Joy in Connection

It’s hard to believe that it has already been a week since returning from meeting our precious son. In a way it feels like it has been forever since we have seen him, and at times it feels like it was just this morning that we were playing with him and hearing his precious giggle and seeing his glowing smile.

Maybe it’s because Steve and I watch the videos that we took of him while we were there every day. Maybe it’s because God is continuing to prepare our hearts for having him in our home forever. As we watch the video, Steve and I pick up on more and more cute little details of our time with our little man.

When we were with him, we were so in the moment. We weren’t  trying to understand the “why” behind everything that he did. Now we have the luxury of watching these videos and trying to get into the mind of this little two year old.

One moment I absolutely love took place on our last day at the orphanage. It began when Steve picked up our little man and he pressed his check against Steve’s. I was singing a little song while Steve and our son were dancing together. In all of this he would not remove his cheek from Steve’s face. Then while I was holding him, he did the same thing.

It was so precious because he really wanted to look at me, but he didn’t want to take his cheek off of my face. So, you can see in the video his big eyes looking as far as he can to the left as his face is attached to mine. There was so much connection in that moment.

It was such a picture of joy and enjoyment, experiencing the intimacy and closeness of parent and child. It was unlike any experience I have ever had and I’m sure unlike any he has had either. That picture is one that I will forever carry in my heart as a reminder of how joy is such a byproduct of connection.

I think about that with our son, but I also think of it in family and friendships. As we feel connected with each other, we find enjoyment in the relationship. Ultimately this is how God designed relationships to be.

We are now in a unique period of waiting. We have so much joy and relief in knowing that God has set aside this little man for us, but at the same time there is pain. Sometimes it just hits me during the day or as I go to sleep at night. I’ll often wonder what he is doing, how he is feeling, if he is itchy, if his booboos on his little hands are being kissed and cared for.

In some ways I just want to close my eyes and hibernate for 4 months until it is time to go back and get him. But I know that would not be the fulfilling life that God has for me in these next 4 months. He wants me to find enjoyment in the waiting. I know I can only do that if I am close to Him. If my face is connected to HIS cheek, so I can hear the God of the Universe whispering into my ear, “I love you. I have great things for you. Even NOW.”

I need His truth in my life. I need connection to His heart. I need to feel rest and peace in His arms. Through this, I will experience joy, even amidst the pain of waiting for my son.

I have already seen how the story of our little guy has affected the lives of so many. Last night Steve shared with our high school students an incredible talk on God, our Father’s love, and how His love for us was magnified through experiences in the orphanage in Russia. (If you want to listen to it, here’s the LINK. It requires quicktime).

Afterwards, several students approached me, expressing their desire to adopt, work in an orphanage, or contribute money towards something greater than themselves. I actually received an email today from a high school girl who has a birthday coming up. She said that for her birthday party, she wanted the people who came to give towards something significant, rather than receiving gifts. She asked if she could raise money at her birthday party for our adoption.

My heart is so full…which seems so contrary to my circumstances. I know this is only from God. Only this kind of contentment and joy can come from an all-loving God who has His cheek firmly pressed against mine.

Updates:

• we have been so deeply blessed by the community of believers. Among the ways we’ve been blessed…
• people have bought clothes for our little guy
• One friend is making us a creative memory book containing the pictures we took in Russia
• friends have given us money, toys, books, encouragement notes
• we even received a package from a family with young children, each of these kids wrote personal notes to our son. So touching!

Prayer Requests:

• there are times when we really feel the pain of separation, pray that God would protect our hearts
• pray for our sweet little boy, that God would keep him strong until we come and get him
• pray for our court date to come soon!!!

Thanks so much for the encouragement. It has been a life source to us. Until next Monday, love Kate and Steve.

What’s Next?

I’ve been sitting here staring at the blank screen of my computer for the last few minutes, wondering how in the world to summarize the most life changing week I’ve ever experienced. There are so many emotions swirling around in my heart and I can’t seem to land on just one. I feel like I move in and out of gratitude, excitement, anticipation, pain, frustration and longing.

We had an amazing rest of the week in Russia. Each day, we learned more and more about our little man. Each day he became more comfortable with us as we caught glimpses into his personality and his heart. He is a sweet, funny, curious little boy who functions best when things are in order around him (sounds a lot like his papa).

By the second day, our little guy was feeding us goldfish and staring deep into our eyes trying to figure out who these strange people were. The third day, he was exploring the room and looking back at me to make sure I was still there. He would go get a little toy to play with and immediately come back and sit on Steve’s lap without even being asked. He knew where he belonged.

By our last day, when the door opened and he walked in the room, his eyes lit up and a smile spread across his face as he made his way over to papa for a hug. I replay each hour of the time we spent with him over and over in my head, savoring each moment, each smile, each giggle, each connection. It all went by too quickly.

As soon as our family time would begin, it would feel like only seconds before the caretaker would knock on the door and he would be taken away. I often wonder what he must have thought. He was told that we were mama and papa and that we were coming back for him, but I don’t know if his little 2 year old mind comprehends what that means.

Who are these people who bring me goldfish and hug me and kiss me all the time? Who are these people who eye’s light up when they see me? Who are these people who left tears on my shoulder when I saw them the last time?

My prayer is that he would hold us in his heart, that as he looks at the picture album we gave him of pictures of us playing with him and smiling with him, that he would find comfort and somehow know in his little heart that we will be back…soon.

On the last day, the orphanage medical director (who helped us piece together our little guy’s story) asked, “do you have any more questions?”  I said, “can we take him home now?” She smiled and said…”I wish you could.”

Thank you for continuing to pray. There is still so much to be done before this process is over. Right now, we are beginning some more paperwork that is needed for the court, but couldn’t be done until we officially accepted him. So, we will begin that, along with updating some other expired paperwork.

While this is happening, our facilitator in our region is sending our formal adoption request to Moscow. It takes about 1 month for this to become official. Once it is official, and all of our paperwork is in, it will be presented to the judge in our region. Our facilitator thinks that will happen at the end of November. That is when we will be given an official court date.

Since Christmas in Russia is in January, it looks like our court date will either be sometime at the end of January or in February. We are still praying for a miracle, and asking that you would too. But, also realizing that the reality is that it will probably be February before we go back. So, that is where we are in the process and why it will take so long.

Steve describes what we are feeling very well. He says that before Russia, we were experiencing the pain of silence. Day after day we wondered if we would ever get “the call”. We wondered if we would ever go to Russia…if we would ever meet our child. And now, we are experiencing the pain of separation.

We love our son more than we ever thought we could and we miss him more than we ever thought we could.

I know he is being fed, and has a warm place to sleep. He gets a bath and interacts with his other little friends and caretakers. But, we were made to have intimate relationships with each other. And he was made to have a mommy and daddy. Someone to whisper “I love you” in his ear when he is sad or afraid. Someone to claim him as their own. Someone to say, “he’s MINE.”

We are so happy to say that, “He is ours. God has given him to us.” My prayer is that he would know that in his heart even now. My prayer is that he would know, that of all of the children in the whole world, God set him aside for us.

We were trying to come up with a tangible way to show our little guy when he gets home that he was in our hearts. So, we bought this jar and each night we go into his room and pray for him. When we finish praying, we put a marble in the jar. By the time he comes home forever, he will see this jar and be reminded that even though we were apart, his heart was close to ours as we brought him to the Lord.

A good friend reminded me  of the truth that God is the defender of the weak and that He comforts those in need. Our prayer is that God will be our little man’s defender and comforter when we cannot be there for him at this time.

There are so many stories and memories, and we will take time over the next couple of months to share those with you. Thanks for continuing with us!

Updates:

• we need to finalize some paperwork then it’s back to more waiting
• In the meantime, we stare at the pictures and videos we have of our little guy to help hold us over

Prayer Requests:

• pray that our son would make the connection that the people in his picture book are his parents and they are coming back for him
• pray that the caretakers would love him and treat him well until we come back to get him

Until next Monday, love Kate and Steve

At Last

Wow.  I’m not even sure that I have the words, or even that there are words to describe our day today. Because of how we are updating the blog, we will have to keep this post shorter, but when we get home, we’ll have plenty of time to fill you in on all of the details of our time in Russia.

This morning, we went to the orphanage. It is about a 45 minute drive from our host family’s house. We drove through a lot of countryside before finally reaching a small village.

As we pulled up to the orphanage, I could feel my heart pounding out of its chest. This is it. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for praying for, thinking about. We walked inside and up the stairs of this very clean building. We proceeded into the office of the orphanage doctor. She was very kind and shared a lot of our little guy’s story with us. We had all of our questions answered.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Before we had a chance to prepare,  in walked a caretaker with our precious little one following right behind. He had on these cute little denim overalls with a sweater underneath. His big beautiful eyes met ours and I knelt down and wrapped my arms around him.

meeting our little guy for the 1st time (we're not allowed to show his face)

He curiously looked around and we started playing right away with his new little Tonka truck. We were then instructed to move to a private room for some “family time” with him. And that began the greatest hour of my life.

He is the sweetest little darling. Once he got used to us, Steve picked him up way over his head and then brought him down and kissed his neck and he just laughed and laughed. He had the biggest smile and sweetest giggle. He loved to be held and cuddled and kissed.

I carried him around the room and sang pop goes the weasel. He thought that was the funniest thing. He would just look at me and we’d start laughing so hard together. We put him down to see if he wanted to gravitate towards the toys or the banana that we had been feeding him, but he just walked right over to Steve for some more cuddles. It was absolutely precious.

We can’t wait to see him tomorrow. We are praying for more of the same. God has blown us away with His goodness and we attribute that to His lovingkindness and your prayers. Please keep the prayers coming. We sense them and are watching them come alive right before our eyes. God is good. He is faithful. And we are overwhelmed with blessing…much more than we could have asked for or imagined.

Updates:

• we get to see our little guy again tomorrow, this time after lunch
• We will update our twitter feed as many times as we can

Prayer Requests:

• that we would continue to bond with our little man!!!

More to come: twitter.com/goingtorussia

Love, Kate & Steve

It’s Happening

It’s absolutely amazing to think that one week from today, we will be in Russia, meeting our son for the first time. It feels so crazy to even write that out in a sentence. We’ve been in this waiting time for so long, this desert land of wonder and desperation and now here we are, 5 days away from stepping onto a plane for an adventure that will change our lives forever.

We’ve ordered our visas, purchased our plane tickets, and purchased gifts/toys for our little man. This whole week has felt so surreal. My emotions have piqued on almost every level. I’ve experienced excitement like I have never felt, love like I have never felt, and nervousness like I have never felt.

The overall state of my heart is that I feel absolutely blessed. When I look at the picture of this little guy, our son to be, I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I think I have memorized every eyelash, tried to count every hair on his little head, stared deep into his beautiful eyes in search of what he must be thinking.

I never knew I could fall so in love with a picture. But, it’s more than a picture. He’s our son. (I know, not officially, we are still a few months away from that). But, he is the one we’ve been waiting for. I can’t wait to see him face to face. I can’t wait for him to be able to look into my eyes and wonder what I must be thinking. I can’t wait to watch him try to figure us out. I can’t wait for him to see our eyes light up when we see him for the first time. I can’t wait to hear his first laugh, see his first smile, comfort him when he cries the first time in front of me.

I know all of these things may not happen on the first trip. I’m trying to set my expectations. I feel like I have this flood of love stored up that I just want to pour all over him, but I do have to remember that to him, we are just strangers. For him, he will wake up on Monday morning like any other day. He’ll eat his breakfast the same way he does every morning…

Then all of a sudden 2 people who speak a different language, people who he doesn’t recognize, are going to walk into his life. How scary that may be for him. So, I’m praying that God will show me how to show him all the love I have for him in my heart, without overwhelming him. That may be through a simple smile or a hug. But, we are trusting that God, as He has been this entire journey, will go before us and prepare the way for our family.

Here is what our upcoming schedule will look like:

This Saturday afternoon we will fly out of Cleveland and arrive in St. Petersburg, Russia some time the next day. From there, representatives from our agency will pick us up and drive us another 4 hours to our region. It is 7 hours ahead of east coast time.

On Monday, we will wake up and head to orphanage!!!

Tuesday through Thursday we will get to go visit the orphanage every day. We will be staying at a wonderful woman’s house who will prepare meals for us, take us around the town and be at our side. We are already so grateful for her.

Thursday night we will head back to St. Petersburg.

Friday we plan on spending the day touring St. Petersburg. We will hopefully see the Hermitage and many of the other beautiful places that St. Petersburg is famous for.

Early Saturday morning we will hop back on a plane and fly back to the states. If all goes according to plan we should be back in Cleveland Saturday evening. Pray for our hearts to be strengthened as I’m sure it will be so difficult to say goodbye to our little guy.

We so appreciate your prayers. We have been overwhelmed this week by all of the amazingly encouraging comments, emails, phone calls, hugs, letters. We feel so strong knowing that we have so many people who are praying with us and for us as we take this next step!!

Updates:

• all of our visa paperwork is filed and we expect to receive them in the mail Tuesday or Wednesday
• friends of ours who have recently adopted from Pskov have been providing us with wisdom and encouragement that is so invaluable as we prepare for our trip. It has been so awesome.
• Here we go! We leave Saturday

Prayer Requests:

• please pray for our flight – that we would have no delays, connection problems, lost luggage, that we’d get some sleep, and for my fears of flying
• for our times at the orphanage, that we would ask good questions to the workers and that our time with our little one would be priceless
• for our hearts as we get ready to step out into a huge unknown – so many emotions, we just need lots of prayer

Exciting times! We are so grateful for all of you who are walking with us through this life changing season. It is an awesome journey.

We don’t know what the internet situation is going to be like once we get in Russia. So we started this TWITTER account, that Steve is hoping to update from his phone. We’ll see. Love, Kate & Steve.