Hearts Full of Praise

I had coffee with my dear friend C today. She's one of those people who you're a better person for knowing and it always spurs me on so much to get to steal some time with her! So my heart is full from that.

We were marveling together at some of the recent changes in both of our lives and she said "Sometimes I feel like I'm living someone else's life." I think that's the perfect way to describe how I've felt as we've marveled at God's handiwork in this process.

I've shared a few times that I can just see evidence of God preparing us for this our whole lives but I thought I'd expand on that a little bit.

I have no relationship with my biological father and the only one I ever had at any point was strained, infrequent and awkward. He and my mom divorced when I was very young so the only memories I even have of them married are very unpleasant. He was abusive to my mom and thoroughly uninterested in being a parent so though we lived close enough for him to be active in our lives, it was never convenient for him and he invested very little. I had sporadic contact with him whenever I initiated it. Shortly after DH and I married, he sent me a horrible letter full of awful things and I have since terminated all contact with him. I did telephone him in the fall when my brother was in the fire because he and my brother do have some semblance of relationship but that has been the extent of our communication for years.

On the contrary, my mom married a wonderful man when I was 9 who is my dad. He has always been a parent to me, though he was never biologically or legally obligated to be one. He gave me away at my wedding and in my heart, he is my dad, and I have as full of a heart for him as I can imagine I would have if we shared the same bloodline.

What I learned from an early age though was that biology had very little to do with one's capacity for or willingness to love. I had one father who didn't love me though I was his flesh and blood, and another who loves me selflessly though we have as much genetically in common with each other as two strangers.

Because of the example my dad set for me, adoption has always been very natural and normal to me. (Though I'm not legally adopted, I functionally am).

DH's extended family has many adoptions in it so though we've never talked at length about it, he has been exposed to adoption as "normal" from a young age, too.

When DH and I decided to get married and we were talking through our family dreams and goals, we always included adoption in our plans, before we had any inkling of infertility. We thought we'd have biological children too but adoption is no surprise for us. Our University is located in close proximity to the Snowflake Program's home and we were in college about the time the first babies were being born so we heard a lot about the program through the media that covered the geographic region that encompassed both the University and the Snowflake Program. So Snowflake became a part of our dialog and mental catalog, too.

A few years ago, my sister in law and her husband adopted the sweetest, cutest little firecracker from China that you ever would know. I know that did so much to grow our family (specifically, DH's parents, siblings, spouses, kids and us) in terms of what the family unit looks like and who is included in that. Seeing the warm reception to our niece has quieted a lot of my fears about how family would accept our little Snowflakes and I am forever grateful for the trail that T&E have already blazed. It also gives me immense comfort to know that our little ones will have such great cousins, including one who knows what it's like to be an adopted child. I pray all the time that they will come to be great friends and sources of encouragement for each other!

At the time they were happening, I didn't really realize how much work was being done in our hearts to prepare us for this. But now that it has been revealed to us that this has been the plan all along, we can look back and say "ah ha" with satisfied and grateful appreciation. They just confirm so much to us.

That evidence of God's handiwork continues even now that we know far more than we did before. I guess I sort of think God could have stopped there and that would have been far more than we deserved. But He continues to lavish upon us tangible blessings to affirm that we are pursuing the course He has for us. Some of our praises today include

•That our taxes are done and filed after much time and labor!

•That for the first time, we're receiving both a state and Federal refund (both very unexpected and in fact we had saved up money in anticipation of owing).

•Last night a dear friend from church gave us a very significant financial gift. She said, "[She] and God talked and [they] decided to give us this to help with the Embryo Adoption." I was so humbled. She was so matter-of-fact and unpretentious about it. DH and I have both been working hard to make some sacrifices in our lifestyle, work more, spend less and reprioritize things and we're doing what we can to do what we think God is asking of us in this but we really haven't been stressed about when and where the money will come from and we haven't asked or planned to ask for help from anyone. We are just completely confident in God's provision. We just have 100% peace that we will earn, save, and/or otherwise receive the money in the right timing so it hasn't been a source of worry for us at all. So her gift to us was completely spontaneous, unsolicited, genuine and God-led. And more than the amount itself, it means so much to DH and I that the money came from her specifically because she holds such a special place in our hearts and we are eager for our children to know her.

•DH and I come from pretty different backgrounds when it comes to money. In the past we've had a hard time coming up with budget, investment and expenditure plans that we're both comfortable with. God has blessed us with 100% unity in our hearts as we decide how to progress with how and what to spend on various expenses, gifts, investments and savings. That has been such a treat and affirmation for us. We worked on our taxes, budget and cash flow projections last night and for the first time, it was fun! We delighted in the unity and peace God had given us as we discussed things that have historically been points of contention for us.

• After reviewing everything last night, including all of our expenses, income, and projected extras of both, we have enough resources to pay off entirely the little bit of outstanding debt we have and which we've been working hard to eliminate, give some gifts we've both been anxious to give, make some investment and savings contributions we'd been wanting to make, and pay for our homestudy, adoption education and home improvements in their entirety!

I am eager to talk to our case worker about scheduling the first meeting and learn about the next steps. I did call the agency to confirm that they had received our application and they had, and they have already sent out our Pastor's Reference form. The Agency said we should be assigned to a Case Worker next week and we should get to talk then! I am excited!

So kind of like C shared, I feel like we're living someone else's life. This is all coming together so perfectly that I feel like I have to pinch myself and wake myself up. I don't doubt God's goodness or ability to lavish so generously, but we are certainly undeserving of Him choosing us to give so generously to, so we are continually humbled and awestruck.

Thank you for rejoicing with us!

Can't Hardly Contain Myself

I have been working on our taxes for the last 24 hours and I want to gouge my eyes out! Seriously, I can't understand why some people (coughcough*DH*) voluntarily do this stuff and on occasion even think it's fun! I told DH he was gipped. Someone cheated and told him the wrong definition of "fun." Anyway! The end result is that we're getting a tax refund this year. We usually owe since we're both self employed. But a variety of circumstances this year resulted in a nice refund. That, plus a few other things that we have on the very near horizon mean that we could proceed with the Homestudy and the Nightlight Portion of the Process (the most expensive part) very soon!

I'm still protecting my heart by estimating on the high end of costs, timelines, and wait times, but it's just sinking in that this is really happening! I talked to the Nightlight Coordinator yesterday and gave her my estimated time line and she seemed to think it longer than necessary or customary, so that was cool! It's just been so awesome, amazing, humbling, exciting, baffling, quieting, affirming and WONDERFUL to see the way God has been working through this. Sometimes I think He obscures His ways from us for a variety of reasons to draw us to seek Him further but this time it's as if He's flung the curtain wide open and allowing us to see so much!

I've got to get back to the accounting nonsense but as I was wading through all our documents and came upon some of these discoveries, I found myself so excited that I could just scream. But that would scare the dog. And hurt my throat. So I'm posting instead! And the thought of all I have to do to get our house ready overwhelms me a bit but it's an exciting kind of panic-not a stressful kind. Eeeeek!

Weird Dreams

They say when you're pregnant, you have really weird dreams. I don't know if I'm having pregnancy-anticipation dreams or sympathy dreams for my best friend or what but I had the strangest dream last night. It was one of those dreams where I knew I was dreaming so I woke myself up but every time I drifted back off to sleep, the same dream continued.

Somehow, DH and I ended up the parents of twins. The dream started with us being at home with the twins the first day. I have no idea how they came to be with us, but it must have been in such a way that we didn't know they were coming (like a sudden adoption or something) because we had NOTHING for them. DH had gone to work the next day (It apparently wasn't relevant where we all slept) and I realize that I have no formula and since I hadn't given birth to them I couldn't nurse them and I had no carseats to be able to take them with me to the store. I call DH to come home and stay with them while I go out and buy a few essentials but somehow my mom from California makes it to our house before he does (his work is 5 miles away). So mom volunteers to babysit, and I go off to Target.

I guess midway through Target, I decide I'd have more luck at Babies R Us. I show up there and my best friend, who really IS pregnant and who spends much time there is waiting there for me as my own personal tour guide. In the dream, I have no idea how she comes to know to be there but she is. I say that I'm hoping for a baby shower so I just want to buy a few necessities-the carseats, some clothes, some diapers and some formula and bottles. Amazingly she has become an expert on newborn bottles and proceeds in to a lengthy explanation of bottle size, shape and volume. It was really very interesting. And weird that it was so prevalent in my dream.

Anyway, as we're going to check out, I spy something else that I must have: blue 3T sized sleepers with footies and rabbit ears (think Easter bunny), and Halloween Costume Finger Puppets. (I told you, my dreams are really strange!) I discuss with my bff why the children HAVE to have these things now and I check out. I think I leave her in charge of registering for me for a baby shower at church and I leave.

I get back home and am caring for the children. My mom leaves to return to California but doesn't get far before she gets stuck in a massive traffic line. Somehow I could see the line though I wasn't with her. It was a line like the line of cars at the Mexico border of people trying to reenter the country. People are out of their cars talking, milling around and interacting with street vendors. My mom somehow connects with someone selling baby blanket making materials. Mom decides she has to have them and turns around to come back and make the blanket. But it's not a typical blanket. What she has is a giant sheet of some kind of tracing paper that's also fabric, and a metal template with a 3D design and she's proceeding to lay the paper over the template and then rub it with a pencil to make the design from the template come through on the blanket. The template isn't big enough for the paper/fabric, so we're arguing about how to place it so the design is centered (it never occurs to either of us that tracing paper and pencil does not make an ACTUAL baby blanket), and then I woke up for the last time.

I hope you've had a hardy giggle at my expense. I have no idea what provoked such thoughts. The couple we had lunch with on Sunday has twins. Another snowflake family had a sudden traditional adoption placement last week (like they found out the day before that they were getting their daughter). Last night before bed I was working on my best friend' baby shower invitations and browsing her Babies R Us registry (though it contains neither 3 year old Easter Bunny pajamas or finger puppets) and last week a lady in our Tuesday night Bible study shared that her daughter was driving up from the orphanage where she works in Mexico and the visit was going to be short so they were hoping she wouldn't have to wait long in the border crossing line. Somehow all of that stuff converged in to this weird crazy dream. What is hilarious is that I don't even think about stuff like that when I'm awake so I had no idea it was hanging out in my subconscious!

Official Start!

We finished our application to the Arizona Adoption Agency last night and mailed it in today with our first (albeit small) financial commitment. So, we have officially begun!

The next step is that they will assign a social worker to us and we will have an initial meeting with her. We also have to get fingerprinted and pass various background checks. We're clearly not stressed about passing the background checks but it just takes time.

So woot! We're excited!

This is going to be a long wait!

I'm just amazed at how much has happened in just a few short weeks. We've told our family and friends and have received such warm congratulations. Nightlight put us in touch with 4 other Snowflake families in Arizona, one of which who has been exceptionally generous with their time and kindness and has really helped as we think about these new and foreign concepts and dynamics. Their input has been so helpful in quelling some of my fears and "unknowns."

I just can't even explain the transformation in my heart and mind that has occurred in such a short time. When we realized IF was going to be a part of our lives several years ago, I suspended really dealing with it on a deep level because I always expected that the end result would be God "fixing" it and giving us a quiver full of biological children. I never really considered that the answer was "no." In my head it was always "not right now." I guess I felt entitled to God fixing it my way, though I didn't really realize it or consciously do it. I made false assumptions that set my heart up for disappointment and pain.

When we got our diagnosis in November, I fell apart. I cried buckets. I raised my fist to God. I asked questions of myself and God that I'd never been brave enough to ask before. Though DH and I have ALWAYS wanted to adopt (and even filed EA away in our "maybe someday" file), I still mourned the loss of biological children spontaneously and naturally conceived.

Since then, my walk with God has changed so much. It took on a new tone of honesty and vulnerability that I'd never before had. And slowly, but surely, he began to answer some of our questions, and reveal to me how much he has already prepared us for this journey. He has been so generous in providing us with so many answers because in reality, we're not really entitled to any.

He's even softened my heart toward the idea of a more open than not relationship with the genetic parents and he's quelled my fears about our children ever wanting their "other parents" more than us.

The end result is that I can't WAIT to meet our children. They have filled my heart so much that it seems hard to imagine that they ever weren't there. And I mean specifically snowflake children not just children in general. These children have taken on an identity and aren't just some metaphysical concept of what's to come.

As God has shown us that this was never His "Plan B" for us, it's almost as if He's retroactively worked in my heart to where I can't even remember what it was like to NOT long for them. It's so hard to explain. It's like this love for them is so natural to me that it doesn't seem imaginable that at one time my heart was full for completely different children (the biological children). I wish I could explain it. I know I'm doing a lousy job.

But I think about them all the time. I wonder where they are. I hope they're being taken well care of by whatever clinic they're in. I wonder how many of them there are. I pray for them all the time. I dream about introducing them to their grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins for the first time and about them immediately welcoming them in to the family. I wonder about the children's Genetic Parents and how their hearts are doing with the prospect of parting with them and I breath such prayers and sighs of gratitude for their selflessness in being willing to give them life.

They children (for some reason I always think about them in the plural, which is odd), anyway, they're just such a part of my internal dialogue all the time now. And I don't have one ounce of worry about whether or not we'll be able to afford it, or whether or not anyone would ever choose us, or whether or not the embryos would successfully implant. I just have a peace I've never had before about anything. My natural tendency is to be a worry-wort so I know it is the work of Christ to still that in me.

The only negative to all of that is that it makes me anxious for them! I lie awake at night thinking about them. Sometimes I can't sleep because I can't stop my thoughts about them. My heart swells so much. They're not thoughts of worry or "to do" lists. They're hopes and dreams and prayers and love.

A part of me feels like I'm stealing something. We've not even *technically* begun this process. We haven't given any agency an application or any money. Hopefully that will all come very soon! But I guess I think others might think I'm jumping the gun. But even about the timing and the money I have peace that though those are barriers for us in the immediate, they're God's stop gaps on the process to make sure things happen in the right time and that we're ready for the right children at the right time. So I guess for one of the first times in my life, I don't even care what other people think about our right to celebrate this. From a people pleaser by nature, that's big!

DH said something so sweet. He said "Can you imagine how loved these children will be? Their genetic parents loved them enough to do the right thing and give them the chance for life, and we will love them as our own." Some kids don't even get one parent who loves them selflessly. God willing, ours will have 4. That's warmed my heart so much!

I'm babbling. I guess I just wanted to share the fullness of our hearts. I hate that they're still so far away from us, but I am excited that we could meet him/her/them as soon as a couple years from now!

Book Review: Infertility, Finding God's Peace in the Journey

I have a new favorite IF book!

Back in November, I went in to our local Berean bookstore, looking for one of the few pretty standard Christian Infertility Books (Hannah's Hope, The IF Companion, and a couple others are pretty "big"). I was annoyed to discover that Berean had only one book in the entire store on infertility (and for a moment, the store associate thought it was in the Parenting section. I was glad to find it in the "Women's Health" section instead). Anyway, I bought the book, stuffed it in my purse, and went on to meet a friend. When I got home, I logged on to Amazon and ordered those more "common" books and shoved this one to the back of my ever-growing pile. After all, I'd never heard of the book or the author, and had never seen it mentioned in any of my IF circles. I knew that it was recommended by Greg Smalley, and H. Norm Wright so I figured it couldn't be bad, but I still wasn't enthused about reading it.

All those other books were great and I appreciate what I learned from them. I read through all of them and was left with just a couple more obscure titles, including this one. When I darted over to California earlier in the month, I tossed this book in my bag figuring it would give me something to do on the plane.

I started reading it and it wasn't long before I was hooked!



Infertility: Finding God's Peace in the Journey by Lois Flowers is a practical, Biblical guide book of the journey of Infertility, written for the IF Patients. As the author tells her story, she challenges the reader at every step with Biblical truths and logical challenges to the traps we often willingly fall victim to in our IF journeys that would seek to steal our joy and attention from God. She maintains a delicate balance of bold truth, and compassionate earnestness.

I've tried for a while to figure out why I like this book so much more than other books because really, what she says is not so profound that it's vastly different from other Christian books on the subject. I think I prefer this book because I appreciate the author's tone and approach. While other IF books are very warm and almost personal, they appeal to the heart. They give me a sense of sitting and chatting over coffee, hugging and crying along the way. Those are wonderful elements of those books but for that reason, I never completely identified with them. I've done my share of crying no doubt, but at the end of the day I need help logically processing through everything. I think that's why I blog. It helps me to outline my thoughts and not just stew in them.

This book appeals to the head and mind of the IF patient, which is much easier for me to identify with. I dogeared tons of pages that contain content I've read before framed differently, but in this context the concepts reached out and grabbed me like they hadn't before in other mediums. My mind was challenged at every step, which in turn trained my heart. The author never allows the reader to just sit and stew in her own melancholy thoughts. She confronts prejudices, false entitlements and pity parties with the truth of God expressed with all the compassion of someone who knows the pain of this journey.

My favorite part of the book is when she quotes the Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis. Those of you who know me know of my soft spot for Lewis but the Horse and His Boy is a book I hadn't cracked since adolescence so I've forgotten much. In an exchange between Aslan and a main character, the boy is asking the "Whys" of Aslan's workings in both his own life and that of a friend. Aslan answers:

Child...I am telling you your own story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

Wow! Over and over I turned that in my head. In November I remember lamenting to my best friend that while I was overjoyed for her pregnancy (and I am!) I couldn't help but think that there must be some cosmic checklist that they accomplished and we didn't for God to decide that natural childbearing was a part of their story and not ours. In my head, there had to be some discriminating factor. I still saw infertility as incompleteness. As a blessing withheld. Childbearing was something they somehow deserved and we didn't, for reasons unbeknownst to any of us. That passage by Lewis and Ms. Flowers' excellent correspondence of it to the infertility journey continues to challenge me even now.

My other favorite part of the book is when the author is addressing the grief IF women often feel in modern Christendom, when motherhood is so magnified, and sometimes too much so. The IF woman is left feeling like the world thinks her life is "less blessed" or "less purposeful" and sometimes, she thinks those things about herself. The author writes:

I agree that children are wonderful blessings. If they were not, infertility wouldn't be nearly as hard as it is. I also understand why people with children might count them among the greatest blessings in their lives. But to suggest that people without children (married or not) are somehow missing out on the ultimate blessing is both narrow-minded and unbliblcal. The Scriptures (especially Psalms and Proverbs) list dozens of other sources of God's blessing. And nearly all of these have to do with a person's heart and relationship with God and others, rather than her ability to reproduce her own genetic material.

For example, you are blessed when you refrain from walking in the "counsel of the wicked" or standing "in the way of sinners" or sitting "in the seat of mockers" (Psalm 1:1). You're blessed when you delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it around the clock (Psalm 1:2). You are blessed if your "transgressions are forgiven" and your "sins are covered" (Psalm 32:1). You're blessed when you take refuge in the Lord (Psalm 34:8), when you make the Lord your trust (Psalm 40:4), when you have regard for all the weak (Psalm 41:1), when you learn to acclaim the Lord and walk in His presence (Psalm 89:15), when you seek Him with all your heart (Psalm 119:2), when you maintain justice, and when you "constantly do what is right" (Psalm 106:3).

You're blessed when you are kind to the needy (Proverbs 14:21), when you are generous to the poor (Proverbs 22:9), when you are faithful (Proverbs 28:20), when you honor the Sabbath (Isaiah 56:3), when you are disciplined by God (Psalm 94:12), when you find wisdom (Proverbs 3:13), when you serve others (John 13:11-17), when you fear the Lord continually (Proverbs 28:14), when you read the book of Revelation and take its message to heart (Revelation 1:3-4) and when you actively watch for the return of Jesus Christ (Revelation 16:14-15).

The author goes on to share the beatitudes as well and finally concludes:

Notice that this passage says nothing about having children. Like most of the blessings delineated in the Old Testament, all the blessings here are a direct result of Christlike behavior, not of familial relationships.

God may not have blessed you with biological children yet. And He may never choose to do so. But regardless of whether you ever have a successful pregnancy, you have many other wonderful opportunities to receive His blessing, most of which can have eternal impact. In the meantime, you can either bemoan the fact that you're missing out on the blessing of children (either temporarily or permanently), or you can actively seek out ways to grow in purity and godliness, serve others and develop wisdom.

What a wonderful, exhaustive list of God's goodness and mercies! As a long term Christian, I knew all of these things, and I also know that I do not exist so that God may bless me, but that doesn't mean that I have always stopped my heart from wallowing in what I was bound to "miss out" on! This passage was such a challenge to me and I hope that it would be a challenge to our church culture too.

I really love this book. I want to find the author and hug her guts out. The book does have an appendix for family and friends of infertile people, as well as a resource for pastors, and those are well and good too, but this book was just so instrumental in shedding light on lies in my heart, in encouraging me in places where I felt a bit on shakey ground, and in challenging me to really appreciate this journey of IF.

I recommend it with my whole heart! Praise God for the "inconvenience" of Berean having only one book on the shelf. I am confident that it was so I would read this book that I otherwise would not have touched and I am so grateful for the gift it has been. I hope it will encourage you all likewise!

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive as we've started this process! I've been so pleasantly surprised at the amount of enthusiastic support and congratulatory wishes we've received. Someone asked me tonight if we had any new news and we don't but it was so nice to just be asked. I don't know how to explain it but I just feel like I'm actually able to participate again in circles that for so long I just felt like an observer or imposter in. It's just so...surreal, I guess. Like I shared before, I don't really know what I was expecting in the way of a response but it definitely wasn't this wonderful. So, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you!

Just a clarification, our other new website is just a webpage, not a blog. I'm not doing any blogging there-all of my blogging will stay here. The other site is just a consolidation of data--sans all the thoughts and journaling I do here. Trust me, if anything exciting happens in our EA journey, I'll be sure to post it here! :)