So it begins

       Every time we use money, we see it. And although some of us rarely use cash anymore, we still see it all the time and rarely notice it. "E pluribus unum". Out of many, one. And it's not just on money. It's there on the seal of the United States, as well as the seals for all levels of the federal government including the U.S. Senate, Supreme Court, and the President of the United States. It's a motto suggested for our new nation by the likes of Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin that fascinates someone with my obsession for American history (and all things nerd-like).
      Our own "E pluribus unum" moment happened on Wednesday as we finished the first of the many forms we'll have to fill out for our adoption. Out of the many forms we'll have to get through, here was number one. It really wasn't all that bad. Just a few pages, some family information and whatnot, but I couldn't escape the thought that this was just the beginning. This was that last snowflake that triggers the paperwork avalanche that will bury us over the next few months.
      Surprisingly, staring down the barrel of this paperwork nightmare doesn't have us rattled at all. I mean, it really should just for the simple fact that one of us can't spell and one of us has the penmanship of a 3 year old, but it doesn't. Our agency emailed us the first round of pre-home study paperwork today. The email had 13 different forms attached! But it actually excited us because we're finally making substantial progress toward getting our child home. There's a lot of work that goes into completing these forms. We'll be running around, trying to gather all of our background checks, financial information, etc., so if you see us with arms full of papers, running down the street, don't worry. It's the beginning of a crazy and stressful time, but we couldn't be more excited about it.
      When the Founding Fathers first used "E pluribus unum" as a motto for our nation, they used the phrase to remind future generations that, out of these many colonies, one nation was formed. Today it reminds us also that, out of many different types of people, one nationality was born. For us, from all of the paperwork, we will find our child. But more importantly, from each of you that's read this blog, donated to our adoption fund, and helped in a million little ways, our family will be complete.
       As always, thank you so much for all that you've done and continue to do for our family.
    


Side note we almost forgot! We now have flyers for our next two fundraisers. If you would like, feel free to print them out and pass them around. Maybe at your place of employment, church, or whatever. Everyone is invited to them. And if you want, they can be printed in black and white and look just as great!

And the winner is....

       It’s funny how things sometimes don’t turn out as you plan. For example, if you were to tell me 20 years ago that this month I’d make 2 trips to Indianapolis to meet with agencies, I would have assumed that I was negotiating my new contract with the Pacers. But Saturday we made our second trip to Indy in as many weeks to meet with another agency. After doing our research, we had come up with these 2 agencies as our favorites and hoped that, after our meeting Saturday, we could come to a decision. We didn’t know what to expect and, despite how well our meeting went last week, we were keeping an open mind. In fact, we had no real front-runner and only prayed that, after our meeting, our decision would be clear. After our meeting though, it was abundantly clear.

         As nice as our visit was Saturday, we were able to say when we left, without any doubt that this place was not for us. Not that there was anything wrong with this particular organization, because it was a fine place, but from the moment we walked in we could tell that this place wasn’t for us. We sat quietly in a large room with probably 30 other couples and listened to all of the information about the agency, but the more they talked the more it became obvious that we needed to be somewhere else. Luckily, we already had a meeting with a great agency last week, so our decision became very easy. So with all that out of the way, we can now say that (pending our application paperwork) we’re excited about working with The Miriam Project.  We’re so happy with this organization and the work that they’re doing and can’t wait to get started.

         Now comes the application process, and list of documents that we have to gather just to get the application started fills an entire page. While the process will be lengthy, we’re looking forward to getting the first steps done. The sooner we get this part finished, the sooner we get our child home.

        We’re also excited about the soup supper fundraiser we’re having in a few weeks on Feb. 23. Mark your calendars and come join us. Also, don’t forget “Can Our Yard Night” at our house on May 10. Start saving up all your aluminum cans, tell your friends, neighbors, and co-workers to do the same and come trash our yard! We’ll have flyers for both of these events available shortly. We’ll also be putting in another order for t-shirts very soon, possibly by the end of this week, so if you’re interested in one, please let us know as soon as you can.

      Thanks again to all of you for being so involved and so helpful in this process. Your help and prayers mean so much to us.  

News! Finally News!

      When we wrote last week’s update, we tried to let all of you know about the work we had planned for the next seven days. After putting a busy week behind us, we’re finally able to share with you in a little more detail, what we worked on. On Monday night we traveled to Anderson, Indiana to meet with our first adoption agency. We spent about an hour and half (along with another couple) meeting with a representative of the Miriam Project (www.miriamproject.org ). Although driving 2 ½ hours after working all day to have a 90 minute meeting isn’t necessarily how we’d like to spend our evenings, it was a great visit. We left the meeting very impressed with the agency and the work that they do. We have one more information meeting scheduled for this weekend with another agency. While we’re still open to talking to any other agencies, these are the only two we’ve decided to talk to so far, so we might be making a decision very soon.
Another thing we worked on last week was planning our fundraisers. After our meeting Saturday, I can now officially tell you that our soup supper will be Saturday, February 23 at Westview Christian Church. We’ll start serving food at 5:30 and eat until everyone has had enough or until we run out of food. Brian Walton, senior pastor at Calvary Christian Church (www.calvarychristian.net) in Winchester, KY, will be our guest speaker and some members of the praise team from Calvary will be providing music during dinner. Another fundraiser that we’re planning is a “Can Our Yard Night” on Friday, May 11. The idea for this is pretty simple, save your aluminum cans, bring them to our house, throw them in our yard. It’s approved vandalism. There are a few rules we need to follow like keeping the cans in the side yard (so the neighbors don’t totally hate us) and within our property line (again, neighbors), but we’ll keep you informed of all that between now and then. The main thing to remember for now is to save all your cans. Tell your friends, your co-workers, your church groups to start saving them too. We want to see the entire yard covered. I’m debating sitting in the middle of the yard on a lawn chair to give people a target, but I’m not totally sure about that yet. We’ll have some flyers for this and the soup supper available soon so you can try to explain this without your friends thinking you’re crazy.
One more thing happened this week that I wanted to mention. We received an email Friday from Amber Spurgeon about making a donation to our adoption in honor of her friends Seth & Lauren finalizing the adoption of their 3 children. We can’t tell you how much this means to us in so many ways. Obviously, we appreciate the donation and the fact that it gets us a step closer to getting our child home. For that, we've eternally grateful. But more than that, when we see someone else adopting we feel inspired. This has been a calling for us since last summer and to see other embrace that same call lifts our spirits. Forgive me if this is preachy, but we as Christians are called by God to embrace the orphans and love them as our children just as He adopts us as His children. It's our continued prayer that this spirit of adoption continues to spread across the world to all people so that more of these children will find their forever families. And to Tabbitha, Heather, & Tyler, welcome home.

To busy for Monday

Now that we’re one week into the year, many of us are clinging to what’s left of those resolutions that seemed so achievable seven days ago. I never break any New Year’s resolutions because I never make them, so my undefeated streak stays pretty safe. Since last year though, we’ve resolved as a family to do everything we can in 2013 to make our adoption a reality. While we know that sometimes this can take longer than we hope, this year will be committed to making this happen. We’re looking forward to 12 months of meetings, fundraisers, and paperwork about as much as any two human beings can. A process which, by the time many of you read this, will have already begun.

        This week we’ll be making a trip to the Indianapolis area to meet with an adoption agency for an information session. While we haven’t decided on any agency yet, after researching pretty much every agency in the region, we were impressed with what we found about this one. While we’re preparing to meet with multiple agencies until we find the right fit, we’re hoping that we find that fit sooner than later and would appreciate all of your prayers.

       We’re also meeting this week to make preparations for our first fundraiser dinner. We’ll be working with our volunteers (aka: all the family members we could con into helping us) and trying to plan out a night that will be a good time for everyone involved. Hopefully by next week’s blog we’ll be able to share some of the details with you.

      With all that on our plate in the first two weeks of the year, we’re putting ourselves on a pretty busy pace for the remaining 50 weeks. But this is what our 2013 is about; dedicating ourselves to doing everything we can this year to get this done.  The more we get into this, the more we see how big of a job this adoption process is. It’s impossible for me to imagine how couples go through this without the amazing support system we’ve been given. Since we made this decision, everyone has been so supportive. Those of you who’ve purchase t-shirts and bracelets, made donations, prayed for us, and even read this blog have meant so much to us. We can’t thank you enough. Sorry if this is a little repetitive, but we really can’t tell you how excited we are and how much we appreciate each of you. This is going to be a fun year. We’re so glad you’ve come along for the ride.

Happy New Year

       Trying to update this blog every week can be kind of a challenge. Last week that meant finding time to write a short update on Christmas Eve. This week it means updating it on New Year's Eve...no problem. But trying to write an update during an IU game? This might be a little difficult.
The start of the new year means the real start of our adoption process. Up until this point we've just done a few things here and there, but our goal was always to kick things into high gear in 2013.               
     We've started looking at agencies and very soon will be trying to schedule meetings with a few so we can find the one that works best for us. We've also scheduled our first fundraiser dinner for February 23 at Westview Christian Church in Campbellsburg. This will be a soup supper that will feature Brian Walton as our speaker, as well as some musical guests. We'll have more information on this in the next couple of weeks. Also on Friday, May 10 we will be having "Can My Yard Night" at our house where you can dump all your aluminum cans in our yard. So start saving those cans! We're looking forward to seeing how big of a mess you all can leave us....but not looking forward to the cleanup as much. We're also looking at a few more fundraisers to take place later in the summer and fall that we'll let you in on when the time comes.
      The biggest thing we're looking forward to though is bringing our child home. We know that this process sometimes can't get done in just one year, and that some adoptive parents have difficulties that force them to wait a lot longer. But bringing our child home isn't some sort of New Year's resolution that we've arbitrarily set. We ache for him daily to come home. We don't just want to get him home, we need to get him home and will do everything in our power to make that happen as soon as possible. It's our prayer that God guides us along this journey and keeps our focus on His will. And in our prayers we are also so grateful that each of you has chosen to take this journey with us. We hope that each of you has a wonderful new year.

Merry Christmas

      Like many of you, today has been a busy day for us, which is part of the reason why we didn't get on here until 10:30 on Christmas Eve. We started out this morning by going out for breakfast with mom, dad, Jenny, Tyler, Katie and Luke, all of whom lobbied for a mention in today's blog post. (There it was. That's all you get. Don't be greedy.) And after breakfast, and watching Katie stand up and sing "Jingle Bells" in the middle of Denny's, we came home to finish up Christmas preparations, watch Christmas movies and get ready for church this evening.
     But even while today was a little hectic at times, the day and this Christmas season as a whole has been amazing for us. It's our hope that by next Christmas our family will have grown, so this has been a season of hope for us. Each event and milestone has been marked by thoughts about how next year will be different. It's been an incredible joy. We've also been overwhelmed this year with the kindness and concern that so many of you have shown in this process. It seems like we're constantly asked about how this process is going or if there's anything we need. I've said it before, but you guys really are amazing.
     Hopefully by next Christmas this blog will be about our child's first Christmas at home. We look forward to sharing that with you. Until then though, we want to let each of you know how much we've enjoyed sharing this process with you so far. And from our family to yours, we want to wish each of you a very Merry Christmas.

12/14/2012

If you've read this blog regularly, you've no doubt noticed that Ashley and I refer to our son as if he's already here with us. We have a picture in our heads of what our son will look like and who he will be. That mental picture helps us get through difficult times, makes us smile, and helps us to stay focused on our goal. This week was the first time that that mental picture scared me to death.

I saw the news on my phone of another school shooting last Friday in a town I've never heard of and, as disgusted as I was, tried to ignore it. I knew it was bad, but at the time there wasn't much news coming in and I figured I'd check it later. But when I saw the ages and pictures of the children on TV, my heart stopped. The images of these children was far too reminiscent of that mental picture that I see each day. I could see this idea of "our son" in the pictures of how a child smiled, or in another one's eyes, and it floored me. I've struggled the last few days with this and with the question of why God would send us on this journey to get our child, only to have us watch helplessly as we send him out into a world where things like this happen.

As we hear more and more about this terrible act, it's evident to me that, while we continue to mourn the 20 children who were killed last week, we must turn to that child whose birth we celebrate next week. I believe that these 20 children are, at this moment, safe in the arms of a loving creator. At the memorial service Sunday night, the President quoted Matthew 19:14 where Jesus says, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." While we might never fully understand why this happened, we can rest in the knowledge that they are in the arms of the Lord today and that they are safe in their eternal home. While we celebrate next week the birth of our King, they will celebrate in His presence. And while we'll never be able to guarantee our child's safety, we can guarantee that he will always be loved and watched over by his Heavenly Father, even when his earthly parents have to let him go.

I pray that that little boy whose picture I see in my mind will know that. I pray that I will be a good enough parent to instill those values in him. But more than that I pray that, when my time comes and God sees fit to call me home, that my son will rest confident in the fact that I am with my Lord.