Growing Family

Another First

Tomorrow Small Sun is having his first phone conversation with his first mom and his sister. This is big stuff people!

I'd love to hear advice from people in open adoptions as we open our adoption up a bit more. Will report back soon!

Eyes on the Cloud

When the Israelites were in the wilderness they followed a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God gave them physical things to focus on, to guide them.

I'm not in the wilderness, but I've got my own set of guide points that God has given me right now, that I am focusing on, and trying to guide myself by.

With the change of the year I have heard several very specific things from the Father:

- This year will be full of the miraculous in our family's life

- Our path will take a complete right angle to our current trajectory

- Whatever the "next step" is, it will be absolutely, undeniably clear and it will obviously be the VERY BEST THING for each of us, and,

- Sometimes God prunes our very best branch, or the fruit-bearing part of our tree, where we find our identity,  because He wants to replace it with something even bigger and stronger.

On that last note, we watched UP! with our kids last week. There is a scene where the old man begins throwing everything out of his house, even he and his wife's chairs that they had spend a lifetime sitting together in, in order to gain lift to get to the place he needed to go. We were just watching along with the kids and suddenly I sucked in my breath. It was like a gut-punch from the Holy Spirit. Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me when the Spirit is saying "hey! focus!".

The man threw out all his possessions! Useful things! Precious things! Good things! Things for his future! He threw it all out and instantly lifted to a new place.

The Captain and I still have the agreement not to make any decisions until April, and honestly, I love it here in Sydney, and am so happy here.

At the same time, I feel like I am on the surface of a deep wave that is starting to rock me and I'm not sure where I will be hurled by the gathering force.

I started out with a heart for orphans and children in need. We adopted Small Sun. I became hugely focused on adoption ethics, the need for reform, unnecessary placements, better services for first parents, and critically examining current adoption practices. Useful things. Good things. Things for the future. But in it, I lost my connection with my heart for children. A lot of fear developed about what could go wrong, ethically, in attachment, and for all parties.

That was a good experience to go through. I need to be aware of all that, but now my focus is changing again. My heart is being absolutely broken for children in need, right now. I mean, it is really messing me up. I've been watching the situation in Haiti for awhile now, and beyond that, becoming more and more aware of the plight of children all over the earth. God is shifting my focus. Another one of those "hey! pay attention!" shifts.

My desire to adopt is through the roof. I think about it all.the.time.

At the same time, The Captain is feeling drawn to make a significant change of focus/direction/application of skills in his career. He doesn't really know how to make the shift, as we need the income provided by the kind of work he does now, but he needs the change. I'm his best friend and I know he needs the change as well. He needs his life to be spent on something that he feels is valuable.

So April is still a couple months away. We have travel plans/holidays/visitors booked for the next eight months, and we just signed another year lease on our house. At the same time, we've got our eyes on the cloud and while we don't know where it will go, all the signs that we are getting from God are that a big change is developing ahead of us and we might not even be able to anticipate it. Kind of scary. A year for miracles.

Haiti

Like many of you, I am totally preoccupied with current events in Haiti, right now. I am distracted and unfocused, trying to catch news on blogs and Facebook all day. I have been following ministries like Real Hope for Haiti, Heartline Ministries, and Troy and Tara Livesay for a number of years. I breathed a sigh of relief when all the staff of those agencies were accounted for, and now as they record what is currently happening, I just keep praying, and praying, and praying.

I've made donations, and now I pray.

With the rise of social networking sites, Twitter, and blogs, there really is no filter on disaster anymore. News agents used to decide what the public would see, what photographs would be published, and what angle would be presented. Now we can see for ourselves via Google Earth. It is all so raw, so constant, so horrible.

Being a mother, my thoughts go most often to the children. Trapped children, hurt children, lost children, children in utero, scared children, dead children. And being an adoptive mother I think about the children referred for adoption to American parents, only to die in the quake. I think about the children getting expedited visas to leave for the U.S. (thank God!), and the children sleeping out in the open yards of their orphanages because their buildings are unsafe.

I think about the kids in Real Hope for Haiti's Rescue Center, where my friend Jamie has a son waiting to come home. They are running out of formula, and water, and food for the 70 children they care for. My friend's son is sleeping outside. He is running out of food.

I think about the voices clamoring for Haiti's children to be put on planes and brought to the U.S. so that they can be adopted. I think about Operation Babylift at the close of the Vietnam war, and how many of those "orphans" were separated unnecessarily from their parents. I pray that we are able to offer assistance out of respect, rather than try to be "rescuers". I hope we empower a strong people. I pray we view the opportunity to live in America as a resource to be shared, not a right to keep to ourselves. I pray we open our borders with generosity.

I pray for peace for those dying alone. I pray that those who are dying meet God before they go. 

I pray, and I read the news, and I keep praying.

The Water

Last week our family went away with 6 other families to stay at a lodge for four days. All friends from church, 30 of us crammed into rustic accommodations, and energy was exploding out the windows! We spent lots of time in the pool, at the beach, "surfing" on the sand dunes, as well as going on a dolphin sighting cruise. The ultimate highlight of the trip for me was getting to go sea kayaking at sunset.

Growing up, some of my fondest memories are of summer holidays spent in northern Michigan. We would spend the whole day out on the lake. Sitting outside the rails of the pontoon boat, out on the pontoon itself, I would let my feet ski on the surface of the water. Heels dug in, water would shear up in a v on either side, toes pointed down I had to be careful not to be flung forward by the force of the water.

I'm not a strong swimmer. I don't know how to dive. I don't like cold water.

But when I was pregnant with The Sprout I started to dream about water. In one dream I was submerged in a deep rock pool that was dark and cool. While it sounds frightening, in the dream it was like...ultimate hydration. Complete saturation of spirit. An intense peace.

Ever since that pregnancy I've been drawn to the water. Living in Sydney, constant glimpses of the Harbour and the sea feed that hunger. 

For me, there is a moment in se*x that is like a deepening clarity and a cessation of sorrow. Suddenly, I feel clear to my core and I disconnect from a world that contains darkness, and experience only light. On this trip I realized that being in the water does the same thing to my soul.

Last week, after my long kayak trip, navigating a strong rip, overcoming my fear of sharks in the water (and there are), I flung off my life vest, leaped into the sea, and came up dripping, feeling cleaner than I have in a long while.

I think it is connected to baptism, this yearning for the water. It is not something in my mind, it is something in my soul, and I am beginning to realize, my spirit as well.

Filling in the Blanks

Adoption is such a strange, strange thing.

Opening up a mostly closed adoption introduces all sorts of emotions and complexities.

Here I have this child that I feel I know inside and out, back and front, from the top of his curly head to the tips of his arched toe nails. I feel like I know his first mother. I've met her. I have her picture. I've written to her, telling her endless details about my child for the whole of my parenting existence. We've shared this journey of mothering. That is, I've shared it with her. Because I've opened up all of our life before her eyes, I feel that I trust her. I know her.

But I don't.

I've spent years looking at my son imagining what his father must look like. I take the features of his face that don't resemble his first mother and I imagine those on a male face. I imagine different characters: "sporty guy" and "nerdy guy" and "rapper guy" and "working man", trying to fasten on an image that goes with the scant details I have.

When the letter comes in the mail, the letter with pictures, I just stare and stare. If I squint, I can see my son in there, but at first glance I don't. I see a man I don't know.  A man who is my son's father, but that I don't feel like I have anything in common with. If we were at the same party, I don't think we would talk. But he is my son's father.

In a mostly closed adoption, where all the communication is going one way, the adoptive family shares details about the most precious part of their life - their child, sending it out into the unknown, not knowing where it will land. Will all these personal details end up in a file in an agency office? Or in a shoe box on a shelf under a stack of lumpy sweaters? Or will the pictures go on the mantle with the other grandkids?

How far will the information go? Will the agency social worker be the only one that knows about my son's first day at preschool or will his mom tell her boss, and show the pictures to her friends?

I save the best pictures, record the sweetest moments, take notes of the funniest sayings, and then I send them on the wind, like dandelion seeds, scattering. 

I don't know where they'll go.

Adoption is a strange, strange thing.

Over my son's bed there are pictures hanging. Pictures of people that I don't know, but who are just as close to my son as I am. Even closer, in some ways.

My family's photographs are on the walls of a woman far away, and I don't know who stands in her house and sees us.

I hold this door open, and I don't know who will walk through.

A Christmas/New Year's Miracle!

Today not one, but TWO things arrived for Small Son in the mail. One was a reminder from the doctor's office, but the other...

The other was...

Wait for it...

A package from his first family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A letter. Pictures of his first mom in her teens. Pictures of his sister. A picture of his dad.

I was almost screaming I was so excited. We read and examined every inch of ever scrap of paper, in our car seats as we checked the mail on the way out to do some shopping. Small Son held the pictures on his lap until we got to the store.

After 4.5 years of birthdays and Christmases gone without communication (save a handful of emails), and without any idea what his sister and father look like, today was amazing. I can't express to you how thankful and relieved I am that he received these things before he got old enough to really be upset that he didn't have them.

We immediately bought a funky frame to put the new pictures in.

His first mom says that our family pictures are up in her house and that his artwork is on her refrigerator.

I don't know how to explain how, as his mother, I want so, so, so badly for his other mother to be in his life. Today's package went a really long way, and I am beside myself with joy.

I have a feeling that this year will be full of the miraculous in our lives.