Rest In Peace

Today we learned that Pastor Rashid Emmanuel and Sajid Emmanuel...two innocent young men, falsely accused, illegally arrested, in the final moments before being released by the Pakistani courts were gunned down in front of the district courts in Faislabad Pakistan.

Their only crime was being born in a country where they were not allowed to freely live out their beliefs.

In their short 32 and 30 years on earth, they made a difference...a tremendous difference not only in the lives of those they worked with directly in their country, but for many of us who never had the opportunity to meet them in person. Pastor Rashid opened the world a little wider for me. I am more aware of the plight of people in a part of the world I never considered much before.

Thank you, Rashid and Sajid for the legacy you leave in the hearts of so many around the world.

May you both rest in peace.

I am an Ant

There's no mispelling in the title. I am an ant, metaphorically speaking.

Tuesday was a difficult day in the small adoption world I am a part of. It started with my having to deliver difficult news to a family who was waiting the court date for a little boy they had met in Russia in March and were hoping would be their own any day now. As it turns out, the boy's biological family is attempting to regain custody that was taken from them by the Russian courts when he was merely weeks old. It's an extremely difficult part of my job to deliver news like that. Not the way to start the week after a long weekend.

Later in the day, we learned that the pastor we are working with in Pakistan to start our orphanage was arrested. He is accused of blasphemy...an extremely serious crime in Pakistan..one that carries the death penalty. We don't know any other details at this time. We do know that this not only jeopardizes his life, but likely the life of his wife as well. I feel so much shock and sorrow.

It goes without saying that his life is first and foremost in our thoughts and prayers. Then thoughts turn to the work we were doing together...no one knows at this time if it can or will continue.

All of this ickyness led me out to my back yard Tuesday afternoon. The weeds are running rampant and I really needed to step out of the office to breathe, think, and accomplish something..anything even if just to make a small patch of the yard look better. I put on my gloves and started pulling the weeds from the rocks near our cement patio. The birds scatter seed there and it takes root and grows amazingly well in the rock. Thankfully, the task was easy given the recent rain and the fact that roots can't grow too deeply in rock. As I pulled the weeds I began to notice that where they grew most thickly, small black ants had built their miniature ant hills. This was no revelation, believe me, I've pulled my share of weeds and seen a fair share of these mini ant hills.

What I did begin to notice though, was how the ants reacted to my uprooting their home (you'll have to indulge my anthropomorphizing here). Some ants got "angry" for lack of a better description and ran about trying to defend their crumbling home. Some ants clung to the root of the weed, refusing to let go. This led to their demise or at least to their significant relocation in the heap of weeds that I tossed. I didn't notice at first, but there was a third set of ants. They came to the surface later after I'd uprooted their home and the other ants had reacted. These ants began to rebuild the hill. They seemed to work together once the chaos had past to try once again to make something of their lives.

I couldn't help but reflect on how like the ants I was on Tuesday in thinking of the affect the news out of Pakistan might have on our own adoption. My immediate reaction was to cling to the root...the plan we have in place...regardless of the realities of the situation. "It is our plan to adopt a little girl from Pakistan, we'll stick to it no matter what." As the immediacy of the response and news subsided, I felt a moment of anger at the situation. This is not the first time we've experienced set backs in our own adoption journeys and I felt angry that this was happening to us. I need only think of the family and the Russian boy from earlier that day to get past this angry, defensive response.

So now I strive to be like the third set of ants. To wait patiently as we await news and to begin to rebuild this dream of adopting a daughter. Maybe the anthill of our adoption won't look quite the same as it did initially. After all, does the country of our child's birth matter? Does her skin color? What about her age? Maybe we are not meant to adopt again at all? All things to ponder in the waiting and the rebuilding.

A little over a month ago I wrote "I record this here mostly for myself so that as that wheel hits bumps and crevices along the way or becomes stuck in muck or even possibly bounces off onto another path " Perhaps we're at one of those bumps taking us to another path. It's hard to know.

But for now I strive to be an ant....the kind that waits and rebuilds one small piece at a time.

When?

Things are beginning to move on our adoption! Albeit slowly..like a heavy stone wheel that people are beginning to push out of a rut. I know at some point that wheel is going to start rolling faster and faster and before we know it we'll be bringing home our little girl!

The million dollar question that everyone asks us is when? When will you bring her home? Right now, to be honest, I'm more interested in WHO? Who is this little one we are so anxious to love? The when can wait for now.

The "when?" question though, always strikes me as an odd one. Mostly because an assumption of what the timing should be goes along with the question when it's asked. So many outside the adoption community assume adoption should be a quick, easy (and most of the time free) process. People are astounded to learn that the process takes time and requires lots of work and patience (and yes, money...unless you are adopting through US foster care). The first time we went through this process I was in a hurry too. But this time around, I'm ok with the time it is taking. Especially, if it's just a matter of "when?" and not "if". Maybe it's because I've had the advantage of seeing and working with so many families who have waited and I get to see that the right child is placed in the right family at the right time over and over and over again.

I have to believe that our far away daughter has things she is meant to experience yet in Pakistan. People who are meant to love and care for her, things she is meant to learn before she comes to us. And maybe, just maybe we are meant to learn and grow through this process too. Maybe our faith and patience are supposed to be stretched. Goodness knows there are lots of things I could work on in both of those arenas! Maybe I'm not yet prepared to be the parent our future daughter will need.

While giving birth and adopting are two completely seperate and equally miraculous ways of building family, there are comparisons. Perhaps, we are meant to labor for this baby emotionally as we did our youngest two children and as I did physically for our oldest three. Like we learned in our birthing class all those years ago, I am going to practice my breathing, relax, and try to go with the flow of the labor...the emotions as they rise and fall...to experience it all until the little one meant for our family comes home.

I record this here mostly for myself so that as that wheel hits bumps and crevices along the way or becomes stuck in muck or even possibly bounces off onto another path that I can look back and read this and take my own advice. She will arrive. Who? We do not know. When? At just the perfect time!