Adoption Update -- Getting Closer!

It's been a while since I've posted an update on our adoption, but man -- it's been quite the roller coaster over the past few months. But finally -- FINALLY -- we are getting ready to book our travel to go get our girl!

It's been a season of change for us, in many ways. My husband switched jobs (he is currently driving for Uber while getting ready to take his real estate exam), which was actually a great financial decision for us, plus it gives him more flexibility to be home with Reagan so I can work more.

We thought we were close -- very close -- a few months ago. We hit an unexpected roadblock, the details of which I can't share here, at least not yet (but it will make a really good blog, someday). Suffice it to say we learned how to fight harder than ever for our little girl, and it brought us all closer in the process.

 Gen. 50:20, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."

With all of that firmly behind us now, we are moving full-speed ahead in getting our girl as quickly as possible. We are getting ready to pay the court fee of $1200, which will allow the court in India to release the documents allowing her to officially become ours (as I understand it). That same day we received that bill, we also got an estimated cost for our travel, which is $10,100. We also got another bill for just over $1000, to update our home study.

It seems like a lot. It is a lot. It's a lot when our second car, our back-up car, needs a part replaced, and our good car, the car my husband uses to Uber, also needs work. Our dryer died this weekend. And on and on and on.

But.

When we started this journey, we were completely baffled how we were going to pay $40,000. It might as well have been $4 million at the time. But we've nickel and dimed our way through the first $30,000 -- without going into debt -- and I have no doubt we'll figure the rest of it out. No doubt.

The average monthly wage in India is the equivalent of $295 in American dollars. We have nothing to complain about. 

Here's a funny thing about the way we all live: We invest our money in temporary things, in a temporary world, and then complain we don't have enough money to to the important work. We make payments on a $30,000 car that depreciates every day, we think nothing of throwing down $100 or more for a dinner in a restaurant, which will be finished in 15 minutes, and we spend a few thousand dollars on a fancy vacation, which lasts a few days, maybe a week, and then it's back to life in the real world, anyway.

We spend all our money on the temporary, completely ignoring the eternal. We put our money into things that have no lasting value, turning our eyes away from the things with eternal significance.

Meanwhile, there are more than 153 million children without a home, while we say we wish we could do something, but we just can't afford it.

 I'm including myself in the 'we,' lest anyone think I'm just pointing fingers at others. Our family gives 10% to our church, which I'm happy to do, but ask me to do more than that, and my fingers figuratively curl around my money like it will vanish if I don't hold on tight enough. I'm by nature a saver, and very, very frugal (yes, actually, I do have a three-ring coupon binder). So if I sound like I'm being accusatory, it's mostly to myself.

Also, not everyone can adopt. Not everyone should adopt. But, as I've said so many times, everyone can do something. We can all take a stand for the 153 million children who have no one to take a stand for them.

I wrote a blog on adoption for my friend, Wendy, for her business, Be the Good. You can read the entire blog here, but in it, I recounted a recent encounter I had:

"She sat across from me, with tears filling her eyes. Dressed immaculately in designer clothing, she was a very casual acquaintance I knew through a colleague, who I ran into at a work event. She overheard a conversation I had with someone about my husband and I adopting a little girl from India, and wanted to ask me a few questions.

20 minutes later, we were still talking, tears now ruining her once perfectly-applied make-up. "I want to adopt a child,” she sniffled. "I really do. But we already have three, and I can’t imagine spending the money at this stage in our lives. It’s just so expensive, isn’t it?”

I told her how we raised more than $30,000 of the approximately $40,000 we ultimately need to bring her home – by giving up eating out, focusing on saving, hosting fund-raisers, applying for grants and being mindful of every penny. I gave her my contact information, and told her to reach out to me if she had any more questions.

A little while later, I happened to get into my car – a used 2005 sedan with low miles that we got a great deal on, at the same time that she got into her luxury SUV, with a sticker price that cost way more than our entire adoption, and we waved goodbye and parted ways."

I'm not trying to lay on the guilt. I'm trying to change our focus. I'm trying to make adoption seem doable, so that more children can learn what it's like to not worry about their food, their clothes, their future.

The final bill of more than $12,000 is going to get paid. I know it is. Of all the things we have worried about over this three-and-a-half year ordeal, money was never one of them.

I love this video that has been floating around on Facebook, of parents receiving their two sons from the Democratic Republic of Congo, after a three-year wait. (You can watch it here). I sent it to a few people and told them to watch it only when they could 'ugly cry,' because it captures so many emotions in only a few seconds.

That video completely sums up why we choose to adopt.

I'm not in this life to gather material possessions. We can't take any of it with us anyway. But what we can do is impact future generations, and save children -- like our daughter -- from a world of poverty and neglect. We can't save all of them. But we can save one.

The wait has been long. So long. But we are almost done. Soon, we will be a family of four.

"I don't want a flame, I want a fire. I wanna be the one who stands up and says, 'I'm gonna do something.'" ~Matthew West, 'Do Something'

To help us bring Marella Hope Grace Thompson home, visit our GoFundMe page.

 

Explaining the Orlando Murders to My Son

“Mommy, what are they talking about?” 

“Mommy, why are they sad?”

“Mommy, why is everyone crying?”

These are the questions my four-year-old son, Reagan, peppered me with earlier this week, while watching the news coverage of the devastating shooting in the club in Orlando. 

“Because they’re upset, baby,” I said. “Someone did something bad, and a lot of people got hurt.”

And then I turned the TV off. I’m not ready to explain to my child – the one who, dressed in his Captain America costume, waved and yelled hello to a stranger walking by our house – that 49 people died at the hands of a gunman whose radical religious views made him think he was doing something good.

I’m not ready to explain to him why 137 people died in Paris last November, inside a theater, or why ten people died at the movies in Colorado four years ago.

I rocked Reagan by the lights of our Christmas tree on Dec. 14, 2012, while 20 six-and-seven year olds, and six adults, died at the hands of a mentally ill man. 20 children who believed that being good would bring them presents from Santa Claus, who instead saw the face of hatred right before their murder.

I’m not ready to explain evil to him yet. But apparently it’s time.

To be honest, when I first heard about the Orlando shooting, I barely flinched. Isn’t that sad? 49 innocent victims lost their lives and I barely flinched. Even watching the news coverage, my heart wasn’t breaking as it should have been. It was sad in an abstract way, until my son needed me to explain it to him. And then, my heart exploded – for the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters and friends who are in unspeakable grief. And also, for all of us, who have to explain to our children that maybe, indeed, the world has gone a little mad.

We need to fix this. We need to fix a world where we barely blink when people senselessly die. We need to stop turning it into a political debate, or a pro-guns and anti-guns debate. We need to stop turning it into a religious debate. We need to stop debating and start fixing.

I shouldn’t have to explain to my four-year-old why 49 people were killed by an assault rifle in a club, making it the largest mass shooting in US history. At four years old, he should be worrying about playing a superhero, not growing up in a world where we desperately need one.

Orlando TV reporter Jaye Watson, after spending her morning talking about the tragedy, shared on her blog, “The problem is that all roads to sanity are blocked by people so busy running their mouths and pointing their fingers that others have plenty of time to pull the trigger and take more innocent lives.”

I don’t know how to fix this. No one does. But unless we all stop being desensitized to the hatred and the anger and the violence – unless we collectively scream, “ENOUGH!” at the top of our lungs, our children will grow up in a world where no one is safe. They will look to us for safety, and we will have to turn and look the other way.

We can do better. We are better. We need to be better.