they will know us by our love for one another

"by this, they will all know you are my disciples if you have love for one another" --john 13:35

one thing i love about the adoption community, is how you feel instantly connected with a stranger who lives states away simply because you are both adopting. the reece's rainbow community is incredibly supportive and encouraging, with emerging friendships and life-long bonds formed, even if you never actually meet. there are of course, these people known as "trolls" who hate adoption...i think that's their point...i'm not sure what their solution is to the orphan crisis, but i'm sure if they'd articulate it instead of attacking adoptive families i'd nominate them for the nobel peace prize; but then again, it's easier to be venomous than it is to actually do something to make a positive change....

there's lots of judgement and nasty things said about adoption, families who adopt, families who adopt and admit it is H-A-R-D. it's easier to throw stones and spit venom than it is to reach out and offer encouragement. we don't think that "'murica is the greatest place in the galaxy! red, white, and err......blue!!!" but it is a blessed nation-that is why more countries are open to international adoptions where the forever family is in america than any other country (aside from putin, but really look at what the guy's done, do you really want him to be the example, the hill you die hoist your flag and die on?).  research the statistics of what happens to orphaned children that age out in china (and other countries).  should they really age out and become social outcasts with no real promises of jobs and quality education just because someone has a some issues with a few families that have adopted (or adoption in general, but again, i ask for their solution....change a culture? great, move there, do that-change the culture's mindset; better yet, move there, or become involved with a program that gets to the root of the issue so that there won't be any orphaned children to begin with...).

for every rotten person that slips through the cracks and is approved for adoption, and then bad stuff happens, there's 1,000s more that are wonderful, loving, caring, and servant-hearted families.  kind of like those wackos from westboro baptist church--you can't judge all christians by those 15.  kind of like kids with guns...not all kids carry guns to harm each other.  kind of like people in the south, most of us do have all of our teeth and can speak articulately. kind of like people up north, they don't all support abortion clinic inside walmarts.

moving on...:
i bought our sweet girl a dress the other day, and i hung it in her room.  i wasn't expecting the tears that would fill my eyes as i did this, and the ones that would continue to stream down my cheeks as i walked out and back down our stairs (trolls, don't worry, we will move upstairs to the guest room once our sweet girl is home and adjusted and feeling safe and secure).  i just want her home. i want to know that she is safe, nurtured, loved, and lavished with positive affirmation; the only way  my heart will rest is when she is home, and i know i and the hubs are providing that to her, and this is still 7-12 months away.

my in-laws are selling their home and buying one in our neighborhood, which will be wonderful for our sweet girl, to have her grandparents so close by.  we're excited to have them a quick walk away (don't worry, our neighborhood has private roads, and sidewalks which hare perfectly safe to walk on).

some resources:
i prefer facts to opinions and judgements
statistics are fun!
so many numbers!!!!!!
educate yourself past a news story (or two)
you'd rather them age out?--then do something about it (this is a christian site, but if you can find an atheist site that promotes ways to care for aging out orphans, then by all means....)

and finally: IT IS SO MUCH EASIER TO JUST LOVE PEOPLE.  hate is taxing and plus causes premature wrinkles, all that anger! let's just love each other.  they will know who we are, by our love for one another.

and if you're not a christian, you're still not excused, there is no reason to kill love:
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” --anais nin

her precious face and resilient spirit

It's been two days since we've been able to share the only two pictures we have of our sweet girl with you all.  My heart has been wanting to share her sweet face and resilient spirit long before now, but there had been another decision on China's end we were waiting on. 

what's next. the question we've been asked like a eleventh-bilion times. here's a summary: 

* book reports!  yeah, we have to read three recommended books from a list of about 30, and write book reports on them-i need to find my old APA books...

* watch about 10 hours of online training videos and take a test on them afterward

* confirm that ryan is not a secret felon (i know I'm not, but how well do we ever know anyone) (i kid, i kid, he's harmless)

* have some people that have good things to say about us submit some recommendations

* file an uscis i-800a application and do some sort of special fingerprinting

* submit our dossier (dos-e-a) (a lot of paperwork, fancy word for a lot of paperwork) 

* wait. 

* wait

* wait

* wait some more

* travel

in between these is a lot money due (well, the most is due right before travel) ($15,000), at one point in submission of paperwork we have like $4,000 due, and at another point we have like $3,000 due, but the main "ohmygod, we have what due?!" is right before travel, which means i have about 7 months to exercise and eat right so that when $15,000 is due, i can stress eat all the hostess cupcakes and prince's hot chicken and still end up at my starting point. 

but none of that matters! look at the sweet, beautiful, happy, and resilient girl that is about to have a forever family!

there is so much to do! 

* learn mandarin (easy-peasy!)

* order this really cute bed set from landofnod.com 

* learn to cook sticky rice and steam fish

* really, really, really sleep in a few more times, like teenager lever 11 a.m. sleep in; because life is about to change---for the awesomely better! 

* i'm sure there's "few" more things i'm forgetting, but, we'll figure it out! 

ahhhhh!!!! i love being able to fully share our joy with you all now! 

more than anything

my thoughts have been meandering through the forrest of adoption pains and sorrows lately.

here are a few things you should know:

*it is not okay to ask us if we are "sure we can handle a special needs child"
would you ask a pregnant woman who was told her baby would have birth defects if she was sure she wanted to keep it? no, no you wouldn't. there is no difference. she is our daughter. we will continue to work to bring her home.

*it is not okay to tell us "you cannot save them all"
what is my response supposed to be, "oh, good point, let them wither and die then"? no. it doesn't matter if we can't "save them all"--we can be her mommy and daddy, and that will change HER world. that's what matters.

*do not tell us "you don't know what she's gone through, i mean, what if she really has a lot of problems?"
she is the one who has been hurt and abandoned. i'm really glad this isn't the response Jesus had when His Father sent Him to us.

*do not ask "aren't you going to miss being able to take fun family vacations, going out with friends, having easy family dinners"
what is our response supposed to be? "yes, we know there is unimaginable suffering in our daughter's life, but gosh, the beach is really calling our name, let it be someone else's problem...." no. that will not be our response. i will probably say something ugly to you.

what we nee more than anything, is support, encouragement, and love.

we are about 9 months out from potentially being able to bring home our daughter. a pregnant woman can touch her belly and feel her baby move, sing to her baby, and nourish her baby in her womb--i can do none of this for my daughter. i cannot hold her yet, i cannot tell her i love her yet, i cannot do everything in my power to ensure she is healthy and safe yet.

i have a few pictures of my sweet girl, and two videos. other mommies can take 100 pictures a day if they wish and fix a cute little baby book. i will never have a picture of my sweet girl as a baby, i will never be able to save the paper where she first wrote her name, drew her first cat, dog, bird...i will never have those sentimental cards and picture she made at 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. i was not there to hold her hand and kiss her forehead before she was taken into major surgery at the tender sweet age of 4. there is so much i have missed, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, THERE IS SO MUCH SHE HAS MISSED, and that SHATTERS MY HEART.

with so much weight that mommies and daddies carry through the course of adoption, even if you can't help financially, with words of spiritual counsel, or offer words from experience, then a smile, a hug, a prayer, or just telling us how beautiful she is means more than you know.

to summarize: if you wouldn't say it to a pregnant woman, don't say it to a mommy in the midst of adoption.

on an exciting and positive note: <3
--oh, and go check out the beautiful jewelry made by the beautiful women in ecuador, south africa, kenya, uganda, ethiopia, and vietnam. there are some really cute new spring color pieces in! enter "carmen preciado" in the order notes for a percentage to go toward our adoption! :)

johari creations

this is where i always want to be: perched on His cross. 

my heart beats again

the hubs and i talked about adoption on our first date: how he was adopted, my experience working with vulnerable and orphaned children, and both our desires to adopt (we decided to keep the conversation light for the first date ;)), so when our first anniversary approached, we had already been little prayer warriors for the precious faces and souls on reece's rainbow, and saw the sweet soul we knew would be OUR daughter.

the country she lives in has LOTS of requirements to adopt a child from there, one of them is to be married for at least two years (or be able to prove you've known each other that long). we did not meet this requirement--since our first date was June 28th, 2012, we were engaged on August 4th, 2012, and married on January 19, 2013.  we were determined to walk by faith through this anyway, and signed on with the agency and began our home study. this wasn't the best time to begin the process if you are impatient or fretful (--i am fretful, but not eeyore fretful or chicken little fretful...more like "ye of little faith" fretful), as chinese new year was approaching. chinese new year is like our new year, only on steroids, magnified, a week long, and the whole country pretty much shuts down. it's awesome. unless you are waiting on the approval issued from a governmental office in regards to your adoption. we hoped we'd hear back before the year of the horse was welcomed in on January 31, but no; and governmental offices would not reopen until February 6th. surely we'd hear back the next day or so. nope. my mind raced and heart fluttered, and fretted, i was approaching eeyore level.

febuary18th, a terrible invader attacked my stomach and i was rendered helpless. i could not work and spread the viral intruder to my cute little preschoolers so i called out. one moment i was outside with our new pup, pleading with him (gnarls barkley) through pains so severe i thought surely my stomach was being torn into by invisible giant hands, and the next i was on the phone with our adoption liaison hearing that they had ISSUED OUR WAIVER!!!! (i shouldn't have capitalized that for you skim readers...).

before we had heard back regarding our waiver, we took a step of faith and began our home study (where it is confirmed you have the emotional, mental, and spiritual strength to raise a child).

we also began saving money and fundraising. goodbye whole foods, and even trader joe's...hello aldi! her room furnishings are all picked out on www.landofnod.com, and we're staring at a rosetta stone for mandarin hoping for a gift of tongues (in mandarin) to be imparted to us so we can communicate with our sweet DAUGHTER from the beginning.

we can't publicly share her picture yet, maybe in a few more weeks-but until then, just know that she is the sweetest, most precious, created perfectly in His image 10 year old girl you can imagine!

after being held in captivity, my heart can beat again.

until then, here's a picture of a dinosaur asking noah why he didn't tell him about the ark (i think T means "ark" though, the "arc" is a totally different thing, unless he was really concerned with holiness).

my heart stopped

i dreamt of our journey to you again. but this time, they told us "no", with no accompanying reason or explanation.

when i heard those two letters, that one word, a sharp pain came upon my chest, and shot down my arm. i lost my breath and my chest tightened. all those "those thoughts of future memories" were jerked from my soul.  gasping for breath from my increasingly tightening chest, i mustered out another "why", and she shook her head in sadness, and said "they didn't say, i don't know". the tightness and sharp pain were unbearable now, and then, my heart stopped.

somewhere in my soul, leaving to it's final home, i felt they crowded around me, and began to compress my chest, breath into my mouth, do everything they had been taught, but nothing worked.

i fear the "adoption miscarriage", and that fear took over my dreams the other night. fear is not from the Lord; i trust in the peace His promises bring.

i trust in Him. i trust in His love for you. He promises that He will not leave you as an orphan; and He's intwined you so deeply into my heart it defies His promises that He would allow you to be ripped out.

every night i lay in bed, waiting to hear you coming down the stairs to seek our help or call to me for a glass of water. each morning, i walk by the stairs and look up, longing for the future days i will walk up them to gently and sweetly wake you up. every day driving to work, i look in my review mirror, wanting you to already be in my backseat, and each day i prepare dinner, i desperately want to have to fix an extra portion; but you're not here yet.

we have a home study visit tomorrow, and with it, great joy, as we are moving one step closer (though there are many steps, we gladly take each one, counting it joy).

we love you sweet girl.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)  --e.e. cummings

praying to have you home by this Christmas! 

you fill my dreams

i know your sweet face.

what i don't know is what you are feeling and what your heart believes. do you know you are loved? do you think you are forgotten? do you know you have hope, or do you believe your days will be hopeless? have you been told that you are created perfectly in His image? have you been told He loves you far more than an earthly father can. i don't know what you will feel or think when you are told we are coming for you.

despite how little i actually know, you fill my dreams.

i dreamt we brought you home. we had asked friends and family to greet us there and welcome you. we came down the stairs, hands within each other, and they all cheered. there were so many people: they held cards and signs, flowers and balloons, and they smiled widely. you were terrified. who are these people? what are they saying? are these good cheers or scary cheers? what do these signs say? am i going somewhere with one of them now?  i could feel the cold sweat of your hands as you panicked. i could see the fear and confusion in your eyes. then i cried, not tears of joy though. i cried because i realized i asked those people to come for my vision, my excitement. now i saw how it scared you, how you didn't understand. and i then cried with you. i tried to apologize, but you couldn't understand my words.

i weep for your first time here, when you are filled with fear and confusion. i weep for how you'll miss the only life you've known. it might not be a "good" life, and less as most americans would measure it, but it was your life, and you knew it. i weep at the hurt you've experience, the rejection you may have felt, the times you've seen others go home to their forever families. i weep for the frustration you'll feel as you hear words you do not understand and try to learn a new language.  i weep at the thought of there being any faint memory of seeing your birth mommy walk away when you were so tiny. i tell myself that surely God's mercy would wipe such a visual memory.  i dream that you will feel joy when you see me walking toward you. God's redemption is beautiful.

i dream of showing you unconditional love you should have had from the beginning. i dream of being able to put my hand on your forehead and kiss your sweet cheek goodnight and of whispering prayers over you the way it should have been for the last 10 years.

i dream dreams that bring tears of joy for the hope to come, and also tears of sorrow for the hurt you have felt.

in every way now, you fill my dreams.

hope is rising sweet girl

it takes a village

adoptions cost a lot of money.  here's why:
cost breakdown..it adds up!

in a perfect world, we (and other families adopting) would have this lump sum in an account already, but this is reality, and we don't.  in a moment of anxious concern, after not having any success with fundraising, i posted a simple little question in an online adoption community site, asking why some families have great success with fundraising, and others none. my goodness! the response and offers for help i received from other families who are in the midst of adoption themselves was so humbling!

we've had several online fundraisers set up for us where we receive a helpful portion of the total purchase to go toward bringing our sweet girl home, there are the links on the side of the page for you to look if you'd like. some are direct links for a fundraising page: usborne books, trades of hope, and with the others, if you enter my name: "carmen preciado" in the order notes, a portion will go toward our adoption: johari creations, young living, thirtyone and ginger on a mission. you can also join our wolfpack by buying a t-shirt here (we have to sell at least 20 for them to print, but our goal is 75): adoption wolfpack t-shirt :)

adoption is God's heart! He adopted us, gave us an inheritance we did not deserve and called us His own!  He became our Father, whom loves us dearly. there is nothing we did to be adopted by Him--nothing! out of His great love, He gave us life, hope, joy, love, and a future with Him. adoption is modeled after this! our sweet girl has waited and waited, seeing other children have forever families come for them. so many other children continue to wait! that is not His will. His heart breaks with each abandoned baby, each abused child, each child who lost their parents at too early of an age.  our sweet girl deserves to be someone's daughter, she deserves to have her head rubbed when she's sick, she deserves a mommy to cook with, she deserves a life where she is loved with a love unimaginable, where scripture is prayed over her, wounds healed, and where she will not be abandoned in the tough times.

and! for each donation, we'll make a cute little ladybug with your name on it, to be put in her closet (she'll have a huge closet--hopefully it will be overflowing with ladybugs crawling everywhere! :) who doesn't want their name on a ladybug! every little bit adds up! no amount is too small! $5, $10, $15? He will bless it all! and when she opens her closet everyday, she'll see the names of the village that brought her to her forever family :).

ryan and i are purposely wanting to adopt an "older" child with special needs before we have biological children, because we recognize it'll be a difficult transition for her--coming to a country that is completely culturally different, not understanding the language, not having a acclimation toward the food, and the attachment process, oh, our sweet girl. we covet your prayers for this, that she would feel safe and loved in our--her! home, that she would know that she is our daughter and we will never leave her or hurt her. that her heart would be open to be loved, and becoming part of a family. honestly, it is a difficult process for these older children, think about it from their life! we want God's hand to be upon it so desperately, so graciously, so wonderfully, she deserves to feel His hand upon her, to heal her heart. we want to be able to focus all of our time, attention, effort, and energy to her, helping her, loving her, giving her what her heart and sweet spirit needs!

please join with us, in prayer, support, encouragement, and if you are able, financially--God sees the heart, and a small amount given with prayer, He will honor and bless!

thank you!

also, look at all these other sweet children that need their forever family! no amount is too small to give toward their adoption too (most of these children do not yet have a family coming for them, so the donations help lower the cost for a family that otherwise might not be able to).

next time we take this picture she'll be sitting between us, holding this incredible ostrich! :)