Entitled

Entitled: A verb; to stake or put claim to something.

One of, if not the hardest thing that we have dealt with in our adoption of two older girls has been entitlement issues. (The other top two issues have been school issues and food issues.) I think that it is so hard for Heather and I to deal with as we just don't really understand it all. So, I have been reflecting on entitlement.

How is it that our girls who came from an orphanage without even their own pair of clothes and just a half full backpack of random items, (such as a 1/2 deck of cards and a few pictures) can now demand SO much. They each had a suitcase of items waiting for them at our guesthouse upon their arrival, including a pair of new shoes. Now, every time we walk past a shoe store we are bombarded with questions about why we won't go and buy them 5 more pairs of shoes! They feel entitled to more. We have given them everything for nothing in return. Nothing that they have done deserves the gifts that they have received, the love that they have been given and the opportunities that will await them. We choose them anyway.

We know not to expect our new kids to feel thankful or grateful, but it is incredibly difficult when you feel like you have now given them more than they need and yet still they are not satisfied with it. They demand more. They might say thank you in the moment, but the moment is fleeting.

I really could go on and on about different entitlement issues that we have dealt with. Trust me, it has been a HUGE issue.

However, I have come to realize that as difficult as it is to deal with, we are ALL guilty of feeling entitled. We feel entitled to:

The right to peace.

The right to prosperity.

Our civil rights.

The right to fast internet.

The right to freedom of speech.

The right to worship how and whom we want.

The right to three meals a day. (at nice places)

The right to take a nice vacation.

The right to buy the newest phones.

The right to have the bigger house.

Etc, etc, etc, etc.

We (myself included) feel so entitled to many, many things. Many of these issues come up and have to be dealt with when you are in a foreign land with a different culture.

As a follower of Christ I have to continually remind myself that I am not entitled to these things. I need to continually re-evaluate my priorities and what is important in my life. I have to often remind myself that I am not entitled to receive any of these things. There is nothing that I have, nor nothing that I can do that earns or deserves the love of Christ. Yet, He lavishly pours it out on me.

Titus 3:4-7

"(4)But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, (5) he saved us, NOT because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to HIS own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, (6) whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, (7) so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

I have done NOTHING to earn his grace, nothing!

I am entitled to NOTHING!

I pray that I can remember this, and that I can teach my children it as well:)

Adoption thoughts...

We have heard just about every question there is when it comes to our adoption and we really want to be an open book so that God will be glorified in our lives and what He is doing in us.

Here are some of the questions, and answers:

What are you thinking? Didn't you already have three kids?

Yeah... sometimes Heather and I ask ourselves this question. Having a family of 6 kids, four of whom are adopted never really was a part of "our" plan. We for SURE have a crazy life now! Actually, our lives felt crazy before this adoption. We felt like there was no way we can do this. (we still can't apart from Christ) Though this never was our plan, it was God's plan all along. As we look back towards the ways that He brought us here it is clear that this was His plan for us. So, what were we thinking? We want to follow Jesus Christ with our whole lives. For us, this meant adopting these three beautiful kids. Who knows what His plan is for you, it is not likely adopting three kids. Though I will say, to give Christ your life, means that you give Him your plans and His plans might entail adopting three kids. :)

If we could do it over again different would we?

Again, this question is fairly similar. The reality is that we can't. So, there is no use in wasting time thinking that we could do it different. However, the answer is a resounding NO! We would not want to do it any different. It was incredibly hard getting into a taxi, leaving 5 children with Heather, two of whom were really sick, in a foreign country. Saying goodbye to them and watching them all cry so much was by far, the most difficult thing Heather and I have had to endure. The hardest part was really not knowing when I would return. This time that we have had here in ET now has been an incredible time for our family. It has allowed us to show our girls how much we love them, a small version of the love that Christ has for us, his adopted children. We, (Heather especially) have been able to bond with them here in their own surroundings, in an area that is somewhat familiar for them, before whisking them across the earth to a place called California. I don't want to do the time apart again though, (I have let God know that many times:) Our time apart allowed Heather's parents to be able to come and help and it allowed me to be able to work some overtime to help cover some of the increased costs. If we had known months ago that we would be here for 4 months total, I am not sure that we would have done it. This is where following Jesus has really come in. We haven't been able to see the path laid out far ahead of us, but only one step at a time. So we have taken that one step at a time, and He continues to lead us in the right path.

Is adoption hard?

HECK YEAH IT IS HARD! I don't want to sugar coat anything, encouraging others to adopt without really knowing what is in store. It is incredibly hard to love someone who doesn't appreciate it. (Once again, kinda like Jesus does for us) Our girls don't trust us fully yet, they still aren't sure that we won't just take them back to the orphanage. Who can blame them? We have to constantly ask for grace, patience and for an increased amount of love. Our girls are 11 and 7, yet emotionally they are like 5 and 3. Educationally, they are around the 1st grade and kindergarten levels. Add that to the language barrier, and the fact that they don't trust our love yet. This makes things challenging at best. Tantrums are the routine. Even after a couple of months, we both feel like adopting older children and bringing them into our home is considerably harder than all three times we brought a new born into the home, (with the hourly feedings and everything). Emotionally, and physically it is taxing! The harder it is, the more we realize the deep needs they have and we are honored that God has chosen us to be the ones to meet them. The other day, our 11 year old told Heather how much she appreciated us adopting all three of them and London as well. She said that she is sorry for the hard times that she gives us. They do bring a smile to our faces. Someday, hopefully, she will start to act out that appreciation:)

You guys are amazing! (This is mostly in the form of a statement as opposed to a question)

Ummm, No! We are not. We lose our tempers with them, we yell at them, we often find ourselves short on patience. We are doing our best, but we are not doing anything super "good" or super "Christian". We are just doing what we have been asked to do. That is all. We NEVER would have done this on our own accord. We only do this, as we try to become more and more a follower of Christ, and learn what that means. Sometimes, that means that He is going to want us to do things that we would otherwise think is crazy. Never, ever ever does Jesus claim that following Him is easy. In fact, He tells us that it is hard, that it is the road less traveled. This is where we cling to Him, and have joy that He is ALL we need.

There have been plenty of other questions, but maybe I will answer those at another time. For now, we love the life that we have been called to. It may be one crazy, hard life right now, but it is our life and we love it! Please don't think that I am complaining one bit. We knew what we were getting into, (mostly.) As I once again get to listen to the morning prayers in the distance, my girls are all going to wake up in about 30 minutes, come downstairs for breakfast and find me sitting here waiting for them!! Last night, two hours before I got here, they sent me messages on Skype telling me that I need to just get on a plane right now and get here:) Well, it worked!

67 hours!!!!

67 hours until I will be arriving in Addis Ababa at our guest house! I. Can't. Wait. It seems like it has been forever since I boarded a plane and flew back home, leaving my family and wife behind. I am super excited. I am fully packed, house is clean and I am ready to go. Just one more day of work and then I leave right after getting off duty:)

I miss my wife.

I miss my kids.

I miss Ethiopia.

I miss the sights and smells.

I miss the coffee ceremony.

I miss the Ethiopian people.

I miss the crazy driving.

I miss the laid back attitudes.

I miss going for walks to get a 25 cent coffee

I miss 30 cent french fries.

I miss being able to walk to the fruit market

I miss the simpleness of it all.

I miss the roadside stores.

I miss the music.

I miss the church.

I miss the injera.

I miss the cold flimsy pancakes in the morning (okay, not really:)

I miss it ALL

I can't wait to go back!!!

We just bought return tickets for all 8 of us for April 3rd. Please pray with us that this date will work. It will be another $2500 or so if it doesn't :( Also, we have a birth family interview set up on the 22nd of March. Please pray that this is all that the embassy requires and they clear us at this time (for ALL 3 children!) May God be glorified in all things we do!

Thank You

One of the hardest things about being here in Ethiopia is the lack of communication that I am able to have with friends and family back at home. It seems like I am constantly fighting trying to be on the internet. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle.

Most nights, we do not have the internet. I'm not sure if our guest house doesn't pay for the "super speed" internet, therefore, it's too slow for us at night (b/c so much of Ethiopia is on the internet), or if Satan is trying to prevent me from feeling connected with loved ones back at home. Either way, it is discouraging. We almost always have internet during the day. But, as I am sure you can imagine, my time on the computer is VERY limited during the day. Most of the time I do get to sit down for a few minutes to log onto the internet, I am listening to crying, whining, screaming, fighting, or all of the above while I try to catch up with life back at home. By the end of the day, I practically fall into bed after I talk to Adam for a few minutes (if I am even able to do that). Many nights I just message him on skype, and these messages "pend" until the internet eventually comes back on at some point during the night, and then they get sent.

All this to say, I am SO very sorry for my delay in saying THANK YOU to those of you who sent beautiful birthday cards and sweet notes for my birthday!! I truly felt SO blessed to know that so many people back at home are lifting us up in prayer as we get thru our adoption process! The night before my birthday (Ethiopia time), the staff here at the guest house, surprised my with a birthday party! Adam had ordered a cake and roses! It was SO much fun! Then, on my actual birthday in Ethiopia, we celebrated by spending the day at the Sheraton! It was such a fun day! The girls LOVE to go here, as we spend the whole day swimming in their pool! It really is nice. When you walk into the water, it's like walking into the ocean at the beach, as it gets gradually deeper. But, it is not like the beach in Santa Cruz, more like the beach in Hawaii:) as the water is very warm! They have the kids area sectioned off, so it is perfect for my five girls who don't know how to swim. My parents gave me the best gift, a BREAK from all of my kids. Some other adoptive mommas met us at the pool as well, so we all ditched our kids and snuck inside for a cup of coffee! It was such a treat:)! This was probably my first real break since coming to Ethiopia, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I enjoyed all of your cards over the course of three days. Reading your cards was the highlight of the days end for me, so I wanted to make it last:). With my kids sound asleep, I would hunker down in my bed and just enjoy the quiet moments of reading these words from home!

Having so many people praying for us, is the ONLY reason I am still surviving here in Ethiopia. When Adam left, I was sure that I was NOT the strong woman that everybody kept saying I was. God has given me the strength to get thru each day though. And, He has stretched me in more ways than I ever thought possible.

Thank you SO much for your continued prayers! I am definitely feeling them. While I definitely need prayer all day, I would specifically love prayer around 7:00, bedtime. This is 8:00am California time. It is around this time of the day that I just feel like I have run out of steam. I want everyone to go to bed, and honestly, I want them to go to bed NOW! Lately the girls have been taking over an hour to fall asleep, which means that they wake up cranky and tired. Capri is often the last to fall asleep and is always the first to wake up. With no nap in the middle of the day, you can imagine how fun she is around 4:00pm:). Please pray for patience for me during this time. Pray that God would sustain me beyond 7:00, and that I would be patient in waiting for the girls to fall asleep (so that I can have "me" time:).

Thank You again so much for all your love and prayers!!

Update!

It has been really hard for either Heather, or I to update anything here on the blog. The internet on the other side of the world in Ethiopia is awful. Even worse over the last couple of weeks. So Heather has been unable to post anything. My main internet is through our ipad, and once again, it won't let me post anything for some reason. So I have had a lot on my mind that hopefully I will posting in the next few weeks. Some thoughts on adoption and life in general in Ethiopia.

However, I wanted to give an update on our status.

I, Adam came home on Jan 31st. Right now it is my plan to return to ET around the middle of March or so. The day that I left, we finally passed court for our boy, Yosef. It took about 7 weeks or so for him to pass. He is still in the transition home as we are really uneasy to taking custody of him yet as his case seems more difficult. We have taken custody of our two girls, Eyerusalem and Mahlet, as of Jan 4th. It has been an awesome time for us to be there in ET getting to know our girls. So many times, we have been able to use a translator to get to the root of different issues. Also, it is more of a familiar area for the girls as they learn how to be a part of our family.

All three of our kids were submitted to the US embassy at the same time last Wed. The embassy is supposed to take around 10 days to decide what they are going to do with our case. There is a chance (albeit SMALL) that they could just clear us and request an interview with us. There is a MUCH greater chance that they will schedule an interview first with the distant uncle who relinquished the kids. This will likely take another month or so. There is also hopefully a very, very small chance that our case could be sent to Nairobi to be investigated which could then take who knows how long. Right now, we are hoping and praying that we will ALL come home as a family of 8 around the end of March.

Here are some ways to pray for us.

- Obviously the whole embassy issue.

- Heather and our 3 other girls visas are all expiring in a couple of weeks and they are going to have to go renew it, hopefully.

- Heather is T.I.R.E.D. Thankfully, her parents are staying with her right now, but this time of us being apart is really wearing on both of us, especially her. The kids are draining every little bit of energy she has.

- For Heather as she parents 5 of our children right now. Though we wouldn't change a thing, our new girls are HARD! Our 11 year old threw a full-blown tantrum the other morning for over 2 hours because Heather cut her balloon string too small! The nerve of her:) Our 7 year old won't leave Heather's side.

- We know that there are some real deep issues and hurt for our girls and pray as we work through these. During the tantrum, our daughter asked Heather to just hit her so that she would be punished already. :( Heather told her that is not how we do things and she is going to need to learn to talk through some of these issues.

- Pray for our girls English to continue to improve.

- Lastly, pray that our Heavenly Father would continue to sustain us. He has to this point, and we see His hand at work. We trust that He is in each and every situation.

Well, I am sure that is enough for now.

What a fun day!!

This morning we decided to venture out and went for a walk down to the cafe. Each of the girls picked out their own special treat (gotta love having grandma here:), we got a bottle of water to share for the girls and my mom and I each got a macchiato:) Our total bill was 65 birr, which is about $3.50. If we only we could go to Starbucks for as cheap back home!!

The girls have gotten super creative and fun in their play today. After lunch London went upstairs and started "washing clothes". She pulled out our buckets we had bought awhile back, and a bunch of clothes from their closet. She found a few different small containers (like bubble containers, small cups, etc) and was filling those with water in the bathroom, and bringing them over to the big buckets her clothes were in. When Geneva went upstairs and wanted to help, they decided to have a wash bucket and a rinse bucket. Then they would "ring"out their clothes and hang them, (still dripping:) on our balcony. SO cute to watch them:)

After they tired of this they decided to put their swimming suits on and brought the buckets and a bunch of empty water bottles downstairs for water play. They have been wanting to go swimming SO BADLY! I think this satisfied that desire, at least for the time being.

While the girls were playing outside, I made some oatmeal cookies, and they all REALLY enjoyed fresh baked cookies.

Now it is just after 4:00pm, they have started a video, and are watching that as we begin dinner preparations.

Best day we have had in a LONG time!! So much giggling and laughter; hopefully the beginnings of friendships being built in our house today!

Hard goodbye, but help is on it's way!!!!

I HATE goodbyes. Always have. I cry, I sob, and I dread saying goodbye. This weekend I have been thinking non stop about saying goodbye to Adam. I knew that I would be hard for me. What I didn't anticipate was how hard it would be for my girls. They each have their own unique way of grieving. The common thread among all of them though, was that they were sobbing. Adam's car was set to pick him up at 7:30pm. The girls usually go to bed at 7:00. I thought it would be easier for them to say goodbye, and then put them to bed.

Adam started his goodbyes with Mahlet. Her way of dealing with grief is to ignore it. She did everything she could to NOT say goodbye to Adam. She barely gave him a hug, and tried to act as silly as possible when Adam trying to give her a hug. Within minutes we found her sobbing on Adam's pillow. Then Adam said goodbye to London. Her way of dealing with grief is fight it. The whole time Adam was hugging her, she couldn't look at him. She knew that if she did, she would start crying. She was whimpering until we got in bed, and then she was sobbing. Then Adam said goodbye to Eyerus. Her way of dealing with grief is to give in to it. She sat on Adam's lap, and just started sobbing immediately. Then Adam said goodbye to Capri. She's only 2, so we are not sure how much she really understands. She was laughing up until we waved Adam's car goodbye, then she decided to join in and just started sobbing as well. Then Adam said goodbye to Geneva. She grieves long and slow, just like her momma:). She has been saying for days how she doesn't want Adam to go. She has been crying for days, and tonight was sobbing immediately.

Finally it was time to put the girls in bed, only nobody wanted to go to bed. Mahlet sobbed again at the thought of going to her own bed, so I let her sleep in my bed. Geneva always starts out in my bed, because she shares a bed with Capri. But, then of course Capri didn't want to sleep in her own bed, so I put her at the foot of my bed. Since everybody else was sleeping in my bed, it didn't seem fair that sick little London should have to sleep by herself. So, we made a spot for London. Eyerus was in her own bed, still sobbing. I had promised her that she could wave goodbye to Adam's car. The other girls I thought for sure would be asleep.

We left the room with everybody crying (except Capri, who was saying "I not crying". When Adam said goodbye to me, I was crying, but not as much for myself, as for my girls. The car finally came, all the girls got out of bed, came to the balcony to wave Adam's car goodbye. By now, every single one of us, including Adam is sobbing.

When Adam's car finally left, the girls and I went back inside and just held each other and sobbed. I HATE goodbyes.

The good news though is, I just skyped my mom. I thought that my parents wouldn't be here for 16 days. But my mom is getting on a plane on SUNDAY!!!! That is less than a week away! Praise God!! Help is on its way:)