Hellooooo good friends! No, over here. I'm the one clawing my way out of the deep, dark cave where no blogging is capable of happening. Sorry to sneak up on you like this, but there's nothing better than a sudden, urgent need to drag my booty back to the ol' iPad to type up a little what-what for ya.
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| Vitya |
Really what this is all about is what I like to call "The Long's probably never would've chosen this particular path on their own...EVERRRR...so God pulled a few dizzying stunts and BAM!". I guess you could also call it our "Family growth plan"...whatever. But since many of you kind people have helped us get to this point, and we are gonna need your help to continue, I think the least I owe ya is an update.
Let's do a brief backstory first to catch any newbies up. Picture it. Monroe. 2009. (Please tell me there's at least one Golden Girls fan out there that just thought of Sophia?). The Long's hosted an 11 year old boy & his 15 year old sister. We fell in love and vowed to make them ours. However, our hearts were broken when we discovered that an 8 month age difference would make that impossible. I googled & searched & begged & pleaded, but our girl was too old (or Jono was too young), and the powers that be weren't willing to split them up yet. Insert months of crying. Then we came to a point when we were beyond burdened to trudge on in this business of adoption, and eventually found ourselves in the Democratic Republic of Congo program. You can read about how/why we chose DRC here. Well, an expected 6 month program turned into a little over a year and a half. I won't bore you with those details, but after we found ourselves next in line for a referral of a little girl, we also found ourselves preggers with bio Long #4. Very unintentionally might I add. I know, I know. I'm a skeptic too when I hear, "It was an accident.". But let's just say, we considered filing for child support from CVS. Or making a competitor a namesake as revenge. Lyncoln Walgreens Long. It's got a nice ring to it. So at this point we're all "Ohmygoshwearehavingtwobabies!". And everyone we announced our pregnancy to was all "Oh." 10 second pause. "Con...grat..u..lations?". But we recovered and remembered that, hey! We like kids. We like being parents. And we have an awesome family. So all was well.
THEEEEENNNN...our "too old" girl ages out of her orphanage and goes off to a trade school and we get a ringy ding saying guess what?! Yep. The courts now see fit to separate the siblings since they are separated anyways. After a little (read:a lot) back & forth communication with a couple of our agencies, here's where we landed.
First of all, we definitely knew that we didn't want to waste a single second getting our boy here. We'd already missed 2 1/2 MORE years of his life and we were ready to get. Him. Home.
Second of all, it's apparently kinda frowned upon to bring two children from different countries & very different cultures home around the same time. I may or may not buy this because they're both my kids that I want home quickly, but I digress. We had to decide whether or not we wanted to pause our Congo adoption to pursue our boy, or continue our Congo adoption and hope it didn't take another year to finish it and then pursue our boy. Well, this is where I PRAISED JESUS for holding off on our Congo referral. It would have been so difficult to make that call had we had two sweet faces to decide between. But we knew then that our Congolese daughter was not yet ready for us and God WAS ready for us to get our son.
So, here is where we stand. Our Congo adoption is currently on hold. We have been assured by our agency that we will not lose our place in line for a referral (which is #1 by the way! Eeeeee!). As soon as we get our boy home we can resume our journey to Africa. At this moment our dossier (French for "paperwork that requires more time, energy, gas, money, & doctor visits than you ever thought you were capable of adding to your life") has been submitted to the court in Ukraine and any day we will be finding out our court date! Our estimated travel date is mid September to early October. That's soon!! I'm months away from being the mother of a teenage boy! Ahhhhh! Reword: I'm months away from having my sweet son whom I've waited two and a half years for home. There. Much better.
$18,000, ok. $18,000. That's how much we have to have in hand when they say "It's tiiiime.". And that doesn't include plane tickets or hotel rooms. I'm not the money person in this family. That role is being played by the handsome Jono Long. But even I know that coming up with 20 grand in less than 2 months is a little, how shall I say it? Ridiculously, insanely, impossibly absurd? Yes. That's it. But that's kinda the theme of this little journey of ours.
God: Hey Long's! You have 3 kids, how about adopt a Ukrainian girl?
Us: Um. Ok.
God: Oh. By the way. She has a brother. Adopt him too.
Us: Ummm. Okaay.
God: Actually. No. A little girl from Africa. Do that.
Us: Uh huh. Okay. So just forget about the first 2 you made us fall in love with? Ok.
God: Now here's a baby. Growing inside you. Jacking up your hormones during all this adoption drama. You good with that?
Me: Whynaksdjfb,dkdjhaerfljhserglijzhasf?! Jono: (blank stare)
God: Hey! So, now that you've had 4 kids and fallen in love with a country where you're expecting a daughter from, how bout gettin that boy from Ukraine? Whatcha think?
Us: (Silence. Breathing into paper bags.)
It's definitely been crazy, but in hindsight, it may have been the only way we would've ever ended up getting four precious babies in less than 2 years. Had we been able to bring our Ukrainians home the first time, I'm sure we would've thought it "wise" to wait a while before even thinking of adopting again. But God made sure our hearts were in love with them, then He grew said hearts to love Africa and a little girl there who is ours. Then He stretched those hearts some more to fall in love with a baby boy who we didn't even think we were ready for. It's kinda like phonics. Just wait...it makes sense. Last year my girls HATED doing phonics. They're both smarty pants, so it took me a while to figure out why they dreaded it so much. Then I caught on. Their workbook pages were crammed full. When I turned to a page and looked at it, I seriously did think maybe I had bought college phonics (is there such?) by accident. Once you read through it it really wasn't that bad, but at first glance it seemed like life would never be fun again. So I started covering up the bottom halves of their sheets and making them just do 1 section. Then I'd slide it down so they could do the next section. Before I knew it, they would be done and they SWORE that I got a different book. It was all about slower revelation. I knew that the whole page wasn't so bad, but they couldn't handle seeing it all at once. So I gave them one little piece, then let them adjust to that, then gave them a little more.
You get it now, right? If God had told us in the fall of 2009 to adopt 3 kids and have one more, we would have panicked and, very possibly, never followed through. But one child at a time, God let us adjust, and now we can't imagine life without our little Lync, baby Frica, Vitya, & Oksana.
Oh. Speaking of Oksana. I bet you're wondering what's up with her, right? Well, she's 18 now and unable to be adopted:(. And Ukraine student visas aren't as easy to come by as other countries'. Buuuuttttt, once her brother is a U.S. citizen she will have a better chance of getting approved for a visa. So pray with us puhleeeze.
Well, that's it. I just wanted everyone who has given towards these adoptions to know that all is still progressing. No money has been lost in these many changes.
AND I'm putting out feelers to see how God is going to provide for this next leg of our journey.
AND I needed to explain why everything we own is suddenly in a "For Sale" photo album on Facebook.
Thanks and love to ya!!
Heather
P.S. Did I mention the little Latvian girly that we Long's are much in love with? No? Ok. We'll talk about that later:).
