Still Waiting

Many people have written to let me know that they are praying and wanting to know if we have received our ruling from the court. We are grateful for all the prayers and support we have received while we wait. But we are still waiting. 

We have friends who waited 6 months or longer for their ruling, so I know that it can take a very long time here. When the judge told us that it would be ready in a week, I was a little shocked. This judge is known to be faster than some others at giving out his rulings. While I told myself that I would be happy even if we got the ruling in 2-3 weeks, when Friday afternoon came and the lawyer said that the clerk said it will be ready next week, I was very disappointed. 

In the evening, all the emotions of the past couple of weeks overwhelmed me and I sat on my bedroom floor and sobbed. This adoption process is very emotional. When I have been the only mama this little girl can remember, and I have loved her as my daughter for almost 2 years now and prayed for her for months before that, my heart is very vulnerable. I have been trying to go on with life, caring for my family and organizing and preparing for our school year. 

This spring and summer have been busy with meeting with several families who are inquiring whether their children can join our school. We have tried to accommodate as many families as possible without negatively impacting the quality of the education we can offer. Missionary families often do not have many educational options, so we want to serve and support as many of them as we are able. It has been exciting to see our school grow, but it has also been a lot of work. Since our students often come from a wide-range of educational backgrounds, we try to make an educational plan and class schedule that will meet each student’s needs. Trying to make sure we have ordered all the curriculum needed for each student, juggling the schedules with limited teachers and caring for the needs of my 5 children who are out of school for the summer has been a lot for me. We have reached the point where we do not have any more space in several of our classes, and telling friends that we cannot assist with the education of their children always makes me sad. 

Then this week we got news that the elementary school teacher who was planning to join us for the next two school years may not be coming. I am now trying to reorganize schedules and figure out how we are going to cover those classes. I have several ideas, but most of them include me teaching all day with no planning period and coming home as my toddler wakes from her nap ready to go. 😳 Since our school starts in one month, it is highly unlikely that someone else would be able to join us that quickly. Thankfully, a couple weeks before getting this news, we got word that our first graduate is going to come back to Uganda to assist us this year. She is not a teacher, but has worked with small groups of students in the past. She even taught Ezra to read while she was still a student. Now he can’t stop reading. I trust that God is at work even in this uncertainty about how our school year will work out. We should know for certain whether this teacher will be joining us next week.

Next week. It seems like all of this waiting for next week will never end. Even when we reach next week, I am sure there will be more questions and steps in this waiting process. Once the adoption is completed in Uganda, we still have to get a Ugandan passport for Evie and then apply for the US to recognize her adoption and grant her citizenship. That process now requires several months of waiting for an invitation to come to the US for the interview. We may need to apply for a visitor visa before that since we want to visit family, friends and partners in our ministry who are in the US. We will need to wait to see if that visa will be granted or denied before we can make any travel plans. 

So we wait and pray.... 

It isn’t easy. Sometimes, like last night, I sit on the floor and sob to let it all out. But I also try to get up early and take all of these concerns weighing on my mind to the Lord. He says, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That rest often seems elusive to me, but it is often because I try to figure out how to solve all the worlds problems on my own. I need to let God be God and I can rest in Him. It is much easier said than done. As I struggle through this time of waiting, I used my Bible app to look up verses on waiting. It is easy for me to to think that I am waiting for a certain event or a challenge to be resolved. But as I looked up the word “wait” I realized that it is often used to remind us to “wait on the Lord.”  Knowing that we have a good and faithful Lord, waiting on Him has a very different feeling than simple waiting for a circumstantial change. Here are some of the Psalms that were encouraging to me this morning:

Psalm 27:14 - “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.”

Psalm 130:5 - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.”

Psalm 33:20 - “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.” 

Psalm 39:7 - “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.” 

Knowing that my hope is in the Lord and not in a certain outcome helps me not worry while I wait. He is my help and my shield. Even though I struggle as I wait, I will continue to run to His Word for my hope. 

Waiting and Remembering our Adoption

This week, on Tuesday, we went to court for Evie’s adoption. We arrived a little before 9am and waited until sometime around 11am when they told us that our case would be heard at 2:30pm. Since we were all tired of sitting quietly in our best clothes, we took a little break and went to lunch at a place with a playground for our younger children to get some of their energy out. Here is a picture of us waiting that morning outside the courtroom. 

When we came back at 2:00, the judge was ready to see us, so we gathered everyone involved in the case and spent the next 2 hours in the judges chambers in one of the most emotionally taxing situations I could imagine. Adoption is a beautiful thing, but if there was not brokenness, there wouldn’t be any reason for it. Rehashing that story is heartbreaking and painful. I won’t share any of those details here. That is Evie’s story to share or not when she gets older. There were also some unexpected challenges that arose legally.  Because Evie is two years old and was missing naptime and the judge needed to be able to hear each person speak, I was in and out of the room. As he was wrapping things up he asked if I wanted to come back in and had anything to add. I had been wanting to speak up at several points in the discussion, and now I had an opportunity. This is basically what I said:

“We love Evie Kisakye and want her to be a permanent part of our family. We live here in Uganda and we want her to know her birth family. But we also want her to be free to travel with us and to have all the rights and privileges of being fully our daughter.”

After I spoke the judge told us he would give us his ruling sometime next week. So now we wait. 

As I was speaking those words to the judge, it occurred to me that God has adopted me into his family and he wants me to experience all the rights and privileges of being his daughter. Sometimes I forget that the God of the universe has loved me. He went through something much more difficult than the adoption process here in Uganda to bring me into His family. He sacrificed his one and only Son in order to adopt you and me. We are fully his children, his heirs. Why is it that I so often feel like I need to take care of myself when God is my loving Father and wants to care for me? I am learning, slowly by slowly, to trust my Heavenly Father with all things. Right now, I am trusting Him with this adoption process. I’m trusting that He loves us and Evie more than we could ever imagine and is working for our good even through this time of waiting. And as we walk the challenging road of adoption, I thank God that He walked a much more difficult one in order to adopt me and you. Let’s live and enjoy the full rights of being His sons and daughters. 

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

‭‭Galatians‬ ‭4:4-7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Don’t Lose Heart

Over the course of one month’s time I had two separate cases of malaria and then came down with a severe bacterial infection with a high fever and many body systems affected. From the end of April through the end of May there were very few days where I was well. Anyone who is a teacher in the American educational system knows that the month of May is often very busy. This May included a school play, wrapping up a semester, exams, an awards ceremony and graduation. We also have been working on plans for next school year as we have had several new families ask if we might have space for their children in our school. While the final stretch of the school year is always challenging, my sickness added additional obstacles. During exam week, I received IV fluids and antibiotics while administering an Algebra 2 exam. 

All teachers also know that when the students are done, the teachers are not. We still have grades to finalize and classrooms and textbooks to organize and things to order for next school year. So the first week of June was busy with many of those things along with having 5 children who are now on summer break. We decided that after this exhausting stretch, our family needed some time away for rest. 

We traveled east to the mountains on the border with Kenya to stay at a lodge near some beautiful waterfalls. We have enjoyed some quiet, peaceful time in nature, a beautiful hike,  nice picnic lunches and fun family game times. But in the midst of this beautiful, peaceful place I am still struggling to be at peace in my mind. Next week we are scheduled to have a court date for Evie’s adoption. I got word that another friend who was scheduled to see this same judge this week had her court date canceled. We also still need to get some documents and have been trying to coordinate that. 

Even as I am lying here cuddling with this precious girl during her nap time, my stomach is churning thinking about this upcoming court date. Evie has been with our family for almost 2 years now. While I have no logical reason to fear that the judge will rule against her being adopted into our family, that fear is sometimes overwhelming. I am trying to learn how to trust God with each moment and not worry about tomorrow. Honestly, I’m not doing a great job with that right now. 

Sometimes remembering how God has worked in the past and seeing his faithfulness gives me encouragement and hope about how He will continue to work. This year’s graduation was a real blessing to me. We had four seniors graduate who have all been in our school for the past 3 years. As they each gave speeches and reflected on their high school experience, I was reminded of how God has worked in each of their lives in amazing ways. They have grown into extraordinary young women who are “rooted and grounded” in the love of Jesus. (Ephesians 3:17) 

Galatians 6:9 reminds us “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not lose heart.”

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I realize that after a rough month of illnesss and a lot of work, I have been growing weary. But seeing how God is at work in the lives of our students was an encouragement to me to not lose heart. This adoption process has also left me weary at times. We have been waiting for this court date for almost a year. But as I remember God’s faithful work in the lives of my students, I will also trust Him to be at work in this adoption process. Part of the harvest that we will reap is personal growth in patience and perseverance. While the process is not always fun, I am learning to trust that God is at work, and I just need to take the next step following where He leads me. And when I have the privilege of seeing the fruit of the harvest, I want to rejoice in the ways God is at work and allow His faithfulness to encourage me to persevere in those times when I am a bit weary. 

Mother’s Day Mahem

On Mother’s Day I was thankful that our family had the opportunity to love on some kids who are good friends of my older children. While I was blessed to be able to show a mother’s love to these kids, I also was grieving over the situations that lead to many children not being with their families. When we arrived at church, I needed a few minutes to just sit in the van and cry about the moms who can’t care for their children and the children who haven’t been able to receive their mother’s love. This life is such a mixture of grief and joy, brokenness and blessing. I’m thankful for a church family that also understands and walks together through these moments. Looking around the room in our church, where there are almost as many well-loved foster and adopted kids as there are biological ones, I was once again reminded that God brings beauty out of ashes. While I was waiting to hear from the social worker about how long these kids were going to be able to stay with our family, I asked my church friends to pray that I would trust God in the midst of challenging situations. 

As church went on I started feeling ill. After church we went out to lunch and my stomach just wasn’t feeling right. I thought it might be anxiety waiting to hear from the social worker and my concern for these kids that our family loves. We got word that they were allowed to stay with us for a week and we were thankful. As I told them, I wondered how to even process something like this. At least we had a plan for more than just today. 

By the time we reached home I was definitely not feeling well and my fever was high. I realized that I had malaria for the second time in less than a month. Ugh. Thankfully we caught it early and I only had a few days of feeling really lousy. 

One  morning recently as I woke early praying for these kids I love, I had a lot of questions for God. My heart was heavy and my mind was swirling with all the challenges of each situation. As I opened God’s Word I read Isaiah 40:28-31.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the Everlasting God, the Creator or the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

As I read this passage, I knew it was exactly what I needed to hear. God opened my eyes to see how this passage spoke right to me. Below is my personalized paraphrase of this passage. 

“Lisa, did you forget Who I am? I am the God who created this whole world. I know exactly what these kids need and you don’t have to. I’ve got it. You don’t have the strength or wisdom to carry this situation, but I do. Trust me and I will give you the strength to love freely without feeling like it is up to you to fix things you are incapable of fixing. I am God and you are not.”

While I don’t know what tomorrow or even today will hold. I know that God is the Creator. He has all things in His hands and He is good. As a math teacher I love solving problems, but many of life’s problems are not for me to solve. I’m learning, slowly, that my job is less about trying to solve the problem and more about following my Lord and just loving the people he brings into my life, one day at a time.