Our past 24 hours in Beijing

It is hard to believe that it has only been a day since we got here.  We have squeezed so much in already that it feels longer, for sure!  Here is a highlight in pictures of our time so far.  :)

After dinner last night, we went to an acrobat show.  Of course the American stuck out like a sore thumb and I got pulled up on stage to drop a giant hammer of sorts to start the show.  ;)

Today we got to climb the Great Wall of China.  Kinda amazing.

See that tiny little dot at the top of the mountain?  Yeah, we climbed all the way up there.
This section is insanely steep.  We had to channel our inner mountain goats at times.  ;)

Breathtaking.

You can see more of the Wall in the background.

It was a little windy at the top.  :)




We also got to drive around Beijing some.  I seriously cannot believe the amount of people that live in this one city.   What amazed me the most, is that out of all the high rise buildings (and there are a lot of them) at least 80-90% of them were apartment buildings.  What is even crazier is that our guide told us that it is really hard to find an apartment to live in and they are so expensive because of the demand.  Beijing currently has a population of over 20 million.  In. One. City.  Compare that to the 9.5 million of Chicago (which is still a lot of people!).  It is staggering that so many people can live in one concentrated area.  

When you are used to high rises in cities being mostly business buildings, it was crazy to see building after building of apartment complexes.

Here are some other sites around the city.

Lots of pedestrians and bikes and motor bikes.  People everywhere.

The traffic is crazy.  Lanes are more of a suggestion and I still can't believe that more people aren't killed crossing the street on foot or bike.  I am also surprised that we didn't see more than just a couple of accidents.  (Thankfully, there is so much traffic that you often aren't going very fast so they weren't serious.)  Seriously.  It is crazy.

Street shops

                                               

                                               We also drove by the Olympic stadium. 

         Then we got to tour the Forbidden City.  I have a lot more cool pictures from inside but we are having some technical difficulties getting my camera to download to Marcus's computer right now.  

Sunset over the Forbidden City

                                                    

Pretty frozen at this point but enjoying ourselves.  :)

Whew.  That is a lot to have squeezed into 24 hours.  Tomorrow morning we get to experience the express train that will take us to Taiyuan which is the capital of Ellie's province.  Then Monday is our Gotcha Day and we get to see the face of our sweet little girl for the very first time!  We get to hold her and kiss her and start the process of teaching her what it means to have a forever family.  :)

           

          Oh, and in case anyone was wondering.... I have also mastered the art of the squatty potty.  ;)

Don't even ask about the smell.  It pretty much just slaps you in the face when you walk into the bathroom.  

  And here is one of my favorite shots of the day since I really can't bear to leave you with the image         of the squatty potty.  :) 

God's beautiful creation looking through a pretty amazing man made creation.

Out of the ashes

Whew.  We made it to China.  Having never flown internationally that flight was definitely an experience for me. Thankfully, it was uneventful and even ahead of schedule but by about the 8 hour mark, I started feeling a little stir crazy.  By the time we hit the 11th hour, as I was walking back to my seat after a bathroom and stretching break, there was a tiny voice inside of me saying, "Please, no.  Don't make me go back to that seat!".  ;)  It really wasn't the worst thing ever but let me tell you that I am asking for even more prayers for the way home doing that with a toddler!

In many ways, the flight was emotional for me. Our flight was made up of about 75% students that were headed home for the holidays.  I had the pleasure of sitting next to one of these students and let me just tell you that it wrecked me in so many ways.  Her name was Ying and she is about one of the sweetest people I have ever met.  She just spent her first semester away from home at the Chicago Art Institute studying film.  She was so very excited to get home to see her parents.  Part way through the flight it hit me pretty hard.  Getting to know Ying was like a glimpse into the future that Ellie will never know.  Here was this beautiful young Chinese woman who though she was born a girl, grew up as an only child, was loved well by her Chinese parents, and now has the opportunity to not only go to university but to study abroad.

How would Ellie's life have looked had she been born to a family with resources to feed her if she could not breastfeed or afford to give her the medical care that she needed?  How would her life have looked if she had been born without a cleft lip and palate?  There are so many complicated reasons that go into why babies are abandoned here but it is heartbreaking nonetheless.  It is heartbreaking for not only the children, but for the birth families that lose these children, as well.

As I was thinking about this lost future Ellie might have known, my heart turned towards her birth mother and broke even further.  I can not imagine the depth of grief that she has known.  Mothers in China are no different.  Though they live in a place that customs and culture and circumstances sometimes force them to give up even their children, do not think for one moment that they do not feel it. I can only imagine what those few days after Ellie was born were like for her birth mother.  With a cleft, she was likely not able to breastfeed because she could not suck.  If her family was poor, they would not have been able to afford formula in the short term and medical care in the long term.  What is a mother to do?  In the US we do not live in a world where poverty and the lack of access to medical care would ever force us to make the hardest decision of our life.  In our world, there are programs to help with these things and a person, let alone a child is not forced to pay for a medical bill before any care is given.

In my mind, I see a heartbroken mother knowing that the only chance for her child to have a hope of a future and perhaps even just to stay alive is to give them up.  Ellie's birthmother loved her.  I know that without a doubt.  She was loved enough to be kept alive even when her birth defect was known (for many children this is sadly not true).  She was loved enough that she was taken to and left at an orphanage on the front steps where she was bound to be found quickly and taken care of immediately.  Did her birthmother hide nearby to make sure her precious daughter was taken in?  Did she kiss her face all over and drink in the last few glimpses of the daughter she gave birth to before she laid her down?  Did she whisper her first given name one last time as she said goodbye?  There are so many questions that we will never know the answer to and this breaks my heart.

I feel forever linked to her birthmother in so many ways.  I have to imagine that as a mother, she will always wonder about her daughter- Always pray that somebody loves her the way that she couldn't.  I am sure as the years pass by, she will think of her on her birthday and wonder where she is and how she is.  And I will always pray for her.  For her to find comfort in her loss.  For her to find the love and hope of the Savior.  For her to somehow know that though she could not be the one to watch her daughter grow and flourish, there is someone who loves her just the way a mother should.  That she has a Mamma and a Babba and a brother and a sister and Grandmas and Grandpas and Aunts and Uncles and cousins and friends that loved her before they even met her and are embracing her wholeheartedly as one of their own.

I share a daughter with this woman.  "A child born to another woman calls me mom.  The depth of that tragedy and the magnitude of the privilege are not lost on me."  I think of this quote often when I think of Ellie's birthmother.  Though I mourn for all that Ellie has lost and will be losing in the next couple of weeks, her birth family, her culture, her homeland, her chance to grow up in the world that she was born into, I am beyond humbled that God has chosen us to help rewrite the trajectory of so much loss.  He has always seen her.  He has been holding her since before she was born.  He wept with her birthmother the day they lost each other.  He weeps that we are living in a world that poverty and birth defects and cultural beliefs separate a family that He brought together.  But He doesn't give up.  He set a new plan into motion that led us to move mountains to bring home a little girl that we had never met.  He placed a love in our hearts for her before we had even seen a picture of her.  He is taking the ashes of a lost little girl's life and creating something new and beautiful.  He has brought new hope to her life and we are just blessed enough to get to be apart that story.  And He wants to do that for each and every one of us.

Today, Ellie shares a 'family name' with all the other littles that have been through her particular orphanage.  By the end of the week, she will share a name with a family that has cried over her and prayed over her for years before they knew anything about her.  By the end of the week, she will be mine.

Is it really time?!

I am leaving for China in the morning.  I am leaving for China in the morning.  I am leaving for China in the morning.

I am still trying to get this to sink in.  I mean, sure, the bags are all packed, the house is clean, our paperwork is in order, our tickets are bought, our passports are ready to go, but it still does not seem real.  We have been working towards this for over three years now.  It has always been one step to get to the next to get to the next and so on.  For the grand finale to finally be here?  Well, it is just hard to fathom.  I have imagined and longed for these next few weeks for so long.  Can it finally be time?

The past few weeks have been busy ones.  There is so much to do to not only go to China but to be gone from home.  Not only did we have to try to pack everything we might need for ourselves and for our daughter that we have yet to meet in a very limited amount of space (let me just tell you that the girl scout in me who's motto when it comes to packing is 'better safe than sorry' really struggled to figure out how to do that!) but there were so many things to get in place to be away from our other two kiddos and home, as well.  Arrangements to be made, supplies to be bought, the kids things packed, phone numbers to be written down, etc etc etc.

Thankfully, my mom passed down some pretty sweet list making skills.  ;)  She would have been proud of the insane amount of sticky note lists I had all over the place.  I had the to do list broken down into days so that I wasn't overwhelmed and had just enough time to get everything done while still mostly having evenings to enjoy family time.  At this very moment, everything has been checked off of every list except for the few things that need to be done in the morning!

The closer the time has come, the more a peace has settled over my heart.  I am ready.  I have no idea what lays ahead, but I am ready to find out.  There are so many questions pinging around in my head and heart, ("Will she like us?  Will we adjust well? Will travel go smoothly? Will any of us get sick? Will our other two do ok? Will I survive the 14 hours flights?") but they are not overshadowing the sense of peace I have.  It is time.  We are ready to become a family of five however that transition may end up looking.  We are praying like crazy for everything to go smoothly.  Praying that Ellie somehow knows that we are her family and that she is safe.  Praying that N and M have peace and comfort while they are away from mommy and daddy for far longer than they ever have been.  Praying for good flights and no delays.  Praying for God to go before us and with us.  Praying for so many things.  Hoping you will pray with us and for us!

I am going to try to keep you all up to date as much as I can while we are there.  You all have supported us along the way and we are eager to share in the joy and journey!  Our flight leaves GR tomorrow at 9:41.  Let the adventure begin!!!  :)

Now, what am I forgetting...?

Our Itinerary!

I am sure you are all dying to know what we will be doing every moment for the two weeks while we are in China.  ;)  Well maybe not every moment but here is a basic run down of our time there.  Hopefully, it will help you know how to more specifically pray for us during that time.  We are certainly going to need plenty of prayers.  Based on the amount of spiritual warfare we have been experiencing the past two weeks, we know God is up to some big things in our family.  (Don't get too freaked out about that.  It might seem strange or cooky to some but I assure you that if you believe in the power of God, you should very much believe in the resistance of the one who made himself God's enemy. And because we are God's beloved, that makes us a perfect target for satan.)  Just as God takes us who Are Not and makes us into his adopted children through salvation through Jesus, we are about to make a little one who belongs to no one our very own.  Just as the Lord promises us a hope and a future as His children, we are part of the redeeming story of a little girl in China who had lost all hope of a future.  We are about to step on holy ground and experience a taste of what God has done for us and for that, we covet your prayers of protection and blessing and grace!

So here is what our two weeks are going to look like:

December 19- Flight leaves from Grand Rapids at 9:41 am.  Fly to Chicago and then a direct flight to Beijing.  

December 20, 2013 - Arrive in Beijing.  Follow the crowd to the immigration area for a passport check.  Then go downstairs to your luggage claim area (as you go down the escalator, you will see a digital screen in front of you giving the # of your flights luggage claim area).  Get a luggage cart, free of charge and load your luggage.  Then go to the exit gate.  Your guide will be there to meet you with your name.  Hotel check in.

December 21,  2013 - Sightseeing in Beijing, which may include Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City (front gate) and the Great Wall.  

December 22, 2013 – Train to Province. Your guide will have your train tickets and take you to the train station.  Afternoon express train to Taiyuan. (leave:11:32am, arrive Taiyuan 2:17pm.

Your local guide will meet you on the railway platform with your name. On your way to the hotel, your guide will inform you as to when you will see your child.  It may be that same evening or the following morning!!!

December 23-27, 2013 - Processing paperwork in Taiyuan.  Your guide will arrange your daily itinerary while in this city.  Simply follow their instructions regarding the civil affairs appointment, notary office and checking your adoption paperwork.  Your guide is an expert in processing these adoption documents so you can trust them completely.  NOTE: Please carefully proofread your adoption documents from the civil affairs.  A tiny mistake (wrong spelling of child's name, wrong birth date or even zip code) will delay your process and incur more expense, extra stay in hotel, missed flights and rescheduling of your Embassy appointment.  So take the paperwork seriously!

December 27, 2013 - Flight to Guangzhou. Your guide will have your flight info and take you to the airport to fly to Guangzhou. Get a cart and your luggage before moving to the gate.  Your guide, Judy, or her associate, will meet you there with your name.  Your child will need to have her medical exam done in Guangzhou prior to the Embassy appointment.  Your guide will schedule the exam for you.

Also in Guangzhou you will be able to do a lot of shopping in the Sha Mian Island where the White Swan Hotel is located.  You will find children's books, music, art, clothes, and jewelry.  Other cuisine such as Thai, and Western style restaurants are within walking distance.  Check with guide.  

December 28, 2013 – Medical exam today.

December 29, 2013 - Guangzhou city tour.

December 30, 2013 – Your appointment with the U.S. Embassy in Guangzhou is today at 8:30am.  You do not have to appear at this appointment.  Our guide will carry in all your papers at the time of the appointment.

December 31, 2013 - Pick up your child’s visa to enter the United States. 

January 1, 2014 - Your guide will take you to the airport for your flight to Beijing in the afternoon. 

When you get to Beijing Airport, simply go to Gate 5 for your hotel shuttle bus.

Beijing Hilton Capital Airport Hotel. 

January 2, 2014- Flight from Beijing to Chicago and then Chicago to GR arriving a little after 9 pm. 

Ellie becomes the newest little citizen of the United States as soon as she sets foot in Chicago to be followed by becoming the newest little Michigander as we land in GR.  :)

I can't believe that we will be meeting our daughter in just over a week!!!!!!

How to love and support us once we get home :)

I have posted a link to this before but now is a great time to post it again.  :)  This is part of a blog from one of my favorite bloggers, Jen Hatmaker.  So many people want to know what to expect and how to help when we get home so this is great.

"Supporting Families After the Airport

You went to the airport. The baby came down the escalator to cheers and balloons. The long adoption journey is over and your friends are home with their new baby / toddler / twins / siblings / teenager. Everyone is happy. Maybe Fox News even came out and filmed the big moment and “your friend” babbled like an idiot and didn’t say one constructive word about adoption and also she looked really sweaty during her interview. (Really? That happened to me too. Weird.) 

How can you help? By not saying or doing these things: 

1. I mean this nicely, but don’t come over for awhile. Most of us are going to hole up in our homes with our little tribe and attempt to create a stable routine without a lot of moving parts. This is not because we hate you; it’s because we are trying to establish the concept of “home” with our newbies, and lots of strangers coming and going makes them super nervous and unsure, especially strangers who are talking crazy language to them and trying to touch their hair. 

2. Please do not touch, hug, kiss, or use physical affection with our kids for a few months. We absolutely know your intentions are good, but attachment is super tricky with abandoned kids, and they have had many caregivers, so when multiple adults (including extended family) continue to touch and hold them in their new environment, they become confused about who to bond with. This actually delays healthy attachment egregiously. It also teaches them that any adult or stranger can touch them without their permission, and believe me, many adoptive families are working HARD to undo the damage already done by this position. Thank you so much for respecting these physical boundaries. 

3. For the next few months, do not assume the transition is easy. For 95% of us, it so is not. And this isn’t because our family is dysfunctional or our kids are lemons, but because this phase is so very hard on everyone. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to constantly hear: “You must be so happy!” and “Is life just so awesome now that they’re here??” and “Your family seems just perfect now!” I wanted that to be true so deeply, but I had no idea how to tell you that our home was actually a Trauma Center. (I did this in a passive aggressive way by writing this blog, which was more like “An Open Letter to Everyone Who Knows Us and Keeps Asking Us How Happy We Are.”) Starting with the right posture with your friends – this is hard right now – will totally help you become a safe friend to confide in / break down in front of / draw strength from. 

4. Do not act shocked if we tell you how hard the early stages are. Do not assume adoption was a mistake. Do not worry we have ruined our lives. Do not talk behind our backs about how terribly we’re doing and how you’re worried that we are suicidal. Do not ask thinly veiled questions implying that we are obviously doing something very, very wrong. Do not say things like, “I was so afraid it was going to be like this” or “Our other friends didn’t seem to have these issues at all.” Just let us struggle. Be our friends in the mess of it. We’ll get better. 

5. If we’ve adopted older kids, please do not ask them if they “love America so much” or are “so happy to live in Texas.” It’s this simple: adoption is born from horrible loss. In an ideal world, there would be no adoption, because our children would be with their birth families, the way God intended. I’ll not win any points here, but I bristle when people say, “Our adopted child was chosen for us by God before the beginning of time.” No he wasn’t. He was destined for his birth family. God did not create these kids to belong to us. He didn’t decide that they should be born into poverty or disease or abandonment or abuse and despair aaaaaaaall so they could finally make it into our homes, where God intended them to be. No. We are a very distant Plan B. Children are meant for their birth families, same as my biological kids were meant for mine. Adoption is one possible answer to a very real tragedy… after it has already happened, not before as the impetus for abandonment. There is genuine grief and sorrow when your biological family is disrupted by death and poverty, and our kids have endured all this and more. So when you ask my 8-year-old if he is thrilled to be in Texas, please understand that he is not. He misses his country, his language, his food, his family. Our kids came to us in the throes of grief, as well they should. Please don’t make them smile and lie to you about how happy they are to be here. 

6. Please do not disappear. If I thought the waiting stage was hard, it does not even hold the barest candle to what comes after the airport. Not. The. Barest. Candle. Never have I felt so isolated and petrified. Never have I been so overwhelmed and exhausted. We need you after the airport way more than we ever needed you before. I know you’re scared of us, what with our dirty hair and wild eyes and mystery children we’re keeping behind closed doors so they don’t freak out more than they already have, but please find ways to stick around. Call. Email. Check in. Post on our Facebook walls. Send us funny cards. Keep this behavior up for longer than six days. 

Here’s what we would love to hear or experience After the Airport:

1. Cook for your friends. Put together a meal calendar and recruit every person who even remotely cares about them. We didn’t cook dinners for one solid month, and folks, that may have single handedly saved my sanity. There simply are not words to describe how exhausting and overwhelming those first few weeks are, not to mention the lovely jetlag everyone came home with. And if your friends adopted domestically right up the street, this is all still true, minus the jetlag. 

2. If we have them, offer to take our biological kids for an adventure or sleepover. Please believe me: their lives just got WHACKED OUT, and they need a break, but their parents can’t give them one because they are 1.) cleaning up pee and poop all day, 2.) holding screaming children, 3.) spending all their time at doctors’ offices, and 4.) falling asleep in their clothes at 8:15pm. Plus, they are in lockdown mode with the recently adopted, trying to shield them from the trauma that is Walmart. 

3. Thank you for getting excited with us over our little victories. I realize it sounds like a very small deal when we tell you our kindergartener is now staying in the same room as the dog, but if you could’ve seen the epic level of freakoutedness this dog caused her for three weeks, you would understand that this is really something. When you encourage us over our incremental progress, it helps. You remind us that we ARE moving forward and these little moments are worth celebrating. If we come to you spazzing out, please remind us where we were a month ago. Force us to acknowledge their gains. Be a cheerleader for the healing process. 

4. Come over one night after our kids are asleep and sit with us on our porch. Let me tell you: we are all lonely in those early weeks. We are home, home, home, home, home. Good-bye, date nights. Good-bye, GNO’s. Good-bye, spontaneous anything. Good-bye, church. Good-bye, big public outings. Good-bye, community group. Good-bye, nightlife. So please bring some community to our doorstep. Bring friendship back into our lives. Bring adult conversation and laughter. And bring an expensive bottle of wine. 

5. If the shoe fits, tell adopting families how their story is affecting yours. If God has moved in you over the course of our adoption, whether before the airport or after, if you’ve made a change or a decision, if somewhere deep inside a fire was lit, tell us, because it is spiritual water on dry souls. There is nothing more encouraging than finding out God is using our families for greater kingdom work, beautiful things we would never know or see. We gather the holy moments in our hands every day, praying for eyes to see God’s presence, his purposes realized in our story. When you put more holy moments in our hands to meditate on, we are drawn deeper into the Jesus who led us here. 

Here’s one last thing: As you watch us struggle and celebrate and cry and flail, we also want you to know that adoption is beautiful, and a thousand times we’ve looked at each other and said, “What if we would’ve said no?” God invited us into something monumental and lovely, and we would’ve missed endless moments of glory had we walked away. We need you during these difficult months of waiting and transitioning, but we also hope you see that we serve a faithful God who heals and actually sets the lonely in families, just like He said He would. And even through the tears and tantrums (ours), we look at our children and marvel that God counted us worthy to raise them. We are humbled. We’ve been gifted with a very holy task, and when you help us rise to the occasion, you have an inheritance in their story; your name will be counted in their legacy. 

Because that day you brought us pulled pork tacos was the exact day I needed to skip dinner prep and hold my son on the couch for an hour, talking about Africa and beginning to bind up his emotional wounds. When you kidnapped me for two hours and took me to breakfast, I was at the very, very, absolute end that morning, but I came home renewed, able to greet my children after school with fresh love and patience. When you loved on my big kids and offered them sanctuary for a night, you kept the family rhythm in sync at the end of a hard week. 

Thank you for being the village. You are so important. "

So thankful for all the love and support you all have given and continue to give and so thankful that we know we have so many hearts and arms ready to wrap around us when our sweet girl gets home! 

I will and I can because He is.

If you haven't seen our news yet then here is the big announcement:  We got our TA yesterday!  It was another long, emotional three week wait to get it.  That is about the longest people have to wait for their TA so it was not fun to have to be on that side of the scale.  I thought we would be overjoyed when we finally got the news but that great news got over shadowed by the devastating news that our agency was not going to work with us to get us out next week like we had planned.  We know that it is possible for people to get their TA's and leave the next week.  People have gotten TA's this Monday and left yesterday.  For whatever reason though, our agency is now telling us that that is not possible- that the provinces can not get the paperwork together that quickly and that we are going to have to wait an extra week to go.  It was like a punch in the gut that knocks the wind right out of you and we are still trying to catch our breath. If I am being honest with you, I have vacillated between not being able to stop crying at the thought of missing yet another week with my little girl to being royally ticked off with our agencies unwillingness to help make things work.

Well, it is just one more week, right?  Yes.  That is true.  I know that once we have her and are home then we probably won't even remember that it took us one week longer to get to her but it is frustrating.  It is frustrating that air fare is going to be TWICE as much as if we left next week because of the holidays. It is frustrating that we are going to have to miss two holidays with our other littles instead of just one.  It is frustrating that we are missing another week with our daughter who is by now back to the orphanage with people that she doesn't know and is already experiencing the loss and confusion of losing her foster family.  And it is frustrating that it seems like we could go next week if only our agency was willing to try.

Through all the anger and frustration and sadness I have been feeling though, I have heard the whispers of the Lord breaking through. He is asking me if I still trust Him when nothing about this timing makes sense.  Do I trust that He is still good and still leading the way if it looks different than I think it should.  Do I trust that it is still His will even if it requires more discomfort or sacrifice than I would like?  Will I trust that even when I pray big prayers and ask for miracles that He chooses to answer in a different way that He is still sovereign and holds the world in His hands.  Will I hold onto my anger and miss out on my joy?

I have been praying for years for God's timing in our adoption.  It has stretched me and grown me in ways I could not have imagined.  So often I have felt like a lost little girl that doesn't know what way to go but knows that she can trust her Abba Father to lead even when she is scared to take another step.  I have trusted God to set the path even when it made no sense- like closing our domestic profile when we were so close to getting a placement only to start all over again in China.  And yet here we are. Leaving in two weeks to bring home this precious little girl that the Lord is blessing us with.  If we have been obedient in following God's leading and praying for His timing then how can I question it now?  He has not changed.  He is not any less faithful or good.

I have also been praying that God would use me and our family through this adoption process for His glory.  I have had images of Him answering big prayers in miraculous ways and us being able to shout His praises to all the world.  But do you know what I am hearing?  I hear God challenging me to bring Him glory by being faithful in struggle.  By choosing to see that He doesn't change even if my emotions do.  Will I choose to humble myself in trust of Him and praise Him when I don't understand the way He is working?  Can I tell people that my God is big enough and good enough that if I don't see the full picture of why He might be answering a certain way that I know without a doubt that His reasons are still for my good?

The answer to those questions, my friends, is yes. I will and I can because He is.  I can now count down the days until I hold my little girl.  This is my last 'wait' and there is a definite end in sight.  No more waiting to get to the next wait to get to the next wait.  Just waiting to get on a plane on the 19th of December to fly across the world to bring my little girl home forever.  And we will be rejoicing, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness"!!!!

Thank you all so much for the ways that you have come alongside of us in this journey.  Thank you for your prayers and encouragement and love.  The best is yet to come... SOON!  :)  Stay tuned for more details!

"Is anything too hard for me?"

I haven't really been posting very consistently.  The biggest reason for this?  On any given day, my thoughts and emotions are so all over the place that by the time I would be able to finish the blog post, they would have changed so many times that you all would probably be ready to have me evaluated for schizophrenia.  Seriously.  It is not pretty inside an adopting momma's heart and brain.  ;)

However, as we are nearing the finish line, I thought I would give you an update and invite you to join us in praying over these last few steps.  :)

Right now, we are waiting for our Article 5 to be picked up which is a two week process.  The Art 5 is basically visa information so that Ellie will be able to come home at the end of our trip.  We are a week into that wait.  Our Art 5 is scheduled to be picked up on the 14th.  From there it is forwarded on and we will just be waiting for China to issue our TA (travel approval).  This is our formal invitation to come to China!  Once we have this in hand, our agency can call to schedule our Consulate Appointment that happens at the end of our trip and then we book our tickets!!!!  (This happens in just the day or two after our TA comes).

TA 'normally' takes 2-3 weeks.  Like most of our experience with this adoption, there is no real rhyme or reason for how things actually end up going with timing.  Right now, we are SERIOUSLY praying for our TA to come before Thanksgiving and for us to be able to get a CA the week before Christmas so that we can leave on December 5th.  There are several reasons for this.  First of all, we are just plain tired of waiting.  We want our baby girl home and we don't want to wait another week.  Second, we really, really, REALLY want to be together for Christmas.  If we leave later than the 5th then we will still be in China during Christmas and will be missing our other two littles like crazy!  Thirdly, ticket prices jump significantly between the 5th and the 12th (with the way appointments and such work out, we will fly out on a Thursday whenever we go).  We are talking at LEAST $600 or $700 a ticket!  Ouch.  Soooo, we are praying for a little miracle for our family.  :)

The other thing that we are REALLY praying for is that friends of ours will receive the same miracle.  They are on the same timeline as us to bring their little girl home and are from Grand Rapids as well.  I have been praying for some time now that we would be able to travel with someone or at least meet someone while we were there that we could connect with that will be going through the same experience as us.  Well, just a couple of weeks ago, our agency connected us with these very people.  :)  We have been on the same timeline since receiving our LOA on the very same day and it has been such a blessing to walk through these last steps with them.  Jodi and I have fussed over all the little details of paperwork and process together and we have been able to share the roller coaster of emotions and encourage each other to hang in there.  :)  Their Art 5 pick up is a couple of days behind ours but we are hoping to get our TA at the same time.  If we can go at the same time, we would be able to spend the second week, after we have our girls, together in Guangzhou.  What a blessing it would be to have that support from each other on the other side of the world!

So the reality is, we are getting close.  Though I have to admit that most days it feels like it is still so far away.  It turns out, four weeks feels about the same as six.  The closer we get, the more time seems to stretch out and slow down.  The wait for our Art 5 is seeming to take forever and I imagine that when we begin our TA wait, time will slow down even more.  The closer we get, the more desperate I am to just go.  I don't want to wait anymore.  I am trying to remind myself that within a month, I should finally know when I am going to hold my little girl for the first time.  I am trying to remind myself that I don't want to miss out on these last few weeks with my little family as we know it.  I am trying to remind myself that the time will indeed pass and before I know it, I am probably going to be freaking out because we are leaving in a matter of days.
I don't want to miss out on this time now, but I don't want to miss out on another second of my daughter's life either.  It is a strange paradox to live in, this adoption world.

Please, pray for us?  Pray for my sanity!  Pray for our hearts to be prepared for however life is about to change.  Pray for patience and trust in God's timing.  Pray for finances to continue to work out as the bulk of the expenses come to a head.  Pray for God to show us His favor in bringing TA quickly.  And please, pray for our little girl.  We are so excited to be able to bring her home but these next couple of months are going to mean so much loss and confusion and fear for her. I just want to be able to love her and help her grieve and adjust the best that we can.

Like I said on FB, I hope that you will join us in sending up a deafening chorus of prayers to God asking Him to move on our behalf.  There is so much power in prayer and we are asking for yours!

"I am the Lord, the God of all mankind.  Is anything too hard for me?"  Jer 32:27