Our Daily Waiting Prayer

We are not gonna lie - infertility and this whole adoption process has been extremely difficult lately filled with ups and downs, sadness and joy, doubt and hope, and anxiety and peace. We have always believed that when one feels down, sadness, doubt, and/or anxiety that it is a summons to prayer. This prayer doesn't take away all of the difficulty, but it helps a lot. So we are going to start praying the following prayer (slightly edited by us) that was shared by another married couple who struggled with infertility and adopted a child. Isn't it beautiful? The lines really touched us when we read it. It is written in the style of Charles de Foucald's famous Abandonment Prayer (which we highly encourage you to look up too no matter what your situation is in life).

A Waiting Prayer

Father, 

We abandon ourselves into your hands to send a child or not as you see fit.

You, by whom the Word was made flesh, send us a miracle if this is what you desire,

Or lead us to a miraculous child through adoption if that be your will.
We do not ask for guarantees, no parent can,
Only light enough for the very next step.
We do not ask for a perfect child, nor can we promise to be perfect parents.
Whatever you choose for us, whatever you desire, we abandon ourselves to your perfect will.
We are ready to offer our daily “yes” until that perfect will be revealed in us;
And until at last perfected, we will bear witness to the work of redemption you began in Eden.
We love you, Lord, and offer ourselves to you, wholly and without reservation.
We surrender ourselves, moment by moment, knowing that this is only the first small step of a Lifetime of surrender so that we may be made more perfect in love...
And that we may imitate, on earth as in heaven, the redemptive love, the adoptive love, and the Selfless Love with which you first loved us.

Written by: Heidi Hess Saxton; slightly edited by us

Baby Quilt Progress aka Photo Dump

We wanted to share an update about the quilt that Bethany is making for our future son or daughter, which will have everyone's name on it who prayed for us or donated to us! (There is still time to be added :-) !) As it turns out, work + life + adoption paperwork doesn't leave much leftover time for quilting. But despite the lack of posts about this project, progress has been made :) Slowly but surely! We are still on track to finish the quilt as a "welcome home" gift for our child. (.....unless we get a call, say, tomorrow...just sayin!)

So without further ado, here's the status of the quilt.

Getting the strips ready - fabric is cut into strips, sewed side by side to other strips, and then cut vertically into still other strips. Those multi-color strips of blocks are what are sewed together to become the squares. Trust me, it's not as confusing as it sounds!



Sewing with Mom, an excellent seamstress and my trusty guide:





Piecing and ironing a few squares (months ago, obviously!):



Sewing with Dan's mom during her New Year's visit:











I think it's really special that both of our child's future grandmothers had a hand in the quilt!

Here's what the quilt top looked like a few months ago - four rows, twenty squares (not all sewn together - most of these are just laid side by side):



Here's what the quilt top looks like as of this morning (again, mostly just laid side by side) - all five rows. Oops! Clearly one square still needs to be sewn! Haha. I didn't realize that was missing until I laid it out. Our living room rug is the backdrop:




And finally, here is the fabric we picked out for the back of the quilt. This is where we'll list all the names of everyone who has supported us during the adoption:



We liked the star motif - it fits with a quilt used for sleeping (starry night, etc.) and also with the idea of wishes and dreams that's also evoked by the dandelions on the front of the quilt.

So there you have it! The next steps are to finish that one square, buy fabric for the borders, attach the borders, and then it's time to take the quilt to my aunt to be quilted together. In the meantime we can start adding names to the back fabric - we may do some before and some after the actual quilting, and leave space for other names. We have SO many to add, thankfully!

2016 The Year of Our First Adoption (We Hope!)

Happy New Year! We here at Adoption Pilgrimage are dubbing this new year as "2016 The Year of Our First Adoption." We know this is bold, but we just have a good feeling that it will be this year! (Okay, our adoption placing agency also has only an average of seven months wait time, so it is a pretty safe bet to say it will be this year! We. Can't. Wait.)

To go along with this title we have several New Year's Resolutions related to adoption. Here they go:

NEW YEAR'S ADOPTION RESOLUTIONS:

1.) BECOME INFANT CPR EXPERTS

• This will be pretty easily accomplished as we will be taking an infant CPR class this Thursday. Then we will be trained to save our baby and yours! Motivational speakers also say that it is important to make at least one resolution that you can keep, so here it is! :-) ...but in all seriousness, if your baby is choking, call 911, not us.

2.) BECOME ADOPTION GRANT EXPERTS AND APPLY FOR 4 GRANTS

• Bethany has already done a lot of research over Christmas break (no rest for us adoption warriors!) and we have narrowed the many grants down to four applications sitting on our dining room. (Sadly, there are zero Catholic Adoption Grants!? Can you imagine that? We need to change that as it just does not make any sense. Catholics have lots of adoption agencies. Catholics have crisis pregnancy centers. Catholics have counseling and charities to help birth moms keep the child or to place the child for adoption. But not a single charity - that we've found, anyway - to help adoptive parents adopt and thereby to help birth moms find through adoption good homes for their children who also need good homes? Huh? One day, some way we can do this. If you have lots of money and you want to start a charity, then we suggest you start this one!) 

3.)  LEARN ALL ABOUT PRE-NATAL DRUG/ALCOHOL EXPOSURE

• We have one excellent resource, a book called "The Mystery of Risk: Drugs, Alcohol, Pregnancy, and the Vulnerable Child" by Dr. Ira Chasnoff (how's that for uplifting reading?). If you have any others, then please by all means email us or comment below!

4.) READ UP ALL ABOUT ADOPTION AND ADOPTIVE PARENTING

• Stay tuned for posts about books related to adoption - starting with our favorite - The Connected Child. Really, this is a book every parent should read and re-read. 

5.) ADOPT!

• We are ready to be parents and we can't wait to meet the child God has prepared for us!

6.) PRAY !!!

• Obligatory Catholic Resolution! No seriously, we have been praying every day for our little one, the birth parents, us, the agencies involved, etc., but we are going to ramp up the prayers the closer it gets.

7.) BEFRIEND ADOPTION BUDDIES

• We have been blessed with many family and friends who have been supportive of our adoption journey. However, we have realized we really need to befriend adoptive parents and friends who are also in the adopting process. Through a variety of circumstances, we have a several of the latter (woo hoo - our adopted children are going to be BFFs!!) but only one or two of the former. So we are seeking friends in the adoptive community this year.  

Fundraising and Savings Update #5 Plus a Goal Change

We have good news and bad news vis-a-vis fundraising / savings. The good news is that we have now raised $11,947.67  and saved $9,640.62 (having two jobs really helps) for a grand total of $21,588.29. Thank you! We are definitely on pace to meet our original goal of $24,180.

The bad news is that we have to adjust our original goal to a higher amount. Right before we submitted our application to our placement agency (St. Joseph's), we learned through conversation with the director that we really should be anticipating around $35,000 total for all the adoption costs, given the latest trends in birthparent expenses and fees paid to the adoption professionals in whatever state the child is born. (Our agency networks with a number of agencies in different states.) We decided we were going to still go with this placement agency because even with these additional fees it is still comparable nationally to other agencies. Hence, our goal has risen from $24,180 to $34,180 (see our adoption costs page here).

This is discouraging, but we know the Lord will provide as He has done in the past through your donations, our jobs, etc. This is just another test of how much we trust the Lord and another sacrifice to enlarge our hearts with love for our child. We also are going to apply for adoption grants in the new year and work our tails off at saving through being extra frugal.

So we pray with confident hope that God will help make this dream of motherhood, fatherhood, and above all a loving home for a child in desperate need come true. This is our prayer, our miracle we pray for this Christmas season. If you think of it, then please remember us in your prayers.

Our First Roller-Coaster Ride with a Possible Adoption Situation

It probably is cliché to say that trying to adopt is an emotional roller coaster ride....lots of ups and downs, exhilaration and terror, disappointments and fast-moving decisions to be made.

n.b. we actually both love real-life roller-coasters!

This past week or so, we experienced our first taste of the adoption roller-coaster. (Spoiler alert - because we don't want to get anyone's hopes up - this doesn't end in us adopting.)

Now that we're home study approved, we're in the process of applying to the agency we'll work with to connect us with adoption situations (St. Joseph's in Kansas City). But a few days before we planned to send in our application, we got an email from our home study agency in Maryland about a potential adoption situation. A mom was thinking about placing her toddler son in an adoptive home, and were any of the "waiting families" interested?

We got that email Thursday December 3rd and had until Monday December 7th to say yes or no to having our profile shown. Thursday night we scrambled to get our profile done - just in case - and we also spoke confidentially to an adoptive family we know, asking their advice. (They had adopted a toddler - this was something we really hadn't looked into.) Bethany asked about toddler adoption in a Facebook group with adoptive parents and got some great advice. And we prayed a lot!! This felt like a really momentous thing, the first time we would have our profile book shown, the first time we'd have a chance at being chosen, maybe even becoming part of our child's story of how he/she came into our family...there's just no way to completely stop your mind from wandering, from thinking "this might be IT....."

It's crazy how fast everything moves too! Thursday to Monday is not that long a time to make a decision that could potentially change our lives forever. So we decided to say "yes" and ask the agency to show our profile. Making that decision was terrifying and exhilarating all at once! At the core, it felt like a "yes" to life. A "yes" to the possibility of welcoming a little one into our home, even with so many question marks about what it would be like. Not seeing the entirety of the road ahead, we felt comfortable and at peace with saying yes to this step.

But......as it turns out, the mom got more counseling from our agency over the weekend, changed her mind, and we got an email Monday night saying that she decided she did really want to keep parenting. The agency is going to connect her with whatever supports they can to make that possible.

Not gonna lie: we're disappointed. It would have been amazing to have our very first adoption possibility turn into an actual adoption. And of course we are so excited to be parents!! While trying to stay grounded and in the present moment, we did daydream about little feet running around our home, a little child to read to and love, and so on. And we could not help but think about our first Christmas with a precious child bopping around, wide-eyed at the wonder of life. Those dreams will have to wait a bit longer and it is so hard, especially around Christmas.

At the same time, throughout the weekend we had been praying for God's will to be done and for the best situation to happen for this mom and her little boy. We hope and pray this is it! At the least, this little guy won't have to go through being separated from his mom - even when that ends with a fantastic new adoptive family, it's still a loss for the child and his first mom/parents. So we pray for blessings upon this family and we believe that this situation was brought into our lives so we can intercede for this mother and child, both of whom are going through very difficult circumstances this Christmas.

Whew. The roller coaster is real. This was a very vivid first taste of the ups and downs in adoption - getting hopes up, trying to stay detached from a particular situation, praying for the best outcome for everyone, whether or not that means us adopting right now. We know we're so early in the process, and of course have no way of knowing how many more "rides" we'll be on. Please keep praying and thank you for your support!

National Adoption Day

Every November 21st is National Adoption Day!

Here are a few things you can do to celebrate today.

1.) If you know of anyone involved with adoption (whether that be an adoptee, adopted family, or a birth parent), then give them a good word of support today or say a prayer for them. Tell them you are happy to celebrate National Adoption Day with them. Hint hint: we love prayers and encouragement. But seriously, reach out to anyone you know!

2.) If you have any desire to learn more about adoption or extra free time, then we encourage you to educate yourselves about adoption. Today is a great day to start to do so. Check out our bookshelf: http://adoptionpilgrimage.blogspot.com/p/bookshelf.html

3.) Get out your favorite drink, whether that be wine or hot chocolate, and toast with your family to the beautiful reality of adoption and muse the mystery of adoption in your own life. While not the same as being adopted by a family, we are all adopted children of God (cf. Romans 8: 23). It is interesting to ponder what this may mean for how we think about adoption and how we should teach our children about adoption. Perhaps we will explore this theme in the future in a later piece.

Cheers!

Fundraising and Savings Update #4 Plus "Two Coins for You"

Fundraising and Savings Update #4

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! We just wanted to update you about how the fundraising and savings are going. Through your support and working two jobs now (Dan started working full-time at the end of August while still writing his dissertation), the Lord has really blessed us with a miracle of provision. Before we offer a reflection on all of this, we will just cut to the chase: we currently have raised $11,252 from donations and we have saved a total of $7,296 towards the adoption for a grand total of $18,548!!! Therefore, we are in great shape for the adoption and just in time for some of the biggest expenses coming up (placement agency fees of $4,500 plus when we get matched we will pay birth parent expenses that could be anywhere from $0-$3,000 or more [see our adoption costs page for more details]).

Now, we just want to reflect upon this blessing. We are so humbled by your generosity. With any gift or donation of any size, we realize we are on the receiving end of a sacrifice to make this gift possible. This naturally reminded us of today's Gospel passage of the widow from Mark 12: 38-44. In this passage, we read the following:

"Jesus sat down opposite the treasury
and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury.
Many rich people put in large sums.
A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them,
'Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more
than all the other contributors to the treasury.
For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood.'"

Now, as we heard this, we couldn't help but think about our generous benefactors and feel like we are on the receiving end of that widow's generosity, as we know many of you who gave are in financially tight places, like the widow. You may have not given your last two coins, but we know you have sacrificed in the spirit of the Gospel and we are humbled. You are making possible this beautiful adoption.

We think the best way we can re-pay you is to make sacrifices, in turn, like you and the widow. We are working hard at saving all we can for the adoption, but more importantly we are trying to cultivate in our hearts a self-sacrificial love for the child who will be placed in our arms, for the birth parents, and for everyone. It starts with prayer, offering up inconveniences and sufferings to the Lord, and just trying to do loving acts of kindness, when we can, to those around us - even when this is difficult.

So, inspired by your generosity and the Gospel, we would like to continue this path of sacrifice by simply loving you with what little we have this week - "two little coins" of prayer. If you dear benefactors, or anyone who reads this blog, are in need of a prayer, then please feel free to email us using the "contact us" tab and send us your intentions. We will write your intention down in a private journal and keep you in our daily prayers (coin #1) as well as offer up our difficulties along the road of adoption for you (coin #2).