You know how some people have meticulously organized drawers and closets, while others have meticulously clean countertops and furniture? Well, my drawers and closets are pretty organized.
I wish I could jump up and click my heels together right now! Heck, I may just go in the backyard and practice.
Things have been moving along with the adoption process, but we have been really stressed about where all the money was going to come from. We’ve had a yard sale and I’m planning a gold party and we’re selling our vehicles and paying cash for two used ones at a government auction. But all of that, doesn’t come close to meeting the total expenses and we firmly believe that God does not want us to go in debt in order to bring our daughter home.
Romans 13:8 Owe nothing to any man except love…
With that in mind, we have felt our faith tested daily. How is God going to provide the 12-15 thousand dollars that this process is going to cost? Well, last night’s FPU lesson (see link on sidebar) was on insurance. We were planning to do the “Buyer Beware” lesson and thanks to our friend Ebony, we did the insurance lesson instead. All I can say, is that it was a huge awakening for me and I woke up this morning itching to straighten out our insurance coverage. In less than an hour, I tripled my own life insurance (despite having cancer in the past 5 years), got additional coverage on Kira, Chase and Seth, cut our monthly premiums in HALF, and cashed out more than $5000 that is going directly towards bringing Ana-Sophia home! I want to cry! I want to dance! I want to fall on my knees and praise God!
Philippians 4:19 And my God will meet ALL your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
If he has brought us this far and provided so much, who am I to doubt that He will provide the rest?
The title of this post is a simple description of the speed at which life is taking place these days. It seems like I just wrote about preparing to move and we have now been in the new house for nearly two weeks. Let me first tell you about the house. We didn’t really want to move, but we were in a leased house and the owner decided that he wanted to move back in. That left us frantically searching for a house in the same school district just before school started. The house we are in seemed perfect when we found it and to be honest, we were just relieved to know we had a place to move to that would not uproot our kids from the local schools. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great house and I think that we will be very comfortable here. But, there are quite a few kinks to work out before the comfort can begin. The whole house has wiring issues and we keep having power outages in different areas. When the power is working, we have no phone, cable or internet. We have had contractors here for all of the past 10 days and it hasn’t gotten much better. If you’re praying for us. We need the wiring straightened out. I am rather fond of modern conveniences like, oh say, electricity.
On the adoption front, we have changed home-study agencies and we could not be happier with that decision. It was taking Catholic Charities 10-14 days to return our phone calls and the final straw was when the director said, “Oh, don’t worry. There’s no hurries. It’s okay if it takes a couple of months to get through this.” No! It’s not okay! There is a hurry! We have a daughter in Belgrade, Serbia that we would like to bring home as soon as possible. We are now using the Datz Foundation and the people there are amazingly positive and seem to be working just for us at the moment. They came with a great recommendation from our friends who have adopted internationally 3 times and they are so excited to be working with a family that is adopting independently. Within a week of contacting the Datz Foundation, our contact in Serbia asked if we thought we would be able to complete the adoption by the end of the year. We don’t see how it could possibly happen, but “With God, ALL things are possible.” (Matt 19:26).
The two other big happenings in the Calvaresi household are Chad’s promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and Chase’s surgery (more on that in a second). After 20 years of protecting freedom and complaining about “The Man”, he became a part of that so called man on Nov. 1st. I am so proud of the amazing Godly husband and father that he is and I am so impressed with his unwavering strength and focus. I met him more than 20 years ago and he told me that he would be right where he is today…married to me, fathering my children, and serving as an LTC at the age of 38. Pretty impressive, if you ask me!
He worked hard to get here!
Tomorrow we are celebrating his accomplishments with about 50 of our friends at our new place (Hope the power stays on!)
Chase is our 12 year old son. He will be 13 in March and he is a great blend of Chad and myself. He has that same unwavering focus that his Dad has and he has my big soft heart and loud mouth. About a year ago, he started complaining about a knot on the back of his neck. We thought it was just a cyst. Well, it’s gotten bigger and it started bothering him when he turns his head. It is right on top of his spine. Long story short, we ended up at Walter Reed this week, he had his pre-op today, and they are removing whatever it is on Monday morning. We have to be in north DC at 5am (yuck!) They want to do general anesthesia because they think it is embedded and it feels pretty solid, so it can’t be a cyst.
We love this little man.
Please just pray for God to guide the hands of the surgeons, for him to do okay with the anesthesia, and for our entire family to have peace until it’s over.
In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. Psalm 5:3
I’m off to bed. I have A LOT of mouths to feed tomorrow.
Tomorrow will mark the one month mark since Ana-Sophia came into our lives. I just hope that the waiting continues to go by at this speed. Our life has been so crazy this past month. It took a couple of weeks to find a home-study agency, fill out the initial paperwork, and pay the deposit to start that process. I’ve ordered our birth certificates and 2 copies of our marriage license for the dossier and we have appointments for our medical evaluations. At the moment, we are kind of frozen in the home-study. We are preparing to move a couple of miles away in 2 weeks and they cannot do the actual home visits until we get settled at the new house.
We are also trying to sell both of our vehicles. Catholic Charities is doing the home-study and the director called us early last week to “warn” us that the USCIS agent for our area is a real stickler on finances. She also said that she may not issue a visa for a special needs child to a family who already has a special needs child unless we can prove that we have substantial net income. UGGHHHH!!! Who does this woman think she is? Chad will be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on Nov. 1st (huge raise), I just started working as a real estate agent in one of the top real estate markets in the country, and we have excellent credit. All of that aside, just to be safe, we are eliminating every bill that we possibly can. Since both of our cars are financed, getting rid of them was a logical choice. We have enough equity in them to take the profit and go to a government auction and pay cash for 2 almost new vehicles. We started leading a Financial Peace University (see sidebar) group in our home the week before Ana-Sophia found us. God does work in funny ways ;)! He has used her as a great motivator and at this rate we will eliminate about 5 times the average amount of debt eliminated by people participating in FPU.
Romans 13:8 “Owe nothing to anyone…except love.”
When we do finally bring Ana home, we want to be able to say that we owe nothing to anyone…except love (and deep gratitude to those of you who are being supportive emotionally, spiritually, physically, and financially.)
Looks like I’m setting sail in the sea of bloggers.
After almost 16 years of marriage (Aghhh! Are we really that old?), Chad and I have decided to complete our little tribe. When Kira was born on Christmas of 1994, we decided that we wanted an even number of children. We weren’t sure if that meant 2 or 4, but when Chase came along in 1997, it seemed like our family might be done. Then…in 2000, while we were living in Korea, God gave us Seth. In the 9 years since Seth’s birth, we have dealt with many challenges. Seth wasn’t like Kira or Chase and it took several years of beating down doors and seeking answers in order for us to learn that he is autistic. We were told just before his 4th birthday that he may never communicate verbally and that he may never be toilet-trained (SCARY!). We were also told that he may never be able to participate in a mainstream classroom environment. He proved “them” wrong by overcoming obstacle after obstacle and we are proud to say that he is now thriving and making honor roll in a mainstream 3rd grade classroom.
As soon as we knew that Seth was getting what he needed in school and at home, we started discussing the 4th child. There were many talks about adoption and we even narrowed it down to international and possibly a child from the Balkans. We joined a Balkan adoption group on Yahoo a couple of years ago, but were really just stalkers on the group page until now.
Isaiah 43:5 "Do not be afraid for I am with you. I will bring your children from the East and gather you from the West."
On Sept. 17th, I opened an email from someone in the group announcing that there were waiting children from the Balkans collected on one web page. It was the first email that I had opened from them in almost 2 years. I went to the page and as I scrolled down, I came across this precious little girl named Ana-Sophia who has been diagnosed with developmental delays and autism. One look, and she was ours. After 4 agonizing days of trying to figure out how we could financially pull off an international adoption, we sat together and Chad prayed. He asked God to show us clearly where the finances would come from. Two hours later, I got an email from the same girl who sent the link to Ana-Sophia announcing that there was a $750 grant available to help us with her adoption. We took that as an answer. If God is going to provide to start the process, He will provide to finish it.
So…this blog will be our link to those who are interested in following our process. I feel as though I’ve been drinking in adoption information from a fire hose for the past 3 weeks, but everything I learn just gets me more excited and brings me more peace in this decision.
Lux, Libertas 