My Overthinking

Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption

Sneak peek at what you voted for

I’ve got an obligation to the folks who clicked for us. And, you better believe I’m taking that seriously. Perhaps Dan Cruver should make a name tag up for me that says “Adoption Community Correspondent” or “Adoptive Parent Special Reporter.” I’d wear it with pride since I’m committed to sharing as much as I can with whoever wants to receive it.

Just take a sneak peek at some of what Mark and I will be receiving…

  • A challenge from Jonathan Merritt, a widely published (A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars and Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet)
    and respected teacher and faith and culture strategist. With a passion for the synergy of faith and culture, he’s teaching on how to mobilize the next generation to care for orphans. He’s going to flesh out the stats on this generation’s heart for issues of social justice, critique this generation for often being more cause centered than Christ centered, and then help us cast a vision for mobilizing them rightly. I can’t wait to meet him and have a feeling that this break-out could be a whole conference of its own.
  • Pastor and Preacher Vermon Pierre, first generation in his family to be born in the U. S. with parents from Haiti, will share through his experience as a foster parent about transracial adoption. Recognizing that adoptive parents tend to approach transracial adoption one of two ways–we either over-emphasize race and live in turmoil, afraid we aren’t doing enough to honor our child’s ethnic heritage or we de-emphasize race and act as though it were completely unimportant now that our child is a part of our family. Pierre is going to teach on how the gospel shows us something different. As parents who celebrate our Chinese daughter’s heritage and work to do that in a way that is sensitive and appropriate to her, this one is gonna be good.
  • Lavonne Dideon, one my personal cheerleaders who had all her kiddos routing for our video entry to get us to the conference, is going to be sharing as National Director of Orphan Sunday efforts this year how we can harness Orphan Sunday in our church to grow a heart for orphan care. 
  • Chris Marlow, founder and director of Help End Local Poverty, is going to take on sharing about the pros and cons of short-term missions. As a couple committed to mission work, Mark’s looking forward to this one.
  • Adoptive and foster mom, Dennae Pierre will be challenging us on how we can teach our children to “suffer well,” without a fear of suffering. She’s going to teach on a biblical perspective of suffering and talk about practical ways to teach our children to live out their stories within the context of all that is happening throughout human redemptive history. As parents desiring to both  encourage our children to have a heart for those who are in the midst of suffering as well as walk with our child who has suffered from losses, we are looking forward to hearing how we can use the gospel at their level to help them process the pain around them. 
  • Jason Kovacs, pastor, cofounder of Together for Adoption, and Director of Ministry Development for The ABBA Fund…and father of 5 (4 through adoption), is going to speak to the men specifically in a break-out session simply entitled Men and the Fatherless. Mark’s ready to hear his challenge to man up; bring it on.
  • Meanwhile, I’ll be hearing Jon Bergeron, Director of Hope for Orphans FamilyCare, and Robin Pennington, Cofounder of Hope for Orphans and Executive Director of Sparrow’s Home Adoptions, discuss why difficulties in adoption are the norm and how early supportive intervention by the Church can make all the difference. They won’t shy away from talking about the reality of disruptions and how the Church can come alongside families who are struggling. I really want to step up to this challenge.
How’s that for a sneak peek? 

I wish I could share our special registration code with you all so you could all come with us.

Maybe you should just come.

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Snapshots of Sensory Stuff

We’re no strangers to sensory processing issues in this house. But, we’re used to parenting a child with sensory sensitivity–one who is bothered by clothing tags and collars on shirts and loud noise and crowds.

Parenting our youngest has been a whole other deal.

This girl is sensory seeking. If there’s a chair or a bench or a step stool, she climbs on it (and then jumps on it and off it and on it and off it). If there’s a puddle, she jumps in it. She moves…constantly. Yup, all the time. If there’s a cup, she pours it out and plays in it. If there’s a basket of anything, she dumps it. If there’s a mess, she’s in it.

We used to think she was trouble seeking rather than sensory seeking.

But, the more I study her and the more I read and learn, the more I understand her and all her “trouble-seeking” ways.

She needs more vestibular and tactile stimulation that most kids her age–those fancy words just mean she needs more balance and big movement type of stimulation and lots and lots of touch. And, that really shouldn’t surprise us. Those senses are the ones most fed during those very early baby months. When babies are supposed to be picked up, rocked, held, bounced, touched, and tickled, she spent most her time in a crib.

So, I’m trying to give her an extra dose of vestibular and tactile stuff these days. My concerted effort this week – a rice box.

And, she loved it.

Burying toys, digging them up, filling cups, dumping cups, stepping in the bin, wiggling those toes, letting the rice run between her fingers….and onto my floor.

My attempt to clean this up seemed rather futile. I was getting so frustrated feeling a single rice grain under my bare feet after multiple floor clean ups that I was starting to think I had sensory problems. 
Rice box got kicked to the curb. Literally. Where Lydia proceeded to bury and dig and play and so forth and so forth until my driveway looked like we hosted a wedding here. 

I’ve been getting ideas from The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun: Activities for Kids with Sensory Processing Disorder. It’s packed full of clever little ways to help our kids with sensory processing stuff goin’ on.

Got any ideas your kiddos love?

Ni Hao Yall

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Training, Opportunities, and a little bit o’ begging

These last 5 weeks have been pretty amazing. Like pretty life-changing amazing.

Mark and I have had the joy of being trained by the Monroes from Tapestry Ministry over the last 5 weeks. Every Monday, they’ve sent us and a few other couples an email packed with homework assignments, readings, videos to watch, and questions to answer. And, we get to work. Because Saturday is a’ coming when we’ve gotta turn in our assignments and await the next email on Monday.

We’ve read more in the last 5 weeks than we’ve read in a long time. And, it’s all been about kids from hard places and the people who love them and the God who made them all.

And, it’s been amazing.

In a couple weeks, we’ll head on down to Dallas to finish out our training with several days of in-person schooling so that we can come on back to ya’ll on the East Coast and help parents here.

Super exciting stuff to be able to be trained in something we are so passionate about as a couple.

Which brings me to the beggin’ part.

There’s an event in September we’d love to go to so that we can learn more and come home refreshed and ready to serve the people God has called us to serve–Together for Adoption’s national conference in Atlanta.

I entered a wee little contest to try to get us there (of course I did).

But, we need you to help. Would you go to THIS LINK, scroll on down to Video #4 (you’ll see a still image of my sweet baby in her nanny’s arms from the day we received her), click on the little “I like it” circle there and then click on VOTE. That’s it – no signing up or signing in. Takes 2 seconds. (If you have a few more seconds free, watch our video. It’s 70 seconds to be exact and is the equivalent of a video plea, if you will.)

The video with the most votes as of Saturday the 14th (like this coming Saturday…ah man…could we actually win this???) wins an all expense trip to the conference. Which would pretty much rule. Yup. It would.

Can you vote everyday this week and help us get there? Maybe even broadcast it to all your friends, neighbors, grocery store check-out person…you get the point. (I may get a little desperate by the end of the week…)

Okay, back to our Empowered to Connect homework.






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Change for China’s children

“Do they just leave their baby girls for dead there?”

“Why would they just leave her?”
“How could anyone do that to their own child?”
I’ve been asked these and other questions as a mother of a Chinese daughter. I explain the one-child rule, the pressure to have a son, how hard it is for many Chinese families to care for medically fragile children, how babies are typically left to be found not left to die, how some babies are left with notes of regret or left with money and food. 
Abandonment there is not like abandonment here.
With the new regulations going into effect soon in China, I wonder how this will change things.
Up until now, in order for a child to be even eligible for adoption, he or she couldn’t be traced to any living relative. No one. If the government could find a distant cousin, an aunt or uncle, anyone related, even if that relative didn’t want the child or couldn’t care for them, if there was a relative, the child was left to grow up in an institution. There could be families lined up to adopt that little one, but they would never even know he or she existed. 
But, that’s going to change.
My first reaction was relief–finally, these children who have no families to their knowledge and experience may be able to have them. 
Then, I started thinking and wondering about what this will mean. 
Will parents be able to voluntarily place their children for adoption? The article I read said the Chinese office that handles all adoptions has already received 6 “applications” from families who want to have their children adopted. With the way Chinese often view life in America, I wonder if more families will make this sacrifice simply to give their children what they may think is a better life. 
Does that mean abandonments will be fewer and fewer in number if birth parents can actually give up parental rights? Will we hear less and less stories like this one (unable to pay more than the $190 USD already paid for the care of his baby boy, a father abandoned his 3 month old baby with heart disease and pneumonia at an airport and was arrested and shamed for it)? 
Will adoptive families know if their new child was voluntarily placed for adoption? Will China give us the names of birth families? Will this eventually lead to some sort of regulation around ongoing contact with birth families? Will there be such a thing as an open Chinese adoption? 
Rejoicing today for the hundreds of thousands of children in orphanages sleeping right now as I write who have had no hope of ever having a family…but may receive one now. They have watched while other children have received care packages and have had photos taken to send to families and have put on new clothing and then never returned. May their day finally come.
Praying for the families who have already submitted their applications to surrender their children so that they can be adopted and for the children named in those applications.
Praying for protection over the sanctity of human life. 

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