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Questions 2:

How did you decide on Ethiopia?

I swear everytime we are asked this question now Eddie and I look at each other, than back to the person, than back to each other – searching our eyes for who will give in and talk this time.  I love the story, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a long one and it’s all about a God who is bigger than us and knows how to give us the desires of our hearts, even when we don’t know what they are.  That’s not something you can explain with a list of pros and cons.  It’s not something you can sum up in a crazy sentence like, we just always wanted to.  And it’s not something that makes sense… to a lot of people.

Here’s what I wrote to a handful of girlfriends when Eddie and I finally made the decision:

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“SOOOO….. Eddie and I have decided to adopt from Ethiopia!!!

I know some of you have heard me express my silly expectation that decisions like these seemed like a sort of Christian magic trick – husband and wife go pray on their own and then they come back together completely united with one answer that God has laid on their hearts.  I know some of you have also heard how far from this story I felt like Ed and I would deviate.  No surprise there – we couldn’t at times be more opposite!  Because of this, we were ever so careful to take our time with any conversation about adoption we might have.  We tried hard to be kind and patient with each other, keeping our defenses down.  Yet, at the end of the day, we were still on opposite paths, not quite sure how to reconcile our differing feelings.  I wanted to go the International route, he wanted to privately adopt and both of us had mixed feelings about the fost-adopt system.  We weren’t sold on our particular paths 100%, but we weren’t sure as to how to arrive at the final decision!

I finally began to realize that I needed to trust my husband.  I needed to leave this decision in God’s hands, and He was in charge of my husband!  I wanted to be on this journey with Eddie, side by side, but I needed to give him the final say, the lead.  Once I entrusted him with this leadership things began to change quickly.  Ed took control over our conversation and prayer.  We began to be more intentional and excited.  We both seemed to loosen up and to let go of our fears.  We grew closer to each other and had a renewed trust in God’s hand in our lives and family.  In fact, we were so trusting that we really had no idea what form of adoption we wanted to chase after anymore – everything seemed like a possibility!  Hang – ups were gone and our minds were open to God’s will.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had my heart in his hands that week, I was so peaceful about WHATEVER decision Eddie would make for us in the end.

The next week Ed and I went out to coffee and he started talking about International adoption and all these blogs he’d been stalking for information and stories.  (yes, my husband became a blog-stalker for a few weeks!)  As he was talking I began to notice that I had been preparing my heart for the possibility of private adoption and had completely let go of the idea of adopting Internationally.  I almost didn’t want him to say what I had a feeling was coming next – ‘Ellie, I want to adopt from Africa’.  In the moment I couldn’t believe what he was saying, and I couldn’t believe that he was so sure about it!  This was it, this was his decision, but I was soooo ready for something else!  I even asked him if he wanted to take a day to think about it J In retrospect, I realize how crazy that must have sounded to him after close to 8 months of consideration.

A few weeks later I am astounded at God’s work – and how recognizable it is!  He calls us to lay down our lives as living sacrifices, to die to ourselves so we might live.  It was when I let go completely that He took control and took Eddie and I on a journey that resulted in the desires of our heart!  I want everyone to know that He really does listen, that He really is there to guide us and to point us to His will.   I do not doubt that God took us by the hand and lead us straight onto the path we are now on.  Though I may need reminders of this along the way, He truly is a good and loving God!

I thought you all should know that : ) “

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Our decision becomes sweeter every time we look back at where God brought us.  There are so many forms of adoption out there – and we truly considered each one.  Hear me clearly on this:

There is not one form of adoption that is better than another.

There is no list of pros and cons.

There is no child that is more in need of “help”.

There is however a child that is waiting for us right now, and God continues to be ever so faithful in shaping and stretching us – our boundaries our marriage our comfort our trust – in bringing us to this child.  That is the child that He has in mind, the child that is already changing our lives in so many ways for the better.  And we can’t wait to meet this baby!

When Eddie and I started this process of adoption we also unknowingly signed on for official posts at the question/answer police headquarters.  I suppose it’s something to expect when you have people in your life that care about you and want to know what’s going on – it’s just – when you find yourself answering the same questions multiple times, some of them with very difficult and long answers, you start to think about these questions in a different light.  I am convinced that every question we’ve ever received has been asked out of a heart of love us and care for what we’ve been up to and will be up to in building our family.  Yet at times having to answer for concerns that are not normally asked during a pregnancy can make you begin to wonder why everyone feels the need to know, to be satisfied that somehow we’ve thought things through and it’s all going to be alright – and that is the beginning of some pretty ugly bitterness and self doubt that drains a soul in a process like this.

I’m writing this to get some of that out of my system and stop it from ever growing into something bigger than just a beginning.  I want to answer some of the most common questions and some of the hardest.

(but seriously, after that large explanation, I am grateful for all your questions : ) You guys keep us on our toes and you keep us feeling very loved.  We are both so grateful for the support of all our friends and family, and even strangers who make our day with a smile and a word of encouragement.  I am so very grateful for the way this baby is being loved even before it arrives!!)

Question 1:

Don’t you want to have your own kids?

This question was asked in many different forms when Eddie and I first announced that we were having trouble having children on our own and had subsequently decided to adopt.  This form was probably the most blunt, but I think it points most directly to the fear/concern behind the asker.  Yes!  We totally wanted to have our own kids – we actually had not thought for a second about adoption when we made our little requests for a child known to God as we practically whispered to each other,

‘I think we should start trying to get pregnant’

‘….ok’.

(P.S. Eddie was the one that wanted it first!)  We tried for over a year before we went in to a Kaiser Fertility Clinic.

We kept this portion of our lives fairly hidden – at least the details – for a long time and I’m glad we did.  There was no need to pull public opinion on this one, just the two of us talking with God about what to do next.  Unlike some fertility issues that you can never quite put your finger on, ours was made apparent within about a 3 month span from our first contact with a receptionist at the Kaiser office to the last in a private meeting with a fertility specialist.  We did ultimately have to make a decision between going through with IVF (and if you don’t know what that is you can look it up cause I’m not going to explain it on here) or adoption to have children.  The question seemed to center here: just because we can, does it mean we should?  It took us a long time.  About 6 months of waiting, praying, keeping conversations light so we didn’t argue, or worse, come to a standstill in disagreement about our future.

In the end it was fairly simple, one direction seemed to become less and less a thing that we could picture ourselves doing and the other seemed to be something we became increasingly excited about.   We let go of old visions for our life and children, we let go of the fear of the unknown and we embraced a totally new idea of family that God had put in our path.  We want to have kids – we want to have the kids God gives us, however they may come, and we couldn’t be more sure about that!

More questions to come…..

Raising a puppy is hard work.  Really hard work.  Raising a Siberian Husky puppy…. is harder.  They will test you to no end and proclaim of their power to every living thing in the house.  We worked so hard to keep this puppy in line, to teach him to mind, to give him a schedule and mold him into the perfect dog.  Oh yes, we worshiped at the feet of Caesar Milan’s Dog Whispering techniques.  Calm assertive pack leaders to the max.  To cut Kingsley some slack though, he is adorable, soft, and the funniest talking dog you’ve ever seen.  He has seriously been our “child project” for the last year and half as we’ve learned how to be responsible to something that utterly depends on you to be there for it and to train it to do the right things.  We have had arguments over discipline methods, we have learned to follow a schedule with dog walking, feeding, crating, we have learned how to love the thing that steals our time and freedom and at times even the thing that upsets us most.

This Christmas, we had to give away our Dog.  By now I feel as if I’ve had to explain it five million times over – but really – it’s boiled down to the fact that as hard as we’ve worked, he’s just not a dog for small children – and we happen to be expecting one very soon.  We’ve found a good home for him with a previous Siberian Husky owner who recently lost his older Husky to a tumor.  I am fairly certain that Kingsley fell in love with him at first sight.  However, this transition hit me like a ton of bricks.  I had no idea it was going to be this hard to give him away.   For as many months as I’ve thought and planned and talked about it happening, it never really clicked until the first night he was gone.  I was a sobbing mess – and I was sick so my husband can tell you how fun that must have been for the comforting front.  I really, severely, misjudged my emotional capability to survive the release of this dog.  I just wanted to run over to their house and steal him back.

I know it was hard on me because he was the closest thing we had to a child of our own and our house just felt so empty.  However, there is a part of me that keeps treating Kingsley like a person and I felt so much pain for him in his confusion – with a new owner, a new house, never allowed to see us and his familiar routines again.  He would be forced to forget about us and I didn’t like it.  I know I’m getting deep into dog psychology here, but this is what happens when you think too much and your children are dogs and cats.

And still, I can’t help but think about the state of my child and his/her family at this time.  We’re getting so close, this could be the exact same month that his mother and/or father had to give him away.  Going through this process with our dog has opened my eyes to just the tip of that large iceberg of grief a mother must endure in having to give up her child for adoption.  I don’t yet know the story of our child, and there are so many reasons why he or she is an orphan, but I do have a heart at this time for his parents.  I am praying for their story, for their grief and their pain.  I am praying that God will be there to comfort them and offer peace.  I am praying that somehow, they would feel the love we have to offer their little baby, and they would be filled with God’s grace.

We’ll miss you Kingsley!