The Body at work

One week into this parenting thing and we just continue to throw more and more challenges into the mix. While our little girl is 17 months old, she has the mental and physical development of a child who is 7-9 months old. This in and of itself is not a disability but rather a result of the life she has experienced and something most every orphan in China faces. The good news is that just like every other orphan, with some love and time she will overcome it and be just like any other child her age. With all that said, the new challenge we faced the last few days is picking up and moving to a completely different part of the country. It may not sound like much but when you put it with the fact that she has been ripped from the only home she has ever known, she has a special need, she has just overcome an infection and a fever of 101 degrees, and the fact that we are new parents, it was quite an experience!

Before I tell you more about the trip, let me tell you a little bit about the amazing friendships we are forming with some of the families that we are with who are also adopting special needs children through CCAI.  There is a family who worked with the IMB for 2 years, a family who has been continually praying for us, a family who has many of the same passions as us, and many other families who are ultimately our brothers and sisters in Christ!  Overall, our travel group has been a beautiful picture of the church as a group of believers working together for the glory of God!  We have been so encouraged by them and so thankful for their wisdom and guidance for us as new parents!  They have blessed in more ways than we can ever pay them back.

One family we have gotten especially close with is the Roark family.  They, like us, are in their early thirties and first time parents.  It has been a blast learning to be parents a long side of them.  No matter what happens, we can just step back for a moment and just laugh at it together.  The other night we went to dinner together and it was a great time of encouraging each other and and just slowing down and enjoying life as new parents with our children and each other.

The next morning, however, started the challenge of traveling with Promise for the first time.  She had grown fond of our room for the week and was excited every time we returned to the room. Now we were packing up everything and moving her again. The difference this time was that she was moving with her forever family this time.  The majority of the travel went extremely well but that doesn't mean that we weren't nervous going into it. Because she is cleft lip/cleft palate, she is prone to have many problems with ear infections and being able to equalize the pressure in her ears. Our fear was that on the plane when the pressure changed, it would cause her great amounts of pain.  Our plan was to feed her as we were taking off and hope that would help her equalize the pressure in her ears.  Well, daddy messed up that plan by accidentally letting her see the bottle before we took off and she had a meltdown.  We had held off her feeding time for a bit for this plan and she was hungry. To make a long story short, we fed her before take off and she was happy the whole time.  She did get fidgety towards the end but we made it.  She even came very close to falling asleep!

A point of prayer for you prayer warriors is that she will not get bored on the three long flights home in a week, that there will be no problem with her ears at any point, and that she will even sleep good on the trip.

We finally made it to our new temporary home and she actually loves it here!  What we are discovering with her is that she is not so concerned with the place, the food, the atmosphere or any other variable; she is only concerned with whether or not her mommy and daddy are there with her and continuing to love her!  It is an awesome picture of the great joy we get when we are in the presence of our heavenly Father. After all, in His presence is the fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11). There is nothing else that will bring true joy. Ultimately, heaven is not going to be about the gates of pearl, the streets of gold, or the crystal sea. It is going to be about spending eternity with our Lord and Savior and knowing that He loves us more than we can ever imagine! He is the source of all joy and He is the reason that Heaven really is Heaven!

We absolutely love her laugh and have heard many of you say that you also enjoy it too so below is a video or Promise cracking herself up with an empty water bottle. Enjoy!