Feeling all the feels tonight

Today we received both good news and not so good news.

The good news from our adoption agency is that the regional authority who previously refused to sign off on our kids' adoption has been replaced by a new authority who sympathizes with our situation and says she won't oppose any appeals we make.

So our team in Ethiopia presses forward, working with their experts on how best to word their latest appeal. We expect to get news in the next few weeks on that. The team says they are "heartened," but they don't want us to get our hopes up too high.

The bad news is that our 10 year old girl has been very ill. In their last update, I noticed that she looked really thin, and her skin and hair had tell-tale signs of poor nutrition.

At the end of December she and other children at her school were given anti-parasitic medicine. Several kids got sick after taking the medication, including M. She had such a bad reaction to it that she ended up in the hospital, in the severe acute malnutrition ward. The combination of poor nutrition and bad medicine were more than M's little body could handle. Her blood counts were terrible, and she required two blood transfusions and a 6-day stay in the hospital.

She's back in the orphanage now, but she will stay home from school for a few weeks until she gets stronger.

If you have ever had a loved one hospitalized, you can understand a bit of what we're feeling. We're so thankful M received the care she needed. At the same time, having your daughter hospitalized for something that could be prevented with proper nutrition and clean water is frustrating. Being 7,000 miles away is frustrating. Thinking about your daughter being hospitalized, without any family to advocate and/or care for her is heartbreaking. Plus, she was in the hospital during Ethiopian Christmas. Alone. On Christmas.

It makes me want to punch something. It is infuriating and annoying and frustrating and disheartening and confusing and I just want her home so she never spends another Christmas alone. I never want her in the hospital again without a parent to advocate for her, I don't want her living in a place where anti-parasitic meds are necessary and yet unregulated.

So while we are glad there was a sliver of hope today in the adoption case, it's horrific that these children, our children, are still in Ethiopia when they should've been here 12 months ago. It's terrible that some people seem to care more about their pride and their politics than about giving kids a safe place to live with a mom and dad to love and care for them.

I could go on and on, but I know you feel the same way. It's maddening.

I don't know how this story will end. Just when I've given up hope, we get a glimmer. Just when I've convinced myself that they'll never come home and perhaps it is for the best, something like this happens, and I know the reason we're infuriated is because we love these children so much.

Love>7,867 miles
Love>nationality
Love>skin color
Love>language
Love>everything

...and there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time...

This video was shot just 80 miles south of where our Ethiopian children live, 31 years ago. Their parents and grandparents survived this devastation. The U.N. has warned that the current drought in the Tigray Region--where our children live--could become comparable to this Famine of 1984. #BearingWitness #NeverAgain

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I never imagined that another Christmas would be upon us and half of our family would still be across the ocean. The three stockings I bought last year for two young girls and an almost-teenage boy are still in storage. And little ornaments I made for them last December were hung on the tree two weeks ago with sadness in my heart.

Yesterday I opened the dresser drawers in the girls' room, and I found neatly folded shirts and socks and underwear--still in the package. A little jewelry bag that I had forgotten about caught my eye--gold necklaces with the initial of their first names. Christmas dresses and lacy sweaters hang in the closet, and D's brand new bike--the one he's been dreaming of--still sits in the garage, tags dangling from the handlebars.

Ready for school

And I wonder. I wonder if the clothes will still fit them. I wonder if D has learned to ride a bike. I wonder if they will have gifts this Christmas. I wonder if they have food to eat, medicine when they're sick, warm beds on cold nights, and hugs and kisses when they are sad.

We got our bi-monthly update on them today, only 2 months overdue, and I couldn't find a single picture where our now-10-year old girl is smiling. She's the more reserved, quiet one of the bunch, but still, it made me sad.

The report says the children frequently ask about us--when are we coming for them and why we aren't there aleady. D tells the orphanage manager that he's trusting God that someday, someday, he will meet us in person. And the orphanage manager confessed to the social worker that he often ignores or avoids their questions--because he doesn't know how to answer them.

And yet, there's still a glimmer of hope. Hope that the drought in the Tigray Region will force the hand of the regional officials who maintain they can take care of their own; that they don't need foreigners adopting their children.

So despite the irony, we continue to pray for rain. Rain to quench their dried-up land. Rain to nourish their fields and provide food for their people. Rain to melt the hearts of stone.

After all, isn't Advent a season of Hope? Hope in miracles. Hope in goodness. Hope in humanity.

And most of all, hope that the boy Mary delivered ... will soon deliver our boy and his sweet little sisters.