R is for Ready!

The old adage that "no news is good news" doesn't hold true for me. When things are going well, it will be duly noted. Hard times, sad stuff... don't expect the written word from these quarters. That’s why it’s been so quiet here.

Now, however, the wind grows favorable again for Jackson's homecoming, as I knew it one day would, even when my heart wouldn't allow me to feel it.

We started down this leg of our adoption itinerary way back in 2006, and thought we'd finally ...well, to stick with the trip analogy: get there. Make it. Arrive the summer of 2011.

It really looked like we were headed that way when in early May, a new job for Alan dropped into our already full laps. Hidden in that good news was a major hiccup: the realization that we could not move forward on the adoption until we settled in our new locale and submitted a home study update.  Somehow, we managed to choose a home that would take us over three months to bring to closing. So the home study update was terribly, painfully delayed.

So the summer turned out quite differently from the one we’d envisioned when we submitted our paperwork for Jackson all those long months ago.  But we managed to keep busy…

First of all, by travelling to a wedding!  My beautiful niece Andrea married her love Matt in a gorgeous ceremony... always the perfect excuse to draw close to extended family. What a time of relaxation, joy, and FUN!  

We also cheered from the sidelines and prayed with exceedingly great joy as my dear Texas penpal and her family went to China and brought home their beautiful daughter. God is so very good! Welcome home Little One!

We said farewell (sniff) to the Harry Potter movie run…

And hello to Hurricane Irene.

And finally, after two months of maintaining separate households and another two months in a summer rental, we closed on our new home, tossed the welcome mat in front of a pile of boxes and called our home study agency.

So the adoption train is back on the track (am I mixing my metaphors, and does it really matter?), we are full tilt into a beautiful autumn with our sights set (once again) on China. The grip of despair has loosened on the part of this mama's heart that could not accept or stand the delay, no matter the circumstances that brought it to bear.

R is also for refreshed. I am. No, the house isn't perfect, but B is for Basement and Basement is for BOXES, so there's a place to sit upstairs, and we'd love to see you. Come for a visit.

But you'd better hurry.

We are getting ready to go to China, you know!　

One might think, from the infrequency of this blog’s posts, that I am no longer suffering from sinking spells, hence the silence. Alas, sinking spells are still in order, but I have not felt compelled to write into the lengthening silence.

You see, in the midst of all the excitement, the planning, the blogging, we hit a snag.  A small, positive change in our life circumstances, no matter how exciting and longed-for, has caused a delay in our adoption.  We must wait for the completion of a three hour move to a neighboring town, and then update our home study before we can finalize our paperwork.

This delay has been a terrible shock, and brought pain comparable to that of our secondary infertility, with all its attendant heartache, longing, confusion, and hopelessness.  To be honest, as with the infertility, there’s some misdirected anger thrown in for good measure.

I cannot speak for domestic adoption, because I have not experienced it, but I can say unequivocally that international adoption is hard.  The process is long, it is expensive, it is invasive.  For us, it became a call on our lives that we were powerless to refuse.  In this ridiculous “paper pregnancy” that has lasted years (we began this China adoption in 2006), we find ways to simultaneously compartmentalize, compensate, pray and hope.

Although it doesn’t trump prayer, compensation is key.  We are staying busy, we are finding ways to laugh at ourselves through this latest delay.  We are drawing on the comfort of family and friends, and the understanding of some who have walked this road before us, and some who walk it now.  Most days we get by without dissolving into frustrated tears.  Most days. 

So how is Jackson?  We are not sure.  We have not heard if he received his care packages. We are not certain that he has been told that there is an impatient, feisty family ready to welcome him home.  We do know that he celebrated a birthday last month, a birthday we had unrealistically hoped to have him home for.  And we know that we miss him more than we thought possible.  We hope that we are using these extra weeks profitably, preparing our hearts and home for him so that his arrival here will be as good as we were able to make it.  It’s not like we haven’t had time to plan.

Life, as they say, is not for the faint-hearted.  Adoption… ditto.  

Hang in there, Jackson.  We’ll be there as fast as we can!

Fingerprints!

Another step closer!  Today, we had our biometric fingerprint appointment with the United States Government.  This is the last government tasking we will undertake prior to receiving our approval to go for Jackson. 


 

Jackson, that exercise in bureaucracy, those fingerprints, mean something to someone who wants to know you will be safe here.     You will be.

 

I have never before felt such a strong compulsion to come for you.  You see, there is much amiss in the world. Many, many suffer, and we wonder and we pray.


The tragedy unfolds in Japan, and I want you close, under my wings. And yet, closer to home, and closer to my heart, a fearful, heart-breaking, wonderful thing has happened.

We have just come home from Texas, and there we said a goodbye that we had not planned to say. There we said goodbye to a child whom we expected would grow up knowing you.

Thank you to Wikipedia, which provides:

“A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges. A friction ridge is a raised portion of the epidermis on the fingers and toes, the palm of the hand or the sole of the foot, consisting of one or more connected ridge units of friction ridge skin.”

A friction ridge...

The past several days have been one of the most God-honoring “friction ridges” I have ever had the privilege to walk.

In these beautiful days of preparation before Easter, I have watched a beloved family love and leave a tiny little boy, whose short time in the womb may well be the vessel by which the Bread of Life is offered to many. I watched a Mama open her heart and her womb, and let go a child called too soon to glory. I watched a father weep and tell the beautiful story of how those tiny lips were his mama’s lips; how his tiny hands were perfect.

Fingerprints ~

Friction Ridges ~

I watched brothers, too young to bear such grief, bear it with dignity.

I want to tell you about his feet. Liam’s feet.  Feet that were the size of his mama’ s fingernail.    Liam’s feet hold the majesty of a Creator God who, to quote his pastor, “does not do random”.

How lovely on the mountain are the feet of Him who brings good news.

Liam has that good news. Liam will never tread the path of sin, or feel the thorns of life’s pain. We rejoice. And yet we tread the deep water of anguish ~ missing him.

“A print from a foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges.”     Liam has left such an impression on many.

It was a terrible, strange, and stormy March morning when his mama called to tell me he was gone. I felt angry and tossed and dangerous at this news. And I felt that God, in that unexpected weather, was forgiving me those unaccustomed feelings.

God is faithful. As we stood at the cemetery a week later and watched his family say goodbye, the sun fell hot on my back, burning through my dress, reminding me that Liam is in a place of wonderful Light.

“consisting of one or more connected ridge units of friction ridge skin.”

You have no idea, Jackson, how each moment of the last week was orchestrated with great care for Liam‘s family. God connected many, many people through those “friction ridges“. This is how our God works! He draws us forth, He pulls us together. He uses the least of us to see that fingerprints ~and footprints~ are remembered forever. He takes these friction ridges and He connects them across years and miles to show His love. For Liam. For Liam’s family. For You.

We are all being swept forward, as Liam was swept Heavenward. This will be a story of God’s faithfulness that I will ever be glad to tell you. To proclaim to you what God was doing, as you waited in Henan.  His fingerprints were all over it.



Birthdays and Adoption

Seemingly everything these days is colored by our wait for Jackson. In February, we celebrated Valentine’s Day, his grandfather’s birthday, and most recently, his big brother Sam’s eighth birthday. All were lovely days, happily celebrated, yet someone was missing…




(Yes, we have updated pictures!)


Jackson, I wonder if you will ever grasp how quickly you were knit to our hearts, how quickly your new family felt your absence? I wonder if you will one day read this and grin at the thought that while you were going to kindergarten in Pindgingshan, we were missing you, even as we were slaying a dragon birthday cake and envisioning your tongue turning frosting-green along with ours?

What were your first five birthdays like? Will you be home by your sixth? A mama can hope, can’t she?

Jackson, you are missed! We cannot wait for you to come home!

Birthdays are special! These special days, and all the holidays, and summer vacations, and the day to day life that American families so joyfully celebrate in homes all across our country are unknown to many children. I wonder if there are a lot of families like ours used to be, unaware of all the children who wait. Not just in China, but here in the States, and in Russia, and in Haiti, and in Africa, and on and on…..

Today, in honor of all the little ones who don’t have a family to celebrate their birthday with them yet, I am praying for families to feel the call to adoption. Will you pray with me? I have added several links that will connect you with the real faces of waiting children in China. Please take a moment and see who is waiting… maybe for you…

Meet Gretchen here...

Or Dalton here...

Find Felix here...

Or Wendy here...

Care Package

The frenzy has ceased. The days of activity to drive forward a blizzard of paperwork, sent around the world to secure a child, have stopped. All the documents that ordain what we hope the Lord has already decreed are now in their rightful place.


In America, government employees will sift through our most personal moments as a family as they read our home study, then validate birth certificates and marriage license, and do their best to protect both a little child and a large nation. Will they find us, once again, suitable parents for a foreign orphan?


In China, equally serious government employees will begin to match the paperwork of an orphaned little boy with that of a family who has a child-sized hole in its heart. They too, will read, in their beautiful Chinese language, the translated story of our family ~ our hopes and dreams, our failures. And they will do their best for their native son.


Our paperwork is now up to date. All that we can do, as the panic-attack provoking stacks of documents find sanctuary in their rightful homes, far from our dining room table, is wait.


The day our last document was sent, we put a care package in the mail to Jackson. How terribly strange. Nothing says loving like…we were at a loss. Can any of it make sense to a precious child whose world is upside down? Can he look at our pictures, painstakingly labeled with the Chinese words for Mama, Daddy, Big Sister, Big Brother, and not feel fear? What must he think? Can he know that those photographs represent safety and love and home? That laughter fills our hearts, not just our “picture faces”? That our home is filled with joy, and books, and toys, and warm meals, and cool drinks, and security?

How do you say “We love you” in a box? Will he get to snuggle under that warm blanket? Will he get to wrap his little fingers around those cars and whiz them with glee down a clean stretch of floor somewhere on the other side of the earth?

Can he know the love his sister felt when she chose that bear? Will the other children treat him better or worse for the knowledge that someone is coming for him? Will he be better cared for by the orphanage nannies because he is going “home”? Will those Twix bars buy him favor? You do what you must.

One day we will tell him.  We will tell him how much we fussed over those gifts, and prayed that somehow they would say “We love you”.

We will tell him about the faithful Ruth in China, whom we have never met, yet who was willing to translate our letter for us, because she is a believer and because she works with believers who are pouring out their lives as a drink offering to care for “the least of these” in Pingdingshan. We will tell him that every hope for him, every prayer for him, every ache to hold him and make things right were sealed up in that box. Sent to him across the planet. Because even though we can’t get to him, that box can. And it can carry to him all the love that we cannot take him.

Yet.

Winter Blessings

It’s official… We have received approval from the Chinese government to adopt our new son. We can now tell the world and celebrate publicly. Welcome Jackson Chao Ju Alan Barringer!  This has all just transpired so there is a lot we don't know.  As the days go by, we will update here when we will travel, who will be going, how you can pray.  Meanwhile....

Exceed / Hold Up

Here is everything we do know:
Chao means “exceed”
Ju means “hold up”
We love these names
He is 5 ½ years old
He is from the Henan province, and he lives in the Pingdingshan Social Welfare Institute (orphanage)
He is named for three godly men. His daddy,
CS “Jack” Lewis, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
We love him


Once upon a time in the cotton fields of Missouri, I played with my baby dolls in the hot summer sun, and imagined a life of motherhood. I don’t believe I’d ever heard of adoption. Or infertility. Or of how hard life is. There were hints of pain, whispers of tragedy, but by and large I thought that those things wouldn’t happen to me when I was “big".


When I got big, grew up and went looking for work, I applied for my first full-time job at a bank. The manager asked me where I saw myself in ten years. I smiled and said, “Being a mama.” He didn't hire me.


It took a few more years than the ten I’d predicted in that interview, but I did get the mama job.


Have you ever wrestled with Palm 37:4, the part that says that God will give you the desires of your heart. I have struggled with it, and sometimes railed against it. Does it mean He gives you those things you desire, like a Divine Dispenser of the good things you ask for, or that He places the desires within you and you are left to grapple with them?


Could I have known all those years ago, a silly young woman in a business suit and too high heels, sitting in a bank, what “being a mama” would bring?


What if I had known? I would not have changed my mind, but perhaps I would have said it with a little more dignity. A little more gravity.


Motherhood is a fearsome and wonderful calling. There is joy unimaginable. Fulfillment found nowhere else. And yet, for me, it has had it’s difficulties.


Year upon year of month upon month of anguish when another opportunity for conception had failed.
Striving, striving for a marriage in which two very imperfect people try not just to be good partners but to be good parents together.


Watching those we love live in ways we cannot control. Watching our hopes fade, and seasons change, and sometimes seasons of life go forever, while trying to remember and make sense of a God who gives us the desires of our heart.


I did not hold my Samuel the day he was born, and for his first nine months. This breaks my heart.  Now a new life, Jackson’s life, will burst into mine, and there will be 5 ½, maybe 6 years in his life story that I cannot go back through and write “Mama” on each page.


These are not the baby doll dreams from the cotton fields of my childhood. There is no warmth today, only weak winter sunlight, slanting in the window onto weathered hands as I type. But I am thankful, and I am excited.


I will have a 5 ½ year old son, not a baby in a soft blue blanket. What a privilege. I will look into those eyes, and teach him that it is safe and good to look back into mine. I will whisper “I love you“, “you are home” and “I’m your Mama".

And I think that which ever way it works with Psalm 37, I have received the desire of my heart.

Once again.

The Best Laid Plans...

We are in a conundrum. For the last five years, we’ve been waiting to receive a call from our adoption agency telling us that they have a daughter for us in China, a little girl, as young as possible.  Her name has been picked out since the beginning. Baby Juliet.

But yesterday, we saw our next child on our adoption agency’s website. And this child is no baby. This child is no girl. He is a gorgeous little boy, and he is five and a half years old! Boy names? Not a clue!

“How about Hammurabi?” yells Sam from the other room. He is seven. We home school. The Medo-Persian Empire is his current passion. Math….not so much.

Once upon a time, twenty two years ago we got married, and we made all kinds of plans. We counted on staying in love. We have. Everything else has been a bit of blur, and most of our plans have passed into oblivion unrealized. But we’ve tried to keep Christ at the center, and here we are, somewhat taken aback that we aren’t thirty any more, and still caught off guard when our planning runs aground.

Starting a family wasn’t easy for us, and although we eventually had our beautiful Rachel, I never got pregnant again. After nine years of dashed hopes, we realized that God had more children for us, He just wasn’t going to deliver them to our house. We made (what else?) an "adoption plan". First, a son from Russia, then a daughter from China. Samuel captured our hearts and changed our lives forever when he joined us from Russia at nine months old in 2003. We experienced a slight hiccup in the plan when Alan deployed to Iraq for a year, but two years later, almost on schedule, we were ready to begin again, this time, heading to China for our daughter. At the time, the wait was breathtakingly brief, but as we gathered our paperwork for the adoption, the Chinese adoption timeline slowed dramatically.

Fast forward to late 2010. We still waited. For the past several years our concerns had mounted as the passage of time impacted our family dynamics. It had been our intention to adopt a child who would be a playmate for Sam, within a couple of years of his age. Not to mention, our age began to concern us. At 48 and 49, we weren’t the spring chickens we once were, and no matter how healthy and active we stayed, it was difficult to imagine getting up in the night with a 9 month old again…. If we ever made it to the front of the line and got a referral.

So we adjusted our expectations and shifted our focus (see how nicely you can say "changed your plans" when you want to?) to finding an older little girl, ideally between the ages of 3 and 5. Drop “Baby”, and just say Juliet. We began to peruse our agency’s waiting child list, as well as some of the wonderful advocacy blogs for Chinese waiting children. Then yesterday happened.

Cup of coffee in hand, I did an early morning, first-thing quick check of our agency’s waiting children, and there I read a brief description of a little boy. A BOY! There was no photograph. Alan read his information and told me to contact the agency. I emailed the office, then in my excitement gave up and called. Yes, we could have his file for consideration. Yes, they had pictures. Yes, they’d send them right over.

Well, we are in love. There it is. God at work, faith in action. And that has really been, from the very beginning… our plan. Move forward till He stops us. Change direction. Pray.

We believe that Juliet still waits and that until we are shown differently, we will search for her even as we wait to travel for our son. This is how it works in our house. We believe. We believe until we are shown that we are to believe something else.

Today, we have been shown that there is a little boy in China who has our prayers, and if God allows, will have our hearts and hold our hands as soon as we can get there. Once again, we are glad that we are not really the ones making the plans!

Now then, about his name….I’m not sold on Hammurabi. Any ideas?