Looking Back

One year ago...my husband was in Nicaragua starting the "in country process" to adopt our 4 youngest children while I was still paper chasing" in the United States. He had arrived at the Child Protection Center to visit them for the 14th day in a row. Not long after arriving he had a random conversation with one of the "Center Mama's" who stated, "They'll never let those kids go home with you until your wife arrives." I was not to arrive until August 13th and this was July 17th. That SAME day, in the afternoon, my husband was told, "the kids are going home with you TODAY!" And off they went, with no time to prepare...

One year later...we are home and you've seen my updates! We've been able to talk over much of the process with the kids. We know which kids were scared silly that day and which were excited. We know which ones love the cool weather of Maine and which ones will keep bundling up...and so much more. We have miles to go together and we've been miles together already! 

I know they carry Nicaragua with them and always will. We pray for their friends and all they left behind. We still stumble over our version of Spanish/English communication at times. We have good days and great day and hard days and harder days. We live, we love, struggle, we laugh, we strain. We move forward by God's grace day by day, trying to pick up the one that is falling or flailing with each event and moment.

I find myself still reflecting, still wondering if the changes in myself are permanent. Those of us in our family not born in Nicaragua still struggle to overcome the disconnect we sometimes feel being back "home" in the U.S. 

I struggle to relate to media:
I can't read or look at magazines. I can't relate.
I haven't watched the news in over a year.
I rarely watch television and if I do watch it, it grates on my nerves.

My politics have changed concerning immigration after talking to so many innocents turned down for VISAS to the U.S. and often publicly humiliated. My eyes were opened to the complexity of my "pro-life" beliefs and the work I must be willing to do on behalf of moms and orphans to see that dream realized. It is SO much more than JUST saving that life. It is a lifetime commitment that will be required for each child and family.

I'm quite a bit restless, my eyes more open to pain and suffering and oppression and need, but not sure what my full action should be, what our full action should be as a family. 

In the meantime, we are making a life together, like a scrap quilt full of pieces of all of us with our differing experiences and nuances sewn together into something new and different! Not totally Spanish and not totally English, not all rice and beans and not all potatoes, not all brown and not all white, not all, not all Nicaraguan culture and not all American. One year ago today, everything changed...