Easter 2011

We kept Easter pretty low key this year here at home :-) We enjoyed a fantastic morning all spiffied up at church.









Then later on, we were invited to a family gathering with our friends the Wissels from church who took pity on us as we had like.. no plans.

Easter Egg hunt!

Lucas' 3rd Birthday

Well in all of the excitement and drama in the days following Lucas' Birthday, I forgot to put up all the pictures!!

So, we kept Lucas' Birthday lower key this year, because he had already had one party in Iowa while I was in Haiti, and will be having yet another one in May with the Sibley grandparents as well. Since his BDay fell on Good Friday, we celebrated on the 23rd with Pizza at Fun House Pizza in Lees Summit, and "shooting" of the "bad guys" at Chuck E Cheese afterward. It truly is his favorite activity and all he wanted to do!!











We drove, and then they shot things.





And then we were really sad when it was time to go...



We went home for some Birthday brownies and present opening as well

We Cleared Embassy!!!

So I awoke on Thursday morning with an e-mail beeping into my phone from the Embassy in Addis Ababa saying that our immigration investigation had cleared. I can't really express to you on a blog post how AMAZING that is. That is most amazing thing just behind taking custody of my son in a few weeks and stepping off the plane in Kansas City a little over a week after that.

This means that both Ethiopia and the United States are satisfied with all of the paperwork and we have been invited to travel. We plan to be leaving sometime in the week of May 22nd and will likely have our interview the week after. Holt has requested an appointment for us the week of the 30th, and we are just waiting for the confirmation so that we can formally book our plane tickets.

I am SO ready to get on the phone with Erle from Azumano travel in the near future.

Since we have a vague idea when we will be traveling, it occurred to us that we have to tidy up all those loose ends as our family of 3! HOW EXCITING to FINALLY have something to really be excited about.

A few little things on the list? I learned last night that even though Ben is almost 12 months old, he will still need bottles and formula as that is what he is used to... and apparently baby food as well?! I'm kind of excited about it actually :-) This afternoon I also ordered the Ergo carrier that I kept putting off because it was so depressing. It will be delivered on Tuesday :-)

I have a few projects that I want to have completely caught up again (I had them caught up back in January when I thought I would be traveling...)including this blog. If it isn't done by the time I get on that plane, I don't plan on it getting done, at least for a long time. Ted and I have also scheduled a few date nights/deal with stuff evenings next week without Lucas' "help".

We won't have our dates confirmed until likely Monday, so I'm just doing the mundane work this weekend. I want to have the last year of Ben's baby book completely updated so I won't be piecing it together later. I need to go through the boys closet and get it really organized...

and the fun part is, that for the 3RD TIME, I will be putting together Ben's clothes and making sure we have enough of everything. Granted, stuff is like 3 sizes larger than I had originally thought, but it's still FUN. I have to save that project til last though, and use it as motivation to get the less enjoyable stuff done. Like going through Lucas' toys and doing the ol' purge or random junk he accumulates.

I just might have to get the other high chair back out of the basement soon too, just for fun :-)

Updates to come.

The update of updates

WOW... I can't believe I haven't written on the family blog in almost 2 months. Well, I sort of can.

In some senses, LOTS AND LOTS of things have happened. In other senses, nothing has changed.

Here is a few biggies that have nothing at all to do with Ben.

1. Just a few days before my last post, we heard of a rental home in Lees Summit. We loved it. We threw away some money paying double rent for a few months, but we wanted it so badly and it was such a great place for our growing family. We moved into it on April 15th. Pictures to come as I'm still perfecting it in Erin fashion :-)

2. After not passing court in March, we received word that our case wouldn't be reheard by the courts until April 15th... almost 6 weeks later. 6 weeks of nothing. 6 weeks of no movement. So what did I do? I went back to Haiti.

3. I went to Haiti. More details regarding Haiti and the workings of my heart can be read on my person blog.

4. I started a personal blog. I haven't written much on it, but I THINK of things to write on it pretty much every afternoon. This afternoon I actually will I think, once we get done with this business.

5. The day before we moved, we found out by surprise that we had passed court EARLY!! I was so surprised/happy/moving that I never wrote it on the blog. Sorry Ben ;-( I promise to revisit the events of that day in the future, because I remember them really well. All the way down to the happy dance in the parking lot of church when the email from Holt popped into my phone.

6. A few weeks after that, Lucas turned 3. My first "baby" turned 3. He is a busy busy determined little person right now, but he is adorable. That will also be its own post soon.

So now that you have the basics of what has gone down around here, the point of the post!

WE WERE SUBMITTED TO EMBASSY ON MAY 3RD!!!

I know, so much has happened.. you may be saying.. "So why is that a big deal again? And, more importantly, WHEN are you finally getting that kid?!?!"

Well, lucky you I am in a fantastic mood and will explain all that.

In the months between when we were doing all of this before in January/February and now, the US Embassy has made some changes to their processes. In the long term, these are GOOD changes. Changes that will cut down and/or eliminate child trafficking with many more check points. Before, once you were "submitted" to embassy, it meant you flew for your visa interview about 2 weeks later. It was pretty much a done deal. NOW, you are submitted and the investigation starts. You don't fly until that investigation is complete. Sometimes the "investigation" is just a checking of facts to ensure that the child meets UNICEF's definition of "orphan" and that there are no discrepancies in forms, or sometimes it means they fine pick every single word anybody ever said about anything and re-interview half the country. Some families take weeks or even months to clear; some cases clear within days. We don't really have any way of knowing on what side of that fence we will land on. Our agency has really had to roll with the punches with each individual case and the whims of the embassy.

Because I was FLOORED when we were submitted to embassy within 3 weeks of court approval, my heart is in a great place for another potentially long wait. Some good news finally happened. Twice in a row in fact. We were finally ruled the legal parents of our son, AND there is movement towards his immigration. That makes me a happy lady. If I need to wait some weeks or more weeks to know that everything about his immigration clearance is perfect, so be it. I'd much rather know that his case was put through the ringer than to feel like anything was rushed just to please me. Some day, our children will have to think about such things as they come to terms with being taken away from their birth countries due to whatever the circumstances were of the birth parent(s) and also the economic poverty of their countries. It is my hope, that they will take some small comfort in knowing that two countries seriously put their heads together and agreed that nothing else could be done, than to allow the baby to leave the birth country.

Although I love my children more than my own life, I would not wish their loss on anyone. Adoption is as beautiful as it is heart breaking. Everyone gains and at the same time loses huge parts of ourselves in the process. My sons are too young to understand such realities right now. Right now, Lucas knows that I am Mama. I am the only Mama he has ever known and we don't have to think of such realities as "biological" or race or hereditary things. We can just be. At some time though, my sons will look in the mirror and really ask "who AM I??". I hope to be there to hold their hands as they piece that together. I hope that they can find some identity as sons of God, not just my sons, and not just born into a particular race.

I love my boys, but such things are heavy on my heart as they grow.

Besides some retroactive posts about Lucas' birthday, our new home, and more details about the adoption process as it has been, I HOPE that my new post will be regarding embassy clearance!!

The update I didn't want to write

Well.. as you can tell by the date of this post, March 10th... that it's been almost a month since my last update. Things have changed so much in my heart and in the Ethiopian program. I didn't want to write this post. I have been putting it off. Talking about things is hard.

First of all, before the giant rehashing of all the past few weeks has involved, I need to send a big encompassing "THANK YOU" out into the void to all of those that have written, texted, or hugged encouragement into me lately. You know who you are... Brenna, Courtney Norton, Cassie, Sarah Graber, Sarah Flanagan, Kristy DeGraw, Chrissy Jensen, Shonda, Martha, Lindsie, Michelle, Betsy Meehan, Rachel... and that's just the ladies of my adoption world and mostly from the Ethiopian program.

Then there are those that are closer to the inner workings of my heart as I process this: my poor husband, the worship team of Deerbrook, the Thursday morning girls,Erin P, Mike, and all my siblings. It has been such a tough road in the past few weeks.

So.. after all that... you probably want to know what happened.

After not being submitted shortly after the Feb 14th update I wrote, I contacted Holt wanting to know the status of my file because everyone around me was being processed and it seemed I wasn't and I just wanted to know why. Holt Oregon wanted to know why too. They contacted the Ethiopia Holt staff and asked "So... what's up with the Sibley file? We haven't heard anything on them". A response was received, but Holt Oregon wasn't sure how to take it. They did more research. I received a call at 1pm on February 22nd from the head of the Ethiopia program. She (lovingly with great compassion) informed me that we had never passed court on December 6th like we were told. The Ethiopian court had decided they wanted additional evidence from the police department where our son was found. Sometime in January/February this info was obtained and accepted by the court, but they were meeting on March 4th to review our case again and hopefully approve it.

Insert knife twisting in my chest here. I cried the biggest ugliest cry you could imagine. My poor husband had to leave me there to go to work. I cried some more. I folded laundry. I took my son for a long and cold walk. The days that followed were an up and down journey of getting over our new reality.

I called Global Orphan project and confirmed that I would be leaving for Haiti on March 23rd for sure. If you're saying "WHAT IN THE????" I'll get to all that later or in another post.

Fast forward to March 4th (last Friday). After prayer on all our behalf we were informed at 10:15am (15 min after Holt opens for business on west coast) that we had not passed court yet again, due to a missing letter from MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs- the gov entity in ET that oversees all adoptions). Now at the time, this did not scare me because this is a very normal problem that many people have. It usually means that they look at you again in 2 weeks and the letter is usually there and then you move on in the process of getting all your stuff together for the embassy (which is what we thought was going on in Jan and Feb). I got this news while on the treadmill... which is a great place for me to get bad news because I can sprint like a crazy woman until I'm calm again. I didn't even cry. You would have been proud.

I organized an emergency date night for Ted and I to make sense of this. Thank you RuthAnn Koltveit for helping with that!

Saturday night, I began to hear more and more grumblings and a big scary rumor from multiple sources that MoWA was going to begin cutting Ethiopian adoptions by 90% to crack down on any and all corruption in the system. Because MOWA is the people that kept us from passing court this last time, does it mean my next court date is now months away? Does it mean that initial adoption cases are being slowed down or all of us regardless if your file needs 10 pieces of paper or 1. I just don't know. It's scary. In light of all of the "what if"s that we are faced with... it's a real time of stretching and looking in my own heart.

So.. last summer.. while I was waiting for Ben's referral and the process made the switch from one to two trips and everyone was freaking out (which is now kinda ironic since that seems like a pretty minimal problem compared to what we are faced with now) and we didn't know what would happen. I remember praying often that this journey would not be about what I want but what God wants to teach me and the journey itself. Now that was an easy prayer to pray, given infant referrals were moving along and most people came home with a child 4-6 months later with no real bumps or problems. Getting our court date in December was a longer wait than some people but still somewhat close to what we were quoted. All quotes are out the window these days as the program seems to be spinning out of control. One constant of international adoption is that it is always changing and is not for the faint of heart, but MAN... it's hard. It's hard when everyone else (it seems) in your group is home with their kids, or will be soon, or has the balls to complain about how long they have waited publicly... when at the end of the day, all that you want is just the prayer to be in that part of the process with them. But you're not. And you don't know when you will be. Or, heaven forbid, you never will be given the news coming out of the country.

I'm not there yet. I do think Ben will come home. I just have no idea when.. if it will be in 2011.

I wish I could summarize all I have learned of God and his character in this blog post... but I can't. I suppose I'll have to site a cliche which I hate, that God only gives you what you can handle. Little bread crumbs at a time. I can think of the past instances in my life, where if I would have known what was ahead of me I would have run as fast as I could in the opposite direction to avoid the difficulty. I think of this specifically in terms of marrying Ted. If I would have known what life with him would sometimes look like, I would have said "I love you and all, but I want someone home every night at 5p that can give me little white babies that look half like me". AND I WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY WRONG. Dead wrong. Because my little 21 year old brain couldn't handle it. If someone would have told me last summer that all that would transpire, I would have said "No thanks, I'm going straight to domestic adoption where I can get a newborn african american boy way way faster and not miss his first year of life or longer". And I would have been wrong. I would have missed out on all that I have learned. At the end of the day, whether Ben is 6 months old or 12 months old or 18 months old, he is still the path that God has me on until I hear otherwise.

So rather than seek the comfort and peace that God can choose to give me, I'm trying to choose to focus on aspects of Himself to be revealed to me. Some moments its hard. Sometimes I'm not strong enough to continue to love him unconditionally even though I know I should. Sometimes I'm just sad. Someday this will all be clear to me, or maybe it won't. The journey is what matters. Every little wonderful and sad piece of it.

So here is what I am asking you to pray for:

That I keep my eye on the prize that is NOT Ben.
That the Ethiopian government can give us a clearer idea of what is ahead from their perspective
That Ben will remain healthy
That I can continue to stay positive even when other people aren't positive about my circumstance.
That I get news of my next court date.
That our update to our homestudy and immigration will come back in time and without drama.
That I stay safe in Haiti.
That I remain open to what ELSE God has in store for me, outside of adoptions.
That I enjoy the everyday blessings that we have been getting a lot of around here lately.
That I don't get any more adoption news that turns out not to be true, whether that is someone's fault or not.


Thank you for all who have put up with my ramblings and emotions and all of that. I love you all. Very much.

Coffee time for me.

Waiting....

So last post we really didn't know what the heck was going on. In terms of the Sibley's, nothing has changed; however, elsewhere in the system things are moving along. A good batch of families were submitted to the Embassy under the new system on the 1st and 3rd of the month (or close to that..) and some of them have received clearance and are leaving in the next few days or have already left to pick up their children. The rest are still being investigated. At least now we are seeing documents submitted under the new system and people are being approved some quickly and some longer. Referrals are happening for families far behind us in process and court dates are being given out. All progress is good.

We received a picture of our sweet boy sleeping last week. His curls are coming in so beautifully. I needed that.

SO... I preface everything I'm about to say by letting you know that we COULD be submitted to the Embassy this week.. or next week.. or some day.. we just don't know when. Under this new system our agency can submit whoever is "paper ready" every week and there is no limit to how many families they can submit at a time like there use to be. Basically, we are waiting for that magical email that says "we turned in your stuff" and then we wait through the investigation that could take 2 days, 2 weeks, or months. We just don't know.

I traveled to Nashville to see some dear people to me from both high school and last year's Haiti trip last week. It was a great choice. It was pretty much a whole week with minimal email stalking because I was just enjoying them and the city so much.

But I came home. We are back to the grind. We have no idea when we are going back to get Ben. I have no plans...

So we will set the scene for today. Ted is now at Children's Mercy running the ER, but this afternoon he was home which allowed me to run some errands sans Lucas. Errands included an oil change that took quite a bit longer than usual. I spent some time reading.. and here are some insights into my soul of what God gave me during that time.

From "Ashes to Africa" by Josh and Amy Bottomly... regarding being open to God's heart while we walk through this and learning of the orphan and HIV crisis in Africa through film, books, etc...

"Any time art touches your life with tears, whether through a story, song, film, or painting, it was wise to pay attention to those tears because your tears could help you find your heart. And if you found your heart, you found what was dear to God. If you found what was dear to God, you found the answer to how you should live your life".

So THAT'S why I've been crying about this child....

Also.. let's have a little chat about being real about what we are feeling.. rather than covering it with classic Christian cliche's. When we write and express the pain in our lives, we connect ourselves with the rest of God's children intimately and united in prayer under our God.

Also from "Ashes to Africa"..

"When we tell the truth on this level, we not only connect to our own deepest humanity, but we also connect to one anothers deepest humanity. At this level, we form a connective tissue of friendship not through our mutual sense of wholeness, but our mutual sense of brokenness."

Thank you Lord.

I am so thankful for other Christians who have suffered the pangs of infertility, and can join Ted and I on the other side after walking through it and continuing to face it.

I chatted back and forth with a friend for awhile, and went to review the lesson I was going to facilitate on Wednesday night with our worship team. Ironically, it was about waiting.

I have read through this book in its entirety, however somehow I missed these two pages. This is taken from "Satisfy my Thirsty Soul" by Linda Dillow.

And then the tears started.




"Desperately helplessly, longingly, I cried
Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate.
And the Master so gently said, "Child you must wait"

"Wait? You say, wait?!" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heart?
By FAITH I have asked, and am claiming Your Word.

"My future and all to which I can relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to WAIT?
I'm needing a yes, a go-ahead sign.
Or even a no to which I an resign.

And Lord, you promised that if we believe
We need but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord, I've been asking, and this is my cry.
I'm weary of asking! I need a reply!

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
As my Master replied once again, "You must wait".
So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut
And grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting... for what?"

He seemed then to kneel and His eyes wept with mine.
And he tenderly said, "I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead, and cause mountains to run.

"All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be.
You would have what you want- but you wouldn't know ME.
You'd not know the depth of my love for each saint,
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint.

You'd not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
You'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there.
You'd not know the joy of resting in me
When darkness and silence were all you could see.

You'd never experience that fullness of love
As the peace of my Spirit descends like a dove;
You'd know that I give and I save.. (for a start),
But you'd not know the depth of the beat of my heart.

"The glow of my comfort late into the night,
The faith that I give when when you walk without sight,
The depth that's beyond getting just what you asked
Of an infinite God, who makes what you have LAST.

"You'd never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that 'My grace is sufficient for thee.'
Yes, your dreams for your loved ones overnight would come true,
But oh, the loss! if I lost what I'm doing in YOU!

"So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
THAT THE GREATEST OF GIFTS IS TO GET TO KNOW ME.
And though oft may my answers seem terribly late,
My wisest of answers is still but to WAIT."


and so friends, and family, I will. And then I cried at oil change guy.

Hugs.

Erin

The Story Changes.... Again

So in all of these weeks since we have been home from court, we have watched and waited every 2 weeks for the announcement of the next travel group to be announced. In the beginning, this was not much of an issue because it's standard for your papers to take 6 weeks or so to be fully collected over there. At the 6 week mark, we didn't expect to get to go, because there were so many people with court ahead of us that were still waiting to travel due to other setbacks in December and Ethiopian Christmas closing things down. Since then...

1) the group of people who DID get to go got stuck at the Embassy to do a last minute paper change that has to do with an additional document proving rightful relinquishment from non-parents such as an aunt or uncle or something. It got resolved, but freaked us all out. Since it all got resolved, we all kinda moved on.

2) They announced right around then that they weren't really going to be going in order according to when people went to court. It would be somewhat close to that, but not really a science like it used to be.

3) They did not go in order and some people that really should have gotten to go didn't, and people behind us did get to go instead.

4) Those poor people that were lucky enough to get to go on the Feb 8th embassy date, were informed TODAY before they were going to leave TOMORROW that they shouldn't go. Heart. Breaking. Yet again, the US embassy invoked some last minute changes that need to be remedied before these peoples cases can be heard.

Lastly, our agency sent out an official notice today ALSO letting us know that the US Embassy has thrown the every other week meetings out the window, and will now summon families on a case by case basis as their stuff is complete. For our sakes, this could be a good thing, since enough time (almost 8 weeks) has passed that our papers should be completely done or near done. The difficult part is that it will be difficult to plan because we have no idea when or if we have been submitted, and we don't know how much notice the embassy will give us before we have to appear. For those of you who have been around for awhile, kinda sounds like waiting for Lucas yes? Go nearly insane, and then, surprise!!! You have a baby you can actually go get.

We will see what happens in the weeks to come, we really have no idea :-)

In the meantime, pray for God's intercession for those families waiting to get their children. Thank God for giving me "peace that surpasses all understanding" because I am much more calm right now than I thought I would be. Pray for endurance for me and for the other families in the process with me. Pray for Ben's continued health. Pray for the wisdom of our staff and also those investigating visa's at the embassy.

To close, a little idea for you to chew on. In Bible study this week, one of my amazing girls (also an international adoptive mama)described the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Fiery furnace. They came out WITHOUT smelling like smoke after such a crazy and emotional trial.

That is my prayer... that I will come out of this experience with a little boy, loving my God more, and as a more mature woman than when I entered. I don't want to smell like the smoke of the fire I was in. I wanna smell like roses baby.