No updates…

I was reminded by a friend this morning that it has been awhile since I have posted anything. Why? I don’t really have any updates…

The only kind of update that I have isn’t positive but I am not really letting myself worry about it either. We received an email from our agency letting us know that there is a possibility that referrals will be slowed down due to the fact that the US and Russia have both signed the Bilateral Agreement on Adoption and are waiting for Russia to ratify it. This will most likely occur sometime after Russian elections are held in March. After ratification, they are expecting that the MOE (Ministry of Education…who is responsible for adoptions in Russia) will develop regulations to implement and execute the ideas put forth in that agreement. This will be time consuming and may well slow down the adoption process over the next few months.

Goodie.

God is in control though, and again, was not surprised by any delays that may come as a result.

So, we are hanging in there and trying to go about our normal life in the meantime. Worrying and stressing over it will not do anyone any good. God will bring us to Russia to bring our child home when the time is right.

I am though getting more edgy when people ask me for an update. I KNOW they just care and are genuinely invested in our lives, but I don’t have an update and it hurts me to tell a million people a million times a day, “Nope, no update! It could be tomorrow, it could be a year from now. God is in control. Thanks for asking.” I wish it didn’t bother me to have to answer that way, but I wish I could just not talk about it. I can feel myself being short with people and almost blowing them off, and I don’t mean to be that way…but I guess I just get tired of having to give the same answer. Anyone else in the same boat as me get annoyed when people ask for updates? Tell me I’m not alone here… :)

One Year Birthday

Today (or thereabout) would have been our baby's 1 year birthday. She is not here with us to celebrate with cake and friends, however, today I do celebrate that we had 14 weeks with our baby and that one day we WILL be able to celebrate together!!

I'm doing good though...this had the potential of being a rough day, but I really am okay. God's good like that. :) I know God's hand is in all of this and He is in control. I'm sad that our baby isn't here with us but God has a reason for not allowing that. My job is just to trust. Today I do that. Trusting Him that His plans are better than mine!

The Battle is Against Satan

I received many emails, comments, texts, etc. after my last couple of posts and I appreciate the prayers and concern so so much! I wanted to share what one of those emails, from a good friend and adoptive mother, said. It is a great reminder for all of us that are in the midst of a battle, regardless of the kind, that I think we often forget…

“I have to say the only reason I can surmise [for all of the hurting, pain, etc.] is to point a finger at one person and one person only.  It would stand to reason that this one person would be the only one who would benefit from any resistance to a child being placed in a loving home or a Christian couple uniting with the child God intended to be a part of their family, because he is the only person who would want this process to be extended, if not all together stopped.  Yep, you guessed it, satan.  While it seems our struggle is with the international country, the government, or anyone who could possibly delay the process for adopting parents, it is really a spiritual battle.  You are at war.  And, not only that, you are winning.  Therefore, it stands to reason the attacks (aka...friends hurting and struggling, family illness, death, day to day living struggles and pessimistic thoughts creeping into your head...) would increase.  But, my dear friend, you know the end.  You know God is victorious! He defeats satan.  Hold fast to His plan.  Don't lose sight of it, no matter what!  Tighten your belt, devote even more time to God's word, or prayer, or praise music, or whatever, hold on tight to Jesus' hand!  It will be a bumpy ride, but in the end, you will have a beautiful child to raise for Christ!  When that day arrives, all of this will be a distant memory, instantaneously!  The moment you see that baby's face for the first time, you will know it is all worth it….eternity, which is the real reason we are involved in God's plan of adoption in the first place, is so much longer.... and it will be worth it!”

Amen! :)

Goodbye and Good Riddance January

I say that and February hasn’t started off the best either, but…

January was a rough month. There has been so much pain, hurting, disappointment and frustration around me. It is laying so heavily on my heart. I feel like every time I turn around there is another person I am lifting up to the Lord. I am so glad that the Lord has blessed us with prayer and the ability to lift our friends and family up to Him, but it hurts me to see so many others hurting around me.

My first week back at work after the holidays one of my coworkers passed away fairly unexpectedly. This continues to be tough for all of us who worked with her, and obviously her family, with so many reminders around us of her absence.

Then our good friends Rachel and Jeremy that I referenced here had their second miscarriage within a 4 month time span. I hurt so much for them and hate to see my friends suffering like that.

There have been several other things going on in our lives that seem petty compared to people losing loved ones so I am not even going to go into detail. But there has been a lot going on personally that makes for a pretty icky month.

January came to a close with that disappointing adoption news that I shared yesterday.

So I thought…surely, surely, February will be better. January is over and February is a new start. Then I wake up this morning and our lizard is dead. (I know, it’s weird that we have a lizard but I am allergic to anything with fur or feathers…so a lizard and fish is about all we can have in the pet arena.) I am telling myself that he died before midnight so it doesn’t count for February. But my goodness.

I don’t say all of this to throw myself a pity party…just to say that thank goodness the month is over. God is so good though and will give us the strength to get through it all. He wants us to look to Him, not at our circumstances. He can see the whole picture and we just simply cannot.

So in the midst of it all, I am praising God that HE can give us hope even when things around us seem hopeless. HE can give us peace in the midst of the storm. HE can show us the way when it seems like there is no clear path. HE will see us through it all!!! Even the icky Januarys.

Blah.

That’s how I feel. Blah.

Now I realize I have only been waiting for our referral call for…4 months and many families have been waiting a TON longer…hello Kat.

However, since our agency had told us to be prepared to possibly travel before the end of 2011, I have been expecting a call sooner rather than later. My heart races every time my phone rings thinking maybe just maybe it’s our agency with our referral. But it never is. Boo. Blah.

Oh lovely, speak of the devil. I just got an email from our agency with some positively wonderful uplifting news. {sarcasm} Russia is now requiring THREE trips with a 30 day waiting period after the 2nd trip.

So, actually, I don’t feel blah I feel pretty icky now. Not only does that extend the process but it adds thousands of dollars onto the overall cost, more time out of the country which is more time missing work (with the 2 trips we were up to 4.5 weeks in Russia, who knows what that will mean now), more time for our child to be left in the baby home…I feel blue.

Why do they make things so hard??? How many families can actually afford three trips financially and taking off work wise?? It makes me so sad that this will now prevent even more families from adopting from Russia. Leaving more children to grow up without families, without hope, without knowing Jesus. My heart feels heavy and I just want to cry. OK, I am crying.

Adoption and Birth Mothers

Do any of you watch Parenthood? I love that show. Never watched it until this season, but I love it now!

Anywho...one of the story lines involves a couple who struggle with infertility. They are in the process of adopting and actually have a relationship with the pregnant birth mother. She is getting further along in her pregnancy and the show is doing a good job of showing how difficult this process is for the birth mother. She keeps talking about how she knew this would be hard but never imagined how difficult it really would be. Can you imagine? Spending 9 months with a child growing inside of you, feeling their movements...seeing their face after giving birth and then never seeing them again. Never knowing what happened to your child...(Now, some birth parents do have contact with their children after adoption, but with international adoption and other closed adoptions that is not the case.)

It has me thinking a lot about our child's birth mother. We will more than likely never meet her, nor know all that much about her, but I can't imagine how hard it is on her for her baby to be placed in an orphanage. What caused her to do it? Is she single? (Single mothers are still very much looked down upon in many parts of the world.) Are finances the issue? Are her parents forcing her to do it? Is she married with other children and can't take care of another one?

Regardless of the "why" I'm sure it still can't be easy. I'm sure she will always wonder what happened to her child. If he or she is loved...taken care of...happy...

I just pray that the Holy Spirit will wrap her in His arms. That she will come to know Him as her Savior, if she doesn't already. That she will know that her baby is loved.

Waiting on God Sermon

Today’s post is brought to you by my hubby…

Our pastor, Ray Jones, started a new sermon series this morning titled “Getting to Know God”, with the first message titled “Waiting on God”.  The sermon was from the following passage:

“He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.  I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.  So I say, ‘My splendor is gone and all I had hoped from the Lord.’ 

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me .  Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.  It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.

Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him.  Let him bury his face in the dust – there may yet be hope.  Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace.

For men are not cast off by the Lord forever.  Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.  For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.”                     

                                      -Lamentations 3:16-33

I don’t know that I have heard many sermons preached from the book of Lamentations, but this one was really good and it was very appropriate for the journey we find ourselves on.  In this passage, the prophet Jeremiah is expressing his grief, and at the same time is reminded of the goodness and love of the Lord during the waiting times of life. 

Brother Ray mentioned four things that should be done while we wait on the Lord.  First of all, we should look down in humility (as opposed to turning away in rebellion) (v.20).  Secondly, we should look back and remember the love, mercy, and faithfulness that God has shown us in our past situations (v.21).  Thirdly, we should look up with hope (v.24).  And finally, we should look out toward the future, for what He has in store for us (v.31).

So why does God make us wait?  Brother Ray gave three reasons (and I’m sure there are more, but these are good): 

1. To regulate our speed – we get in such a hurry these days, sometimes we need to slow down and listen to what He is trying to tell us.

2. To refocus our attention – we stay so busy that we tend to give Him less and less of our time and energy.

3. To refine our spiritual hearing – sometimes it takes a trial or a season of waiting for us to get quiet enough to hear what the Lord has to say to us.

All three of these things really hit home with me this morning, because they all made sense in light of our struggle with infertility and loss.  It made me think back to where we were when we first started trying to get pregnant, and how we (or at least I), just assumed that it would happen the way I envisioned it, and life would go on from there.  How differently things have happened!  And at the same time, thinking back to the me of almost 4 years ago, I never would have dreamed that we would be waiting now for a call from Russia to find out who our child was.  If someone had told me then, that I would be waiting for that now, it would have been unnerving and scary, but God has taken me so far from where I was 4 years ago, in a good way, that I am excited about, and looking forward to, getting that call.

Even though almost nothing that has happened in the last four years was part of my original plan, knowing that it was always part of His is comforting. Even though waiting is hard, I know that the wait and what the Lord has in store for us will all be worth it in the end.

Waiting...

Waiting. I seem to do a lot of it...we all do in one way or another...hence the name of the blog. For me, first there was the waiting to start trying to get pregnant, then the waiting to get pregnant, then the waiting to begin infertility testing (they typically don't start testing until after a year of trying to conceive), the waiting to see if Clomid would work, then waiting to see if injectibles would work, the waiting for lab work and ultrasounds, waiting the dreaded two weeks almost every cycle for 4 years to see if there were two lines on those darn pregnancy tests, then the waiting for each ultrasound when we found out we were pregnant, then the waiting to have a D&C once we found out our baby no longer had a heart beat, then the waiting to let my body and our emotions heal to begin TTC again, then the waiting...OK, I went on way too long there, I think you get the picture.

Now...the waiting is different. We are waiting for that life changing phone call from our agency telling us we have been matched with a baby. I have less control over this wait...and somehow that is reassuring to me. Weird, I know. Everything during the infertility journey was not at all in my control, but I had to juggle all of the balls...doctors appointments, labwork, phone calls, shots, medicine, ultrasounds, more waiting for phone calls (there's that waiting word again). It's actually a really nice feeling for this step to be completely out of my control.

The even weirder feeling in this step of waiting though...is that our baby is in Volgograd and we are not there with him or her. I can't explain how crazy that feels...to on one hand BE a mother...but to a child I have never met...to not be able to comfort him or her when they cry...not to be able to rock them to sleep at night...

However, guess who CAN protect, love and nurture our baby until we can? It gives me a huge peace to know that our Heavenly Father CAN. My prayer through this wait is that He will supernaturally take care of our baby...that He will send an angel to love on that baby. While I'm waiting this time my prayers are different...they are for our baby that I will meet one day (hopefully not too far off). That God will bring us to our baby at precisely the right time and that until that day He will care for that baby as only He can.

What are you waiting for? What are you doing while you wait? God doesn't want us to waste the waiting time...He has a plan for us even during the dreaded waiting!

Thirty-One Products Fundraiser

Williams' Family Adoption Fundraiser!! A Thirty-One consultant in my area has offered to donate 100% of her commission from a Thirty-One party to our adoption fund! If you have never heard of Thirty-One products, they are a great Christian organization that sells totes, purses, organizational products and so much more in a variety of very fun prints. You can get things personalized too...who doesn't like a monogram after all? :) If you are interested in buying some awesome products and supporting our adoption fund at the same time you can shop at this link. Orders must be placed by January 16th, so do your shopping now! :) Thanks everyone!

The Whole Staircase

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” (Proverbs 3:5-6, NIV)

Someone once said that if God showed us every detail of our lives - all at one time - we would sit down and refuse to face another day.

Isn’t that true?? We wouldn’t be able to handle it if we knew what all our future held. It might be too scary, too overwhelming, or on the flip side too comfortable…allowing us to become too dependent on ourselves.

But because He is a loving God, He gives us only what we need to know today. He reveals His plan to us one day at a time. Even though to us that seems more overwhelming because we want to know what the whole plan is and what our entire future looks like.

He doesn’t show us everything though because we must depend on Him. We must have faith that He knows our future and that’s all that matters.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

TRUST Him and He will show you His will for your life. He has a plan for you...every day, every hour, every minute of your day. Seek Him and follow His plan!