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“I will go before you
and will level the mountains
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.
I will give you the treasures of darkness,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the LORD,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name.”
Isaiah 45:2 – 3
The weeks that followed the joyful rush of claiming our daughters as our own settled into preparations for their homecoming and the discipline of waiting. We were told it would take about two weeks for our papers to be legalized before they would be sent to the longest stage of their journey, the wait for approval by Haitian social services. Once, it cleared that stage, the case would spend a couple of weeks in court and then go to the U.S. end in Haiti where we would begin the Visa process. All in all, we were told to prepare for about one month between approval by Haitian social services and homecoming.
When we reached the two week mark, we began to watch for news that we had proceeded to the next step. Week two however, stretched into week three and then past one month with no word of our case. As the days wore on, we began to experience the frustration and anxiety that would mark the rest of the adoption process. Before long, all preparations possible had been made and there was nothing to do but wait.
Eventually, we did make it into Haitian social services and our case spent many months there. If we heard any news at all, it was of new requirements, hurdles and obstacles. Then, when all new red tape seemed to be exhausted, our case fell into the abyss and there was no news at all.
At last, we received news our case was approved just a few days before the one year anniversary of our acceptance of our referral. I remember the agent saying they would get them home as soon as possible and it would probably be about a month.
It took 6 more months to get them home. Read the rest of this entry »
In true cowardly style, I have decided to take a detour from our adoption story and lighten up a bit. I have been fearful that my readers may not be getting a full picture of our family, which in fact, is actually a tremendous amount of fun. So, here are some sound-bytes. Enjoy!
The night of the Superbowl my 4 year old son came to the kitchen where I was cooking pizzas to give me an update on the game. “Who is winning Jeremiah?” I asked.
“Well, the Chicago Bears are ahead right now ’cause they have more points.” he replied.
“Hmmmmmm. Well, is that good? Do you want The Bears to win?”
“Nope. I’m cheering for the Indian Apples.”
The kids and I are in the school parking lot and there are cars everywhere. Jeremiah has been in a less than cooperative mood and I am nervous about him running out into traffic. We all make our way to the back of the van to get the backpacks when I panic, realizing I have lost track of him.
“Where is Miah? Where is Miah?” I anxiously demand.
The kids begin giggling.
“Mommy!” I hear Miah say and look down to find I have been holding him by the hand the entire time.
I laugh with them. “Well, there is my Crazy Mommy moment for the day.”
I am in the grocery store with my baby girl, Roseline. Often, I am wary of strangers because of some of less than pleasant comments people have made but I see an elderly white man (I would guess around 85 years old) looking at Roseline and smiling. I tell her to wave at him and she does. He seems delighted.
“That just makes my day” he said.
Then, it goes down hill.
“You know he says, she reminds me of that black girl on TV that does the news. That girl is so smart. It is no telling what her IQ is. You never know, she might grow up to be as smart as that black girl on TV.”
Huh? What does THAT mean?
Back to the Superbowl…..
It is the half time show and much to my delight, Prince is the show. (Stop it. Stop condemning me right now. I am a child of the ’80′s. Cut me some slack.)
So, what do I do? I dance of course.
I am not a good dancer but I am having a blast. My younger three children are thrilled and dance too. My older two children beg me to stop the humiliation while there is still time to stave off future therapy sessions. I dance on. I dance and dance and dance. I remember that I used to be a head banger in the ’80′s and try one of my old moves. I forget I have degenerative arthritis of the neck.
Oooops.
The next morning I phone my doctor.
“Ummmm. I think I made my neck worse.”
“Really, Mrs. Gragg. What happened? Were you in an accident?”
“No. Did you watch the Superbowl……..”
For three days we thought about every angle and talked through every obstacle from the practical (where will we put everyone?) to the profound (do we have what it takes to parent five children well?) We asked a couple with nine children to come for coffee and asked every question imaginable. Most of all, we prayed and prayed and prayed.
In the middle of all of this, God gave us 2 Corinthians 9:7 – 11
“Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: “He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.” NIV
Seed for the sower……
That was our greatest fear, that we would not have what it took to be all we would need to be and God was promising us that if he called us, he would equip us.
Before we consciously reached a decision, we found ourselves referring to the girls as if they were already ours and at the end of the week, with little fan fare, we called and accepted the referral.
Joy! It is the only word that fits. We made copies of our referral pictures and showed anyone who would look. Sometimes, the response was encouraging and the friend, relative, or acquaintance would rejoice with us. Other times……well, not so much.
There were people who would look at the girls and then at us and with thinly veiled disgust ask, “Why?” There were others who would look from the picture to us and only say, “They are black.” The most common comment however, was “Are you CRAZY?”
And so our journey into not only adoption but being a family of color began.
Our file was already in Haiti before we accepted the referral and we were told it would take an unfathomable and impossibly long 5 – 7 months for it to proceed through the Haitian end of things. We hoped for a Christmas homecoming.
The girls did not come home that Christmas. As a matter of fact, they did not make it home until nine days before the next Christmas.
Instead of 5 months after referral, it took 18.
18 months in the life of a small child is a long time. It is long enough for a 3 year old to forget completely that strange white family in the pictures she was shown in the beginning. It is long enough for her give up hope that they will ever come at all. In the life of a 9 month old, it is long enough to wind up in the hospital once with an IV in her tiny arm to keep her alive. It is long enough for her to attach to her caregiver so that it is like another death to be taken home at last.
And for a waiting family……it is long enough to go through every stage of grief and despair and find hope on the other end.
Enough
When I look at your picture I see traces of pain in your eyes,
I see there things that cause a mother’s heart to ache-
Loss, fear, hunger, pain….
You know what it is like to cry yourself to sleep because you are hungry, don’t you?
Did you sleep on the floor, hard and cold?
You know what it is like to be dirty for so long;
You can’t remember being clean.
There were times when you were sick but your parents had nothing to give you so,
You suffered.
Yet, you lived.
So many others do not.
And they, your first parents, loved you;
They gave you their names.
I can’t imagine how terrifying your first night was, there in the orphanage.
Did you watch out the window, waiting for someone to return?
How long did it take before your tears ceased,
Giving way to numbing acceptance of loss too profound for one so small to understand.
I see it all there, in your eyes.
I know I will have to prove it to you,
But I’m not going anywhere.
So many upheavals in one small life.
You have learned to be wary of what comes next.
I see the traces there in the way your brow knits together.
Then, like the first rays of sunshine breaking through storm clouds-
Hope dawns in your eyes.
A fragile hope, but an effervescent smile.
You haven’t given up yet, have you?
Can I love you enough?
Can I love you enough that you will forget what it was like to be lonely?
Can I feed you enough that you forget what it was like to be hungry?
Can I hold you enough that you will forget what it was like to be afraid?
I can’t wait to try….
Sherri Gragg
The poem from my first entry, Lindito,was a poem I wrote about my youngest son when he was two years old. First, I have to tell you that our entire family was absolutely crazy about this little guy. He had the wonderful blessing of being born third. Perhaps in some homes, being third born is not a blessing but in our home it was prime real-estate because his Dad and I had learned enough about parenting that we were able to relax a bit. Also, there were four years of age between him and his next oldest sibling and that allowed us some breathing room.
It helped that he was a sweet baby who developed his michevious, teasing personality early. He was a thumb-sucker so he was able to soothe himself when he was sad, tired and angry. He was chubby and his hair stuck straight up on top so that everywhere I went people would laugh delightedly at the sight of him. Everybody loved Jeremiah: at the gym where I went to exercise, in the church nursery, neighbors, friends, aunts and uncles.
But no one loved him more than his Daddy, siblings and me.
So, when we found the lump in his neck and the pediatrician sent us to a surgeon, it was hard for all of us to remain brave. We simply could not imagine life without our sweet baby boy. The surgeon did not know what the lump was but said the bottom line was that it had to come out and we scheduled a date. One day during that interlude between discovery and surgery, I wrote Lindito.
A strange transformation took place in the hearts of my husband and I in the days that followed. An unfathomable peace began to seep into our souls, wrapping around the rough edges at first and then growing until it covered us completely. I thought, perhaps I would find it lacking the morning we drove our small son to the children’s hospital to hand him over to a team of doctors and nurses we did not really know who would in turn hand us a release form stating all of the dangers of intabation which we would then sign. Perhaps, I thought, the peace would fail when they took him from my arms to a sterile operating room to place him under anesthesia, insert a tube down his small throat, and then take a knife to that spot on his soft, tender neck where I loved to steal kisses.
Perhaps, I thought, when that happened I will plumb the depths of the grace of God and find it lacking.
Then, much to my joyful wonder, I found that moment of insufficiency never came. As a matter of fact, I reached the point of tears only once, as I kissed my sleeping, helpless baby good bye and placed him in the nurse’s arms but even then, the peace flowed deeply underneath the surface and held me afloat.
Remarkably soon, they called our name and told us we could go to the recovery room. Jeremiah was just awakening from anesthesia and….fighting like a tiger. They eventually found it necessary to knock my warrior child out with morphine in order to keep the oxygen mask on him. Then, he lay sleeping in my arms, his Dad and I content to simply watch the miracle of his chest rising and falling, content to listen to the comforting beep of the EKG.
The doctor told us the lump was some form of tumor and he had followed it as far as he could as it ran from the front of our son’s neck and around the side. He did not think it was malignant but we would need to wait for the pathologist’s report. We were supposed to stay the night in the hospital but found there was no room and eventually were released to go home because he was doing so well.
Exhausted, we stopped for carry out and drug ourselves home. I carried our still heavily drugged baby to his bed and when I returned downstairs my husband said there had been a message from our adoption agency and they wanted us to call them the following day. We had just settled down to wait for our referral and had been told it would take several months before we received it and could not imagine the purpose of the phone call.
Jeremiah ended up sleeping through the night and was amazingly like himself the next morning. I placed the call to the adoption agency and our contact there told us she had a bit of a surprise for us. They wanted to offer us two daughters instead of one. They were referring a pair of sisters, ages 9 months and 3 years.
It was one of those moments where I had the sense that Providence was at work. Even now, my memory of that time is vivid: where I was sitting, the tears in my eyes, my voice responding that both my husband and I had been sensing for 2 weeks previously that God would have us adopt another child when this adoption was completed. I told her we would pray about it, talk about it and call her in a few days.
And so our lives were forever changed.
Jeremiah, it turned out, was just fine. The tumor was benign. I think the purpose of that particular journey was for God to prove his faithfulness to us.
Sometimes, it seems, He takes us through one trial to prepare us for a greater one.
Next post……….”Referral”
My Haitian daughters have been home for over a year now. I refuse to count the months and days exactly because I did that for so, so long while we waited for their adoption to be completed. The freedom to lose track of time is a sweet luxury.
Recently, I helped one of them from the bath tub and wrapped her in a fluffy white towel, pulling her close, and inhaling deeply, savoring the fact that she was mine and home at last. She snuggled close to me.
I rubbed her down with lotion to keep the “itchies” away and as I was finishing said, “I remember the first time I gave you a bath.”
She perked up immediately because she loves to reminisce. “You do?” she asked. “When?”
“It was the first time I came to Haiti; when I came to visit you”, I replied.
She asked, “Did I like it?” Her eyes twinkled because she already knew the answer and she is a big tease.
“Oh, no.” I answered “You hated it.”
She giggled and asked, “Did I cry?”
“Yes”, I replied. “You cried the entire time. You did not like me very much.”
At this, she laughed out loud. “But I like you now”, she said.
“Yes”, I laughed with her. “You like me now.”
”You know,” I said. “I have been thinking. Things seem to have settled down for you lately. You seem to love your brothers and sisters. You seem to be glad you are here. You just seem, I don’t know, happy.”
At this she shouts, flinging arms wide in expression “That’s because it is wonderful here!”
And I whisper the same prayer I have whispered a thousand times since we finally boarded that plane to come home…..
Thank you…..
Thank you……..
Thank you…….
It may have been excruciating, but my babies were certainly worth the wait.
What if tomorrow, you were gone from me?
Would I reflect upon today and wish I had loved you differently?
Would I wish I had taken the time to hold you close?
Or take the time to dream of all you could be,
If tomorrow you were gone from me?
Would I weep over harsh words,
Or words left unsaid?
Would I see roads down which I should have led?
Would I wish I had let you roam for awhile, strong and free,
If tomorrow you were gone from me?
What if tomorrow you were gone from me?
Would I wish I had loved you differently?
Sherri Gragg
