the unexpected

What a week this has been. For the last couple of weeks we've been praying for Mason's Child Abuse and Neglect Clearance - the one missing piece of the home study puzzle - to come back from Guam, since we weren't even sure it had been sent across the Pacific to the right person. Amazingly, the clearance came back very quickly and arrived at Ashley's desk on Tuesday morning, June 12. Ironically, what would have been a huge woohoo moment for the completion of home study was instead an uh-oh moment because an hour earlier I had watched in shock as two pink lines appear on a home pregnancy test. We are unexpectedly expecting. We did not plan for this; in fact, we planned against this. God has evidently chosen to bring us a third child through pregnancy despite our efforts and prayers to avoid this eventuality until after the adoption. Tuesday and Wednesday were full of emotional devastation, I'm not going to lie. While our first two pregnancy discoveries were joyous and expected, this one was not. It's Friday and we're finally coming around to the realization that God has indeed had this week planned since the creation of the world, of me, of Mason, and of our family. This is not a mistake even if it looked like one initially to us. If to somebody reading this, it seems strange and wrong to use the words "devastation" and "pregnancy" near each other, I'm very sorry and don't mean to offend. As is so often the case, it would be difficult to understand without having been in this situation. But God's been reminding us this week that Jesus says "Let the little children come to me, and don't hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these (Mark 10:14)" and that this child is another blessing for us to point toward Him. We will surely love and cherish them just as we do Ezekiel and Eden.

The first thing I want to do is lay out for you how this news will change our adoption process. It is NOT canceling or nullifying anything. It IS postponing and shifting some things. I called our social workers Ashley and Beth before calling anyone else (after Mason, of course). The past couple of days they've been blessing us with encouragement and information about how to process this and still stay on track for the amazing adoption journey through which God is guiding us. This is not an uncommon occurrence for adoptive families to experience an unplanned pregnancy, as both Ashley and Beth are working with other families in similar situations right now. That encouraged me. This WILL put the process on hold for the duration of the pregnancy and the first few months of the baby's life. When the new baby is 1 year old, we will be eligible for a referral. It looks like we're due February 2013, and our original best-case time estimate for traveling to Peru to pick up our child/ren was summer 2013. Now we're looking at summer 2014 instead, and we are so encouraged that this is only a difference of one year and that this has no bearing on our ability to continue on towards becoming adoptive parents. Our home study will still be effective, after an amendment to account for the new family member, and though we will need to renew medical reports and child abuse/neglect clearances, those should be easy tasks to start wading through once the baby is a few months old. It's a blessing that we had not yet submitted our dossier to Peru because if we had, it would have been returned to us - with all of that work, time and money lost. As it is, we are not losing any of the resources we've put in so far, and because we've been the grateful recipients of generous financial support from wonderful friends, we are determined to communicate to you clearly that all funds received towards adoption will stay put in our adoption account until we're able to resume the process full-speed ahead in 2013. It's been so encouraging to us to see God move people to give of their resources toward our family's adoption. We value your support and generosity and will not redirect that money toward anything else. 

On the positive side, and believe me, Mason and I have been grasping for everything positive we can think of - God provided us our minivan last Saturday the 9th. It was a fantastic birthday present for me! With the breaking down of our family SUV that seated only 4, it was time to invest in a real family car, and little did we know that a couple of days later we'd discover that the van would need to be in place earlier than we had thought. Getting the big expense of the van out of the way at this point in the game is going to really help us out down the road by freeing up funds for Peru travel and for continuing paperwork/immigration costs. Another huge positive is that we now have an additional year to save our money for the adoption! We may not need to take advantage of those interest-free loans we'd been eyeing, as we were thinking of using one to buy the minivan which has now been taken care of. God has provided, in a different way than we expected, and I know that He will work this diversion of our path to His glory and our good. Among the encouraging things that friends, family and social workers have told us is that it could be our child/ren aren't even in the orphanage yet - maybe they're not yet available for adoption because of paperwork hangups - maybe at the time of adoption we will end up closer to family - maybe He's preparing a bigger house for us to love 5 children rather than the 4 we were planning on - and the list goes on. One idea I like to consider is that maybe Eden really needs to be a big sister, and she probably wouldn't be through adoption. Trying to guess how God is working can be a futile exercise if we're trying to predict the future, but it's an encouraging exercise when we're working to understand why in the world God would throw a kink in our plans!

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts." - Isaiah 55:8-9

I'll keep you posted as we find out more, whether about adoption or pregnancy. I probably won't be seeing a doctor until the beginning of July. Next up is for Mason and me to decide if we want to go ahead and file our immigration paperwork now, or if we want to wait until next year. There are pros and cons both ways so we would appreciate your prayers for wisdom. Obviously, this is very early in the pregnancy, and only God knows His plans for this child and our future children. I don't really know what to pray for right now besides clear direction! I'll be in Guatemala serving with Orphan's Heart from June 23-29, so I WILL ask you to pray that I and the entire team stay healthy throughout the trip. It's awesome that God opened up the door (at first it seemed closed) for me to keep my spot on this trip despite the pregnancy, because this is a way for Mason and me to practice orphan care despite the disappointment of having to wait longer to adopt! I look forward to posting about Guatemala in a couple of weeks. Until then.