Counting The Costs

I’ve had a few people asking me to blog more. Ha! I’m on demand. You people need therapy! I kid, I kid. Thank you all for reading my unintelligent writings that somehow pass for a blog. :)

Nothing really to update on the adoption front. We still need a miracle in funding and we are waiting for the US to give us our Article 5 for the girls. <---- Pray!

I wanted to share what’s been going on in my heart over the last few weeks as we’ve “readjusted” to the reality that our girls are coming home. I think some of you who have talked to me in person have picked up on the fact that I’m not jumping up and down like a lunatic when you comment about the miracle God performed for our family and how exciting it is. I apologize for being so stoic. Let me explain beyond the simple fact that this girl just doesn’t jump up and down unless there’s a roach, thanks to some double black diamond ski slopes in Colorado.

When we first received the “referral” (I use that term loosely) for the girls in February of last year, we were nervous and excited. As the months passed and we adjusted to the idea, we KNEW that bringing home three children at one time would be hard, HARD, SO HARD. We worked on preparing ourselves for the hard that would completely define our lives. However, I think there was still a tiny bit of grit and resolve in us that said, “We can do this. We can!”

Then we lost the girls. It was a really confusing time for us because we had no idea  what number of children was the “right” number for our family. Should we just go back to two. Would we accept a different group of three? Would we be ok with just one? For me it was an adjustment of expectations and the realization that I just needed to trust the Lord... more. 

When we began pursuing Eden, I must admit that Lance and I both kind of exhaled and said, “Man, one will still be hard, but three would have been crazy hard.” I think we quickly became more “comfortable” with the idea of just adopting one child. I mean we would actually be able to fit our family in my Nissan Cube! Lance and I might actually be able to go on a date every once in a while! I might actually get an hour of sleep once a week! We might actually be able to live a somewhat normal life! 

Then apparently God laughed and said, “Look at Kristian. She’s so cute with all those ideas of ease and comfort.” I don’t think he really said that but who knows. I am cute though. That’s true.

Anyways, so here we are back to staring HARD in the face and guess what? The grit and resolve is gone. “We can do this. We can!” has been replaced with, “Oh God, we can’t do this! We don’t have what it takes! This is too hard!” and all of that is the absolute, honest truth. We can’t. We don’t. It is. 

But our inadequacy and our fear of the unknown doesn’t change the fact that we truly believe God is calling us to walk this road. I believe he purposely chose this road for us specifically because WE can’t do this. 

The Apostle Paul found himself on a road of hardship. In 2 Corinthians 12, he writes, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Over the last few weeks as I have looked ahead to where God is leading us, I feel that he has been preparing my heart for the trenches of adoption. The place where we are just completely in it, the new and exciting is gone, the girls are scared, the boys are hurt, we are exhausted and there’s nowhere to run except the strong arms of our Sustainer. He is preparing me to boast in my weakness so that HIS power may rest upon me. He is preparing me to be content with weakness and hardships.

The beautiful reality is our DAUGHTERS are coming home! There is joy and excitement and anticipation that the girls we love will soon be in our arms! Yet, with that lovely reality comes another one. The day that Lance and I board that plane for Ind*a we will leave our easy, comfortable, convenient life behind... forever. Everything will change. I will change, Lance will change, our marriage will change, our boys will change, our family will forever change. Our home will be filled with hurts and fears and anger and confusion and just flat out HARD. I am scared and grieving all that we will lose when we gain our daughters.

Before you jump to conclusions and say, “Well Kristian, if you have these feelings and think this is all too much, then maybe you guys should reconsider if this is really what God is calling you to,” hear me when I say that I believe God has brought me to this place, because when Jesus calls us to follow him we must count the cost. There will always be costs in following Jesus, and we are delusional if we think that He only asks for easy, little costs. In Luke 14:33, Jesus tells the crowds, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” There are BIG costs involved with following Jesus and there are cost in this adoption beyond the $50,000+! Bringing home our daughters will cost us everything, and I believe God is preparing my heart to move forward in obedience with full awareness of these costs.

And before you think that I’m looking for a pat on the back for my "faithfulness", hear me when I say that EVERYDAY I fail! Everyday my flesh says, “NO! I don’t want to do this! I want easy! I want peaceful! I want comfortable! I want, I, I...” You can always recognize your flesh when you hear a bunch of “I”s inside your head. This is hard! It’s a battle! Daily I have to remind myself that it’s not about me and that in the end my reward is in Christ! I love these wise and convicting words of David Platt...

“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy... It's not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us... My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus' words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to Him.”

So when you run into me and I don’t ooze excitement, just know that God is doing a lot of somber work in my heart preparing me for what lies ahead. We ARE happy and we ARE excited, but we are not blissfully unaware of all the costs involved. Pray for us, that God would give us courage and faith to do his will. Pray that, through the power and grace of Christ, we can love these little girls in a way that reflects how God the Father lavished his love on us... it cost him everything. 

Now that I’ve laid my soul bare before you, I’ll leave you with a shameless plug for our Both Hands Project. Please visit and share this link!

http://www.bothhandsfoundation.org/lance-and-kristian-ogden

And IF you share our link, you can view this video ;-) Love this song!

The Bottom Line!

It’s finally sinking in... the reality that we are back to adopting three little girls. I think having to eat, breath and sleep stacks of paperwork for K, K and R helped me to finally get that this is real. This is happening. I think. Haha. It also helps that I found some more pictures online. Look at this! Chocolate! Little R can have all the chocolate her heart desires if she'll never stop giving me kisses with those lips!

We are excited and happy and so many of you have expressed that you feel the same way, but here’s the bottom line of the oh so sweet and amazing reality that, Lord willing, our girls ARE coming home... we have a lot of money that is due immediately and I am super, super nervous about this! It’s so easy for me to look at these numbers and see nothing but the word “IMPOSSIBLE”, but God continues to remind me that he is our provider and that there is NOTHING impossible for him!

For some crazy reason, God likes to speak to me through kids church messages. I think it’s just God’s sense of humor. He knows I love it when he’s funny. Every Sunday that I’m scheduled to serve in kids church, I think, “Man I really wish I could listen to the sermon this morning!” but it seems like every time I serve in there, I have to hold myself together because I am just completely bulldozed by the simple truths that are being taught. It’s like they are the exact messages Mrs. Kristian needed to hear! 

God did it once again this past Sunday! The message was about Jesus feeding the 5,000 and then we also tied in the story of God sending quail and manna from heaven for the Israelites. Truth: God provides. Truth: God provides miraculously. Truth: God often provides in ways that require us to trust him. Truth: All of these truths apply to Mrs. Kristian! Gaaaaah! No, Mrs. Kristian isn’t crying... she just has allergies! 

So going forward with those truths in mind, here’s the skinny on what we are looking at. Our adoption fees for all three girls (to our adoption agency and !ndia) come to a total of $40,500. This does not include travel which will likely be around $10,000. We have paid right at $20,000 toward these fees. So right now our most urgent need is $20,500. We need this as soon as possible!

What’s our game plan? Well, I have a lot of things swirling around in my head, but we feel led to focus on three things right now:

Our Both Hands Project- This is our primary focus because it’s just such an awesome thing! Our project will be on March 8th, and as I’ve mentioned before, we are super excited about this one! For this project, we will be partnering with House of Heroes to serve the widow of a veteran by doing work in and around her home. The widow we will be serving is Ms. Bernice Wright. Ms. Wright’s husband, retired Sergeant First Class James Lee Wright, passed away in 2011. SFC Wright served in the United States Army for 20 years. He served three tours in Vietnam and was awarded the Purple Heart. When her husband passed away, Ms. Wright was left with taking care of their family home and paying for the mortgage by herself on a very fixed income. Our team of awesome volunteers will be helping Ms. Wright with some things like cleaning, organizing, painting and landscaping. If you aren’t familiar with the Both Hands Foundation, please watch this video:                                          In the same way that people run in 5Ks or play in golf tournaments and raise sponsorships to support a specific fundraising cause, we are asking for people to sponsor our team for our day’s work on Ms. Wright’s home. All of our supplies are donated so all the funds that are raised will go directly to bringing K, K and R home from !ndia. Will you help us by sponsoring our team? Please visit and share this link to our Both Hands webpage: http://www.bothhandsfoundation.org/lance-and-kristian-ogden 

A Grant- We will be applying for a specific grant. The foundation who gives this grant is such a wonderful and generous organization that has helped so many families bring their children home. The deadline for this grant is March 15th, but we won’t know if we’ve been awarded any funds until the end of April. Please pray that this organization will see our need and feel led to support our adoption. 

Photography- I am still doing all my photography sessions on a donation basis. Let me know if you would like to schedule any type of session! I still have some open dates for February and March!

You can track our progress via our YouCaring Page. We are also still letting folks sponsor puzzle pieces for $10 each on this page.

This momma is asking for your help! These feet belong in Columbus, GA!

If you haven’t already, would you please pray about partnering with us to bring these girls home? There are so many ways you can help, but our most critical needs right now are PRAYERS and FUNDS. Please, please, please, if you feel led, share this blog post, our Both Hands Page or our YouCaring Page with anyone and everyone. The more shares the better!

Thank you all for being such a wonderful support to our family! I look forward to the day when I invite you to praise the Lord with me as I shout to the world that our God has supplied ALL our needs! He is faithful! Lots of love to you all! -K

All Aboard!

ALL ABOARD!!! All aboard the Ogden Crazy Train (aka our adoption)!

Last time I updated about our adoption was December 10th. I explained that we had made the decision to move forward with Eden and we were waiting for the official match from !ndia. 

On Wednesday, January 8th, we were still waiting. Our agency had been sending emails and making phone calls with no results to show for it. We still didn’t have the match! Then, on the evening of the 8th, it came...

Our agency director called Lance and told him that !ndia had OFFICIALLY matched us...

But not with Eden (say what?)...

Welcome aboard the Ogden Crazy Train! Please be seated for your safety!

We have been officially matched with K, K and R, the sisters we lost in September! Apparently the other family that !ndia matched them with changed their minds and turned them down. !ndia immediately turned around and assigned them to our family and sent a notification to our agency that the match was official. 

In a matter of minutes our adoption was turned completely on its head. We were incredibly shocked. Basically we were now in a place where we had to make a very, very hard decision. We could proceed with the girls, whom we loved and begged God to return to us, or we could turn them down to continue pursuing Eden, whom we also have grown to love, with the risk that there was no guarantee that we would EVER get matched with her. Confusion is an understatement.

As always, I’m going to be complete honest and raw with you. I was in a really, really bad place Wednesday night. I was super angry and pretty much in pure agony over the fact that no matter what choice we made we would lose. Despite my efforts to hold her at arms length, I had grown an attachment to Eden. I had forced myself to detach from the girls (while I still loved them) because they were gone, never coming back to us, GONE! I was faced with picking which of my children I wanted to leave in an orphanage in !ndia. We discussed things that night, but Lance and I were not on the same page. I was incredibly defensive about Eden and I didn’t want to be open to the possibility that God may be taking us in a different direction... again. I had not cried so much since that day in September when we lost the girls. I was just so, so confused.

Thursday morning, after a rather horrid night’s sleep or lack thereof, I dedicated myself to prayer. I cried out to the Lord and voiced all my anger and heartache. I asked him to lead us BOTH in the right direction. I prayed that God would give us peace beyond understanding and 100% assurance with whatever decision he led us to. I tried to set aside my emotions and just let God lead me by the hand because I know that he never leads us wrong! God answered my prayers.

By Friday, I began to feel in my heart that we needed to proceed with the girls. Lance was feeling the same way. Everyday it became clearer and clearer that this was where the Lord was leading us. Everyday God gave me more peace and assurance. Joy began to sneak in a bit, too. We see this match as a complete miracle and an answer to our prayers despite the complicated timing. 

Lord willing, we believe these are our girls!

At the beginning of this week, we let our agency know what we had decided and we took the first steps of proceeding with K, K and R. We began the paperwork for their immigration to the United States and we signed their referrals. On Thursday, we told our boys by celebrating little K’s 5th birthday. They are really happy that, Lord willing, K, K and R will be their sisters! They have still been praying for the girls on a nightly basis and just days after we had been matched, Asher (before he knew anything that was going on) prayed that God would give us our girls back. 

So what does all this mean for Eden? Well, first off, I want to say that I absolutely believe that God led us to Eden. We love this little girl and she will always hold a place in our hearts. God used her to change me in so many ways and I will never be the same because of her. We are grieving as we have to give her back to the Lord. The bottom line is that she still needs a family, and we will do everything in our power to help her find one. She has had so many people praying for her, so I am confident that the Lord will provide what she needs! More posts to come about Eden!

We are truly amazed at all that God has done. He continues to teach me that none of this is in my control and that I have to just trust him completely. It’s crazy to me that our girls, whom I thought would never come home, may be home by SUMMER!

Well, I think that’s enough crazy for one day. I’ll let you guys process all that. :) Thank you all for your prayers!

Until next time! -K