Part 2: En Route

When the intercom announced that it was time to board our flight, we couldn't have been more relieved to be on our way, and the process of boarding the plane provided even more amusing people-watching moments to keep us entertained.

Like the guy stowing his carry-on in the compartment directly above us, completely unaware that his zipper, which was directly at our eye-level, was all the way down. I had turned to say something to Jeremy and instantly and uncontrollably made a "Whoa.....yikes!" face and turned away. But as I turned away, I realized the guy had seen my expression and was looking at me like, "What?" Then he glanced down, and I was relieved, thinking he had identified the problem...until he proceeded to reach back up, without addressing the zipper, and continue adjusting his bag.

And of course, there was the always entertaining dance-of-the-giant-carry-on. It goes something like this....

A lady stops in the aisle in front of the first open compartment and attempts to shove in an overstuffed carry-on. It clearly won't fit, by a mile, but she continues pushing and shoving anyway. People are lining up behind her, but she is undaunted. She lowers the bag and rotates it 90 degrees, seemingly convinced that this rotation will magically make the bag six inches thinner.

At this point, a flight attendant politely suggests that the passenger allow her to check the bag and stow it for her in the cargo area, but the passenger continues on, undeterred. She lowers the bag yet again, this time attempting to put it in wheels-first. Because, once again, this is a magic maneuver that makes the bag smaller. Push, shove, lower, rotate. Push, shove, lower, rotate.

Again, the flight attendant suggests checking the bag. This time more insistently. The insistence of the flight attendant prompts the woman to realize that perhaps it would be wise to remove something from the bulging suitcase. So she lowers it, balances it on the back of the nearest seat, unzips it, and removes exactly one item before attempting, once again, to shove the bag into the overhead compartment.

The poor flight attendant is now using an ever-so-polite voice through clenched teeth to say, "Ma'am, really. It is no problem to check the bag. But we must clear the aisle at this time." The other passengers, who have no obligation to be nice, have murderous looks in their eyes. So the lady lowers her bag yet again and removes 8 more items, passing them over 4 rows of seats to her daughter who will apparently hold them in her lap for the entire 5 hour flight. She then triumphantly squeezes her bag into the compartment and proceeds compliantly to her seat.

And the whole plane erupts in cheers.

Not really.

But I know everyone, including the carry-on, breathed an enormous sigh of relief.

After every bag was finally stowed and every passenger seated, and after a forty minute delay for a minor repair in the cockpit, and another 15 minutes of waiting for our turn to take off while the cabin filled with the smell of exhaust, we finally lifted off and headed for Guatemala!

The night passed uneventfully, with the exception of the air vent near my feet which blew frigid air throughout the flight, making me regret my oh-so-smart decision to wear flip flops so as to save forty-seven seconds of shoe tying in airport security. Two hours of semi-comfortable sleep successfully exchanged for forty-seven seconds of not tying shoes. Well done, Kristy. Well done.

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During the last hour of our flight, the sun began to light up the sky enough for us to see a beautiful lightning storm in the clouds far below us. As I watched the lightning and the sun rising through the clouds, I was filled with an incredible awareness of God's goodness and providence and sovereignty. It was at that moment that the weight of two years of struggle began to dissolve away.

Steven Curtis Chapman sings a song about adoption, and there's a line in the song that says:

Like the rain that falls into the sea, in a moment what has been is lost in what will be....

The sunrise that morning was my moment.

As our plane descended over Guatemala city, I knew I was looking at the place where my son was born. I wondered where, in all the tiny buildings below, he lived the first six years of his life. I wondered about the people who were part of that life, where they are now, and whether anyone ever wonders about him. I wondered what he might have looked like as a baby and who he smiled at the first time he smiled, and who was there when he learned to walk. I wondered whether there was someone who held him when he cried or kissed him when he got hurt.

And I wished with all that is in me that I could have been there. That I could have studied his newborn face and coaxed out his first smiles and let him hold my fingers while he learned how to walk. That I could know with certainty that he was loved and snuggled and kissed and hugged and rejoiced over.

But God, in His grace, gifted me with a storm and a sunrise to remind me that the rain of Israel's past and of our long struggle to adopt him are just drops in the sea of God's plans for our future.

As a family.

And before I knew it, we were on the ground in Guatemala.

Backtracking...

When we went to Guatemala, all of our energy was focused on the steps that we needed to do to get on that plane to LAX and get Israel safely home. We sent out some emails along the way so that our friends and family could be praying over those steps, but there really wasn't time to share much about what the trip was really like. And to show you pictures, for heaven's sake.

Of course, it was my plan all along to get right to that as soon as we got home, but I think we all know how successful I was with that one.

So here we are, a month later, and if you don't mind, I'd like to backtrack a bit so you can experience a little bit of what our trip Guatemala was really like.

Without further ado, here's Part 1: The Airport...

Throughout the whole adoption process, we talked a lot about the need for God to move mountains in order to get Israel home. So it was particularly amusing, I thought, that just after Jeremy & I checked our bags at LAX, a good sized earthquake hit that was centered right near the airport. Of course, no one even looked up from what they were doing, but still. An earthquake. I'd like to think it wasn't so much an earthquake as it was the rumblings of that last mountain getting moved out of the way.

Besides the earthquake, we found plenty of entertainment during the time we spent in the airport, which we needed because we spent a lot of time in the airport.

We had left our house nice and early because we wanted to avoid somehow missing our flight because of some kind of problem. Like traffic, or car trouble, or not being able to find a spot to park at the long term lot (where we had a reservation). Or we might have a problem catching a shuttle or getting to the right terminal or checking in. Or one of our bags might be too heavy and we'd have to have them all sprawled open on the floor of the baggage check area so we could try to shuffle stuff around without our underwear falling out. Or maybe security might confiscate my chapstick. Or suspect one of us of having the swine flu and put us in quarantine.

And yes, I know that it is somewhat possible that I might have been maybe a tad bit paranoid, but hey, a two year long adoption process will do that to a girl.

At any rate, we got there early and were able to enjoy a stress-free airport experience with plenty of entertainment.

First there was the huge group of Catholic Korean missionaries (we know this from reading their matching bright blue t-shirts) who spent who knows how long checking in like 37 people at a single check-in kiosk, not minding at all that people trying to use the nearby kiosks had to negotiate over and around their mountain of bags. Oh yeah, and they felt the need to document this part of their trip by periodically pausing in business of checking in to take pictures.

(If we were even remotely worried about time, that would have seriously stressed me out).

Then we got to see a lady almost wipe out because she was hurrying too fast down a long ramp through the terminal.

I'm sorry, but since she didn't actually fall or get hurt at all, it was funny. It's just that you could see it happening almost in slow motion. At first she's in a hurry like everyone else, but then she's going a little faster. And faster. And then she's running. Pretty soon her feet are going too fast for her body, or maybe it's the other way around, and she starts to lose her balance. She's flinging her arms and her purse is flipping all over and her feet are slap, slap, slapping to try to regain control. And then she manages to get the better of her momentum and slows down back down to a walk and then stops and kind of does that inventory of patting things like her hair and her purse and her shirt. And then she tries to look around to see if anyone was watching, but she tries to do it really casually in case somehow everyone in the general area did not see her and she doesn't want to be obvious after all.

(And before you go thinking that I'm mean, you must know that I myself have done the exact same thing, except I was not a put-together grown up woman in an airport. I was a dork in junior high and I was in a gym full of high school boys. And when I tried to take off running, my shoes decided not to grab on, and they didn't just slap, slap, slap. They screech, slap, squeak, slap, slapped because it was a gym floor. And all the boys heard the commotion and turned and looked. And so I am allowed to be amused when something like that happens. Because it's funny. It just is.)

Anyway, back to the airport.

While we waited around, we also got to cringe over the guy who spent too much of his layover in the airport bar and then proceeded to stand there and call out to random people to join him in his very festive celebration of being in an airport.

"Hey, girl! Green shirt. Yeah, you. Come have a drink! C'mon! No? Okay, your friend then. Friend! Hey Friend! You've got a nice smile. You should bring your green shirt friend over here to have a drink. No? Okay, but you do have a great smile. Great smile! Dude. Yeah, dude. In the hat. Come hang out man. Aw, no, come on. I know you see me. Come hang out man!"

And then he would high five and fist bump anyone who came near him.

We saw him a few hours later waiting to board a flight to New York. He was considerably more subdued at that point...probably getting ready to start the tearful "I love you man!" kind of thing. I feel sorry for the poor flight attendant who got to deal with him that night.

But even after all of that, plus a trip to the airport California Pizza Kitchen, 2 or 3 trips to the bathroom, checking our email 17 times, and talking to lots of people on the phone, we did eventually get bored out of our minds sitting around waiting for our midnight flight. And so we did the only thing two very tired and very excited and very bored people could think of. We tried to take a picture of ourselves.


I don't know why.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

From the picture, you might think we decided to join Friendly Airport Bar Guy for a drink, but I assure you, that is not the case.

Thankfully, not long after that, the intercom put us out of our misery when the muffled voice announced that it was time to board our flight.

Sin Palabras

Translation: Without Words

That is the best explanation for my lack of blogging lately.

It's unfamiliar territory for me, to be sure. Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows that it is not usually a problem for me to come up with something to talk about. But lately, especially when it comes to this blog, I've been struggling to figure out what to say.

There are a few different reasons for this...

For starters, we have welcomed a son into our home who speaks only Spanish. Much to my surprise, the combination of Spanish classes in school and the studying I did for our Sunday evening phone calls with Israel have actually resulted in me being able to speak Spanish well enough to get by. (And by get by, I mean communicate in a basic way with a limited vocabulary and bad grammar.)

But nonetheless, I have become the official translator for our family, and I spend the better part of the day switching back and forth between speaking English and Spanish. So by the time the kids have all been kissed and hugged, prayed with (in 2 languages) and tucked into bed, I am most definitely without words.

The second reason has to do with the fact that I underestimated how much adding a twelve-year-old to our family would feel like having a newborn. There are no diapers or middle of the night feedings, but as a mom, I'm in adjustment mode. There is more food to cook and serve. More dishes to wash. More laundry to wash and fold. More hands that need washing, teeth that need brushing, and baths that need taking. There are more arguments to referee, more owies to kiss, more bodies to hug, and more questions to answer.

And then there is the issue of my mom-radar operating in overdrive. You're familiar with the mom radar, right? You know...it's the thing that causes you to circle the quiet house one last time at night to make sure everyone is sleeping peacefully (and breathing). The thing that allows you to fold laundry in the bedroom while simultaneously monitoring the sounds of the kids' voices in the backyard for changes that indicate a problem. The thing that counts children every seven seconds when you're out in public. The thing that knows when each child should be hungry, tired, or need to go to the bathroom. And the thing that pulls you out of bed in the morning even though the house is quiet to make sure that everyone is still sleeping peacefully (and breathing).

Yeah, that thing.

And let me tell you, it makes no distinction between newborn and pre-teen. If there is a new child in the house, that mom radar revs up and runs on high-alert status around the clock, which effectively disables the mechanism that allows a mom to put together a coherent sentence for the purposes of adult communication. Leaving me, as I said, without words.

But probably the biggest thing that's been holding me back from posting is that I'm having a hard time figuring out which parts of this time to share and which ones to keep private.

By personality, I'm pretty much an open book. If you want to know something about my life, my background, or my favorite cheese, I'll tell you all you ever wanted to know and then some. It's a trait that's gotten me into trouble on more than one occassion.

But when it comes to Israel, it's not all my story to tell.

I want to be able to be completely open and honest. I want people to be able to participate in this adoption as fully as possible--to know the ups and downs, the struggles and the victories, the heartbreaking and the glorious. I want people to pray for us and our children, to perhaps gain a heart for adoption themselves, and to glorify with us the God who makes all things possible.

But I must respect the privacy of my son.

And I'm having a hard time figuring out where to draw the line. I am without words.

So please be patient with me while I pray over what and how much to share. And please feel free to ask us questions, but understand that we may not be able to answer all of them. And please continue to pray for our family as we navigate new waters.

And to reward you for your patience, I will share with you our new family picture. It's been a long time coming, hasn't it?



But well worth the wait.

Updates Coming Soon

Life has been a wee bit busy around here lately, but I hope to have some new posts and pictures up soon.

Don't give up on me just yet!