Author: darthjedi

The thing that is scary…

Today we called Chris to ask her a few questions about things we can bring to help the Orphanage with, and she informed us that our son has been very sick – has been for almost a month and has lost a lot of weight – but they didn’t tell us… 

I suppose they didn’t tell us because there was nothing we could do but worry (except perhaps they forgot about prayer and intercession?), and we would have not only been worried sick, but perhaps we would have also been calling quite frequently to check on him.  Perhaps they were worried about his ability to make it through – so they spared us the agony of worry and concern for something that was out of our hands and half way across the world… 

I am not angry at all with their decision to not tell us, a little scared, and a lot sad though.  It brings a level of concern that we could be thinking that everything is all right, then get a shocking call without any warning or time to prepare… babies are so fragile… this was one of my biggest concerns about having another baby, the constant worries around health and safety of a child that is so tiny and so fragile…

I guess this is the risk that every parent takes… but we didn’t even know he was sick, how heart breaking is it to think of ourselves as his parent and not even able to have a close enough relationship with him to know that he is sick… sad… 🙁

I’m my own grandpa!

We were discussing in my discrete math how you can represent genealogical information by trees; but I had to point out that as trees can’t be cyclical, and genealogies can be – that technically we can’t use trees to represent genealogies.  For example, what if you were your own grandpa – that would create a cycle and would break the whole tree thing…  What?  You say it’s not possible to be your own grandfather… surely it is.. just look…

 

 

Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father’s wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad,
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad.
For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow’s grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.

Father’s wife then had a son who kept him on the run,
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter’s son.
My wife is now my mother’s mother, and it makes me blue,
Because, although she is my wife, she’s my grandmother, too.

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I’m her grandchild,
And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild,
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!

I’m my own grandpa.
I’m my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so,
Oh, I’m my own grandpa.

Talking to our children today…

Once again, we are very grateful to H.I.S. Home for giving us the opportunity to spend a few minutes on the phone with our children a couple times a month. 

This week Christella seemed to be a little more responsive to us, she shook her head a few times; she showed us the “I love You” hand sign, and even blew us a kiss!  Amanda also saw that she had put her dress on backwards today – so CUTE!  When Braeden dressed himself for church today, he put both his shirt and his pants on backwards!  I guess it’s the ‘in’ thing for the 5 year olds right now!  😉

We are so excited to go and spend some time with them in a couple weeks…

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Feeling stupid funny

Tonight I did something that gave me such indescribable childish pleasure, a feeling that I have not had in a long, long time.  I got on my lawnmower and drove down the road to the neighbors house.  I had this big stupid grin on my face, I felt foolish, and lazy, and embarrassed as the cars drove by and stared at me.  It was so new, and different, and childish and foolish; but it made my night!

 

🙂

Two and a half weeks until Haiti…

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….

News from our Attorney today..

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. :~(

Today’s conversation with our babies…

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 🙂