The Life We Imagine

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. Blaise Pascal Well, it's been awhile. The combination of unreliable Internet in Rwanda, non-existent Internet in Ethiopia and utter, complete exhaustion, have kept me from being able to post. I apologize to those of you who have been so faithful in your prayers for us; I have been remiss in updating you. So, I will attempt to give you an idea of the last few weeks and the completion of our adoption trip abroad. For starters, I opened this post with a quote from Blaise Pascal, who happens to be the person whose name inspired our son's name: Blaise Christopher Mugisha Pawlak. We decided to keep the portion of his name that was Rwandan--"Mugisha", which means blessing. When I last posted I was waiting for the travel letter which would allow Blaise to stay with me full time. In the effort of full honesty for future adoptive families; I will say that I think I probably could have pushed a litt...

Any of you who knew me "back in the day" remember that I liked the modern adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma in the form of the movie Clueless . Over the last few days one part of that movie keeps coming into my mind. To paraphrase: Cher is trying to describe something and she says that it's kind of like one of those impressionism paintings--when you step back and look at the whole thing it's really beautiful, but if you look closely it's actually a big mess. That seems to be Rwanda. Really and truly the country is beautiful and when you take time to look out at the hills it really is spectatular, and I haven't even seen the prettiest parts yet. But when you come down to the day-to-day reality that is getting by in Rwanda it is tedious, frustrating, and really hard work.

We passed court yesterday March 25, 2010. This means Cyprien Mugisha is officially a part of our family. That also means I can post pictures! Here is a recap of the last couple days: Thursady was a wild and crazy day. In the effort to increase our efficiency, we ditched the driver and I resorted to motorcycle taxis. It was actually really fun (except for the 2nd degree burn on my leg, watchh out for those tail pipes!). We passed court and got the official court documents the same day which is a miracle. For those of you in this process, I plan to write more detail when time allows, but for now suffice it to say that your POA has to do a full day or two work on each step of the process and each of those steps usually involves several smaller steps. It is hard, hard work. I was exhausted, sore, and very very dirty when I got home. God knew how much I needed the shower because I actually had warm water! Today, I was able to help with some items for our friends' adoptio...

I met our son. He is beautiful, scared, shy, affecionate, perfect. His official name is Cyprien Mugisha. I have been calling him Spree. We have not decided what his final name will be. Peter picked me up Tuesday morning and we headed out to the Minstry where he was to drop me off so I could wait and see if the letter would be ready. Before we arrived we found out that the letter was signed and ready! I had been praying all morning that this would happen and it did! So, we went directly to the orphanage where they brought him out to me. He was very shy, but he didn't cry. He came to me while looking around at everyone--he seemed to be wondering why he was the center of everyone's attention. He made eye contact with me a lot and sat and looked at me. I told him about Daddy and brother and showed him pictures. Finally he cuddled into me and fell asleep. It was obviously one of the best days of my life. Just as with the birth of Brooks, I feel exhausted, excited, numb, ...

"Promise me you'll always remember--You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." Christopher Robin to Pooh I have lived in a perpetual state of nausea with the uncomfortable feeling of an impending panic attack very since Thursday. That is the day we decided that I was leaving for Rwanda , by myself, in 2 days. No big deal, right? I've left the country before--all the way to the Bahamas! So, I cried the better part of the way from Houston to Charlotte and I don't think the tears are depleted yet, but as I told Brooks, sometimes we do things we don't want to do because in the bigger picture, they're the right things to do. So, here I sit on leg one of the journey in the Charlotte airport. I head to Dulles soon and from there will head to Addis Ababa and onto Kigali, Rwanda . Unfortunately, my touch down in Rome on the way won't allow for sightseeing! No, we didn't actually get the ref...

ATTITUDE by Charles Swindoll The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes.

"Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." John 14:27 Okay, so maybe I was a bit harsh in my last post. I'm sorry. I am blessed beyond belief that I have the friends and family that I do. This process can make you a little crazy! I opened with the Bible verse I did because I feel that last night I had a break-through of sorts. I stayed up past midnight trying to get Peter, our POA in Rwanda, on the phone. I could not make the call go through. Then I started reading the Rwanda newspaper and saw that there was another grenade attack that injured more people. Then I became very worried for Peter. And then all of a sudden I felt sure that we would not be hearing good news about our referral. And the weird thing was that I felt sad but not angry, not frustrated, nothing like that. I felt that God was telling me that this was not the time; I needed to wait.

Do you remember the part of the movie European Vacation where Chevy Chase and his family are in the car stuck on a round-about in London. He keeps saying, "Look, kids, Big Ben!" That is how the emotional cycle of waiting for this referral has been--a seemingly endless round-about, where I experience the same emotions over an over with no end in sight. Eventually, we, like the Griswold's will move out of the round-about, but I don't know when. Here is the cycle:

If you happen to be one of the people in my life who usually hear from me often and you've begun to wonder if I've fallen off the edge of the earth. Or maybe you think I'm mad at you, I'm not. I just don't want to talk about IT. I cannot properly express the sense of helplessness that comes with every new setback and delay. It makes me feel so silly to get excited and report that it should be this week, etc, etc and then just have it not happen AGAIN. It's not that I don't think you care--I know you do. It's just that there are really only a handful of people that can really understand. I'm not a week past my due date in a pregnancy--I've been there--the baby can only stay in so long. I'm not trying to get pregnant for a year--I've been there--that baby while longed for didn't yet exist, in an orphanage, across the world. I know that this will too be resolved, but there is no way of knowing when or what it is going to take. This...

Tonight in Brooks's little boy Bible, I opened to the story about Jochebed floating baby Moses down the Nile to save his life. It was in the devotional part after the story that I had to smile at the perfect timing of the story for me even if Brooks didn't see it. The devotional said, "Sometimes when we have to trust God with how a situation works out . . .all we can do is wait patiently. But there are also times when God wants us to use the brains He gave us and do what we can. We should ask God for wisdom and help . . .and get busy." It closed with a "Verse to Remember": A child's version of Isaiah 1:17, "Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Fight for the rights of widows." We're waiting patiently--we're ready to use our brains and do what we can!

"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes and fears and wishes, rather than with their minds." Nancy Astor Maybe it's hard when it relates to our children to not focus on the emotion of the situation, but that is just what we've had to do to get through this and it has helped. We still feel the emotion, of course, but filtering it through rational thinking is allowing a certain calmness. I just wanted to keep you all updated our referral situation and give you some very specific prayer requests. There is hope, based on the updates coming from Rwanda, that a replacement to handle adoption matters (and a whole lot more) could be in place with the next week or two. Coming from someone whose husband works for the US government--I can't tell you how impressed and grateful I would be if they could fill a government position so quickly. If that happens, there is a chance we could still have our referral while our friend, Tina, is in Rwand...

Well, it has not quite been the week we hoped for so far. Tuesday was a rough day, and I was just too upset and emotional to manage a post. However, I know how many families earlier in the adoption process watch the blogs of those ahead of them to learn about the process. So, in fairness, I want to make sure that I don't only post about the exciting easy parts, but the setbacks as well. My tears have stopped flowing and I'm calm; so here goes . . . After not receiving our referral last week, we reached the point of 2 months and 3 weeks of an "approximately 2 month" wait. So, we optimistically formed a lovely plan: divide and conquer. Elizabeth (the mommy in the other family whose file is very close friends with ours by now) would stay up until 2 am Tuesday morning and call for an update. Meanwhile, I would send a heartfelt email to the same person. Then I would follow up in Thursday with a call. These measures combined with our POA's personal visits to the o...