Past, Present & Future
As we approach the one year anniversary of meeting our boys and bringing them home, we have spent alot of time lately reflecting on all that has transpired in the past year. So much change has taken place that it is hard to comprehend how fast we have bonded as a family and grown personally. They bring so much joy and laughter and excitement into our family, it is weird to think of life before they got here. We are thrilled to announce that Asher finished his 9 month long medicine for TB on Friday. Levi finished one month ago, his 6 month regime. The nurse from the Health Department (Lisa) was super nice, but it is so great not having to be home right after school two days a week to greet her. It is an awesome feeling to put that behind us. I have finally gotten into a great routine with the laundry and meals. I have a 4 week rotation that everyone likes. Victoria finished club volleyball this past weekend in Dallas. They won the silver bracket which means they finished 9th out of 32 teams. They started out in 19 place and fought their way up. It is truly a great group of girls and parents. We had a blast!
Emma visits the doctor on Thursday to examine her foot and possibly remove her cast. That would be great! She is in the beginning of her biggest growth spurt. She seems to grow taller each week. Emma pleasantly surprised us when she told the principal at school that she wanted to talk to the kids for chapel one Monday. The principal agreed and Emma prepared a devotional for the whole elementary. He got up in front of all of those kids, teachers and parents and talked to them about chosing the right path and making choices that please God. She did such an amazing job. We couldn’t have been prouder.
Asher is doing great. His vocabulary is mindblowing. He told me that other day that he gets “frustrated”. He doesn’t even qualify for ESL (English as a Second Language) anymore because his English is better than most natural born citizen children. He will go to pre-school next year three days a week. He is very excited. He is my little buddy and I love taking him with me wherever I go. He is so good in stores. We just talk about things.
Levi is doing great in school. His reading is really coming along. We are fairly certain that we are going to move him to our neighborhood school next year for 4th grade. It has been very difficult for him socially to not live near the kids he goes to school with. He is excited about the change. We continue to have open discussions with him about his siblings and father in Ethiopia. We have just started getting updates on them, and just received pictures. It has been a huge relief for him to know that his family is getting help with food and other needs. He is very insistent on sending them some of his money. He really wants his older brother to get a bike. Even though he loves us and is glad to be a part of our family, there are people and things he misses. He has been fishing several times here and has yet to catch anything. He is convinced that there are no fish in America. I have had to toughen my skin. The emotional aspect of this process is hard to prepare for. His love and devotion for Anat (Mother) is very deep. I sometimes feel like I am competing or being compared to her. Most recently we were talking about heaven and after I told him that he would get to see Anat when he got there, he was very excited. I told him that Jesus will prepare a room just for him. He told me that he wanted to be with her in heaven and not with me. My heart wanted to break, but the Holy Spirit made me realize that he was struggling with loving me and her at the same time. He was thinking that he had to choose. I told him that he doesn’t have to stop loving Anat to love me, that he can love both of us. I continued to tell him that I couldn’t wait to meet her and that we would be great friends, because we both got the awesome privilege of being his mother. He is also thinking about what will happen to him if David and I die. There are very few old people in Ethiopia, so he thinks that we could not possibly live for a long time. Two weeks ago he asked when his skin would turn white like mine. We received a brochure for a waterpark that we went to last summer. In one of the pictures, there is an African American boy in the pool. He brought it to me and asked how they got that picture of him. He thought because there was a black kid in the picture that it had to be him. It made me realize just how “white” his world is. These are just examples of what we deal with on a weekly basis. God has been so good to us to help give us the answers to his questions and to be able to give him comfort and security. The best part is when he talks about his future. He wants to marry and be a father. When he is 20, he is going to go to Ethiopia and bring all his siblings back with him and they will live with him in his house which will be next to us. We would love that! It has been incredible to look back and see where God was working in the past, where He is working now, and glimpses of what He will do!
Nancy
