In the midst of our anticipation and excitement, Chad’s family has undergone an unspeakable tragedy.  He has a cousin who struggled for years with infertility and spent a fortune in an attempt to have children.  Last year, she and her husband had a successful in-vitro and on New Year’s Eve they gave birth to twins.  A boy and a girl.  On Friday they lost the little girl.  The situation is horrific and I am not free to share all of the details on such an open forum, but please keep the entire family (including us) in your prayers.

Five years ago today, a woman that I  do not know, gave birth to a little girl, in Belgrade, Serbia.  I do not know at what time she was born, nor do I know any of the circumstances surrounding her birth.  What I do know, is that the little girl was born to be my daughter.

“You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit” (Job 10:12)

The woman named the baby Ana-Sophia.  Ana means gracious.  Sophia means wisdom.  My daughter is destined to be a gift of gracious wisdom.  Who couldn’t use a good dose of that?!

Jeremiah 1:4-5

The word of the LORD came to me, saying,  “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;…”

God knew.  He had it all planned out.

Only ten more days will pass before I can see her and touch her and smell her.  Today, on the day that I celebrate her birth, those ten days seem like an eternity.  I have longed for my daughter today.  I hope.  I pray.  That someone loved her and celebrated her life.

Ana-Sophia,

Happy Birthday!

Today is Good Friday.  I believe that this is the most tragically beautiful day of the year.  It is today that we acknowledge the fact that God allowed His son to be brutally tortured and murdered on our behalf.   It is a day that I, you, we, do not deserve.  But it is a day that I whole-heartedly accept and embrace.  For without today, there would be no healing.  There would be no grace.  There would be no completion.  There would be no Easter morning.

Romans 5:6-8

“Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatsoever to him.”

Today was also about as gloriously beautiful as a spring day in Washington DC can get.  And…it’s the end of spring break for my my 3 oldest children.  After a week filled with adoption happenings, we decided to escape our little world and make the most of our time together.

First thing on the agenda: A practice run to Andrews.  We are planning to fly out of there on our way to Germany in nine days and we thought it might be nice to know our way to the terminal.  Chad ran in to ensure that all will go as planned and immediately upon his entry, he was approached by a secret service agent who asked if he’d like to meet the President.  Apparently we arrived just before Air Force One was scheduled to land and they were trying to find a crowd to welcome him.  Chad presented the opportunity to the kids and in typical kid fashion, they declined and insisted that we head out for destination #2. Sorry, Mr. Obama.  You lose to colossal milkshakes.  We did enjoy seeing the belly of your plane as you flew over heads while landing.

Destination #2: The infamous “Chick & Ruth’s Delly”.

Being fans of Man vs. Food, we have a list of establishments that serve ridiculously large portions of food that we hope to visit.  It just so happens that the entire family is also a huge fan of milkshakes.  Chick & Ruth’s Delly happens to be the home of the six pound milkshake.  It also happens to be a short 45 miles from our house.  Yes.  I took photos.  No.  I have not yet uploaded them.  Yes.  We conquered the shake.  Okay.  I have to be honest.  We were actually pretty intimidated by the six pound shake.  That thing is enormous!  We settled for two, much smaller, 33oz shakes.

I think I’m being called to a fast.  It might not be God calling me, but my swimsuit is definitely pleading.

Chick & Ruth’s is located right on the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, MD.  Between Mother Nature dishing up the best she had to offer and 4lbs, 2oz of shake in our bellies, we were inclined to walk along the bay.  It was glorious!  Have you ever been outdoors and found yourself just blown away that God created such a perfect environment for us to live in?  Yeah.  It was one of those moments.

Destination #3: fishing

The original plan for the day was to go fishing.  Last summer we learned that the Naval station at Annapolis rents boats.  A quick Google search confirmed that they do indeed rent them and that the rentals are very affordable.  A phone call yesterday to reserve a boat taught us that the affordable boat rentals will not be available until the end of May.  Sigh….

Unfortunately, Chad and I made the mistake of discussing our fishing plans within earshot of little ears.  This mistake led to moaning and groaning and high hopes of catching the big one.  Seth even suggested that we sell all of the big fish we were going to catch to help pay for the adoption.  I love him.

After our attempt to burn off some miniscule amount of the calories we’d consumed, we gave ourselves a tour of the U.S. Naval Academy and began searching for a spot to cast our lines.  We found a sweet spot behind some abandoned buildings and spent a fishless hour or so engaged in casting practice before calling it a day.

The sweet spot will be revisited.  So will those sinful colossal shakes.  And perfect grace.  And healing.  And all the gifts and beauty that are possible because of this day.

Today was indeed a Good Friday.

fool

“Form I-72, Request for Evidence has been issued after reviewof the home study indicated that it was not in compliance with the requirements listed by Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations 204.3 regarding special needs adoptions. Please allow for 2-3 mail service for the document to arrive to your home address.”

I’m assuming she meant 2-3 days.  It really didn’t matter.  I could not wait.  I immediately found the regulation and matched it up to our home-study.  There didn’t seem to be any discrepancy, but hey, I’m no immigration, federal-code reading expert.  I cut and pasted the code and that portion of our home-study and sent it back to her asking her to clarify exactly what was out of compliance.  The response I got was one sentence.  “have your home-study agency contact me”  No capitals.  No punctuation.  So…I called our agency, and I waited.

After 48 painstaking hours, we got a call from the agency that our amended home-study was ready.  Just before we left to pick it up and hand deliver it to USCIS, we got an email that our appointment in Belgrade is confirmed for April 14th.  We then got an email from the lovely immigration lady telling us that she will have Ana-Sophia’s visa approval, the infamous I-171h, approved and in our hands by next Tuesday.

So there…It’s no joke.  Not fooling around.  Not make believe.

In 9 days we will leave for Serbia.

In 12 days we will meet our daughter.

And…if we had been in Baton Rouge this week.  Well, our story would be different.

Now we just have to figure out where the rest of our adoption expenses will come from!

Every day I think of things I want to blog about.  There are several moments in each day when I have an urge to share the current scoop on the adoption.  Most days, I refrain from writing for one single reason.  We still do not have our I-171h.  That’s the blessed document from USCIS (the current name of immigration) that says they deem us worthy to be adoptive parents.  It’s the end result of filing our I-600a, which is the “Application for advance processing of an orphan.”

So…everyday I check the mailbox a dozen times.  I know that our mailman never arrives before 3pm, but that doesn’t stop me from checking it just about every hour from the time I get up in the morning.

Pathetic.  I know.

Today I started feeling a little neglectful.  I realized that there have been significant events in the past 3 weeks that I failed to write about.  Now I can’t remember the details.  I’ve pushed out a couple of kids that weighed more than 9.5lbs.  As a result, I have permanent baby brain.  Those significant events are probably now lost forever.

Even though the evasive I-171h is still not in my hands, I need to document where we are on the journey to bring our daughter home.

At 2pm today (Serbian time), our facilitator met with the ministry officials.

“…I suggested April 14th as your meeting date.
It’s 90% sure,but I asked them to confirm this date for 100% as soon as they can.I insisted very much to get the answer very,very soon.Hope to get it in several days.
Tomorrow the MO lawyer is sending your dossier to the center,and till the end of the week they will officially confirm that your family is in the best interest of Sophia.Just a routine procedure.
You must count on staying three full weeks in Serbia,because of a very delicate adoption procedure of little Sophia.
But,there is a possibility for Chad to leave the country after the adoption ceremony….”

So there.  It will be a minimum of 2 more weeks before we meet our daughter.  If we have to stay for more than 3 weeks, Chad will have to come home with our older three and I will stay behind.  That’s where things get a little quirky.  We are planning to fly on a military aircraft from here to Germany and take the train from Frankfurt to Belgrade.  There are daily flights (yesterday there were 5) from here to Germany.  This travel plan will save us thousands of dollars and provide ultimate flexibility.  It will also be a great adventure riding the train from Frankfurt to Vienna and then from there, to Budapest and on to Belgrade.  Our travel plan also means that we do not have to board a commercial aircraft with a child who may be upset, hysterical, unruly, and non-communicative.  Everyone on a military aircraft is required to wear ear-plugs.  A priceless gift to those who end up on an airplane with my children.

If Chad comes home early with our older children, he does not want me traveling across Eastern Europe, alone with Ana-Sophia.  I kind of agree with him.  That means that she and I will fly directly from Belgrade to DC.  It’s pricey.  And…we don’t have the money for it.  We are still about $1000 short from our original goal and this change in plans would add about $1500 to our total adoption expenses.

I’ve read every scripture I can dig up on provision and faith lately.  With this being Holy Week, I’ve also been reading about the last days of Christ life on earth.  God gave everything for me.  For you.  I keep looking at my children and asking myself if there is anything at all for which I would sacrifice them.  It hurts my heart and brings me to tears to even think of giving them up.  God did it willingly.  With that kind of sacrifice, how could I ever doubt his ability or willingness to provide?

Romans 8:31-32

What can we say about all this? If God is on our side, can anyone be against us? God did not keep back his own Son, but he gave him for us. If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else?

That’s the scoop.  I need to stop checking the mailbox a dozen times a day and get busy making some money!

We are supposed to be in, or at least on our way to, Baton Rouge right now.  I haven’t seen my family there in 2 years.  I miss home terribly and I would give just about anything to be in the presence of my grandmother for a day.

That being said, I still do not feel 100% healthy and the hubby has had tummy issues since he returned home from Arizona on Friday.  There’s also the issue of our budget.  You see, since we began Financial Peace University last fall, we’ve become sticklers about our budget.  Stacks of spreadsheets and budget forms have earned a permanent spot on our kitchen counters.  We are not yet debt free, but we have found financial peace by taking control of every dime that comes and goes in this house.  We have an emergency fund.  We have an adoption fund that is still a little short, but that we have faith will soon be fully funded.  We have a car fund.  What we do not have, is a vacation fund.

The common question around our house concerning any expense is, “What would Dave Ramsey say?”

I kept trying to tell myself that we would somehow make it work.  I fed the kids ramen and leftovers the entire time dear hubby was in Arizona.  I’ve driven the absolute bare minimum for the past 2 weeks.  The money I saved on groceries and gas would certainly justify a little excessive spending to see my family.  Wouldn’t it?   Yeah, Yeah, I know.

Dave Ramsey would probably turn it around and ask, “Did you budget for it?”  And the answer would be….No.

So here we are.  At our home.  Not quite the home I wanted to visit this week, but it’s still home.  It’s Monday.  It’s Spring Break.  It’s raining.  Chad and I both still feel pretty icky.  My grandmother is 1133 miles away.  And that money I saved on groceries and gas is still sitting in the bank, waiting to be applied to our debt snowball or moved to the adoption fund.

If USCIS (immigration) actually comes through with the holy grail of documents that they’ve promised, we will be on our way to get our daughter in exactly 2 weeks.  Two weeks.  Fourteen days.  Three hundred and thirty-six hours.  Kinda crazy!

Today I put away little girl clothes and organized all the things in the house that will belong to Ana-Sophia.  It felt real.  Folding little leggings and pajamas and hanging little dresses.  Placing night-time story books on her dresser.  Putting Barbie dolls and play-doh into colorful bins.  Every activity made her feel real.

And then I began to think of what I would pack for her to wear and play with while we are in Serbia.  I got a knot in my stomach.  For months we have been promised updated photos and information on her.  Chad has said repeatedly that he needs a “proof of life”.  The only photos we have are more than 2 years old.  The last evaluation we have on her is more than a year old.  We have absolutely no clue what size she is.  Should I pack the 4’s, the 5’s, the 6’s?  Should I even bother to take shoes for her?

For a period of time, I was in daily communication with our facilitator in Serbia.  I just assumed that as the time for us to travel drew near, that daily communication would continue and that information would be forthcoming.  I was mistaken.  In the past 3 weeks, I’ve received 3 brief emails and none of my questions have been answered.

On my end, I have miserably failed at learning Serbian and I’m trying really hard not to think about how I’m going to communicate with my child.  And…I have yet to buy one single gift out of the 26 we’ve been asked to bring for everyone involved in the adoption process.

That being said….Is it really too much for us to want a proof of life?

Kaci washed a load of whites, load of whites, load of whites….

I need to preface this post with my recent state of being.

Chad is in Arizona for the week and I’ve been fighting a sinus infection/bronchitis for the past 2 weeks.  My discomfort level has approached that of childbirth.  Feeling icky and simultaneously single-parenting stinks!  For all of my friends and family who are single Moms (or Dads)….Kudos!  You deserve a medal.

Between my current state of being and Chad’s absence, this week has been tough.  We are planning to go away next week for spring break and return on Easter Sunday.  We then plan to leave for Serbia the following Saturday.  That gave me this week and the 5 days between our trips to finish preparing for Ana-Sophia, to wrap up loose ends with work, to prepare for traveling out of the country, find an apartment in Belgrade, buy gifts for the 20+ people involved in the adoption process and, oh yeah, to actually pack.  I started the week with a to-do list that was a mile long and I’m fairly certain that it’s doubled.

In the midst of trying to scratch things off said list, I have squeezed in loads of laundry at every moment possible.  On Thursday morning I got Kira to the bus-stop at 6:20 and saw Chase off at 7:35.  I did a load of colors in between.  Just before running Seth to school at 8:45, I threw in the last load of darks and piled all of the whites in the house in front of the washer.  Considering the fact that I couldn’t breathe and I was functioning on about 3 hours of sleep, I felt pretty accomplished to have only 1 load of  laundry left to do.  While sipping my 2nd cup of coffee and enjoying the quiet in the house, I heard a CRASH in the laundry room.  The dogs cried and hid behind me and I thought for a second that someone had entered the house while I was driving Seth to school. I entered the laundry room and suddenly I could breathe.  An entire gallon of bleach had fallen off the top of the washer and busted all over my load of whites.  How amazing is that?!  They might just be the whitest whites I’ve ever washed.  I kept thinking that it was my lucky day.

I painted the girls’ room (purple) and my dear Charity helped me get all of their furniture set up and the beds made.  All the while, I kept thinking about that load of whites.  I could breathe while in the presence of the bleach.  The clothes were as white as freshly fallen snow.

This morning I awoke with that load of whites still lingering in my thoughts and scriptures learned long ago playing over and over again in the background.

David’s prayer.  Psalm 51:6-7, 10

“Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow … Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

Isaiah 1:18

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD.  Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

The simplest truths.  The greatest truths.  God’s grace is so much more powerful than a gallon of bleach.  I want David’s prayer to be my daily prayer.  I’ve screwed up monumentally in my life and daily I am humbled by the fact that God’s grace is bigger than my screw-ups.  Yesterday may have been a lucky day, but the day I accepted that grace was, by far, my luckiest day.

“…Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

steadfast, stedfast [ˈstɛdfəst -ˌfɑːst]adj

2. unwavering or determined in purpose, loyalty, etc.

Yep.  I want David’s prayer to be my daily prayer.

“Gratitude, thankfulness, or appreciation is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive.” – taken from Wikipedia (because I liked their definition better than dictionary.com’s)

A few days ago I sat down and read Roger Ebert’s story.  Like many Americans born in the wake of Vietnam, I grew up wanting his job.  I can remember waking up ridiculously early on Friday mornings just to hear him and Gene Siskel tell me what movies were worth my $3 or $4 that week. At some point in the early eighties, I watched the two of them in an interview discussing their film-watching rituals and how they managed to squeeze in 10-20 films each and every week.  Even if I often disagreed with their opinions, the fact that they got paid to watch movies all day still made them two of the coolest people on television.  To this day, film critic is still pretty high on my list of things I want to be when I grow up.

Several years ago I heard that Roger Ebert had cancer.  I think I simply filed that information somewhere in my brain’s card catalog and responded with an, “Oh,  isn’t that sad.”

To be honest, I thought he died.  Then a couple of weeks ago, I heard a stranger say in passing, “Did you see Roger Ebert on Oprah yesterday.”  To which a 2nd stranger responded, “Yes!  Thyroid cancer is awful!  Can you believe how terrible he looks?!”  1st stranger, “And he’ll never talk or eat again! Can you imagine?!” 

My head was spinning.  I came home and Googled him and sure enough, he had thyroid cancer.  And….he looked awful.  And…he’ll never eat or speak again.  And….he had the exact same kind of cancer as me.

Papillary carcinoma.  That’s the ugly name.  I had people tell me that it’s the “Cadillac of cancers”.  There’s no such thing.  I had 7 tumors.  The largest was 4.2 cm.  You know what the difference is between my cancer and Mr. Ebert’s?  Mine grew down under my collar-bone and his grew up into his jaw-bone.  That’s it. His wasn’t bigger or different in any other way.  It was still papillary carcinoma and it simply grew in a different direction.

I feel immense gratitude.  I say often that I am blessed beyond measure and I have more things in my life to be thankful for than I could possibly even begin to count.  I am still in the process of writing an entire book on my healing and I hope that there is never a single day when I fail to acknowledge that my life is a miracle.

This week I became thankful for a different blessing. You see…  I am rather fond of my face.  I sincerely like food.  And… I LOVE to talk.

So to add to my list of blessings, I am now grateful for cancer cells growing down instead of up.

I just wanted to give a quick update on Seth’s school situation.  Today he brought home another letter from the principal.  This one stated:

“Today I had the opportunity to consult with Mrs…(the assistant superintendent) and Ms….(the director of special education) regarding the timing of your appeal, the appeal process, and subsequent communications that would occur regarding this issue.  Since the whole process would most likely take us into a window of time at the end of a school year when moving a student does not occur, with their agreement, I am permitted to approve your son remaining at Stratford Landing Elementary School through the remainder of the school year.”

The people she mentioned are individuals that I emailed over the weekend and I received an email from one of this morning apologizing for the principal’s behavior on behalf of Fairfax County.

I’m trying not to gloat…..It’s not easy.

This morning, before the email from the county or the letter from the principal, I read Isaiah 54:9-10

“This exile is just like the days of Noah for me: I promised then that the waters of Noah would never again flood the earth. I’m promising now no more anger,no more dressing you down. For even if the mountains walk away and the hills fall to pieces, My love won’t walk away from you,my covenant commitment of peace won’t… fall apart.” The God who has compassion on you says so.”

Those were the exact words that I needed to hear.

Thanks to everyone who has offered up prayer and encouragement.

Thanks to God for having compassion on me and for making a covenant commitment of peace with me.