better late than never...

Well, in case you missed me shouting from the off ramp of our airplane or from the open window of our car as we drove home from the airport nearly 7 weeks ago, WE ARE HOME WITH RUBY!!!

There are so many things I could share and would love to tell you, like...

How it was nothing short of an actual miracle that the embassy granted us an appointment when they did--it was.

How when ruby was finally placed in our arms, she screamed and kicked and wanted nothing to do with us, but then 24 hours later she was calling us 'mommy' and 'daddy'--it's true.

How when I finally had her as my own I looked at her and for the first time in my life I finally understood the way the God sees me and was so grateful for my redemption--I was. I am.

How I grieved in a way I could have never imagined as I sat in a restaurant in Ethiopia and realized that ruby would never grow up to be an 'ethiopian' woman and later how I cried as we drove to the airport to take her away from the land where she was born-- oh, how I did.

How she pooped at least 25 times on the 17 hour plane ride from addis to Washington and I was panicked because we ran out of diapers--it was awful.

How joyful the moment was when we drove up a red-balloon lined driveway to our little house where our three older children waited with open arms for their new sister--it was amazing.

How jet lag and the reality of life almost got the best of me, but the saving grace of a freezer full of home cooked meals from our loved ones literally got me through--they SO did.

How one day the decision to love a little girl gave way to the pell- mell, rumble-tumble feeling of actually falling in love with her--so thankful.

How full and crazy and wonderful our home is as a family of six--I have a little stash of wine;)

How one day shortly after we arrived home I learned that ruby's Ethiopian name, which I thought had no significance whatsoever actually means "from death to life"--seriously.

These are the things would tell you in detail if we had hours alone in a room together. I would also tell you how I look back at the last year and see the fingerprints of an amazing God who brought our family together so strategically and accomplished far more as He did it than I could have ever imagined. We are a different family than we were before we began working to bring ruby home. Some of it has been painful and some of it has been thrilling. I can now say that I am thankful for all of it.

My next Goal on here is to actually post pictures and update our timeline... I would like to close out this year by putting this blog to rest... Thanks so much for checking in with us!

Full circle

Exactly one year ago this weekend Chad and I were at the mid-Atlantic Orphan Summit. It was there that we made the firm decision to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia. Well, we have come full circle. I am pounding out this little post from my cell phone because we are on our way to the airport to pick up our daughter, Ruby, in Ethiopia...and bring her HOME!!!!! We got the email saying that our case had been cleared by the embassy just a little less than 48 hours ago, and it has been chaos ever since:) thank you all for your prayers and support these last months as we have been waiting. Our God has truly brought our family full circle from a year ago...here's to the best orphan Sunday ever!!!

no place like home...

today i was able to sit in on the USCIS stakeholder conference call. the call was an hour and a half long and it was USCIS and the state department's way of trying to make a bunch of desperate, crazy mothers & fathers-who-continue-to-be-kept-apart-from-their-children-without-good-cause understand american immigration law. now, on one hand, i left the call with a greater understanding of the separate responsibilities and duties of  the state department and USCIS. on the other hand, i also feel strongly that the individuals running these departments fail to look at these cases and see the faces behind them...the children who have already been abandoned once for a myriad of reasons and have likely faced neglect, malnourishment and disease, the mothers and fathers who have emptied their life savings and gone into debt without blinking an eye because they LOVE the one whose ransom it pays, the cribs and beds that remain empty night after night just waiting for the warm body that will one day occupy them, the clothes that have been lovingly bought, washed, and now sit untouched while the intended wearer slowly grows too big for them thousands of miles away. we are the parents of these little ones. i am mommy to ruby. i want her home. just this week two very awesome gifts were given to us for our little girl...the first was a ruby red bird, now hanging in the middle of our kitchen, it came with a note that says "fly home ruby!", the other was a pair of ruby red slippers...and i just bet you can guess what their note said...

i'm going to click them together a few times and see if they work...

what i hope, what i know...

well, this has been a disappointing day at the kyllonen home...disappointing is a very mild word. i am writing this this tear stained cheeks and a headache from all the ugly crying i've packed into this morning. we woke up to an email from the U.S. embassy in ethiopia, but it was not the email we had been hoping for. this email said that without an interview with ruby's birth mother it would be very difficult for them to "verify the facts of the case and mark it as clearly approvable". The problem is, that they will not approve the case unless it is clearly 'approvable' and our agency has searched to dead-ends without finding ruby's birth mother, and WE cannot make her materialize out of thin air. for the first time today my mind has gone to that really dark place, the place where we do not get to bring our daughter home. there is, however, some logistical hope to this, a team from the state department (CIS) is heading to addis in a few weeks to investigate what exactly is going on at the embassy, and there is a possibility that they will help to process cases with less rigidity than the embassy will, we have a sentator going to bat for us, not to mention several advocates and legal aid who are petitioning on our behalf, and i believe somebody is trying to contact the former head of homeland security on our behalf to see if anything can be done. though i am exhausted of this up and down, i am confident that these people, many of whom do not even know us personally, will be used in amazing ways. this is what i hope.

this is what i know: "a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land." Ps. 68. MY heavenly father, RUBY'S heavenly father has said it in scripture, that HE is the one who sets the lonely in families. so, i say with complete confidence, that ruby not coming home is NOT an option...i do not say this to our creator, but i say it to our enemy, the one who "comes only to steal and kill and destroy" John 10. I do not know what all of this is going to look like in the end...we may be in for a long haul, or we may be recipients of crazy grace, and have ruby with us in only a few weeks. but i do know the one whom we serve and i know that HE is good. i know that HE is sad for the frustration and sadness that our family is experiencing today. i was talking to alanna on the phone earlier and we were talking about the story of lazarus in John 11. there we find the shortest verse in the bible..."Jesus wept". He knew that very shortly HE, HIMSELF, would raise lazarus from the dead, and yet, he was grieved and "deeply moved in [his] spirit" when he saw the grief of his friends. when he first heard that lazarus was dying his response was "this sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory that God's Son may be glorified through it. Jesus loved martha and her sister and lazarus. yet when he heard that lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days." this kind of wows me. it initially seems so cruel that Jesus would know of his dear friend's impending death, yet chose to not act and spare them their grief right away. we then see that not only were they grieved, but so was Jesus(!!!)... he was grieved for them, his loved ones. only HE knew that to wait would mean that their joy would be restored and God would be glorified in a way that he would not have been had lazarus not died. i have to remind myself of this, becase sometimes i forget that our God is a GOOD God. he is the giver of life, strength, health, all good things, and HE is to be glorified. if we must sit in a dark spot for now so that HIS light can shine brightly, then so be it.

i have been so incredibly touched today with the way that people have been praying our girl home and with the encouraging words that have been sent our way...not to mention the picture of the most enormous ruby i have ever seen posted all over facebook, in support and prayer for our daughter!

i have had the most amazing reminders sent to me today in the form of scripture. the first one that was sent my way was this: Joshua 1:9-11 "have i not commanded you? be strong and courageous. do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go. 'and joshua commanded the officers of the people, "pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, 'prepare your provisions, for within three days you are to pass over this jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess." --no, ruby is not land that we have been promised, but she is the daughter we have been lead to by the One who loves us both. today is friday, the embassy is closed for the weekend, but in three days we are preparing to fight to bring our daughter home.

Deuteronomy 31:6 "be strong and courageous. do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you."

Habakkuk 3:17 "though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vies, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fileds produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls...the LORD God is my strength.

Nahum 1:7 "the LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and HE knows those who trust in Him."

John 16:33 "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. in the world you will have tribulation. but take heart; I have overcome the world."

Psalm 130:5 & 6 "i wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word i put my hope. my soul waits for the LORD more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Mommy's Heart Went POP

an update...

it's been a while since i posted any kind of an update on how close we are to bringing ruby home. this is mostly because we have been living week-to-week, thinking that at any moment things were going to shift in our direction and the embassy would grant us an appointment, and we would be able to bring our daughter home. well, this has not been the case. when we left addis we were told that because ruby has some special medical needs, we would likely be back in 2-3 weeks, but clearly, here we are, 12 weeks later, with no concrete end in sight.

ethiopian adoption has been under scrutiny for several years now. there have been all too many cases of corruption. corrupt agencies and orphanages have been found taking children and placing them for international adoption under false pretense, using coersion to separate them from their parents. ethiopia has already stripped corrupt agencies of their license and has (and continues to) closed many 'dirty' orphanages. both ethiopia and the U.S are commited to ethical adoptions, and are taking every possible precaution to ensure that children leaving their homeland to join american families are, in fact, truly orphans. in march of this year all eyes were on MOWA, the ethiopian agency that issues approval letters that ultimately determine whether a family passes court. MOWA had issued a statement that they would be cutting down the number of letters they would write each day. They stated that they would only write 5 letters each day, this was an estimated 90% decrease from the previous trend. while all eyes were on MOWA, the U.S. embassy in addis was quietly re-organizing. in july there was a complete turnover of staff at the embassy and, seeminly overnight, new procedures for orphan investigation were being put into place. this left agencies confused becuase there had been no communication between the agencies and the embassy, and as a result, many cases were taken to the embassy and not accepted for submission because the files were not meeting new embassy standards. last week the embassy (finally) met with agencies and laid out new guidelines, they also posted a notice on the state department website. in this notice they disclosed that 80% of files are not meeting new embassy guidelines...this is resulting in a 'traffic jam' of sorts at the embassy...files are coming in at a still steady pace, be nearly all files are requiring an 'orphan investigation' and so they are not leaving the embassy as quickly as they are coming in. becasue of this overflow, hundreds of files are being sent to nairobi for processing.

so, you ask, why on earth am i telling you alllll of this?? for one, anybody who is newly in the process of ethiopian adoption, or is considering ethiopian adoption, will find this very interesting...it's the climate of adoption in ethiopia right now. secondly, it is why we have. not. moved. there was a miscommunication between the embassy and our agency, regarding a tuburculosis test that ruby needed,  and it held us up for 6 weeks. once our case was finally submitted and processed we were told that we could not pass embassy until ruby's birth mother was interviewed. agian. this is where the most recent problem came in. she could not be located. anywhere. our agency followed several leads on her whereabouts, but they all resulted in a dead-end. we do know that the last time she was seen she was very sick, and there is a distinct possibility that she may no longer be living, but we don't know, we may never know...and that is a whole different post. but as there has been nothing concrete, the embassy is still investigating. yesterday a notice was placed in the addis paper, notifying her that she was needed at the embassy. if there is no response to the notice in several weeks, we have every reason to hope that we will pass embassy and be free to travel. in the meantime, our agency has told us to pray that our file is not sent to nairobi, as that would add another month to our already long wait.

we are hopeful that we will have ruby home by thanksgiving, and we are confident that our God is in control of this situation. we have been completely caught off guard by the complications that have arose with this portion of the process, and yet we know that HE has not been surprised by any of it. the other day i was looking for a verse in the bible...i wanted a promise. i went straight to 1 samuel. i wanted the verse that said this: "i prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what i asked of him." i was craving this promise, the answer to hannah's prayer. the answer to the prayer that chad and i have been praying since the moment we started this adoption.  i was so engrosed in the reading of this verse that i almost missed the next one, the so-important next verse: "so now i give him to the Lord. for his whole life he will be given over to the Lord." i wanted the verse that felt so reassuring, that God would give me this child that we have asked and begged for, that i almost missed that part where i am to give her back to Him. where i was looking for a promise, i found a challenge that i will carry with me as i wait, and a challenge that will continue even when i have her here in my arms.

well, thats it. i've got nothing more...do with it what you will:-)

i've told you mine, now you tell me yours...

hello bloggy friends!! thank you all for following our family as we work to bring our ruby home. it's amazing to me that actual support can be offered via the blog world, a gift i had not anticipated. now, as you have been patient and listened to our story unfold, it's my turn to hear your adoption stories:-) please take a look at this and consider sharing your story with the Mommy's Heart Went POP! team. The adoptive community is vast, and while there are many opportunities for adoptive families to come together to learn and ask questions, we are working to simply provide a platform where stories can be told....each one different from the next, every one precious. We would also love to share your blog address, if you have one, and enter you into a drawing for one of the first copies of "Mommy's Heart Went POP". Come, take a look, share your story, and pass this opportunity along to your friends!!