One Year Later

It was exactly one year ago today, on a cold January 3rd morning, when we knew our family would be expanding to include the adorable, dark-haired, spunky child featured all over these pages.

As the dust settles on another hectic holiday season, we've been quietly reflecting on all that 2017 has meant to us and all that it has taught us.  And even though Jenny is still so far away, she somehow seems closer than ever.  It's only a matter of God's time.  Soon we will board a plane to Eastern Europe.  Until that invitation comes, however, we want to reflect on this journey and thank all who have personally been touched by it.

January 2017 - It began when we read an article by our new bestie, Crystal Kupper.  Crystal and her family have become dear friends, sharing holidays, birthdays, and rejoicing in every milestone in our adoption journey.  We can't wait for Jenny to meet her "Auntie Crystal" - the woman, the mentor, the legend.  We submit a "Letter of Intent" to adopt Jenny and begin the long, arduous process of completing a homestudy.

April 2017 -  With an almost-completed homestudy in our pockets, we get the news that Jenny is able to be adopted by an American family and we are on our way to being approved for her!  This was huge news that came after a halt was placed on all international adoptions from Jenny's country. An exception was made for her since she's considered "difficult to place" due to her respiratory condition.

May 2017 - We go public with our news and confuse quite a few people by stating that Vivien is going to become a "little sister!"  We are more than overwhelmed by the love and support of our friends and family, many of whom have also been touched by adoption and fostering in some way.  We become sponges, soaking up advice and well-wishes.  Our fundraising efforts will top well over $5,000 by the end of the calendar year - a testament to God's provision along this expensive and uncertain path forged by faith. 

Summer 2017 - Paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork.  We are busy obtaining fingerprints, birth certificates, and blood samples (literally) to submit our dossier to Jenny's country.  By the middle of September, every necessary document, certified twice over, is en route to the adoption agency in Jenny's country.  We are also blessed by numerous fundraising efforts, from LuLaRoe to yardsales.

 


October 2017 - Jenny's country submits her medical information, birth certificate and other court documents to us in an official referral.  Of course, we say YES to this referral and quickly apply to USCIS to begin the process to obtain a VISA for her.  We also learn quite a bit more about her medical condition, current living arrangements, and custodial history.  We connect with the international adoption department at CHOP as well as their pulmonology department in order to prepare for her arrival in our family.  We also complete a 9 week adoption course called Empowered to Connect which equips us with strategies to parent a child from a hard place.

December 2017 - The US has approved Jenny's VISA and the file is forwarded to the central authority in Jenny's country for final approval.  All of our i's are dotted and our t's are crossed.  Now we wait, and we pray, and we prepare for the journey to bring Jenny home.

Merry Christmas

Christmas is in full swing at the Etter house.  The tree is up, the lights are on, the carols are playing, the cookies are baked, and the presents are wrapped.

There's just one thing noticeably missing.

Jenny.

It was about this time, one year ago, when we began to seriously consider adopting a special needs child.  Entering into the fully researched process, we knew it would take about a year before we would have a new child in our home.

I remember thinking back then:  "Next Christmas, we could be in a foreign country with our new child."  Our hearts were full of hope at the prospect.

"Next year" has come and our little girl is still thousands of miles away, but our hope is nearly full.  While we're still a few months from actually meeting Jenny and bringing her into our family, we have come to know her better and better over these past 12 months.  She is already so much a part of the Etters.  There will be an empty place at our Christmas table this year, yes, but that space is filled with such hope and love for a child we've never met but hold so dear in our hearts and prayers.

Let this season of joy fill your lives and the lives of those you love.  Merry Christmas from the Etters!

4,265 Miles

Yesterday, Vivien was eating lunch and pointed to the picture of "Jenny" on our fridge and said quite matter-of-factly "I want to go see Jenny."  

A lump formed in my throat as I whispered my reply, "So do I, baby girl.  So do I."

I want to go see Jenny.

A few days prior, in the calm, quiet hour of 5am, I was reading Psalm 8.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (verses 3 & 4, NIV)

Stargazers

In our house, we have a fascination with the vastness of the universe and the astronomical time and space mysteries that mankind is just too small to figure out.  Galaxies go on literally for ever and the starlight we see in the sky this very evening was emitted from a celestial being that burned out and died a lifetime ago!

So where does God fit in all this?  Over the past half-century, mankind has traveled quite literally to the ends of our galaxy and beyond.  Voyager 1 was launched over 40 years ago and is currently over 13 billion miles away from the earth.  And it's still going!    And it's still sending data back to us!

What feels like a world away is actually just in the palm of His hands.

Jenny is currently ~4,265 miles away from her forever family.  Compared to 13 billion, this doesn't seem like much.  But to us it feels like a chasm. 

We pray for Jenny everyday.  And I'll admit:  some days I feel like David in Psalm 8.  Who are we, and who is Jenny, that God is mindful of us?  There's a lot of crappy things going on in the world.  Big, crappy things.  Things that should take God's attention away from the Etter family, their immigration paperwork, and their medical insurance logistics.   I wouldn't blame God for not having us or Jenny at the top of his priority list.

But our God is bigger.  Bigger than all the big, crappy things that are happening in the world.  Bigger than the natural disasters and the depravity of mankind.  And so we still pray.  We pray because Jesus said in John 16:24b, "Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."  We pray because he hasn't forgotten us.  And most importantly, he hasn't forgotten Jenny. 

And someday soon, when we tuck Vivien into bed and she says "We go in the airplane to get Jenny!" (as she does almost every night) we'll be able to answer her with "Yes!" 

And we will.

Preppers

As we sit here waiting for US Immigration to approve an immigrant VISA for Jenny, we feel the deafening and almost overwhelming calm before the storm.

I remember the baby shower that my mother and sister-in-law Rebekah threw for us before Vivien was born.  A party to celebrate this new and exciting addition to our family.  It was a joyous occasion.

Doesn't she look so well-rested and kid-carefree?

No one dared to bring up the scary realities of having a newborn:  crying for hours, not gaining enough weight between pediatrician visits, post-partum depression, saying goodbye to your life as you knew it.  Sure, everyone made jokes about the sleepless nights we would experience, but nothing, I mean nothing, prepares you for that kind of sleep deprivation.   I wish someone would have had the courage to sit me down and tell me the harsh truth of parenting a newborn. 

Because that's exactly what's happening to us as we now prepare to parent an adopted child with serious medical needs. 

Each Tuesday evening for the past two months, we have been attending a parenting class called "Empowered to Connect."  This class is preparing us to build a meaningful relationship with Jenny who likely has never had a meaningful relationship in her short little life.  Add to that the terrifying reality of caring for a fragile life dependent on a machine to breathe for her and we have certainly embraced the old adage "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best."

Watching as Daddy paints her new room!

We aren't the only ones prepping these days.  This weekend, Vivien moved into her "big girl bedroom" with her "big girl bed."  The Etter's guest room took on a purple hue and a toddler bed as Viv moved from the nursery down the hall into her new bedroom.  She handled the transition like a trooper and was excited that she could climb in and out of bed on her own! 

Viv's big girl bedroom!

Her old room has turned into a blank slate waiting for Jenny's arrival and Viv is already proudly boasting "that's my big sister's room!"   

We're preparing for the best.  Because we have a hope that isn't in our own abilities, or in the advice of the experts who compiled the ETC course materials, or even in the doctors and nurses who will be caring for Jenny and teaching us to adjust our lifestyles to meet the physical and emotional needs of our newest family member.  No, our hope is in Him - the Author and Finisher of our Faith. He is the one who holds us in the palm of His hand and He has had a firm grasp on us since January 3rd when we first began this adoption journey. 

A New November

It's funny how life works.  Exactly one year ago, we had no idea that November is National Adoption Awareness Month.  And now here we are, neck-deep into our own international adoption and advocating for orphan justice around the world.  Our journey started with a magazine article.  This guest blog was written by Crystal Kupper, author of that article, adoptive mother, and mentor.   Thanks, Crystal!

My career is literally wordy. As a freelance writer, I transfer what’s running through my or someone else’s mind and put it on the paper and screen. In that sense, words are transactional for me, a mere business move, counted blots of ink that add up to a paycheck.

But a simple transaction is rarely my goal. I want to make my readers laugh, think, pause, be moved, cry or ponder (and if I can make them do it all in one article, even better). I want my words to be the spark that lights a fire. I want anything and everything I write to push someone to action to make this world a more just place.

Every so often, not only does this happen, but I get to hear about it. Such is the case with the Etter family.

Tara has already told many of you how our families met — first indirectly through reading my work in a magazine, then in real life this year. This is crazy-cool in and of itself: that something I wrote generated a wonderful, in-person friendship.

 But this story is about so much more than connection over Easter egg hunts, family dinners, baseball games and dessert. It’s about the power of the press to change a little girl’s life — and that of a family thousands of miles away.

Tara and Justin may have eventually embarked on the adventure of international special needs adoption without me, sure. But when they read my article about adopting my own daughter last November, a God-inspired light came on, and they obeyed now. Hearing the very real fears and trials my husband and I went through demystified the process (if we could do it, anyone can!), and suddenly it didn’t matter how hard they knew the process would be; they just had to get to Jenny.

On my end, knowing that a family was adopting (especially through Reece’s Rainbow, the organization that photolisted both of our daughters) blessed my socks off. But the story doesn’t end there. Because exactly one year after reading mine, Citizen magazine readers are reading Tara’s adoption story this month.

Guyana reads her ripple effect article!

That’s right; Tara is a nationally published author! (She’s not the greatest at tooting her own horn, but I am more than happy to do. She knocked it out of the park!).

More importantly, this chain of families finding their children has another chance to continue. If the Etters read the Kupper’s story and were then moved to create their own, can it not happen again — perhaps to even more families and waiting orphans? I certainly pray so!

May this article move you and your own little family to action. May it inspire others across the States to examine how they can personally get involved in orphan justice. May it see another article come out next November (National Adoption Awareness Month, not coincidentally) on how the Etters’ story began another chapter in a new family.

Most importantly, may every single one of my and Tara’s words translate into love from the Father straight into the heart of a waiting child. 

The High; The Low; But God

An emotional roller coaster.  That's what this journey is.  And if it's done nothing else, it has strengthened our faith in God.  For his mercy, his grace, his wisdom, and his provision.

Yesterday, in a matter of hours, we went from the highest high to the scariest low.

The High

The adoption agency emailed us to let us know we got Jenny's referral and it's in the process of being translated!!  This is HUGE news.  It means that the authorities in her country have determined us to be a suitable family for this precious child and they are now "referring" her to us for adoption (like it was their idea!)  Normally, this is when a family will be introduced to their potential child and they'll review the child's file and records and make a decision to either adopt that child or ask for the referral of another child.

Obviously we had already prayed about and made this decision way back in January.  Jenny is ours.

The Etters are all in!

Once we get the official referral after it's translated, we will be able to send it to US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) for their approval of Jenny.  (As you'll recall, they have already approved us as a family...now they need to approve the child).  Once they approve her for immigration to the US, they will kick her file over to the US Dept of State and we'll begin to work on obtaining her Immigrant VISA.

Meanwhile, in Jenny's country they will be working on assigning her case to a court and a judge who will then set a date for the proceedings and determine the amount of bonding time they will require for us prior to the court date.  They will tell us when and for long long we will travel.

We see a light at the end of this adoption paperwork tunnel.  God is inching the door open and we can almost squeeze through!  This is actually happening!

The Low

The realities of adopting a child with special needs is not lost on us.  We do not enter into this lightly, and we have calculated the cost of adopting a child from a hard place with extra special needs.  The emotional baggage that Jenny will bring in addition to her physical baggage is daunting.  

We are currently in the middle of a 9 week adoptive parenting course called Empowered to Connect.  One of our homework assignments was to "count the cost" of our adoption.  Our answers were "money and time".  She's going to need medical care, speech therapy, and probably psychological care as well.  These things may or may not be covered by our medical insurance.  And they will certainly cost us time:  time away from our jobs as we run her to doctors appointment and meet with her teachers, time away from Vivien as we deal with Jenny's needs.  The cost is overwhelming.

We haven't studied this hard since college!

A few hours after we got confirmation of the referral, we had a consultation with a doctor from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's International Adoption Program.  She was very familiar with the typical needs of internationally adopted children and she shed some light on the potential cognitive and development issues that Jenny might experience as an institutionalized child.     

She also gave us some things to consider regarding Jenny's physical limitations due to her "chronic respiratory failure at night."  While she couldn't make definitive recommendations due to the lack of official medical files for this child on the other side of the world, she did want us to consider the fact that Jenny might need an in-home nurse to monitor her each night and that many commercial airlines may not allow a mechanically ventilated passenger so we need to consider how we're going to get her home.  The very expensive-sounding words "medical transport" were used.

But God

We left the consultation enlightened.  It's impossible to know everything that Jenny will need or experience until she's home and in our care.  But for now we have some homework to do and some phone calls to our insurance company to make.  We have a direction.  And that direction is forward.  It's a direction ordained by God and he has laid the path ahead of us.  We travel forward knowing where our help comes from.

I life up my eyes to the mountains - 

ehere does my help come from?

My help comes from the LORD,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip - 

he who watches over you will not slumber;

indeed, he who watches over Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD watches over you - 

the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all harm - 

he will watch over your life;

the LORD will watch over your coming and going

both now and forevermore.

Psalm 121

Our Adoption Story Goes National

As a reader of this blog, you're probably aware of our adoption story's origin. It all began last November with an adoption article in Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine. 

And now it comes full circle.

This November, Citizen will run the follow up article, "Our Adoption Story" by Tara Etter. 

We pray that it would touch even just one life to make a difference in the life of an orphan.

#orphanjustice

#bringjennyhome