How did I get here? (Part 2)

Adoption was not on our radar when we said yes to hosting. 

I think it’s important to emphasize that the goal of hosting (at least as it is facilitated through our organization, New Horizons For Children) is NOT ultimately adoption.  The majority of the children that are hosted are not even cleared for adoption.  Only about 10% of hosted children are eventually adopted.

We didn’t know if these children were cleared to be adopted, and we decided before they came that we wouldn’t ask.  Six weeks seemed like enough of a challenge.  As a family we decided that after the hosting period was over, we would consider if God was leading us towards anything else.

Honestly, I expected my answer to be no.

I already know that I am capable of loving a child who is not biologically mine as my very own.  There is a young man we would have adopted in a heartbeat had it been possible, and he was as dear to me as the four I’d given birth to.  In that situation it was not meant to be, and he has since withdrawn emotionally from us.  I grieve that loss and there is not a day that passes I do not pray for him and wish for our relationship to be restored.  So yes, I know I could love an adopted child.  That was not the source of my hesitation.

Mostly, I was comfortable.  I’ve been having and raising children for a couple of decades now, and while I’m nowhere near an empty nest, the last year or so have afforded me some freedom that I haven’t had since about 1994.  Katie and Mackenzie are grown and mostly on their own. Elijah is a senior and is quite independent. Eleanor and Constance are still home but are old enough and capable enough to fend for themselves when necessary.  Even homeschooling doesn’t require my constant, undivided attention anymore.  Dan and I can have date nights.  I can go grocery shopping alone.  One afternoon each week, the kids leave home after lunch and I am in my house ALL BY MYSELF.  I’ve  daydreamed a bit about going back to work in a few years, maybe even getting my MSW.  I almost went into social work instead of law, and I think I would be great at it.  I’ve had a lot of fun imagining what my second act was going to look like, and I was going to be the star of the show. 

It's ironic to me that when I was smack dab in the middle of the motherhood mayhem, when I felt like I had no identity beyond diapering, homeschooling, cooking, cleaning and chauffeuring, when I had to retreat to the laundry room in the basement for alone time…that’s when my “yes” was immediate.  That’s when I would have added one or more without hesitation.  But now when I had more time and resources to give, I found myself a little reluctant to share.

Comfort can be as addictive as a powerful drug.  And once we are hooked on our own comfort, it becomes increasingly difficult to notice or care about the discomfort of those in the world around us.

I’m grateful that God didn’t let me go there.  Because while this journey is most certainly uncomfortable, it is also thrilling, joy filled, and rewarding.  Not only have we received the gift of having these three amazing kids in our lives, we have been introduced to other incredible, interesting, and generous people who probably would never have crossed our path.  We have experienced the blessing of complete strangers who have volunteered their time and given their money to help us with expenses.  Our family has been challenged and stretched, and our faith and relationships are stronger from it.  And Lord willing, Dan and I will have the opportunity to visit a part of the world that we almost certainly would never have chosen on our own.

Comfort is overrated.

How did I get here? (Part 1)

How did I get here?  I’ve been asking myself that question a lot recently…usually when I am shuffling stacks of papers and responding to an inbox full of emails about hosting, home studies and fundraising ideas. 

This time last year, I could not have imagined that we would be undertaking the adoption of three children from Eastern Europe.  We were in one of those sweet spots of life when the seas are fairly calm and the skies are mostly sunny.  I have lived long enough to know that those times are brief, so I was breathing deep and enjoying the peace.  I expected that change was on the horizon, but I could never have predicted that it would look like this.

In the spring of 2017, when our friends shared that they were planning to host a sibling group from Eastern Europe, I knew their hearts were in the right place, but I honestly had a lot of questions about the concept of “orphan hosting.”  Our family has done foster care, both long term and short term, so the idea of having kids from hard places in our home wasn’t an issue for me.  What concerned me was the impact that bringing orphans into American families for a summer and then sending them back would have on them.  I am by no means an expert on cross-cultural experiences, but through my daughters’ international mission work, I have learned that many things we do as Americans with the best of intentions can have negative and even tragic unintended consequences when we don’t understand the culture we are trying to help.  I worried that these children would be given false hope of finding a family and would return to their home country more broken and hurt than before.  So while adoption and orphan care were issues that I cared deeply about, orphan hosting was not something that I would have ever sought to be involved in. 

Perhaps one of these days I will learn that when I think I have things all figured out, God will lovingly, but not necessarily gently, put me in my place and remind me that I’m not in charge.

Fast forward to the spring of 2018, and our same friends are advocating to find a host family for this sibling group for the coming summer.  Dan and I have a lot of conversations that go like this:

Dan: Did you see where Glenna posted about those kids needing a host family for the summer?

Me:  I saw it, but didn’t really read it.

Dan:  I keep thinking about them.

Me: um…that’s nice.

This is very backwards from the norm in our marriage.  Usually I’m the one pleading with Dan that we are supposed to do something *unconventional* that God has laid on my heart and he is looking at me like I’m crazy.

Finally, after several weeks of this exchange, Dan persuaded me to visit the website of the hosting organization and all of the assumptions I had about orphan hosting were proved wrong. 

I was in trouble and I knew it.

The statistics for kids who age out of their orphanages in Ukr*ine are heartbreaking. Within two years of leaving the orphanage:

    Only 27% will find work

    15% will commit suicide

    40% will be homeless

    30% will become addicted to drugs

    60% of the girls will become prostitutes

    70% of the boys will turn to crime and eventually will be incarcerated

The last two statistics drop to 20% when a child has been hosted.

 The experience of living with a family and the bonds that form, even in a few weeks are enough to change lives.  Having people who love you, check in with you, and pray for you, even from an ocean away can give a child enough encouragement, confidence and hope to believe in and work for a good future for themselves. 

That alone was enough to move me from ”no” to “perhaps.”  But there was something else that had been quietly nagging at my mind and heart, and now it was wailing like a siren.

I remembered these children.

The two summers ago when they were in our area briefly, I had the occasion to meet them twice. The first time was at our friends’ home, when I took a bag of Constance’s clothes over for N.  Most of the clothes Glenna had ready for the kids were too big, and we had more than enough girls clothes to share.  The following day I saw them at the pool, which is odd because I NEVER take my kids to the pool.  That’s what older siblings are for. But there I was, sitting in the snack bar ignoring my book and watching these lovely children interact with each other.  Both of these encounters were fleeting, yet they affected me profoundly.  I was surprised by how often they would come to mind, and I am still able to recall many details about those moments.  I remembered their faces. I remembered N’s big grin and bright blue eyes and how she had her arms wrapped around Glenna the entire time I was standing in their driveway with the bag of clothes.  I remembered the older two boys, handsome but unsmiling. And I remembered the youngest boy, tiny and shy, with an impish little grin. 

When I was so skeptical about hosting, I felt sorry for these children, but I never imagined that there would be anything I could do for them beyond sharing my daughter’s clothes.  But now I was wondering if God really intended us to do more?  I started praying.  I reached out to the host families from the previous summer to learn as much as I could about their experiences with these kids.  I sent email after email to the very patient volunteer coordinator at New Horizons with questions about hosting.  My “perhaps” became a “yes” and we applied to host for the summer.  I was nervous and I knew it would be hard, but you can do anything for six weeks, right?

Stone by Stone

I broke my blogging record.  Blew it out of the water, really.  It’s now been well over a year since I posted anything here.  I write things in my head all the time, but they never make it here.  Too busy. Too tired. Too convinced that no one would be interested anyway.

But big things are happening.  Such big things. Writing helps me process how I’m feeling, so I hope this will be therapeutic.  I also want to remember this always.  How it came together, how people came alongside us, how God showed up in expected and unexpected ways.  There have already been many times that I have shaken my head in wonder at how marvelously things have been provided.  And there have already been times that my heart has been on the ground as I consider the mountains in our way.  I want to remember it all. So if anyone cares to read along, I am going to blog about our adoption journey here. 

 I wish I could promise that all my posts are going to be spiritual and encouraging, but full disclosure here: they may often be the rantings of a crazy woman because this is already overwhelming, intimidating, and expensive, and we aren’t even done with our home study yet.  There are lots of precious and lovely adoption blogs out there.  This is not likely to be one of them.

But the story that I want to share tonight is encouraging.  It’s exactly the kind of small thing that I want to remember because it is these small things that give me hope that mountains might just move.

I got an email earlier this week that we had an installment due this coming Monday of $1400 per child for our winter hosting fees. Our fundraising account has a balance of about $3200 and I was worried.  Our raffle ticket sales have been fantastic (THANK YOU to everyone who has purchased or helped sell!) but $1000 in a week seemed a pretty ambitious goal.  We hadn’t told anyone about the payment due. I hate talking about our financial need.  I hate it so much that I may complain about it in every post.  It’s a pride issue that I’m sure God will continue to work on throughout this process.  But this time we had not shared our situation.  I was worrying and praying and planning to put the rest on a credit card if we had to.

Today has felt very heavy.  The looming payment was a huge part of it, but also the thousands other details that have to be attended to.  The kids and I had to get physicals today as part of our home study…another unexpected out-of-pocket expense and half day away from all the other things that I need to be doing and already can’t keep up with.  As I was sifting through the massive pile of paperwork from our home study agency to find the physical forms, doubts were creeping into my mind:  What are we doing?  We can’t afford this.  I don’t have time to do it all.  My life is already more than I can manage.  Have we really been called to adopt, or did we just let our emotions get the better of us?  Will the mountains really move?

When Dan got the mail this evening, there was a check for $750.00 from an area church.  This is not a church that we have ever attended, but we have friends who do, and their leadership gave us a generous donation from their benevolence fund, unsolicited and in perfect timing.

I just cried.  The hosting fee installment will be covered and then some with the tickets that I expect to be returned to us this weekend.  That is an enormous relief.  But even more encouraging is the reassurance that God is right here with us, moving the mountains stone by stone.