A Very Different Kind of "Back to School" Post

My heart is overflowing with joy.  As I sit here the past two days on Facebook reading everyone's complaints and woes, I am struck at our country's lack of perspective and gratitude.  How spoiled and self-righteous are we as a nation when we complain about our "first world problems" whilst people around the world fight for their right to simply live.

On Wednesday we, as a family, watched a documentary on Netflix called "On the Way to School".  It follows the lives of four different children in four different countries and documents their journey to school every day.  None of the kids in the film walked less than an hour each way to school daily.  One child had to watch out for elephant stampedes, while another pushed their brother, who was in a wheelchair, through very rugged terrain for over an hour.  Yet we complain.  After the film I was struck when the first words out of Charlotte's mouth was "When are we sending the money to send my sisters to school?".  Little did she know that I had been working on this very task over the past few days with our friend Workineh in Ethiopia.

I want to preface this post with the fact that Mike and I are no saints.  This story is of God and only possible through God.  We are simply following God's call on our lives.  He is the one making all of this possible, so please join us in praising Him and not us.

As many of you already know we hired an investigator back in May and were able to locate both birth mothers of our girls.  You can read ore about that story here.  We knew the twins had two sisters, one is now 7 and the other is 12.  In the interest of their privacy I will refer to them as K and N.  Once we found them I had a strong desire to make sure these girls were in a good school.  Since May I have been working with Workineh (our investigator turned friend) as well as our Ethiopian friend here in the states to determine what the best way to go about this would be.  Mike and I wanted to make sure we weren't trying to swoop in and be all "white savior" about the way we wanted to help.

This summer, while visiting family in Ohio, we were able to call the twins' birthmother, Abinet, ON THE PHONE!!!!  Our friend, and Godsend, Amsale in Ohio had her phone number from when the investigator told us that Abinet did have a phone.  Amsale happened to be in Ethiopia visiting her family in May when Workineh found Abinet, so she was able to talk with her on the phone 2 times while she was there.  We were sitting up in a bedroom in Amsale's house.  Our main goal of the phone call was to let Abinet know how we would like to help and find out what kind of school she would like the girls to go to. 

An interesting side note is the twins' response to our phone call to Abinet.  One girl wanted to stand in the room to just listen, but did not want to say anything.  The other wanted nothing to do with the call.  I mention this to emphasize that these are BIG and COMPLICATED feelings that they are sorting through.  They each sleep with a scarf tied around their waist that Amsale brought back for them from Ethiopia that she told them was from Abinet.  They love their first mother, but yet, there's so many feelings!  Mike and I are very intentional about letting them lead as far as how much, and what, involvement they want in this whole process. 

In Ethiopia a boarding school is the most prestigious school.  In my gut, I didn't think she would want to send them to a boarding school.  She already had to part with two of her kids due to terrible circumstances and I felt that she wouldn't want the other two out of her house.  I was correct.  She was so moved by our offer and asked why we wanted to help her.  All of us were crying.  We told her, through Amsale's translation, that she is now a part of our family and we help our family.  We conveyed to her how much we loved her and her other daughters and how we wish to come to visit her in three years.  At one point in the phone call she said "God made these girls (the twins) for you."  My response was "No, he made them for you, but we are so blessed to help."

She chose the school she wanted and let Workineh know how much tuition, the entrance fee, uniforms and school supplies would be.  The total for BOTH girls was...$310 for the entire year.  We are blessed with an incredible group of friends and family who all waned to participate in helping our new family members, which allowed us to send some extra money for school clothes, shoes, etc.

I sent the money to Workineh through Western Union on Wednesday and he traveled to their town on Thursday.  He sent me some pictures.  God is so good guys!

 Here are K & N modeling their new school clothes, shoes and backpacks.

 These are some of their new school books.

 This is the fabric that has been taken to a tailor to be made into their school uniforms.  School starts on September 18th.

 N, Abninet and K showing the photo album I made back in May for them of pictures of the twins from the entire time they've been with us.  Workineh delivered it to them on this trip.  

Here are the girls standing outside the school compound.

I need to express to you that through this entire process we have been very transparent and open with the twins.  They know everything, every detail we discovered about their birthfamily.  Some of it wasn't ideal, obviously.  This has brought the twins so much healing and helped them bond with us on a whole other level.  Their trust in us has grown exponentially.  They see our love for them shown through our love for their first family.  It helps that they no longer need to worry about what ever happened to their first family, especially their sisters.  We will always keep in touch and make sure they're ok, as much as is possible.

In no way has this discovery made me feel any "less" their mother.  I have not felt threatened in any way.  I feel closer to them knowing their history.  It has made me love their first family like they're my own.  It has opened my eyes and broken my heart for what breaks God's.  It has brought me closer to God.  He has been in every small detail of this whole experience.  I pray for Abinet everyday.  I wear a bracelet that says "enat" {mother in Amharic} to remind me to pray for her.  

I sleep better at night knowing I am doing all I can to help them.  It has brought our whole family here, and friends, together for such an amazing reason.  Our family has made us feel so loved, and again it shows the twins that they can trust all of us.  I sleep better knowing that this woman halfway around the world knows she's not forgotten.  She knows her babies are loved and cherished.  She knows that God has heard her prayers and is using us to help answer some of them.  That is an incredible honor.

Family Zumba...Good Lord!

There are not many times that I have the thought "I wish someone was filming our life right now.  This is incredibly entertaining", but tonight was one of those times.  I swear that our family can not do anything in a normal or inconspicuous way.  We recently joined the YMCA and tonight the girls and I went to a family Zumba class.

First of all let me just say that when I read the name of the class I assumed that the class would be a bit less difficult.  Kind of like how I want to go to a senior yoga class (for real folks, I think I might just sneak in and pretend one of those ladies is my grandma!!).  I am easing back into physical activity since my surgery and knew I was not ready for a full on Zumba class.  Talk about false advertising, good Lord!  This teacher led us down a full on, hard core, exhausting hour of Zumba!  The girls did a good job at attempting to keep up.  Each girl had a different experience.

Caroline LOVED it.  She was grinning from ear to ear the entire time.  Every time the teacher did a new or difficult move Caroline would twist her sassy and expressive little face into the most hilarious looks and kept cracking the teacher up.  She never even took a break to get water. Apparently they did Zumba in her 2nd grade class sometimes as energizers, because Mrs. Speckman is da bomb.

Charlotte was very intense.  She hardly smiled because she was so focused on trying to figure out the moves, and unfortunately the girl has no rhythm and very little coordination.  She was not a fan because she could feel that it was working her stomach muscles.

Celia, oh Celia my dear love.  I was hesitant to even take her since she's five (although her emotional age is more like a 3 year old) plus she finds any excuse to complain about everything...EVERYTHING.  She does love to dance though so I let her come to check it out.  In the beginning she seemed to have fun.  She was making the older ladies in the class laugh a lot when she would shake her cute little booty.  About 30 minutes in she started to cry because she wanted to leave the class and go running around the track.  At this point, for the sake of making it through the last half hour, I told her she could just do her own moves, dance however she wanted.  That helped.  With 10 minutes left she asked me who she was supposed to be watching.  That might explain her look of confusion for the previous 50 minutes.  She's my blonde.

As I said before I went into this expecting it to be lower impact than typical Zumba and am still very out of shape.  I am also recovering from my third intestinal resectioning surgery from Crohn's Disease.  So it came as no surprise to me that about 40 minutes into the class I feel something below the belt that made me panic.  Was it booty sweat or was it something more???!!  Oh good Lord, did I just poop my pants at family Zumba class??  I went to the bathroom and much to my relief it was simply sweat.  I, in fact, was dripping with sweat and, when I looked in the mirror, my face was as red as my red t-shirt I was wearing.  Like, for real, only a shade away from fire engine red.  As I went back into the class I noticed that all of the other women in the class were older than me, like significantly.  All of them were as pale as me, and NONE of them had red faces!  LOL!  Once again, the older chicks were in better shape than me and kicking my butt at Zumba.  This felt very familiar since I had the same experience in a Jazzercise class last year which I blogged about then as well.

Here's another observation I made.  If you've ever taken a Zumba or Jazzercise class, you may have had that moment where you are in the groove, you are keeping up!  You must look pretty good doing this!  You think to yourself "After this class the instructor is probably going to come ask me if I've done this before.  She will probably tell me that I should become a teacher myself!  I am rocking this!"  Then you make the mistake of looking at yourself in the mirror.  OH NO!  Who is that freak looking back at you?!  Turns out that you don't look nearly as cute and coordinated doing it in real life as you do in your head!  I danced competitively for my entire childhood and even was on the dance team of a professional sports team in college, and even I look like a silly fool during these classes!

So in conclusion, thank you Zumba instructor for throwing me into the deep end of getting back into shape.  I may not be able to walk for three days, or shower, or brush my hair, but I know I will be stronger in the end.  It was pretty fun and entertaining to take an exercise class with my kiddos though.  I think Caroline and I will go back again...once I recover!

The Twins' Adoption Story (part two)

The original family was not the right placement for the girls and they knew it.  Many mistakes were made by our adoption agency.  Their first family made the difficult choice to disrupt the adoption knowing it was in the best interest of the girls in the long term.  They needed to be the only children in the family, they had a lot of special needs that needed to be addressed.  It just so happened that the girls fit the description of what we were looking for. Oh, and you know those insurmountable obstacles that popped up during our homestudy?  Yeah, those weren't even an issue now because, since the twins were already in the US, this would be considered a domestic adoption and none of those things were even an issue.  (Props, God!)  So over the next 2 weeks we got to meet them and visit with them everyday and by the end of those 2 weeks they were living with us full time. BAM, instant family!

At this point I felt a wave of calm come over me as I realized that I no longer could give God the silent treatment. I needed him. This was not going to be easy. These 4 year olds spoke no English, they were in diapers, and they had severe behavior problems. It was like jumping into the deep end of the pool without any swimming experience, no life jackets and no life guards. We just had to figure it out.

We spent the next few months in a bubble. We couldn’t leave the house. The girls had to be completely socialized. They knew nothing of being in a family, had no idea of social norms or socially acceptable behavior. The amazing part of it all was that even though they had been through so much in such a short amount of time, they were so open and loving to us. They began bonding with us so willingly. Those months were filled with a mixture of tantrums, dance parties, physical restraints, and hair salon parties, but all of it brought us closer.

Their English became so good so fast, no one could believe it. And, with the help of many professionals, their behavior was improving as well. They began preschool and did wonderfully! We still had many struggles behaviorally and I’m sure the library considered calling Children Protective Services based on what I was checking out at the library! I read everything from “The Rage Free Child” to “The Out of Sync Child” along with any other creative consequences books. According to the books we were doing everything right, but our kids just didn’t fit the molds of these books so we just prayed and did the best we knew how.

Along the way they’ve been diagnosed with a whole myriad of disorders, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the medications have been an amazing tool for helping them cope with all of the change and trauma. It wasn’t until the summer of 2011 when we were sitting at the table that we really understood the scope of what their little brains were dealing with. At the dinner table we start talking about their life in Ethiopia. They weren’t often open about talking about it, but this night they were. They told us in their broken English, that they lived in a mud hut, with a dirt floor with their mother and older sister. They bathed, drank and relieved themselves in the same river. Once their mother had another baby is when she relinquished them to the orphanage. We later found out in 2015 when we hired an investigator what the whole story was.

As I think back about everything I am amazed at how God works. I know now that losing my job was such a blessing because I got to spend those last precious weeks with my dear Geeta.  I believe God used Geeta to tell me what His plan was since I sure wasn’t listening to Him! The black mold we discovered during our homestudy forced us to move into a beautiful large home with 4 bedrooms, and 2 twin beds that were already there from my childhood. That’s what the girls sleep in every night. The disrupted adoption meant that I did not have to travel to Ethiopia, which was going to be difficult because of my health. It also saved our family a lot of money not having to travel.  God's timing is always PERFECT.  If we had not started the process when we did (when it made no sense for us to do so) we wouldn't have been ready for our daughters.  Listen to God people!

Through this amazing experience I went from being a control freak, to working hard to be an open book for God. I try everyday to soak in everything he is trying to convey to me. I know now that God has wonderful things in store for our family and I don’t want to miss any cues from him!