The Most Significant $50 We've Ever Been Given

(Note: I was planning to post this earlier today, thus the mention in Kristie's post of an earlier entry.)


What difference can $50 make? Apparently, a rather large one. Before I get to that, however, I need to back up about a week and start the story there.

Kristie and I have been feeling for months that God was preparing us to adopt in the not-too-distant future, and so we have been praying and seeking His will for us, our family, and our future child(ren) during that time. Briefly—for a week—we thought that He was leading us to adopt a little girl named Abigail from Taiwan. In fact, we were so convinced that He was leading us to her that we chose the name Evelyn Amanda for her. One week after we began calling her Evelyn, we found out that she was being pursued by another family, which left us disappointed, discouraged, and confused. I still think of her often, and I know that if she were ever to become available again, it would take me almost no time to think of her as my daughter, so close had I grown to her from November to March. Whatever they might be, God has His reasons for having led us to her, and after trying once more two weeks ago to confirm whether she was being adopted, we made the difficult but necessary decision to consider her door closed and to consider carefully the other children that He had drawn our attention to recently.

In the middle of last week, we focused our prayers on four children whom we had been drawn to, in an attempt to discern God's will more clearly. They were: (1) Aaron - 2½, Philippines, Klippel-Feil syndrome; (2) YNX - 3, China, Down Syndrome; (3) WY - 2½, China, Down Syndrome, heart defect; (4) WFC - 2½, China, Tetralogy of Fallot, heart defect. By last Saturday, we had narrowed our search to the two girls with Down Syndrome. That day I made an offhand comment in our kitchen that perhaps God wanted us to adopt both of them. I wasn't convinced of that, but I recognized that it was possible and that we therefore needed to remain open to that possibility. Kristie was leaning strongly toward one of the girls, but I had only the slightest leaning and was feeling more than a little directionless about all of this. Neither of us told the other which way we were leaning. Our prayer was that God would give us a clear answer by the end of the weekend, and we have learned that it's often a good indication of His will when the two of us reach the same conclusion independently. So, I was resolved not to tip my hand until my conviction was sure, and I continued to pray.

On our drive to church that Sunday morning, the whole situation changed dramatically. When I woke up that morning without any more clarity than I had had the day before, I was initially discouraged. I said as much in the minivan, and I even told her that I was slightly more drawn to YNX than to WY, strongly suspecting that she would be leaning the other way. She was. That led us to discuss more seriously the possibility of adopting both girls. As crazy as that sounded—after all, that would leave us with four three-year-olds—was that any crazier than adding "only" one more to our family? If we were going to trust God to provide the funds for one adoption, to open up our hearts and the hearts of our children so that we could rescue one more orphan, who was to say that we couldn't—nay, shouldn't—trust Him to do that for two children? The thought of adopting two children was terrifying, but by the time we arrived at church, we were almost convinced that He wanted us at least to try to adopt both of these girls. Interestingly enough, we almost didn't go to church that day because we had had a bad night and had consequently slept in, but we made it to church and, in a shocking turn of events, with a few minutes to spare. Boy, am I glad that we were there! Our pastors have been preaching through the book of Revelation, and the sermon was on the fifth chapter, a scene which takes place before the throne of God. The music selections had the effect of focusing our attention on God: His majesty, His worthiness, His holiness, and the awe of being in His presence. It had been a long time since I had felt that close to God in a worship service. in fact, the last time that I can recall sensing His presence that clearly was our first time back at NCCC after returning from Ukraine with Mikaela. At the conclusion of the service, we were fully convinced that He wanted us to try to get both girls. The idea still seemed crazy, but we were at peace with it—so long as we didn't think too much about the paperwork and the fund-raising ahead.

That night, we caught our Core Group up on what God had done in our hearts that day and asked them to pray for us as we continued to seek His will in this process. As part of that seeking, Kristie wrote to Cheryl Graham on Sunday afternoon to find out whether we even had a shot at adopting both girls. We found out Monday evening that the chances of that were essentially nil. That news hit us hard, and it hit me harder than I had expected it to. I withdrew a little bit Monday evening and through the first part of the day on Tuesday, largely because I couldn't fathom why God would be so clear in leading us to pursue both girls, only to tell us the next day that we could only have one of them. What frightened me about the news we received on Monday was that I was rather at peace with it. Did that mean that I didn't care enough about the YNX? (Kristie's concern for WY was such that there was no way we could leave her behind.) Why would God seemingly change directions so suddenly? Had we misread Him? I can answer the first and last questions negatively, but I'm still not sure about the second. Maybe we'll never know, and I'm okay with that. I pray that YNX will have a family someday soon, and we did commit to adopt WY—whom we are calling Isabelle Noelani—on Tuesday evening.

We knew that we were starting this adoption with no money in our pockets to start anything, and we were nearly thrown into the fire right from the outset. Isabelle was on the Shared List, and Cheryl put in a request on Wednesday morning to have her assigned to Heartsent's list, which would give us three months to submit our papers for PA (along with the requisite $1,300). If, however, China should deny her request, we would have only forty-eight hours to complete the PA application and raise that $1,300. Yikes! Knowing on Tuesday evening that this was a possibility, we stayed up that night in order to get a good start on the paperwork, all the while praying that she would be assigned to Heartsent's list the next day. Cheryl had said that we'd know for sure by the end of Wednesday morning, and so when 1:00 rolled around and we still hadn't heard anything, we were really wondering what was going on. Thankfully, her request was granted, which has given us a chance to breathe. We are not resting on our laurels, though, as we have no intention of waiting long at all before submitting for PA. But, at least we weren't put in dire straits right off the bat.

Soon after committing to her adoption, fear of the unknown began to settle in. How would God provide all of the money that we'll need? How will we have enough strength and patience and focus to complete our paperwork accurately and promptly? Are we crazy?!?! Well, yes, we are, but that's not the point. The point is, God has taken us back to a place where we have to rely completely on Him and, just as it has been with TSC in the past (and present) and with Mikaela's adoption, it's almost equal parts exciting and terrifying. There is a profound joy and thankfulness that comes from receiving one's daily bread almost directly from His hand, and it is also frightening to have to relinquish all control. That's where we are, and all of this hit home this afternoon over a measly $50.

When we filled out our tax return this year, we were due $418 from the federal government, easily the biggest refund we've ever received. But, we owed $711 to the state of Ohio, which was actually not a bad tax situation for us. (Because Kristie is self-employed, we get hit hard at tax time.) That left us with a total of $293 that we would need to pay Ohio, a total which we didn't have after having just bought our first house—and all the necessary household items that can't be collected while living in an apartment—in February. As we were preparing to move, however, I found the security deposit refund check from our second apartment (which we left in 2009), that had never been cashed! The funds had been sent to the Ohio Division of Unclaimed Funds, so we had to submit a form to them in order to receive the funds. We did that shortly after moving into our house. And then we waited. And waited. We received no confirmation that they had received or processed our request, and at a couple of points I nearly gave up hope that we would ever see that money. The day after we committed to adopt WY, the very next day, that refund check showed up in the mail, for $254 and some change. Amazing! When Kristie sat down this afternoon to write the check to pay for our state taxes, we decided just to go ahead and pay the last $39 out of our pocket right now and be done with it. After all, having to pay only $39 of our own isn't too bad, right? Well, apparently God thought so. A few hours after writing that check, we found an unexpected and completely unlooked for check in our mailbox. Our mortgage lender sent us a $50 refund check for our appraisal. We had no idea that this was coming, and the timing of its arrival did not seem coincidental in the least. We had been praying for months that God would provide what we needed to pay our taxes this year, and sure enough, He did. And, as is often the case with Him, we never would have been able to guess where and how He would provide,. Our only certainty was that He would. The arrival of that $50 check this afternoon cemented not only that it is right for us to embark on Isabelle's adoption, but also that He has us right where He wants us: in the palm of His hand. It's a terror to be so close to His might, and yet a comfort to be held so dearly by Him. I pray that He will use Isabelle's adoption to draw us closer to Him, and that He will use her story to manifest His glory to those around us, just as He did with Mikaela's adoption.


- Greg

Meet Isabelle

Unfortunately, we have our posts a little bit out of order here. Greg posted earlier today about some encouragement we received during the first few days if Isabelle's adoption, and now I am writing the post that formally announces that adoption. I guess it is just more evidence that we still aren't very good at this whole blogging thing, right. :)

As Greg said in his most recent post, we have been convinced for a while that God was calling us to adopt again. We looked through many different lists of children, and fairly quickly narrowed our decision down to four children. Then, it took days of praying, talking, thinking, reading, and praying some more before we finally chose our daughter. She is a little girl in China who will be three years old next month, and like Mikaela, she has Down Syndrome. The initial uncertainty was a little strange for us, because with Mikaela's adoption, it was clear from the very first time we saw her that she was supposed to be ours. Even though it took us a lot longer to make the decision this time, we both felt completely confident in it once we did decide.

Our next step was to choose a name for our new daughter. Even that was harder this time around. We both looked at this little girl's picture and felt that she needed a name that was very soft and feminine, and we both liked the names Isabelle, Sophia, Lydia, and Alayna, but couldn't seem to come up with the right combination of first and middle name. On Saturday afternoon my parents kept our four kids, and Greg and I sat down at Panera, each with a copy of a baby name book. We read though the girl sections from beginning to end, and did finally find a name that seemed perfect for our little girl. We chose Isabelle Noelani (No eh LA nee) which means "beautiful girl from heaven, consecrated to God." This seems like the perfect name for this precious child that God has given to us, while also reminding us that she ultimately belongs to Him.

The next step in the process is to submit our packet of information to China to request their pre-approval to adopt Isabelle. We are almost finished filling out the forms, but we won't be able to submit the packet until we have the $1300 fee that goes along with it. We are praying that God will send that money soon, because until we have that, we can't even officially begin her process. We know that the timing is all in His hands, but it is so hard to wait when we want so badly to bring this little girl home.

Isabelle's picture is attached below. This photo is about a year old, but we don't have anything more recent right now. Isn't she beautiful.

Kristie

Mikaela can sit up!

Mikaela hit a big milestone this past week. She can sit up all by herself now! We are so proud of her. We have been hoping that she would be sitting up and crawling by Christmas, and she just might make it. She spends a lot of time on her hands and knees, rocking and looking around. Sometimes she even takes one to two "crawl steps."

Mikaela at Halloween

It is late, and I need to get to bed, because the kids wake up early, but I want to post a few pictures of Mikaela's first American Halloween.

She was a little cowgirl, and she had a great time.

It was cold that evening, so she spent the whole time wrapped in a blanket, and no one even saw her costume. I guess it is a good thing we got pictures.

She is getting so much stronger! She could not push up like this a few months ago.

Here she is with her Daddy. This is the only shot we have of her full costume.

This is my favorite shot from the evening. She isn't usually this serious, but this is a great shot to see how pretty she is.

These are the pictures that should have been included in the most recent post. I don't know why it didn't work the first time.

This is Mikaela during one of her breathing treatments.

Mikaela and Gabriela with their grandparents

Mikaela playing pat-a-cake with Great-Aunt Bev

Mikaela, Gabriela, and Josiah with their little cousin, Jason

Although life is very busy with three children under the age of three, Mikaela continues to thrive and grow. She is still gaining weight and is just about on the growth charts now. Cognitively and socially, she is pretty much at an age-appropriate level, although very near the bottom of the range. Verbally she is very, very slightly delayed. Her motor skills still need a lot of work, but she is making progress in those areas as well. We are so proud of her, and both forget that there was a time when she wasn't part of our family. We made a trip out to PA to visit with Greg's family, and it was her first big road trip. She did really well for about four-and-a-half hours of the five-hour trip. The last half hour was really hard on all three kids, and both girls screamed pretty much the whole time. Once we got there, they all did great. Mikaela was a huge hit with extended family members who hadn't had a chance to meet her yet, and I am including some pictures of that trip. Mikaela caught Gabriela's cold right about the time we got to PA, but she was a good sport about the stuffy head and runny nose. While we were out there, however, Mikaela developed a very bad case of croup. We spent most of the night up with her trying to decide if we needed to take her to the emergency room. Finally between steam and cold air, we did manage to get her through the night, but she didn't ever recover like she should have. Once we got back home, we took her to see the pediatrician, and we found out that we had a pretty sick little girl. Mikaela's cold had turned into an ear infection and resulted in some fluid in her lungs. In addition, she was still struggling with the croup. They put her on three different types of medication, including breathing treatments with a nebulizer and told us to come back in a week. Fortunately, that did the trick, and she is now fully healthy. We are so happy to have our happy, healthy baby girl back with us again. We also had Mikaela dedicated at our church this past Sunday. She had been baptized in her home country, so our church decided to dedicate her instead, re-affirming her previous baptism, emphasizing our responsibilities as her parents, and welcoming her into our congregation. It was a very nice little ceremony. I don't have the pictures of that yet; I think they are on my Dad's camera. I will try to get them soon.

We are still here

Hello to all. As we mentioned back in May, we decided to switch over to a private blog while we were in Europe so that we could share the details of Mikaela's adoption a bit more freely. We did maintain that blog while we were in country, so if you did not get the login information for that and would like to read the details about our trip, feel free to email us at 2polyglots@gmail.com, and we will be happy to send you the login information. Now that we are home, we can go back to using this blog. Our goal will be to keep both blogs updated, so most of the posts will be identical. To bring you all up to speed, I will give a really quick summary of the last few months.

Near the end of May, we flew to Eastern Europe. As we shared with you then, we were still short of the funding that we needed, and we were trusting God to provide everything for us. We are convinced that we were right to follow God even without knowing where His provision would come from, but we realized shortly after arriving in Europe that we had been very wrong not to communicate this information to our facilitators. We had never intended to be dishonest, but by not telling them how far short we were of the funds that we needed, we put them in a very difficult spot and jeopardized Mikaela's entire adoption. As a matter of fact, one of our facilitators told us that if we could not raise $7800 that day, he would send us back to America. We were devastated. We had already come to love Mikaela like our two bio children, and could not stand the thought of loosing her. We called my parents and begged them to pray, and they sent out an urgent plea for help. We couldn't imagine any way to raise that much money in one day, but God is very gracious. The members of our church banded together to raise that entire amount, and other friends and family raised the rest of the funds that we would need while we were in country. Rather than being angry with us, Reece's Rainbow even helped us raise a good bit of the money that we were lacking. We were so humbled and awed by God's mercy and the love that His people showed to us. We will never forget His goodness or the lessons that he taught us that day. Once we got through that initial crisis, we had a wonderful time in Mikaela's home country. We have wonderful memories of almost every day, and I am already wanting to go back. I think it will take Greg a little longer to get there, but he had a wonderful time too. The food was delicious, the people were kind and gracious, and the city was beautiful.

We returned home on July 2, and Mikaela has slipped into American life like she has been here from the beginning. She is a delight and a treasure. We can hardly imagine life without her. She has seen quite a few doctors since coming home, and most of the news has been very good. She had no parasites, no hepatitis (A, B, or C), no other diseases, and her heart condition seems to have resolved itself without surgery. We are so thankful for this. She does have hypothyroidism, but that is easy to control with medication. She is gaining weight and getting happier every day. She celebrated her first birthday on August 1, and we are so thankful to have been able to share that milestone with her.

That covers the highlights, and I will include a few pictures of our beautiful girl if I can figure out how to do that. Okay, I did get the pictures to post, but they are at the beginning, not the end of the blog. I have gotten so used to Wordpress, that it will take a little time for me to adjust to blogger again. Sorry about that. From now on, we will try to post all updates on both blogs.