Pt. 4: The Wait

This post could probably be split into a lot of separate ones because there was so much waiting for us. I know there are many that have and will wait longer than we did. However, when we were in the middle of the wait, it felt like forever.

The day we chose an agency is when I started the wait, but really it started a year before that for me. I had been longing to be a mother even a year prior, so add another 2 years, and it felt like an eternity.

While we were in the beginning stages of our process, I had my first surgery. From the sounds of it, there could be some serious hope that we could actually get pregnant. We had started the process because I felt like the chances were slim, but when a Dr. is telling you to try, you hold onto a little bit of a hope that's given.

Fast forward 3 months, and a lot of pain. I had another surgery scheduled to help with the pain and mainly for a serious health concern. A week after my surgery, we had to go get our fingerprints taken. Even then our process was still moving along. The fingerprints were the last thing to do on our list.

After that surgery I was finally feeling better than I had in the past. Those times were actually difficult. I didn't have a lot distracting me. Time was going slowly. I remember calling my mother in law crying at times wondering if I could actually make it through this waiting time. I remember being upset when people would ask if we had been matched, or when we were bringing home our daughter. I remember what it was like processing the emotions of watching yet another friend become pregnant, sometimes for the 2nd time. The wait was hard.

There were good times though. We went on vacations, dates, spent time with family and friends. We had a lot of freedom to do things when we wanted to, etc. Looking back now, it was good to have that time to wait. To grow more in love with each other, to build stronger friendships, and relationships. To see our family and friends support us like crazy was nothing short of amazing. If everything happened in my time. God wouldn't have been able to humble us, and let our people support us the way they did. 

I started to have a lot of complications with my health in February 2013.  I knew I had to take the most drastic measure and have a hysterectomy. It was something I said so easily to my Dr. but deep down in my heart, it was broken. My heart was broken. I felt broken physically. It was a feeling of failure. There was a part of me that didn't want to face society and especially my family. By the time I had my hysterectomy we had waited for 16 months for our match. It seemed like nothing was ever going to happen, and now I made a choice that could never be changed. Motherhood seemed so incredibly far away.

Those 2 weeks of recovery were dark. I cried, a lot. I felt alone, and lost. I had reached a point where I honestly didn't even know what to pray for anymore. Luckily, Kyle was my rock through that time and I'm quite certain he was throwing up some big prayers. Because on March 21st our lives were changed forever.

Redemption is now part of our story. The wait, the oh so long wait was worth it. We had that picture, and information about our daughter. God knew this was our story. The surgeries, the waiting, the pain and heartache. The good times with family and friends while we waited. The questioning at moments. It was His story woven into ours, the beautiful story of redemption. 

Pt. 3: The Paper Chase

The next part of our story would be compiling our dossier. Our dossier was ALL of the information about our lives. I'm talking every single detail. I used to joke with Kyle that somehow, someone knew what I was making for dinner, or what I was wearing that particular day.

The paperwork we needed to compile was fairly easy for us, luckily. Our biggest hiccup was finding the one paragraph in our insurance policy saying our child would be covered. It was at least 200 page stack of papers, with no table of contents. I just randomly chose a spot to start in, turned to the next page and there it was. God showed up even in the small details.

In the evenings I would come home from work, make dinner and do paperwork. We were surrounded by it, I would ask Kyle question and write down answers. We had trainings to go through, and of course the homestudy.

We had our homestudy, which went very well. Although, I totally panicked and cleaned the house as if the Queen of England was coming over, and she merely peeked in a few rooms. It was a lot of conversation, and questions.  A lot of family past, how we would handle discipline, what we see our lives looking like after our child is in our home.

Before our case worker left, she gave us some paperwork to fill out, surprise surprise. One of the sheets was about what type of child we would accept or not accept. I vividly remember sitting with Kyle outside checking yes or no to certain boxes. That sheet of paper took us the longest to through. It was HARD. I felt so guilty saying no to certain special needs.

We struggled so much because, had we conceived a child with a particular special need, we would never say, no. That would have never even gone through our minds. But, now we had to choose what we would accept. We would accept anything, but we had to talk through what would be ideal, what we thought we could handle. That was a challenge too, because God really can give the strength to do anything. However, we had to think hard about what was going to make the most sense for our family and being first time parents.

We finished our homestudy and we were approved for a healthy girl or boy and we were open to siblings. There were a lot of other forms, and fingerprints we had to go through before we were officially on the waiting list, but we were really moving. I was getting excited, I wanted to be on that wait list because it seemed like families were getting matched fairly quickly.

We officially were on the list in October, and I couldn't have been more excited. I made a countdown sheet to watch us move along in our journey.

Then the wait started....

Pt. 2: The Search

A lot of people will ask me how we chose an adoption agency, and how we decided on Ethiopia, as far as countries to adopt from. 

When Kyle and I decided to start this process, we just celebrated his 26th birthday and I was only 25. Believe it or not, that's pretty young. At least in adoption world anyway. I did a lot of research on countries and requirements for each of them. A lot of countries had requirements we just didn't even come close to. Examples: married couples must be married for 5 years (we were about to celebrate our 2nd.), married couples must both be 30 years old, one spouse has to be 35, are you getting the picture here? We just didn't fit. Except, Ethiopia.

We had people ask us this during our process, "why not adopt here in the US, they need it too" We absolutely agreed with that statement, it didn't matter to us where our child came from, but we had to consider our emotions. At that time, we just didn't feel led to a US adoption. There is a reality that a birth mother could change her mind at the last minute and decide to parent her baby. We want what is best for any child, but we also knew ourselves. It just didn't seem like we could handle the emotional side of possibly losing a match during that time. I'm going to post more about that part of our story, but it wasn't a quick response to hearing bad news at one Dr. appointment. We had lost something that we weren't expecting and we had been through a lot within that past year.

Choosing an agency wasn't overwhelming to me. Maybe it was because I just wanted to start the process. However, we didn't just choose willy nilly either. A dear friend of mine's sister had adopted recently, so I asked about her agency. When I called the agency, they asked how I heard about them. I told them the child's name, but couldn't remember their last name at the time. They immediately knew who I was talking about. That was HUGE to me. The families weren't just numbers, they are families waiting for their children. I loved that, and it really made an impact on my decision. After talking to Kyle about it, we chose them and began our paperwork. 

Personally, I loved having a smaller agency. Ethiopia was a great match for our family, and ultimately brought Zola to us. The country, the culture, the people are all amazing and I'm so thankful God closed so many doors and Ethiopia was our choice.

Pt. 1: The Calling

Lately, I've been feeling led to really share more of my story. I believe we all have stories, and maybe some of them are similar and I find that helps so often. But, no two are the same, each one is uniquely different.

Kyle and I went to the same small high school, so we knew of each other. He was seriously the "cool kid" but not the jerky cool kid, the nice cool kid. Who was also good at everything, football, basketball, baseball, and incredibly smart. I on the other hand, let's just say I wasn't at the top of my class, and I didn't get any awards for outstanding athlete.

When Kyle was nearing the end of his Junior year, the big news going around school was that his mom and dad left for China to bring home a little girl and his mom was missing Mother's Day with her kids at home. I thought that was really cool, but sad she was missing her other kids. Because I had no real ties, there wasn't this deep feeling of emotion going on, yet.

In the fall his family would bring his sister to football games and I would notice them a lot. They actually sat really close to my parents during the games.

I guess you could say it somewhat started from there. During the next couple of years I remember talking to my grandma about adoption and what it meant in her life, because my dad was adopted. The conversations were always positive, but I hadn't yet put myself in her shoes.

Fast forward a few more years, and Kyle's family adopted again from China. This time the girls were in my small group at church. I was able to see how they interacted, their excitement, and their love. Looking back now, it was starting to stir things in my own heart, and I didn't even know.

Kyle and I had our first date, and adoption was a big topic of conversation. I said I was absolutely open to adopting and I'm sure I asked a lot of questions. Things started to get more serious in our relationship and we talked about it a lot. We had decided (funny how that works, right?) that it would be really neat to have biological children first and then adopt. (when we had saved up the money)

Fast forward to almost a year into our marriage, and I thought it was time to start trying to have a baby. When things weren't going as planned for us, and I had received some news that wasn't great, I made up my mind that day and started researching agencies.

Although, my calling wasn't in one moment, but over several years it was still my calling. I always felt a tug at my heart when James 1:27 was read "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." 

On July 21, 2011 that Calling turned into a YES.

If I didn't start researching that day, and getting information that day, it wouldn't be Zola. That calling is powerful, and I'm so thankful we said Yes together.