Thursday, May 28, 2009

Mother's Day

There is a song that I always sing with my girls as I cut their fingernails -- "Tommy Thumb, Tommy Thumb where are you..." and it goes through all the different fingers as you cut each nail "Here I am! Here I am! How do you do?". Songs like these are silly and on the whole largely unimportant, but they become habit, and overtime they shape a childhood, and even a culture. They become strangely significant to childhood and to childhood memories.

One challenge in adopting internationally is that a child is removed from his country of birth. He has to adopt not only a new family, but a new language and culture. His childhood memories will be Canadian, not what they would have been had he remained in South Africa. As a child grows, this can be difficult in developing a sense of identity and a sense of self.

We hope to become a trans-racial family. That is different than being a Canadian family with an adopted South African child. We plan to become a South African-Canadian family. That means all of us, not just our son, but Sara and Leah, and Marc and I, will all be South African-Canadian as well. That is why the gift that Marc and the girls gave me for Mother's Day is so important to me.

Marc and the kids gave me presents on a South African theme. First, they gave me a South African cookbook Recipes from the Hearth: At home with South African icons. It has the favourite recipes of famous South Africans. So...I now have Desmond Tutu's famous "Tutu Chicken" recipe as well as F.W. de Klerk's "Lakhano Domades (Stuffed Cabbage Leaves)". The book also has beautiful pictures and write-ups on each person. This way we can learn a little bit about South Africa. Food is significant in shaping a culture.


My family also gave me two South African CDs, both by a South African group called Ladysmith Black Mambazo -- they're pretty well known and have won many awards throughout the years. The first CD is self titled. It's pretty neat. What I especially like is that it also includes worship songs in Zulu and English.



The second CD is called "Gift of the Tortoise: A Musical Journey through Southern Africa". It is a children's CD and is narrated by Geina Mhlophe who is a famous South African story teller. I listened to this one on Mother’s day with Sara and Leah while Marc was at work. We read the lyrics of the songs and sang along. The songs are very simple; even Leah could sing some of them on the first time. It was quite an incredible moment for me. The girls were entranced with the music and the narration. We talked about each song and danced together during the action songs, and then danced to the slow ones too. We talked about our little baby and how we could sing to him these songs some day.

The gift, for me, and for our whole family, was more than a cool CD. It was a gift of knowledge and of relationship with South Africa, and actually with our South African baby. I will be able to sing our baby traditional South African children’s songs, in his first language and in his second.

The CD even has a “fingernail cutting song”:

Uthikithani, the teeniest of them all
Utembeseya, friend of the wedding ring
Umudeynana, tallest of them all
Umkombabantu, the one who likes to point
Uthupazana, the fat, fat thumb

I look forward to trimming the nails on my son’s beautiful black fingers and singing with him the traditional South African “Finger Dance”. (And I look forward to dancing with him too)

I end this entry with a Zulu blessing. One that I plan to sing while I rock my South African-Canadian boy to sleep:
Hambani kahle
Ukthula makube

Go well
Peace be with you.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Mind-blowing peace...

Just to continue our story chronologically, this is a reflection that I wrote and shared at a Coffee Break meeting during our homestudy process. It's from a little while back, but it gives some insight into our thoughts and feelings at the time.

January 8, 2009

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus ~ Phil 4:6-7

It’s amazing how a scripture passage can do two opposite things at the same time. This passage to me right now both comforts me, filling me with gratitude and joy, and convicts me, filling me with regret and eye-rolling frustration…

What you don’t know is that Marc and I have decided to adopt a child. It’s very exciting and we’re overjoyed at the opportunity. We hope to adopt a baby from South Africa. The baby will be orphaned due to the AIDS crisis there. Once all the information gathering and processing is done, we will travel to South Africa for three weeks where the adoption will be finalized and then will come back home with an infant boy or girl.

We’ve been very quiet about the whole thing because it has been a long and prayerful journey to this point. We’ve been talking about it since May and have been praying and researching and attending workshops and talking with some important people in our lives and are just now beginning the actual process of adoption. The passage that I just read is a wonderful account of how the process to get to this point has been for us. Both Marc and I felt the call to consider adoption at the same time, individually. We began to pray about it together and alone. When things became overwhelming, as we began to research it, which it did many times, we just stepped back from the whole process to pray and wait on God. Finally, in November, we both, at the same time, felt at peace with the decision. It blows my mind (or transcends my understanding) how that happens. We feel wonderful about the decision and are filled with joy and anticipation. “Present your requests to God and the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”…

However…These past two weeks, I have been stressed out of my tree. We have begun the homestudy process and have an incredible list of things that need to be done. Time is of an essence in all of them, because the longer it takes me to complete them, the longer it is before we can adopt. Since Marc is working full time and I am not, I am really the one responsible for completing all of them. Also, I begin work in February so the plan is that all the work for the homestudy be done before then. I am frustrated with bureaucracy, did you know it takes over 100 days minimum to get your fingerprints checked by the RCMP – that’s almost 1/3 of a year! I’m frustrated with people who don’t return phone calls, frustrated with forms that aren’t self-explanatory and even, I was frustrated with Christmas holidays because people weren’t in their office to answer my calls. I feel like I can’t get this stuff done because I’m waiting on other people. Monday night I didn’t sleep because I was stressed about how we will pay for the adoption. Yesterday I burst into tears because the police department doesn’t do fingerprinting in the morning, only in the afternoon, --but I had planned to go in the morning. I have been stressed and definitely lacking peace.

Last night, I had an epiphany. I am a very good big picture Christian. Major decisions like adopting a child, I take time to pray and read and reflect, and I don’t make a decision until I feel peace. Major decisions, I wait on God.

But the passage says: do not be anxious about ANYTHING, but in EVERYTHING present your requests to God.

Last night I closed my file with all the documents that need completing and spent time praying about the documents. I prayed about the RCMP fingerprinting, I prayed about the loans, I prayed about the medical forms and the personality profiles. And then, I put it away, for just a short bit. I’m waiting for a peace that will blow my mind and guard it with my heart so that I don’t go crazy or emotionally breakdown – that’s the kind of peace that’s promised.

If we pray about everything…

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

How it all began...

Our second post is going to be something many of you have read before, but it is part of our first steps into adoption. We'd like to "tell it from the start". This is a letter that we sent out to some family and friends in our Christmas card in December 2008. It shares a little bit about our family as well as some of the thought processes that brought us to this point in our lives.


December, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,

Each evening after supper we light advent candles as a family. Although much of the moment is tense and even a little nerve-wracking (Sara and Leah like to light the candles themselves --“Leah do it!”), it is a special time nonetheless. Each night we read a different part of the creation-fall-redemption story and then sing “Come, Lord Jesus”. This moment is immediately followed by Leah demanding, “Blow out candles; Leah do it!”. Clearly the fire is the main attraction for our 1 and 4 year olds, but yet it is a time when we all anticipate something – the lighting of that last candle in the middle of the advent wreath. Leah calls it “Happy Birthday to you candles”, which shows her general confusion about the whole event, but at the same time makes a great deal of sense. As a good friend (Scott Post for those who know him) said over a beer the other night – when we celebrate someone’s birthday, we don’t celebrate who that person was on the day they were born, we celebrate who that person is now. We shift, then, from celebrating baby Jesus, to celebrating Jesus, King of Kings! We hope you have a great Happy Birthday party as you celebrate the risen Lord!

Speaking of Happy Birthday parties, our kids are getting older. Leah will soon be two years old and is already there behaviourally. That was a joke by the way – the terrible twos aren’t so terrible really. Leah is hilarious. She is exasperatingly independent (as is clear by the anecdote above) and not at all quiet or shy. She copies everything Sara does and they are a great team. Sara, who just started JK, feels very grown up about the whole big sister thing and plays a great game of hide and seek with Leah. Today, at lunch, Sara announced that she was going to be a ballerina and travel the world. I said that would be a great idea.

Sara has been challenging us philosophically and theologically. Who’d have known from a four year old! Just recently she asked us whether we were all dolls and our house was a doll house. She pictured giant creatures moving us around and manipulating what we do and say, “a plaything for the gods” to quote our friend Shakespeare. On the way home from church today she asked us “if I was holding something when I died would it go to heaven with me?” So, now she’s planning what kind of treasures she can store up in heaven. I love it.

Although the plaything of the gods idea isn’t maybe where we want to be going theologically, Marc and I have spent a good part of this year trying to figure out what God’s plan is for our family. Earlier this spring we were trying to decide if we should go ahead with IVF again in the hope of having another child. The financial, emotional and physical stress of IVF and pregnancy were daunting, yet we really would love to have another child. And our children would love to have another sibling: “Mom, everyone in my class has a brother except me. Can you grow a boy in your belly?” There you go, babies by peer pressure!

Last May, we attended a Starfield and Shane & Shane concert (if you don’t know these musicians, you should check them out because they are oh so great!) in Cambridge which had a social justice theme throughout. One of the statistics that came out of that evening was that there are 40,000,000 orphans in the world. If 8% of the church adopted one orphan, they would all have homes. Since May then, Marc and I have been exploring adoption. We are hoping to adopt from South Africa and have just begun the home-study part of the process. Most of the babies adopted from South Africa are orphaned because of the AIDS epidemic and it is expected that the number of orphans there will more then double in the next 7 years. As a result, by 2015, more than 10% of the South African population will be orphaned children. South Africa does not have the resources to care for all of these children and so have opened the doors to overseas adoption.

We think that God’s plan for us is to expand our family by using our financial, emotional and physical energy to adopt one of those orphans instead of undergoing IVF. It’s been a long process of prayer, discussion, and research, but we feel excited at this opportunity. We ask for your prayers as the process of adoption is just beginning and is a long journey.

Last weekend, Marc and I attended the Canadian National Youth Workers Convention in Toronto for four days. The theme of the conference was “Seriously Ridiculous” which is a conference title that only youth pastors would come up with. We were treated to incredible speakers (Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo to name a few) and great artists (once again Starfield and friends). The first half of the convention completely wrecked me: the idea that to truly follow Christ requires us to be seriously ridiculous in our lifestyle. The decisions we must make with our money, our skills, our possessions are seriously ridiculous in light of our culture today. I was completely disarmed to the point of asking “How now shall we live?” all over again. Of course, the whole conference was focused for me on our adoption decision (which had only been made days before) and is a seriously ridiculous decision for us in many ways as well. But the second half of the conference explored the seriously ridiculous nature of God’s grace -- the ridiculousness of God coming as a completely powerless, naked baby -- The seriously ridiculousness of God as a human criminal, executed -- And the seriously ridiculous truth of his love for us.

May your Christmas celebrations this year be seriously ridiculous!

We love you all,

Marc and Renée, Sara and Leah

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A Brother for Sara...

One evening, while Renée was putting Sara to bed, she said, "Mommy, all my friends at school have baby brothers. Can you grow one for me?" Renée explained to her that there are many ways to have a baby brother or sister, and reminded her of her friend from Haiti who was adopted and moved a few months earlier. Sara's eyes widened, and she yelled out, "Let's do that, Mommy!"And with that, our considerations about international adoption were confirmed.

Welcome to our blog, our journal, and our story. We hope you will read, enjoy and walk alongside us as we graft our family tree with a beautiful new shoot.