Dear Mom~
This my my favorite day to write you this letter. It's my secret day to think of you. I remember all the fun we do. I can't sleep because I think of you and Rebecca, too. I miss you Mom, I want to go to Hoio (Ohio:)again. I can't wait to see you again. I remember the fun that we had. I want to visit Chicago again. When it was my Birthday the children makes me cry when I finish talking with you. I love mom and also my dad.
From- Frannie
(letter written by a friend for Fran to me)
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| Francesca the morning that she was to fly home! |
"With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years to the Lord is like a day! "...these words of the apostle Peter have echoed in my thoughts for the last several hours. Knowing that he was speaking of the coming of the Lord, it was a reminder that God's timing is not the same as ours and that He see things in a all together different light then what we mortals do! Waiting on the Lord is not something that comes natural to us...we more often then not, do not want to be patient. To often our human nature wants it now and not later!
And so it is this state of mind that I often have found myself in over the last year and regardless of how much I have prayed and begged and sometimes screamed, "Help me to wait on you,Lord"...I have fallen quite short of completion of this desire. It was one year ago this week that our sweet Francesca Elizabeth returned to Haiti to live for the remainder of her adoption. In some ways it seems like yesterday...but mostly each day since she left has seemed like a thousand years.
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| Early spring walk on the day before she left! |
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| Last picture with the siblings minus Abbey and including Dulci! |
A bit of history on this decision to adopt...we did not make a decision...in fact we had never even discussed it. Four biological children later we felt quite certain that our quiver was full and if you had told us differently I'm afraid that we may have snickered a bit like Sara did when God told her that she and Abraham were to have a son! We were done...short of God's intervention...and intervene he most certainly did. Not in the form of diapers and bottles, but in the aspect of home studies, fingerprinting, back ground check, and psychological evaluations.
At the wedding of a friend, just as the ceremony had began, because there was not a extra chair, I found my lap full of a twelve year old girl dressed in turquoise and just about as big as I was. It was then, at that moment I believe that she was born...into my heart and it is there that she has remained henceforth.
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| Ready to go to the airport! |
Our family spent four wonderful months getting to know her and we were even blessed to have her move in with us for a time and attend school at our local public facility. Visiting on a medical visa for health issues, when it came to the end of February her visa was expiring and it was time for her to return to her country. She left our home with her froggy backpack on her back carrying her own dossier to give to the lawyer that would process her adoption....and part of each of our families hearts went with her.
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| Charity had a picnic for Francesca! |
And so the waiting began! The timetable was to be as such that her adoptive sister Rebecca, who had also been added to our heart family, would age out at 16 on June 9 and we were praying for a miracle that this could happen with Francesca riding on the kite strings of Rebe's adoption. The months preceding June was spent with much fervent and desperate prayer that the Lord would allow this to happen. Never in my 17 years as a believer of the Lord had I prayed with such a agonizing plea. Everyday and every minute of the day of the next three months I found my mind begging the Father to deliver these children on time. As the age out time approached we were also planning for our first visit to Haiti to see the girls and where they lived. It was there in that foreign land, among poverty and despair, that we learned that God had answered our prayers...just not quite like we wanted Him to! The adoption would not be done in time and that would put Fran back into the normal adoption timeline...which in Haiti...has no beginning or ending...or rhyme or reason! Rebe would be sought to come home in the form of a student visa...a very long shot indeed as I was told by a American embassy official!
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| Daddy and Frannie waiting at the airport! |
I suppose the gut feeling looking back on it now was that we, in the dark recesses of our mind where we did not want to go, knew that this would quite possibly happen! But instead we had chose to believe and until that moment had complete confidence that our girls would be home by June! From that moment on the situation changed...no matter the pain that we felt and it was great...we began to see the hand of God working in a new way. Not that we hadn't seen it work prior to this. God had made his work very evident allowing us to complete our dossier and have it sent to Haiti beginning the second week of January and going back with Fran at the end of February. Our home study agency was blown away by things likea child abuse report which typically takes 4 months being done in less than 6 days and many other little miracles which sometimes I still find unreal.
But the working in the situation following the prayer answered by NO was a new look at everything in our lives. It seemed that the floodgates opened...on our compassion for others, on our understanding of the poor in spirit, on our ability to see what living a life sold out to the Lord really looked like...
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| Frannie having a snack before she leaves |
As of today we are planning our fourth trip to see the girls and have no new or encouraging news that either is even close to coming home. They are now one year older and we are blown away each time we visit at how they have changed. No, Francesca can not read above a 1st grade level, but she will turn 14 in June. Rebe is still waiting for her visa appt because the Haitian govt was out of passport book for about 6 months and have now added additional steps to the process. They are currently waiting on a appointment and the school year has come and almost went that she had been approved for at the private school that she was accepted into and still we just wait.
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| Our sweet Christmas reindeer- Celebrating Christmas in Haiti! |
As discouraging as this might sound, and we have had many people comment that perhaps it is not God's will that they come home...(as if God's will would not be to adopt?!)....we are finding that we have learned so many things through this time and that we are seeing a side of waiting on the Lord that we never thought possible!
Just a few things that we have learned about waiting and the meaning of "to wait on the Lord" since this process began...
The first meaning of waiting is IN SILENCE: We spend much time delivering up our prayers...many words spoken over and over...in deliberation, in desperation, and in distress...but once we have delivered this prayer we must then become still before the Lord in waiting- our souls hushed and bowing in silence ( in faith) before the Lord. Sometimes our souls are just two noisy and we hurry up and rush out of His presence and try to answer the prayer in some way ourselves. Many times in the beginning of the adoption process this would have been so true of us...trying to accomplish it...saying we were trusting God...but working as though we were on our own. So you see, we have done the praying but not the waiting!
The second meaning of the word carries the thought of EXPECTATION and HOPE! "For God alone my soul waits in silence. For my hope is from Him" Pslm 62 1, 5. This is the act of trusting in Him and to expect Him to take care of the situation. Our natural man is so self sufficient. He turns here and there and expects help to come from his natural ability, friends or the circumstances behind the plea, but as a spiritual being in Christ we are taught to not trust in self and to depend upon the power of the the Holy Spirit. We tried to trust in our attorney, in the orphanage, in our ability to get things done fast, but only to acknowledge that the power of trust in the Lord was our only answer and knowing that He will take care of our children and He will also bring them home.
The third meaning of wait that has become apparent to us is TO WATCH, TO OBSERVE, and TO NOTICE. In this waiting we must be still but also be so near the Lord that we will catch the slightest communication from Him. Our hearts must be sensitive enough to discern quickly His voice. "Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors." Prov. 8:34 Time spent in earnest Bible reading, powerful prayer with much time invested, and a communion with God through worship and reaching out, to bring us so close to Him so that we can almost feel His very presence in everything that we say, everything that we see, and every circumstance in our lives.
The last comprehension that we have found in the waiting is the ACTION of waiting. That is a oxymoron you say. You can not wait and be in action at the same time. We have learned that there is indeed a action with waiting! We must PREPARE our hearts through prayer and studying, we must LEARN all that we can through the struggle that we are waiting on, we must remain WATCHFUL for the hidden activity of God, we must stay active with what we know to be - LOVING our neighbors, TRANSFORMING our hearts, MAKING disciples...etc. We can also be LISTENING for the voice of God and for those that He sends to us, we can have HEALING as we wait on God to work so that we can be ready for the next assignment that He has for us and lastly the action of PRAYING without ceasing.
It is very easy to put into type this awareness of waiting that God has brought into our lives but we struggle daily to implement it into our daily living. Sometimes it seems so easy and other times I feel that I have failed in each and every way.
But one thing that is for sure as God has brought us into these realities of waiting, we have been able to establish a peace and perseverance in the wait. We can do NOTHING to bring our children home....but God can and it is Him that will do so! We must be patient in prayer, in stillness, in worship, in hope, and always in believing...in His presence!
So while our hearts ache to have Francesca & Rebecca home we also know that God is near and He knows...He will always direct us when we need to move and He will still us when we need to be stilled. Let us be so close that we will always hear what we are to hear!
My heart has turned to a new scripture..."Those who Wait on the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings like of eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint!"
