The Road to Ren

Where to start, where to start...

It's been exactly three weeks since my last substantial blog post, and so much has happened since then, so please let me back track a bit and bring you up to speed on what's been happening! This back tracking will need to happen in a series of posts, but let me start with an update on the adoption front.  

The last time I wrote, I filled you in on the drama with USCIS and how disheartened we were with bureaucracy and indefinite wait times. Well, just one week after I mailed out our revised home study to CIS, we got our approval letter!  

It came rather unexpectedly, three Saturdays ago. I was having my Red Tent girls over for dinner (another post on that later), and Chris brought the mail in just after we'd finished eating. I was clearing dishes from the table and Chris nudged me and pointed to an opened envelope on the kitchen counter. I looked down and saw the words "Department of Homeland Security." I looked up, my eyes wide, my jaw hanging down, searching Chris's face for some sort of clue--Is this it?  Is it already here!?!  He smiled and nodded and I grabbed the letter and scanned it for the only word I needed to see: APPROVAL. And there it was, in black and white, and I started laughing and crying all at once.  

My dear friend Carly, who has a gift with the camera, was in our kitchen when this was all going down, and she started shooting away.  My joy, my relief, my uncontainable emotions, captured candid on film, thanks Car!

It was so much fun to have my girl friends here to join in this celebration with me. They have listened as I've shared my deep fears and joys at the dinner table, and it was special that I could share this milestone with them.

After the ladies headed home, Chris and I popped open a bottle of Prosecco and clinked our glasses together, grateful to be one step closer to our son.

Frizzante!

Toast to Ren!

The following week proved to be a bit insane. I got our approval letter notarized that Monday, and then, of course, we found one other glitch on a financial form that required a notary to witness Chris's boss's signature. After pulling a few strings, we got that worked out, and finally, on Thursday I was bound for Sacramento,

to the notary department at the Secretary of State's office, where our entire dossier was to be state certified.

It took me longer to find a parking place than it did to get our paperwork certified. Thirty minutes and two hundred and seventy dollars later, I was walking out of there, our dossier finally complete!

It was a beautiful day, and I even got to see the pristine monument of bankrupt California!

That evening, Chris stayed home with the girls so I could take over the copy machine at Kinko's. Before I left the house, Chris took a picture of me and my pregnant paper belly.

I was specifically instructed NOT to take any staples out of the original documents, so I got to fold each individual document back to photocopy one at a time, careful not to obscure the state-certification seals I had just paid big bucks for. Two hours and several trees later, this fat stack lay before me...

I nearly had a panic attack as the Fed-Ex clerk pried seven months of paper gestation out of my hands to put in an envelope. Tiffany, our China case manager, said that never in her six years at AGCI has she seen a dossier get lost in the mail, and I prayed to God that ours wouldn't be the first.

Still, despite my angst, I felt a massive sense of release as I walked out of Kinko's that night. Mailing off our dossier marked the end of a significant portion of this journey, and the beginning of yet another stretch of road ahead. It also freed up a substantial chunk of space on my desk!

I got a call from Tiffany early the following week. She sounded excited and perky--far more enthusiastic than I was used to. She said our dossier looked perfect and she was stoked because usually she finds a few glitches. She also said it was already on its way to the Chinese Consulate in Washington DC, where it will be authenticated. This process usually takes 2-3 weeks. After that, it will cross the big blue Pacific en route to China, where it will be translated and then hopefully accepted, after which we will receive our monumental "log in date," which gives Tiffany access to view all the children in the databank of waiting orphans on our behalf. She expects our referral to come at some point this autumn.  

Just before we hung up the phone, she said, "Well, your wait has officially started!"  Huh? Just now? I thought. What about the past seven months...doesn't that count too? 

But then it struck me that we had suddenly been filed into a new category...a category where we are taken far more seriously...as if the seven months of paperwork was some sort of testing ground to see how committed we really were to this adoption. I suppose they have a lot of drop outs during the paperwork phase. We were in JV, but we've just moved up to Varsity, baby!

So here's to the next leg of this long road to precious Ren!

Thanks for being a part of the ride with us, for your prayers that sustain us and your encouragement that refreshes us!  

live your story.

take two...

Here's the latest on the adoption front...

Exactly three months ago, to the day, we mailed the above package--our I-800A form and completed/approved home study--to US Immigration (CIS). In non-adoption terms, this was the final hurdle in completing our dossier (paperwork) for China.  I had completed every other piece of paper needed for our dossier, and an approval letter from CIS--which grants us permission to bring a foreign child onto US soil--was the last piece of paper I needed before we could send our thick dossier to China.  We were told that the immigration process would take about two months.  

About two weeks after I mailed off the packet, we got our appointment time to get fingerprinted--the last set of fingerprints for this adoption as well. Chris and I went to Sacramento on May 13th and got those prints done, no problem. Then we waited...and waited...and waited...for our approval letter to come.

About a month later, on June 14th, just when we were starting to wonder why it was taking so long, we got this lovely letter in the mail...

A Request For Evidence...boohoo...not the long-hoped-for approval letter.  The letter stated that our home study did not contain a child abuse clearance for me from the state of North Carolina.  Part of our home study involved getting child abuse clearances from every state we've lived in since the age of 18...which for me, is five states. Apparently, at the time our home study was completed, North Carolina did not release this information--it was against state law. Hence, this information was not included in our home study.

After some investigation, we figured out that this NC law had just changed, and instead of CIS honoring what the law was at the time our home study was done, they said we needed to go back and obtain this clearance in accordance with the new law, and have our original home study revised and re-approved based on this. Seriously?

So, that's what we did, and thankfully, we were able to obtain the clearance very quickly, but it still took a few weeks for the home study to be revised, re-notarized, and re-approved by our adoption agency.  

The good news is that I received the amended home-study and approval letter with the proper NC clearance in the mail this past Friday...and a few hours later, I mailed the below package to CIS.

This was all feeling like deja vu on Friday when I took this package to UPS. I felt like we were back at square one. The same package was sent off to CIS three months ago, and here we go again... 

TAKE TWO! 

Hopefully, this time we will receive our coveted approval letter.

Once I receive the approval letter, I will attach it to our dossier and drive these precious pieces of paper to the Secretary of State in Sacramento to get State Certified (say that ten times). Then I'll make a ridiculous amount of photocopies and then I will overnight them to our adoption agency where they will be authenticated and translated into Chinese, and THEN (finally!!!) they will cross the big blue Pacific Ocean and land on a desk in CHINA... 

Hooray! 

when that 

day comes.

(I'm mindful that this might all sound like a foreign language to a lot of people. I'm realizing that adoption is a lot like being in the military--it has it's own language and a whole slew of confusing acronyms that you only understand or care about if you're in it. So if you're still reading this, I thank you.)

So, that is where things are at, and I've had my share of frustration at the delays and the red-tape that we've had to navigate. I realize that even the delays are part of God's perfect timing, but bureaucracy is still annoying no matter which way you slice it.

And yet again, I'm seeing how this adoption process is like a crash course in spiritual discipline, as I try to embrace the discomfort of waiting.  

A few weeks ago my friend Kelly came out to visit and she remarked, 

"Wow, this pregnancy is going to be a lot longer than nine months."

Yes...I'm on month seven and there will definitely not be a baby arriving in the next two months.

One thing that's encouraged me in the last week is an entry I read in My Utmost For His Highest.  I think this is real wisdom:

"We always have visions, before a thing is made real...God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way.  Every vision will be made real if we will have patience. Think of the enormous leisure of God! He is never in a hurry. We are always in such a frantic hurry...The vision is not a castle in the air, but a vision of what God wants you to be...Don't lose heart in the process. If you have ever had the vision of God, you may try as you like to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never let you."  --Oswald Chambers.

So in the midst of the waiting and the frustration of legal processes, I'm mindful that the paperwork we've compiled to find our Ren will land in China exactly when it's meant to, and in the meantime, God is preparing and equipping me for the reality of becoming his mother.  

I will let you know when we receive our CIS approval. It's going to be a grand celebration when it finally comes. In the meantime, we always appreciate your prayers!  Thanks for reading and for your support from afar.

life cycles

[disclaimer: do not read this post while eating]

When I quit my full-time nursing job in the Air Force, I thought I was finally done cleaning up urine, feces, vomit, and sputum.  

But what did I know?

I was only six months into motherhood then.

The puking started in our household about three weeks ago and it stopped over a week later. The whole saga began when Lucy woke herself up early from her nap. She had projectile vomited all over herself and her crib. The puke kept coming almost every thirty minutes after that, until it finally stopped late that night before she went to bed.  

And then you can probably guess what happened.  Less than two days later, Tess started puking, and puked every thirty minutes for the rest of the day.

Tess, laid-out on my lap between puke-sessions.

Then we thought we were in the clear.

Until about four days later, when Chris started complaining of nausea.  And then the next day Tess started having diarrhea, and at one point it was coming out both ends.  That same night Lucy also pooped in the bathtub, and the following morning she woke up covered in vomit.  I think she'd slept in it, because it was already dry and crusty when I got her up.  Chris was still laid out in bed, so I was manning the house-hospital all by myself for a couple of days, scrubbing floors, replenishing Gatorade, throwing away defiled underwear, and trying to keep our dog away from all the excrements, which she finds appetizing. 

It all transported me back to the good-ole days working on a medical-surgical floor, with multiple patients with different ailments, who were dripping, spewing, and excreting bodily fluids in all the wrong places. When I went to nursing school almost ten years ago, I didn't know how much it would prepare me for motherhood. But what do ya know?  God doesn't waste a thing!

All of these bodily excrements have been topped off by puddles of pee-pee I've been finding around the house, wondering "who done it?" It turns out that my suspicions were right all along: our dog, Texanna.  

Finally, this week, I admitted to myself that these sporadic urine accidents weren't so sporadic anymore, so I took her to the vet this morning. It has been an eye-opener to realize that my furry baby isn't a baby anymore.  She's an old lady who now suffers from urinary incontinence.

Tex, taking an afternoon snooze...getting so gray on her chinny-chin-chin.

And here I am--currently in the midst of my female cycle, keeping my heating pad and Motrin close at hand--and I'm in jaw-dropping awe of how controlled we are by the flesh...by all the bodily fluids that this flesh excretes.

During our life cycles we have these babies and we teach them and clean up after them and it wears us out...and then we grow old and we start making messes of our own and our children clean up after us while they start to have their own babies.

We spend the first 2-5 years of our lives (give or take a few) learning how to put our pee-pees and poo-poos in the right place, and it's hard work, you know, it's a real skill.  And all it takes is a little virus or old age, and before we know it, we no longer possess control over our own bodily functions.

It's all very humbling.

In light of the past several weeks, I think the term "physical perfection" is an oxymoron.  The flesh perpetually keeps us humble; we are slaves to the material world. It seems to me that all of humanity is at the mercy of forces much bigger and smaller than ourselves. Cleaning up the aftermath of stomach bugs and incontinence is evidence enough that when it comes to this fragile thing called life...the birthing, the growing, the aging, the illness...

we have no control.

Thank God for hardwood floors and washing machines.

same ol' same ol'

Tomorrow is the first official day of summer, but in my book, summer is already here.  The hills of Northern California have turned from vivid green to rusty blonde, like the grass has decided to hibernate until the rain returns in November.  The sky looks like a big ceiling coated in light blue paint, with no variation or texture other than the abrasive ball of heat that moves across its surface.  I sit here at my desk, looking out at all of it, and I think about how my life mirrors the landscape.

I remember when summer used to feel full of excitement, activity, and change, but ever since I graduated from college, it seems to have become quite the opposite. The heat makes me want to stand still. The monotonous, cloudless skies feel uninspiring. 

I exchanged emails with a friend of mine last week, and we talked about how hard it sometimes is to carry on with the daily grind of raising a young family, of doing the same thing over and over again without change or newness. But this is life, after all.  Peaks and valleys come and go, but in between the slopes of change lie the flat, sturdy plains. Dry. Dull. Austere. Just like the steady, summertime heat.

I currently find myself on one of these dry plains, having just descended from a steep, invigorating mountain, and I'm starting to settle into the new landscape, to adjust my eyes to the change of scenery, which is still beautiful in its own right, but not quite as flashy as the dramatic mountain view I encountered last winter. I know there are more dramatic landscapes soon to come, so I'm trying to slow down and enjoy this lull while it lasts.  But I also find myself wondering about what it is inside of us that tends to resist the flat lands, that longs to speed through the sameness into more dynamic topography? 

If my life were a road trip right now, I presume I'd be driving through rows of flat cornfields somewhere in Nebraska.  The sun would be blaring through my windshield and I'd be flipping through my iPod, fanatically looking for a new song to play to break up the boredom.  A trickle of sweat would start to trail down the back of my neck, and I'd start to feel that the miles that I've logged thus far haven't gotten me anywhere.  But I'd keep driving, waiting for the landscape to change, waiting for some cloud cover to break up the heat, and waiting for some sort of sign to indicate progress.  But perhaps I'd also take note that the Great Plains are called the American "heartland" for a reason.

A few days ago I read something that seemed to tie all of these thoughts together.  I keep going back to it, and it gives me pleasure to read it.  It makes me realize the intrinsic value of the season and landscape of life I now find myself in:

Drudgery is the touchstone of character.  The great hindrance in spiritual life is that we will look for big things to do...There are times when there is no illumination and no thrill, but just the daily round, the common task.  Routine is God's way of saving us between our times of inspiration.  Do not expect God always to give you His thrilling minutes, but learn to live in the domain of drudgery by the power of God.  --Oswald Chambers.

So here I am--here many of us probably are--in the "domain of drudgery," in the steady summer heat on dry flat land.  Supposedly, this is a blessed place. Perhaps the reason we resist it so much is because it forces us to practice more self-awareness, to embrace monotony and discomfort. In the absence of thrills and constant change, we can no longer drown ourselves out.

What does the domain of drudgery specifically look like for us right now?  Well, I have to continually surrender this adoption process to God. I am feeling frustrated that my efforts to complete our dossier in a timely manner have backfired, as we are experiencing paperwork set backs at US Immigration due to factors beyond our control. It feels like this whole thing is at a stand still. Stuck.  We are at the point of the journey when it feels like we'll never arrive.  I know, I know, you might tell me that "the journey is the destination"...yada yada yada...  

And like Oswald Chambers says, routine does feel like the glue that holds me together during times like these.  I'm thankful for a summer schedule I can sink my teeth into.  I'm grateful for the new gym that opened up two miles down the road.  I'm thankful for grad school and Mom's Day Out and the company of good friends.

Perhaps I'll look back on this time and see how it built character and endurance, how the waiting enlarged my heart, how the uncertainty matured my faith, but right now, I'm just on the open road tryin' to keep my eyes on the flat, hot pavement.

What season and landscape do you find yourself in?

What does the domain of drudgery look like for you?

tea and things.

So, according to my calendar, I'm just about six months "pregnant" now, and over the past weeks I've been experiencing sudden, intense cravings for Chinese food. Go figure.  

There is a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant less than one mile down the road that serves up some amazing chow-mein. The noodles are salty, earthy, and doughy...wholly satisfying.  They soothe my waiting spirit, my primal maternal angst, which is starting to groan and moan daily as we wait for our referral from China. 

Chris and I had a date night a few weeks ago and we went out to eat...Chinese food again.  Each time we crack open our fortune cookies at the end of the meal, I hope for some sort of sign, wanting God to cosmically communicate some secret message that indicates how this will all pan out and when it will all go down. But instead, I open up my crinkled piece of paper and read,

"a modest man never talks to himself."

Hmmm...whatever.  That gives me nothing.

We are nearing the end of paperwork now, and every evening when Chris comes home with the mail, I ask...

Did IT come?

That is, our approval from US Immigration, the last prized piece of paper we need before our dossier is COMPLETE.  

We're coming up on two months since we sent in our application, which is the usual amount of time it takes China families to get immigration's approval, so it should be any day now.

In the meantime, we are just waiting...drinking tea, eating lots of noodles, and reading lots of meaningless fortunes.  

We hope and anticipate that our dossier will be in China by the end of July, and that we will find out who our boy is by the end of the summer.

***  

In other news, I'm reminded that nothing passes the time like busyness and distraction, which equals SCHOOL for me.  I'm back in school this summer, completing the final two classes before I start my thesis, which I'm still uncertain about, but I'll cross that bridge when it comes.

The class I'm currently taking is Advanced Workshop in Poetry II. This is actually the first poetry class I've ever taken--I volunteered to move up into the advanced level course because it was going to cancel unless a few more students joined.  I also moved up because the professor of this class is one cool dude and is the head of our whole MFA program.  So far, so good.

The description of our "student lounge"--the message board where we can virtually raise our hands and ask questions--reads:

This is the Student Lounge. It has plush leather chairs and a mini-fridge filled with travel sized bottles of Cristal. There is a masseuse on call, and take my word, the personal chef creates the gustatory experience of a lifetime. If you have forgotten your smoking jacket, loaners can be found on the rack to your left, next to the Rodin. Yes, indeed, the National University MFA program spares no expense!

Needless to say, the Student Lounge is my kinda place, and it's amazing what kind of classroom you can create for yourself when it's left to your imagination.

Anyhow, some words that immediately come to mind though when I think of poetry are:

frivolous

impractical

unnecessary

melodramatic

And...I suppose it can be all of these things...and I LOVE IT.  Perhaps I have an affinity for impracticality. I think Chris is expecting me to change my track from nonfiction to poetry. I'm not sure, but we'll see. Poetry, just like prose, seems to be GOOD THERAPY. Putting thought and emotion into words is cathartic and freeing, and I find that it offers a great sense of pleasure and relief in the midst of life circumstances that are largely out of our control. So, in that sense, poetry is the most practical and necessary thing ever! 

So...you guys may be seeing more poetry up in here over the next eight weeks.

For me it's been hot tea, chinese noodles, and poetry...

but what soothes your waiting heart?

growing you.

growing you

doesn’t look 

like two

cells that 

divide 

inside

my womb.

you grew 

within

my new

soft heart

alive 

inside

of me.

meeting you

doesn’t look

like two

colors

black/white

that light

a screen.

i meet

you in

my dreams

my mind

i trace

your face

within.

chasing you

doesn’t look

like two

small feet

that run

fast one

from me.

i chase

your heart

replace

the wounds

with love

above

the shame.

seeing you

doesn’t look

like two

brown eyes

or skin

akin

to mine.

I see

black eyes

to me

you shine

handsome

boy come

home.