Did you hear about the 22-year-old woman who burnt her newborn baby to death in New Jersey? This was a recent example of women in crisis who abandon or kill their babies, a situation that is not unique to the US. Recently, a cat in Russia helped to keep an abandoned baby alive by cuddling with him, keeping him warm while also meowing until help arrived. In the US, there are safe haven laws in all 50 states plus DC that allow women in crisis to leave their babies in hospitals, police stations, or fire stations. However, babies still get abandoned, two-thirds of such abandoned babies die. The state of Indiana is considering 'baby boxes' as a way to decrease such deaths, an additional measure to their safe haven process.
I recently found out about an organization that is dedicated to saving babies from abandonment and death - Project Cuddle - a non-profit charity that helps
frightened girls and women in making safe and legal decisions instead of
abandoning their newborn babies. Since finding out about them, I have been following them on Facebook, I am so appreciative of the work that they do that I chose to highlight them on the blog. I also realized my naivete - see, I didn't expect child abandonment to be such a huge problem in this First World USA...but it is. That's why there are safe haven laws. And since those laws are not enough, that's why there are organizations like Project Cuddle, providing women and girls with the chance to do the right thing - whether that is the support to parent or to make an adoption plan. Project Cuddle is not an adoption agency or facilitator, thus rescue families willing to adopt babies through their program work directly with lawyers and the birth mother. Rescue families apply to Project Cuddle, and only get a call if a birth mother is interested in selecting the family to rescue her baby.
Beyond discovering the wonderful lifesaving work of Project Cuddle, the past few weeks also involved about 30 additional hours of training in order to qualify to adopt from foster care. Who knew you can do a 3.5 hour training on car seats? We sat for two days learning about (mostly) the challenges of adopting from foster care - the physical, mental and emotional problems that children from foster care are likely to be struggling with. My reaction after the training - anyone who adopts from foster care after that kind of training has to be both brave and compassionate! Our trainers said they were giving us information so no one would walk into fost-adopt with their eyes closed. Well, our eyes are definitely open. Mostly, with compassion.
So that's whats going on in our neck of the woods. Our training for fost-adopt is complete, now we wait to complete the mountains of paperwork to update our homestudy for foster care (generally, it takes about 6 months from placement to finalization in fost-adopt, thus we have to be licensed as foster parents). We have also applied to be rescue parents with Project Cuddle. That makes three programs - domestic infant adoption, rescue parents, and soon, fost-adopt. Whichever path the Lord chooses to bring a child or children into our home, we are open, available, waiting and hopeful. Your continued prayers are very much appreciated...
Hope-filled Faith
Showing posts with label adoption outreach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adoption outreach. Show all posts
Friday, February 27, 2015
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Waiting as Spiritual Practice
As often happens when I get on Amazon or go to the grocery store, I went to buy one book and ended up with two. The second book is titled Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting by Holly Whitcomb, its been around for about 10 years but I just found it today. Perhaps I found it because hubby and I are in that space, the waiting space. And there is so much to learn in this space, as I have written previously here and here and a few other spots on this blog. I decided to read the book immediately...no patience here :-)
Whitcomb argues that:
We need to actively participate in this dramatic conversion from waiting as something to be endured to waiting as a gift.
Ahem...I try hard to think of waiting positively, but honestly, mostly I feel it is a test of endurance. Whitcomb talks about seven ways that waiting is a gift: it teaches us patience, loss of control, living in the present, compassion, gratitude, humility and trust in God. I read the first chapter on the gift of patience that comes from waiting, let it soak in, and reflected on how waiting to adopt has been teaching me patience.
Whitcomb explains the gift of patience thus:
When we have to wait without knowing the answers, without knowing what's ahead, we are nudged into a new perspective. Waiting without immediate solutions presents us with an opportunity to lean into the unknowing, to let go of the false promise of a quick fix, and to grow in patience. When we can embrace the gift of patience that waiting offers, we can trust beyond the moment.
Truthfully, though I cannot claim to be an expert on patience, I have learned a lot in the waiting space. I have definitely learned that, just because we are waiting does not mean being passive. I think at first I expected to just sit back and wait, and somehow a match would appear through our agency...alas, we needed to be more actively involved in our waiting. A few weeks ago, I finally set up our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FaithChasAdopt opening up a new avenue to communicate with others. One of the results of that was a contact from an expectant mom who is considering adoption, and though there is no match yet, it served as a source of hope that the Facebook page is contributing to our outreach productively.
Just over a month ago, I also set up our fundraising site on YouCaring compelled by the discovery that the costs will likely be above what we had expected. That site has raised over 2000 dollars of the 15K we are hoping to raise. And, it has been a tremendous lesson in humility and expansive patience - the willingness to be vulnerable and share with our wider community.
This past week, we have learned about various interesting situations arising out of our outreach efforts: one involving 5 children under 6 years of age in Florida that both broke our hearts and encouraged us as we saw 9 families willing and able to adopt all those children together; another involving two boys under 2 years of age that we couldn't apply for because the adoptive parents have to live within the state of Florida. While none of these situations could work for us, this week I felt my hope rising, I saw this active patience beginning to bear fruits. I learned that patience means staying with it, living through it, and listening intently to what God might be saying through it all.
So, I am grateful for the gifts of waiting, for the patience that is growing in me. I am grateful for the testimony that waiting can indeed be a gift to me and to those sharing this journey with us. In the fullness of time, I know that God will come through for us, and we will become parents. In the meantime, I will
"be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond" Rumi
Wont you wait actively patiently with me and my hubby?
Patiently, Faith
Whitcomb argues that:
We need to actively participate in this dramatic conversion from waiting as something to be endured to waiting as a gift.
Ahem...I try hard to think of waiting positively, but honestly, mostly I feel it is a test of endurance. Whitcomb talks about seven ways that waiting is a gift: it teaches us patience, loss of control, living in the present, compassion, gratitude, humility and trust in God. I read the first chapter on the gift of patience that comes from waiting, let it soak in, and reflected on how waiting to adopt has been teaching me patience.
Whitcomb explains the gift of patience thus:
When we have to wait without knowing the answers, without knowing what's ahead, we are nudged into a new perspective. Waiting without immediate solutions presents us with an opportunity to lean into the unknowing, to let go of the false promise of a quick fix, and to grow in patience. When we can embrace the gift of patience that waiting offers, we can trust beyond the moment.
Truthfully, though I cannot claim to be an expert on patience, I have learned a lot in the waiting space. I have definitely learned that, just because we are waiting does not mean being passive. I think at first I expected to just sit back and wait, and somehow a match would appear through our agency...alas, we needed to be more actively involved in our waiting. A few weeks ago, I finally set up our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FaithChasAdopt opening up a new avenue to communicate with others. One of the results of that was a contact from an expectant mom who is considering adoption, and though there is no match yet, it served as a source of hope that the Facebook page is contributing to our outreach productively.
Just over a month ago, I also set up our fundraising site on YouCaring compelled by the discovery that the costs will likely be above what we had expected. That site has raised over 2000 dollars of the 15K we are hoping to raise. And, it has been a tremendous lesson in humility and expansive patience - the willingness to be vulnerable and share with our wider community.
This past week, we have learned about various interesting situations arising out of our outreach efforts: one involving 5 children under 6 years of age in Florida that both broke our hearts and encouraged us as we saw 9 families willing and able to adopt all those children together; another involving two boys under 2 years of age that we couldn't apply for because the adoptive parents have to live within the state of Florida. While none of these situations could work for us, this week I felt my hope rising, I saw this active patience beginning to bear fruits. I learned that patience means staying with it, living through it, and listening intently to what God might be saying through it all.
So, I am grateful for the gifts of waiting, for the patience that is growing in me. I am grateful for the testimony that waiting can indeed be a gift to me and to those sharing this journey with us. In the fullness of time, I know that God will come through for us, and we will become parents. In the meantime, I will
"be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond" Rumi
Wont you wait actively patiently with me and my hubby?
Patiently, Faith
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Still Waiting to Adopt
When we began this journey of domestic infant adoption, our adoption social worker told us it could move pretty fast because we are black/African-American parents looking to adopt a black/African-American baby. Apparently, there are not as many non-black parents willing to adopt black babies. And there aren't enough black parents in the system. A few days later, we had a baby girl at home; a beautiful black baby girl. And two weeks later, we experienced every adoptive parent's worst nightmare - a reclaim.
That was March 24, 2014. The whole process from learning about the expectant birth mother, to taking baby home, to the reclaim took less than 3 weeks. Talk about drama! We loved that baby girl. We miss her daily.
After Zawadi was reclaimed, we came back home empty handed and heavy hearted, experiencing this weird, strange kind of grief at the loss of our hopes and dreams of growing our family, desperately missing our little baby girl. The grief was multiplied as the reclaim scratched old wounds - the wounds of infertility and miscarriage. But as people of strong faith, we found our footing again. And told our adoption worker we wanted to go on with the process, we wanted to remain on the list to adopt.
We are about to enter the month of July, my birthday month - am a fourth of July baby! I should be excited about my upcoming birthday. Instead, I find myself feeling ambivalent about it, and sad that I am getting a year older and still, motherhood continues to elude me. We celebrated our anniversary in May, and that too was very understated. Even sad.
This week, our hardworking adoption worker emailed asking whether she could share this blog with a family that had just experienced a reclaim. I said off course, its a blog in the public domain, its supposed to be shared...I went to that family's blog and read about their reclaim. They had their baby for two days before he was reclaimed. They had all these beautiful pictures of their almost son, the nursery, their family - it scratched my healing wound. And reminded me that we, the Ngunjiri-Nowlin family are not alone. There are many others across this nation who are walking this path, waiting, hoping and praying. We are not alone. My heart breaks for this family whose pain is so raw, I pray that they will heal and keep the hope alive.
I am also reminded we are not alone because we have family and friends across the world praying, waiting and hoping with us.
As I try to energize and motivate myself to prepare the nursery - our initial placement happened so quickly we hadn't prepared the nursery; afterwards we didn't have the emotional energy to do it - now I want to do it. I want to go in there and paint, convince hubby to set up the crib, etc. I want to walk in faith, to believe that this waiting shall come to a good end. While I wish that we'd been matched during the summer months, I have to remind myself that the timing is not up to me. The God who began a good work in us, that God will surely bring it to completion. Nothing is impossible with God...not even the intricacies of domestic infant adoption!
So here's to walking in faith, to nesting, to waiting in hope.
PS: If you are in the US, please feel free to share our story with those in your circles. You never know who might know about an expectant birth mother who could potentially be our match, or a black baby who is free to be adopted (we can adopt from anywhere in the US). You can contact us through the comments on this page (I get them first before they post on the page), or email me directly.
That was March 24, 2014. The whole process from learning about the expectant birth mother, to taking baby home, to the reclaim took less than 3 weeks. Talk about drama! We loved that baby girl. We miss her daily.
 | |
| I fell in love with Chas all over again as I watched him with Zawadi... | I yearn for him to experience fatherhood for life |
After Zawadi was reclaimed, we came back home empty handed and heavy hearted, experiencing this weird, strange kind of grief at the loss of our hopes and dreams of growing our family, desperately missing our little baby girl. The grief was multiplied as the reclaim scratched old wounds - the wounds of infertility and miscarriage. But as people of strong faith, we found our footing again. And told our adoption worker we wanted to go on with the process, we wanted to remain on the list to adopt.
We are about to enter the month of July, my birthday month - am a fourth of July baby! I should be excited about my upcoming birthday. Instead, I find myself feeling ambivalent about it, and sad that I am getting a year older and still, motherhood continues to elude me. We celebrated our anniversary in May, and that too was very understated. Even sad.
 |
| Faith and Chas hanging out in Utah during our anniversary week |
I am also reminded we are not alone because we have family and friends across the world praying, waiting and hoping with us.
As I try to energize and motivate myself to prepare the nursery - our initial placement happened so quickly we hadn't prepared the nursery; afterwards we didn't have the emotional energy to do it - now I want to do it. I want to go in there and paint, convince hubby to set up the crib, etc. I want to walk in faith, to believe that this waiting shall come to a good end. While I wish that we'd been matched during the summer months, I have to remind myself that the timing is not up to me. The God who began a good work in us, that God will surely bring it to completion. Nothing is impossible with God...not even the intricacies of domestic infant adoption!
So here's to walking in faith, to nesting, to waiting in hope.
PS: If you are in the US, please feel free to share our story with those in your circles. You never know who might know about an expectant birth mother who could potentially be our match, or a black baby who is free to be adopted (we can adopt from anywhere in the US). You can contact us through the comments on this page (I get them first before they post on the page), or email me directly.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Faith & Chas Waiting to Adopt
The title I chose for this post reflects some of what we just learned in two days of adoption training - that we are supposed to be letting people in our circle know about our adoption plans, so that they would tell others, because apparently, many US domestic infant adoptions now happen through outreach. Adoption outreach involves all the activities that prospective adoptive parents engage in for the purpose of reaching out as potential resources for birth parents. According to those in the adoption field, it is important for adoptive parents to take an active role in reaching out through their network, using resources such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook, postcards, and such, to spread the news and essentially, 'market' themselves to birth parents.
Most of us at the adoption training felt uncomfortable about the idea of putting ourselves out there in this way. But the more the trainers talked about it, the more it made sense that, in this day and age, where we get jobs and even meet prospective partners (marital and otherwise) through networking and the internet, we would use similar pathways in the adoption journey. Essentially we could have our profile in a big book and hope that birth parents find us by walking into Lutheran Social Services of MN, or we could engage in outreach activities ourselves so we can feel like we are actively involved. Either way, "Waiting to Adopt" still captures the space we are living in right now.
With our failed adoption still so vivid though, "waiting to adopt" is not a comfortable space to occupy. Unlike everyone else in the room during those those two days, we have already experienced every adoptive parents worst nightmare - a failed adoption, or more correctly, a "reclaim". A reclaim is the term they use for babies who are taken back by their birth parents before final consents have been signed. In Minnesota, birth parents have 10 (working) days within which to change their minds. So we are waiting to adopt after a reclaim, with all the attendant fears and frustrations, hopes and aspirations. That reclaim stole our innocence.
After the training, I found myself feeling my hope was getting depleted. On the one hand, it is great to learn that there is something we can do, that we can engage in outreach in order to increase our chances of connecting with birth mothers. On the other hand, it still feels like waiting to adopt is a space where we adoptive parents have no control; we can do all manner of outreach, but in the end, we wait and wait for birth parents to find us or choose us.
At church today, I received just the jolt I needed to rejuvenate my hope. Pastor Jon Hauser of Prairie Heights Community Church preached about GREATNESS derived from Luke 1. Of the 8 lessons he derived from that chapter, this is what jumped out at me (from Luke 1:5-7):
Don't allow DIFFICULTIES and DISAPPOINTMENTS to define your greatness. God is waiting to DEFINE and REFINE your greatness during difficult times.
So today, I am reminded not to let the difficulty of the waiting to adopt space, or the disappointments of the failed adoption and the infertility that brought us here, dissuade me from believing in the promises of God. Zechariah and his wife were old and infertile too, but God came through for them eventually. Their son was born into greatness, having the awesome responsibility of heralding the coming Christ. So though waiting to adopt is an uncomfortable space to occupy, I aim to occupy it with hope, with faith that God will eventually come through on His promises. May this refiner's fire leave me purer, stronger, with even more faith than before this journey began.
Most of us at the adoption training felt uncomfortable about the idea of putting ourselves out there in this way. But the more the trainers talked about it, the more it made sense that, in this day and age, where we get jobs and even meet prospective partners (marital and otherwise) through networking and the internet, we would use similar pathways in the adoption journey. Essentially we could have our profile in a big book and hope that birth parents find us by walking into Lutheran Social Services of MN, or we could engage in outreach activities ourselves so we can feel like we are actively involved. Either way, "Waiting to Adopt" still captures the space we are living in right now.
With our failed adoption still so vivid though, "waiting to adopt" is not a comfortable space to occupy. Unlike everyone else in the room during those those two days, we have already experienced every adoptive parents worst nightmare - a failed adoption, or more correctly, a "reclaim". A reclaim is the term they use for babies who are taken back by their birth parents before final consents have been signed. In Minnesota, birth parents have 10 (working) days within which to change their minds. So we are waiting to adopt after a reclaim, with all the attendant fears and frustrations, hopes and aspirations. That reclaim stole our innocence.
After the training, I found myself feeling my hope was getting depleted. On the one hand, it is great to learn that there is something we can do, that we can engage in outreach in order to increase our chances of connecting with birth mothers. On the other hand, it still feels like waiting to adopt is a space where we adoptive parents have no control; we can do all manner of outreach, but in the end, we wait and wait for birth parents to find us or choose us.
At church today, I received just the jolt I needed to rejuvenate my hope. Pastor Jon Hauser of Prairie Heights Community Church preached about GREATNESS derived from Luke 1. Of the 8 lessons he derived from that chapter, this is what jumped out at me (from Luke 1:5-7):
Don't allow DIFFICULTIES and DISAPPOINTMENTS to define your greatness. God is waiting to DEFINE and REFINE your greatness during difficult times.
So today, I am reminded not to let the difficulty of the waiting to adopt space, or the disappointments of the failed adoption and the infertility that brought us here, dissuade me from believing in the promises of God. Zechariah and his wife were old and infertile too, but God came through for them eventually. Their son was born into greatness, having the awesome responsibility of heralding the coming Christ. So though waiting to adopt is an uncomfortable space to occupy, I aim to occupy it with hope, with faith that God will eventually come through on His promises. May this refiner's fire leave me purer, stronger, with even more faith than before this journey began.
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