My Heart

This post is about to be very real and honest and so I am giving everyone a fair warning!

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven...a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..." Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 4. 

This has been one of the hardest days of my entire life. For those of you who know me personally, you know that I don't cry--like even in situations where I should. But today, I woke up crying and have pretty much ugly cried most of the day today. Our hearts are truly broken today, but our hearts are also rejoicing as tomorrow my little brother is getting married. Most of today, I have flipped back and forth between a time to weep and a time to laugh. I love Hunter and I love Mary Beth and I am so thankful for their marriage and what the Lord is doing in their lives. I am also thankful for a family who will grieve with us even while celebrating.

We are also so thankful for all of the support from our friends and family. Thank you for your calls, your messages, and your willingness to fight for Josiah on our behalf. You will never know the ways that you have touched our hearts today. Your willingness to stop what you are doing and help us fight for a little boy you have never met has brought us to tears.

I wish that I could tell you good news tonight, but we honestly don't know much. We are still waiting to find out what will happen to the families like us who are in process of adopting. We have talked with members of our government and are grateful for the work that they are doing on our behalf. Russ*a is currently in their holiday and so government offices will close tomorrow for the next two weeks and so it may be a few weeks before we know the specific details.

So many of you have asked how we are doing. And I can honestly say that the Lord has been so very faithful to us. We knew that this journey was not an easy one, but we have never been more sure that this is the journey that the Lord has called us to. The call to adopt is deeply rooted in the Gospel and over the past few months has wrapped itself around the very fibers of who we are.

This journey has changed me. It has shown me more about the character of our Father than anything before. Tonight, my brother reminded me of the story of Abraham and Isaac. God had promised Abraham a son and yet then ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on an alter. I am seeing a glimpse of the faith that it took for Abraham to travel with his beloved son to a mountain top and build an alter. I am pretty confident that he was begging God to let him return home with his son, and yet he continue ahead. Oh how I wish I had Abraham's faith, a faith to believe that "God will provide" even when our human brains cannot comprehend.

Tonight, I am longing to hold a little boy who is halfway around the world and just waking up from a nap. A little boy with a stubborn streak just like his daddy's and a dimple that has him wrapped around his mama's finger. So I am choosing to believe that God will provide. This seems impossible to me, yet throughout Scripture our God does the impossible. So we pray to the God who created Josiah and who loves him more that we ever could. We pray, asking for His will to be done and choosing to believe that our God can work through our broken hearts and unbelief.

Josiah, I pray that you know much your daddy and I love you. One day I pray that we will tell you of the stories of the people who prayed and called and fought to get you home. While my desire is for you to be in my arms soon, I know that I may not get to hold you, but I also know that the God who made you, loves you. And I pray that you will know and understand His love for you, both now and through salvation in the future. We love you, little man, to Russ*a and back (it seems farther than the moon!).

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." Romans 15:13

Courtney Leigh

A Call for Prayer

The last 72 hours have been truly a whirlwind for us. We are still recovering from jetlag, finishing up projects for class, heading back to work, and trying to figure out how to emotionally deal with missing our son.

Monday, that roller coaster was made even harder with the news that members of the Russ*an Parliament are putting up legislation to ban U.S. Adoptions. 

This legislation is in response to a piece of legislation that was passed by our House and Senate and signed into law by President Obama last week called the Russ*a and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal Act of 2012 that includes language that is referred to as the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act now punished Russ*an officials implicated in human rights violations. It freezes their accounts, places visas on hold and will not allow them to travel into the United States. For those of you who know me, I am a true political junky. I understand that politically, this act is the right thing for American businesses and it takes a stand on human rights, which has always been a stand the United States has been willing to take when no one else would. However, the language used in this act was denounced by President Put*n before it was signed into law and as far as we can tell, there were no diplomatic relations set up to ensure that the international relationship would still stand strong.

Earlier this morning, around 7:25 AM our time, the Russ*an Duma (lower house of parliament) overwhelmingly passed the second reading of a piece of legislation that now holds the amendment to stop and ban all US adoptions. This piece of legislation has one more reading for passage on Friday and then will go to President Put*n’s desk for signature. If it continues like it is, the new law will go into place on January 1, 2013 and would take the place of the agreement signed this July between Russ*a and the US.

We are hopeful that the Russ*an government will work diligently to find a way to ensure that the children of Russ*a are taken care of. We are hopeful that the United States government will work diligently to find a way to work towards an agreement that will help keep the door of adoption open for the many children who are looking for homes. 

At this time, we ask for your prayers. This does not change the affirmation we feel to continue to follow the leading of our God to bring Josiah home. We have worked throughout the day to finish paperwork and get things in order to send to Russ*a as if this conversation was never going on, because we know that the little guy we left in an orphanage last week is truly our son. It does not make us waver in our faith in the God we serve, for we know that He is sovereign and like Isaiah 55 tells us “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” It is during this time that we must not lean on our own understanding but truly trust in the God we serve.

Pray, not only for us, but for the many parents around the country who are waiting for the call that there is a child in need of a home or the parents who have met their children and are waiting to bring them home.

More importantly, pray for the children of Russ*a. It is already Russ*an law that all children who are placed for international adoption must have already been available for adoption by Russian citizens for an extended amount of time. As one Russ*an diplomat said earlier today “this will harm our children because they will not be able to find adopters.” As Courtney and I look at the picture of the place where our son is living, our hearts are heavy because of the thousands of Russ*an children that will call places like this home, permanently, if this law is passed.

It makes the days harder, but as we come on the celebration of Christmas we are reminded that Christ came to fulfill promises. We hang on to the truth that God will finish the work He has started in us and that His promise to us will be fulfilled. We know that our God is bigger than any government, any piece of legislation and any plan that we could have.

So for now, we will echo the Words of the Psalmsist…"I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the LORD more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning."

Josh

Home

We are finally back home and it is good to be back! Many of you have been asking how we are doing and so let me try to fill in a little of what has been going on. 

Thursday, we went to the notary to official sign all of our paperwork. We had already accepted his referral, but now we were signing to officially begin the process of adoption. We will have to complete more documents on our end and then will have to wait for a few more documents to arrive on the Russ*an side before all of our paperwork is submitted to the court; however, it is really nice to actually have the process started. 

Because of when our appointment was at the notary, we were not able to go back to the orphanage on Thursday. While this was difficult for us, the Lord was very faithful to provide some much needed fellowship for us. The other adoptive families who were in Russ*a with us are such a blessing. They truly understand the joys and challenges of adoption and they know and understand the places that these children come from. Their honesty, encouragement and laughter was definitely what we needed on Thursday. 

Friday, we began the long journey of heading home. The flights and layovers went very smoothly, and we had the unique experience of seeing the sun rise and set multiple times on the same day! :)

Many of you have also asked how we are doing since we returned home, and we are very grateful for your encouragement. I have struggled to know how to put words to what I am thinking and feeling. Leaving your child in another country and not knowing when you will return is extremely difficult--everything about it feels wrong. While we can be working on paperwork and completing our checklist, we ultimately have to place our child in our heavenly Father's hands--trusting in his protection, his sovereign timing, and his prefect will. This process is entirely out of our control, but it is not out of His. 

Josh and I were talking as we drove home and the Lord had placed the same verse on both of our hearts:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6 

How grateful I am for that promise. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. Please don't stop praying.  I cannot wait to be able to hold our little boy in his room upstairs and tell him of all the Lord has done and all who prayed him home.

Courtney Leigh

Day 4 update

Yesterday was a very hard day for us, good but very hard. 

We got up early to head to the orphanage so that we would be there right after the kids finished breakfast. We arrived as they were getting the kids dressed and our little man very clearly recognized us. As soon as they let him in the room, he walked straight to Josh and climbed up in his lap. So many times orphans are scared if men because they just haven't been around them but he very clearly is not scared of Josh.

We got to play with him for about two and a half hours, most of it by ourselves. He loves imitating whatever we do--drawing shapes, making things with pipe cleaners. He is very quick to copy what we do. We brought stacking cups with us, which he had a lot of fun with-- until he realized it was a lot more fun for us to build the tower and him to knock it down! 

Our little man is so smart! We brought a Mr. Potato head with us and he had so much fun putting all of the parts in the exact right spot. And he may be a little OCD too-- at one point he put the ears at different heights and he was not ok until we fixed it!

We were in a room next to his class which was hard because he could hear everything that was going on. They were having music time next door and he didn't understand why we couldn't go in (and we have no way to explain that to him!) I picked him up and we started dancing to the music! He was so funny, alternating between being scared as we spun around and clinging to me and laughing as he would bounce up and down in my arms. 

We had pulled my phone out to continue to play more music for him and he was so confused at how this thing worked! He kept turning it over and over--pressing all of the buttons. One of the games on my phone lets you draw and so we started teaching him how to play. The lines are a different color each time you touch the screen and so he would touch the screen and then pull his finger back to look at it! He couldn't figure out where the color was coming from! 

We got a chance to try clothes on him and then the social worker came to talk with us-- really me as Josh was left to wrestle a 2 year old! And then very quickly, it was time to go. 

I picked him up and carried him into his classroom to sit down and eat. I am normally not emotional at all, but I could not stop crying. This is our son--everything about leaving him here feels so wrong. We got to stand and watch him eat for a few minutes, with tears streaming down both of our faces, not knowing when we will be able to see him again. 

As we drove away from the orphanage, I thought about the sacrifice God made for us in sending his son to earth. Maybe it is because I have not been a parent until now, but I have always thought of it as the sacrifice Jesus made, not God. But God sent his only son to earth, choosing to be separated from him, for our good. God knew the pain that this journey would cause and yet he choose it anyway, to redeem us and to allow us to be adopted as his children.

Now I am by no means comparing myself to God, but this adoption journey has allowed me to understand so many things about our Father's heart. Even now, I know how much my heart longs to be able to see my little boy again and one day soon that will come. I can only trust that the pain we feel now is a part of a greater story our Heavenly Father is writing-- one of grace, redemption, and adoption as sons. May this story be for his glory alone. 

A few prayer request: 
1. We are leaving in about 2 hrs to sign paperwork to begin the official adoption process. Please pray for that process to go smoothly. 
2. We have met several families who are here for adoptions as well. Two of the families are from the US and just picked up their children. Pray for them as the children get adjusted. One of the families are not believers. Pray for opportunities for the gospel to be shared. 

We love you all and are so thankful for your prayers and encouragement!

Josh and Courtney

Day 3 Update

Adoption is definitely an emotional roller coaster and yesterday I was feeling every minute of it! Meeting our son for the first time was so special for us and one of those moments I will cherish for the rest of my life, but we knew that he did not understand. He was confused about who these people were and why we were there. He warmed up to us by the end of the visit but there was no real attachment.

However, today he recognized us as he walked into the room! He ran right over to grab a handful of Cheerios! We were in a larger room that serves as a special playroom for families and the children. We were able to spread out and really play with him.

He really enjoys the touch and feel books! One of the books that we brought had a mirror in it and his reaction to seeing himself was so funny. We colored, played with cars, and with the puzzles that we had brought. 

He is very inquisitive and loved exploring and seeing how things worked. He loved looking out the window to see what was going on outside. We brought a small train with us that made noise and went around a small track. He LOVED it! He was looking it all over to figured out how it works and had so much fun pushing the buttons over and over. 

He spent a lot of time climbing back and forth from one of our laps to the other. We both got a chance to hold him and I think both of us cherished having him lay his heads on our shoulders and just relax. 

We asked to go and see where he slept and so the teachers invited us into the nursery and we were able to see his play room as well as the room where he sleeps. It was sobering for us because while his physical needs are being met, it is by no means a loving, nurturing home. As one of the teachers said, "while he has no wants here, he does not have parents and that is what he needs--the love of a mother and father." 

As we were getting ready to leave, our translator asked him if he was ready to go back. And he very clearly said no and wrapped his arm around my neck. Josh carried him back into his classroom and he stayed in Josh's arms for about five minutes not ready to go. We are grateful for the beginning signs of attachment and understanding that we are safe. 

Thank you for all of your prayers! We love you all. 

Josh and Courtney

Day 2 Update

It is very early in the morning here and I am working to get all of my thoughts out on paper. Yesterday was such a blessing and so very surreal. We got to meet our little boy!

Yesterday morning, we got up and got ready to leave to head to officially get the referral. However, we found out at the time that we were going to leave that the meeting would be delayed. We had to have one specific women sign off on our paperwork and she wasn't there. I have to admit we were are little disappointed because we didn't know if this meeting would prohibit us going to the orphanage. We spent some time praying that The Lord would open these doors and we know that many of you prayed as well. Less than two hours later, the lady was in her office and we headed to meet her.

The meeting went very smoothly. Everyone's main questions seems to be about how young we are. We thankful knew that ahead of time and we able to adequately answer her questions. We signed the paperwork and headed to the orphanage!!

The orphanage is about an hour outside of the city. We definitely understood what they meant by the roads being bad, but snow by no means fazes the Russ*an drivers. We stopped to pick up our coordinator and then headed to the orphanage.

The building looked very much like the orphanages in Ukraine. It was a concrete three story building with a nice playground outside. The outside of the building was very simple,but the inside was very clean and colorful. We headed up the stairs and through a large playroom into a small office, just off of one of the nurseries. We were told to wait there and that our little boy was in the next room. His class was a large class of 15 children and that they had just gotten up from their nap.

We waited in this small classroom, filled with toys and bright colors. We were told that the children would receive small group or one on one instruction here. As we awaited, we were told that our little boy is pretty fearful of strangers and so the teacher would have a lesson with our child and one other boy to help him get comfortable with us. But then she said, the children are having snack next door--you can look in to see him!

We peeked through the door way and were quickly able to pick out his precious face. He was chowing down on some crackers and milk. He definitely likes to eat! We were able to watch him for a few minutes before the brought him into the rooms where we were. He seemed a little unsure as to who all of these strangers were but quickly began to participate in the lesson. He knew is colors, the animals and could easily match his colors together. The teachers were working to help him learn who we were, asking him to take different animals to mama or papa. He definitely got more comfortable as the time went on.

I have several books in my bag which we were able to pull out and read. He loved the touch and feel animal book--I'm not sure if he had every seen that before. We played with cars and trains for a minute--and then he found the Cheerios! He pretty much demolished them--Emily, we may have another social eater on our hands!

He wasn't as much into the ball, but loved the cars and loved animals. He also really enjoyed the book with all of our pictures in it. He would look at it over and over again. He held that book and the Cheerios with him for the rest of the time we were there. He definitely felt more comfortable with us the longer we stayed-- letting us hold him and tickle him. It was wonderful to see him little personality and to hear his sweet voice and precious laugh.

We were able to meet with the doctors and hear more of his medical information. Hopefully, we will hear his social information today to give us more information about his family.

We are going to head back to the orphanage today to have another chance to visit with him. Please continue to pray for us to began the process of bonding together, for peace and clarity for Josh and I, and for our little boy to be able to see and feel our love. We are so very thankful for your prayers. They are sustaining us. We love you all,

Courtney and Josh