November

I rode my bike with my siblings up and down these country roads on Thanksgiving day (You'll note from the picture that I got the awfully puny bike until Ben chivalrously swapped with me). The sun had begun its descent in the West, and the breeze, even colder than showers in Haiti, stung my skin and burned my throat.

Slowly, slowly and very slowly, I am realizing the beauty of the Michigan landscape once more. In November, the color brown dominates. When this brown welcomed me home, it at first seemed to me to make everything so terribly and awfully deadened. Lifeless and devoid of blessing. Contrasting so sharply with the lush tropical blossoms and deep green mountainsides and stunning nightly sunsets that I miss each day.

Yet once again, my eyes are becoming attuned to the softer and more mellow beauty in Michigan. Southeast Michigan in November. The trees, bared completely now of leaves, silhouette themselves in patterns – intricate yet austere, impossible to duplicate. The sun sinks lower, a mellow and hazy orb that casts a fuzzy glow over the chilled scenery. The colors of the sky during this twilight hour are not rich, unspeakably vibrant and majestic, but these skies do also declare God's glory.

November is national adoption month. A time set aside to advocate for these precious children, a time to find them homes, a time to remember them and pray for them. Each month of each year should be adoption month. For religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress...

What does that mean for you today?

I went on a walk this afternoon, trying again to see the beauty in this corner of the world. Bundled in three layers and still cold, I walked briskly in a vain attempt to ward off the chills. I remembered that there is goodness in seeing the sun intensified as it reflects off of the ice of our backyard pond. I remembered that while there is goodness in charging up mountainsides alongside waterfalls with lush greenery, there is also goodness in leaping over burbling brooks and shimmying over fallen logs in the forest. 

And while there is much goodness and blessing in holding sweet babies tightly against your chest and singing to them of the love of the Lord, there is also much goodness in hearing the silence of this afternoon in the country broken by the shouts of two boys, both very special to you, who are running around the barn and across the yard, engaged in an airsoft war. Most of the time you forget that they were adopted, carried safely home from that far land of Vietnam, for so seamlessly are they woven into the tapestry of your family, but in moments like these, you remember, and you rejoice.

Tomorrow I have a play date with one of my best friends, a five year-old, adopted from China. He is like my brother, indeed I cannot imagine life without him, and I praise God for the redemptive work evidenced so profoundly in his life. In the lives of all who are restored to a family. Whose status changes from orphan to son. From forgotten by all but the Father to beloved by many. God doesn't call everyone to adopt, but consider seriously if He would have you step out in faith and open your homes and your hearts to just one of the millions of children waiting and ready to be loved. The massive disparity of wealth here in relation to the need of the world is like a heavy weight. The scales do not measure up. Especially because there is awareness to the disparity. November is national adoption month. What would God have you do today, me do today, the church do today, to answer His imperative to care for the orphan? It's a question that's been asked time and time again, but we must continue to ask it and answer the call until the end when all things are made new.

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 
John 14:18

Zoey is almost six years old, weighs less than ten pounds, and is waiting for a family. Read more about her here. Take just a few minutes of your day to pray for her and pray that someone answers the call to bring her home soon.

Long Time No Blog!

It's been a whole week since something happened on this blog! Each time I've attempted another blog post, I've ended up poring over pictures of my babies and getting no where on the writing end of things. A few items to discuss - 

1. Reading

This week I enjoyed some extra time to read. I read a bit in Haiti, and since getting home, I've started chipping away at my reading list at a faster rate. For those who are interested, below is a list of the books that I have read this school year or am in the middle of reading right now:

The Help

By Kathryn Stockett

Passion and Purity

By Elisabeth Elliot

Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality

By Wesley Hill

Cross-Cultural Connections: Stepping Out and Fitting in Around the World

By Duane Elmer

Peace Like a River

By Leif Enger

Enjoy the Silence

By Maggie and Duffy Robbins

Carried Safely Home: The Spiritual Legacy of an Adoptive Family

By My Mother (Kristin Swick Wong)

Mere Christianity

By C.S. Lewis

City of Bells

By Elizabeth Goudge

Life Together

By Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Finding Calcutta

By Mary Poplin

Mark: The Gospel of Passion

By Michael Card

Letters to Children

By C.S. Lewis

I've found all of these books to be most excellent! More extensive reviews available upon request. 

2. Chicago

Thursday and Friday we (myself, my mother, my brother) were in Chicago. The main purpose of this trip was to apply for a long term student visa at the French Consulate. The appointment went quickly and smoothly - so much so that it seems slightly ridiculous that we were required to make a trip all the way out to Chicago just so I could hand someone a stack of papers. 

Being in the city definitely had its overwhelming moments of, "America is big and rich and awful", but America also has it's elements of need and poverty, and we were blessed to use our resources, that really belong to God, to buy potstickers for a homeless man, and then a chicken pesto cheesy panini along with a big chocolate cupcake for a homeless mom and her two sons. Besides the French Consulate appointment and talking with the homeless in Chicago, we enjoyed seeing some wonderful friends, purchasing shoes to alleviate the pain induced by walking extensively in high heels, and going to the Lego Store.

Getting the visa may not have been too thrilling, but the build-up to it certainly had elements of intrigue. You go into the big shiny building, up the escalator, show your ID to the formidable security, receive a special pass which you use on the fancy metal gates that block access to the elevator (at that glorious moment in time where I swiped my special pass to open the gate, I definitely felt like a special agent), go up the elevators to the 37th floor, and follow the signs to a rather anticlimactically drab little room where all people desiring to get a visa in France must visit. You sit down and imagine the McCropders and their many children waiting in this exceedingly unexciting room, get up when your name is called, hand your papers to the lady behind the desk, and that's about the extent of what it took to get the visa.

The big shiny building with the French Consulate on floor 37...

Two siblings, reflected in a massive metal bean!

Lego Store madness!

3. Six Months

My baby turns six months old today. I think about this child constantly. I can't believe he's already half a year!!! When I met him, he was three months old and in my mind he's stayed that old. I wonder how big he is by now. If he has a volunteer or not. Who is forever family is and what they are doing today.

More Pictures, More Stories, More from Haiti!

I may not be in Haiti anymore, but I have no plans to stop blogging about the children who have become so dear to me. And by the children, I mean all the children, not just my seven. Each child at the Main House became so dear to me, and there are so many unshared stories and little personalities and photographs of stunning faces that I'm dying to share to the world. Hopefully none of the stories, photos, or sentiments will be redundant from previous posts!

Fort Jacques, about a twenty minute drive further up the mountain, is where GLA will eventually relocate. This piece of land is gorgeous. A plethora of tall coniferous trees reach high up into the sky, creating dappled shadows on the forest floor. The air is cooler, and the breeze is refreshing. There is often mist that blocks the view, but when the mist clears, a spectacular landscape is revealed before your eyes. You can see Port-au-Prince and the Ocean and the Mountains beyond. This picture (taken by one of the Barnum girls, other volunteers whose time at GLA coincided with mine) sort of captures the beauty of Fort Jacques. It will probably still be years before they are finished with the construction here, but I am so excited for the day when they move to this lovely haven.

I have to say a word about these two:

They both came from the other orphanage that was shut down at the beginning of the summer. (In case you hadn't already heard, there was an orphanage shut down for having very bad conditions...kids came malnourished and with rat bites and with lots of horrible neglect. About twenty of these kids ended up at GLA.) Because of their lack of paperwork and because it is extremely difficult to track down the biological parents of these new children, none of them currently have families. These two beautiful girls are best of friends. They hold hands. They love to be in the same crib. Once a volunteer asked one of them where the other was. She disappeared and came back a few minutes later holding her friend's hand. Each night I went into the big nursery, they were always in the same crib, laughing and laughing and laughing together. The one in the back still becomes very fearful often, screaming and thrashing at the sight of dogs or sometimes a stranger or anything unfamiliar. But their joy, and that picture of them, and the way that they both knew and loved me and hugged me and laughed at the sight of my face was an indescribable blessing.

Lilly's favorites of my children were my two youngest - Monday's girl (T) and Friday's boy (C). I think this was mostly because she could actually hold them and play with them like they were babies. She just doted on the two of them, and I love this picture of her with my Monday girl. The love and the radiant joy of Miss Lilly was so evident in her interactions with the babies, and I miss her dearly. I tried to save my babies for the end of the day since she got back from school around 3:30 each day and always her first question to me was inevitably, "Have you taken out C and T yet????" If I hadn't, elation ensued. If I had, disappointment and a follow-up question was inevitable, "Well can you take C and T out again???"

I spend too much of my days looking through photos and photos and photos of the kids. Last night I was up past midnight reminiscing and swapping GLA stories with another volunteer while I looked through pictures. I just LOVE this one of my little guy in his post-pool outfit. A new pool arrived on the shipping container which I am very excited about; the pool currently on the balcony is full of holes and leaking!

Check out that sweet, shy smile on that tiny, precious face! (My apologies about how overused certain adjectives are on this blog such as sweet and precious...But try as I do and much as I loathe redundancy in vocabulary, I really can't do much about it!)

These two siblings are GLA staples. Everyone falls in love with them. Everyone. The staff, the volunteers, everyone. They have a beautiful family with lots of siblings waiting to bring them home. Both of them are very serious in this picture, but both of them are full of laughter and energy and so much good fun! The little girl loves hats. She's perpetually putting on hats.

Marguerite feeding the kids her $7.50 USD box of cheez-its (food at Haitian grocery stores tends to be quite pricey...) to the kids of the big nursery - a weekly routine for her.

These two boys capture my heart. There is something about little boys that I just cannot resist. Something that tugs on my heartstrings in a different way than little girls do. Something about their faces, their sense of playfulness, just EVERYTHING about them absolutely MELTS me.

These two boys especially (although I will likely say that about all the kids!) got to me. Their laughs, the way they blew kisses, their heartbreaking smiles... Both of them were outgoing, interactive, talkative, active, and general speaking super duper amazing kids.

I wonder if these children will realize the country of beauty that they were born in. There is something wildly and deeply and radically beautiful about this country that these photos don't even come close to capturing, but at leasts it's better than me repeatedly saying "beautiful" in a vain attempt to depict the unique landscape of Haiti. Somehow it's a beauty that is intensified by the depth of poverty and the weightiness of what these people have endured for generations.

Happenings at Home & the Last Letter

Well it's been a week now. It's been good to be back and see everybody again. At the same time, it's certainly been hard to be back and I miss my babies every moment of every day. Life here in Michigan has been busy!

On Friday, mom and I started talking about Donaldina Cameron again. We were thrilled to have Sue Leong attend our talk - she lives in Ann Arbor, but spent part of her childhood in San Francisco at one of the orphanages started by Donaldina Cameron for the younger girls! She had met Donaldina on a few occasions, and we were privileged to have her present.

After a lovely euphonium concert, I stood there while at least half a dozen friends took out braids round two.

Marginally painful experience, as is evidenced by this particular grimace.

Final product!!!

Went back to church this past week in three different rounds! This was the first time back on Wednesday night. Definitely wonderful.

And, perhaps best of all, I had a surprise visit from one of my many collegiate friends who came home for the weekend and surprised me on Friday night!

Little boy –

Only you would laugh so hard at the sight of my face that you'd tumble right on over, banging your head on the ground. And only you would sit right back up again after banging your head and continue to laugh.

Only you would toddle deliberately away from, turn your head, and give me that evil grin, daring me to chase you across the balcony until you couldn't run anymore from the laughter.

Only you would remember to grab that same blue ball the minute you walked onto the balcony.

You were the perfect mix of playful joy and sweetest cuddles. You could run and run and laugh and laugh and play and play and play so hard, but you knew when it was time to be held. You'd stop your play, drop your toys, sit down, and stare at me with those beautiful eyes of yours and then I'd know that it was time to pick you up, and I'd hold you, sometimes for only five minutes, sometimes for half an hour, until you were recharged and ready to go back at it again.

At first you weren't too sure about me. You just toddled around the balcony, holding your blue ball, watching me with a suspicious stare. But that only lasted about a day. Every subsequent day, you became more full of joy and freedom. You toddled with reckless abandon. As you learned to trust and love me more, you needed your blue balls of comfort less and wanted just me to play with more.

Sometimes you were just so so so so so so so incredibly cute that I didn't know if I could stand it. I'm not usually at a lack for words, but as I'm sitting here, staring at the blinking cursor, I actually am at a lack for words to describe how just how darn cute you are. It hurt inside because you were so beautiful and so wonderful and so zesty and so fantastic. Walking in the big nursery and standing there while you bolted (in a wobbly toddley sort of a way) across the room, laughing and burbling the whole way, was priceless. Opening my arms while you tottered into my embrace never got old. On the contrary, each time I saw you, it became exponentially more wonderful. 

You gave me such an abundance of joy. My cup overflowed when I was with you. One day, I tried to see if I could suppress smiling at the sight of your giggling face, but it didn't work. I actually tried. Really hard. But it was a sheer impossibility.  

You have an insatiable sense of curiosity; don't ever let that change. You know how to have the best kind of fun; don't let your joy dissipate. You are charged full of life. There is never a dull moment with you – indeed each minute I was able to spend with you was like a golden nugget of sheer happiness. I see heaps and mountains of vast potential in you, and I am convinced that God is going to a great work through your life and that He has already prepared good works for you to do in His name.

You have the sweetest sensitive side to you as well. GLA is a fantastic place, and you've been there your entire life, and I can see what a good job they've done in helping you grow, but you need to be home. You need love to thrive. You need tender attention, someone to read you bedtime stories, sing you lullabies, and tuck you in at night. You need love, and I cannot wait for you to go home, carried by the loving arms of your mommy and daddy to your new life with them forever.

For God did not give you a spirit of timidity, but He gave you a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. May you use this resilient, sparkling spirit God has given you to change the world.

I love you so so so SO much!

Kathryn

Letter to my Friday Baby

Baby -

My last night in Haiti, I stood on the balcony and held you in my arms, so tightly, never wanting to let go. I looked into your eyes, mesmerized, for in those vast, deep, dark orbs, the clouds were perfectly reflected. Perfectly. The way the scintillating sun beams shot from behind their white poofiness, the way the light traced the complex shapes, the way their varying shades of colors were juxtaposed so sharply against the clear and open blueness of the sky – everything was immaculately mirrored in those huge and beautiful eyes of yours. I couldn't take my eyes off of them. 

It was your eyes that I noticed from the first time we met, and how strikingly large they appeared on your tiny face. For a few moments, my own eyes began to drown and the image of clouds in your eyes was blurred. Saying goodbye to you the next day would be one of the hardest things I have ever done, and I knew it then as I looked at those eyes of yours, at your whole face, as I held your tiny warm body, so sweet and small and innocent and peaceful. GLA is a wonderful place, and they are so very good at getting children families, but you don't have a family yet, baby. All my other children are perfectly matched and waiting to go home, but you still don't have a family. And that's one of the reasons that made it so hard for me to say goodbye. 

I loved, relished, cherished every moment in your presence. Watching you grow and thrive and change so quickly and in such leaps and bounds blew me away. I may have seen it happen time and time again to many a baby, but that has done naught to mitigate how utterly amazing it is.

You were so tiny when I first met you. So tiny. You had just turned three months, everything about you was small and miniature. You hadn't even reached ten pounds. You didn't interact with me much; you were content to just sit in my lap and stare into space. You didn't do much, really, not even cry for the most part! The only thing you really did was suck your thumb. Suck and suck and suck your thumb.

But all that soon changed. Except the thumb sucking part. I can't imagine you will ever stop sucking that thumb of yours. But after about a week or two, you started to smile. Not for prolonged periods of time, just fast, shy little grins that captured my heart in an instant.

We enjoyed lots of tummy time together. Whenever I could bear to put you down on the mats out of my arms. Which was not exactly a common occurrence. Each day, you lifted up that head of yours for just a little bit longer, pushing yourself to be stronger and stronger. You got quite a bad rash on your face at one point, but after about a week of lots of baby lotion and tender loving care, your skin healed beautifully! Your face became increasingly expressive as you grew, and there were so many days when you would make me laugh and laugh and laugh at the way you could manipulate your eyes and your mouth and your sweet little face.

Your thumb sucking got to be quite an issue since the skin on and around the thumb became red and raw and the skin began to peel. To fix this problem, the nannies taped a sock over your hand. Never have I ever heard you cry so much! You struggled and fought to suck your thumb through the sock. You wailed and wailed and wailed at this calamitous loss, but never when you were with me. You were always the sweetest and the best when I held you.

Soon enough, you figured out that it was possible to suck your left thumb as well as your right thumb, and the skin on the sore thumb healed, and the sock came off. Each day, you put a little bit of chub on those cheeks of yours. Each day you had me more and more entranced with your precious little self. 

You started to observe things and people, getting increasingly alert by the minute. You could track toys, jerkily moving your head, as I swung them back and forth in front of you. I watched you and wondered what sorts of thoughts were running through that little head. I would sit and daydream. I'd dream that you would suddenly get a life-threatening but curable medical condition that could be best treated at the University of Michigan's Children's Hospital. Miraculously, a medical visa would fall into place and I would carry you safely home with me. I would be the one with you at the doctor's, the one to bathe you and feed you and clothe you, the one to bring you to church and show you off to all my friends, the one to dress you up in the handsomest clothes and take fifty bajillion million pictures, we would go on so many adventures together. I'd sit there and dream about taking you to the park and about making you laugh every day and about buying you toys and soft blankets and warm pajamas and about celebrating your first Christmas with you, showing you with excitement the trees and the ornaments and the lights and the pictures of a baby, not unlike yourself, lying in a manger because there was no room for him in the inn...

One thing's for sure, you have a sense of humor. Not really my type of humor, it was always more of a very masculine sense of humor - you think poop's hilarious. And you find it even funnier when the poop shoots straight out of your diaper and onto my pants. This happened not once, not twice, but thrice. Yeah, not really my kind of humor.

You were always so happy and pleased with yourself after spewing poop on my pants and up my shirt. I tried to be angry with you and reprimand you, but one look at your smiling face and my heart melts into a puddle.

We practiced sitting up a lot. By the time I left, you could sit by yourself pretty decently for quite a significant portion of time (at least sixty seconds!) before getting a little tipsy. It was the best when you started to recognize me. I'd put you in the bumbo, and you'd stare into space and suck your thumb until I'd catch your attention.

You'd bashfully fight the grin from breaking forth, and you'd try your best to keep that thumb stuffed in your mouth.

But I always won the game, the thumb always came out, and you always smiled. And so did I, little boy. So did I. Any small amounts of joy that I brought into your life, you gave to me tenfold.

Look at you, sitting up all by yourself, chubby to the point of being fat, smiling because of me, and wearing the darlingest little hat. I couldn't be prouder. Best of all, you started to laugh. A deeply satisfying and deathly cute burble that welled up inside of you each time we made eye contact. That sound couldn't have made me more joyful.

I love you, baby. I think of you perpetually, wondering if you're okay, if someone's there to love you and hold you and kiss you and sing you songs and rock you to sleep and tell you how handsome and wonderful you are. My arms are so horribly empty without your little body nestled so perfectly inside of them. I know you will continue to receive good care and much love at GLA, but I long for the day when you can go home. Because somewhere in this world, there is a very very special family that somehow has a hole in it. Something missing. And that something is you. God is preparing their hearts to love you even more than I do. He has a family for you, sweet boy. A family for you and a plan for your life. I'm very jealous of them, but I know that they will be perfect for you and you for them. So many prayers have I prayed for you, and God has heard every single one of them. I may not be there to watch over you anymore, but He is, baby, He is. Your life is important, and even without knowing it, you have already impacted the lives of many. And by the grace of God, you will continue to do so for the rest of your days. And one day, I hope to welcome children like you into my home and call them my own, and when I do, I will remember you.

I lift my eyes up to the hills - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip,

he who watches over you will not slumber; 

indeed he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 

The Lord watches over you,

the Lord is your shade at your right hand; 

the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. 

The Lord will keep you from all harm,

he will watch over your life; 

the Lord will watch over your coming and going 

both now and 

forevermore.

Psalm 121