At The Crisis Point

Dear Friends and Family

Let me start off by thanking you all for your love and support over the last few weeks.  The encouragement and generosity that has been poured out in us has been overwhelming and life changing.  Julie and I have had a chance to see tangibly how much we are cared for.

That being said, we have reached a crisis point in our adoption efforts.  The agency is requiring us to pay the remainder of our fees in order to move forward with the adopting Abigail and Autumn.  The money needs to be sent this week according to an e-mail we received today.  

This is compounded by an issue we have run into with Reese’s Rainbow, the non-profit charity we have been using to raise money.  To ensure that donators are not being defrauded, they refuse to release any funds until a travel date is determined to get the children.  That’s a good policy and probably necessary.  Unfortunately, while we could use the money toward flights and in country expenses, we need it initially for payment of adoption fees.

With that money on hold, our number to get the girls home is $6500.  

At this point, I’m not sure what is going to happen.  We are trying to muster our faith and believe that God will do a miracle but, in complete honesty, we are struggling.  We made a crucial error encouraging people to donate to a site that will be helpful in the future but is a hindrance now.  We have physically and emotionally exhausted ourselves in this process and we are still ridiculously short.  To say that we are broken this evening is an understatement.

So I’m asking once again for prayer and, if you are able, donations directly to us for our girls.  We are desperately crying out to Jesus for our Christmas miracle.  He is still able and we are still hanging on, if barely.  

I imagine the worst thing to happen would be to “almost” save a life.  I hope that’s not our story.  Please pray that it isn’t.

Aaron and Julie

Hold on, babies, daddy is coming!

From my perspective, adoption is kinda a bizarre thing.  I am paying insane amounts of money to take on the burden of raising two children that I’ve never met.  These children will come with a unique set of emotional and physical hurdles that will intensify the process and make it extremely difficult at times.  These problems include language barriers, heath issues, failure to thrive, learning to bond, disabilities, malnutrition, and a host of other struggles as a result of being institutionalized.  I know this to be true because I had to take a forty hour class on the topic and the material seemed to be created with the sole purpose of scaring me off.  But it didn’t work.  Despite the difficulties and brokenness and financial pressure that is coming with these two little girls, I’m not scared at all.  I’m excited.  And that’s a bit bizarre.

As we’ve wrestled through the last two and a half years, I’ve asked myself the question of why I would stumble down this strange path in life.  Was it just supporting my wife?  Was I trying to obey God?  Was I captivated by a cause?  If I’m honest, I’m sure all those things have been true at times.  But not since I saw them.  The moment I looked at Abigail and Autumn, I loved them.  Somewhere in the deepest part of me, I knew they were my mine, my daughters that I would move heaven and earth to bring home as a part of our family.  That seems bizarre too.  But it’s the truth.  I sit here this morning, typing on this computer, and my heart tells me that I have two children on the other side of the world that are mine and I love them like my own.  They have never met me, I have never met them, but they are mine!

Pretty strange story, right?  But perhaps one that is not unfamiliar,  It seems to me that I am simply experiencing on a very small scale what God has felt for the entire world.  I John 4 tells us that God loved us first.  We had no idea of real love - of family, acceptance, health, comfort, trust - until He showed us what it meant.  He loved us and came such a long way to get us, paying an immeasurable price.  Unsurprisingly, adoption was God’s idea first.

So maybe I’m not weird.  Maybe I’m blessed enough to catch a glimpse of God’s heart.  Maybe my experience is simply an echo of how He has shaped eternity.  Maybe I just love being adopted in His family so much, I want to pass it on.  Doesn’t matter in the end.  Because whether it is weird or wonderful, my heart tells me I have two daughters in India and I will do whatever it takes to bring them home.  So hold on, babies, daddy is coming!!

Why you can't see them...

One of the things I can’t help thinking is how much people would be impacted if they could see pictures of our girls.  If I could just put their photos on Facebook or Twitter, the response to their cuteness would be overwhelming; we would have our miracle in minutes.  But we can’t post and pics.  Know why?  Cause we live in a messed up world where evil people sell children for profits.  Child trafficking is a terrible problem around the world and, in an attempt to protect innocents, most countries prohibit displaying images of orphans to prevent advertising children to monsters.  I totally agree with this.  Anything that can be done to protect kids, I’m all for.  I still wish you could see our daughters.

I’m looking at there pictures right now.  They are so beautiful and yet so broken.  You can see that they need someone to hold them, someone to cuddle them, someone to tell them that they are loved.  We so desperately want to be those people.  One thing that you would notice right away is that they don’t smile in any of the pictures.  They look so sad and serious.  I don’t know if it’s cultural or if they are told not to smile.  All I know is that I look at them and want to see them laughing.  Life has stolen joy from these girls.  Life has stolen their smile.  I am determined to get it back for them!

Would you help me?  Would you help me find joy for these girls that you can’t see but who need your help so much?  If we don’t help them who will?  Please take a moment and click the link on the side of this page and give a donation to bring them home.  Julie and I will go get them, bring them into our family, and love them as our own.  But we need your help to make that happen.  Please help us save them.  I know we can do this!

When we do get them home, I’ll make you this promise.  I’ll take some pictures and post them for you to see.  I can guarantee they will be smiling. How can I be sure?  I’ll buy them ice cream.  You can’t help but smile the first time you have ice cream.  Then you will be able to see the joy that you helped return to these little girls!

Major Update!!

Wow, we have had a crazy twenty four hours!  Yesterday, we received an email full of pictures of the two little girls we are adopting.  Previously, we only had one small photo of each of them, a simple head shot that gave very little detail.  Seeing them clearly for the first time made it feel like Christmas!  Julie and I stared at computer screen, trying to memorize every detail of their faces, imagining bringing them home and giving them the life they deserve.  It felt like such a milestone in our journey of growing our family and rescuing these lives.  But it was only the first part of an impactful day.

Not long after we received the photos, we got another email from our adoption agency updating our status.  They told us that the final paperwork from India would be arriving next week and, with it, our final bill for adoption.  This was far more accelerated than we expected.  We had been fundraising in anticipation of this expense but things move very slowly in inter national adoption and we believed we had more time.  Still, we thought we were only off by two thousand dollars and that seemed possible with a fundraiser push in the next ten days.  But the numbers we received were different than what we expected.

We originally had been matched with two sisters who were ages eight and ten.  Due to a computer issue in India, we lost that referral and had to be rematched.  That is how we got connected with Abigail and Autumn.  But the difference in age was significant.  Abby and Autumn are two and five.  What we didn’t realize is that the difference in age would play a major part in determining the fee.  Because the original girls were older, there was a discount.  The cost of adopting each girl would have been around $10,000 a piece.  Because Abby and Autumn are younger, the price increased dramatically.  The cost for each of them is $14,000.  

That means instead of being off the mark by two thousand, we are short $10,000.  That’s a lot of money!  It seems almost impossible to raise that kind of cash in ten days.  But despite the shock, Julie and I are not discouraged.  We believe that God has led us to these girls, that He wants us to adopt them, and that they are our daughters.  We also believe that He specializes in the impossible.  And we believe that He uses people to accomplish His miracles.  So we are asking for help!  See that white square on the right side of your screen?  That number needs to be $10,000.  

If you can, please take a moment and donate to our account on Reece’s Rainbow, a tax deductible non profit organization that assists in special needs adoptions. (We qualify because Autumn is blind in one eye.)  In doing so, you are being a blessing to us as we look to bring our little girls home.  More importantly, you are literally helping to save a life.  There is no future for orphans in India, especially girls.  Most of them are eventually swept up into the sex trade or into slavery.  Together we can prevent that for these two girls and give them a family who will love and care for them.  

It’s going to take a miracle to hit this financial mark.  But it’s Christmas time. It’s a good time for miracles.  Please, please help us get one on behalf of Abigail and Autumn.  

PS- Donations to our Reece’s Rainbow account are anonymous (we can’t see who gave what).  We would love to shower you with our thanks, love, and appreciation, but unless you tell us, we won’t know.  

Dreams...

I admit it.  I am a daydreamer.  My mind wanders off into its own little world sometimes :).  Previously, just like a lot of you guys, it would go places like this....

 Sometimes maybe a place like this....

And often times to fun places like this...

But lately, this place has filled my dreams.

Because behind those gates are two precious little ones who have captured my heart and I can't WAIT to get here.  Forget the beach.  Forget the snow.  I desperately want someone to tell me it is time to go to this dingy yellow building on the other side of the world.  I dream about that moment when those gates open for me.  I imagine the feeling as the weight of a small child is transferred into my arms, her warm little body against mine.  And then small hand slips into mine and my heart feels whole again.

It is the same moment every time. Over and over and over and over. 

For now, they are only daydreams.  But one day.....<3

Lost and Found

We finally received our long anticipated referral on July 1, 2013.  It was exactly one year, to the day, since we were registered with the Indian government as potential parents.  They were beautiful sisters, ages 6 and 8, and we called them by their new American middle names, Hope and Joy.  We gave our verbal consent within the hour.  Like any proud mama to be, I printed multiple copies of their photo and shared them with future grandmas, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors.... just about anyone who would give me opportunity!  We were in love.  We started making bedroom plans, buying cute outfits, and discussing what life would look like with our new brood.   But we never got any further with the actual adoption side of things.  The next step was to receive Hope and Joy’s case files (CSR), which were needed in order to give official written consent.  We were told that this would take about 2 weeks.  

Three months passed without a peep from the orphanage about where the case files were.  Aaron and I were praying fervently every day for our daughters and whatever was conspiring against them.  Then last week we got the dreaded phone call.  The president of our adoption agency, Bob, gracefully broke the news to us.  

Sometime in August, the Indian government’s database for all adoptions crashed.  It was down for three weeks.  When it came back up, Hope and Joy were no longer on it.  Bob and his representative in India worked diligently to find the girls and figure out what to do, but the orphanage was unresponsive.  In addition, India announced that in an effort to continue to improve the adoption process, they were separating the “older children” from the “special needs” children.  For those of you not fluent in the adoption world, “older children” means just about any kid ages 5 and over.  Did you know that once a child turns 3, his chance of ever being adopted drops by 80%?   “Special needs” in the adoption world is a very broad category.  It can be anything that you have going against you that would make you harder to place for adoption -- school age children and sibling groups often fall into this category.  It also includes what would be considered very very minor medical conditions in the US -- birthmarks, missing a finger or a toe, low birth weight, cleft palate, hearing loss, correctable heart defects, etc.  In an effort to get more of their orphans adopted, India is working to narrow these broad categories.  Potential families might be totally willing to adopt a healthy 10 year old, but be scared away by the “special needs” label.  I get that and I respect their efforts.  I think it will help tremendously.  But it caused a major problem for us.  We applied to the Indian government under the special needs category.  *IF* Hope and Joy were to be returned to the database, they would now be under older children.  We would have to cancel our registration as a special needs family and start over in the older children program.  Not a big deal here in the US.  In fact, Bob said that if he could just go into the computer and do it, it would take about 20 minutes.  But the reality of dealing with a foreign government is that this would probably take 3 months to a year.  We would be at the back of the line, and that is all dependent upon the very big IF Hope and Joy are put back on the database at all.

We were crushed.  Our family had loved and prayed and planned for these girls for months.  I know that all we had were pictures and names, but really, I liken the pain to having a miscarriage.  There is a child who is going to become part of your family and change your life forever and it is going to be awesome.  You are planning for it, shopping for it, and dreaming about that day.  No, you have never met this child or held this child in your arms, but yes, you are absolutely in LOVE with this child and eager shower them with that love.  There were many tears and hard questions.  There is tangible fear about what may have happened to Hope and Joy.  I am hoping for the best.  Perhaps by some miracle, they were reunited with a relative who was financially stable enough to take custody of them.  Maybe they were already matched to another adoptive family-- there could have been a paperwork error and they were accidentally double matched -- and maybe they are already on their way home to mom and dad’s loving arms.  But maybe.....  I don’t want to think about any of the other possibilities.   There are too many scary ones that don’t end well.  We asked Bob to continue to keep an eye out for Hope and Joy.  If we can find out that they are safe and well, it would really help our family.  

Our long conversation with Bob then took an interesting turn.  He said that he was just made aware the day before of a little girl who was 2-1/2 and was on the special needs list because she was blind in one eye.  Bob was originally thinking of another family, and requested more info from the orphanage.  The orphanage responded promptly and said “you need to know that this little girl has a sister and they want to stay together if possible”.   That is when Bob knew that this was a potential answer to a devastating phone call he needed to make to our family.  He asked us if we were interested in considering these new sisters.  We agreed to consider it.  Our hearts were broken and we were still reeling from the bad news of this phone call, but we were not ready to give up the idea of adoption.  An hour later, we had CSRs and medical files on the new siblings.  We waited months for that info on Hope and Joy.  If we said yes to the new referral, we would already be several steps ahead of where we were.   We told Bob that we would think and pray about it and give him our answer the next day.  We wanted to make a responsible decision and that is more challenging when emotions are high.  So, we talked with our kids, the grandmas, and the Lord, and the next morning we said yes.

I never blogged about the referral of Hope and Joy because the agency had told me to wait until we had their CSRs and things were more official.  But now, I can tell you all about our new daughters because even though it has only been a few days, we already have the CSRs and have signed written consent that we want to adopt them.  We will be naming the new girls Abigail and Autumn.  We did not like the meanings attached to their Indian names and quite possibly they were just assigned these names when they were brought to the orphanage based on their case files.  So, they needed new names to go with their new, fresh start in life. 

Abigail Faith is 5 years old and is considered physically healthy (she does have the typical orphan issues of malnourishment, anemia, intestinal parasites, etc., but this is to be expected).  We cannot share photos of the girls on the internet until we have gone through court in India and have been granted guardianship, but I will tell you that she is adorable.  Her deep dark eyes are amazing and she looks very sad in her photo.  It makes this mama want to scoop her up and make it all better.  She attends kindergarden in India.  We will call her “Abby”.  Her name means “the joy of her Father” - guess who picked that one - LOL!

Autumn Rose is 2-1/2 years old.  She is a tiny little thing.  It is hard to tell if she was born blind or if there was some sort of trauma to the left eye.  The photo is very small and the medical record has no details at all, but it looks like there are some scars in that area.  I hurt for her, what she may have been through, and because I know that most people don’t see past that milky, atrophied left eye.  But, oh that right eye, it speaks of mischief and adventure and giggles and LIFE!  Besides, we learned that there is a simple prosthesis (almost like a thick contact lens) that will make this left eye a non-issue when she comes home.  When we had Winter, we alway thought that if we had another girl we would name her Autumn.  I think it is to be expected that our new little Autumn may struggle with self image.  However, we will tell her that we named her Autumn because she is beautiful.  In the Autumn, the whole world puts on a display of its beauty.  

So that is where we are at.  Big changes this month, but moving forward again.  Please pray that Hope and Joy are safe.  Pray for our family as we continue to grieve and heal from the loss of Hope and Joy’s referral.  It is a strange and intangible pain that is difficult to put into words.   And celebrate with us as we look to welcome Abby and Autumn into our family hopefully in the next 6-8 months or so!

Waiting

Time for the honest truth.... I am terrible at waiting.  I didn’t think I would be.  I have counseled and encouraged many a friend and church member who was waiting for test results, hard answers, better days, etc.   I know all the right answers and verses in my head and I thought I was fairly patient.  I enjoy the methodical careful plan that eventually comes to fruition just the way I imagined it.  But that is SO far from the truth when it comes to adoption.  I am impatient and frustrated.  From my perspective, there is no plan and nothing is going the way I imagined it.  Don’t get me wrong.  Nothing terrible has happened.  But, that’s just it.  NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.  I feel like I would be a better “waiter” if I could see what was going on.  If I could watch the forward progress, no matter how minute it may be, I think it would help.  If I could physically see that my agency is working daily on our behalf (although they do write frequently to assure us that they are).  But, until we are matched, we have no access to what is going on behind the scenes.   It could be years.... or it could be just days away.  

I have been such a bad “waiter” that I have been trying to help God and my adoption agency do their respective jobs.  I stare at the faces of waiting children on Reece’s Rainbow and other websites.  When advocates ask, “where is this child’s momma?”  I scream inside “pick me!  pick me!”  I have called the agency asking about different waiting children, asking about changing country programs, asking about anything that would speed things up.  It is to the point where I would accept ANY child in the world.  Just give me one!  or two!  I don’t care if they are boys, girls, black, white, green, or purple.  I don’t care what labels the world has put on them or what their medical charts look like.  I just want my babies!!  

And so as I write this, I feel that maybe that is the point.  Perhaps God is using the waiting to break me down to the point where I am willing to accept anything, no matter what, so that when He reveals our children to me, I will plow forward without hesitation and with unwavering determination.  Somewhere in the world there are 2 more Fraleys that are waiting to be found and I am ready for whatever God has in mind.  I pray that the Lord will prepare my heart and my family.  I pray that I will learn the lessons that I need to learn and not have to “go around the same mountain twice”, if you know what I mean.

And......I am still hoping that tomorrow is the day that I will get that phone call that I have been impatiently waiting 6 months for.  

-Julie