My normal morning routine does not usually involve sitting down at the computer.  Seth requires quite a bit of coaching to get ready for school and I try to do everything for Ana Sofia as part of my effort to teach her about trust and dependence.  I only give myself about an hour to get the three of us out the door, so most mornings I’m lucky if I even get a pot of coffee made before I take Seth to school.  This morning was different.

I woke up half an hour earlier than usual to the sound of Sofia walking out of my room in plastic high heels.  To my surprise, Seth was already up and he had dressed himself (Hallelujah!).  I fed them both breakfast, dressed us girls, and still had about forty-five minutes to spare.  As I approached the coffee maker, I had an urge to check my Google Reader.  The coffee would have to wait.  Before I even sat down in front of my laptop, tears were spilling from my eyes.

The first line I read was “Dancing with Jesus”.  My heart broke into a thousand pieces.  Chrissie has gone home.  Her heart and lungs are healed and she has the strength and stamina to dance like the princess God made her to be.  I hurt.  In the depths of my soul, I hurt.

In the past eight months, God has revealed himself to me in ways I never imagined.  He has brought people into my life who have inspired me and humbled me and lifted me up.  Lorraine Patterson is one of those people.  As we started our journey to bring our daughter home, the Pattersons were approaching the end of their journey.  About the time that we started our home-study and prepared to move into the new house, they traveled to Serbia to get their princess.

Like our family, they did not set out to adopt a child from Serbia.  They simply acted on the urgency of God’s calling.  Christyn Joy Patterson was given the life she had dreamed of.  She was given a Mommy and a Daddy and brothers and sisters who loved her.  What she gave back is immeasurable.

I imagine that Lorraine’s urge to write is much like my own.  It’s like therapy for me.  I described to a dear friend last night how each moment of my day can seem without purpose.  It is not until I sit down with my Bible and start writing that I realize what God is doing.  He literally reveals his purpose to me through the words that I type.  The first time I read a post of Lorraine’s, I saw that God was doing the same thing for her.  Every time she wrote, I would see God revealing himself to her.  For the last thirty days, I’ve watched Lorraine’s unwavering faith and I have been broken as I have watched God bring her to a place where she is raw and exposed and at His feet.

I first began following Chrissie’s story because of how inspirational Lorraine is.  Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with that little girl.  I was not alone.  Tens of thousands of people, all around the world, have fallen in love with her and fallen to their knees because of her.  In the past thirty days, as Chrissie’s little body resisted death over and over again, God used her story, through Lorraine’s writing, to bring countless souls into His family.

John 14:18

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

This was Jesus’ promise to all mankind.  In their obedience to rescue Chrissie, He was able to use her story to rescue thousands of orphans.

Last week my heart broke for a family that lost their son in the same hospital where Chrissie has been for the past month.  I do not question God’s timing or His sovereignty.  It may never ever make sense to us for a child to be taken, but I have to accept that God is in control of ALL things.  While praying for the family who had lost their son, I saw the empathy that God was feeling for them.  He allowed His own son to suffer and die because He could see the bigger picture.  I saw clearly that He knows the pain of losing a child.

The very first Bible verse I remember learning is:

John 3:16

“God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die.” (CEV)

It’s the verse that most children learn first because it’s probably the most important verse in the Bible.  God allowed his son’s death because he knew that his son would defeat death.  And He promised that everyone who had faith in that story would have eternal life.

Chrissie is alive.  She will never really die.

And while we may hurt for the loss of her physical life,  we have to find joy in the fact that through her story, so many people have found eternal life.

Shoes

by Anonymous

Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,
or, whine, Israel, saying,
“God has lost track of me.
He doesn’t care what happens to me”?
Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?
God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.
He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.
He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.
And he knows everything, inside and out.
He energizes those WHO ARE WEARY,
gives fresh strength to dropouts.
For even young people tire and drop out,
young folk in their prime stumble and fall.
But those who wait upon God get fresh strength…”

It’s so nice to know that the one wearing the biggest shoes around here never gets tired.  He never stops to catch His breath.  He knows every single detail of what’s to come in our lives.  And no matter how weary any of us, including my daughter, become, He will give us strength and energize our souls.

I don’t know about you, but that knowledge feels like a security blanket or an old broken-in pair of shoes to me.

We all know them.  The grownups who, if they were still kids, could be diagnosed with Aspergers.  The ones with completely inappropriate social skills and who, without a doubt, have no long-term close-knit friendships.  In an attempt to be a nice person, I like to call them ‘special people’.

Today one of them crossed my path. Grrrrr…

A sweet elderly lady began talking to Sofia (I think we’re gonna take the ‘j’ out) while we were out today.  She said a couple of times, “You are so beautiful!”  My daughter responded with an earful of Serbian and so the nice lady looked at me and asked, “Do you speak English?”  I told her yes and that we had just adopted our daughter from Serbia and that she had only been an American for the past twelve days.

Before we came across the nice lady, we walked past this woman who was very obviously watching us.  At this point in the conversation with the nice lady, the stalker lady started walking towards us and before she was even in my line of sight, said, “I adopted my daughter from the Ukraine eight years ago when she was only eight months old.  She asked me yesterday what her name was before she was my daughter and I told her that it was none of her business.  She’ll just have to wait until she’s eighteen if she wants to go back to that life.”

Huh?

Awkward way to start a conversation, but this woman has adopted from eastern Europe.  So I thought for a second that she may have an ounce of wisdom to share with me.

I’ve developed many online relationships with other adoptive moms in the past eight months based on this one common thread.  Some of them have given me advice and shared wisdom from their own experiences that I have found priceless.  Some of them have even helped me avoid some pretty big mistakes.  And who knows?  Maybe some of my online friends are ‘special people’.

So while my daughter stood there rocking from one foot to the other, making figure eights with her head and producing a low growl, I made eye contact with the woman and said, “We loved her name and since so much about her world is already changing, we have decided to keep it.  I guess we’re lucky that it’s a pronouncible common English name. (chuckle)”

This woman, who is over six feet tall and has the shoulders of a linebacker, grabs little 5’5″ me by the arm with her right hand.  At the same time, she grabs my daughter by the arm with her left hand.  The low growl now turns into a very loud tigerish growl.  She pulls us both into the doorway of the bathroom that is just behind her, releases my daughter, puts her index finger in my face, and says, “I highly suggest that you take her to Children’s Hospital immediately and have her evaluated.  She has a psychiatric disorder that they haven’t told you about.  Do you know anything about the autism spectrum.”

You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me!  I’m still wanting to slap this woman for grabbing me and my daughter by the arm.  The reaction that her comments were evoking was much uglier than a simple slap.  I wanted to put her in her place.

After a very long awkward heated pause, (during which I removed her hand from my arm) I responded with, ” I happen to have a son who is autistic.  I’ve been parenting on the ‘spectrum’ for about a decade.  We were matched with our daughter because of our experience.  Are you only familiar with it because of your Aspergers, or do your children also fall on the spectrum?”

Her mouth fell open and she stared at me.

I stared back.

No response for several seconds.

I then grabbed Sofia by the arm (as her mother I have the right to do so) and said, “Come on, baby girl.  Let’s go.”

But no000000….  She couldn’t just leave it at that.  She says, “Who do you think is gonna educate her?  The schools will just warehouse her like they did my daughter.”

The urge to slap was growing stronger.  I knew that I had to end this conversation and walk away or end up in the backseat of a military police cruiser.  I really did not want my daughter to experience jail within two weeks of arriving in America and this is probably not a good point in my husband’s career for his wife to be arrested on a military installation.

I turned again and looked at her and said, “My son is main-streamed full-time now in the third grade.  He is where he is today because he’s had great educators and because I’ve fought tooth and nail to make sure that he is given every opportunity to succeed.  The schools only “warehouse” (and yes, I used finger quotes) children whose parents aren’t proactive enough to make sure that doesn’t happen.  Maybe you should be a bigger advocate for your daughter.”

Then I walked away.  And no.  I don’t feel bad about putting her in her place.  She was begging for it.

John 10:10

“A thief comes only to rob, kill, and destroy. I came so that everyone would have life, and have it in its fullest!”

Seven and a half days.  That is how long Ana-Sofija has been an American.  Eleven days is how long she has legally been our child.    As I listened to her screaming for me to come get her some yogurt this morning, these numbers seemed just silly.  It feels as if she’s always been ours.  As if she were our child before she was even born.  This God-given parental love makes it painful beyond words to think of what she has experienced in the first five years of her life.

We are getting into a routine as a family and she is catching on to how things run around here like a fly on fly-paper.  Speaking of…she actually reached out and caught a fly with her thumb and fore-finger a couple days ago…Mr. Miyagi style (sans chopsticks).  This girl has wicked fast reflexes and amazing hand-eye coordination!

I have to confess that I had totally forgotten what life was like as a stay-at-home Mom with a toddler.  Those memories have all come flooding back this week.  My days are no longer my own and I’m beginning to think that it will be fall before I get to finish a phone conversation.  For any adult that happens to cross my path in the evenings, I apologize now.  I am a little starved for some tall-talk.  The beauty in all of our Mama/Ana-Sofija time is that she is picking up English unbelievably fast.  I am pretty certain that she understands just about everything that we say to her.  I say this because when we tell her to do something, she either does it or sticks her finger up in front of her face and says that she doesn’t want to.  She is one brave little girl!

From the first day that we were able to spend time with her, we have prayed with her and around her.  The entire time we were in Serbia, she would squeal like a pig and laugh this deep belly laugh when we prayed.  The day that we got home, she started just listening quietly.  By the middle of the week, she was bowing her head, closing her eyes, and praying on her own.  There are very few phrases that she is speaking entirely in English.  Most sentences are a blend of English and Serbian.  But she prays, “Now I lay me down to sleep….” and she sings, “Jesus loves you….” entirely in English.  Okay, it may not sound entirely like English, but she’s trying, and it is understandable.  And one thing she is saying very clearly is her emphatic, “Amen!” at the end of every family prayer.

She has fallen in love with our dear friend Charity and a couple of days ago, while Charity was pushing her on the swing, she sang, “Charrrrity (rolled r), Jesus loves you.”  How stinkin’ cute is that?!

It took several days and a lot of headaches to get her registered as a military dependent and enrolled in our insurance, but by Thursday she was officially an Army brat (not the Serbian kind of brat).  As soon as this was done, I called to schedule a physical and was lucky enough to get an appointment on Friday morning with a pediatrician who is from Eastern Europe and who treated orphans from China for decades.  Chad thinks she’s somewhat of a quack, but it was nice to see someone who knew what they were looking for and who was very cooperative in giving us referrals.  As I suspected on her first night with us, she has an umbilical hernia.  You can see the tear when she lays down and it pops out when she stands up.  She also pushes it back in all the time.  People who’ve witnessed this will tell you that it’s painful just to watch.  So, we have a surgical consult and she will most likely have it repaired at Walter Reed in the next couple of weeks.  She also has lots of icky stuff in her digestive system that has been sitting there for who knows how long.  So, we will be doing a daily cleanse for a minimum of six months.  Joyous!  She has also grown three centimeters in less than two weeks.  I don’t even know how this is possible and I would not believe it if I had not measured her myself.  She is now over four feet tall.  If she keeps growing at this rate, we may end seeing an endo just to make sure that her endocrine system is working as it should.  We also got quite a bit of insight concerning her behaviors and their relationship to the drugs that she has been given.  This is the area where we need prayer and guidance.  She was placed on medications as a baby that should never be given to children and definitely not to babies.  She stayed on these medications until she was three.  One of them was an anti-psychotic that is no longer even manufactured by the drug company that created it, because of its terrible side effects.  While many of the behaviors we have witnessed can be explained as autism or institutionalism, there are a couple of things that do not fall into those categories.  I have scoured the internet at night trying to find a psychological diagnosis that describes these things.  Yesterday, I found where they fit.  They are not psychological.  They are biological and pharmaceutically-induced.  She has a few characteristics of Parkinson’s.  These behaviors are listed as the top long-lasting side effects of the anti-psychotic drug.  Even when the drug was being prescribed in the states, it was only recommended for short-term use by persons undergoing chronic psychotic episodes.  She was on a fairly high dose for a very long period of time.  She will see a developmental pediatrician in the near future and she will undergo a CAT scan, MRI and EEG.  She will also be tested for heavy metal poisoning.  Our prayer is that the doctors will be able to flush the toxins from her system that have been poisoning her.

Jesus came to promise her life in its fullest.  He is bigger and more powerful than any toxins floating around in her bloodstream or her brain.  He CAN and He WILL make her whole! (emphatic) AMEN!

Ana, Ana, bo-bana

banana fana, fo fana, me, my, mo, mana…Ana

From the beginning of our journey, we thought that our daughter’s name was Ana-Sophia.  Ana means gracious and Sophia means wisdom.  I have written before about how we felt that we could use a good dose of gracious wisdom in our house (who couldn’t) and that we planned to keep that as her name.  There was also the factor that we planned to name our oldest daughter Sophia.  From the very beginning of my pregnancy with her until three days before she was born, her name was going to be Sophia.  At my baby shower, everything I received was for “Sophia”.  Could it just be a coincidence that God prepared us to parent a child named Sophia, fifteen years before He was planning to bring this child into our lives?

The day after we arrived in Serbia, we learned that Ana-Sophia was not her name.  At our first ministry appointment, everything we saw had “Sophie” or “Sophia” as her name and we were told that she only had this as her first name and a Serbian surname.  We tried to get used to it and we even talked about the fact that God had already paved a road into our hearts for a daughter named Sophia.  We all tried really hard, but we kept finding ourselves calling her Ana-Sophia.  After a week of spending time with her, we were given papers with her name on them that had it spelled S-o-f-i-j-a.  This is the Serbian spelling of Sophia.  Chad likes the spelling and I just keep imagining Americans butchering it and not having any clue what to do with that ‘j’.  I asked if we had any options when it came to naming her at the adoption ceremony.  The answer was, “NO.”  After the adoption ceremony, she was given a birth certificate with her first name and our last name on it.  So…we came home with our new daughter, Sofija.

After the miracles it took to get us home, we were hoping and praying for a fairly painless first few days as a family of six.  God showed us mercy.  Sofija seemed to know that this house is her home from the moment she walked in the front door.  Within 24 hours she was calling it “my house” and she had staked her claim in pretty much every single room.

We were amazed at how she managed to stay awake until 9pm on our first night home.  That’s 3am Serbian time and she didn’t even seem phased by the time difference.  The rest of us kept waking up and trying to go back to sleep, but our little Serbian Superstar acted like she has lived every day of her life in America’s eastern time zone.  Thank you, God!

Around this house, we’re big waffle eaters.  Any child (or adult) who has slept over at our house in the last decade has heard Donkey’s line from Shrek before they ever get to sleep.  “And in the morning…We’re making waffles!”  On our daughter’s very first morning as an American, her Tata made Belgian waffles.  She kept pushing them away and telling us “necu, necu” (don’t want).  After watching the rest of us eat for a while, she took a bite off of Kira’s plate and then devoured her own and attempted to eat the syrup with a spoon.

Something that I’ve failed to write about is just how musically inclined ALL of our children are.  Chase picked up a trumpet last year for the first time and he’s now able to play just about anything he hears.  He’s more dedicated to practicing than I’ve ever been at practicing anything in my life!  This dedication brought him very close to a panic attack when I suggested that there was no room for his trumpet in our luggage.  We made room, and I’m sure that the people who lived in all of the apartments around us took great pleasure in his late night and early morning tunings.  At our first visit at the foster home, someone told us that Sofija loves trumpets.  It was just a random fact that someone threw out in the middle of a hundred other random facts that we were trying to absorb, while waiting for some great nugget of information that might help us connect with our child.  But…it was the fact that stopped our heads from spinning and put a huge smile on the oldest brat’s face.  In case you’re wondering, brat is the Serbian word for brother and the ‘r’ is rolled.  So, on day two, we came armed with our own personal trumpet player.  From that moment forward, Chase has been her favorite family member.  While the rest of us have been pinched, slapped, kicked, bitten, and generally abused, Chase just gets smiles and hugs.  Man, I wish my Mom hadn’t let me quit every time I started learning a new instrument!

I mention Sofija’s love for music because it has played a huge role in her transition into our family.  The same day that we learned she loved trumpets, we found a book with a cd of Serbian children’s songs with the lyrics in both English and Serbian.  It’s designed to help her learn English.  She loves it!  She sings ALL THE TIME.  The rhythm of her songs tends to match the rhythm of her rocking.  This tendency is contagious.  We’ve made up lots of songs that match her rocking rhythm and she sings them all with us.  In one of these songs we call her pretty Sofija.  She loves to sing the word ‘pretty’.  She rolls the ‘r’ and sings it in her deep, raspy, smokes a couple packs a day, voice.  It’s one of the most precious sounds I’ve ever heard.  On our first day home, she was standing in the kitchen, rocking and singing her pretty Sofija song, when the rest of us realized that she had changed the lyrics to “pretty Ana-Sofija”.  Then on Sunday, just before we entered God’s house and got to spend a little time quenching our spirits, Chad said “Tata volim Sofija” (Daddy loves Sofija).  She quickly stuck her pointer finger up in front of her nose and said, “Tata volim Ana Sofija”.  And yes, she emphasized the Ana.  On Monday, she corrected us several times throughout the day when we called her Sofija.  So there you have it.  Her name is Ana Sofija.  I printed out the packet from the local county court to readopt her, issue her a Virginia birth certificate, and legally change her name.  She had no name for the first six or seven months of her life.  We do not even know who named her.  What we do know, is that she was called to be our daughter.  We know that we were called to rescue her from a life without hope or a future.  We know that she is our child, but more importantly, we know that she is a child of God.  He called her by name.  She is gracious wisdom.  She may be trapped in a cage that is too small for her to spread her wings and show the pretty gracious wisdom that God made her with, but I believe with all that I am that God has put her here, in our family, in order to destroy the walls that cage is made of.

Isaiah 43:1

“Do not fear, for I have rescued you; I have called you by name (Ana Sofija), you are mine”

Psalm 148:2-5

² Praise him, all his angels,
praise him, all his heavenly hosts.

³ Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars.

⁴ Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies.

⁵ Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for he commanded and they were created.

Saturday May 1, 2010

Today, we praise God.  We praise Him for creating the shining stars and the angels (both high and low) who have stood by our sides, lit up our world, and surrounded us and lifted us up from the very beginning of our adoption journey.

Our little family of six is home, safe and sound.  Our little Serbian superstar is officially an American.  Well, we have to wait for USCIS to send her citizenship certificate, but other than that formality, she is an American.

We spent all of Thursday afternoon at the US embassy.  We traveled back to our apartment that night with no visa and no idea who, if any of us, would be traveling home on Friday.  Our flights were booked through Golden Rule Travel about five hours before we left for Serbia, on April 12th.  We had planned for months to fly space-A on a military flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.  We were planning to travel from Frankfurt to Belgrade on a train.  It was going to be a grand European adventure.  In hindsight, it was probably not a wise plan, but you know, hindsight is always 20/20.  For the past two months, we checked the flight schedules for both Andrews and Dover Air Base and both had almost daily flights to Germany.  The weekend before the 13th, that changed.  The nuclear summit was taking place, and all of the military flights were grounded.  We were packed and ready to go by noon on Monday, we were beginning to panic a little about how we were going to make our ministry appointment in Belgrade on Wednesday.  We had already come to terms with the fact that there would be no great adventure by train.  The flights from Frankfurt or Munich to Belgrade were almost as much as the flights we were finding from DC to Belgrade.  Around 1pm on the 12th, we sent an email to Golden Rule.  They provide travel agent services for humanitarian purposes.  Within minutes, a dear angel had booked flights for all six of us, for less than $5000, with changeable tickets, one stop each way, and no long layovers.  For this man, I praise God!

We were told by USCIS that everything was taken care of with our daughter’s visa approval, the week before we left.  We had a hard-copy of the approval with us, along with copies of all of the documents that were submitted in order for us to receive it.  After our third visit with our daughter, on Friday April 16th, we rushed back to Belgrade, in order to go to the US embassy before the closed for the weekend.  We learned that all was not okay and that the lovely lady at USCIS had never sent our approval to the National Visa Center.

So…on Thursday, April 29th, the day before we were supposed to fly home, we packed our bags and went to bed, with no visa.  Golden Rule is only open during business hours, central time.  That meant, that if we arrived at the embassy on Friday morning and still had no visa, they would not be open for us to call and change our reservations.  When we fell asleep on Thursday night, it was with total faith that God would provide.  We had no alternative.  God knew that we had no money to buy new tickets or move to a hotel and He knew what time we were scheduled to leave.

Earlier in the week, we asked for help from our local representatives and our state senators.  We received no response from any of them.  Our associate pastor, is also a congressional attorney for a representative from Kansas.  I don’t know that we will ever know what all was done in order for our paperwork to be sent to the embassy in Belgrade.  We do know that when our borrowed cell phone rang on Friday morning at 8:15am Serbia time, we received the best news we could have possibly received.  For us, it was a miracle.  Once again, God delivered our requests at the 11th hour.  Thank you God!  For our dear friend Matt, and for those in his office who fought for us, we praise God!

Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

During our two and half weeks in Serbia, we often felt like we were swimming in darkness.  Everything just seemed much bigger than the people involved.  I cannot fully explain the spiritual battle we were (and are) in.  There are many things that took place while we were away and that we continue to witness in our child that I do not feel free to blog about.  I do feel free to tell you that we crave your prayers!  In the midst of the darkness, what we experienced over and over again, was the power of prayer.  There were moments when all of us were completely overwhelmed and when I could look around and see each of us swimming in our own little cesspool.  Chad and I were each dealing with our own battles, which made it really hard to reach down and pull our kids up from the stuff that they were dealing with.  We watched so many of those moments transition, sometimes instantly, to moments of peace and joy.  That is the power of prayer!  Your prayers put shields around us.

We have dreaded our trip home.  We have not seen our daughter be still for more than about five minutes, unless she is sleeping.  Most of our outings have included episodes of complete hysterics with her biting, punching , scratching, pulling our hair, pinching, kicking  or throwing objects at us.  I would love to say that those episodes were in anger, fear or frustration over the sudden change or lack of communication, but that is not always the case.  She often has episodes that are spontaneous and unprovoked and most of the time, her outbursts are accompanied by laughter. And….she screams.  A lot.  Some of you may remember our episode with the fisher cats near our house.  They make the most awful noise and they seem to be able to screech for two or three minutes without taking a breath.  Our daughter does a great fisher cat imitation.  Hence the worry about our flight home.  I have a history of being “anti-meds”, when it comes to my children.  That being said, I had no  problem asking for either anti-anxiety drugs or sedatives for my new daughter in order to get her home.   We have already accepted that she is going to need some detox, so a couple of doses of ativan or xanax added to the mix of junk in her body, seemed relatively harmless.  Our requests were not granted and we boarded our plane in Belgrade, at 1 in the afternoon (not even close to bed-time), armed with nothing more than our brute strength, dramamine, benadryl, and your prayers.  We only had a forty minute connection in Munich and we did not want her to be sleepy, when we would be running through an airport, so we did not give her anything before we left.  Her very first trip on an “aviona” was wonderful.  It was only a one hour flight, but she was very excited, and she did great.  She even ran cooperatively to catch our next flight.  The flight from Munich was nine hours long and we were leaving at 3 in the afternoon.  Once again, it was nowhere near her bedtime and we had no idea, how we would entertain her.  For the first flight, she sat by the window and clapped and squealed over all of the things she could see (in between visits to the very interesting bathroom).  For the second flight, we were in the center section of an airbus.  This, in itself, was a miracle.  When our angel at Golden Rule booked our flights, the trip from Munich to DC was pretty full and he had to put us in seats all over the plane.  When we walked up to the counter in Belgrade, the agent was able to find six seats that were all together.  We had three seats on one row and three seats on the next row and the only empty seat that I could see around us, happened to be right behind our daughter.  Praise God!  She napped for forty-five minutes.  That’s it.  That means that she was awake for the other eight hours and fifteen minutes.  She had her own screen on the seat-back in front of her and a great selection of movies, cartoons and music.  Unfortunately, none of this was available in Serbian and she had absolutely zero interest in hearing it in English.  On my second or third attempt to put her headphones on, she pulled them off, leaned down, aimed, and hit the target on the temple of the gentleman to my left.  So much for the in-flight entertainment.  She did have a couple of ‘episodes’ and I lost a fair amount of hair to her little fists, but I would estimate that at least five hours of the flight were uneventful.  She rocked and sang to herself and on occasion, she even asked me to sing to her.  Progress!  Chad and I remarked several times, that we could feel the power of prayer around us.  There is no other explanation for how smoothly our trip went.  We arrived at Dulles, eleven and a half hours after we left Belgrade, tired, but with no doubt that we are walking in God’s will and without having to put our daughter in restraints or a muzzle to make the journey. 😉 For each of you that has lifted us up in prayer, we praise God!

Last weekend, one week before we were scheduled to return home, our church family and friends, gathered at our home.  They cleaned our house, both physically and spiritually.  They prayed in and over our home.  Those same angels stocked our pantry and refrigerator.  They made posters and planted gifts in our home for each member of the family.  They met us at the airport, helped us get our luggage home, and brought over the dinner that we have craved for the past three weeks.  They also scheduled meals for our family for the weeks to come.  I can not put into words how big this is.  I have complained about the house we live in on more than one occasion, but when we walked in the door last night, all I saw was the presence of God.  He put angels in our lives when we first moved here and he continues to add to that list of angels on a pretty regular basis.  He has used those angels to bring healing and blessings beyond measure.  For each of you (and you know who you are), we praise God!

Along this journey, we have had unexpected glitches and many expenses.  Our adoption budget grew and grew and every single time that we needed additional resources, God used his angels to provide.  Some of those angels we know well, some barely at all, and others have been completely anonymous.  Our daughter needed us.  She needed an opportunity to be set free and to excel.  God has a plan for her and He used each of you in the plan to get her home.  We look forward to the day when she will praise God with us for you.  Until that day comes, for each of you who have helped her become our child, we praise God!

One of our many angels sent me this verse today for Sofija (still not certain about her name):

Zephaniah 3:17

The LORD your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He
will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His
love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

I claim this!  I cannot explain how I have so much love for a child I just met and who has tried with all her might to push me away.  God allowed me to see her as my child.  He gave me a mother’s love for her.  He has already rescued her.  He will take great delight in the person she is called to become.  He will quiet her with His amazing unconditional love.  And even if she does not allow her Mama or her Tata to sing to her, Her real father will sing as He rejoices over her.  That Mama and Tata that God gave her…will continue to praise Him for all of His angels.

At the end of Sofija’s adoption ceremony, the director of the center for social work stood and told our translator that she had a poem to read.  She did not speak English, but someone in the center had written a poem in Serbian and had it translated so that she could read it for us.  I have to admit, that it was difficult for me to understand what she was saying and I did not think it was all that special (at that moment).  Last night, I opened the packet containing our adoption decree and saw that it contained both an Engleski and Serbski copy of the poem.  Whoever wrote the poem, knows my child.

Daughter

It isn’t true that love is made when it is born

Than is still younger by far

When your face is seen, it is reborn

And shining like the brightest star

Those eyes that follow you growing

They give you love that you long for

Hold out your hands for they are showing

Their heart to you forever more

Remember this day when the love is bred

When this line of bliss is made

Because today is your birthday instead

Rejoice,and of love don’t be afraid

WE PRONOUNCE YOU HAPPY FOREVER AFTER!

John 14:18

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

In the world of adoption, the day that your child legally becomes your child, is known as “gotcha day”.  Adoptive families often make gotcha day celebrations just as important as birthday celebrations.  Today, Tuesday April 27, 2010, our family grew by one five year old little girl.  At around 6am eastern time, Chad and I signed a piece of paper that made her ours.

There wasn’t much fanfare and we rushed out of the room and into taxis as soon as it was official, but she is indeed our daughter.  This country does not allow us to choose what name we would like on the birth certificate and they do not have middle names.  So, for the time being, her name is Sofija Calvaresi.

She now has a birth certificate with Chad and I listed as her parents and with God’s grace, by Wednesday afternoon, she will have a passport that proves to the world that Calvaresi is her last name.  On Friday, she will board an airplane (willingly, thank you, God!), and after a quick stop in Munich, she will set her feet on the land of the free and home of the brave and be declared an American citizen.

If this had been an actual emergency,…..

With all that sweet stuff out of the way, we need prayer!  For the past two days, she has created a whole new emergency broadcast system.   She slaps and we whisper to ourselves, “This is only a test.”  She kicks, we whisper to ourselves, “This is only a test.”  She throws a plate of food all over her sister and then punches her, Chad and I hear sirens going off.  We hold her tight in time-out so that she can’t bite, scratch, pinch, kick, slap, punch, poke, or head-butt us, and we catch our breaths and remind ourselves that, “This. Is. Only. A. Test.”

James 1:2-4

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. ⁴Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Okay, God, I got it.  Chad and I need some perseverance.  We’re obviously lacking in some character trait that you cherish or that we need in order to fulfill your purpose.  We will consider ourselves blessed.  Amen.

Psalm 126:5-6

And now, God, do it again—
bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
So those who planted their crops in despair
will shout hurrahs at the harvest,
So those who went off with heavy hearts
will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.

Seven months ago, our family embarked on a journey to bring a little girl home from Serbia.  We knew little about her, we had not been seeking to adopt, and although we are financially blessed, we did not have fifteen to twenty thousand dollars sitting in an adoption fund.  What we did know, is that God intended for her to be a part of our family.  So, with a leap of faith, we committed to bringing her home.

To save you the trouble of going back and reading about the beginning of our journey,  I’ll paint a picture of what our life looked like at the time.  My husband was in Iraq from January until June of last year.  While he was deployed, I dealt with a health scare.  As we prepared for our children to return to school in the fall and we were trying to adjust to having two parents in the house again, we discovered that we would have to move.  Oh, and I had just gotten my real estate license and I was finishing up degrees in business and psychology.   We had also just begun hosting Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University at our home and we had made a commitment to live a debt-free life.  So, in the middle of trying to find a house that would allow our children to remain in all three of the local schools, starting a new career, finishing an education,  and attempting to eliminate all of our debt, Ana Sofija Calvaresi came into our lives.  We were unexpectedly paper pregnant.

This  has not been an easy pregnancy, but it has been one full of spiritual growth and character building and purpose.  When a child is growing in your womb, you anticipate the end of the pregnancy, not only because you want to meet your child, but because you are sick and tired of being pregnant.  When a child is growing in your heart, it is different.  The last trimester is the waiting period.  You do not feel your baby moving inside of you.  Your feet do not swell.  You do not pee your pants when you sneeze or cough or laugh out loud.  And unless you are up at night obsessing over paint colors and names and travel dates, you sleep pretty well.

Galatians 6:7-8

You cannot fool God, so don’t make a fool of yourself! You will harvest what you plant. If you follow your selfish desires, you will harvest destruction, but if you follow the Spirit, you will harvest eternal life.

It does not matter where God allows your children to grow.  There is one thing about parenting that is an absolute truth.  If you are seeking and following God’s will, you will harvest blessings.  My three oldest children are not perfect and neither is their mom or dad.  My children are blessings.  They watch their parent’s always attempt to put God first and in return, we get to watch them always have faith that God is on their side.

Throughout this long journey, God has constantly reminded us that He is our provider and that as long as we have faith, all of our needs will be met.  Sometimes those needs have been met at the very last minute (literally), but every single dime, piece of paper, signature, or appointment that we have needed, has been there.

After all that has been sown in these past seven months, tomorrow…is the harvest.

At 12 noon Serbia time, on April 27th, 2010, we will become the proud parents of a five year old little girl, whose name (at least for now) will be Sofija Calvaresi.

If all goes as planned and our visa mess gets worked out between the Washington DC USCIS office and the US embassy in Belgrade, we will arrive at Dulles airport, on Friday evening, laughing (we hope), and with armloads of blessings.

I assume that when any family is called to adopt an older child, they begin to mourn the firsts.  You know what I’m talking about.  We missed her first smile.  We missed her first laugh.  We missed the first time she sat up or crawled or walked or ran or spoke.  Of course missing out on some firsts is not so sorrowful.  The first time she used a toilet, for example.  Or, the first time she slept through the night.  We have had seven months to come to terms with the fact that our new addition is a big girl and that we not only missed out on many firsts in her development, but that we will never know exactly when or where any of those events took place.

Today, we were given an unexpected gift.  We got to experience a first.  A big one, in my opinion.

Sofija lost her first tooth!  All week, she’s let me wiggle her “zub”.  Seth uses Tom’s strawberry toothpaste.  She loves anything related to strawberries, so she has been very willing to let me brush her teeth and wiggle that little loose one in the front.  This morning, I could feel that it was just barely attached, but I was afraid that I would traumatize her if I attempted to pull it out.  Shortly after brushing her teeth, she slapped me across the face (still a semi-regular occurrence).  We have been putting her in a specific chair every time she hurts someone and telling her that she is in timeout.  Chad or I have to be in the chair with her, or she will not stay there.  So…While sitting in the timeout chair, with his arm wrapped her, Chad watched her push it out with her own tongue.  I had to dig around in her mouth to find it, but it has been retrieved.  She doesn’t sleep on a pillow and I doubt that she’s ever heard of the tooth fairy, but nobody will ever be able to take away the fact that her family got to witness her losing her very first tooth.

Yesterday, after our sleepless night, we ventured to the Belgrade zoo.  Our apartment is located about two miles from the zoo and in an effort to drain every last bit of energy out of our little hummingbird, we walked there.  Along the way, we came across many interesting sights, but only one screamed to be used as a backdrop for our daughter.  Although we are making a constant effort to give her praise and love and positive reinforcement, she has been spending a fair share of her time in ‘timeout’.

So much so, that before we left the zoo, Chad called the social worker who is her current guardian, and attempted to cancel the visit by the foster family that was scheduled for today.  After a night filled with screaming and hitting and biting and a trip to the zoo filled with testing her boundaries, we were fearful that we would see more regression, if she spent time with them.  Chad is famous for saying, “Fear is the tool of the devil.”  and “Fear is just the absence of faith.”  Unfortunately, neither of these statements came to our memory when we started discussing the possible effects of the planned visit.  The social worker doesn’t speak or understand much English.  Chad’s phone call to her resulted in her meeting us at our apartment when we returned from our outing.  She came equipped with a “Serbian for foreigners” pocket-book and an “English for Serbians” pocket-book.  Between the two, we had a very fruitful conversation.  She explained that part of Sofija’s bonding with us involves her realizing that people do not just disappear.  She needs to know that even though we are now her family, the foster family still care about her and they are still a part of her life.  These three people who took her into their home, were the first people to get through to her.  They were the first people that she showed love to and they were the first people that she ever communicated with.  By the end of our conversation, I was very convicted for allowing any fear to enter my thoughts and I felt like an idiot for not realizing how important the visit would be.    You would think that having a psychology degree would have helped me put this one together all by myself.

We had a fair night’s sleep.  I can’t say it was good, but it was better than the night before.  After straightening up the apartment, painting baby girl # 2’s nails on her fingers and piggies, and preparing for our guests (and a few timeouts), we walked to St. Sava’s cathedral.  Sofija decided to play the rag-doll game.  She would walk a few steps and go limp.  She would then lie on the ground and laugh.  She did this, every few feet, for about a mile.

It was joyful.

I have to admit.  The visit was wonderful.  No matter what the situation has been leading up to our arrival, or how things played out once we were here, I have nothing but gratitude for the people who have loved my child for the past two years.  She came to them in June of 2008 with no verbal skills.  She was not toilet trained.  She did not allow anyone to touch her.  I can not begin to imagine her being that child.  Because Jovana began caring for her at the orphanage when she was only five months old, she has a wealth of information about her life.  I learned today that Sofia had no name until she was six or seven months old.  I will write another blog post about her name, but this new information provided me with a great deal of freedom.  I have been under the impression that her name was given to her by her birth mother.  I know that her birth mother went straight into an institution after her birth and that she went from the hospital to an orphanage when she was ten days old.  I guess I just never thought that her mother may not have given her a name.  Anyway, like a said, that’s an entire post in itself.

The visit with Jovana and Elza was wonderful.  They have not only provided our daughter with a loving home for nearly two years, but they have provided us with a picture of her past and they have given us photos of her from five months old until now and they even made us a four-page translation sheet of the things that she is most likely to say.  Those sheets of notebook paper have been our biggest God-send for the past week.  They are almost worn out from our constant folding and unfolding and we panic when we can’t find them.  Chad and I noticed that she has figured out what we understand and that she uses those phrases over and over again.  She dumbs-down her Serbian for us.  It’s become very clear that she is doing it.  When she comes across someone who speaks Serbian, she will just explode in her native-tongue, like she’s been holding her words for days.  Then, she will turn to us and say “Hoce mo…” or “Neci mo…”  The phrases mean ‘I want’ and ‘I don’t want’.  She follows up with words that she knows we understand.  I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for her to have to do this.  We have a stack of Serbian books and our computer program and we are able to look up and communicate just about anything that we want to her.  She is stuck with four pages of phrases that she must use over and over and over again.  But, if it were not for the foster family, we would not even have those four pages.

Another first took place during the visit.  She has been referring to me as ‘Mama’ since our second or third visit.  She screams it or whispers it, whenever she is in need of anything.  However, it has been hard for me to jump for joy over this title because she also uses it on occasion for Chad and Chase and I’m fairly certain that I’ve heard her use it in reference to strangers on the street.  Today, Jovana said something to her about Elza (the foster mom) and used the title Mama.  My daughter jumped across the room, grabbed my arm, and said very loudly, “Ovaj si moj Majka!”  “This is my mother!”

At this moment, it is so hard to even think about my state of mind one week ago.  It has only been seven days since I felt that I had no place in her life.  Today is very different.  I am so head over heels in love with this little girl.  She is extraordinarily beautiful and funny and intelligent.  And…she is the strongest little person I have ever known.  I am not just referring to her physical strength.  This little girl has spirit.  She was born to a woman who may not have even comprehended that she had just given birth.  She spent more than half of the first year of her life with no name.  She made it through infancy and toddler-hood without being held or rocked or talked to.  She was given big labels and little hope.  Yet, she found a way, to not only survive, but to learn and to grow.  And to my sheer delight, somewhere along her path, she acquired the ability to grab me and declare me as her mother.