Leading Me to the ROCK that is higher than I

The morning after we returned from Haiti I woke up in an upstairs bedroom at the Downey's in Orlando. At first I thought I was still in Haiti and instinctively rolled over to look at the mat on the floor beside my bunk where Spendy would've been. Sorrow swept over me and tears filled my eyes as I realized I didn't have Spendy beside me. I prayed for God to comfort me and Spendy. The verse that came to my mind was, "Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I." Truly God has done just that over the the last days. He has led me to Himself.

Comfort has come as I have cried out as a child to my Father. It has come in the form of Scripture, like the one above, from music- Fernando Ortega singing, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt and power," and also, "More love to Thee, O Christ, More love to Thee! Hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee...", for the great temptation in the midst of adversity is to doubt God's goodness, so I need constant reminding of who He is and what He has done. It also has come from having Cameron and Shanley, in addition to Ryan and Alec, gathered with Ted and me around our table, a special thing any more. It has especially come from a chapter in Jerry Bridges' book, Trusting God, which Ted quietly handed me quotes and Scriptures from on Christmas morning...things he had written to help himself think rightly. I have been feasting on them over the last few mornings.

I infact have gone back and am slowly reading the entire chapter which is called, "Growing Through Adversity." In the beginning of the chapter Bridges writes about the Cecropia moth emerging from its cocoon. He explains that it is an event that occurs with much struggle on the part of the moth. The struggle is essential to developing the muscle system of the moth's body and pushing the body fluids into the wings to expand them. If someone were to try to make it easier on the moth by helping it out of the cocoon, he would infact damage the moth, for the struggle is essential for the moth to be able to develop. Bridges says, "The adversities of life are much like the cocoon of the Cecropia moth. God uses them to develop the spiritual 'muscle system' of our lives." The Christian life, Bridges reminds us, is to be one of continuous growth. We want to grow but we resist the process. "This is because we focus on the events of adversity themselves, rather than looking with the eye of faith beyond the events to what God is doing in our lives."

Horatius Bonar writes, "God knows exactly what He is doing....He knows exactly what we need and how to supply it...His training is no random work. It is carried on with exquisite skill." Jerry Bridges continues, "Every adversity that comes across our path, whether large or small, is intended to help us grow in some way. If it were not beneficial, God would not allow it or send it, 'For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men' (Lamentations 3:33). God does not delight in our sufferings. He only brings what is necessary, but He does not shrink from that which will help us grow."

God doesn't ask us how we want to grow or when we want to grow. He is the Master Gardener pruning the branches. "The healthy vine requires both nourishment and pruning. Through the Word of God we are nourished (Psalm 1:2-3), but through adversity we are pruned" (Bridges). God is at work in us through this present adversity. He is humbling me, reminding me of my desperate need for Him in every area of my life, causing me to see I even need to cry out to Him for more love for Him. He is making me hunger and thirst for His Word, for it is a sure comfort. It indeed nourishes me as I am being pruned. I am seeing that I dare not trust in my own understanding, but must acknowledge Him in all my ways, for He will make my paths straight (Prov. 3:5-6). I continue to cry out with the Psalmist, "Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the ends of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I" (Psalm 61:1-2), and God indeed has been faithful to lead me to Himself, the ROCK that is higher than I.

Our Labor is Not in Vain

Today is Thursday. It has been exactly a week since we met Spendy's birth mom. I know I have needed to write to update this blog, to let people know what's going on, but it has been hard to sit and write clearly. So, here it all is to the best of my ability. Read it and pray. Pray for Spendy's well being, pray that he will be raised in a family where he will be taught the truth of who God is...that is more important than anything else. What good is a full stomach when eternal death looms over you? Pray that he will come to know and receive the bread of life. Pray for Lizette, his birth mother, to believe the Gospel, to know it is the hope for all men. Pray that God would give us all peace in the midst of this trial, and that He would move hearts according to His plan. I cannot help but pray for God to place Spendy in our home, but at the same time I am aware that I pray to the One who sees the big picture. I trust in His goodness and in His perfect plan. We live in a world ravaged by sin. Lizette, Spendy, and now us, are living with the consequences of sinful choices...our own and those we are victims of. The whole orphanage is a result of that. Parents dropping kids off to live in an orphanage, children outside of a family, scarred bodies and souls...all of it is sin's consequences. It is brutally painful, yet we wade in. We wade in with light and hope, not our own, but Christ's, and as we go through this time of trouble, He carries us, giving us strength and comfort and hope. Read on for details of our week last week, and then we ask you again to pray.


When we saw Gretchen (President of Three Angels Children's Relief)at the airport in Miami, in route to Haiti, she told us that they were having a hard time locating Spendy's mom for the DHS appointment. (It is easiest when everyone goes to the appointment at the same time- adoptive parents, birth parents and child, but not necessary) So, we prayed that they would find her; word on the street was she had moved and not said where she was going. Thursday morning we arrived to find she was there at the orphanage, and I thought, "Thank you Lord." Then Gretchen came out and hurriedly told us that Spendy's mom wasn't wanting to go through with the adoption, that we needed to go in and reassure her, she was afraid of never seeing her son again. I thought, "Lord, you brought her, and you knew this was going to happen. This is all still under your control." I didn't feel panicked, but I was aware, as I often am these days, that though we think something is going to look like X, it often looks like Y. I am no longer as surprised by this fact. I also thought, "Lord, you are in the middle of this."

We walked into the office at Three Angels and my heart was beating hard inside me. How thankful I am that Ted was with me. I hugged Lizette (Spendy's mom) and put Spendy in her lap. We all looked at each other, introductions were made, some questions were asked, then in time she shared that Spendy had an older brother by a different father and she didn't know where that son was. The father had taken the child when she had not known and put him in an unknown orphanage. She was afraid of Spendy leaving Haiti, of never seeing him again. Ted told her of our desire to bring Spendy back to Haiti to see his country, of our desire for him to know and understand his Haitian heritage, that though he would be a citizen of the US, he would still be Haitian. He shared that we wanted Spendy to maintain his ability to speak his native language, that our hope was that someday God would possibly use him to bring the light of Jesus Christ to his people in Haiti, that we wanted him to know who his birth mother was. We told her that we would send pictures, that we could remain in touch through Three Angels. Unbeknown to us, Lizette had told Gretchen earlier that Spendy needed to be the one who would make the choice. Gretchen had been silently praying that Spendy would do just that. Spendy slid off Lizette's lap where he had been warily sitting and stretched his arms up to me. I pulled him into my lap where he sat clutching his sippy cup with his Thomas the Tank Engine sunglasses perched on his head. Lizette tried to hold him again, and he turned away holding tightly to me, crying, not wanting her to touch him. She agreed then to sign the papers.

We headed upstairs to Angela's room to go over papers that we would need to turn in at the appointment. As we were going through the papers there was a knock on the door. We were told that Lizette was in the office again with Jean Nathan; she had changed her mind again. So, together we prayed upstairs, asking God to protect Spendy, asking God to move hearts, asking God to lead Lizette to think of Spendy first. As I prayed, I thought about how God began all of this. I wasn't looking for another son. He moved our hearts. How huge is that- He moved both our hearts, mine and Ted's, in tandem. He took our daughter to Haiti, drew her to Spendy and Spendy opened up to her, feeling safe for the first time in who knows how long. God has blessed the steps. He has provided all that we have needed to do this. Ted went downstairs after a bit to pray with Lizette, to reason with her. She was not open.

As we headed out to our appointment, Gretchen told Lizette that we were going on to the DHS appointment without her. We left for the appointment with prayerful hearts, aware as never before of God's absolute hand in all of this. He was working out His plan and we were a part of it, regardless of the outcome. We asked questions and found out from Jean Nathan that Lizette absolutely knew that Three Angels is an orphanage that adopts children out (there are many other orphanages that do not do this, though not probably as nice as Three Angels). She was told her son would be adopted. He also told us that he sent her away three times to think about it, and each time she had begged him to take Spendy. The fourth time he said yes and let her bring Spendy to the orphanage.

I know from stories that I have heard that Spendy came in bleeding from a deep cut on his head. I looked down at his scarred legs. The Dr. that we saw in Oct. says the scars are from cigarette burns. I do not think Lizette did them, but the evidence clearly points to her being at best negligent with Spendy. My other thought is, how can she not know who his father is? Were there so many men? What is her profession? Is she trying to hide something? What other "surprises" might there be? I ache at the thought of him returning to possibly be mistreated, to being hungry. Yet, I too have had children. I know what it is to carry a child in my womb, to nurse him or her at my breast. I understand she must feel guilt and confusion and so many emotions. I struggle with her flipping back and forth in her decision making, begging to leave Spendy, then changing her mind. Ted reminds me that that is how it is when you are dealing with a double minded person, they are driven and tossed in their doubt like the waves of the sea (James 1:6,7).

We went forward to our appointments, doing all that we went to Haiti to do, and God blessed all of them. Nothing was cancelled; nothing was found to be out of order. As far as Lizette goes, she must go into DHS and sign the papers by Jan.14th. Things cannot move forward until she does because she must consent (which is only right). In time if she does not sign the papers Spendy will have to leave the orphanage, for she cannot just have him sit in the orphanage to be fed and cared for but not adopted. It seems she wants to have him cared for and to be able to see him when it is convenient for her. Hard for my mind to fathom, but then I have never known what it is to be hungry, to possibly need to remove my child from a dangerous situation. I do not know Lizette's heart, but God does, and I can pray to Him on Spendy's behalf, our behalf, and on Lizette's behalf.

Spendy's present is still under the tree, his stocking will hang with the rest, his pictures are all around the house, and our tears flow often and freely as we ask for God's help. We do not doubt God's goodness or His perfect plan, nor do we doubt that we reflect His heart when we cry for the plight of Spendy and other orphans, for there are many. Haiti is filled with orphanages. We groan waiting for the day when we will no longer live under the effects of sin, when we will not see a mother leave her children, when we will not see a child go hungry or be harmed, when things will be made right again. For such a day is coming, and we live differently because of it.

I think 1 Corinthians 15:51-58 sums it all up....what our hope is in, why we trust, and why we do what we do in the waiting. "Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' 'O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."

Heading to Haiti

In my last blog I talked about the fact that our I-171h had come from Homeland Security, which meant we could go to Haiti for our December appointment. The only catch was we had to find cheap tickets. God, as He has done all along with this adoption, clearly revealed Himself again as the One who has put it all together and who is providing all that is needed. I prayed and began looking for plane tickets, and found them for unheard of cheap prices. Consequently, I am currently sitting beside my sweet husband on a plane. We will spend tonight and tomorrow night with Ted’s sister Becky and her husband Mike and their youngest daughter, Elia, in Orlando, FL. Then on Tuesday we will head for Haiti and Spendy. I cannot wait to fix my eyes on him again and to hold him. I also cannot wait to see him with Ted. I have not let myself dwell too much on Spendy because it is too hard, but today I am letting go. My mind is full of thoughts of the first time I met him and other things about him like how he wraps his little legs tightly around me when I carry him, the way he looks when he sleeps, or how his brown face looks with sweat beaded on his upper lip, or the way he reaches his arms up to be held. I also love to think about how his voice sounds when he says, “Mama.” Oh, how good it will be to be with this fifth child of ours.

Though he is not yet in our home, his presence in our family is felt. Pictures are up on the bulletin board above my desk and his framed photograph sits perched with the other kid’s phots on the piano. Alec and I went Christmas shopping on Friday, while Ryan was at basketball practice, and picked out a needle point stocking that is like the other kid’s stockings. It will hang with the rest this Christmas, for this is not like a child that I carry in my womb. This child is here, waiting, growing older daily.

This year we have a gorgeous tree and as I turned the lights off this morning, readying the house for our departure, I looked down at the present wrapped under the tree…a book for Spendy because Knox children get a book each Christmas. It says, ”To Jamison Spencer, Love Mommy and Daddy.” It is currently the only present under the tree. It is a foreshadowing of things to come, reminding me of the reality of this child. He is not a figment of my imagination, this Haitian son of mine, he is real, and in two days I will be tightly holding him. I cannot wait!

Our hope is that this will be our last Christmas where we have to go to Haiti to be with Spendy. I find myself thinking as we move through this holiday season “next year Spendy will be with us when we do_____________.” Lord willing He will be with us. For now, we prepare our hearts, excitedly anticipating the changes he will bring to our family, and we pray that the Lord is preparing his heart as well.

It Came!

Our I-171h came yesterday in the mail! I yelled "Yeah!" when I saw the envelope from Homeland Security. Five documents are in transit to the Haitian consulate in NY city. Once they are legalized and returned to us (should happen by early next week), we will have everything we need to go to Haiti! Thank you for your prayers.

One other thing...we have a name for Spendy! It is Jamison Spencer Knox...sounds good, doesn't it? We will call him Spendy for a nick name and evolve into Jamison along with Spendy.

Checking Things Off the List

We have a checklist of all the things adoptive parents need to do to have a completed dossier to take to Haiti. It is a fairly extensive list...two and a half pages worth of list. Next to each item is a place to check off when that step or process has been completed. This week was a week of doing a lot of check offs...Praise God! Yesterday Alec and I picked up our completed notarized home study (it took 2 months to complete) and then zipped it over to the county recorder to have it authenticated, then headed over to FedEx to send it to Albany to be authenticated at the state level. The day before, Thursday, I scanned fourteen documents to send via email to be translated into French. They are now in the hands of the translator who should have everything completed, including the translation of the home study, by the 6th of November. I can then send the translated documents that I need to send to the Haitian consulate in Chicago to, Lord willing, be legalized by them.

Yesterday when I picked up the home study, my heart was so full of gratefulness to the Lord for this completed step. I have been working on it steadily, along with other things, since the end of August. The study, as I read it, reflected God's faithfulness to Ted and me....on its pages were the record of our parents who have kept the marriage covenant they made, of sorrows that had been weathered by our families by God's strength, statements by our children that were full of sincerity and a desire to bring Spendy into our family, and a description of Ted and me- a description that, though the social worker has only known us for a couple of months, conveyed a picture of us over time that was accurate, a picture that caused my heart to well up with an acknowledgement of God's providential care and goodness to us, a sinful couple who have endeavored very imperfectly to follow Him. It was good to pause and thank God in the midst of all the doing and remember that this is a seed He has planted. This adoption is His idea. We are simply privileged to be the tool in His hand.

I would like to ask you to continue to pray for us in this process, thanking God along with us for His care and provision and sanctifying work in our lives and asking for His help. Besides the dossier, we also need an approved I-171h to come in the mail from Homeland Security before we can go to our DHS meeting in Haiti. This is a paper that declares that we have been approved to adopt using the pilot program "Orphan First." It is something we must have in hand before we go to our meeting. In my previous post I mentioned that Homeland Security is very behind.... the I-171h is something we need to receive from them. Please join us in praying that God would grant the workers speed in processing the orphan petitions, so we could get our I-171h soon! Gretchen (the Three Angel's parent liason) has made an appointment for us with DHS on Dec. 13th at 11 am. She is holding off canceling it in the hope that Homeland security might get things finished faster than they have predicted. Our social worker, who works closely with the woman in Albany who processes the orphan petitions, also thinks there is a chance that we might receive our I-171h in time for the December Haiti trip. We have not purchased plane tickets, and I had truly let go of going in December, but I have been given a little ray of hope that we might still be able to go next month. So, if the Lord allows the paperwork to process quickly, we will also need to find an affordable flight to Haiti. It would be wonderful to keep the meeting, to take Spendy his Christmas presents, for Ted to meet him, and most of all just to hold him in our arms. My arms daily ache for him. It is a difficult enough thing to be waiting for a child you are adopting. It is an added difficulty and joy when you have met that child. Pray that I would trust God's perfect timing and not forget that I can ask of Him, even when things look bleak. In other words, that I would remember that He is bigger than the circumstances. "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will" (Prov. 21:1).

A long week and it's only Tuesday

It feels like it's been a long week, and it is only Tuesday! Ted and I just returned from being in Albany all day. Today was the day for us to go to the Homeland Security office and be finger printed for the adoption. Since we were going to be in Albany already (a two hour drive from our home), I also took several documents that had to be authenticated at the state level with us, and Ted dropped me off on State St. where I ran in and did that. An authentication is something I had previously never heard of. For those of you who, like me, have never heard of such a thing, an authentication is a paper that says that the notary who notarized the document is indeed a licensed notary in the State of NY (in our case). For some states (NY being one) the documents must be authenticated at the county level before they can be authenticated at the state level, so yesterday I headed out in the morning for the hour and a half drive to Delhi to do that. As I wound my way past the farms and homes, taking in the last of the fall leaf show, I prayed confessing my fears, my self focus, and my wrong thinking, asking God for provision for all the different details in the adoption and in other areas of life, specifically thanking Him for what He's teaching me in the hard things, even though I don't feel very thankful. Lately it seems like there is a lot of hard....good friends moving away, my nephew and his family as he continues to battle with leukemia, our friends, the Bricks, whose daughter Mandy is trying to emerge from a coma as they spend day and night beside her, another friend who just found out he has cancer, others in our life who are making poor choices, sinful choices, that cause suffering for themselves and the others who are in their lives, and the thought of an orphanage full of kids in Haiti waiting to go home to be with their forever families, yet sometimes being sent back with the very families who gave them up to the orphanage, for reasons that don't make sense to our minds. It just seems like the evidence of the Fall is all around me. I had to get a hold of my thinking yesterday and remind myself of who God is and that He is not for a minute out of control, and He lets the trials sit on us for exactly the right time, not too long and not too short. I also had to remind myself that it isn't about my ideas of comfort or how things should go. God is God, and it is His glory and our ultimate transformation to be conformed to the image of His son that He's concerned with; therefore, He is willing to allow all kinds of things in our lives to bring about repentance and to bring glory to Himself. I find as we are studying Philippians that I am not at all like Paul (or Christ). I still tend to be more focused on my idea of how things should be and I hold very tightly to those things, but God, in His eternal goodness and mercy, brings things that pry my fingers loose. Sometimes it is little things that reveal my wanting to be in control, like finding out I cannot go see Spendy in December. Today I had a little melt down when I found out, at the Homeland Security office, that they are 6-8 weeks behind schedule in processing their adoption stuff. The NY office's turn around time is normally one week. Our home study will arrive there early next week to wait in the stack with all the others to be processed. I have been planning on going to Haiti in December for the last couple months and have been working like a mad woman to have everything ready in time. This morning I realized how I am really not in control at all. As the tears fell down below my sun glasses, my sweet husband reminded me of God's sovereignty. I am so glad he was with me today. Let me end by saying a few things off the top of my head that God showed me today. 1.) Ted was with me to comfort me and remind me of the truth. 2.)I had a day alone with him, which is all too rare, and we had time to talk about all kinds of things. 3.)I had not yet purchased my plane tickets. 4.)This might allow us to be able to be going down with Lori Mills (a friend from church who may also be adopting, who is not excited about traveling alone to Haiti.) 4.)Gretchen does not think we will lose much time because in December people go home and paperwork ends up sitting on people's desks anyway, so even if we'd gone done to Haiti, it probably wouldn't have made things go any faster. 5.)I was reminded again of who my attention needs to be fixed upon.

Pictures of Spendy from Haiti- October 2007

Me and Spendy

Looking out on Port au Prince from the balconey at St. Joseph's

Spendy and me

Shanley and Spendy

Mama and Spendy

A tired Spendy napping in his bed at the orphanage

Journal excerpt from week in Haiti

I wrote this on October 5th when I was in Haiti.

The time here goes slower- the day seems to last longer, and when I look at my watch, I am often surprised that it is only 10 AM or only 3 PM, when it feels later. At the same time, it is already Sunday, and on Tuesday I have to leave my little boy and this world here. It is a world you either like or don't. There is steady noise here- people outside talking, a guitar playing and someone singing, bottles being sorted outside, and of course the intermitant crowing of a rooster. Whenever I hear a rooster, I will forever think of Haiti. A child is crying in the next room. There are many here who are in different stages of adoption, some coming close to the end and others, like myself, painfully aware that we are at the beginning of a long process.

Spendy is napping here beside me- sweat beaded up on his upper lip. He is beautiful. He is daily changing since I've been here. He started out guarded, hardly willing to leave my lap or Shanley's lap; now he will play nearby. He is nothing like two year olds I am used to. He guards his books we've given him, never putting them down at the orphanage. He will sit on one of our laps, content, never saying a word, only watching. Today he started talking to me. Of course it is in Creole...a sweet little voice. His eyes are huge, and he is very intelligent- figuring out how things work, carefully building. I think he may be particular, liking things just so. He eats everything- ate up all of his breakfast here at St. Joseph's, ate a bowl of mush at the orphanage, ate cheetos and salami and bread with goat cheese for lunch....eats salad, avocado, meat, rice, beans- there is nothing he won't eat. I am sure it is the difference of never having choices or the opportunity to eat at any time other than the appointed time.

I am sure it will be hard for him when we leave- all this attention will cease. Will he realize we will be back, since Shanley came back after this summer? Will it take him a while to warm back up to us? Will it be less traumatic for him than I imagine, simply because this is what he sees- parents coming and going? I do not know. I know I will miss him, my little Haitian son.

I am a blogger now

The main reason for this blog is Spendy. As most of you know, he is a two year old orphan who lives in Haiti that we are adopting. We began this whole process when Shanley came back from spending a month at the orphanage in Port au Prince that is part of Three Angels Childrens Relief. She fell in love with many of the children, but Spendy tugged at her heart in a special way. Through her emails Ted and I went, in a sense, to Haiti . They caused us to make a connection with the children there. I found myself praying for "forever families" for the children who did not yet have them. As Shanley told us more about Spendy, how reserved he was, how he clung to her, how he began to open up after being given attention, we found ourselves hurting for this little one. I would pray, "Lord, I pray that you would move the hearts of the parents that you have determined for Spendy." As time went by, I found myself saying, "Lord, are we those parents?" "Compel us, give us a desire, urge us if this is what you have for Spendy and us," I prayed. All of our reasons for not adopting seemed small and wrong when put next to the words that the Holy Spirit inspired James to write: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:27). So here we are in the process of adopting Spendy and God has made it our fondest desire to do so. This blog will be a place for those of you who want to to keep up on what's going on with Spendy and the rest of us as we travel this adoption road.