We have a Toddler in the House!!!

Okay, so I know you're thinking...what in the world?!  She just drops us in the middle of this "going to get the baby" and leaves us hanging!!  I did.  It got complicated.  I could totally bore you with all the details but I will spare you.  Long story short...we had internet/connection problems.  Computers not charging...the whole voltage/pluggy thing/outlets.  We packed a special conversion for the outlets...didn't work.  Went and bought another...didn't work.  Yaddadda blaah blaah...anyway...

We are home and loving our little Sadie!!  She is all and more then we dreamed of!  God is good...all the time!  Yes, there are many adjustments going on but I have to say we are doing really well other then the jet-lag;)  Our kids LOVE her and yes....fight over her as well.  She is the princess in the house!

To give you a quick synopsis of our time in HK:

We picked Sadie up on Wednesday and said goodbye to the foster mom.  This was very hard and tears were shed on everyone.  Both the mom and sisters wrote letters to Sadie...oh how we will treasure those letters to share with her one day.  As we said goodbye, Stella, our social worker handed Sadie to Bob and we drove off in the car.  Tears just streaming down my face.  What an emotional moment!  Sadie did not cry but looked very sad.  She didn't know what to make of the whole thing.  But, she definitely knew something was very different.  She wanted to sit with me and so I held her the whole way home.  From that point on I was a little bit of comfort to her as her world was turned upside down.

I wore her in the sling a lot.  Which I thoroughly enjoyed!  She latched on to me but struggled with Bob.  This however, is quite common for a child to latch on to one parent and not the other.  In time, she will attach to both but in the very beginning this is "normal".  I just had a flashback I have to share.  The Tuesday before we left for HK our small group had our family over to pray for us before leaving.  One of the prayer requests Bob shared was that if Sadie was going to reject a parent he wanted it to be him.  God chose to answer his prayer...and yeah....I'm married to that guy!!!  What a heart he has!

Rejection, no matter how you slice it... it hurts.  It just does.  No matter how much you prepare...you just can't.  I watched my husband love when it wasn't easy...when he was pushed away, swatted at, screaming in his ear and yet he pursued her.  He loved her even though she isn't able to receive his love...yet.

Bob and I both found ourselves thinking many times over again about Derek Loux and what he wrote while he and his wife were picking up their 3 special needs children in the Ukraine.  You might get tired of hearing his name on here...I drop it often.  But God used his life dramatically in our adoption story and many others!  It never gets old to me!  His words and thoughts are so true and Bob and I thought of him and what he wrote here many times over during our stay in HK and it helped us greatly to remember who we are, what we are here for, and mostly who we are in need of...our Savior.  Here's a part of his story...

Renee’ and I are sitting in the office of a telephone company in Novograd Valenski, Ukraine, using wireless internet.  We are in the middle of adopting three special needs boys from an orphanage here.  Two of the boys have Down Syndrome.  Roman is high functioning, energetic and happy.  Dimitri has serious mental retardation, failure to thrive, and though he is five years old, he is the size of a 1 year old.  He has sores on his face, a distinct smell of death on him, and yells out if we try to do anything with him other than hold him. Because he has less ability to respond and learn, he naturally gets less attention and care from the orphanage workers in this world of limited resources.  The harsh reality of the “survival of the fittest” principle is a life and death struggle that this little boy is losing fast.  Our third boy Sasha, is a brilliant six year old who has Spina Bifida (the condition our son Josiah died from in 1996). He is like a learning sponge that can’t get enough! He is happy and alert and thirsty for knowledge and experience.  So with two of our boys, we get an immediate return on any investment we make.  With Dimitri, there’s not much immediate gratification. In fact, it’s unknown when and if there will be a return at all. This is the kind of situation that makes the carnal, fallen, human reasoning think, “Why try?  What’s the point?  What will this produce?  What good will this do?  Why not select a boy who has more potential?  This looks like a lost cause.

Two days ago we drove for hours into the Ukrainian countryside to the village where Dimitri was born. We met with officials there and signed papers and answered their questions. We also went and saw Dimitri’s house. The day had been long, we were still recovering from jet lag, I was beginning to really miss my six daughters at home and all the familiar things our fragile human hearts entangle themselves with in feeble attempts to feel secure. Sitting in the dark on our very long drive back to Novograd that night, the Holy Spirit began to whisper to my heart, and new understanding about redemption began to take shape.

I was thinking, “Man, adopting this little boy has been so much work. This is exhausting, expensive, uncomfortable … and it doesn’t feel very rewarding right now.” What am I doing in some little Soviet car in the dark, in the middle of rural Ukraine in frozen December, as the driver dodges cats and potholes? What if Dimitri doesn’t improve at all? What if we get “nothing” out of this? … Ahhh, there it was; that dark, fallen, unreedemed, selfish human love, rooted in the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil”. The love the Greeks called “erao” love. The love where we treat someone as precious and treasured for what we can get out of it. This is unlike “agapeo” love, the God kind of love that treats someone as treasured and precious for their good, not for my good. It’s when I love a person in order to meet their needs, having no expectation of them meeting any of my needs. At a whole new level, God is working His kind of love into my weak heart, and He’s using little Dimitri to do it.

On the drive home that night, the Lord whispered in my ear, “This is Redemption. Derek, do you know how far I travelled to get you and bring you back? I had to be separated from my Son, in order to get you, just like you are separated from your children in order to get these boys. Do you know how expensive it was for Me to purchase you? It cost me everything. Do you know how broken, sick, damaged, twisted, dirty, smelly, and hopeless you were? And at the end of it all, you had nothing to give me or add to me. I did it for you. I emptied myself and became nothing so that you could have it all. This is redemption.

My friends, adoption is redemption. It’s costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him. And when He redeems us, we can’t even really appreciate or comprehend it, just like Dimitri will never comprehend or fully appreciate what is about to happen to him … but … he will live in the fruit of it. As his Daddy, I will never expect him to understand all of this or even to thank me. I just want to watch him live in the benefits of my love and experience the joys of being an heir in my family. This is how our heavenly “Papa” feels towards us.

Today, settle your busy heart down and rest in the benefits of redemption. Enjoy the fruits of His goodness, and stop trying to “pay Him back”. You’ll never get close you goofy little kid.

Tears for me every. single. time.  Beautiful picture of Redemption.

Here are a couple of pics that Kim took of us while finishing our trip in HK.  I can't tell you how thankful we were to have Kim and her family there.  What a treasure..a gift to meet with her, talk with her and share our hearts together...our love for our Savior as well!  Thank you Kim...we love you and your family!

her sweet lil' feet

right before meeting Sadie for the first time!  Proud parents of 5 children

We are not able to post pics of Sadie until her adoption is finalized in 6 months.....ugh...yes this is so hard because I have video and sweet pics of her that I would love to share...so trying to figure out if I should go "private" on my blog or not...if anyone has any thoughts let me know!

I have more on our HK trip to come!  Thank you so much for praying for us and encouraging us throughout this whole process!  We are so blessed and thankful for the Body of Christ!