Adoption is exhausting. Just going to throw that out there. I wouldn't change a thing, and we don't even have our little Chappell home yet.
Our last few months:
While we were in the process of doing our home study, we intended to go ahead and sign with an agency/start our dossier (the BIG packet of paperwork that is sent to Uganda- basically our entire life condensed-ish down on paper). We wanted to do both at once to make the process faster. We were ready to attack this process and get it done ASAP.
We interrupt this blog post to bring you a little ***Adoption Education FYI***:
The first thing you do with an adoption is your home study, which is basically where a social worker comes into your house a few times, educates you (In most states, 10-16 hours of education are required), measures your rooms and checks where your hazardous materials are, interviews you about your entire life, and gives you a TON of paperwork/questions/essays/budgets to fill out to make sure you are able to be an adequate parent. Many of these questions are self-explanatory, like, "Do you agree with withholding food and water as punishment?" But the sad thing is people have done these types of things. Some questions are intensely deep and take some thought to answer, like how each of your extended family members views money, culture, faith, etc. Home study workers want to make sure you know what you're getting into, make sure you have adequate resources compiled for the arduous parenting journey, and make sure you're adopting for the right reasons- not just to have a pretty multicultural family, or because it's trendy, or because you saw a really sweet Youtube video once about adoption that went viral. Our home study workers were awesome, and they will also be conducting interviews post-adoption and helping us along the way for years if we encounter any difficulties or have any questions.It was actually pretty fantastic, and I fully believe you should have to do this type of thing prior to bringing home babies from the hospital. It was just that informative and thought-provoking. I was totally flying by the seat of my pants when we brought Sawyer home.
The second thing you do with an international adoption is sign with an international agency and compile your dossier. This includes immigration papers, background checks, fingerprinting, etc. Once your agency sends your dossier to the country, you are eligible to receive a referral (basically your child's version of his/her dossier), and you can accept or reject it. I can't WAIT for this step! Show me my baby!!!
Well. That brings me from July when we decided to pursue adoption to the weekend before Labor day. At school Friday, I was filling out the application for the adoption agency we had decided upon, and I had left my phone at home. I couldn't get some necessary numbers out of it. So I didn't close the window, and I went home. I had to wait until Tuesday to finish and send it. Over that weekend, I got a Facebook friend request from a missionary in Uganda. She and I had a mutual friend who had adopted from Ethiopia. We began talking about Uganda, adoption, and life, and I told her the adoption agency we had chosen. Her exact words were, "Run, don't walk, away." What!? Seriously? I had this figured out. We could afford that agency. They seemed great. They were a Christian based agency. She is a point-blank person, and she has a front-row seat on adoption processes in Uganda. She spoke truth after truth, and just like that, my eyes were opened to the dark side of international adoption. Honestly, I didn't really like her in that moment. She got in the way of my plan, and I didn't want that. However, we continued talking that weekend. Uganda and Illinois are an eight hour time difference, so often she would be up for hours in the middle of the night talking with me. She committed herself to helping us conduct an adoption ethically. Coincidence that I forgot my phone AND got a random friend request? Hardly. (by the way, now I totally love her and her ministry- it's just that sometimes truth is hard to swallow)
So we held off. And she put us in touch with people still in the country using that agency, trying to get out. They said the same thing- run far and fast. Find another agency. *Insert major disappointment.*
We researched. We found out painful reality about international adoption. Some days I still wish I could "un-read" what I've read. International adoption, like all things intended to be redemptive, is full of people whose only goal is self-satisfaction. People are driven by greed; just because kids are involved doesn't change that reality. In fact, sometimes I think it even exacerbates the situations. People who honestly want to be parents begin letting that desire control their actions, and they are blinded to the corruption of adoption processes and have a "What I don't know won't hurt me" attitude. Others take advantage of this extremely deep desire, and they, for all intents and purposes, traffic these kids into the adoption arena. For instance, 80% of kids in Ugandan orphanages have at least one parent living. That isn't what you normally think of when you think "orphan", is it? Agencies or orphanages, in an attempt to make money, allow these kids to be adopted. Not all agencies are like this, nor are all people in the adoption world corrupt. Obviously. We're still going forward with the process. But some are willing to pay an agency, who will then bribe government officials to kidnap or persuade a family to give up a child for adoption, just to make money off the process. It's unspeakably evil, and NOT something Daniel and I want any part of.
Here's the deal: Daniel and I are called to adoption. We know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Our hearts are burdened for the fatherless, and we are ready to stand for those who need us. Have you ever read James 1:27? This is pure and true religion: caring for orphans and widows. There's no parentheses saying (this is only pure and true religion for those who can afford it, or for those old/young enough, or for those who can't have kids biologically). There's no fine print disregarding certain Christians from this. We are all called to care for orphans. Now, in no way do I believe all Christians are called to adoption. What caring for orphans looks like for your family, you have to decide. It could be sponsoring a child; it could be fostering a child; it could be financially supporting those who are adopting (insert shameless plug for our fundraising efforts!).
For two months, we delayed signing with an agency. Some other painful disappointments happened during that time in both our adoption and biological-baby worlds. But those can wait- this is already long enough :) We researched BOTH sides of the agency's reputation- American and Ugandan. We spoke to families who had used the agency. We bypassed the HR people at the front lines of adoption agencies, and we asked a whole bunch of really tough questions to the people actually conducting the adoption processes.
And still we weren't completely sure. There's no 100% guarantee they weren't giving us lip service. Perhaps they were. But at the end of the day, we worked unbelievably hard to find an agency that was above reproach. We found an agency who works hard to reunite families and investigate the truth behind each orphan's status. After all, third-world country people are no different than we are. If Daniel and I died unexpectedly or were unable to care for our children, many extended family members would step up to care for Sawyer. Our agency works to make sure NO ONE is speaking for these precious babies. We committed ourselves to finding an agency that finds families for children, not children for families. The syntactical differences are slight, but the eternal significance for these kids is huge. We are still praying daily that God works within the possible corruption to orchestrate our connection to the child who needs us as parents.
So YAY! We signed with an agency and made our first payment. We also applied for ELEVEN grants (which was a ton of paperwork in and of itself). We should begin hearing back from grants in the next few months, and some as soon as this month. We sent out one hundred letters and adoption announcements to our extended family and friends who live elsewhere. We have a few fundraisers in the planning stages for our Vermilion County area. We finished all of our home study, filed our immigration papers, and are in the middle of compiling our dossier. To turn in our dossier, we have to turn in $11,000. Right now, we have $2,000 saved. After that, we only owe $6,000+ travel expenses. We are trying to save the rest of our personal savings for travel, since grants don't pay for travel expenses. We have a plan on how to pay for each payment, but we're obviously depending on a lot of people's generosity and help for those plans to work! So that's where we are. Two months behind where we expected to be but in a whole lot better shape. We're doing things right, which should be some sort of reassurance to those who do donate financially; we are aggressively working to be good stewards of your (and our) finances for the Kingdom.
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| This is my adoption pile all cleaned up: the big stack is the REMAINS of our adoption paperwork. That is, just the instructions/education/papers we HAVEN'T sent in. The pile we have sent to various places is at least that large. The pictures/letters are in the front, and the thank-you notes are in the back just waiting to be written. |
So why do I tell you all of this? I am not against adoption. Not in the slightest. It has been the biggest eye-opening, faith-stretching experience of my entire life. I truly think so many more people should do this, and we haven't even begun reaping the rewards yet!
I want to be real with you. I want you to know the cost. I want you to know how hard we're working for this child. I want you to know that
our need is great, but our commitment is greater. I want you to know that love is a fight. Redemption is messy and comes at great cost. Think about it. The greatest adoption story of all time is the one where God adopted us. It wasn't quick. It wasn't easy. It wasn't without pain. Jesus came, and he was above reproach in everything. He was an absolute perfect steward of the life he had been given. He fought for us- before we ever knew him personally. He waited. He underwent terrible pain. He conquered. And he did all of this, not so we could serve him as slaves, not so we could work for him as employees, but so that we could be his children. And it's not like he had the guarantee that we would all love him super-duper much, and it would be rainbows and unicorns from then on. I mean, let's be real. We all have the choice to love Him and follow him, as will our child have the choice to love us as his/her parents. Sometimes
it we don't end up so well. Sometimes it's really really hard to be His child. But yet...
We are. And He is good. And it's worth it.
So there you go. If I didn't tell you in this blog post the darkness and difficulties we have encountered, the blog post a year from now proclaiming the beautiful blessing our child is won't mean nearly as much. The moment you get to watch a video on Facebook of us meeting our child for the first time won't bring nearly as many feels. Those first family pics with some pretty dark-colored skin in them won't be nearly as beautiful. If you don't know the truth behind it, the story isn't nearly as good. This Chappell baby is fought for (as was Sawyer, but he was fought for in incessant puking and losing 22 pounds, and endless paperwork is MUCH more preferable).
And guess what? The best part of this whole, dark blog post is the fact that YOU get to know you were fought for- a thousand times harder than we're fighting for our baby.
Wasn't it worth reading the hard stuff to know that?
