the long-awaited t-shirt sales!!!

Friends, it's humbling to ask you to join with us in bringing three siblings out of their orphanage and into our family. As much as I'd love to be able to fund our adoption without asking for help, we merely have the love and creativity to double our number of children... but not the funds to get it done.

God created us for community, though. As we move forward to do one of the most challenging things we've ever done and probably ever will do, we are encouraged and emboldened by those of you who are linking arms with us in prayer, in hugs, in smiles, and - yes - in donations.

Thank you.

In our final leg of fundraising, we're selling these shirts, designed by our dear friend Angie. (She's also the one who will be traveling with us to help with the kiddos!) This is a PRE-ORDER; after about a week or two of pre-orders, we'll submit the order to our printer, who will take another week and a half to complete the shirts, and then we'll get them out ASAP... which, if you do all the math of that, means your shirt won't arrive until the beginning of September.

(Hopefully, we'll be in Uganda then! We'll have a friend prepped to ship the shirts out in case we're not here to do it ourselves.)

How much? It'll be $15 per shirt. In our shop, you have the option of local pick-up with no shipping charge or shipping for $5 per shirt for the first one and $1 per shirt after that.We're offering one design in a children's tee, and the rest are adult.

Enough of the details, though. Here's where you can SHOP!

{Also, our auction is live: CLICK HERE for that.}

how are you doing?

Hundreds of people have given to our adoption.

No, not our adoption. Their adoption.

THANK YOU!

This isn't about us. If it were fully about me, I'd be buying the cute goods in our last auction and the one starting Wednesday instead of getting them donated to sell to others. I'd be playing Barbie and reptiles and peek-a-boo more with Jocelyn and Robbie and Zoe and filling out paperwork less for the newest ones. I'd spend more time exploring the neighborhood with the three I have and less time limping around as I wait out the week I have left before restarting my RA meds following the live vaccines we received last week.

It's worth the price we're paying, though, just as God considered my adoption into His family worth the price paid by Christ on the cross.

While I know God's adoption of us was far more costly than any of our earthly adoptions, today the expense of this current adoption is on my mind.

The financial aspect is in my thoughts, but that's not weighing as heavily as it used to. So many precious friends and family members and strangers have sacrificed financially for us, and I think the odds are good that we'll raise the final funds we need through this final auction - starting tomorrow - and t-shirt sales - starting once I have the energy to stop by the last couple of printers to decide who can provide the best product for the best price - and a Shop2Adopt event - in which friends selling Mary Kay and 31 and Tupperware and Pampered Chef and a few others are donating their profits to us - and a few grants we haven't heard from - though one will notify us in the next couple of days. Many of you will receive thank you notes, many of you already have, and some of you sadly won't because currently Project Hopeful isn't able to provide a list of donors for us at this time. Know this, though: we are thankful beyond what words can express. 

The cost of adding three more children to our brood will be high. Feeding and loving six, including three who have experienced devastating loss, while keeping clean clothes on them and clean plates in the cabinets and clean enough for us (though maybe not for the health department) conditions throughout the house? I really can't imagine what that will be like.

But, as crazy as this sounds, I can't wait to find out.

I can't wait to gather all six together, holding and kissing and cuddling and cleaning and playing with and praying with and loving them all. I long for the massive Pluto to be filled with precious cargo in a half dozen car seats and boosters. I am strangely looking forward to the jet lag and the hours of travel with little ones and the lack of air conditioning and the mosquito nets and the constant reminders to our current ones not to open their mouths when we're bathing them, because they can't drink the water.

I know it will be costly to all of us, but honestly? I'm not scared.

I'm just thankful and jittery with excitement.

Ready to get through this adopting thing and on to the parenting thing.

And, most of all, full of longing for the babes in my heart to join the ones in my home.

I don't want to go to Uganda!

Jocelyn has talked about traveling around the world, helping people and telling them about Jesus, since she was 2. International adoption has sharpened that desire, so as we prayed about the trip to Uganda, we felt certain now was the right time to take the kids out of the country.

Jocelyn was ecstatic. Every person we've met since then has heard about her upcoming Africa trip and the siblings she'll meet there. Her love for adoption and missions and the world is constantly on display.

Except for at the travel clinic.

We went to get our vaccinations. Yellow fever for all of us, typhoid for all but Zoe who is too young for that one, and boosters for a few things for Lee and me. Zoe was angry about it, but got over it quickly... because chocolate was available. Robbie made some impressive faces and shouts with each shot, but he bounced back too.

Jocelyn? She sat on my lap at first and then both fight and flight kicked in. She fought me, tried to bolt from the office, and yelled, "I don't want to go to Uganda!" As we brought her back to the chair, she whimpered about staying with friends of ours like she did when we went to Taiwan.

The picture above shows a precious hug, but the hold I used at the clinic was less tender. Lee and I both restrained her, the nurse moved quickly, and she cried for 20 minutes after the shots.

Even though she tried to convince us otherwise, we knew she didn't want to stay in Raleigh while the rest of us went to Africa. We knew she wanted to see the world and meet her siblings on their home soil and understand the world from which they are coming.

As she hollered, "I don't want to go to Uganda!" we knew she really did. And so, we held her down and made her endure temporary pain for the trip of her lifetime.

It made me think of this:

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. {2 Corinthians 4:17}

How many hard moments in my life have been like her hard moment in the travel clinic? How often has my loving Father held me down for pain, knowing the future glory I couldn't see or imagine at the time? How much might I have missed without those light and momentary afflictions He not only allows but also inflicts, that I might be prepared for the eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison?

Someday, Jocelyn will feel a different kind of pain and ask me why. I'll be able to remind her of the pain in the travel clinic that prepared her for the trip to her siblings. I'll tell her that I don't know how her present hurt will benefit her but that I trust God when He says it will.

And, just as I did after the shots, I'll hold her for as long as it takes to cry it out.

on grants, doll giveaway winners, fundraising tees, and one more auction

In other words, I post full of randomness.

For those of you who are only stopping by to find out if you won the dolls, check the image below! I listed Shola from Afghanistan first, so Teresa will receive that doll, and Brooke, Mosi is all yours. Congrats to both of you, and be on the lookout for an email from me to get your mailing address!

For the rest of you who care about the other stuff, GRANTS! So far, we have received three: two outright grants in which a check is written right away (from Sea of Faces Foundation and The LYDIA Fund), and one matching grant in which $2500 will be granted to us as soon as we raise $2500 in donations to match that (from Lifesong for Orphans).

Side note: Some friends have asked why Lifesong wouldn't just give the grant outright. The short answer is that they are a Christian organization, wanting the church to be the church. They provide the matching grant as a tool for families to use to engage their fellow church members and other friends in supporting the adoption and caring for the adoptive family.

We're waiting to hear from a few more grants, and meanwhile, we're proceeding with fundraising plans. Two of those are (1) another auction and (2) t-shirt sales. The shirt pre-orders will begin later this week. The auction will begin Monday, including 20 necklaces from The Adopt Shoppe, a couple sets of personalized burp cloths, more gift cards, a gift certificate to a beginning motorcycling class, a dress from Shabby Apple, and more!

In other adoption plans, we're getting travel vaccines tomorrow. This marks two weeks off meds for rheumatoid arthritis and another three weeks left before I can restart them. My trusty self-injectables suppress my immune system, and the yellow fever shot is a live vaccine. In other words, basic medical math:

yellow fever vac + immunosuppressing drugs = yellow fever

And I'm thinking we want to avoid that.

For now, I'm feeling the effects of being off meds. My throat is badly swollen (RA fact o' the day: the cricoarytenoid joint, near the windpipe, can get swollen and damaged by rheumatoid arthritis), and I'm a little achy in other joints, and I've been running some low-grade fevers. I knew we'd be facing this, though, so I planned with a month's free trial to Netflix DVDs. 

Parenting by screens: ain't no shame in it from time to time. 

Okay, that's it. I'd love to come up with a witty or clever end to the post... but I have nothing. So I'll borrow from a friend...

Have a nice day!

wrestling with God about the hard blessings

The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip on the sinew of the thigh. (Genesis 32:22-32, ESV)

I love this passage. I love the re-christening that's given in the struggle. And I love the reality of the hard blessing, that Jacob leaves with a new name and legacy but also with a limp.

As I've reflected on them in recent weeks, I've both loved and hated passages like the one above and the one at the end of Genesis including Genesis 50:20 ("As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.") and the ones we know well because they're quoted often: Romans 8:28 ("And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.") and 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ("But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.")

I love them because of the precious promises held for us.

I hate them because of wrestle required to reach the promise.

I want to get on a plane to Uganda so badly it hurts. I want to know that the child who will be mine won't have to wait much longer for the HIV meds needed. I want to gather the three who have suffered such loss in my arms and assure them that Mommy is here.

I want the promise. Now. 

I don't know what it will look like, but after this adoption Lee and I have resolved to join efforts with those who are working to provide testing and treatment for HIV in Africa. Why? Because the hard reality is that our Ugandan three didn't have to be orphans.

That is not okay with me.

As much as I love adoption, I love it more when first families can stay together and when mothers don't have to die before their child with HIV is tested.

This bruised blessing is now leading to life for the child with HIV. Given the present realities (that I hope will change in my lifetime), that child wouldn't have been tested otherwise. The HIV infection likely would have progressed, undetected, and the precious child we love probably wouldn't have lived to be an adult. The three blessings we're adopting were only tested for HIV because the orphanage tests each child during the entry physical.

That's the reality motivating us to become involved in some way - at least financially - in HIV detection and treatment on the other side of the world. The verses that call us to do justice for orphans mean, for me at least, joining arms with those who are fighting public health epidemics that needlessly create orphans.

because we're not that different on this side of the world as they are on their side

As I work through how I feel about these passages, I'm wrestling with God myself. And I know I can trust Him, because I became His through the hardest blessing ever.

And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. {Hebrews 10:10}