Is the kid worth it? (and another shoe update :-)

A few days ago I had an interesting interaction that I have been pondering ever since.  As some of you know, completing a dossier involves almost the amount of meetings/notarizing/appointments/paperwork/driving/WAITING/signing your name as I would imagine it would take to form a small new country.  Thankfully, my dear husband is MUCH more gifted at these type of things (please read "I am too lazy and think it's too boring, and thankfully he is kind and willing to do it"), but I have participated in a few steps along the way as well. One of these involved getting something re-notarized because when it was done the first time, the notary didn't quite form her "3" correctly and wrote over it a little bit. When we sent it in to our agency, they said we needed to have it done again.  It does seem a little crazy (everything has to be done JUST SO), but I guess we have just gotten used to it by this point.  When I went in and told her what had to be done, she looked at me like I was crazy.  And then when she signed her name with her middle initial instead of her middle name (her notary has her full middle name, not initial), and I asked her to do it again, she really started to get quite annoyed. Again, I can totally understand, and I just apologized and waited for her to do it again.  As she finished signing, she looked up at me and said (with a disdain only those in their 20's can really perfect), "Is the kid worth it?"

I smiled and thought of his sweet face, and said, "yes, he is."  I knew she didn't really want a real answer, but a big part of me wanted to tell her all of the AMAZING. WONDERFUL. INCREDIBLE. things about our sweet boy.  How he can light up a room with his shy smile.  How he can run so fast you would not even believe it.  How he can house a plate of food like you have never seen.  How he concentrates so hard to beat me in any game we are playing.  How sweet his voice sounds when he says "good night."  How he always insists on sharing with all of us anything he is given.  How much fun he had boogie boarding with Clint in the ocean this summer. How he rolls his eyes when I make him and my other boys put on collared shirts for our annual Christmas pictures at the beach, but then does it anyway.  How he falls soundly asleep almost instantly and sleeps so peacefully. How he ADORES our dog Tober.  How he is insanely fearless and crazy brave.  How he caught a catfish with his BARE HANDS.  How he loves to cook. Loves to play soccer. Loves to play games.  Loves to be with us.

OBVIOUSLY this young woman did not care about all of these things, so I just thought about them to myself as I drove to my next destination.  But what stuck with me as I really thought about it as the day went on was the question itself, "Is he worth it?" What she meant was, is he really worth all of this you are going through?  She only saw a teeny, tiny bit of the picture - one form that had to be re-notarized.  But there is a larger picture here as well.  Is he worth having your home overrun by old shoes? Is he worth posting so much on Facebook, asking people for things, that by the end of this adoption you might be unfriended by everyone you know?  Is he worth feeling pushy and uncomfortable as you tell folks at lacrosse/basketball/school/the store about the shoe drive and the Amazon link, and knowing that some of them just want you to go away?

Then a little deeper - Is he worth the heartache that we are all enduring as we say goodbye time and time again, and wait and wait until we see him again? Is he worth all of those many tears, by every member of our family?  Is he worth the time and energy that is being taken away from raising that family, by fundraising and completing our dossier now, and loving and raising him once he is here?  Is he worth the money that we will spend on him once he is here, feeding him, clothing him, getting English tutors, sending him to soccer camp, paying for all kinds of things that might be necessary to help him heal from what his life has been up until now?

And then, even deeper, where it really hits home - Is he worth leaving my kids here for a long time to go get him, when it is super hard for me to just leave them for the weekend and go to Myrtle Beach?  Is he worth the risk of what could happen to them, to us, once he is here?  Is he worth the unknown of all the things that we have been warned about could happen once he is home for good?  Is he worth upsetting the peaceful, happy, very-comfortable-and-super-amazing life that the Dowdas are living right now?

And the honest answer is, I don't know.  I do not know what our future holds. I don't know whether or not he will say yes or no when the judge asks him if he wants to be adopted by us. I don't know if we will come home without him.  If he says yes (which we think he will, don't worry - he's already told us yes several times :-), I have no idea what will happen when he comes here to live for good.  From all the books I have read, I do not think it will be the everything-works-out-perfectly and everyone-is-super-happy ending that I know that I have planted deep in my heart and in my head.  No one really knows what it will be like.

But here is what I do know. I KNOW that God has chosen US to love this boy. I have no doubt of that. NONE.  NONE AT ALL. (well, most of the time I don't ;-).  And how, you ask, do I know?  I know because when I saw his bio from New Horizons, he said he wanted to learn to play tennis. I know because he looks like he could be Liv's twin brother.  I know because he loves to play games. And he loves to win.   I know because I can tell how he feels about our other three kids, and how he feels about us.  I know because he doesn't like to talk much, and between me and Sam there isn't much more room in our house for more talking.  I know because when I am with him, I just know.

And then there is - the shoes.  When I start to doubt at any point, I just think about the shoes.  We receive this email out of nowhere, about how we can get money for our adoption through used shoes. I start posting about it, and send out an email.  Almost immediately, we start getting shoes.  We get a storage unit donated, that is a mile from our house.  People we have never met are collecting shoes at places we have never heard of.  Everywhere I go, everyone I talk to, tells me some amazing story about a connection they made, or someone they heard of who is collecting shoes.  We have friends in other cities collecting them, friends in other cities sending them to us.  Friday night the boys and their friends sorted about 40 bags (thank you friends :-). Then by Monday the Suburban was filling up so I sorted about 15 more.  By Tuesday the Suburban was filling up, and by Wednesday there was literally not one more inch open in it.  Today I have received 7 different messages from folks who are bringing them by today - and some of them are bringing a LOT.  I feel like at this point I would not be surprised if I opened my door and they just started falling from the sky.  It feels THAT INCREDIBLE to me. THAT MIRACULOUS.

It just feels like God saying "Have no doubt. He is worth it. I picked you for him."  Every pair of shoes feels like confirmation. Every time I open the Amazon account and see how it continues to grow. Every time someone orders a 31 bag.  Every $15 that was donated last week.  Every time someone shares our link on Facebook. Every. Time.  It feels like God saying, "Yes. He is worth it."

SO, please oh please oh PRETTY PLEASE know how much each one of you is a part of what we are doing.  PLEASE know how desperately grateful we are to you.  Not only are you financially helping us bring him here, but you are the arms of God, hugging us and reassuring us, "He is worth it."  And ultimately, it all comes back to Him (with a capital H), right?  Because WE WERE WORTH IT.  He came to this earth.  "He left his Father's throne above, so free, so infinite his grace. Emptied himself of all but love, and died for Adam's helpless race." We were helpless. We were orphans.  We were alone.  And He came and rescued us, brought us home, brought us to Himself. There was nothing in us that made us worth it, but because of who He is, He believed that we were, and He came.  Thank you, God for coming for us, and thank you that you are allowing us to come for Sergey. Please provide families to come for each and every child who doesn't have a home.  Please allow more families to have this amazing blessing that we are experiencing.  You are so good.

What these shoes are REALLY going to do

(PLEASE read to the end - the best story is last :-).  As many of you know, we are now completely ensconced in used shoes.  They are on our porches, in our cars, on our driveway - everywhere we turn there are smelly, old, dirty, getting-rid of shoes.  But EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. feels like love to me.  I knew when I read about this fundraiser that it was going to be awesome (hopefully not in the way that I KNEW that the ladies night out roller skating with our church was going to be awesome - I am still shocked that hardly anyone wanted to go, and it permanently bruised my confidence in knowing what people want, but anyway...).  Thankfully, I WAS right, and it has far exceeded even my very optimistic expectations.  We have gotten LOTS of shoes.  And hope to keep getting more as long as we have this storage space!!

Obviously I know that there are shoes out there that people don't want anymore - everyone has at least a few pairs in their closet.  It doesn't seem surprising that they would bring their unwanted shoes to us.  What I was totally unprepared for was how excited everyone would be to help us - really, really help us.  Folks we don't know that well (or even know at all!) are telling their friends about us, sharing it on Facebook, putting boxes on their porches for collecting, gathering up shoes from their gyms, their clubs, their workplaces, their schools.  People are setting up collection boxes, handing out flyers, giving out bags, spreading the news everywhere they go.  In their eagerness to help, it almost feels like they are getting something FROM us rather than giving something TO us.  It has completely blown my mind and brought me to tears more times than I would like to admit.  If you want some beautiful examples of how people have loved us, just ask me the next time you see me - I literally have new ones every day.

What I wanted to talk about for a few minutes was something that a sweet friend said to me the other day.  I was at a local church dropping off a collection box.  A woman I don't know super well (I teach her kids tennis) had contacted her church to see if they could put a box in their hallway. The church agreed, and now also has put up flyers on their bulletin board and included us in their weekly email and their newsletter. (SEE??? This is what I am talking about.)  Anyway, I dropped by to put up the box, and a group that had been meeting there was just finishing up.  (As an aside, two friends that were there who had no idea I would be there saw me and said - Oh, I have shoes for you!! - and ran out to their cars to get them. SEE????).  I stopped to chat to this sweet friend who I don't get to see very often but has been so kind and supportive all along during this process.  We were talking about the whole shoe thing, since she saw me putting up the box, and she said that as she saw all the ways that God was providing for us to bring Sergey here, she thought "Wow.  I can't even imagine what God has in mind for Sergey.  He must have great plans for him."

Now it is a bit awkward to admit this, but I don't think I've really spent much time thinking about Sergey's future.  I am so fixated on the present - the fundraising, the paperwork, etc, that I just can't even imagine what it will be like when he is here. Or if I do think of that, I think in terms of how fun it will be to take him to soccer camp next summer and introduce him as my son, and bring him home each night knowing that he will not be leaving again. What I don't really think about much is what the rest of his life is going to look like.  Obviously we do not know what God holds in store for any of us, even tomorrow, or even in the next hour, so trying to figure out what Sergey's future will look like is not productive.  However, thinking that God has such great plans for Sergey that He would do so much for us to get him here - to bring us tons and tons of shoes, to place in the hearts of folks the desire to help us in this way, to allow so many people to fall in love with this boy for reasons they don't even know - that is mind-blowing (and caused me to cry the entire way home, which, by the way, I have decided is not such a safe way to drive).

God is about setting the lonely in families, about loving orphans and widows, about caring for the least of these.  But to think that He has great things for THIS one boy, this sweet soul who is going to be part of our family in just a matter of months - that almost takes my breath away.  I am not saying that I know he will necessarily do great things in the way people normally think of great things (amazing doctor, famous lawyer, brilliant surgeon, world-changing politician), but in the exact way that God has planned for him.  To think that no one else besides our Sergey can do what God wants done - that He is bringing Sergey to us to glorify Himself, not just to save him from an orphanage or life on the streets in Ukraine, is almost more than I can handle.  It is so humbling, encouraging, amazing, breath-taking, to think that our family gets to take part in plans that originate in heaven.  To know that we will get to watch as the future unfolds for this young man - no words.  Grateful that you all will be there watching with us. :-).

OK, PS.  You know I couldn't end without telling you at least one more story. As I was typing this up my phone rang with a number I didn't know.  It was a woman who got our flyer through Harry's travel lacrosse team.  We have never met her and her son isn't even actually even on the team yet - they are in the middle of tryouts.  And her son is in high school, so he and Harry would never even play together anyway.  She went to a yard sale that her son's school was having and asked for all of the shoes that were not sold, bagged them up, and has them to bring to me. THEN she tells me that she told her Bible study about us on Wednesday and that they all wanted to participate.  She asked me to send her an electronic copy of the flyer, so she could send it out to her friends.  I just now flipped over to check my email and she has already sent something out to the 50 ladies in her Bible study group, a beautiful email full of truth from the Bible and the details of our fundraiser, with the flyer attached.  So now there are 50 more people who have heard of Sergey, might be praying for him, might meet him one day.

OK one more.  As we were unpacking the shoes tonight, several of the bags had these cute pink flyers attached (see below).  I read one, and saw what a friend of a friend had done (a woman I have still never met, we just recently became friends on Facebook through a mutual friend).  She brought over tons of bags yesterday, from this drive that they did at her school - a bunch of 4th grade girls apparently called the "Giggles Girls" got together and gathered up shoes for us.  People we don't even know.  For us. For Sergey.

OK one more.  Then I'll stop - I promise.  Our dear friend told her family in Ohio about our fund.  Her aunt drove her car ALL THE WAY FROM OHIO completely jam packed with shoes, hundreds and hundreds of them.  Her little seat where she drove was like a little pocket, and everything else was jammed.  They pulled up as we were bagging shoes tonight (I had no idea they were coming), and I got to hug her and try desperately to keep from sobbing.  She mentioned in passing that she didn't have a lot of air as she was driving - and considering that is was about 100 degrees today I just can't believe that. A woman I have never met drove so far to love a boy she's never met, with a car full of love from Ohio.  How is that possible.