Godspeed!

I'm not sure exactly where that phrase comes from, but I am very sure that in the entire history of mankind, it has never been used with more meaning than today.  Today, the day our Home Study was signed on and sent off with our I800 so we could officially apply to adopt our child!  Yay!!!!  The adoption process is defined by waiting, waiting, waiting, not getting anything done, and still, always, having one more thing to complete, re do, and then wait on.  So, two such big milestones is an awesome accomplishment.  Now, we have to undergo yet another fingerprinting process (our third) and wait to hear back approval from the US government that we can adopt internationally.

Our completed I800, now on it's way to USCIS!

And while we are waiting for that approval, we are also waiting on more paperwork, although when I thought before that some paperwork was out of my control, that was just the tip of the iceberg.  This paperwork is REALLY out of my control-it's paperwork that will lead to the reopening of Kazakhstan to US adoptions.  As soon as this paperwork (have I said paperwork enough?  No, there is never enough paperwork for adoptions!)  is filed, then our governments just need to have a little chat with each other and all will be well. The paperwork is on our side, but hopefully once it's resolved, things will move fast (which in the adoption world never happens but I am ever the optimist and sure all my little ducks will be in a row when in reality one of them is probably swimming in the wrong ocean and I will move heaven and earth to get it, but hey, that's what I do) and then not too long before I get my long imagined phone call.

You see, months ago, when we first started this process, I started imagining my phone call.  Where would I be?  At work?  At the Y?  With Bard?  Driving? What would they say?  How would I respond?  Scream?  Cry?  Because how would you respond if someone called you and told you they had a baby on the other side of the world for you, and would you like to come pick him up? Yes please.  That's the referral call.  Accompanied by an email with pictures of the most darling boy ever.  But we can't get that call until we turn in our dossier-all the forms required by the Kazakhstan government to adopt-and we can't finish those forms until Kazakhstan is officially open to US adoptions. Interesting fact about Kazakhstan, they are considered to have very good orphanage care, when compared to many other countries. Their First Lady has invested in the orphanage process, increasing the quality of care to orphans all over the country and even visiting the Baby House that we will likely travel to when we meet our child.  Some houses have music lessons, swimming pools, and different kinds of therapy!  Which is a reason why many people choose

First Lady Nazarbayeva

Kazakhstan to adopt from, because they know their children are getting better care than many orphans world wide.  So when we do get that phone call, that we have been referred to a child, it helps to know that he will be in good hands. Even though I have imagined that phone call for months, I am now imagining another phone call.  Actually an email but that is not as dramatic, so nowhere near as fun. Soon and very soon, I am going to get an email stating that Kaz is open.  And then I will scream and cry.  And then I will bust my ass (and that of anyone who tries to slow me down) to complete our paperwork in record time.  So that I can get my next phone call.  So that I can get on a plane.  So that I can go meet my baby.

Open.  Open.  Open.  I am just sure I can will things to happen.  I can't explain it, but I feel positive.  Maybe it's because I like getting things done.  Maybe it's because I know a family in Kaz right now, bonding with their little man who is likely the same age our little boy will be when we meet him.  Maybe I feel positive because this process is growing me, changing who I am as a person, helping me to be comfortable in a waiting time of unknown and being used to deepen my love.  A friend once said that love is like a muscle-it has to be stretched to get stronger and often that stretching involves pain.  As I type this my triceps are killing me because I upped my weights this morning during my work out.  When you are sore the night of a work out, wow, the next day will be real fun!  But I have experienced continual stretching throughout this process, to the point of intense pain, and over and over again I hear, "Wait." Yet while I am waiting, there have been several clear moments when I feel so much love for this little boy, I have a physical reaction - I know that waiting is part of the process, making me ready for my little one.

Lately, waiting has been the theme of my life in so many areas.  We have been waiting through this adoption process.  We have been waiting on Cici's health issues.  We have been waiting to find out about a new job for Bard. In the past few weeks, all three of those issues hit major milestones.  And yet, we are still waiting!  I wrote in another blog that "I Will Wait" by Mumford and Sons has become a bit of an anthem for me.  I seem to hear it in the moments that I most need a release and it's almost cathartic.  You might laugh but I've thought about getting a tattoo about waiting because it does seem to be a permanent part of me!  I think I am learning to use "trusting" as a synonym for waiting.  In that sense, waiting can be a time of rest, not strife.  And the focus can be on hope, not despair.  So as I wait to hear from our government (probably the ultimate test of waiting and trusting!) and from the Kazakhstan government, I really do mean godspeed.  Not in a fast sense, since sometimes God is achingly slow, but just in a right sense, with rest and hope. Godspeed means the perfect speed.

Woven

Open, open, open.  Anyone remember these commercials?  They went virile before there was virile and were quoted and spoofed for years after they aired.  And although I could not even tell you where to find a Mervyns now (I think they may have gone bankrupt, how is that for failure of a marketing campaign?!) I can still hear that little voice in my head "Open, open, open." Except now it's a big voice and screaming incessantly, getting louder with the rising of my blood pressure!

Let's backtrack, shall we?  Our home study is done, everything turned in, report sent to the agency for corrections and then coming back to us for any final input before it is rushed. . .off to sit on a shelf and gather dust.  Why? Because Kazakhstan is still not open to adoptions from the US.  After being expected to open at the beginning of the new year (ours, not theirs), we are still waiting to hear that they are open.  Open.  Open.  Oddly enough (and most of you will not believe me) but I haven't been too stressed about the delays.  I'm not sure why, probably a combination of faith, trust, hope, and distractions   I've been distracted because although we finished 98% of our home study over a month ago, we have been waiting on two final documents.  One from me, and one from Bard.  Mine was a total blooper, something that I should have done ages ago.  Listen up folks, never put off til tomorrow what you can do today because it might come back later and bite you in the adoption butt.  Bard's was very frustrating though. And as much as I would like to go into the details and completely slander someone who so royally got on my bad side that I am surprised the universe didn't implode from the pure pressure that was exuding from every pore in my body, I will restrain myself.  Let's just all be thankful that my husband is for more mature than I am and that every once in a while I listen to his voice of reason. However, I will give you a little cookie in that I may or may not have uttered the phrase, "I can't even imagine why you are doing this to us, are you against international adoptions?  Because there is an orphan on the other side of the world waiting for us to bring him home and we are waiting on you." You groan, but the next day we had our paper-after two months.  Silly people, if you would stop giving into my tyrannical displays, maybe I wouldn't behave so tyrannically :)

Either way, those two obstacles took way longer than should be legal for someone trying to meet her child, and so it didn't really matter that Kazakhstan was still closed to the US.  The day those forms were completed the full force of my attention turned toward the current problem.  Remember in Jurassic Park when the dinosaur spots the kids, turns and bears down on them like a freight train with snappy teeth? That's me (I am full of 90's cultural references today!) except I have no where to run because I can't see where I'm going and I'm not the one in control of end goal anyway.    That is so irritating.    And before you jump to conclusions, it's not Kaz I am waiting on, it's our own government, agencies, and people here in the US taking their sweet time.  I don't know why, but somehow that is oddly relieving, yet also incredibly annoying. And in the meantime, Russia is apparently considering lifting their ban on US adoptions, to which my response would be the same as when they first made the ban legal.  Oh wait, Bard wouldn't let me blog that either, you all need to talk to him, this blog would be SO much more colorful if I said what was in my fun little head!

So, where are we now?  Waiting.  We had originally hoped to turn in our dossier sometime in June.  And while if Kaz opened immediately and we put our dossier together super fast, that might still be a possibility, it is looking less and less likely.  So we wait.  That's the adoption process:  hurry, hurry, hurry, wait, wait, wait.  Pieces from all over the world have to come together in a complicated and pre determined order.  One piece can't be in place without the other and if a different piece comes undone, it can bring many more crumbling down with it.  And most frustrating, I don't even know what all the pieces are and which order to put them together in.  Or even the final product!

A Kazakh shanyrak at the top of a yurt.

Years ago, a decade now, when I was going through a challenging time in my life, someone told me the analogy of a tapestry.    Sometimes all you can see is your little threads being woven together.  From your limited perspective, the tapestry just looks like a colorful jumbled mess. You might not even be able to see the front of it, but are likely just looking at its back-torn off threads unraveling with no apparent purpose!  But time gives you a bigger picture. As you move further and further away from your own little spot, you can see patterns emerge.  Threads and colors blending together creating shapes, something new.  You look at it from the other side, designs and symmetry are visible.  Each small, seemingly chaotic piece has somehow been woven into a beautiful story.  How?  Someone had a plan, a purpose, and set out to turn knotted threads and snipped off ends into a piece of art.

Thank you Kelly, for our shanyrak.

Tapestries are quite prevalent in Kazakh culture,  from rugs to wall hangings.  But easily the most recognizable, and culturally important item woven together, is the shanyrak. Made from intersecting wooden beams it is used to center the yurt. As a nomadic people, Kazakhs resided in yurts, dome like structures, on the steppe for countless generations.  The final piece of the yurt was the shanyrak, allowing light and ventilation, but also providing a deeper element.  The shanyrak became a family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. Just as the woven wood centered the yurt, the shanyrak also symbolically reflected peace and calmness as the center of family life. As we watch our own story being woven together, we have been given a shanyrak, created from love to remind us of our center: peace, of threads of life being woven together, wandering and being found in family.  Peace only comes from trust.  From faith.  From hope. This shanyrak, given by a dear friend, lets Light into our home.  And that is what I most want to be open.  And that is the reason for this whole journey.

Maternity Session

The Kazakhstant pendant Bard gave me.

 I never did a maternity photo session.  I  have seen many gorgeous
 photo shoots of women-stunning, alive, about to become mothers.
 And I think it's a beautiful idea, just not one that I have been drawn to,
 until now.  But these photos do not capture the baby growing inside
 me, they capture the love, growing inside all of us.  And they were not designed to show a timeline, an expectation of how much longer we had to wait.  Just that we are waiting. Expectant.  Hoping.

Holding our horse, brought back from Kazakhstan.

I read another adoption blog not too long ago, that talked about how it takes a village to go through an adoption, just like a regular pregnancy. But perhaps even more so.  With a biological pregnancy, every time you see the expectant mother, you are reminded of what she is going through and a pregnancy comment or question is on the tip of your tongue.  With an adoption, every time I see someone, the adoption is on the tip of my tongue.  Honestly, it's all I want to talk about with anyone, from grocery store clerk to close friend.  This. Is. My. Life. And I am fortunate to be surrounded by a village of people who get me. When Chelle first took these photos, she posted one right away, saying that people going through the adoption process shouldn't have to wait for one more thing!  She is an amazingly talented friend, (check out her work here) one who has been taking our family photos for years. But never before has she captured our hearts, our prayers, our lives, so powerfully. So beautifully.

Evelyn wearing her Kazakh vest and hat.

You can see all the photos she took by clicking the link on the right, and check out her blog for the write up she did for our shoot.  In fact, you should stop reading this blog and read her write up of our pictures!  She wrote what I needed to read and those thoughts have never been outside my head.  That's the village.  Friends who send me links to ideas for photo shoots, interviews about adoptions, webinars for adoption support.  Friends who ask me how the process is going, what they can pray for, and that are crying, and waiting, with me.  That's the village. And just as a waistline grows with a biological pregnancy, so my support grows with this adoptive pregnancy.  Just knowing that people are thinking of me, of my family, of our growing family, is incredibly meaningful.

There is an old saying, "It's the thought that counts."  I don't know how it was originally intended, but let's be honest, often times that saying is used as a cop out!  Which is too bad, because the thought does count, and it counts a lot. I've never really thought about why some women do a maternity photo session and why I wasn't interested in one.  But I thought about this photo shoot.  At first it just seemed like a really fun idea.  Then I thought about it some more.  And I realized that it would be a moving expression of where I'm at right now; where our family is at, captured in art.  Then I thought about it some more. And I realized that this photo shoot wasn't for me.  Because what it ultimately captures is the thought behind our adoption.  You see, some day, a lifetime from now, but relatively soon, I will bring home a little boy.  And he will be young, innocent, completely unaware of the life he should have experienced. But he will learn.  And as he grows, he will grow to understand that someone gave him up.  And no matter the reason behind her decision, the fact remains the same, his mother left him.  And I, as his mother, will watch this dawning realization with terror and grief.  I will want to fix him, to stem the sorrow, to make all the hurts go away.  But I can't, won't, be able to.  Because at each stage in his life, he will grieve in a new way.  And so as he faces each new stage, I

Praying for baby brother.

must be ready to face it with him.  To let him grieve.  To let him feel. To cry and to pray and to do anything possible to show him love.  And so I thought about these pictures.  Even now, half way across the world, somewhere, with someone, is my son.  Maybe he has already felt hurt and confusion at who loves him.  But I love him.  And in any way I can, I will show him that he is wanted, loved, longed for.  Before he was born, I wanted him. Before he opened his eyes, I dreamed of what color they would be.  I celebrated his first Christmas, his first Easter, his first photo shoot.  Some day, he will see these pictures.  An undeniable visual message of love. Photographs to show we are planning for him. We are excited to meet him. We are praying for him.  And he is part of our family.  Maybe a maternity photo shoot is designed to capture the beauty of a new life.  To me, and my family, this photo shoot captures all our new lives.  The beauty in a new hope.  A new love.