and then there were five

What an amazing life we've been given. We are finally home now for one month and "interesting" doesn't even begin to describe our days. We had an amazing trip to Ethiopia. I wish I could put the experience into words, but every time I sit down to write about it, words fail me. It was wonderful, heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, so many different things all at the same time. I saw things I never thought I would see. I saw the city of Addis Ababa and the countryside of Ethiopia. I rode in a van with a goat and prayed he wouldn't pee on me. But most importantly I met beautiful, kind people, many of whom are dying of AIDS. It was overwhelming. Meeting our girls was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Seeing their country broke my heart. I cried every night I was there. No one can explain what poverty looks like. You have to see it yourself. I will never ever forget those images.
Destaye and Sintayehu are extraordinary children. They have many emotional wounds that will take a lot of time to heal, but I have so much hope for them. We are all adjusting now to being a family. We have had some rough patches, to say the least, but we also have those wonderful times where I look at all 5 of them playing and laughing together and my heart soars. It is difficult, yes, but I have learned that the best things in life come with difficulty. Every time I've settled for easy, I've settled for less.

A great article

We got the picture of our girls in the shirts that we sent them with their Welcome Bags! Abby saw their smiling faces and announced that they looked excited to come live with us. I can't believe we are leaving in 12 days. It's just unreal! I read an article in New York Magazine that I wanted to pass along. http://nymag.com/news/features/35817/ It is so interesting to look at all of the complexities of adoption. Randy and Justin Fried are a couple featured in the article. They adopted through AAI and are in the process of adopting again. I have communicated with them a little through email and they seem like amazing people. I feel like I have met so many extrodinary people throughout this whole process. We are so blessed!

Joy

Well this is it. We have passed court, recieved our last document needed to travel, and purchased our plane tickets. We leave August 30th. That's 3 1/2 weeks away! I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything. Just a week ago we were bracing ourselves to have to wait until November. Now that it is coming up so soon, I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on anything. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the trip and all that it will include. The funniest thing about it is that I'm not at all afraid. The reason this is especially strange is that I am usually anxious about everything. I have OCD. Trips like this should be rocking my little Sierra world to the point of being under the covers in the fetal position. I'm not though and I know why. When I prayed about adopting I asked God for a lot of grace. One of the reasons we decided not to have any more biological kids is that I mentally couldn't handle it again. With all of my complications during pregnancy, I lived in constant panic. Everything was so out of my control that my anxiety took over and robbed me of many precious months of enjoying the new life inside of me. I never never wanted to go through that again. So I prayed and told God that I wanted another child but asked if He would please grant me this feeling of peace that I have always craved but never been able to grasp. He chose to give it to me. Today I feel the greatest joy and peace of my life. I wish I could take a picture of it. I don't know if I will ever see it again in this life. I feel like I'm getting a glimpse of heaven. I'm thinking ahead about all of the logistics of leaving the girls for 12 days and trying to figure out what to do about the new girls with school. And on top of that there are all of the feelings of uncertainty that go along with picking up 2 strangers and bringing them home as my children. Everything in my head screams FEAR, but yet I feel none of it. I'm trying to figure out why this time is different and realizing that there is no answer to "why" when experiencing grace. There is no answer because nothing I did or ever have done would cause me to deserve it. It's just given. With OCD you live in a world of checks and balances so this concept blows my mind. I love it when He does that.

waiting

Our wait has been so short that I'm almost embarassed to share how long it has felt. We sent in our application on May 4th, found out who our kids were on June 12th, and now we are looking at our court date this Wednesday and it seems like forever away. How do I explain this? From the moment we decided to adopt it was like finding out I was pregnant-only-there is no due date. Also, you don't know how old your "baby" will be. You are getting a child with a past full of hurt and probably a lot of fear and anger. But most of all, you know that they are already out there and they're waiting for you. I cannot begin to explain the feeling of seeing your child's picture for the first time. How I studied every inch of them, wondering how she got that scar or why her hair was cut so short. I compare it to your first ultrasound during pregnancy when you get to see that tiny body swimming around in there and you count their fingers and toes. But looking at a picture of a child you are adopting is different in that you look into those eyes and you wonder what they've already seen. And now as we wait we wonder what else we are missing. Are other kids kind to them? How are they doing in school? Do they wonder about us? And the one that haunts me the most-are they as happy as they look for the camera or are they secretly crying themselves to sleep with no one there to comfort them? That is how I explain the waiting. As far as I'm concerned, even with them being at the great place that Layla House is, every day is one to many to spend in an orphanage.

here we go..

It all started with Baby Ana. When I was very little, so I've heard, I was given a doll. I named the doll Baby Ana and she was with me wherever I went. There were many more after that. I loved babies. When I got a little older I wanted to work in the nursery at church, then as a camp counselor, a sunday school teacher, a preschool teacher. I have always had the need to mother. As I grew up it was all I really wanted. After Brian and I married, I got my wish with our beautiful Abigail. 2 more times we were blessed with daughters. It seemed like my dream had come true, I had my kids. But there were more. I just knew it. We had always thrown around the idea of adoption. But then we were able to have kids biologically and that seemed like the end of that. Then one Spring afternoon, when Brian was on a trip and the house seemed to be crashing all around me God spoke. I know it was God because it wasn't exactly a time where these thoughts would have naturally occured to me. It was as if I suddenly realized that there had been a plan all along. My love of kids, my easy-going husband, my OCD, our 3 sweet and accepting girls, my exposure to different countries through family and the military, and then there was Ethiopia. Like a fire in my heart became my passion for this country. I remembered every time it was placed in my path. Praying for the drought as a child, crying looking at the pictures of the starving people, our compassion child and the stories of her life there, Brian's trip there, my dad's trip there, the Ethiopian orthodox cross in our house that I looked at every day, the newly adopted orphan on Abby's soccer team, 800,000 AIDS orphans, 800,000!!!......needing mothers and fathers and hope. One of the biggest realizations was that I didn't just want to "rescue" a child. I WANTED these kids. I wanted to be their mother. As all of this hit me, which let me tell you was a lot to take in, I thought again of a verse that had come up numerous times that same week. Matthew 25:35-40 Jesus said "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. " Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' As I thought about this verse I realized something. This is it. We have one chance at life. God was telling me what to do and I knew it. Once I came to that realization I knew that I could make that leap. I have had many trials of faith and I believe they were for this. I have come to the point where I actually trust God. Imagine that. So, I decided to put it to the first test. I asked Brian what he thought. He took this proposal in stride and decided to be open about it. Within just a couple of days of thinking and praying about it, he was in! We decided to tell the girls first. We sat them down and told them that we one or two new kids were going to come join our family. Without missing a beat, Emma said "mom I had a dream last night that a new kid came in the mail from another country". As humorous as that revelation was, she was dead serious. I wonder if it was God's way of preparing her for the news. We continued to tell our family and friends and got all sorts of reactions. "that's wonderful!" "are you crazy?" "why do you want more kids, you already have 3!" "you guys are brave" "what about ____and what about______ and what will you do if_______?"and my favorite- "oh....wow....that's...um....wow" :) . We tried our best to answer everyone's questions and concerns since this did come out of left field for most. The great thing was that no matter what was brought up, we never lost our peace about it.
Fast forward to now, July 18th, and we are sitting here ecxtatic about the 2 girls that will soon be ours. Our case has been submitted and we are waiting for a court date. We are on the journey of our lives and loving it! There will be ups and downs as there always is in life, but we are not on this journey alone.