waiting.

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Waiting hurts.

Waiting helps.

It's a frustrating paradox.

God refines me in the wait,
but the pain is still there.


Today, Elisabeth Elliot's words are encouraging me, especially these two quotes:
I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.
Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.
My will would be to have us there in Uganda with our newest three children or, at least, having the proper HIV treatment available for and administered to our dear one with the virus.

God is telling me to wait.

And while I'd love to close this post with some encouraging conclusion, this is all I've got: Waiting is hard.

the story of God in us

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Dinglefest began with God. He brought together this guy and this girl who were doing the church thing well but who didn't treasure Him, and they fell in love. The guy and the girl fell in love with each other, and both of them fell in love with that God who had loved them from the beginning.


As they grew in relationship with Jesus, these two committed their lives to serve Him together as two made into one through marriage.


(The name of this blog comes from their wedding reception, which was a carnival to celebrate their devotion to God and to each other. Dinglefest was complete with a dunk tank, rock climbing wall, moon jump, bungee run, jousting ring, foosball and air hockey and pool tables, video game systems, Dippin' Dots, and t-shirts ... and lots of love.)


Their first blessing wrapped in flesh from God arrived about a year and a half after the first Dinglefest celebration.


Then, exactly twenty-six months after their sweet girl was born, her brother joined them.



After being a family of four - two big Dingles and two little ones - for nearly three years...


...a friend contacted them about a baby girl in Taiwan who needed a family. On January 30, 2012, they accepted the referral to be her family, and they began a wild ride to bring their fifth family member home from the other side of the world.

thanks to The Archibald Project for documenting this moment and the rest of our adoption journey!

After Zoe had been home for about nine months, they began looking into adoption again, expecting to adopt from a country with a historically long court process (such as Haiti or India). As they prepared the paperwork to update their home study, they found out about a sibling group of three in need of a family in Uganda. Sometime in late 2013, they'll bring them home, doubling their number of kiddos to become Dingle, party of 8.

Their hearts are full with love for each other as they live out their daily Dinglefestival of life. And, more important than that, their hearts are full with Christ.

In the midst of this full life, the Momma Bear here likes to blog about our family, faith, adoption, books, life with special needs (including Zoe's cerebral palsy, Robbie's epilepsy, her own rheumatoid arthritis, and one of the Ugandan siblings' HIV+ status), education, and whatever else strikes her fancy.

Enjoy!

join us at Chick-fil-A on Saturday, June 22! {and feel free to give me a hug, because I could use one}

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Before I share the details about the Chick-fil-A day benefiting our adoption, let me share where my heart is right now.

It is hurting.

 Today, I was able to throw myself into serving precious little ones at our church's Super Summer Adventure (aka Vacation Bible School)  but my mind was elsewhere.

Specifically, in Africa.

One of the precious adoptive mamas from the same orphanage shared with me that our precious one with HIV was feeling crummy health-wise during the month they were there. I wish I could say her observation was a fluke, but it's typical. Simply put, the care and treatment needed for pediatric HIV is just not available to most people in Uganda.

Including our darling child. 

That dear mama wrote this to me (slightly edited to remove gender pronouns, since we're not disclosing online which one of our three Ugandan siblings is HIV+), "One day I just sat with P on the couch rubbing P's back as P slept- P needs a mommy. I can't wait for you to go."

Me neither.

 If you saw me at church today, don't feel bad that I didn't bring this up. I couldn't. I was there to serve, and I needed to serve to quiet my worries. If I had mentioned it, I would have been a puddle of tears.

And I even put on eye makeup today, so that would have been really unfortunate.

 All this to say: I am in need of encouragement. So if you have a hug to offer, I'm willing to accept it.

Another way you can encourage us is by joining us at our Chick-fil-A Fundraising Day THIS SATURDAY from either 11am-2pm or 4pm-7pm (or both times, if your arteries your budget your appetite can handle that). Let them know at the drive-thru or register that you're there to support our adoption - or, even better, show them the flyer below! - and a portion of what you pay will come back to us for adoption expenses.


This is only good THIS SATURDAY and only at the TOWNRIDGE SQUARE Chick-fil-A (the one on Glenwood, near Providence Baptist Church). Check out the Facebook event page for more info.

 This event will also kick off our silent auction, which you can find at www.becauseHefirstlovedthem.com. We have more than $6,500 of items up for auction, so I'm sure there's something you'd love! We've paid/raised $14,500 total, but we have $25,500 more to go before our adoption expenses, including travel for me and Lee and our newest three, are paid in full.

As for my heart? I'm encouraged by this shortened verse our kindergarteners (including my Jocelyn) are learning this week at church:
God helps me. I will not be afraid.
Hebrews 13:6
He does. And I won't.

why fundraise when you can get the federal adoption tax credit?

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Simply put, because our family doesn't get much of that credit back.

Side note: I know this is not going to sit well with many of my fellow adoptive parents, but if I'm honest, I don't think a federal adoption tax credit should apply to international adoption. It makes sense for domestic adoptions to be subsidized, because the taxpayers' cost of not having those kiddos in families is higher than the cost of subsidizing their adoption with tax dollars. For international adoptions? I don't see how it's in the best interest of the US government to subsidize the adoption of orphans from other countries. 

Obviously, I'm pro-adoption. Obviously, I think it's a good thing. Obviously, as we are in the process of adding three children from Uganda to our family after having added one from Taiwan, we're a-okay with international adoption. But we, as a family, made a choice to do that, and I don't think the macroeconomics make sense for taxpayer dollars to support that. 

That said, the credit exists, and just as I cashed the stimulus check while not considering it to be a wise economic move by the feds, we will accept the credit.

Let me back up a few steps. I'm sure some of you are wondering, "What the heck is the federal adoption credit?"

In the words of the IRS: 
Tax benefits for adoption include both a tax credit for qualified adoption expenses paid to adopt an eligible child and an exclusion for employer-provided adoption assistance. For tax years 1997 through 2009, the credit was nonrefundable. For 2010 and 2011, the credit was refundable. For tax year 2012, the credit has reverted to being nonrefundable, with a maximum amount (dollar limitation) of $12,650 per child.
This begins phasing out if a family's income exceeds $189,710 and phases out completely at $229,710... which, you know from my earlier post about not having to be rich to adopt, puts us safely within the qualifying range.

Side note: the amount of money in question here is why the IRS is prone to audit tax returns from adoptive families. I'm cool with that. We weren't audited, but we were ready and expecting to be. It's a hefty credit, so I expect more accountability and scrutiny when claiming it.

What does non-refundable mean? Well, it means we're only refunded what we paid in taxes. In other words, if we paid $10,000 in taxes in 2012, then we could only be refunded $10,000 instead of the entire $12,650 credit for Zoe's adoption. The credit can be spread over five years, though, so the remaining $2,650 could be applied to taxes in 2013.

Sweet! So since Zoe's adoption cost was $25,000, you'll get half of that back?

 Wait, if it's $12,650 per child, doesn't that mean you'll be eligible for $37,950 in tax credits for this sibling group of three? With a total adoption cost of $40,000, you should be set with the credit, right?

 No.

We make $62,000. Last year, through tithes to our church and other charitable contributions, we gave around $9,000. Combined with the refunds we get for having three kiddos and other mumbo jumbo I don't have to know about, we were only eligible to receive somewhere around $1,200 of the adoption tax credit for Zoe.

 Side note: Accountants rock. having a husband who owns part of his engineering firm, which means the company pays for our taxes to be filed, rocks too. I used to do our taxes. I love not doing them now.

Being eligible for more money in tax credits won't make that refund any bigger. Actually, given the credits we'll get for having more kids, it will probably be smaller. Over six years - the five years of Zoe's credit and the five years of our Ugandan kiddos' credit, which start in the second year of Zoe's credit - we'll probably get around $6,500 refunded to us of the $50,600 would would have received if we had more tax liability.

In other words, at first the tax credit makes it seem like it would cover our adoption expenses, but it doesn't. (But WOOHOO! for $6,500. That ain't nothing, even though it won't be enough or arrive soon enough to help much with the cost of this adoption.)

That's why we are fundraising.
Nope, this picture doesn't have anything to do with the post. And it's from March. But we've had a nasty cold 'round here, so it's been low-key. Plus, it looks like Zoe is threatening to punch someone, so there's that.