Paper Chase

Daddy made another quick trip home and back - just to see this smiling face.  It's a long work day, but Daddy went home to see Madison and Mommy, who had a marvelous feast prepared for dinner.  While there, Daddy brought a little camera to snap a quick photo of Madison.  She's always ready to pose for a picture now, which is quite a change from a few years ago, where she never wanted to look at the camera, or smile, or do both!  Now, she's asking to take pictures all the time (and steals people's cell phones to take photos of herself).

Tonight, we're continuing our Under Construction series with a message on demolition.  It's a fun one, talking about the walls of Jericho.  It also features a return of Rusty, who helped build this house, but notices that small wood-eating insects called termites have damaged the integrity of this once-fine structure.  So today, he's going to blow it up.

Yes, that video never gets old for Daddy.

I did a lot of writing on messages and skits today.  Also, a bit of proofing for our upcoming series.  It was a fairly busy day, but also a really productive one.  Sadly, that means I didn't get to spend much time with the family (outside of the typical driving Madison to school in the morning).

We've been doing a lot of reading together at night this week, with Madison actually reading Daddy Bible stories from a few of her books.  It's simple reading, but it's great to hear her try her hand at reading to me, instead of the other way around.  Daddy has been reading all sorts of stuff, some stories related to Noah's Ark, and even a penguin book he found by the same author and artist who does Curious George.

Another form of reading that Daddy's been doing is from a journal I kept in 2005-2006.  Those were rough times, though they started out pretty optimistic.  Like this blog, each page was a letter to Madison, written as we were beginning the process of adoption.  We were collecting all the paperwork, going to doctors, and taking classes - all to put together a dossier to send off to China.  Little did we know, cancer was lurking inside of Mommy at that time.  The timing all worked out perfectly though, despite the awful months of emergency surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.  God took us through those years, and it's interesting to read the day-by-day accounts of labor towards getting the dossier together, while trying to figure out why Mommy has been suffering with her health so much.  It all lead up to a fateful day in the early spring of 2006, when finally there came an answer.  It wasn't a good one, but at least we're still here seven years later.  And we're with Madison.

Anyway, here's an entry from September 14, 2005 that sort of cracked me up.  It essentially sums up the "paper chase" of the adoption process - and every word of this is true:

Some things will seem comical years later, but now are simply insane.  Get this:  you order a birth certificate.  Despite the fact that you order it from teh place where you are born, it is not official if you receive the short form.  no, you need to specify the vault long copy when ordering.  That's official.  But not enough.  No, to make it more official you have to have an accompanying letter of exemplification, proving that the person who sent the form really sent it.  THAT, though, is not enough.  The birth certificate must be certified, which means that another person verifies that yes, the person who wrote the letter about sending a birth certificate is in fact the one who sent the right birth certificate.  But this is not enough.  To adopt, remember, the birth certificate must be notarized and authenticated, which basically means the authenticator authenticates that the certifier is certifying the process, certificate, and sender who writes out a letter of exemplification exemplifying that the sender did in fact send a long vault copy instead of one of those unofficial, apparently worthless (although they cost us a lot) birth certificates.  All this to say we got the wrong birth certificates and no letter of exemplification.  We'll have to wait until early next week for Zena's birth certificate.  If we have to wait much longer, we'll both be certifiably insane!

We thought about adopting long before 2005, of course.  When we were married in 2000, we always knew that having children biologically would be somewhat of a miracle.  But Daddy was quite happy to adopt, and not at all worried about biology.  Madison is our daughter, and we are her parents now.  But back then we had many conversations about adoption, particularly where to adopt from.  We did research:  we were uncomfortable with the adoption process in many countries, worried about bribes, extended stays, return visits, fetal alcohol syndrome, and government issues.  Our studying revealed something that we heard before we even began:  China would be the place to be.  But in our hearts, there was already a seed of a thought:  China.  She'll be waiting for us in China.  The invisible red thread was already tied firmly around us.

When we sent off our dossier, we were nervous and excited.  Within a few months, we were frightened.  Mommy's journey to recovery was long and painful. But God's timing was perfect, as mentioned above.  It turned out our wait collectively was extended, and extended by well over a year.  Anyone who sent in a dossier at the same time as us now had to wait, and wait, and wait.  We were okay with the waiting.  It just meant there'd be more time for Mommy to get better.

And she did get better.  In fact, she was completely okay the few weeks we traveled on our adventure to China.  If the trip was a few months earlier, her condition would be questionable.  But she was okay.  The other aspect of that is the simple fact that if we went a few months earlier, it wouldn't be Madison.

When Madison was first carried into the room, Daddy spotted her.  And the simple truth is that of all the babies that were in that room that day, we would have chosen Madison.  It was meant to be.

Here, as I close up, is an excerpt - the very first one - of the book we wrote when we first began the paper chase.  Over time, I'll copy more into the blog.  But this one is significant, as it was somewhat of an official start to it all.

July 18, 2005

Madison.  The name has been on our lips and hearts for quite some time now.  We've been waiting on God's timing - and getting more and more anxious to meet you.  Though there have been many small steps already taken in our journey to be with you, today was significant.  Today at 2:00 pm we made a phone call and discovered that we can send in our application for adoption.  During the phone call itself, it was hard for either of us to keep tears of joy back.  Immediately, we set out to finish the application and placed it in an envelope.  Holding this small seed that contained so many hopes and dreams, we prayed for God's favor and perfect will.  We even anointed it with oil before getting into our car to drive to the post office.  Sure, the mailman would come by tomorrow - but putting in the application one day sooner means seeing you one day sooner.  They say this will take nine to twelve months.  We called family members - my parents and sister rejoiced with us.  We're expecting.  Zena put out the ladybug flag in teh front yard.  In China, the ladybug symbolizes a child is on the way.  That is why on her birthday this year, which fell on Mother's Day, I gave her a package of hundreds of ladybugs.  A child is on the way.  Her name is Madison.