Quarantine Cocoon

The #Covidquarantine has been like a major timeout sanctioned by God - something that the Etter family learned to appreciate during the last 13 weeks of confinement within our household.  We stopped.  No restaurants, no shopping trips, no Six Flags, no baseball games, no running and running and running.  We just stopped. 

The "experts" highly recommend cocooning in the days and weeks following an international adoption, an idea at which the very busy and always-moving Etter family scoffed.  We're always on the go, so Niky better get used to it! 

And then God said stop.  Just be. 

So we did.

Like many, our new normal has been a struggle.  We are both blessed to be working full-time from home, but it does come with a new set of challenges as we've been parenting and schooling our two preschoolers while working our jobs.  Vivien's academic preschool had plenty of seat-work for her to do and held Zoom classes at least twice a week.  Niky had a tele-therapy session via Zoom every single weekday, plus two class sessions, and was offered a one-on-one teacher session which we politely declined to participate in because, well let's just say it: no human being, let alone a special needs child, should be subjected to 8 zoom meetings in a single week.

Ready to Zoom!

All of this extra together time has been a struggle, but it's also been a great bonding opportunity for us as a family and has led to the following enlightenment:  Niky today is the boy we thought we were picking up in August.  What do we mean by this?  Our expectations of Niky's cognitive capabilities and interests were significantly above and beyond what he was capable of during the days and weeks after we picked him up and brought him home.  This realization came to us after dinner last night.  Last night Niky was sitting on the floor reading a Seek & Find book, pointing to pictures and asking "What the?"

Eight months ago, Niky didn't have enough language, either in English or Bulgarian, to express this question, nor did he have any interest in sitting still, let alone looking at a picture book for any length of time.  This is a testament to just how far he has come in 10 months.  Now his current favorite activity is playing "peek-a-boo."  We are keenly aware of how far he has come, and yet how far he still has to go.

We used to have bad days...now we just have bad moments and they (mostly) never feel insurmountable like they once did.  And we have bonded significantly and learned to trust each other, which makes the tantrums and trauma slightly more bearable and certainly more understandable.  

We hope you, too, have had a chance to breathe.  Amidst all of the uncertainty, the fear, the isolation, one thing has always remained:  God is in control.  He knows what we need, even when we think we're doing just fine.

Family in Waiting

There's something special about this time of year.  Spring flowers, freshly cut grass, and chirping birds are the harbingers of longer days and warmer temps.  They bring a certain hope.  A hope to grasp and cling to.

At this very moment, we are at the exact same place on the international adoption timeline where we were with the adoption of "Jenny."  The US Embassy in N's country has issued the "Article 5 Letter" to the Ministry in N's country.  This letter essentially states that the adoption is copacetic with all of the Hague requirements of an international adoption and that N is allowed to immigrate to the US as our child.

Now we're waiting for a court date.  The court proceedings will take place in N's country and a member of the adoption agency will represent us which will save us a trip across the world.  Once the judge decrees the adoption as official, N will get his passport and we'll be invited to go pick him up.

We've been here before. And we take nothing for granted.  We have heard that no judge has denied a family in Hague history.  After all, to make it even this far requires much effort and scrutiny from both American and foreign authorities.

A picture Vivien drew of her with her little brother (Apr 27, 2019).

It has been a while since our last blog post - and people are starting to wonder.  Golly, even we are starting to wonder.  Where's our paperwork?  Who's our judge?  Why haven't we been given a court date yet?  Every week that passes is another week without our son.  It's a week farther from the bonds that we tried to leave with him back in March.

Until we get the call, we'll keep praying:  Father, please put our paperwork into the right hands today.  Allow our case to be scheduled and progress to be made on this journey.  And in the meantime, please continue to prepare our hearts and minds to add this little one to our home.  In Christ's precious and all-powerful name, Amen.  

What does Moses have to do with our Adoption?

As most of you are aware, we've hit a devastating snag in our adoption journey.  As our placing agency representative traveled to Eastern Europe the week of April 8 to advocate on behalf of us and three other families who have made it this far (two of which have already been denied and are in the process of appealing), we dropped to our knees in prayer for her and the ministry officials she met with.

The past few months, our church has been doing a study of Moses and the Exodus.  What does this part of Israel's history have to do with our adoption journey?  Actually, a lot more than you'd think, but there was one specific passage that stuck out to us recently.

Exodus 30 and the "Altar of Incense."  Admittedly, Exodus is a difficult book to read - there's a lot of intricately detailed instructions that God gives to Moses:  construction plans for the tabernacle and everything in it, all the way down to the undergarments for the priests who would work there.  It makes sense that God would be so picky...after all, the tabernacle was literally His home on earth.  Yes, He actually came and dwelt among the Israelites at the mercy seat over the ark of the testimony. 

The Altar of Incense inside the Tabernacle of the Israelites

There were many different components to God's home on earth, but the one we're focusing on here is the altar of incense.   "You shall put this altar in front of the veil that is near the ark of the testimony, where I will meet with you.  Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it" (Ex 30: 6-7a).

You see, in the Bible, incense is always a picture of prayer.  "Let my prayer be set before you as incense" (Psalm 141:2).  It's sweet-smelling and pleasing to God and it rises up to meet him.  For the Israelites in Moses day, the priests had to make intercession for the people, and even then, there was a thick curtain separating them from God's presence.  When the incense burned, it would waft through the curtain and reach God.

Today we have it even better!   There's no more altar, there are no more priests acting on our behalf, and there's no more curtain separating us from God.  We are free to approach him directly:  "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" (Phil 4:6).

Not only are we able to approach God directly with our requests, but we also have the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us even when we don't know what to pray for!

https://www.desiringgod.org/labs/the-spirit-helps-us-in-our-weakness

Did you catch that?  "With groanings too deep for words."  Sometimes there literally are no words.

Such was the case on the morning of Friday, April 13.  At the exact moment these advocacy meetings were taking place halfway around the world, we knew there literally hundreds of people all over the world, maybe yourself included, who were praying the same prayer.  And when we ran out of words, the Holy Spirit took over for us!

I pictured our prayers all rising up - from Georgia, Michigan, California, Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Jenny's country - all rising up like incense, mingling together, joining in the air and becoming one sweet-smelling fragrance to the Lord our God.  What an awesome God we have - who accepts and hears our prayers and gives his Spirit to pray on our behalf!

Now let's PRAY JENNY HOME!!!