Jodi Speaks Her Mind

There’s no place like (a church) home 7/8/2007

We have been attending a new church since last October.  Prior to that, for a few months we were attending a mega-church that had a sign language ministry.  We liked the access to Deaf people and sign language, but felt we were not being spiritually nourished very much.  Finally, we stumbled across meek little 2 Rivers Church by way of a car sticker and then a visit to their website and subsequent visit to a church service.  It’s a very small congregation that was originally a church-plant from Wisconsin of all places.  We felt immediately at home, though, and have been consistently attending ever since.  We became members in February, and Adelina is thoroughly enjoying the children.  If you’re local, feel free to come for a visit.  We’d love to have you.

Life…at full speed 4/24/2006

I barely have time on my computer these days, so what little time I do have I am usually reading and responding to e-mails and the few message boards that have become my community of support these days. I barely have time to read blogs much less write for my own. But I continue to desire to keep up with it, so if you guys keep on with the gentle encouragements (thanks Mary and Tulipgirl!) I’ll keep doing what I can.

Steve and I realized last night that we met Adelina exactly 8 months ago and marveled that so little - and so much - time had passed since that Providential day. We brought her home around 6 months ago, and it is when we remember this that we realize how far she has come and what an amazing child she is. At the same time, how can you love someone so much and yet still feel like you barely know them!? She is fully our daughter and yet at times a complete mystery to us. We look at each other and ask, “what do you suppose she is thinking?”

As I mentioned recently, we are now trying to find a new church, and this change in routine has been very difficult for Adelina. She usually expresses her displeasure with whining, defiance and tantrums (so much fun), but yesterday it was just with sadness and tears. We still aren’t sure what was/is going on with her but all we knew to do was to pray and offer all the love and support we could. Really God, what is she thinking and feeling? It is hard because she can maybe tell us she is sad but she doesn’t know how to tell us WHY she is sad. We play guessing games and sometimes she nods, but there is a lack of consistency in her responses that leads us to doubt that she comprehends her own emotions. I look forward to the day when she can respond to simple “why” questions. It is so hard to have a child with a five year old mind and a lot of life experiences, but the language of an 18-24 month old.

Adelina is now attending two schools - one in the morning for preschool and another in the afternoon specifically for speech help. This schedule is intensive, but it is working out really well. She loves both schools and teachers. The afternoon school requires a 40 minute drive each way, which with gas prices what they are is going to be costly. But it is worth it. Her speech is continuing to improve both in terms of production (how many words she can speak) and pronunciation.

She continues to show a strong motivation towards speaking and she is also at a stage where she will do a lot of echoing (whatever I say, she’ll try to say). This is great in terms of giving her practice speaking longer phrases and sentences, but when you are trying to ask her a question, it is most aggravating! “Adelina, who gave you the sucker?” and she replies “who, who?” and nods excitedly. I then repeat the question in sign and sometimes will get a response, which I then feed back to her in spoken English. “Oh, the bus driver gave you the sucker” to which she will respond, “yes!!!” which is really “yaaaaahhh” no matter how many times we say “yessss”. I’ve never parented a 2-year old, but I’m guessing this is a pretty standard exchange. Anyone???

Adelina now has favorites, which of course change periodically. Her favorite colors are yellow and purple (and occasionally pink, but not often). Her favorite meat is sandwich turkey. Her favorite activity is swimming (or trying to swim) at the pool. She continues to show strong social tendencies and enjoys visiting with the neighbors and making new friends. She made a new friend at her afternoon school the other day just by boldly walking up to a little girl and putting her hand in the other girls hand and guiding her up onto the play equipment. Anyone who has ever thought this girl is shy is wrong - she is so not shy! She now loves to climb trees, she can swing so high she makes the swingset shake, she makes beautiful watercolor paintings (see also Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI - links are in the site), knows most of her alphabet, is trying to count objects to ten, but still has trouble with this. She has recently mastered the “wh- question” facial expression and uses it whenever she doesn’t want to answer a question and sometimes just at random. She is incredibly goofy a LOT of the time!

It is funny how everyone always comments about how much Adelina looks like Steve and I. The truth will be revealed in the summer, though, because this girl tans so easily and naturally. She is a lovely, smooth, brown already, and Steve and I will remain a pale, freckled white. Oh well, we’ll just call her our gypsy girl in the summers.

BTW, sorry for the lack of photos. Our camera actually died, and we are waiting for a new one we finally got around to ordering. We will try to get up some recent photos very soon!

So much to say, so little time… 4/1/2006

I haven’t failed to post because there isn’t anything to write about, but rather that life has been throwing a lot our way. I’ll try to sum up here, and I reserve the right (ah, blogger’s rights) to elaborate on them more soon.

Here is what has been going on with us - in no particular order:

Adelina - schools and more schools: I have been visiting different educational options to consider for kindergarten next year. This was very overwhelming at first, and we are still undecided, but I am pleased to report that we do have two reasonable options to choose from, although one of them is significantly more costly than the other. Still, choice is always a good thing in matters such as this.

Adelina - progress: Of course Adelina continues to progress in both her ability to convey her thoughts and feelings in sign language, and in her ability to speak English. She is now learning to speak two-word combinations, and it will be many months before she begins to speak in sentences, but we are encouraged by her rate of progress and her obvious internal motivation to speak. We wrestled a bit with whether or not to phase out sign language, but the truth is we all love it so much that we will stick to our original plan to raise her bilingually to the best of our ability. This means we will continue to learn and develop sign language ourselves. It’s really time for us to get a better grasp on the grammar and syntax of ASL, which thus far has eluded us, especially since we thus far have emphasized spoken English along with our signing. If we are going to be bilingual, then each language needs its own proper grammar and syntax. It’s time for us to expand our circle of friends to include more deaf families. We have a sweet neighbor who is deaf, but she (and her family) use Signed Exact English not ASL. And, yes, they are very different.

Church: We recently said goodbye to the church we have attended for 4.5 years. We now find ourselves faced with the hopeful but also somewhat overwhelming task of finding a new church home. It is really an interesting position to find ourselves in - and largely an unexpected one. Still, I’ve done some reading on various Christian blogs, and definitely have some new thoughts on this topic that I may explore further. Well, maybe they aren’t thoughts as much as questions: what is the purpose of the local church? how should one go about seeking a church? how do today’s churches align with the biblical expression of church? should they align? is church a place for believers to grow or for unbelievers to meet God? can it be both? and so on… Definitely some good stuff to be chewing on. Thus far, we have enjoyed services at Cornerstone.

Family: We had a wonderful visit by Steve’s parents complete with the sweetest and most genuine tears shed by Adelina upon their departure. She loves her grandparents so much (both sets)!! While they were here, we checked out the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum, The Wildlife World Zoo, and Adelina got her first taste of Taliesen West (only the bookstore).

Loss: Becky Richardson, the wife of Oscar Richardson, the pastor of the Chesapeake Vineyard Church we attended in Virginia, was unexpectedly taken to be with the Lord. Oscar co-officiated our wedding and their family is very dear to us. She will be sorely missed on earth, but I have no doubt she is beyond herself with joy, as worshipping the Lord was her absolute most favorite thing in the world to do, and now she can do it without hindrance or interruption. We love you, Becky, and will miss your smile and your presence!

A Perfect Garden 8/21/2005

We are heading into the week feeling incredibly renewed and having a fresh hope for the future.

“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

We do not understand why God has brought us through all that He has, nor do we know what He will do next, but we have been given a glimpse of what God is doing in us. In a nutshell, we feel he is plowing us, stirring up all the hard places and and making our hearts ready for planting. We ourselves prepared the garden according to our own plans. We moved the soil around and prepared the rows for the seeds to be planted. Then we looked to God to deposit the seeds into the prepared rows. What we did not know or understand is that the Gardener has His own idea for how our garden should look, and He has been doing His own soil-readying process. It hurts being plowed, de-thatched, and rearranged, but who is the soil to question the Gardener? Being the Master Gardener, He will plant only the most carefully selected seeds into soil which is uniquely sifted and ready to receive these special seeds. When the soil is ready, God alone will plant the seed or seeds of His choosing into the readied soil, and the result will be nothing short of a perfect garden. Our family will be made in the Gardener’s timing and to His liking, and it will be everything that it is meant to be.

“I (Jesus) am the true vine, and my Father is the Gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” John 15:1-2

The hardest post I’ve ever written 8/13/2005

Ok, folks, here it is. I’m going to be really transparent on my blog today. I generally try to be, but I know that it might make some of you uncomfortable. Still I believe we glorify God most when we are real. I don’t promise it will be pretty…just honest. We believe that the journey, the process, is as important as the outcome of this trip. And most of the journey is an internal one. So here is a glimpse of my internal journey…

Obviously, we were hit pretty hard by the outcome of this second referral. It was so hard to say no, and looking back it wasn’t even so much because of the boy, though he was sweet and we pray hard that he is adopted by a loving family very very soon. The reason it was so difficult for us (and me especially) was because the cycle of frustration and doubt (along with a lot of waiting) followed by hope and a sense of possibility followed by crushing disappointment followed by hope for “the next time” followed by frustration and doubt…etc. etc… is a cycle we thought we had overcome when we came to grips with our decision to adopt and left our infertility behind. Through grace and trust, I had reached a place of peace and knew that this path of adoption was the path that God had chosen for us - at least for now - for our first child. With this peace and sense of God’s will, we moved forward towards adopting.

But as we experienced the repeated disappointment on Friday with this second referral, I found all those past emotions flooding back - overwhelming, suffocating, dark, and despairing, and worst of all - a feeling of hopelessness. I feared that “the cycle” was going to take over my life again. I cried most of the way back from Cherkasy (the region where we were) to Kiev. I cried a good bit for the boy, but mostly, selfishly, I cried for myself and my own hurt as the years of pain tried to descend upon me like a dark cloud - a ghastly and familiar dark cloud. But I was not overcome! God has done a real work of change in me, and while it was one of the hardest battles fought yet, even as I cried, I cast my fears before the Lord, and felt them, slowly, one by one, lift away. The difficulty with this process of “casting your fears on Him” is that each fear, each painful memory, has to be felt all over again (ouch), let go, and replaced with God’s truth, with His version of the situation because His version is the only right version. What seems awful and disappointing today will lead to God’s perfect will and utter joy tomorrow. If we accept this and surrender to His leading, we can live a life of adventure, peace, and joy that is beyond imagining. Sometimes, like last night, we get a glimpse, a foretaste so to speak, of that perfect joy and peace that can only be found in Him.

Back to the story…

Still feeling heavy-hearted, we returned to Kiev and got settled into our new flat. The first thing we did was get online to read the e-mails and comments that had been sent since Thursday. I was starting to feel a bit better, but still quite emotional. I was still fighting the internal demons of doubt and fear. I was seeing the giants again and feeling they were growing in strength, numbers, and power to defeat us. How were we possibly going to get a good referral in this kind of environment!? Why? How? It seemed impossible. We sat down and got online to read over e-mails and comments. We were feeling very tired, emotionally drained, and it didn’t take much to get us crying. E-mails from family and friends have touched us deeply here and helped to keep us connected to our “real life” outside of this bizarre adventure we seem to be in the middle of. Sometimes they contain news and sometimes they just let us know folks are thinking about us and praying for us. Sometimes they contain actual prayers that make us cry as our spirits agree and respond to the collective work that God is doing. Sometimes there are scriptures that people feel are encouraging or pertinent to our situation, and these are read with hope and gratitude. But tonight there was even more, and it seemed like God was speaking to us in a new way, more clearly and more specifically. Our God, it would seem, has us here going through this process and experiencing these difficulties and heartaches, and obstacles, for one particular reason - and this is in fact the thing we wanted most - that He might be glorified through the process and most especially by the result. Be careful, they say, what you ask for, because you might get it.

God has basically promised us that He will be faithful to complete this process here. We will find our children and there will be joy for everyone to share in. There have been several prophecies spoken about this and the latest are downright dizzying in their awesomeness.

We want to publicly worship and honor God as the orchestrator of all of this, and we give Him thanks in advance for His faithfulness to us. When it comes to pass, we hope that all of you who have witnessed it will do more than just be happy for us as we start our new life as parents - but that you will seriously consider the power, goodness, and faithfulness of God and praise Him for it! And, if you do not know Him personally, consider the joy of surrendering to Him. Knowing God is the sweetest, most amazing thing in the world and I desire that all of you would know the joy, peace, and thrill that is found in Him. Just like we will never be the same after this experience, those who give their lives to God truly are never the same again. Never - that’s eternity, and it can start at any moment.

To Him be the glory!!