here we go.

It's hard to believe that it was only three weeks ago that I last posted. It feels more like three months ago. June has been a time warp. I'm pretty sure I just over-dosed our dog on her heart worm medication because I was convinced it had been at least six weeks since I last gave it to her. In reality, it's only been half that time.

What's even harder to believe, though, is that tomorrow we start our long journey to get our son in China. It has been a long road and it feels surreal to be so close to meeting him for the first time. It's almost too much to wrap my mind and heart around.

I think I have cycled through every possible emotion over the past few days: doubt, fear, excitement, elation, strength, weakness, boldness, sorrow, panic, peace, shock. Most of this just results in a lot of tears because I don't know how to hold all of this emotion simultaneously. Waterworks, for real.

Overall, I've felt pensive. So many thoughts and feelings, but the words have been hard to come by. We got our travel approval eight days ago and it's just now that I've felt capable of putting any words down. The quiet, detached, brooding Lib has shown up a lot over the past few days. She's the same girl that used to show up at track meets right before my event was called, right before it was time to run as fast as I could towards the finish line.

Today is our last day as a family of four. I've been trying to soak in these last moments with the girls before leaving them tomorrow for about two-and-a-half weeks. I've never left them for that long and the momma-bear in me has a hard time letting go. Last night, Chris said, "Babe, it's like you're going into labor, only the hospital is in China and you won't be home for almost three weeks." I can't say I've ever had a labor experience like this before, and I'm pretty sure there's no epidural for what lies ahead.

Yet despite the fear and insecurities that show up on a regular basis, I am SO ready to do this. My heart is full of excitement. I am ready for this. I am ready to go get our boy. BRING. IT. ON.

In church last Sunday morning we watched this movie put out by The Gospel Project. The movie depicts the grand narrative of the Bible as one story, the story of redemption through Jesus. This three-minute video has been floating around in my mind all week, and each time I think of it, I get so pumped up. It reminds me of how our journey to get Ren has been a powerful manifestation of the gospel story in my own life. It's been a story of light shining into darkness, a story of awakening, a story of fighting against so many lies that tell me I can't or shouldn't have embarked on this journey. It's been a story of love and freedom and hope. It's a story of a grand adventure with my God, the master Story Teller, and this is just the beginning. I feel so grateful to be a part of it all.

We leave at 7am tomorrow morning. The first leg is dropping off the girls with my parents. Then we fly back to SFO, then to Beijing, and then from Beijing to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, where Ren is (in red).

We will meet Ren for the first time on Monday, June 2! We will meet him at the civil affairs office in Zhengzhou and we will get to keep him with us for the remainder of the trip. We will be in Zhengzhou for the rest of next week, and then we fly south to Guangzhou (next to Hong Kong), where we will apply for his US Visa (the US Consulate is in Guangzhou). On the way home, we will take a bus from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, then fly out of Hong Kong to Tokyo, then Tokyo to SFO. We will be back in the US with our son, Lord willing, on July 14th!

His crib is an arm's reach from my side of the bed. It's all made up and ready to go for our big R! It's crazy to think that his sweet body will by lying there soon enough. I can hardly believe this is all happening!

Thank you all SO MUCH for your love, support, encouragement, and prayers. A MASSIVE thanks to my parents--this would not be possible without you both! Thanks to all of our friends and family who have consistently uplifted us with encouraging words and prayer over the past year and a half. We love you and we are so grateful for you! We covet your continued prayers over the next few weeks.

when it counts

Wow. Well, life is getting pretty intense around here. Things are changing and happening so quickly, which I am grateful for. After existing in a place that has felt like purgatory for a long time, I'm so thankful that the wheels are finally turning faster on this journey towards our son. We aren't out of the woods yet, but we are starting to make out the faint edges of our destination on the hazy horizon. We are embarking down the final stretch of this journey, and despite the fatigue, our legs are carrying us faster in anticipation of the finish line. In Dr. Seuss terms, we are preparing to depart from the dreaded "Waiting Place." Praise God, for real. We can't wait to experience what He has in store for us on the other side of this terminal.

So, here's the latest. We got an email a few days ago from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, notifying us that our Article 5 (another big bunch of paperwork) had already been processed and was being sent on to the CCCWA (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption), which is the LAST LINE OF APPROVAL! If everything goes as anticipated, the CCCWA should issue our travel approval sometime within the next couple weeks, and then we will travel to China about three weeks after that. According to this timeline (which our agency assures us is pretty reliable), we will be departing for China sometime in early-mid July!

We are getting so excited and already making preparations for travel. I have a million to-do lists scribbled in my steno pad. I am buying boy clothes and have already started a suitcase for Ren boy. (So far the clothing theme seems to be "surfer dude"...I found him some dope Hurley duds!) I'm setting our travel paperwork aside in its own folder and I'm going to get my immunizations for China later this week. I got Chris and I a new pair of summery closed-toe walking shoes, as flip-flops aren't very culturally appropriate in China. I also ordered a brand new ERGO to carry Ren around in...and get this...so cool...within an hour of it arriving on my door step...my neighbor and dear friend Jami came by my house to bring me hers...she doesn't need it anymore! So, I returned the one I ordered and got my $$$ back. Every little bit helps and sweet gifts such as these mean a lot!

Lucy and I decided to try it out on a walk to the park...we loved it.

I also FINALLY got our travel visas for China after multiple trips to the Chinese Consulate in downtown San Francisco. The second trip there was not without drama, as my car got broken into that morning...the whole passenger window smashed to smithereens.

They only took my $5 iPhone charger...

and whatever money we saved by not hiring a courier was negated...and then some...from damages.

oh well...you win some...you lose some...

and thankfully it was perfect weather for driving home with the windows open. 

I've never been so happy to leave SF in my life!

We also had our travel call with our family care coordinator at our agency on Monday, who briefed us on what "Gotcha Day" will probably look like and how to be prepared. She spent a lot of time discussing what this massive transition will be like for Warren and described this whole ordeal from his perspective. We know that as elated as we are to see him, he may not feel the same way about us, and she talked through how to handle all of that. As she was talking to us about what it might be like, I started imagining the scene in my mind and my eyes started to well up. To be honest, I've pictured that scene a million times in my head already, and every single time it chokes me up, but something about hearing someone else describe it really got me. I'm going to be a mess! It's going to be intense. It's going to be awesome.

I have a lot of doubts and fears. I hope I will respond in the best way possible and do everything I can in those critical moments to show our son love and tenderness while allowing him to feel all that he is feeling. He will have had to say goodbye to his foster mom already, as they move the foster children back into the orphanage about a week or two before their adoptive family comes to get them. He will be grieving that loss and change, only to be hurled into another massive transition when they hand him over to us crazy white people who speak funny and smell weird and keep trying to give him candy. My heart hurts as I ponder what might be going through his little mind amidst all of the scary transitions.

All of this kind of reminds me of when I was a nurse, taking ACLS and BLS classes, studying over and over how to respond when someones's life is on the line. You memorize the numerous algorithms--the drugs and doses and procedures for how to resuscitate someone--but you always wonder if you'll remember it when it really counts. Will you remember to open the airway before you start giving rescue breaths? Will you remember which medication corresponds to which arrhythmia and how many minutes apart to administer it? Will you freeze up or will you be able to apply the training to a real life situation? I've been reading and learning about all the text-book rules for encouraring attachment with Ren, but will these translate to reality--in the chaotic moments when it really matters?

The good thing is I know I don't need to be perfect, and I know that this is going to be a journey (aka: a ginormous learning process) for all of us. I know there is help along the way when we need it--praise God--because I know I'm going to need it. A massive thanks to you guys for reading and supporting us and praying for us. Please pray that our travel approval comes promptly...and in God's perfect timing...because if I've learned anything from this whole endeavor, it's that His timing really is perfect...in ways I can't even begin to describe.

a tree in a story about a forest

Several weeks ago I said that I wanted to spend some time talking about books that have meant something to me over the past few years. I thought I'd continue that discussion today.

It's difficult for me to do really thorough book reviews, because when it comes to books that I love, it's hard to know where to stop. I could probably talk for days on end about all the ideas, thoughts, and dreams that get stirred up inside of me when I read a book that I love. One little blog post is insufficient to relay what a particular book means to me, because I think that a good book becomes a very personal thing and intersects with some deep emotional places within us.

Anyhow, moving on with my insufficient blog post. The book I want to talk about is A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. I've actually written a post about this book before, a few years ago, closer to the time when the book was released. But the other night I couldn't get to sleep and the book was flashing at me like a strobe light from the dark book shelf. So I picked it up and started to read it again.

A friend of mine once said that you know what your favorite book is by the number of times you've read it. I think this is true. My favorite books are those that never get old no matter how many times I've read them. They become new each time and I connect with the characters or the message in new ways, depending on what's going on inside of me. So, I suppose this book by Donald Miller should be added to my favorites list, right along with Family Happiness by Tolstoy and East of Eden by Steinbeck.

The first time I read this book, I was about eight months pregnant with Lucy. I read it in bed as I felt her perform gymnastics inside of me. I think it got her excited too. I was so pumped up about the premise of the book--the idea of "living a good story"--and I was excited about how this book converged with so many things I'd been studying in my MFA program. The book planted a big seed inside of me...a seed that started to germinate about a year and a half ago when we started the adoption process.

I picked the book up for the second time when Chris and I were fervently praying about adopting. The words in this book were the push I needed to start the process when we did. It inspired me and told me it was okay to be afraid. It reminded me that if we wait for the perfect time to start living a good story, we never will. So we jumped in with both feet, hoping and praying that God, the Author, would work out the kinks in timing. Suddenly I felt like Chris and I were making an intentional and calculated move to live a better story and this was exciting. Something deep inside of me that had been dormant for a long time--perhaps forever--had opened it's eyes and started to see clearly.

And now, here we are, only about 6 weeks away (Lord willing) from getting our little guy, and I'm re-reading this book again. The adoption journey has been it's own story, one that is just beginning in so many ways. I think I understand words like "process" and "waiting" and "patience" and "trust" better now than I did a year ago, and I also better understand what Donald Miller means when he writes that "you become the character in the story you are living, and whatever you were is gone." I'm starting to wrap my mind around the idea that it's not necessarily about the conclusion, but how the character is changed by the story at hand, and I can see a lot of ways that this story is changing me.

I read a part of the book earlier today that really hit me, so I wanted to spend some time talking about it. It's so in line with so much that I've learned just in the past month so it got me really psyched when I read it. Donald Miller writes (paraphrased),

I was a tree in a story about a forest and it was arrogant of me to believe any differently...and the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree...and I asked God to help me understand the story of the forest and what it meant to be a tree in that story.

I mentioned in a recent post that I had the opportunity to speak at Celebrate Recovery several weeks ago. I was so scared. I seriously thought I was going to hyperventilate before getting up on stage. But one thing I kept telling myself as I sat in that chair in the auditorium, my hands sweaty and my heart palpitating, was that this is not about me. My sponsor kept telling me that too. "This isn't about you," she'd say. And I knew it was true. It was about God and the story He was telling through my life, and it was just my job to put it into words and to speak those words into a microphone so that other people in that dark sanctuary could hear about it. It wasn't my job to know how my words might impact the story that God was telling through other people or to worry about whether or not my story was important enough to be told. It's kind of my story because I'm living it, but ultimately, it's not about me.

This thought did help me push through my fear of public speaking. It silenced the voices in my head that tell me my story isn't extreme or important enough to be told. When I could view my life as a small chapter or sub plot in the epic, eternal tale that God is writing, then it freed me from caring so much about what people thought of my story or what judgements they'd make on me. It really took a lot of the burden off and made me excited to share about what God had written in my life so far. It allowed me to take myself seriously enough to speak, but not so seriously that I'd buckle up in fear. It made me want to speak so that I could bring Him praise, and I am learning that life is so much more meaningful when it becomes about Him--when it stops becoming about striving to bring myself praise for a story that's not really mine anyhow.

I read this verse the other day:

"Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." Heb 13:15-16

How is praise a sacrifice? I thought about it. It felt like a sacrifice to get up on stage that night and praise His name. I feel like it should be easy to praise God in front of other people, but it was hard. I was nervous about it all week. I didn't sleep well and I spent a lot of time preparing and praying about what I wanted to share. It feels like a sacrifice to write on this blog sometimes, putting things out there for the faceless and nameless public to read. But regardless of comments or site-meters or popularity, something inside of me keeps spurring me on to share my life and my story with other people, even if it's just in this quiet corner of the blogosphere. It's not always up to me to control who hears...just that I keep offering the praise, the fruit of my lips.

I guess He's created us all to bring Him praise in different ways...sometimes we speak this praise, sometimes we write it, sometimes we sing it or play it on an instrument. Sometimes we run it, sometimes we draw it, sometimes we cry it, you fill in the blank. We live it in the stories He's writing for us and it's vital that we share it in the way He's designed us to.

Overall, I think that incredible things happen when we are open to sharing our tree stories with the other trees around us, because this gives us a deeper understanding of the forest story and how our tree fits into the forest.

Tess came home from preschool a while ago saying, "Sharing is Caring." How true that is. Sharing is caring...and sharing is sacrificial and scary too...and sharing gives our lives meaning.

I'll conclude with the words of the brilliant Mary Oliver:

"I don't want to live a small life. Open your eyes, open your hands."

***

What are some of your favorite books?
How does your tree fit into the forest story?
How is praise a sacrifice for you?
How do you share your story with others?