Category: adoption

I was so very excited to see my children… very excited… and I wouldn’t really have been nervous about this plane trip this time at all, but now we have this Swine Flu outbreak.  What if one of us parent’s going down to visit Haiti picks it up and brings it with us, what if one of the missionaries brings it down with them?  Haiti is not a country in a position to protect it’s citizens from the flu; I’ve been told that a simple stomach bug has the potential (and has) killed many children in Haiti and it’s orphanages…

And what if we pick it up on a plane and bring it back to our children here in the states…

Suddenly, I’m given a whole new reason to worry…  just what I need….

To adopt in Haiti one spouse must be 35 years of age, and if you one isn’t 35 years of age, you must have been married for 10 or more years.  You must have no biological children, and you must be 19 years older than the child you are adopting.

Herein lies our problem.

• Even though we’ve been married for over ten years, I am 31, Amanda is 29 – strike 1.
• Even though the oldest child we are wanting to adopt is 5, so Amanda is 24 and I am almost 26 years older respectively, we have 3 biological children – strike 2.

Our attorney said that with both of these issues going against us, he would highly recommend us waiting until I reach 35 (4 more years) before we begin to adopt from Haiti, as the probability of our adoption taking an ‘indefinite amount of time’ is very high; and the possibility of being denied is very strong.

When looking at our adoption process, we have already spent months of dedicated time in preparing our family and our home and our paperwork for our adoption of our two Haitian children, and have invested unmentionable amounts of money just to get to the point of submitting our paperwork to the Haitian government. 

We have invested time, emotion and love into our someday-to-be-children, felt the heartache of watching these two little children through the video screen of a computer, and wanting nothing more than to hold them in our arms, to give them the love and comforts that their biological parents could not give them.  We’ve shed many, many tears thinking about how long it would be before they were safe at home with us, and how much hurt (especially our older girl) has gone through in loosing both her parents to death, and wanting to be there to comfort that pain and fill that emptiness.

We knew it was going to be tough, and yet, no one has actually quantified how tough it really was going to be for us to walk this road.  The pain of possibility of year after year just waiting, and hoping; the possibility that even after all this we might be rejected.  The fact that our little children will be sitting and waiting without parents to tuck them in at night during this whole time we fight for their future.

So now we’re supposed to walk away?  I’m left numb, and disillusioned and saddened.  Why would God send us here, just to find a dead-end road. 

Surely we will take His hand and allow Him to lead us, and open doors in His time, in His time.  He has brought us here, He will make a way!

As Antoine De Saint-Exupéry states:  You risk much weeping if you allow yourself to be tamed. :~(

Christella was a little more communicative today.  She nodded to us a few times, and she waved to Bella when we were looking the other way.  She still doesn’t say much of anything and seems more interested in what all the other children are doing during our time together, but I have to keep reminding myself that she is 5 years old after all – how much fun can she have with a bunch of old people on the t.v. screen…

Little Jedidiah has grown SO MUCH!  It’s incredible, he looks like a completely different baby.  Amanda had to ask Hal if he was sure he brought us the right baby for the call! 🙂

He kept looking at Hal to get kisses on the head over and over again – it was so adorable.  I am very excited to go and see them again; and at this point, I’m almost not dreading the plane right anymore.  Whatever happens will happen, and if I get to see my babies again, I’ll be a happy man!

I’ll steal some of Amanda’s snapshots from her blog, so I don’t have to take any on my own 🙂

If I wasn’t so worried about leaving my children without parents if something happened to me, I think I would be on the next plane to Haiti! 

Skyping with our children in Haiti is getting a little easier.  Settling back into the understanding that it is going to take time, a long time, and there is nothing we can do about it, brings almost a sense of relief in the acceptance.  Please don’t misunderstand, it saddens me beyond words that it’s going to take so long, and I’m still resolved to do anything and everything I can to speed along the process, but, there is a certain pressure and pain in worrying about something you can’t change that is relieved when you finally accept that you can’t change something.

Instead, I realized today, I need to focus on what I can do.  I can work to gain more financial independence so that I can give my five children an even better life.  I can continue to work on being a better father and provider.  I can pray without ceasing for the health and safety of my entire family (even with it being spread across the continent).

But I realized today too that I can’t be so caught up in getting my children home, that I forget to live my life with my children that are already home.

I think I really would be on a plane to Haiti tomorrow, if I didn’t have to worry about what would happen to my children if something happened to me…

Perhaps there is some blessing in how fast time flies… we are finishing up our Dossier within the next week or two – hoping that our lawyer can connect up with our Cresh, so we can get our dossier submitted – and then the long wait starts….

Jedidiah and Christella; beautiful and half a world away.  I can’t wait to hold them again!

We made it home yesterday – after waiting 5 hours in the Haiti terminal, getting three hours of sleep in a Miami hotel, and another 2 hour flight and 5 hour drive. We are exhausted, and emotionally drained. To top it off, I think we picked something up on the way home, because we’ve been quite sick since Saturday evening.

I want to talk to our girls so bad; I want them to know that we didn’t abandon them, that we are still alive, that we are coming back for them, but I can’t – yet – and even if I could – how much would they understand?

It’s like these two people stepped out of a television show (Skype), made them happy for a week, showered them with love and affection, attention, and even physical possessions, that I’m sure they’ve had very little of – and then, like a dream, they woke up again one morning, and we were gone.

Do they know we really exist, do they know we really do love them, do they know that we’re coming back for them. Do they?

I was thinking when I got home, the famous words, of my most favorite movie: “The next time I go looking for my heart’s desire, I won’t look any further than my own backyard; if it’s not there, then I never really lost it to begin with.” – but that’s not entirely true – I am SO happy to be home, and the trip to Haiti has made me appreciate so much in my life that has gone unappreciated – I am truly a new person… but… I left part of my heart back in Haiti – so I now can’t really say that my heart’s desire is all in my own backyard… how very heart breaking…

Lord, please tell me… when can I be whole again? L

– Christella

– Fabienne