood back in line to ask them to change our money. Once he finally got to the front of the line, the postal worker told him she could break the 1, but didn't have enough change to break the 20. That left us 20 cents short of being able to make all the copies we needed. The only thing we could do was to drive back home and make the copies at our apartment. Once we did that, we drove back to the post office and got in the line again. Once we got to the front of the line for the third time, the worker began processing our applications. He got all the way through Gabriela's and was just beginning Josiah's, when he noticed one more problem. My driver's license had expired last month on my birthday, and he couldn't process their applications until I had a new license. We drove back to my parents' place and dropped the kids off so they could get some lunch and take their naps. Then we drove to the nearest BMV to get a new license. On the way we ran into road work and the consequent detour, and one of the slowest trains I have ever seen. We finally got to the BMV, and after waiting in yet another line, we renewed my license. The only complication was that the laminating machine jammed while trying to print my license, and they had to do it twice. Then we drove back to the post office, used the copier to make copies of my new license, and finally finished the applications for the kids' passports. Needless to say, we didn't get any work done that morning.

We were supposed to meet a friend of ours who is a notary at the doctors' office at 4:00. The doctors have been difficult to work with from the beginning, so we were both a bit concerned about this meeting. Our friend showed up right on time, and she helped us by notarizing a few other forms while we waited for the doctors. We were trying to move quickly, because Greg's Latin class also started at 4:00. He had given the quiz and answer key to the students' parents, and they were covering the class until he could get there. After a few minutes of waiting, Greg's doctor called us back. He was just about to sign the form, and we noticed he had the wrong one. We had dropped off a form with a mistake the first time, and I had gone back the next day with the correct one. Somehow, the form had never been switched in Greg's chart. The doctor was very irritated, and told us outright that it was all our fault. He grudgingly agreed to fill out the correct form (fortunately I had brought an extra copy of the correct form, because we never did find out what had happened to the one I dropped off earlier), and told us to go back to the waiting room while he completed it. Shortly after we sat down, the nurse told us that my doctor was ready, so we went back again. She made it clear that she thought it was stupid for us to ask her to sign in a blue pen, but did agree to do it, as long as we had one for her. (We had 3) About the time my doctor finished, Greg's doctor called us back over to his side of the office. He signed the form quickly, and left to meet with another patient. As soon as he walked away, we discovered that he had not signed one of the forms he was supposed to sign. The notary finished all of her work, and we all stood in the office and waited for more than 15 minutes for the doctor to come back. We were so afraid he would fight us when we told him that he had forgotten to sign a form, but we had to have it. Once he finally came back out, he did agree to sign the form with little more than an irritated eye-roll in our direction, so that was a relief. Then, our notary noticed that there was one line on the form that asked for the office or doctor's seal. She asked us what that was, and if we needed it. The doctor responded, "We don't have a seal," threw our pen back on the counter, and walked away. We decided that since the form was printed on their office letterhead, that would probably count as the office seal, and we left for Greg's Latin class.

He got to class just in time to answer a few questions, give them an assignment for next week, and dismiss them. Fortunately, the students and parents in the class are very, VERY understanding and supportive, and they were not upset at all.

Yesterday, we found out that Greg's doctor had made a small mistake on his form, and it will not be accepted by Mikaela's country at this point. After all that, we have to re-do it. Today, Greg made a few phone calls to try to find another doctor. Neither of us has any desire to go back to the doctors we had been using.

In the midst of all this frustration and discouraging news, there have been a few bright spots. Both our bio kids have been great through it all. Naps and feeding schedules have been chaotic as we have run all over town trying to take care of things, and both of our babies have nasty colds. Even so, they have remained cheerful and pleasant almost the whole time. My parents have been willing to help us out with anything we have needed. They have fed us, kept our kids, listened to us complain, and helped us figure out the complicated mess of adoption paperwork. Perhaps the most wonderful and encouraging thing that happened this week is that we got new pictures of our beautiful baby girl. We will post those soon.

Feeling Mikaela Kick, From Half-Way Around the World

Even though we've been working to bring Mikaela home for two-and-a-half weeks now, the reality of all of this has only started settling in over the last few days. When we stepped out in faith last fall and started working on our home study, we knew that God was leading us to adopt at some point in the (relatively) near future. For a while, we even thought we knew which child He was bringing into our family, but it was only after that possibility fell through that He brought Mikaela to our attention. Through all of our home study work, I found it difficult to stay focused on the things that we had to do in order to be approved to adopt because, at that point, we didn't know which child we were laboring to bring home. We had no face to look at and imagine sitting next to our two bio children. We had no name for the child that God had out there for us. We had no information about the child's medical history. We didn't know how old this child was. We didn't know where this child was. In fact, if it weren't for Kristie's diligence, I'm convinced that we would still be floundering in the early stages of our home study, meaning that Mikaela would be stuck in her orphanage longer than would be ideal. As it is, we're in the early stages of putting our dossier together, and it is still possible that our daughter could join our household by the end of April.

One would think that knowing whom we're adopting would have wrought an immediate change in me, that I would have jumped into this new batch of paperwork with both feet. Alas, that wasn't the case. At least not right away. For the first week or so, I was largely in shock as to how quickly things were moving. There were still a few pieces of our home study that needed to be wrapped up, but I actually had some trouble following through on them. For some reason, it just didn't quite seem real that God had shown us our new daughter, who is currently thousands of miles away. The sensation was not that far from how I felt during each of Kristie's pregnancies. For both Josiah and Gabriela, the reality of it all didn't sink in fully until they grew enough for me to feel them. And when they started kicking and moving around, it became that much sweeter. As of about a week ago, I reached the point where the fact that we are indeed adopting a little, five-and-a-half-month-old baby girl from Eastern Europe finally made its way into my (somewhat thick) head. Now, I'm constantly thinking about our daughter, stuck in a poor orphanage almost half-way around the world, still unaware that there could be a life for her that's different than what she knows now. Every time I change a diaper—whether Josiah's or Gabriela's—when it's not very wet but still needs to be changed because it's been on for several hours, I wonder how long Mikaela has to wait until her diapers are changed. I wonder whether her skin has ever been—or, perhaps more accurately, how frequently—burned by being left in a wet and/or dirty diaper for too long. It makes me sad to think of her little, smiling face enduring that kind of discomfort and pain. I know that many children around the world are treated similarly, and in some cases even worse, but the thoughts of Mikaela's plight are the ones that make my heart sink. That's all the motivation I need to push to get her home as soon as possible.

Right now, I get momentarily paralyzed whenever I take a step back and survey all of the paperwork that still needs to be done, the long trips (or possibly trip) that lie ahead of us, and all of the money that is still needed. (Thankfully, God has given us the first bit of the funds that we need for this, and we praise Him for that!) But then I'm able to focus in on the things that I am responsible for to get her home as quickly as possible. This is not easy, and there is much left to be done, but we are well on our way now, and we cannot wait to meet Mikaela, to hold her, to tell her that we love her, to introduce her to her brother and "twin" sister, to usher her into her new life with us. Hold on, baby girl; we're coming.

Prayer

Today was one of those rare and wonderful Sundays when the sermon at church addressed the exact topic that had been most prominent in my mind all week.

Since we decided to pursue Mikaela's adoption, I have been striving to find the balance between trusting God to provide all that we need for this adoption and continuing to bring my petitions before Him again and again. I have been thinking about verses that encourage God's people to "be still and know that [he is] God." Greg and I are constantly struck by how little our 18-month-old son trusts us in certain areas. When we all sit down together for a meal, Josiah immediately begins to ask us for his food. When we lay his silverware down so that we can feed ourselves, he asks urgently for his food again. If he can't see us actively preparing to put the next bite in his mouth, he begins to worry that we might not feed him any more. It doesn't matter to him that every day of his life, we have given him as much food as he has needed as soon as he has needed it. He still worries each meal that we might let him leave the table while he is still hungry. I know that we Christians have a tendency to do exactly the same thing to God. No matter how many times He provides for our needs, we start to worry if we are aware of a need and can't yet see Him preparing to meet that need for us. I have tried to be very careful to avoid this sort of a mindset as we wait for him to provide for Mikaela's adoption.

On the other hand, I don't want to take God's provision for granted in this (or any) area. It would be just as serious of a mistake to know that God will provide what we need and then to dismiss it from our minds. In many different passages, God encourages his people to ask Him for the desires of their hearts. I have thought many times this week about the parable of the woman and the unjust judge. She begs the judge for her needs so many times that He finally gives her justice in spite of his own wickedness. We are told to be as persistent as that widow when we ask God for things. How do I bring my requests to God again and again and again with out slipping into the childish tendency to wonder whether He will really meet our needs this time?

Our church has been working through the book of Hebrews, and today the sermon was about praying with confidence and commitment. There was little new information in the sermon, but it helped to solidify many of the things I already knew and to clarify the interaction between our trust in God and our repeated requests of Him.

One of the helpful points in the sermon today was on the importance of praise. That is one element of my prayers that tends to be weak, and has been particularly so over the last week or so. Most of my prayers have focused on Mikaela. Spending more of each prayer focusing on God, and His character and mighty works of the past will help give my prayers some of the balance I have been trying to find. Rather than dwelling on the significance of the need, I will try to focus on the power and goodness of God. I will still acknowledge the need and ask him to meet it, but I think this shift of emphasis will help.

I came away from church this morning more excited and encouraged than I have been in quite a while. I look forward to seeing His mighty works in this situation. I am more aware than ever before of what a privilege it is to participate in His works through the gift of prayer.

Greg and I are praying for a few things specifically in this adoption. We pray that there will never be a point during which the adoption is slowed down because of a lack of funds. We ask that God will provide everything we need for this adoption so that we do not need to incur any debt. We ask that God will keep Mikaela safe and healthy while she waits for us, and we ask that he would have her home safely by the end of April. Please join us in praying for these things and watch with us as God works in this situation.

The Waiting Begins

I knew before we began this adoption that the waiting is the hardest part. I have seen my parents complete 13 adoptions at this point, and I have talked to many other people in the midst of an adoption. I think the thing that surprised me is how early in the adoption process the wait becomes agonizing. Greg and I heard about Mikaela yesterday afternoon, and committed to her about 24 hours ago. Already the strain of the wait is wearing on me. In some ways, having Gabriela makes the wait harder, because she keeps Mikaela on my mind so constantly, and because the contrast between their situations is so stark. At several points today, Gabriela has started crying because of something small that was troubling her. Once, her hands were cold. Another time, she wanted to get in her crib with her little stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet. Several times, she just wanted someone to talk to her. Each time, I thought about Mikaela as I was comforting Gabriela. While I warmed Gabriela's hands, I wondered if Mikaela was cold. When Greg carried Gabriela to her bed for her nap, I thought about her bed with its little quilt and her favorite stuffed animals. I have seen cribs in orphanages many times before, and I know that often they have dirty sheets, plastic bags poking out, and sometimes two or more children sharing a bed. As I lay in the floor talking to Gabriela and reassuring her that we are still here and still care about her, I wondered if Mikaela has given up crying when she is lonely. We have been told that the orphanage caring for Mikaela right now is very poor and not able to care for its children very well. Even in good orphanages, there are never enough workers to hold all the children, and in a poor orphanage, there isn't a chance. I wonder if my little girl is cold at night and hungry during the day. I wonder how long it will take her to learn to trust us to meet her needs once she comes home. After months of not having her needs met, surely that is what she will expect, even once she comes home. Our contact tells us that Eastern European adoptions can move very fast, and that we might have Mikaela home as early as April. I know that is very, very fast for an adoption, and I hope and pray that things will go that well. But I also know that is a very long time for a little girl to be cold and hungry. I pray that God will move this adoption as quickly as possible. I pray that he will provide all the money we need as we need it. And most of all, I pray that he will take care of my baby girl. I am asking Him to help me wait and trust Him to give Mikaela everything she needs. The first day of our wait is now over. I have no idea how many days of waiting still lie ahead of us.

Meet Mikaela

We have been thinking about adoption for quite some time now. Before we were even married, in fact. Both of us have hearts for adoption—especially when special-needs children are involved—and we felt strongly that God's plan for our family would include adoption. We just didn't think that it would happen this soon into our marriage. He has blessed us with two children in our first two-and-a-half years together, but He doesn't appear to be finished adding to our household at this point. For the past eight months or so, we have been convinced that God was leading us to adopt in the very near future. So, we have been praying hard over that time, trying to keep our hearts open to His prompting. We have considered a number of children whom we have learned of, and just yesterday we saw a girl who melted our hearts unlike any other has. She is five months old, just eighteen days older than our biological daughter, Gabriela. She has Down syndrome and a heart murmur, and she is living in an Eastern European orphanage where the children are often underfed and lack the care that they need. After praying about her for several hours, we became convinced that she is indeed our daughter and that God is leading us to pursue her adoption. And so, we are beginning the work for her adoption in earnest. There is a good deal of paperwork yet to do, and a lot of funds need to be raised before we can bring home our daughter, whom we are calling Mikaela Colleen. Mikaela is the feminine form of the Hebrew name Michael, and Colleen is Greg's mom's middle name. Together, her name means "Who is like God, little girl?" That means that our first two daughters (perhaps our only two, but we're not closing any doors here) are named for the only two angels named in Scripture and each have on of their grandmothers' middle names. We did not plan for this to be the case; we only realized that interesting fact after choosing a name for this baby girl.

Our prayer right now is that everything that needs to be done to complete her adoption will happen quickly and smoothly. We want very much to get her out of her orphanage as soon as possible, but there are a number of hurdles in our way. Perhaps the largest of those (at least from our perspective) is the cost of the adoption. From what we know, it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $26,000 to complete Mikaela's adoption. Thankfully, the very little bit that we have is enough to begin the process, and we are having to trust the Lord with the rest. He has led us here, and we are confident that He is going to provide all that is needed to bring our daughter home, though we don't know precisely how He is going to do it. We ask anyone who reads this please to pray with us and for Mikaela, that we will be able to complete her adoption and bring her home by her first birthday, which is in August. The best-case scenario has us traveling to bring her home in April, which would be amazing. That means, of course, that we would have to have raised all of our funds by that time. If you or anyone you know would like to help us in that way, please click here to find out how to donate. (There is a fund for Mikaela that has been set up through The Shepherd's Crook Ministries. Just be sure to designate your donation as being for Mikaela Godwin.) We will do our best to update this blog as we continue down this road to adoption. Oh, and we will post a picture of her as soon as we have verified that we are allowed to do so.