happy dance

Our lawyers called yesterday. Our adoption order has been pre-approved. Ahead of our court date this Friday.

So even though we still have to wait a bit, for our lawyers to get the paperwork and to make a date to get Noah's birth certificate, WE ARE DONE.

=)

Sunday

Is there any sweeter sound than hearing your kids singing,
all God's children singing
Glory, glory, hallelujah
He reigns!

heartbeat

Noah's court hearing is in a week's time - 9 Jan. If all goes well, he will be legally ours then and we can apply for a birth certificate for him, with our names on it as his parents. We have been told that everything should go smoothly; our lawyers aren't anticipating problems. Still, I think I'll still heave a sigh of relief when it is all done.

Even though he already feels like part of our family. He seems to have attached to us well.

Sometimes when I carry him, he'll rest his head on me. I imagine he can hear my heartbeat. And I wonder if he can tell that it's a different heartbeat, different from one that he listened to for nine months.

the things my firstborn says

I am so CONFUSED, Dad!
As K slows down almost to a stop at a red light, and then picks up speed again because light changes to green.

I am covered all over with fleas!!
After we explain that fleas make cats and dogs itch. (It's a daily battle with eczema since moving back home.)

Emma, that was a big fart!
When they're in separate cubicles in a public restroom. And it wasn't even her!

reflections on a year past

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

Deuteronomy 8:2

A year ago, on the last day of 2007, we had only a vague idea of what the year ahead held for us. We knew we would have to move back to Singapore. Our sabbatical in Claremont would draw to an end. We would be back in real life! K would have to go back to work, and the kids to a new preschool.

But God has also taken us down roads unexpected, where we experienced fear, worry, anxiousness, but also God's joy, peace and love.

This year, Noah came home to us. As we worked this out, we have felt God prodding us along. We have felt God working it out for us - it was just little over six months from the point when we definitely decided that we were going to adopt to when Noah came home. We have felt God challenge us to keep believing His plan for us, when we learned of Noah's health issues. We have felt God's love and blessing as Noah settled into our family, and as we adjusted to being a family of five.

K and I continue to learn about God's father heart for us - how He loves, cares and comforts us, just as we do our children. As Josh and Emma grow up, we have felt challenged to become better parents, wiser parents, and have felt keenly our need for God's wisdom. They ask hard questions sometimes!

In our move back home, we have felt loss. It was harder than I had expected to give up all that we had been blessed with in Claremont. It was harder than I had expected to settle into our life back home. But even in this time of transition, I have felt God challenge us to keep to the course that He has planned for us. It would be easy to wander off, to seek something else because I think it is better, easier. But what blessings, what lessons would we be giving up then?

So here, now, this is what I know. God has been real in our lives. He has been faithful. He has blessed. And even in the hard things, we have been taught to trust that God is there, that He knows it all, that His hand is on us, and that His hand guides us.

sitting on a rocking chair

Noah is 8 months old today. He has been home with us for almost 4 months. We are waiting for the court proceedings to be done, so that he is legally ours. He feels like ours already.

We have hardly thought about it: it was just a matter of letting our lawyers work out the process.

Then yesterday the ground start to shake again.

We came across information in the newspapers that could potentially hold things up. In the worst case scenario, I thought it could hamper, even bring to a grinding halt, our legal adoption.

In the couple of hours we had to wait before we could get a hold of our lawyers, I worried, fretted, and threw the equivalent of a four-year-old's tantrum in my conversation with God. (I see a four-year-old's tantrum with more regularity than I would like, so I have a pretty good idea of what it looks like.)

Why did we come so far, if it was not going to work out? Why now, when we were so close to being done with everything? Why now, after we've had so much time with him? And if it didn't work out, how was I supposed to explain everything to the two older kids??

Those couple of hours were plenty of time for me to get scared. To feel fearful. To feel how shaky the ground was.

K finally managed to speak to our lawyers, and we were basically told that our legal adoption should not be held up at all. We continue to pray that this will not change.

When K called me to report what the lawyer had told him, I was in the middle of doing my bible study homework. After we hung up, I went back to it. This was what I went back to...

Sing, O Daughter of Zion;
shout aloud, O Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,
O Daughter of Jerusalem!
The LORD has taken away your punishment,
he has turned back your enemy.
The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you;
never again will you fear any harm.
On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
"Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands hang limp.
The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

Zephaniah 3:14-17

The last verse has always been one of my favourites. But today, God showed me something else, something more. That last verse follows God's assurance that he is keeping me, us, safe: "Do not fear, do not let your hands go limp".

This is what Beth Moore writes: These verses beautifully illustrate that blessed moment in which God's throne becomes a rocking chair and He pulls His fretting, fearful child into His arms and says, "It's ok, I'm right here."

How those words leapt off the page.

How many times have I done this with my children: pull them to me, cuddle them, comfort them, so that in my embrace they go limp with relief.

God didn't tell us how it was all going to work out for us, for Noah, if we would have any trouble with the legal process. We still don't know; we are waiting it out.

But He did pull me into His rocking chair and quiet me with His love.

I am limp with relief.

funny faces

looking like Christmas

This is what we have been busy with this past weekend...

Putting up with tree, with a great deal of help from the two older kids.

A little late in the game, but we decided last year to start getting a special ornament for each of them each year. J was happy to see his car, and E to see her little puppy, that they had picked out at Target last year!

The sight of the presents under the tree is driving Miss E slightly insane though. She CANNOT resist their siren call. Yesterday morning, J tattled on her - she was quietly peeling the wrapper off a little present. I decided that we needed a distraction, and so was obsessed with finding an Advent calendar all day yesterday.

It was not to be, so I decided to make my own.

The kids will get to open up a little package each day - and will each receive a small treat. I've written down a bible verse in each little packet that, all together, tells the story of Jesus' birth. I have grand plans that we'll read it together just before they enjoy their treats - we'll have to see how that goes.

My last project - our family wall.

The idea was conceived while we were still in Claremont: partly executed there, when I bought the prints off Etsy (two of the prints read: love lives here and you are my sunshine). And then finished off with our photos earlier this month. It's taken me almost a month to get them printed, find mattes for them, framed, and then arranged on the wall.
And there's still room for photos to be put around what we have now.

I am off to lie down now.

thanksgiving

A good time as any to count my blessings today, so here goes...

I am thankful for my husband, because he loves me and is always so patient with me.

I am thankful for coffee, because it makes me happy, after a night of interrupted sleep.

I am thankful for interrupted sleep, because it means my kids still need me.

I am thankful for tired legs and an aching back, because it means we spent a busy (and happy!) day out with the kids.

I am thankful for a noisy home, because it means that my kids are home.

I am thankful for funny moments throughout the day, because they make the hard parts of parenting seem a little easier.

I am thankful for good health, because it is not so fun having sick (and whiny) kids.

I am thankful for the hard lessons God keeps bringing my way; if I learn, I grow.

I am thankful for grace.

I am thankful for the long hours that K has to work, because it means we are still taken care of even though Singapore is in a technical recession.

I am thankful for difficult relationships, because it means God is calling me to live beyond myself.

I am thankful for naps.

Happy Thanksgiving!

fear

If you make the Most High your dwelling--
even the LORD, who is my refuge--
then no harm will befall you,

no disaster will come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread upon the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
"Because he loves me," says the LORD, "I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
He will call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life will I satisfy him
and show him my salvation.

Psalm 91:9-16

Two Saturdays ago, K pointed something out to me that I had not thought about before. Noah's CMV makes it a little tricky if I should get pregnant again. The worst time to get CMV really is when you're pregnant, because you'd pass it on to the foetus, and the virus could affect its physical development. Because we're pretty sure Noah caught the virus in utero, we were, just weeks ago, quite worried about how his development would be affected.

My hands are full right now with the three kids, and we are not planning to get pregnant. But that conversation with K, when we talked about not getting pregnant anymore made me sad. Just because we felt we had to close that option off.

The next day, something in me rallied. I thought, living in fear is no way to live. And the sermon we listened to that Sunday was on Psalm 91. What I heard: Do not fear.

We were fearful of how the virus would affect us. But God reminded us that He has our back. He always had it. He brought Noah into our lives. And this may be it for us - three kids is plenty! But if He does give us more, fully healthy or not, it will be His plan for us, for our family.