This adoption journey has driven my to Sudoku!

Let me just explain to you. I do not like strategy games!! I don't even like card games that require thinking. It drives me nuts how people can keep track of what cards have been played and what cards are still out there that can be played. It ruins some great talking time with friends. :) I play these games to be polite. Sometimes I even play a hand well.:) I feel I have to apologize to my partner before we start a new round if I don't know them very well. I like to read books. A great day on a cold wintery day is a cup of coffee, soft blanket and a wonderful book! Obviously that is not possible very often anymore. Quite frankly there are times now that I just don't want to read. I can't focus or the book just seems so trivial or the ones about adoption seem pointless when I really don't have confidence we will ever adopt.
I have two boys that love strategy games. They have been in chess clubs and played in tournaments. If we get together with friends as families and play card games, my one son has done better than some of the adults. He also likes Sudoku. For Christmas in 2009 he was given one of those desk calendars that has a Sudoku to do each day. Saturday and Sunday were always very easy, Monday and Tuesday were always easy, Wednesday and Thursday were always Medium level and Friday was hard level. My son wanted me to try one so like a good mother I sat down and let him show me a few tricks that might help me. Of course we started with the very easy. After a few lessons I was able to do it. I was thrilled! So I decided to try an easy one. With more help from my son, I could do this one too. I tried a medium, but that was too much. I kept doing them. I found myself looking forward to them. My son was nice enough to let me do the easy ones from his calendar. One day I started questioning my sanity. Why was I enjoying Sudoku?! But I realized something. When I was doing Sudoku the only thing I thought about was numbers. If the nine is here, here and here, then a nine must go here too! I wasn't thinking about the adoption. :) For the last three years my head has been full of many issues. The highlights are: What country should we adopt from? How much longer until Jan. 1, 2010? When will the Maoist stop their force strike? Well, maybe April 15th the Nepal government will take our dossier. Will the Prime Minister resign and then we will have to wait for a new Prime Minister to be appointed to see anyone's paper work start being processed again? When will my paper work officially be accepted by the government? When will the wait to be officially waiting, start? Will we have to renew our homestudy that will expire on Sept. 15, 2010? When will my I-797 come? If we get the paper work we need on this date then maybe by this date we can be DTC. Ugh!
I very rarely enjoy a good book anymore. It seems so hard to start such a long book. I know that I could be reading books to prepare for adoption, but why read them if adoption is never going to happen. I just struggle to focus on something that takes a long time to do. I feel restless at times. I know that I have more work to do on paper work, but what do you do when you have to wait on other people? But a Sudoku can be done over a short period of time. It keeps my hands busy when there is no paper work to do and I am just waiting. I can enter the world of numbers and stop the maddening questions and unknown circumstances happening around me. Guess what? I even can do Medium level now. Yesterday I did my very first hard level. Ahhhh!!! What is happening to me? I need to be DTC soon. Maybe that will stop this madness.

My Blog Friends

I have thought about this post for awhile. I have been concerned with how I might come across to people. But I decided that since my focus is on failed adoptions, most of my audience will understand.
Most of the blogs I follow are families that have experienced failed adoptions. (Not all. I have several that have brought their children home and they give valuable info of what to expect.) I go to my blog friends and read words that bring comfort because I usually can relate to their posts. Sometimes it is such a relief to know I am not alone in what I am feeling or how I am acting. I check almost everyday to see how their journey is going. I am so thankful for each one of my blog friends. I feel a connection even though I have never met them. I have wonderful local friends who have been a great support to me. I need these people in my life and I am so thankful for them, but they don't understand they way my blog friends do. The blogs I follow, we all come from different backgrounds, are families that have gone through similar things, but I can not claim to understand all they have gone through. I will never know some of the pain that they have experienced, but one thing we have in common. We all have a child that was born in our hearts years ago. There is an ache in our heart that will not heal until we are united with this child. Let me explain. My life is rich and full and I want to enjoy life to the fullest. I have joy and peace, yet there is a pain there that I can not explain. It is not there all the time and the further away I get from the failed adoption the less the ache. Sometimes out of the blue though it is like a sucker punch in my stomach.
There is really no guarantee that we will ever get to this child. I know of families that after Nepal closed they could not financially change countries. I pray that they are finding healing, but will the ache completely go away? I know that this will be it for us if this 2nd adoption would fail. You see we can't afford to wait years for an adoption to work and I am not talking about just the financial aspect. We have 4 boys ages 17, 14, 13 and 9 that anxiously await a little sister. At the same time we can't continue to put our life on hold for much longer. We hold vacation time so we can travel to adopt. This is the last year we can do this. As hard as it is for me to believe, my boys will all be moving on in their own life soon. We need to build more family memories. I pray it will be with our little girl, but if not, we must go on. We hold off on braces for two of them until our paper work is final so we don't mess up our financial status. We have an empty room that I need to know what to do with. We had just moved boys to a new room in the basement one week before Nepal closed. Right now their old room is just collecting stuff. If it will not be a room for our daughter than I am sure we can put it to better use than a storage room. There are hard decisions that have to be made on this journey. I have read the hard decisions others have had to make and reading their words help ground me and put things into prospective.
Our family is now adopting from China, but right now I just don't feel like trying to connect with new China blogs that are in process. I don't mean to sound harsh, but if a family has only been in process or adopted from a country that is working "smoothly" (I say this a bit tongue and cheek) and following a working plan, I just don't feel a strong connection. I pray someday I will be enjoying the excitement of adoption, but right now I just can't bring myself to join a forum or read new blogs. I don't feel like I can explain this without sounding pathetic or offending someone. I hope someone can relate to this. Maybe someone can explain my emotions better than me.:) I will follow China blogs of those who were adopting from Nepal, so for now this is where I will get info that I need for the future.
If you have experienced a failed adoption or a very long wait with a lot of unknowns that is reading this and you don't have a blog I follow, what is your story? I would love to hear it.
To all my blog friends: thanks for being real and sharing your heart! You have touched mine deeply. I hope someday I will meet some of you. I know several of you have talked with me about getting together after we have been united with our child. I long for the day that I read on your blog that you have been referred a child and have brought them home. I want to celebrate with you even if I never get to my child.

What is it with the letters?

When we were involved with Nepal adoption program it had not developed a system of doing adoptions yet. We had 3 simple things that we hoped for. We waited for our number to tell us where we were in the order of submitting our dossier, (which really didn't matter because they gave referrals in whatever order they wanted to) for our referral and then travel approval. We never got past step one. We were number 13 for 2010. We were so excited. I had a friend give me a card with a picture of a very excited lady with the number 13 all around her. I think that is when I dropped my guard and started really believing that I was adopting from Nepal. Then it came to a crashing halt.
When I started with the China program I started to see all these letters. DTC, PA, LOA, LOI, LID, etc. I now know what they mean the the order they are suppose to come in. I hope that I can check each one off as we go along. The crisis in Ethiopia is a reminder that you just don't know what might happen next on this journey. I am seeing people in the China program going through these letters, but from someone who knows that anything could happen along the way, I still have my guard up. I let my gurad down before. I want to believe that this system of the China program is working, but it is scary. All I really care about is that TA! But I will play this game. (that is sure what it feels like)

I was very excited to hear that friend of mine who has family adopting from Ethiopia just received their court date. It is March 19th! Praise God! It is so good to hear that there is some movement. I pray each day for Ethiopia. I think too often we can get in our own little world when it comes to adoption. We can not ignore what is happening in other countries. We just can't do that. It could be our country that is affected next.
Friday we go for our fingerprints for the 2nd time. This week I want to get our local back ground checks done for the 3rd time. I also need to get a letter from employers for the 2nd time. I will keep plugging away on my list and hopefully mid April I will be taking two road trips. One to Indy to get our certifications done and then on to Chicago to get everything authenticated. Then I can start the game with the wonderful letters.

Both Ends Burning

A New System of International Adoption from Both Ends Burning on Vimeo.

If you have wondered just what this group is all about and if you should support them, here is a video you have to watch! 

Why?!

I read a very disturbing article. Why is this happening? It makes me sick, angry and overwhelmed. You see blogs that advocate for the children in China that are aging out of the system or have special needs. I want to advocate for the children that are sitting in orphanages who either are having to wait years to be adopted or will never have a chance to be adopted because of the continued trend of closing countries or slowing things down so that "corruption" can be investigated. Who is to blame? That is a very complicated question. There are people that feel that this trend is a good thing. I posted on this several days ago. So those of you that want to try and educate me on the damage that international adoption is to these children, please don't waste your time. I understand your concerns and I want to see the children protected. I think you will agree with this statement. International adoption system as it is functioning right now is broken. There is an organization that is working to change the laws of international adoption. Please check them out. I plan on devoting another blog post with some research information.
I will leave you with these questions. Why is it that a child in Guatemala has waited 3 years to be united with his forever family and there is no end in sight? Why is it that families involved in the Philippians have to wait over 2 years for a referral? Why do families have to spend thousands of dollars on lawyer fees to try and prove that a child is a "legal" orphan? Why is it that a family just went through a failed adoption with Nepal and now is faced with the problems of Ethiopia that will slow it down or close adoptions from this country? This family is a part of the Ethiopia program and they need your help.
Most of the blogs I follow either have faced failed adoption or extreme waiting for their child to be referred to them or both. It breaks my heart. People who support what is happening in the adoption world think that it is a good thing for the children. How could spending the first 14 years of your life in an institution and then being kicked out on your own to face the world alone be a good thing for them? I want to make a difference in the life of one child, but I also want to raise awareness for the children left behind in this crisis.

7 Months ago...

It has been 7 months now since I received the call from my case worker informing me that adoptions from Nepal were suspended. I still remember sitting down in the nearest chair in shock. My husband was home and was working in the garage and he saw me crying and left the door open so he could see in. He kept working, but knew that it was not good the news I was getting. I remember just sitting in the living room together after the phone call, just numb asking so many "why" questions. We needed to go to the store to buy a wedding present and we walked around the store so apathetic. We had lost a lot of money and had been so carefully saving for the last half of the adoption costs. We just wondered what was the point of saving anymore. We thought, "let's just make a big purchase." Saving didn't matter anymore, right? We only walked out with a cd each. Why I even brought it I didn't know. Music is a big part of my life and that day it just died and I didn't listen to my regular music for a month. That cd I bought was completely different than what I usually listen to. I really didn't care about it and it was days later until I listened to it. It became all I listened to. It had a song that put words to my grief. I listened to it over and over again. I thank God for bringing this song to me when He knew I needed it, when all other music died in my heart.



Today I went out and got the newspaper and realized I didn't get Saturday's mail. How wonderful to find what I found in that mail box on a day that brings back memories of the pain. Getting this piece of mail is pushing me to look to the future. The pain of the past will be there and it is a part of this journey, but this journey is not over. Thanks God for the reminder. I just mailed on Feb. 18th our I-800a form. Today's piece of mail was from USCIS and it had our fingerprint appointment! I have been praying that it would at least be scheduled before the end of the month. Our appointment is for March 18th!! If you know anything about the adoption world, then you understand that this is huge. Nothing moves very quick with government agencies, but this did.

When you experience a failed adoption you look at things alittle differently than you did the first time around. You don't know whether you can trust the process to really work. You don't want to get your hopes up to have your heart broken again. You feel you have to guard your heart. You see things are working right now, but you know from past experience that tomorrow could bring bad news that you never expected. Every little thing going right gives your emotions a boost in the right direction. So I will enjoy today even though when I woke up this morning my heart was heavy and even though tomorrow could bring bad news. My heart is a little lighter right now. I will choose to enjoy this moment.

Somewhere

I recently went to a Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant concert. When I heard this song I thought of our journey to our daughter and the many families that I know who are waiting for their child. When I heard the first verse, I thought of all the families that have gone and met their child and had to say goodbye for any number of reasons. Some have to go home and wait for the paper work to be finished and they don't know if it will be weeks or months until they hold their child again. Some leave, like the many Nepal families, wondering if the government will ever grant their request for a visa. It breaks my heart to think of the many families still waiting for their Nepalese children.
Some of us have experienced a failed adoption and we continue on this wait for our child. I love some of the phrases in this song, "I will find a way to find you, a heart that is waiting, it may take some time, I'll wait for you."
This is dedicated to all the families that are waiting to find their child and bring them home. The wait has been much longer than any of us expected, but may we find the courage to continue on.