Praying to Pass

Posting from an actual computer, not an IPhone.  My, but this is nice.  I'm up at the master's hearing office, where he is presently using the children as lab rats for one more cram session before Wednesday's state board exam in Austin.  This is the test that he failed one portion of in January.  The one that HE MUST PASS for his salary to go up--to double to be exact.  We NEED his salary to double.   But I thought we needed it in January and the Lord had other ideas.
I'm doing well.  I thought pregnancy would be more difficult this time around ('cause I ain't as young as I used to be), but so far, so good.  Maybe I won't feel the difference until the later stages.  I was so horribly sick with K (and I was only nineteen then!) for the first six months, that any discomfort seems mild by comparison.  I'm not sleeping well at night due to vivid pregnancy dreams--but I've had these with every baby.  And even with making an afternoon nap a priority, by this time of night, I long to creep beneath the covers.  Next week, I see the obgyn for my first really real (in that an MD will finally examine me) doctor's appointment.
I have been spoiled by two incredibly easy, incredibly fast adoptions, for sure.  This whole process seems as though it will take FOREVER.  And why that should bother me, I don't know.  I'm not ready for a baby right now, anyway.  I should say, another baby, because, of course, Levi is still very much a baby. Levi and the new baby will be as close as Marina and Ian in age (19 months), but we didn't bring Marina home until she was 13 months old, so we never experienced two babies in the house.  I'm not sure we can swing two hinnies in diapies--which brings me back to praying that the master passes that test.

Oh, The Places You'll Go

Does anyone know how to get pictures from facebook up on your blog?  I feel bereft without photos of my family making periodic appearances here.
Things are at an odd place.  Odd for many reasons.  Unsettling.  I'm considering opening up a private blog to unload some of those.  But then I wonder if I should "unload?"  Is that just a handy veneer for "complain?"  A thing I'm commanded not to do?  Anyway, opening up my blog and seeing my beautiful children's faces always was grounding, fortifying for me.  Seeing as financial relief is nowhere in sight, we will not be purchasing a new home computer in the foreseeable future, so I will be on this laptop.  I'm getting better at maneuvering on this thing, but still can't figure out the pictures.  There must be a way.
Back to the financial part.  The master did not pass his state board exams.  At least we are 90% sure he did not.  That means that his salary will not double at the end of this month as it would have had he passed.  From a purely human standpoint, we NEEDED his salary to double.  I don't see a way out of this place we are at, but I will keep looking.
We were called to Houston, Friday.  Levi's birthmother was very ill.  Actually, we feared she might die.  We had not had any contact from her since before Christmas.  Our cards were returned with the note, "No such person at this address," and our text went unanswered.  We feared, like so many open adoption placements, our contact with her had fizzled out.  On Wednesday morning early, Levi stood for the first time.  My first impulse was to grab the phone and text her.  But there was nowhere to send my text.  I got  the kids dressed and went out to do my shopping.  It was a cold, wet morning.  And she was weighing heavy on my heart.  Did she have shelter?  Was she fed?  She should know that he stood up today.  It is something I know she would want to know. Where was she?
I came home from the trip to find an email from our agency.  God was about to answer all of my questions.  She was in a hospital, well fed, but sick.  Of course, I wanted to come see her, but agency didn't know if she would be open to our seeing her that way.  When they mentioned our offer to visit she broke down crying, saying that she had been praying that God would send us to see her. She is better now.  Maybe out of the hospital.  We don't know.  She doesn't have a phone right now.  She was overjoyed to see Levi--that he was strong and healthy.  She picked my brain about him.  There was a man there in the room with her.  Her new "boyfriend."  (Pimp?) A Latino gangster.  Of course, he didn't introduce himself that way, but that's what he was.  Exactly like the one who tried to have her killed nine months ago, and the hired hit man who left her badly beaten instead of dead.  An attack which caused ongoing infections (that still might claim her life) and precipitated the birth of my son.  Why?  Why doesn't she get out?  Why doesn't she stop the cycle?  I want Levi to know her.  She is so sweet and optimistic; I can't help but wonder how she came to the place she is.  Doubtful that I will ever be close enough to her to ask.  Oh, Lord, I'm sick with worry for her.
On a lighter note: Never thought I'd be sitting in a hospital room with my husband, my son, his birthmother and a gang banger having a pleasant conversation as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  And I bet they never thought they'd be doing the same with a Baptist pastor and his wife.  Makes me smile to think of it.

Levi, Marina, and Jesus

I just got off the phone with the legal assistant in Houston. We will, most likely, finalize on Levi's adoption on February the 24th.  I'm excited to get that lose end tied up. But strangely, another adoption is weighing heavy on my mind and heart today.
 Marina's adoption into the Kingdom.  These days, Marina is the first person I see when I wake.  After many months of power struggle over her hair and the grooming thereof--which brought her perilously close to a second butch cut--she has submitted to my arrangement of her do's.  It crossed my mind that in three short months she will be eight years old.  Wow!  That shocks me.  How can she be that old?  This is the age I start to look for the signs.  The signs that God is knocking at their heart's door, the signs that they are listening, that they are beginning to see their need of a Savior.  Sometimes, they show themselves in their artwork--stick-figure drawings of Jesus on the cross or a love letter to God.  Sometimes, it is questions from the back seat about last week's Sunday School Lesson, or a face of rapt attention during service.  Signs that I haven't seen in Marina in the smallest degree.
And so, I pray.  'When you can't trace His hand, trust His heart,' right?  I pray that I will be ready to council her, maybe answer questions that she will never ask out loud. Perhaps ask some of my own.  She's been taught the Truth from infancy on, but she's characterized by stubbornly clinging to fantasies in total contradiction to what she had been told, and wouldn't Satan love to spread some lies in her heart and watch them take root?  From a child that never did anything by the book, I shouldn't look for the normal indicators.  In the words of the Russian caregiver on the day we took her from the orphanage, "That Olga....she goes her own way." Parenting her for seven years, I can Amen that statement.  She goes her own way, in her own time, with her own little way of walkin' it.
But, ultimately, for peace, love, joy and life, her way must become His way.