The Queen B

Good Stuff

To prove that God has a sense of humor, guess what play The Princess performed in this weekend?

Annie.

Like, the orphan.

In an orphanage.

The Princess played the bossy, bully orphan.

Hmmm?  Where have I met her before?

The Princess did an amazing job.  I was so proud of her.  All of the kids did an amazing job...5 sold out performances!

I'd post a picture if I knew where The King's camera was currently located.

Speaking of bossy orphans...I've got an amazing story to share with you.

So.

The week before last, I had this major sense that I was to pray for La P.  Not a general type prayer, but a very specific prayer.

I felt that I was to pray for a miracle.

On Sunday morning (a week ago) I looked up several verses about asking God for specific things.  Those scriptures caused me to feel even more strongly that I was to pray for a miracle.

Sunday evening, our small group from church met.  During prayer time, I wrote a tiny note to The King and asked him if I should speak.  He nodded.

I began to spill.  I told my friends how I felt.  That I thought God was telling me to specifically pray for a miracle regarding La P.  Our group prayed together.  We prayed for hearts to soften.  For movement.  For the truth to prevail.  For La P.

On Tuesday, The King had just walked in the door from work when one of the missionaries from the orphanage called.  

I need to hold off on the details for now, but here's the end result...the orphanage suspected that they'd possibly received some misinformation.  The King was asked to come meet with them and we were told that we were welcome any time.  

We've spent the last 2 months thinking that we'd never see La P's sweet face again.  

Today, The King flies to Guatemala.

I'm amazed.  So grateful.  So hopeful.

Please pray for safe travel for The King.  Pray for a great meeting.  Especially pray for his time with La P.  It's been 4 months since he's seen her.  There's always that teeny worry of whether she'll remember/know us.  She has no idea of what has gone on the past few months.  Thank goodness.

We feel so strongly that she is ours.  Ultimately, though, we just want what is best for her. 

God is so good.

Choices

Once again, I want to thank you for your kindness and concern.  We've been overwhelmed, humbled and strengthened by you.

Warning:  I have no idea where this post is going.  No plan.  Read at your own risk.

I feel as if I'm beginning to come out of this weird fog that I've been in for the past few weeks.

Or maybe a more accurate description would be...the world is going on so I can either move forward or be stuck here in isolation and sadness.

Moving forward it is.

I'm not sure how much I've shared about the actual situation (and I'm too lazy to go back and read my other posts right now). I feel that the information that I can share is pretty limited.  My intent is not to trash anybody.  

And really.  If I start down that road, it will be too easy to stay there.

I'll just say that my family's character, motives, intentions and beliefs have been questioned.  Actually, they weren't questioned.  

We were deemed guilty without ever being questioned.

Now before you begin thinking that we had staged an international coup, let me reassure you that everything we did, we did with integrity and honesty. 

We simply tried to follow the orders that we'd been given.

And here we are.

I think one of the hardest parts of this has been processing the choices before us.

Which really are, like, two.

We can fight or we can rest.

There is nothing that I want more than to fight for La P.  To go in and demand to be heard and explain ourselves and remind everyone involved that we only did what we were told to do.

To scream until someone will listen that we are only trying to provide a child with a family.

I want to beg and plead.

There are still a couple of opportunities we have that might possibly make a difference.

Our other option is to stop.

While that initially feels wrong, in many ways it feels right.

Let me explain...

The obvious devastation of this entire situation is the loss of having La P in our lives. But there is also a lot of pain in this entire journey ending in such a way.

Those of you who have joined with me from the initial realization that I was going to have to go on this stinkin' trip to Guatemala through the preparation and fear know what I'm talking about.

This journey defined the last year of my life.  God took me to a place that I never thought I could go (both literally and figuratively) to show me His love and mercy and grace and comfort.  Fears were conquered.  My life was changed.

For someone to question my heart after it has been so radically transformed is very hurtful.  

I mean, they should have seen me before. 

It is as if all that I learned was in vain.

Or maybe not...

I learned that God can work any time in any way.  I learned that He is all I need.  I learned that His love for me and protection over me is greater than anything that I could fathom.

I learned that He is the giver of all good things.

I remember writing that being terrified in His will is better than being comfortable out of it.

If I really believe all of that...not just as words that I write...then how can I not believe that He is all I need in this situation?

Am I making any sense?  

If we attempt to fight this fight with the options that are currently at our disposal, things will get a little ugly.  

I'm not sure that is a very good example of what we've learned.  In fact, it might even justify the actions that other parties have taken.  

And it would sort of seem like we're saying, "since God didn't work all this out, we're gonna step in and fix it".  

Done that one before.  Not a good outcome.

If we rest, if we wait upon the Lord, I know He will open doors.  It feels a little unnatural.  A little lazy or unconcerned.  

But I think it is the road to which He's been leading us.  

God loves La P even more that we do.  He wants her to live the most abundant life possible.  If it is with us, we will praise Him.

If it is not, we will still praise Him.

This is just part of the journey.  Not the end.  

The Princess asked me when we are going to get back to normal.

What is normal?

Currently, I have no idea, but I'm going to try and find it.  Bear with me.

It feels wacky to write about hair and houses and pets and all the crazy when La P has been sentenced to life in an orphanage.

This has been a struggle for me for the past 10 months, but it seems especially weird now.

I don't want to lose who I am.  I need to be me for The Princess and The King.  And for me.

I'll give it a whirl.  

(Tune in next week for senseless rambling.)

Grief

Words cannot begin to express how overwhelmed we have been by your sweet comments and emails.  

Thank you.  

I don't want to be a whiner, but if we are going to see this journey through to the end, I am pretty much going to lay it all out there.  The good & the bad.

Right now I'm deep in the bad.

This is such a strange grieving process.

The only thing that I can compare it to are the miscarriages that I had before The Princess was born.  

The loss of each of those babies was so real to me.  To the rest of the world, they weren't exactly real. I wasn't pregnant enough to have a belly.  There wasn't a nursery that had to be undone.  There was no funeral.

It was just over.

The King and I grieved differently.  I mourned the loss of the lives of those children. I mourned the loss of life inside of me.

The King grieved for the loss, but mostly he grieved for me.  Because there was not a life for him to feel or see, it was hard for him to feel the depth of the loss.

And, because he's a guy, if he can't fix it, he can't think about it.

(That was a huge generalization.)

(Well, it was.)

(But it's kinda true.)

The loss of La P feels the same to me.

She was never here.  Most of my family and friends have never met her.  

But she was so real to us.

The depth of this loss is overwhelming, but it is in our hearts.  We've nothing to pack up or put away.  

I run into friends in the grocery store who never knew of her at all.

Yesterday, I wanted to stay in bed all day.

The King made me get up.

If I see one more video of Haiti parents uniting with their adoptive children, I'm going to scream.

I wanted that.

I wanted to have that moment of introducing her to everyone.  

To wake her up in her very own room.

(Who am I kidding...she'd so be in The Princess' room.)

I wanted to share the amazing story of what God had done.  Wouldn't it have been great?  

Instead, there is another story to share.  

One of answered prayers that didn't go our way.  Of remaining faithful through disappointment.  Of struggling.

I like the original version better.

This is not easy.  It feels weird.  Almost pretend.  

What am I grieving? 

The loss of what could have been?

Here's where I'm finding hope...if those babies had been born, it is very unlikely that I would have The Princess.  

And I cannot imagine life without her in it.

While I struggled to find the purpose of the miscarriages, I never doubted God's love or His plan.

I didn't like it.  But I accepted it.

Looking back, I still don't know the "purpose", but I know that The Princess healed my heart.

(As she is now.)

When some time has passed, I know that we'll be able to look back and see a bigger picture.  I know that we will experience healing.

But today, it still hurts.

Heavy

Struggling to write this one...

The last few days have been pretty tough.

I am torn between my need to share with you all and the responsibility of taking the high road.

Have y'all ever noticed that the high road sometimes stinks?

The last few weeks have been spent waiting on news from our attorney in Guatemala. He's been trying to meet with the judge who has La P's case.

Unfortunately, the judge who had been instructing us on how to proceed just retired.

The new judge will not meet with our attorney without a representative from her orphanage.

The King sent an email to the orphanage asking for some assistance.

Not for assistance in the adoption...just assistance in obtaining the medical visa to deal with her medical needs.

We made clear that we want to provide her with medical care even if we aren't able to adopt her.

The reaction was not what we hoped.

For now,the door to the orphanage has been closed to us.

We were asked to not return...to "cut our ties".

The same people who, in March, told us they had been praying for a family for her have asked us to let go.

We were completely caught off guard.

Not sure how to move forward.

Not sure what God is doing.

But we know that He is doing something.

My heart hurts.

I can't think about not seeing La P again.

Just gonna take it day by day.

Plans

Hi.

So my plan for 2010 is to get back to the blogging.

Or to stop the blogging entirely.

Because this "oh, no I forgot to blog and I'm feeling some guilt" is for the birds.

(What the heck does for the birds mean?)

We'll see.

***

Thank you so much for your prayers and emails concerning La P.  This crazy, unknown journey would be so much more difficult if we were going at it alone.

Our faith has been strengthened by your faith.

Here's pretty much where we are today.

Which could change in, like, 3 minutes.  By the time I hit "publish" we'll seriously probably be working on another plan.

But at this moment....

La P is not adoptable.  Which is sort of a good thing.

Guatemala is soon to be re-opening adoptions.  If I understand things correctly (which is honestly not very likely) the new! improved! adoption rules will not allow a family to "choose" their child.  The next family on the list will be given the next child on the list. Make sense?  

The only way to go around that is to have an established & well documented relationship with a particular child.

Well, yeah.

We've got that.

But whose to say what an established & well documented relationship is by definition...?

So.

We are proceeding with attempting to obtain a medical visa.  We have letters from American doctors.  We have a letter from a Guatemalan doctor.  We have a judge who has seemed to look upon the situation favorably. But that judge will be retiring soon.  

And I don't know if you've noticed, but things don't seem to move very fast in Guatemala.

Once she is here on a medical visa and is receiving medical care, we will attempt to have her declared adoptable.

Hopefully, the fact that she has, um, lived with us and we've provided her medical care will be an established and well documented relationship.  You'd think.

The obvious ginormous risk is that it won't work.  That we'll have to send her back.

I cannot go there right now.

I know that it is a possibility.  That's as far as I can process.

I just know that we are willing to take the risk.

Please pray for any person that is making decisions regarding La P.  Pray that they will see past red tape and rules and laws and precedents and see the needs of this beautiful child.

***

Now.

Changing the subject entirely.

Does anyone need a cat for Christmas?

Y'all know I love my cats.

But we currently have FOUR CATS in our house.

And that's a few too many.

The Princess can't bear to give the kittens away.  Once the vet said, "they think you are their mother"...she was hooked.

Fat & Chester don't love being big brothers.

 

The Princess and I will only give them to families that will love them as much as we do.

The King's standards are somewhat lower.

They are declawed, so they need to be indoor kitties. 

They are fixed. 

I can't ever remember which gets spayed and which gets neutered. 

If you live in our area and are interested in one or both, or know someone who might be interested, let me know.

And please don't email me telling me I'm a bad pet owner.  I have an immense amount of guilt.  It will have to be a great situation for the cats for us to be ok with it.

(Read between the lines:  This is a decree of The King.)

We've Trained Him Well

Thanks so much for your prayers for The King & La P last week.

The King's flight was delayed from Thursday until today, so we're catching up a bit.

I'll update you on the progress when I have time to think.

I thought I'd share some cute pictures with you, though.

On Friday, The King wanted to spend a fun day with La P, so he did what all good daddies of girls do...he took her to the mall.

She'd never been to a mall before.

Or on an elevator.  When the door opened and she wasn't where she started, she was a teensy bit freaked out.

 

The first purchase was a jazzy new pair of pink metallic tennis shoes.

Next stop was the Hello Kitty store.  There, she found a pink "cell phone".  

I'm guessing The King did a bit of emailing on his phone while he was gone?

After that stop, The King decided that shopping when you are the only person not speaking the language was not for him.

The one book that she really, really wanted did not have a sku sticker.  Things went downhill from there.

Plus, she wilted a little.

 

Things picked up at the carousel.

 

She rode every horse.

Every one.

And these, too.

 

 

The King did some math and found that La P could ride every moving thing offered at the mall for less money than a return trip to Hello Kitty.

They ended the day with a trip to McDonald's and then the ice cream shop (where she took down a double scoop of chocolate).

Sounds about perfect, don't you think?

 

Taking Pause

Another day, another plan.

Basically, we are pausing to catch our breath.

God has so clearly been opening doors for us as we have followed the plan originally given to us by the Guatemalan judge.  

The news about La P's parents came out of nowhere and completely threw us off.  The King & I don't want to make a decision based on a reaction to unexpected news.  

We want to make a decision based on prayer.

So.  The King is not going into the mountains today.  Instead, he will be meeting with an attorney that is not associated with the orphanage.  We are so unfamiliar with their legal system and want to be sure we have a clear understanding of what is actually taking place.

We are getting conflicting information from people with various agendas.

We need to make a decision for this little girl based on truth.

Thank you so much for your prayers.  The King and I both felt uneasy about the mountain trip.

Partially because it's, you know, the mountain trip.

But I think mostly because of the prayers on our behalf.  

While he may still end up making the trip, it will be because we are completely confident that it is God's plan.  Not because we want a quick solution.

And that is the plan o' the day.

For now anyway.

Out Of Nowhere

Well.

A lot can change in 24 hours.

Yesterday we were going down one path and today it's a completely different journey.

Quick(ish) version:

In July, we communicated with a Guatemalan judge who gave us instructions on how to proceed in order to have an opportunity to adopt La P.

We have been following those steps to the letter.

On Sunday, The King had an appointment that, if things went well, would finalize all that the judge had asked us to do.

Things went very well.

The King was preparing to meet with the judge on Wednesday.

I was preparing to share the amazing things that have taken place.

Then a bomb was dropped.

The orphanage informed us that they had received a letter from the court IN JULY that stated when her medical care (which we would provide) is complete, custody will go back to her parents.

The parents who left her at the hospital.

I don't say that in a judgmental way.  Many of the kids at the orphanage have been left in alleys or dumpsters.  I very much appreciate that her parents realized that they would not be able to care for her and wanted her to have a better life than they could provide.

(Here's where it becomes The Palace version of a Made-For-TV-Movie.)

On Wednesday, The King and two of the missionaries from the orphanage are going to drive 6 hours into the depths of Guatemala to try and find her parents.

The King is going to ask La P's parents if they will allow us to adopt the child whom they gave up 6 years ago.

Will they care?

Will they want her?

Will they want money?

Will they even be found?

I'll be honest...I'm still pretty new at this this whole "living without fear" thing, and this is pushing me past what I feel like I can handle.

I'm so scared for The King to travel into the middle of a third world country.  It's likely that I may go a few days and not hear a word from him.  

How many news stories have I heard about buses plummeting off the mountain roads of Guatemala?

But I'm so proud of him.  

He is doing exactly what a father should do for his child.

Please pray for his safety.

Pray that her parents can be found.

Selfishly, I want to pray that they will let us have her.  

But if they want her, I pray that they are able to care for her and provide for her.

That they will love her as much as we do.

Earlier today, a sweet friend reminded me that the more impossible things seem, the bigger God gets to be.

Isn't that true?

I know that when this journey is complete, we will all stand amazed at what God has done.

I am already amazed at what God has done.

9 months ago, I was begging God to not make me go on some stupid mission trip.

Begging.

Now I'm (relatively) ok with my husband driving to a Guatemalan village to ask an unsuspecting family if we can have their daughter...?

Only God can pull that off.

I can't wait to see what He will do next.

The King Has Returned. Sort Of.

So The King's been working in Boston.

Since mid-October.

He has finally come home.

I would not even consider complaining...I'm so thankful that he has work.  I know there are many in need of a job right now.

However.

We are kind of in that re-entry phase.

We are getting adjusted to living together again.

And I'm reacquainting myself with the massive amount of laundry he creates.

During his time away, The Princess and I did ok.  We were not afraid.

Except for once.

We had a little visitor on our front porch.

Nothing major.

Just, you know, a bear.

A BLACK BEAR.

Thankfully, we only heard it and saw its bear prints.  

And the carnage of my little Japanese maple.

I looked up info on what to do if we meet Mr. Bear face to face.

The info said not to block his exit.

REALLY.  Well that's incredibly helpful. I'll try to go against my natural instinct and not stand in the way of his departure route.

(You caught the part where I said it was on my front porch, right?)

But back to The King.

He is now in Guatemala.

I really, really can't wait to share La P news with you.

I need to wait until a few details are worked out, though.

God has recently opened doors that have blown me away.

He has shown His power.  He has (again) demonstrated that He is in control of all things.

Our adoption is in no way imminent.  But I do believe that she will be here soon.

I have no reason to expect it.  

I just believe it.

La P and The King skyped The Princess and me tonight.

(Is skype a verb?)

The Princess showed her two of the kittens and she said (in Spanish), "My cats at my house!"

And then she started petting the screen.

We sent her a coat and a My Little Pony and some Christmas hair bows.  My mother-in-law sent her a few pairs of pjs and a pink crocheted hat.

During our conversation, La P tried it all on and modeled for us.

When we were telling her bye, she kissed the screen and said (in Spanish), "I love you, Mommy".  

I hadn't heard her little voice since July.

If you think about it, please pray for us this week.  The King is working so hard to bring her home.  He will be meeting with officials in a foreign land.  He will be sharing with them what has been on our hearts since we met her...

She is a 6 year old girl with a tumor on her face that is growing.  The tumor and scar tissue and bone fragments rest dangerously close to her optic nerve.  

Her eye does not sit in the right spot.  Her nose is misshapen.  She has chronic sinus issues.

The King sent me a picture and she appears to be wearing her bangs so that they cover that side of her face.

She has been abandoned since birth.

She needs a family.

And a family needs her.

So Close I Can Taste It

I'm working on a La P update.  

I know it sounds weird, but La P posts kind of drain me.  I have to write them in small pieces.

Am I a wimp?

Until then, I thought I'd show you my almost completed kitchen.  

The pantry door still needs its screen to be installed, but you can get the idea.
 

You know my photography is not good.  If you enlarge the picture and squint, you can sort of see it...
 
 

There will be another light over the sink.  It is crystal-y and sweet.  And backordered.

Did y'all know that "backordered" is code for "we forgot to order it"?  

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure...
 

 

I'm thinking there may have been a hair on my camera lens.

Some of you may notice that this is not the stove from The King.  

That's a long story.  Another time...
 

Thanks for looking.  

***

Here's a sweet picture of La P that I received last week.

I'm about to bust to see her again!