Why Ethiopia?

After feeling like God really opened our eyes to the needs of children without families, and knowing it wasn't the right time for us to adopt, we spent a whole lot of time praying and researching and praying and waiting.  We figured that since this nudge to adopt had occurred while we were already expecting a baby, we'd just begin the adoption process as soon as ours was born.  But we didn't know...domestic or international, private or foster care?  Throughout the time I was pregnant with Ella, we prayed for two babies, the one who was growing my mid-section beyond recognition, along with the sweet babe we planned to adopt shortly there after.  Our timing was grossly miscalculated (another post for that one).

As we prayed, he directed us toward this beautiful country and the agency we would use to pursue our child.  At first, the research about orphans and adoption just depressed me.  The statistics were shocking and the stories horrifying.  I was frozen.  What was I supposed to do with all of this.  We are one family.  Didn't God know this?  What the heck!

The end of this fog began with Invisible Children.  I watched and was distraught beyond belief.  However, God definitely used it to stir in our hearts a burden for Africa.  So, I bought merchandise that supported groups helping people in Africa like this one, www.joinred.com , and prayed for the people dying of AIDS and malaria and starvation and other preventable and/or treatable ailments.  I shared with people around me my struggle with the scope of the need, all the while praying.  And, wouldn't you know it, stuff started happening.

First, Rebecca, the Children's Director at our church, who knew we were researching adoption, came to me with a story.  She worked a second part-time job at a local elementary school.  One day some high-school students came to perform a puppet show for the little kids.  They did a great job, so she pulled one of the girls aside to complement her.  The girl thanked Rebecca, and told her how easy it was for her to do stuff like that since she and her family traveled to Romania every year to perform similar shows and activities for orphans there.  You see, she herself had been adopted from Romania.  As a result, her parents began an adoption agency, All God's Children International, to help other families do the same.  She gave Rebecca the website who in turn passed it to me.  I looked it up, sent for the information packet, and didn't do much more.

In the midst of this our lives turned upside down by the arrival of our Ella-girl.  All self-motiviated adoption/orphan care pursuits were halted.  In an effort to stay sane, I spent a lot of mornings over at a friend's house.  She was a slightly more experienced new mom who understood the craziness of new parenthood.  Wouldn't you know it, she and her husband likewise shared a burden for orphans, and it was through this relationship God continued his direction.

On the way home from a weekend away, this friend, Angie, and her family stopped at a rest area to let the kids play.  Another family was doing the same.  They got to talking, and not so coincidentally the conversation turned to adoption.  This mom shared with Angie about her family's own heart for adoption, so much so that her parents adopted a baby from Romania and began an adoption agency.  As soon as she told me all of this, we immediately scanned the All God's Children website only to find this same couple serving as directors of the agency.  We couldn't believe it.  We immediately called them up, spoke to the then Executive Director (Angie knew him as the dad from the rest stop).  In a face to face meeting the next day we inquired what the local church could do to support their efforts globally.  We had no idea how to start or what to do.  We both had small babies and knew something corporate was all we could do.  He happened to be leaving for Ethiopia to establish a new program there with a new Ethiopian born, American educated in-country director.  That seemed to be a great place to fit in.  We could be a part of the program from the beginning.

It made sense, first the burden for orphans, then Africa, then this direction toward Ethiopia specifically. We felt smack in the middle of God's work.  And, because God is just so, so, so good to encourage us when we take even baby steps of faith, he provided an additional piece of confirmation.

Later that week, I called my college pal, Sarah, in Boston to tell her all about everything that had been going on.  She was so excited with me but just kept saying how she was sure I had told her all of this before.  Since our meeting at AGCI was just that week, I knew I couldn't have.  Then, she paused and said "Lisa, I know Almaz."  Who was Almaz?  I didn't know what she was talking about.  She continued to explain that the woman AGCI hired to be their in-country Ethiopia director had been living in Boston, attending my college roommate's very own church.

We were both dumb-founded.  You can't make this stuff up.

This began a relationship with an agency, a country, and countless orphans world-wide.  Now, almost six years later, God has used our church to serve orphans during two trips to Ethiopia, two to Haiti, provided clean water to a community without, and hand-held one little family of four through almost all of their home study paperwork to bring one precious child home.

Praise God for his faithfulness.

Why Adopt?

Now that we are smack in the middle of home study paperwork, this whole adoption business seems to come up more and more in conversation, with the bank notary, the police department receptionist, the friends and neighbors we've pestered to write recommendations, you name it.  And inevitably, people ask us what made us want to adopt (we have such beautiful children, after all;).  Generally, I take a deep breath and let them know it is a very long story.  I'll say something like, because God wants us to, or because it's the right thing for our family to do, or that it's our family's way of living out what the Bible says about loving our neighbor and caring for the least.  This is all well and good.  And true.  But just like most anything else big-ish (or small-ish for that matter) that requires obedience, even when you are scared spitless to proceed, it is really the weaving together of God's greater story.  This is why it takes so, so long to explain.  Which is why I have a blog :).

So, here goes, the first of several installments of why the heck we're crazy enough to do this:

Sometime in November 2005, friends of ours invited us to a benefit dinner for a local adoption agency.  They had two extra seats at their table and figured we wouldn't turn down a free meal for a good cause.  We had just found out we were pregnant but weren't telling anyone.  So even though all I wanted to do was stay at home in sweats, I squeezed into something half-way decent and went.  (Coincidentally, this dinner was located in the very ballroom our wedding reception took place almost five years prior.  It wasn't until recently that I really considered that connection to be pretty cool.  Same place.  Same Paul and Lisa.  Same life-changing kind of stuff.  And, likely the same chicken dish which the second time around made me want to barf, given my newly pregnant self.)

We sat and ate (sort of) and listened (sort of) to the many testimonials so beautifully shared.  The evening was filled with the heart-wrenching stories of forty-somethings who tried for years to become pregnant to no avail, only to feel God's leading toward adoption.  I felt so glad that this had happened for these people, but honestly, I couldn't relate.  I was twenty-six, pregnant with our first child, and had NEVER considered adoption.  NEVER.  That is, however, until the final couple came to share.  Paul and I both tuned back in when they walked up to the mic.  They looked just like us, for real.  They were probably in their late twenties, she was a fifth-grade teacher (I had spent most of my teaching years in sixth-grade), he was some business guy, like Paul.  Really, it was pretty weird.  Also weird, some might call it crazy, was the story they shared of their lives, their adoption, and most of all the way they did what God told them to.

To abbriviate, they adopted one of the wife's students and the girl's sister(s?) the summer they got married, as in, the girls were in their wedding, her parents watched them while they were on their honeymoon, and they arrived home from their honeymoon with tween daughters.  YIKES.  Everyone warned them not to, especially church people.  Guard their marriage, they said.  Wait at least a year.  But, when it was time to make the choice, they felt so overwhelmingly like God had this for them.  They couldn't say no.
 
Obedience.

Oh, then, they had a surprise pregnancy shortly thereafter.  DOUBLE YIKES.  As she sat rocking her crying newborn back to sleep one night, mourning the quite most moms of newborns can on occasion claim, she felt like God whispered to her that he never promised it would be easy or fun or restful.  But he would sustain her, and her offering was obedience.

After hearing their story and then being sucker-punched by the slide show of foster children waiting to be adopted in Oregon, we knew God was leading us down a new path of obedience.  The timing was unexpected, for sure.  Poor, I think, was the term we used.  But that night, in that hotel lobby, we agreed (still shaking our disbelieving heads) that we would walk down this path, hoping we'd trust enough to obey.

NOW WE ARE SIX!

When I was One, 

I had just begun.

When I was Two,

I was nearly new.

When I was Three,

I was hardly Me.

When I was Four,

I was not much more.

When I was Five,

I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.

So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

A.A. Milne

Take Two

I had such good intentions of blogging after my first few tries.  I even wrote some stuff I never posted,  simply because I never got around to it.  Maybe I'll do that sometime soon.  Nothing and everything has changed since I last attempted to chronicle anything of this life.  I still have two kiddos who are amazingly great but send me over the edge on many days (this happens less and less as they get older, though).  I still have Paul, also amazingly great since he talks me down from the cliff (or at least allows me a little breathing room when I need it).  However, we have just entered the world of international adoption.  We are just at the beginning...paperwork.  I read a really great adoption blog of a girl I went to college with.  Even though I didn't know her at all back then, reading her blog makes me feel like we are pals.  She said in one of her posts to blog this whole experience, so I'm gonna give it the old college try.

My hope is that in ten years when I look back at these potentially few snippets of life during this time, I'll be reminded of what God did.  Because for some reason he invited us to play a part in his big, good plan.

Abandoned Farmhouse

Abandoned Farmhouse
by Ted Kooser

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, says the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar-hole,
and the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow gravel road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken blow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

Once upon a time when I was a working professional, I used this poem to teach personification to sixth-graders. They loved it. They loved poet's conjured-up images. They loved hearing the perspective of the innocent broken-down stuff left behind. Mostly they loved speculating about what possibly could have happened to the man, the woman, and the child.

After a day or so of thinking through possibilities, I would have them write bio-poems using only non-human objects to tell the story of their own lives. This was always my favorite assignment of the year. Somehow, their stuff had the ability to be honest and thoughtful and vulnerable when the ever-critical, always self-conscious, eleven-year-old could not. Their poems were unfailingly remarkable. Some were funny, some where sad, some were poignant. All of them, though, were honest in a way that only an eleven-year-old's stuff can be.

I thought of this poem and the amazing poetry my students would create the other day as I surveyed the chaos that is my family room and kitchen. What sort of speculations would people make of my life if they were just given that snapshot to survey? I can only imagine! Here is my best attempt to let my stuff honestly disclose a brief snippet of our life. I'm hoping it will prove to be a bit more sweet and humorous than the super-depressing Abandoned Farmhouse.

Not-So Abandoned Suburban Family Room

She wasn't much of a house-keeper says the dust
mounting atop the once-white shutters; nor a chef
yawn the under-used cookbooks stuffed behind closet doors.
She almost always opted out of those tasks
mention the half-read fairy tale left open on the couch.
And the blanket still warm beside it.
There were daughters to love and a young minds to nourish
say the puzzles overturned on the floor.

The last bit of coffee left simmering in the pot
says the nights were long, and the days sometimes longer,
mention the slow-ticking clock hung on the wall.
The backdoor flung open reminds that a little summer sun helps brighten a weary soul, and a bit of music will expedite even the lengthiest Tuesday afternoon, swell the Seventy-Six Trombones set to repeat from the dining room speaker.

The breakfast dishes at the kitchen table say that a man lived their too,
amidst the piles of sequined dress-ups and naked baby dolls thrown about.
Always rushing out the door mutters the forgotten lunchbox left waiting on the counter.
The half-read sports page says that he loved his team.
Wished he had more time to follow those Giants
complains the box scores still-unread;
Maybe in a few more years, they suspect.

But for now there are little girls to be danced with
say the red plastic high heels tossed where they please.
And baby toes to tickle giggle the bright pink socks pulled off tiny feet.
They won't be little for long
whispers the empty swing propped against the wall.
Enjoy them while you can say the toys that seem to be EVERYWHERE.
A purple tutu, a misplaced kazoo, a giant stuffed elephant.
Remember what is most important, they say.

So Everyone Will Know Who I Love

When I first became a mom, school days seemed slightly more than an eternity away. I couldn't wrap my brain around the idea that my wee babe would one day make her own little way in her own little world, apart from me. And yet, here we find ourselves already two weeks into her Spanish immersed mornings con Maestra Sarah and seven other pint-sized Camas residents. We've loved hearing her share about all the goings on of preschool: schoolmates, art projects, stories, and of course, snacks.

Knowing Ella to be a thinking kind of kid who likes to be prepared for what her day will bring, we try to spend some time on the way over the hill imagining what the morning will look like. It was during one of these front-loading session last week that she announced, "I am going to pray before my snack at Spanish with Sarah today so everyone will know who I love."

True to form, Jesus met us in a rather unexpected place. Coming down Dallas, through the flashing yellow light, Ems chattering in the back, He used our four-year-old to remind us what we all should be about. Thanks, Ella, for wanting everyone to know who you love. I pray that I might live that way too.

"He said to them, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.' And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them."

Matthew 10: 14-16

So Apparently I'm a Blogger

I never really thought I would end up with a blog. I have no out of town family waiting for newly posted pictures, I am definitely not technologically savvy, and my once proficient writing skills are more than a bit rusty these days. However, I do have two really great daughters (and a pretty marvelous husband) with whom God has blessed me time here on earth. And when they are old enough to care, I hope that my few posts will make up for my otherwise horrible mommy record-keeping.

So, girls, if you ever are sad (which I actually don't think you will be) that your mother did not jot down many (or any) of your developmental milestones, please know that I basked in the glory of each baby giggle, each trip to the beach, each pedal down the sidewalk. I just didn't get the chance to put it down on paper.