Christ is All

Okay, here goes an attempt at explaining what's going on to all of you who love us and who love Lilibeth and Eddie and are praying for us. It is a very long, involved and complicated story, so it is really hard to tell in a brief couple of paragraphs. So, I'll give you the basics and then I might add some details in the entries to come.

There has been another family in process with adopting Lilibeth and Eddie since February 2007. We received the referral for them in September of 2007, after the family in process with them said that they were not able to continue. We were told that this family would be "disrupting," and we would adopt the children as a domestic adoption once they arrived in the United States. The last few months have been filled with ups and downs as any international adoption is - especially Guatemala adoptions lately.

We did believe, however, that Lilibeth and Eddie were coming to our home. We were thrilled at how specifically God answered many of our prayers in blessing us with these two precious children. We were told that the kids would most likely be home by the end of the year. We prepared for their homecoming as best we could by getting ready physically (buying beds, car seats, clothes, bilingual children's books, Spanish children's CDs, etc.) and getting ready emotionally. (I did try to guard my heart - but I'm wondering if it's actually possible after you receive a referral?) We also prepared our children for the addition of not one but two little siblings. My five-year-old daughter quickly went from "I think four is too many kids" to "I think Lilibeth and Eddie should both share my room with me." My two-year-old son frequently prayed "Tank you for Lilibeth and Eddie."

Then, one week before Christmas everything came crashing down. Literally. We experienced a grief that we had never known before. We were told "Lilibet and Carlos are no longer an option for you." You can imagine our absolute shock and disbelief. Up until this phone call we had absolutely no idea that anything was going wrong. We were made an offer to fly down to Guatemala and sign POA (power of attorney) for two other unrelated babies. There was absolutely no way we were giving up on our kids that easily. We pressed for answers - What had gone wrong? I now know what it means to experience so much grief at once that you actually suffer physically as well. My body completely reacted, and I was in bed with "flu-like" symptoms for the next day (it was most likely food poisoning at a very inopportune time). My husband was left to take care of the kids and try to put together the pieces of our shattered dreams.

Now comes the part that is a big reason I have been struggling with how to tell our story. This is where I could use prayer to have the right attitude towards people who we were trusting to help us and to do the right thing for Lilibeth and Eddie. I am going to leave some pertinent information out at this point because I just don't know how to tell it yet or if this is actually the place for it. For now, suffice it to say that after a few days we found out that Lilibeth and Eddie were again an "option" for us, but time was not on our side.

For those of you reading this who are not familiar with what is happening with Guatemalan adoptions right now, you need to know that everything in Guatemalan adoptions as we knew them ended at the end of December 2007. With only 4 business days left in the year, we were left scrambling trying to figure out what could actually be done to bring Lilibeth and Eddie home. After many agonizing phone calls and e-mails to people that are considered experts in Guatemalan adoptions, we became increasingly aware that there was nothing we could do this year (2007) that would help to bring them home. We were advised over and over that we needed to wait until next year when a new system of adoption was in place for Guatemala.

Although I did recover from my sickness, I was physically shaking for the next several days as we struggled to do something - anything - to figure out how to get these kids that we loved safely home. Eventually my body calmed down, but I spent the next few weeks making phone calls, researching on the internet, calling the US Department of Homeland Security, trying to figure out how to become a Guatemalan citizen in case it would help us under the new process. . . yes, basically exhausting every avenue I could think of.

Then came the final blow to my striving to figure out how to bring these children home. It came in the form of another phone call. This one was a tearful call from the woman who was in process with Lilibeth and Eddie since last February. She was calling to let me know that they had been contacted by our agency to ask them if there was any way they could still bring the kids home as their case was actually still active in Guatemala. They spent a few days to figure things out but are now proceeding to bring the children to their home ("grandfathered" in under the old system of Guatemalan adoption). I am so grateful to her for calling to tell me what was happening, because otherwise I would still be spending my time in a useless pursuit of information on how to adopt these kids.

I am ashamed to admit that at first I really was angry towards God for allowing this to happen when He so clearly led us to this place. During those weeks of extreme stress I said quick prayers for direction and comfort, but I did not spend time in agonizing prayer. I had more of an "I need to do something to fix this" attitude. I was not resting and trusting in my God who is good all the time, and who loves Lilibeth and Eddie more than I do and has the power to move in ways that I could never even imagine.

Looking back on the last several weeks I know that God has been doing a mighty work in my heart. For some reason, I was having a hard time completely surrendering Lilibeth and Eddie to Him. In fact, I have always struggled with knowing how to surrender my children completely to Him. I have prayed that God would show me how, and I believe that this experience has answered that prayer in a lot of ways. Walking through this fire has also taught me much about the all-sufficiency of Christ. There is a kind of joy that comes from realizing that Christ is all you need - everything else that He blesses you with is secondary compared to loving and knowing him.