Reflections

Today is the the last day of one of the best years of my adult life. After a very rough and discouraging 2013 on almost all fronts, 2014 brought with it so much joy and blessing into our family. As I reflect over all that God has done, I am truly in awe of who He is and how much He loves us. 

On Christmas morning, as all FIVE of our children sat around the tree opening their gifts, I cried tears of happiness. All of our hopes and prayers over the last two years had come to this... two handsome sons and three beautiful daughters for us to treasure and love and share the world with. It was and is so wonderful.

 

 

It was a strange feeling, really – one I’ve had quite often since November 10th. Although, it’s actually an oddly familiar feeling. After giving birth to both of my boys, I would stare at them in disbelief that mere weeks before they were nesting within my own body – so close and intimate yet so unknown to me. It seemed weird that all of the waiting and pain was over in a single moment and they were in my arms. And in that moment it was as if that was all I had ever known. On one side of that moment I couldn’t fathom life with them in it and on the other side of that moment I couldn’t fathom life without them.

This was the same feeling that I had as I watched wrapping paper fly across the room and listened to little girls giggle over their new gifts. All our waiting and pain was over in that beautiful moment on November 10th, and here they were in our living room, no longer nesting in my heart but here with us, living and breathing. And it’s as if this is all I have ever known. 

 

I always wondered how I would love my adopted children. Not IF I could love them, but rather how it would compare to the love I have for my biological children. Surprisingly for some adoptive parents, the love they expected to have for their new children isn’t there automatically. Love isn’t always instant. Love grows as a result of relationship and the building of trust. While I believe we have a lot of room for our love to grow, I realized the other day that I truly love our girls in the same way I love our boys. I love them... truly and honestly, I love them. Sometimes, I almost forget they aren’t my own flesh and blood... then I walk into the grocery store and all the stares remind me. 

I think about how scared we were two years ago. We had so many fears of the unknown, but we couldn’t get away from the strong conviction that God was leading us to adopt. It was illogical and crazy, but we put our fears aside and took a risk for love. I’m so thankful we didn’t use our fears as excuses because we would have missed out on so much! 

I wonder how many people out there feel led to adopt or foster, but use their fears as excuses to put it off or just say “no” all together. I wonder how many children are waiting for their families to choose them over fear. 

I won’t pretend adoption is a bed of roses, because it’s not. Adoption is hard, gut wrenching and will expose your own sin and brokenness more than you can imagine. I actually plan to blog about some of the gritty details soon, because I believe it’s important to share the ugly, hard parts of adoption as well as the shiny, pretty ones. However, adoption is so beautiful, rewarding and faith building and I will never, for the rest of my life, stop advocating for families to rise up and answer the call of caring for children in need. 

My desire for 2015 is for more children to go from this...

to this...

Until next time! -K

Home At Last

On Tuesday, November 18, 2014, our whole family of seven was united! After two years of waiting, we finally had all of our family together! We were tired and sick and probably didn't smell very well, but we had each other. What a wonderful day that was! It was the culmination of all our tears and prayers.

Here is our adoption video. It serves as a reminder of all that God has done! We are so thankful for his faithfulness and goodness! I pray our story encourages others!

Until next time! -K

Quick Update On Life At Home

I'm still running behind on blogging obviously but I'm also behind on laundry and a myriad of other things so don't judge too harshly! I've got FIVE kids now! 

We have been home two weeks today. It's kind of crazy how fast two weeks have gone by! 

Since January, I tried oh so hard to prepare myself for what our life would be like once we got home. TRIED is the key word here, but it's just so hard to prepare for all the unknowns. I basically prepared to feel like I was drowning for a good year. I planned to be completely and utterly overwhelmed by our new life. I feel like these are pretty realistic expectations when you plan to add three children from hard places to your family. So how did the expectations line up with reality?

Well, two weeks in, and I'm still so surprised how easy things have been. I mean it's almost scary how smooth things are because I'm wondering when the you know what is going to hit the fan and the water is going to rise to where we can't breathe. 

Now, don't get me wrong. We have little issues here and there. Our biggest challenges have come from Rabina but I honestly can't say what is adoption related and what is just simply her being three. I totally forgot how much I hate that age! I mean twos are bad but threes suck, y'all. Two words... pull-ups and stubbornness. Those two words have been my biggest frustrations with her. Poop in pull-up? Yeah, not fun! She will now sit with Lance and even called for him the other morning. This has given me a break here and there but she still prefers me. We are also dealing with a little indiscriminate affection from little bit. I didn't think this was an issue at first but the more we've socialized the more I've noticed it. I think she just like the attention really but it's still not good to hug a stranger in the bathroom at Chick-fil-a (don't worry I caught her before she did). 

Kashila and Khushboo are doing well. Khushboo has had some emotional shutdowns and we haven't really been able to find the best way to break through and get her to put her feelings into words but we are learning. I honestly think she just has a lot of feelings that she just can't really make sense of. She's such a sweet child. Kashila can be an instigator and she tends to be stubborn. We have to be firm yet playful with her. She has been warming up to Lance which is a huge improvement. She was very cold toward him in India. I think now she's learning he's the fun one. She has the most precious smile and is so joyful (when she's not pouting). 

Brayden and Asher are doing pretty well. They continue to fight with and aggravate each other until I want to pull my hair out. Asher is doing a lot of attention seeking. We are trying to be aware of how both boys are feeling and what they need. This is hard for them but they are hanging in there really well. 

Of course we have had to adjust to bedtime routines, bathing routines (no more baths! showers for all!), and, the biggest adjustment off all, meal routines. The hardest thing for me is feeling like all I do all day is meet basic needs. If that's the hardest thing right now, then I think we're doing pretty good!  God has truly blessed us!

Some of things I'm really enjoying... their desire to keep things tidy, their laughter, they way they always ask "Where Dad is?", singing to them at night, how they remind us to pray, they way they sing "Let it go" and "For the first time", their sweet kisses, when they ask me to put lotion on them, their Indian head bob, having a van FULL, watching Brayden and Asher be loving to their new sisters, kissing Lance and watching the girls trip out about it, and so many other wonderful things! We are truly blessed!

I'm sure there will be challenges in the future. I'm sure there will come a time when we do feel like we are drowning. I don't know what tomorrow holds but I am so confident that God will continue to lead us every step of the way!

Until next time! -K

Henna, Packing, Shopping, GOING HOME!

The Sunday before we left India was another free day for us. We completed our morning ritual of eating breakfast in the hotel (Hilton Garden Inn). I haven’t really talked much about that, but it’s basically an all-you-can-eat-made-to-serve-buffet and thankfully the girls haven’t expected me to live up to it. We had the option of traditional Indian breakfast with rice and dal and sambar and idlis and other stuff I can’t spell... or we could have waffles and pancakes and eggs and cereal and fruit and bacon and pastries. Our table was usually full of all of that. :) Oh an the juice? AMAZING! Fresh squeezed orange juice, apple juice that tasted like real apples, grape juice, watermelon juice, cranberry juice, litchi juice, mango juice.... it was all so good. By this point in our stay, the waiters knew what we wanted to order as soon as we walked in. 

I assume since there are no photos of us at breakfast that this was one of the mornings we went “sloppy” and showered later and therefore I told John no pics. After breakfast, we went back to the room and got dressed for the day.

Our first order of business was finding some new shoes for the girls. The shoes Khushboo and Kashila wore home from the orphanage were fine but they were a little too small. Khushboo's toes hung off the end. I wanted to get them something that fit and also wanted to get something with a closed toe since we would be landing in freezing temps in Georgia. I had nice little tennis shoes in mind, but they picked the most sparkly shoes in the store. How could I say no?

We stopped and got some cinnamon rolls in the mall for a snack. The girls were not fans! Haha... more fore us! 

We also ran up to Colleen's room to see some of the things Abhi had brought. She works with children who are crippled by polio. She is helping teach them skills that will give them a way to support themselves in life. One of the skills she is teaching them is painting. Most of them paint with their feet since their hands are shriveled. Oh man, the stuff these kids paint is amazing. I mean it's really incredible. I can't paint that well with my good hands! This a painted sari (below) and it took more than a month to paint. Abhi said they can paint anything and she would love to start taking orders for them. 

As promised, we took the girls back to Dilli Haat and got henna. This was quite the experience since this was the first time for all of us! I was amazed by how FAST this lady could to a whole hand! Rabina only got one hand done because she sucks her fingers on her other hand. One hand was enough. I was kind of freaking out about it. It took 30-40 minutes of just sitting and waiting for the henna to dry. It’s kind of like mud icing on your hand. It has to dry up and then you can pick it off. I was wearing Rabina in the Ergo so one wrong move and I would have henna on my face for 2 weeks. No thanks! We made it through will only minor mess-ups!

Once we were back at the hotel, we went to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe which was inside the mall. Our friend Abishek and two of his friends joined us. I had to bail early with the girls because Rabina was crashing and she is less than agreeable when she is tired. We all got a good nights rest!

The next morning, after our last breakfast in the hotel, we started the long, tedious task of packing to head back home. I set aside a lot of the snacks we had brought (I brought way too many) to be donated to the Welfare Home, as well as some of the girls clothes that would no longer be needed once we entered the winter that waited for us back home. Somehow even with all of the gifts we bought, we managed to have an empty carry-on-suitcase. This was fortunate for John who needed something to pack all the things he had bought.

I must say, if you plan to travel by plane with checked baggage, you HAVE to invest in a luggage scale! This was a LIFESAVER!!!!! It’s a little handheld scale that works kind of like those old hanging fruit scales in the grocery store. It’s digital and I promise the one I have was accurate within a 10th of a pound! I would fill those suitcases up and weigh them. If I was at 46.8 lbs I would stuff something else in there. It was kind of a fun little challenge. 

We ate one last meal with Colleen and Elliott. I thought we would get to see each other again before we left but this was the last time. 

I made the girls lay down for a late afternoon nap so that they could hang in there at the airport. I couldn’t sleep so I ended up going shopping in the mall for some warmer clothes for the girls to change into once we landed in the U.S.! Abhi joined me in the mall and actually showed me to the other portions of the mall that I had not seen. She was mad at me for not finding these parts earlier in our stay and frankly I was mad at me, too! We went to Pantaloons which I LOVED. I bought four shirts that were a mix between Indian and Western. We returned to our hotel room to square up for all of her services and then we said goodbye. Oh man we love Abhi! I hated seeing her walk away because she was such an instant forever friend. I pray that we get to be together in the flesh again at some point in our lifetime. 

We planned to leave the hotel at 8:00pm and head to the airport. Our flights weren’t until 3:30am on Tuesday, but I wanted to be there early just in case. Abishek came with his car and Ashu came with his van. Making our way to the airport was bitter sweet. I was excited to be going home but I was sad to leave India and all of our friends who had been so wonderful to us. 

At last we stood outside the airport doors. We said goodbye to our friends and headed in with all of our luggage and our three little girls! The Delhi airport has pretty strict security to even get in. Armed guards asked for our flight confirmations. No problem! I was completely organized and had multiple copies of our round trip flights as well ask the girls... wait no, no I didn’t have copies of the girls’ flights!!!! I was kind of freaking out because I had triple checked everything to make sure we had all we needed before we left! Of course we had no internet so I couldn’t look it up in my email. Thankfully they just pulled the flight manifest and found their names. And just like that they let us in. 

 Of course, the desk wasn’t open so we couldn’t check in yet. We sat and waited for what seemed like forever. Finally, the desk opened around 10:30pm or maybe it was closer to 11:00pm. I’m not sure. The line moved very slooooooooooowly. The girls did amazing as we waited! We gt everyone checked in and I was thankful that there were no issues with the girls names on their boarding passes. We kind of booked tickets on the assumption that they wouldn't have last names on their passports (which was correct).  So we used "FNU" as their last names to book their flights and there had been mixed opinions about this. We had just trusted that God would work everything out and he did! 

We made it to our gate and waited and waited and waited. I could tell the girls were growing restless but they still did so well. I was tired and ready to get on the plane! We waited and waited some more and then an angel came down from heaven and told us we could get in line for priority boarding... ok maybe she was just a plain old airline worker but she seemed angelic to me. 

They opened the doors and we boarded the plane! Finally! We got settled in our seats and we were very comfortable. Sitting next to children is a lot more roomy than sitting next to grown ups. About 45 minutes later we were in the air! 

We were going HOME!!!! Praise the Lord!!!!