I don't fear the tears.

This morning found me cradling a cold cup of coffee {maybe I'll get to drink it warm once the kids are in college?} while warm tears traversed my cheeks.

Don't worry; all is well here. Zoe is doing amazing new things, like independently drinking from a sippy cup and strutting down the hall with help from a push-behind toy and ankle braces and a rockstar physical therapist.

Jocelyn is wrapping up her kindergarten year. Robbie is learning more facts about reptiles, as if he doesn't know enough yet. Lee's work is good. Adoption fundraising is coming slowly but surely. My coffee was cold, but it was good.

So why the tears?

Because I read a passage in a book in which the author talked about pastoral visits during those unexpected late-night rushes to the ER, and my mind immediately went back to Thanksgiving. I'm pretty sure I have a touch of PTSD from that night I try not to think about, lest the tears flow anew.

I can never put words to just how thoroughly Robbie's seizure shook me to my core. He hasn't had another. We're not on any seizure meds right now, and his brain seems to have recovered from the trauma of that terrible 15 minutes in November. 

But still, I'm shaken just thinking about it.

And? I'm thankful. 

I love serving families affected by disability because they live in brokenness and, unlike many other folks I see on Sunday mornings, they daily acknowledge those broken places, often in public ways. Being shaken by Robbie's seizure brought us face to face with our broken places. 

The only response to that is the same response my kids demonstrate when something of theirs is broken: bring it to Daddy for fixing.

2012 was the hardest year of my life so far, but it was the best too, as God drew us into sweet communion with Him in the midst of brokenness, showing us the beauty that could be found there. I don't doubt that 2013 will enter the record books as well, as we travel to Africa to double our number of children. 

I am thankful to consider the pain in our past over coffee and tears, and I am encouraged knowing the God who brought us through those hurts will be faithful to bring us through whatever He ordains for us in 2013 and beyond. I don't fear the future, because He is with us and leading us. 

I don't fear the tears, either. 

Sometimes it's best to let them spill out of the broken places.

our silent auction is LIVE! {plus how to see a picture of our Ugandan three!}

The auction is live... with the first two items, that is.

The auction itself will run online between two in-person events in June. To read more about that, go here.

To get a glimpse at the items, check out our auction/fundraising blog: because He first loved them {and us}

I'm adding more items all day today and tomorrow, and I expect to add more as we get more donations in the coming weeks.

(On that note, do you have a vacation rental/home - possibly in the mountains or at the beach or on a lake - that you'd be willing to offer for a week to our auction? Or do you know someone who would? You can specify one week, offer a list of weeks to choose from, or work with the winner to find a mutually convenient time. If so, please email me at shannon@dinglefest.com. If it's the rental/home of someone you know or someone you've rented from, I can provide you with a donation request letter you can pass along.)

For now, though, we have TWO items that can't wait until June. Why? Well, the first is a voucher for four tickets to the NC Symphony's Summerfest series of concerts which run through June and into the beginning of July (valued at $86, but the starting bid is only $20).

The tickets will be no good to a winner after most of the concerts have already happened! Go here for more information or to bid on the tickets.

The second item? A week of Princess Summer Camp at CC & Co Dance Complex here in Raleigh. 

We want you to have every week available to choose from for your princess (or prince!) between the ages of 2.5 and 4, so we're auctioning it off now. The value is $240, but the starting bid is only $50, so go take a look or bid now!

Please, please, please share this information with anyone who might be interested. Once I list all the auction items on the site, you'll see that we have a diverse assortment of arts, sports, gift card, and kid-friendly options (with a market value total of $5,500 in all!), but the rest won't be live until June 22.

All money earned in this auction will go directly to our adoption. Every item was donated, and a generous friend has offered to cover the expense of shipping any items to non-local winners. 

In other words, every penny goes to bringing us together with Patience, Philip, and Patricia as a family.

One more incentive to checking out the auction site? You'll find a picture of our Ugandan three there. Granted, their faces are covered because they aren't legally ours yet... but it's the best picture we can share until they are home!

Need an incentive to bid? Every bidder will receive a confirmation email from me, which will include the unobstructed picture of our Ugandan siblings, with a watermark reminding you that it cannot be posted online.

Please spread the news about this. Please.

Thanks!

I'm humbled by her wisdom.

They've had a mutual crush going on all year, flirting through Sunday school.

My six-year-old daughter and my friend's seven-year-old son, that is.

While I'm not ready for this sort of thing, the kids and I went to his baseball game on Saturday. As we pulled into the lot, we scanned the crowd for neon orange shirts, knowing his team's color. Jocelyn spotted a little boy in yellow, wearing leg braces and moving with the help of a walker.

"Why's he wearing yellow, Mama?"

"That's his team's color, Joss. I bet the yellow team is playing Josiah's orange team."

"Oh," she said, satisfied with my answer.

"Zoe might play here one day," I added.

"Zoe might? Why not me or Robbie or Patience or Philip or Patricia?"

"These baseball teams are for kids with special needs, Jocelyn. That's why Zoe could play here."

Jocelyn's brow fell over her eyes, showing her confusion. I waited, expecting the question to come as soon as she processed her thoughts.

"But, Mom..." She paused.

"Josiah doesn't have special needs. He just has an extra chromosome."

She gets it.

...For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

{1 Samuel 16:7}

One factor making a child more likely to wait? Being a boy.

Most of us know that children with special needs and those who are older wait longer for families. Meanwhile, boys – for no reason other than their gender – wait longer too, in almost every country, even our own.

Prospective adoptive parents talk about the need for families for girls in China, because of their one-child policies combined with a preference for boys. In other countries, orphaned girls are at risk for becoming victims of child trafficking, sexual abuse, and forced slavery. I agree – girls matter. Girls in need of families should be adopted.

But boys in need of families should be too.

This time around, our preference was for a boy. We have two girls and one boy, and Robbie badly wants a brother. I wanted a brother for him too.

I knew of the preference for girls in adoption, based on stats I’ve read and the trend I’ve noticed in waiting child listings. It didn’t sink in fully until program after program, agency after agency, said, “Oh, if you want a boy, the process should move more quickly for you.” Right now, many more boys wait in China for families, despite the perception that Chinese girls are the ones who languish in orphanages.

Obviously, our path took a different turn, and we’re adopting a sibling group: two girls and one boy. We didn’t truly pick our children this time around, just like last time. God wove their stories into ours through a Facebook friend, just like He did with Zoe, and all we did was say yes. Nonetheless, this topic is a worthwhile one.

In an article on Adoptive Families,

“If it was just about parents getting a preference, it might not matter so much, but this really affects children,” Mary Ann Curran, director of social services at WACAP, says. “It makes the wait dramatically longer for boys. You see little boys waiting for homes who shouldn’t have to wait, and families cheating themselves out of getting a child sooner.”

In another article, this time in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune,

"When it comes to families, we just have more boys [waiting] than girls," said Rochon, senior country relations manager at the St. Paul agency. "We place more girls. It's just what families want."
How many more? In 2006, families expressing a gender preference chose girls over boys 391 to 166. In 2009, the split was 213 girls and 88 boys; in 2010, 121 and 38. Last year, it was 78 girls and 31 boys.

Some hypothesize that girls are easier to raise than boys: less violent, less active, more well-behaved. (Which begs the question: Have they met our girls?) Others point to more single women adopting than single men, many of them feeling that a girl would be easier to relate to or that a boy needs a father figure that they’re unable to provide.

Whatever the reason, boys wait.

Do you have to be rich to adopt?

Nope.

You do have to meet basic criteria. Most countries set a minimum income criteria and a minimum net worth bar, but those vary by country. Some countries - like Uganda - don't have set requirements, and then the criteria is set by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which states that your income must exceed 125% of the poverty threshold.

If you choose to adopt domestically through foster care, costs are minimal and, depending on the child, a monthly payments may be available for the family to help subsidize the costs involved with your new child's care; these payments continue until he or she turns 18. For friends of ours in Jacksonville, FL, who adopted their son through foster care, their adoption expenses only included travel costs to and from Tampa, where their son lived until he was legally placed with them.

I might as well put this out there, since NPR already did: we currently make $60,000 a year.

If I pick up freelance writing projects or speaking engagements, that usually goes to ministries we support (or – not gonna lie – the occasional purty area rug).

We’re comfortable with our income, in part because our only debt is our mortgage. Sure, with five of us and three on the way, we have to be creative at times to live within our means.

I detailed our adoption expenses last time in this post. This time the cost is a little higher, in part because of increased travel costs and the use of an agency this time around. We pay the agency to do some steps for us that we did on our own last time, and we’re very pleased with their ethics. Our agency is a non-profit (as I think every adoption agency should be).

Sure, fundraising isn’t fun. Well, it can be, but I haven’t found it to be terribly enjoyable. It’s a necessity, and it provides the opportunity for others to support adoption, as all of us in Christ as called to care for orphans in some way. We have been made rich in a different sense through adoption, as Zoe has certainly enriched our lives.

That’s the best kind of rich.