Finding the Words

Sometimes words flow out poetically as I compose a blog post.  This is not one of those times, and for that I will apologize now.  I have sat at my computer at least four dozen times over the last three months trying to write this entry.  I committed to being open about our experience of a failed adoption and I haven't actually shared much of anything about our personal battles through it all.

Three months.  It's been exactly 3 months since Sam & I boarded a plane in Accra and headed back to the US with the knowledge that the daughters we love so much will never be ours.  I've cried.  A LOT.  Those first weeks were unimaginable.  We arrived home and couldn't bring ourselves to discuss all that unfolded in Ghana while we were there.  We had a family vacation scheduled for just 5 days after our arrival home from Ghana and we didn't want to spoil that for the kids, so we kept everything quiet.  We didn't lie to the children - we answered all their questions very honestly - but we didn't offer more information than was specifically asked.

Our family vacation was to Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL - dubbed "the most magical place on earth."  It was torture.  Don't get me wrong - I loved seeing Cora's eyes light up when she met Princess Tiana and watching Mya curtsy to The Beast while adorning her Belle costume with full hair & makeup - but less than a week had passed since saying goodbye, FOREVER, to the precious little girls in Ghana that we longed to make our own.  I was (and am) in full-on mourning and the 60 degree temperature felt like 30 with the constant rain.  The weather sure seemed fitting to the personal hell I was enduring internally, all the while trying to put on a happy face so the kids would enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience.  The parks were beautiful - all decorated for Christmas (yes, even manger scenes...and a menorah or 2).  It was spectacular to see the lights shows and to watch Liam's face as he tried to decipher if it was the "real Tinkerbell" flying overhead during the fireworks show at Magic Kingdom.  It was special to see our sweet Ivy still want to see the princesses, even at eleven years old.  Memories were certainly made...but sadly, what I remember most about that trip was the fear.  The fear for R & A in Ghana.  The fear that I wouldn't smile at just the right time and my very intuitive Mya would figure out what was going on.  The fear that I would be the one to ruin their Disney vacation because of my grief - of which they knew nothing.

We returned home just a week before Christmas.  Talk about emotions running high!!  December 24th, Christmas Eve, marked ONE YEAR since Liam & Cora arrived home!  What an amazing anniversary to celebrate.  I love these children with all my heart.  Their first year home has NOT been easy (that's another post) but it has been miraculous.  I wanted to celebrate them, yet the whole time I struggled immensely with the reality that R & A will never come "home" to us.  See a recurring theme?  The grief has been consuming.  Completely, utterly, all-consuming.

We agreed not to ruin the kids' Christmas by telling them about R & A...so the presents the kids made for their sisters remained tucked under the tree, all wrapped pretty in anticipation of a homecoming sometime in the future.  Oh the heartache!

Christmas led to New Year's Eve.  I was a wreck.  Here were were, what many would deem a perfect mid-size family, sitting around the house sipping hot cocoa and watching fireworks displays on television as each timezone around the world entered 2013.  7:00pm rolled around.  It was midnight in Ghana.  Were R & A awake?  Was there any sort of celebration?  Do they even know the year is changing?  My mind raced and my heart ached.  I couldn't live through the lie anymore.  I couldn't start the new year off with this secret that was eating away at me minute-by-minute.  So Sam & I sat down with the kids and told them that their sisters would probably never be able to come to America as part of our family.

The tears were many...but the questions, OH the questions...I was not prepared for those.  Why, Mommy?  Don't you WANT them?  Weren't they nice girls?  Will they be safe?  Will they have food?  Who will take care of them?  Why were you told they needed a family if they didn't?  WILL THEY BE OK MOMMY??????

Those questions still haunt me several months later.  I can't go to sleep at night or wake in the morning without wondering ARE THEY SAFE?  ARE THEY FED?  ARE THEY OK???

I still cry for them.

A LOT.

I still ache to hold them in my arms again.

I suspect a piece of me always will.

We held our daughters and had to say good-bye...and we don't have the peace that might eventually come from a "typical" loss of a child, in that the child is resting peacefully in perfectly healed spirit at the hand of God in heaven.  No, we have to rely on HOPE that the evil in this world won't overtake them again, as it has in the past.  We have to HOPE that the people who deceived and dishonored these precious girls will not continue seeking to do so.  We have to HOPE that R & A have someone in their lives in Ghana who will feed the Gospel into their souls so that we can hold onto the HOPE that we will have eternity with them.  So while we have peace that we are in God's will...we, or at least I, do not have PEACE with the situation and the loss...but we're clinging to the promise of HOPE.

Mourning 2 Sisters

When we first told the children about our plans to add R & A to our family, they were ecstatic!  All of them! Ivy was excited to add a sister her age and the little 3 all adore Ivy so much that they were over the moon with the idea of more big sisters to love on them.  Of course, Liam would like a brother, but that's more because he wants someone to share his bedroom with than anything.

In the wake of our failed adoption of R & A, their grief has been immense.  Of course, kids are resilient and they're getting through (far better than I am most days to be honest), but the pain still surfaces regularly...especially for our Ghanaians.  Here's how the grief is playing out thus far with the youngest members of our family:

Ivy is sorrowful, and she has shed many tears.  She had crafted gifts for her new sisters and was super excited about having a new "big girls bedroom" for just her & R.  She has become even more reclusive and her sleep has been disturbed.  She's burying herself in books more than ever - not even returning texts from her friends.  However, when asked about it, she sees this as a new opportunity to help a different child - one who needs us more than R & A did.  She has a special heart for the children who will "age out" of adoptability and has asked us to consider adopting a 13 year old girl from China before she loses all chance of ever having a family (her 14th birthday).  We agreed to pray about it.

Mya has either handled this with the most peace or she's internalizing her pain.  We're not sure which.  She is our most compassionate child and she eagerly tends to hurting hearts within our home.  I'm afraid she sees my pain and the pain of her siblings and, much like her father, hides her own to be "strong" for the rest of us.  I pray she's just at peace with the whole situation...but she's so much like her daddy that I do wonder what's going on in her mind.

Liam is struggling.  He doesn't understand why R & A won't come to our family.  It is especially painful to guide him through this tenderly.  We try to explain that his "Ghana Mom" wanted him to come to America to have love and food and school and medicine and all the best things life can offer, but all he hears is R's mom wanted her and his mom didn't.  I won't even pretend to know that grief.  It hurts him to the very core.  His developmental level and language skills don't allow him to verbalize all he's experiencing, but he has reverted to many self-soothing behaviors (common to children from institutions who had no one to truly care for them & meet their individual needs) and he has also started pushing us harder.  I'm sure part of it is fear that we'll abandon him at some point.  He subconsciously needs to test our love and our faithfulness and commitment to him. We're trying to stand strong.  To be consistent.  To not allow this major family tragedy to affect our parenting...but to say we're succeeding in that would be a stretch.  We try.  We fail.  We apologize.  We're struggling too, and our patience while hurting is limited.  Thankfully Liam sees a wonderful, Godly counselor who is trained specifically in how to help children who've experienced a traumatic past, including adoption, foster care, etc.  She is a blessing to Liam and to our entire family and she will be working closely with him to help process this grief in a God-honoring way.

Cora is, well, Cora.  She will be five years old next week.  She is sad, but she forgets about it minutes later.  Whenever something reminds her of R & A, she comes running to me and cries.  She asks me to explain, again, why they won't be her sisters.  She asks me if they're safe in Ghana and if anyone gives them hugs & kisses.  She loves them and she's concerned...because she's lived it.  Don't for one moment think this little girl who came to America just 3 weeks before her 4th birthday has forgotten her life there!  She may not remember every detail, but she remembers hurting.  She remembers being hungry and having no food to eat.  She remembers watching her friends go to families before her while she stayed at the orphanage.  She remembers and she agonizes (for a few moments at a time) for the sisters she'll never have.  Sisters she's skyped with and sang with.  Sisters who will live out there days on the other side of the world.

I can barely make sense if it myself.  I don't know how this is going to affect any of the kids long term.  I know that we made wise decisions.  I know that God took us down this path for a reason.  I just wish living out our faith didn't come at such a high cost.

But then again, God sacrificed his son's life for us...for me...so maybe I shouldn't complain.  Maybe we're all just becoming privy to a small piece of the pain and a portion of the tears that Our Father has shed for us.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,

that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

~ John 3:16 ~

Uncovering the Truth

In adoption, especially international adoption, there lies within a deep stream of emotional entanglement. We are not new to this, however this adoption has taken a much different road from our first process.

We first committed to R over eight months ago (April 2012).  Each day our love for her has grown so exponentially I can't even contain it.  We learned about A roughly a month later and agreed to pray about adopting her as well, because we were told it was in the best interest of the girls (who are best friends) to remain together.  It took what felt like an eternity (also known as two months) to have wisdom and peace with committing to her as well, which we did in July.

As we worked with our local social worker to update our homestudy for the adoption of these two precious girls, we came to learn a lot of unpleasant truths about the orphanage they were residing in.  Stories of neglect and severe abuse.  Stories of finding/creating "orphans" for families instead of finding families for the true orphans already in their care.  Stories of horror lived by the children in that institution.  These are not rumors or exaggerated tales of minor infractions.  These are true, accurate, documented accounts of the conditions the children are subjected to within the walls of that facility and the incredulous nature of the orphanage's director.  We continued to pray about whether we were to move forward, knowing that we would be dealing directly with the director of the home to complete our adoption.  We knew very clearly that God called us to fight for these girls, and so we did.  We maintained regular contact with the orphanage director and gathered all the documents needed for our dossier (the collection of paperwork needed to show us as suitable parents for the Ghanaian courts).

We wired money for the girls' medicals to be done and for the proper clearances to be obtained for the girls to be legally cleared for adoption.  It took several weeks, but we finally received their medical information and were told that the remaining paperwork (relinquishments & Social Inquiry Reports) would only be done after we submitted our dossier and a significant sum of money.  Having been through this process once, we knew that was not the established procedure, but the director kept insisting this is the "new way."

We continued to pray, and very clearly heard God tell us to GO.  Drop what we're doing and GO to our girls.  We were scared to death because we had no idea what we were supposed to do if we went.  We didn't even know if we would be able to afford a trip over...so we prayed "God, we hear you telling us to go, but You must provide so we can"...and He did! As you probably know, we hosted an online auction to benefit our adoption.  That auction ended right around the time we heard this call to go.  That auction, by God's grace and provision, brought in exactly $4,072.  I really didn't think that would even cover our airfare, especially during the holidays (Sam's ticket alone to bring L & C home was more than that a year ago), but God provided.  I checked flights with several carriers and itineraries over a course of several days.  The tickets hit a major low and I booked them!  With the bargain price I got on airfare, plus staying at a very inexpensive guest house as opposed to a nicer hotel, our auction earnings were enough to cover ALL our travel expenses!  God provided the means, so we went to Ghana!  You can read all about that here.

SIDE NOTE: Many months ago (late spring-early summer), charges were filed against the orphanage based on the issues I mentioned above.  In October of this year, after completing their investigation, the government raided the home and removed most of the children, but our girls were among those left behind to continue to endure the nightmare.

Anyway, we arrived in Ghana under the radar so to speak.  We kept our trip very quiet, with only immediate family and a few close friends in the know about our journey of faith across the ocean.  We had a strong conviction that we needed to do everything in our power to have the girls removed from this awful orphanage.  We wanted to move forward to bring them into our forever family, but it was obvious that could not ethically happen while they were under the "care" of that place.  Thanks to an amazing friend, we were able to connect with one of the top leaders within the Department of Social Welfare (SW) - the govt agency responsible for overseeing all adoptions in Ghana - about our case.  This woman treated me very kindly and was very open about the situation in that home.  She explained the the reason R & A had been allowed to stay at the orphanage was because they were each somehow distantly related to the director's family.  A is related to the director and R is related to his wife (both by at least 4 degrees of separation...so by no means a "close" relative).  Supposedly the children who remain at this facility are all somehow related to the head couple of the institution, so while the facility is legally closed, these poor "relative" children remain to suffer abuse at the hands of those who should love them most!

During our week in Ghana, we met with several members of SW about having the girls removed and placed into a foster home.  While there, a case worker was assigned to investigate their specific cases to see if we could also get the ball rolling on their adoption paperwork.  What came next was something we could never have anticipated.

The TRUTH about R:
We learned that R's birth mother, M, had NO KNOWLEDGE of her residing in an orphanage!!!  An aunt was supposed to be caring for her all these years.  A trusted family member had promised to raise R, who had been born to an unwed teen mom, but instead placed her in at least 2 different orphanages over the last 6+ years that we know of.  M was understandably furious to learn of this deceit and of the atrocities that her precious daughter had been subjected to all this time.  The aunt would periodically remove R from the facility to go visit M at her home in a different village, completing the rouse that she was caring for the child.  M is now married with a young daughter, just over a year of age.  She is in a place in her life where she is able to care for R and she WANTS to!  Therefore, we offered to not only cease our adoption of R, but also to remain her education sponsor so that she can be returned to her birth family and still be able to continue her schooling.  M & R have my phone number and we have regular communication.  While we are grieving this very real loss of our daughter, we have complete peace that she is in the arms of the mother God planned for her.  Had we not gone to Ghana to fight for her, she may never have been returned to her birth family who loves and WANTS her!  Of course I want her too...but international adoption is intended ONLY to be a LAST RESORT for orphans who can not otherwise be cared for in their native land.  This is not the case for R and our ethical standards kept us from proceeding.

Let me say that this child will ALWAYS be my daughter in my heart.  I have been covering her in prayer for roughly a year and have been committed to making her a member of our family for over 8 months.  While my first thought is to liken my emotions to a woman having a stillbirth at full term, losing a child you've planned for and loved, my situation is much different.  I have a RELATIONSHIP with this child.  We have written letters and skyped and now met and snuggled and played together!  While she has been instructed (understandably) to no longer call me Mommy, but rather Auntie Christy, I will forever be her America Mommy and I am abundantly thankful that M wants us to remain in their lives.

The TRUTH about A:
A's story is a little murkier.  The unfortunate TRUTH about A is that she remains at the orphanage even as I write this.  We fought our hardest to have her removed, but hit one stumbling block after another.  I will be contacting SW again this week to touch base, but the basic understanding at this point is that A's family can NOT support her, does NOT want to, has relinquished ALL of her siblings, but has been talked out of relinquishing her, which means our adoption of A is going to be a failed adoption as well.  It is a devastating situation for our daughter.  She has one family that wants her...us...but we can not make her ours because of some alternate anti-adoption agenda pushed on A's birth family.  Even as we sat together in the SW office, A's grandmother was flip flopping and changing her story.  We know there is another family who has been trying to adopt A out from under us.  We can not say for sure if they have any connection to the family not consenting to our adoption now in order that they might get the consent later, but it is certainly in my mind.  I do have the word of the SW Director that if A is EVER legally cleared for adoption, we will be given first opportunity because our dossier is logged in and waiting specifically for her, but only time will tell what God's plan is there.  We, again, are devastated over the loss of our child.  She has been in my daily prayers for seven months and in my heart as my daughter for five.  While I will probably always hold onto some small sliver of hope that she could someday be our daughter, the reality is we are not going to be able to adopt her right now or any time in the foreseeable future.

In a moment we lost two of our children.

The book of Job has come alive to me in the last month.  To experience such grief and loss and still focus on worshiping God through it all, regardless of circumstances, is something I'm striving to do, but it's unbelievably difficult.

In the coming days, as we enter the new year, I will be chronicling our family's journey through this loss.  The entire family is grieving immensely and I hope to share candidly what that looks like...not to exploit the raw emotions of my family, but rather to hopefully help someone else to know that they aren't alone.  Maybe even to show the redemption waiting on the other side of choosing ethics in adoption over my own want & desire to bring "my child" home.

"...Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."  ~Job 1:21