Day ?? - I have no idea anymore

On Wednesday BJ (Will) came home at lunch to feed the masses so that I could go for a run and on my way out the door several of my sweet children were concerned about my missing lunch, “Aren’t you hungry, what will you eat?  Don’t you want to stay and have lunch?”  Bless your adorable little hearts but I would rather go Survivor on this run and eat nuts and berries along the way then stick around for another session of the feeding frenzy.  This is not intended with even the slightest manner of maliciousness but it is meant in complete sincerity.  I dearly love my children but filling their bellies multiple times a day is a full-time job in itself, so if Will is gracious enough to give up his lunch hour to allow me to indulge in a quiet run then I gladly hand over the apron and sprint for the door. 

Week three was relatively calm around here, we did not flood the kitchen, attempt another drowning, we have not stuffed rotten food in coat pockets and I have not seen any wet undies on the bedpost.  We have worked hard to settle into a schedule and we continue to shun the outside world as much as possible as we struggle to find our new normal. 

That is the kids this week, this is me this week  -  completely and profoundly exhausted, entirely overwhelmed, and battling moments of intense loneliness.  Regardless of the 16 hours per day of steady work there is still mounds of schoolwork left undone, countless dishes and messes around my house, menus and grocery lists unfinished, and multiple projects of varying importance that lay untouched.  And this week the weight of my family came crashing down on me and the unending emotional, spiritual, relational, educational and mental needs and demands of these 6 wonderful people felt as if they might suffocate me. 

I left for another run on this Friday lunch hour and my chest was tight as the frustration and loneliness bore down on me and I ran and we talked and I fought back tears and He whispered words of love and comfort and reminded me that He is always listening.  And in the intense moments of loneliness He was always just a slight cry away and in the moments that I was too exhausted to utter even a small cry that the inaudible sigh and cry of my heart was heard.

I continued to run and He continued to talk and He reminded me that no one, no husband, no father or mother, no sister or dear friend can carry this burden for me.  That while my family and friends can come along side and offer a cold cup of an encouraging word or rally behind me with a well-timed and loving prayer, they cannot bear up under this cross He has asked me to carry.  No, only He can stand up under this weight with me, this is our cross to bear.  My loved ones have their own bundle of cares to carry so He gently reminds me that it is He who stands beside me and that while I am not sufficient that His grace is.  I run on and we continue to talk quietly and in His love and graciousness He allows me to bear my soul and talk of the hurt and the fear and He soothes and comforts. 

As I walk back up the porch steps my chest is tight again and my eyes filled with tears but now it is not frustration and loneliness that clamp down but an indescribable gratitude for His friendship and compassion. 

Right now five of my six sit quietly tucked onto the couches watching Snow White and I enjoy this quiet hour (the first since last week when they watched another movie.)  As I look back over this week, this week three, I realize that not only did He bear up under this load alongside me but He swept down and took up this load into His arms and in His sweeping down He has not only picked up my burden but He has swooped me up into His arms too.   And I have glided along in His arms and He has held me and my toes dangle down gently moving along this new race that He has set before me.  And the moments where I hit the ground hard and was bruised and battered were only the moments I forgot to look up into the face of the One Who has already prepared the way for me.   

So we race on into week 4 and I am reminded that when I look to Him I am radiant (Ps. 34:5)

2nd half of day 9 ~ it gets better!!

It was very presumptuous of me to post a blog halfway through a day, it was completely unreasonable of me to think the rest of our day would be uneventful when we had 7 more hours to wreak havoc on our quiet, unsuspecting town.  So, I planned a little excursion into town, no big deal, I have been parenting 4 children for over 14 years now, I can handle this, right? Wrong!  Here is how it went down ~ It was just the 5 younger kids and me (Will was at work, lucky dog, and Tay was at school, lucky dog!) and I decided to take them swimming at the Y, the poor Y, it is just there to increase community well-being, it was not designed to handle the Ruppel clan.  But, I have to give some background in my defense in regards to my decision making because I understand that it may not seem like a good idea to take 5 children to a pool, 2 of whom are completely non-swimmers.  But, I taught swim lessons and lifeguarded for years, I have spent countless hours in the water, we spend our entire summers in the water, all 4 of my oldies (my original children) swim like fish, they swim in pools, oceans, lakes, and rivers, for goodness sakes, my 4 oldies would swim in a muddy puddle if I let them.  In theory we should have been able to this, but theory does not mean squat with adoptive families!!  So, we had been there for literally 2 1/2 minutes when Rue decides to try and drown, the lifeguard moves incredibly quickly, hurdles himself into the pool and snatches her out.  And I am standing beside the pool, in my bathing suit, speechless because I have no idea how that just happened.  First of all, she was about 2 feet from the stairs and secondly she was in about 3 feet of water, and last of all, 3 of my fish were about a foot away from her!  I determined later that she had sat back in the water and gone under and rather then stand back up, she panicked.  I asked Trae later why he did not grab her and he said, "I did not understand what she was doing Mom, sorry, she could stand so I thought she was playing."  Honestly, I was slightly confused too and I realized that my version of a non-swimmer and an Ethiopian version of non-swimmer were completely different.  So, a few minutes later I am sitting there filling out an incident report laughing to myself, wondering how I got here.  I mean I have run 1/2 Ironmans for goodness sakes and yet here I am sitting next to my daughter at the local Y filling out an incident report.  I think God may have had a few laughs at my expense that day.  And Will's first question was (as he is laughing hysterically at us) is, did you film it?!  Yes, Will I was that adoptive mother standing beside the pool filming my daughter at her first attempted drowning!!  We all know that we need all the firsts on film right?  First step on US soil, first time meeting your new siblings, first time seeing your new home and your first time drowning at the YMCA!  That one should definitely go in the baby book!  Like I have not already earned the worst adoptive mother award for our "incident" at the pool, no need to have it on video too. 

Oh, and I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not one of my new daughters managed to get out of the house with her undies still on under her suit.  I can say nothing, except to say that Trae leaned over to me a few minutes after the "incident" and said, "Mom I think ______________ still has her underwear on!"  And we may or may not have laughed a little together in the Beaufort Y over the alleged "undie incident."

The rest of our time at the Y went beautifully though I must say, which I am quite proud of.  Rue got back in the water and Tsinat death gripped me and laughed and squealed and played in the water and we did not have another incident, Yea!! I did notice though that the poor lifeguard never took his eyes off of us.

Everything else has run pretty smoothly though.  I think we have finally run out of gum to hide and there have not been any apple cores hidden in the closet.  We are learning to scramble our own eggs and some how we keep managing to crack the eggs on the floor, not the bowl, not sure how that keeps happening.  We also dumped the sugar bag all over the pantry floor, again unsure of how we managed that.  Rue is very playful and she and Grace are at this very moment racing around the house wrestling with each other.  Tsinat is still quiet, even though we see improvements in her English every day.  Tsinat continues to eat like a full grown man and I do not expect to see a change in that anytime soon.  Rue has met with her deaf education teacher who will work with her once a week and she is very pleased with Rue's signing and her academic abilities.  Our teacher, Julie, actually spends far more time trying to teach me how to teach Rue I think, I am quite sure she finds Rue a better student than me.  It is tough to teach an old dog new tricks but we get through each day and we continue to look more and more like a family (and sound like family) all the time.

On a completely different note ~

Psalm 42:1-2  ~
"As the deer pants for the water, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God"
42:5-6
"Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, For the help of His countenance.  O my God, my soul is cast down within me;  Therefore I will remember You from the land of Jordan..."
42:7
"deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me.  The Lord will command His loving kindness in the daytime, And in the night His song shall be with me - A prayer to God of my life."
42:11
"Why are you cast down, O my soul?  And why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God."

This Psalm was written by the descendants of Korah and was very likely written during the Israelites exile.  Also, Korah had rebelled against Moses and was swallowed by the earth, wrong decision on Korah's part, but his descendants chose a different path and remained faithful to God.  It is wonderful to know that God is a God of new beginnings and regardless of your past or your family's path, He is a God of redemption and reconciliation. 

God is a God of infinite depth and He calls to us in the depth of our innermost being, deep calls unto deep, and there deep in our souls and spirits and deep in our pain and our joy, deep in our loss and our gain, deep within who we are we meet our Creator.  And this is difficult for us in our society that is geared towards superfluous existences, a society that drives people to endless noise and constant busyness of nothingness and in this relentless pace and space of useless activity we miss the deep call of the Spirit.  And we continue to spin our wheels in the mud and we dirty ourselves and those around us with the muck and the mire that comes from all this incessant chatter and useless busyness.  Here, let's talk about this in 2012 terms ~ God is not going to text us, email us, tweet or twitter us, and I am quite sure He is not going to catch up with us on our Facebook pages.  He is depth and He resides in the depth of His people and He meets with His people in the inner places if they are able to slow and be still and abide in Him.  But, our enemy, our adversary, desperately wants to keep us bound up in his noise and fills our lives and our days with his useless chatter and he drowns out the voice of God with this loud and noisy nothingness.  There is nothing superficial or skin-deep about our God and He does not want to coexist with this superficiality.

We are driven and taught to avoid every instance that may cause any pain or discomfort, Satan pushes us to run from this pain into the addictive arms of luxury and comfort because he knows that deep calls unto deep and God is calling to us in the depth of our pain and that deep pain gives birth to a new kind of joy, a real and heavenly joy.  The Psalmist speaks of a sad soul right before verse 7 and right after.  Our disquieted and cast down soul so often precedes the deep call of God and the Psalmist calls us to cry out to God in praise and worship even in our despair because the deep is calling us and it is a far sweeter voice then anything this world can produce.

And we know that God promises to be near us in the depths of our pain ~
Psalm 34:18 ~ "The Lord is near to those who are broken hearted, and saves such as have a contrite heart."

And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  That is not me, that is Paul  (Romans 5:3-5).  Why does Paul glory in tribulations?  because he knows and lives Ps. 42:7 and he knows God calls to him in the deep; the deep pain and the deep joy, but deep all the same.  And when our inner man throws off the distractions and chatter of this world and hears the Voice that has always been and will always be, then nothing else will do, no, not even Facebook.

So, if God is asking you to do something that you are quiet sure will break your heart, then do it joyfully knowing that the deep is calling and He is calling you, what could be more life changing and profound then that?

Funny but exhausting

If you have ever wondered what to do in case an adorable and helpful little Ethiopian accidently puts dishwashing soap instead of dishwasing detergent in the dishwasher, then never fear because your answer has arrived ~

1. Don't panic!!  The mounds of soap and tons of water on your kitchen floor will not kill you.

2. Retrieve every available towel in your home, little or small is unimportant, this is not the time to be picky.

3. Sop up mess and quickly call husband, who quickly Googles you an answer (thank God for google, how did we survive without it!)

4. Ever helpful hubby advises to take all the dishes out (yea! do you know how many dishes a family of 8 can generate in a day?!) remove as much water and soap as possible, throw ice and 2 cups of vinegar in the bottom of dishwasher and run through a short cycle.  Be advised this step is most easily accomplished with the help of a very hard working and completely dependable Trae.

5. Cycle the dishwashing machine through 3 times, yes, that is right, 3 times to get all the soap out.

6. Return all the dishes to dishwasher and wash, with dishwashing detergent not soap, just my opinion though, you can do as you like.

7. Resume with ~ kindergarten math, long division lesson, reading of King Aurther, math in Amharic and math lesson in ASL.

No problem, just another day in the Ruppel house.  Oh my the way, another great hiding place for gum, the mail box!! Why didn't I think of that?!

Also, just in case any of you were wondering Nat likes skirts but not dresses, but Rue likes dresses and skirts.  Nat likes her hair partially braided but Rue NO BRAIDS!  Got it.  Loves scrambled eggs, eats a large man's portion of scrambled eggs almost everyday but not hardboiled, oh wait, Rue does like hardboiled, just not Nat.  Loves avacodas and potatoes (the white kind not the sweet kind, got it) and just about any fruit.  Celery on the other hand will make you gag and almost throw up, Nat that is, Rue will happily sit by her sister eating all her celery while laughing at Nat.  What else, Rue loves to read and Nat would rather scratch her eyes out then read (yea, considering I am her teacher!)  Oh, and they love to laugh and play and hang out with their brothers and sisters and apparently Rue is accustomed to an early evening nap because we almost always find her asleep around 5pm.  And last but not least just when you think you have overcome the washing of underwear in the sink alas, you find wet undies hanging on the bed post!

Love them, love every minute with all 6 of them, even when I am up to my elbows in bubbles!!

Day 8

She pokes her head into the front door, "Mum, Mum," her beautiful dark hair is covered by a bright pink shower cap, I am rewarded for my slow response with, "MUM!!"  I finally make it to the front door and she tosses a wet wrist watch my way and smashes back out the front door to resume her water balloon fight with her 5 siblings and multiple neighborhood children (all of whom found her pink shower cap quite funny).  Day 8 and I am quite sure I have arrived as Mum, times 6; when you burst in my front door and throw things (soaking wet things at that!) in my general direction then I know I am Mom or Mum if your country of origin is ET.  It is good, God is good and we see that everyday, more and more.

Give a girl some love in her pink shower cap!

Recap of the last week ~ wonderful and exhausting.  We have not quite mastered that poopy toilet paper belongs in the toilet, but we are confident that we do not have to wash our underwear and socks in the sink at night (with Mum and Dad's bar of soap, Yea!!)  We have slept well and eaten A LOT!!  We have laughed and cried (Will has always been a cry baby) and we have stared at each other countless times in total and complete confusion (English vs. Amharic vs. Ethiopian Sign Language vs. American Sign Language is quite a challenge!)  They have ridden their bikes until I thought they would drop; by the way this family of 8 on bikes is entertaining, Trae rocks a pink bike, Nat looks like she is riding a clown bike and Will's bike should have hit the junk yard several years ago but we have a good time anyway.  I have begun to learn the meaning of an Afro and spent over an hour and $50 in the Glamour store trying to figure out hair care products and still have no idea what I am doing!  Fortunately I have a wonderful and dear friend who has adopted 6 children from ET and she is ever patient with me and answers all my crazy questions.  I have also begun to appreciate the deaf community and our entire family is committed to ensuring that Rue does not live her life out in silence, which means we carry an ASL dictionary around everywhere we go and have multiple aps on my phone, iPad and computer.  Let's see what else, I have found food hidden in beds and jacket pockets hanging in the closet; when you have gone hungry before you do what is necessary to prevent hunger again.  So, I throw away the apple cores and nuts and remind them again that there is plenty of food, let's eat it in the kitchen.  "Eshee, Mum, eshee."  Ok, Mom, ok, for those of you who are not fluent in Amharic (myself included).  We are learning everyday that family and love are not about the color of your skin, your country of origin, language, or anything of that nature, but family and love come from the heart of God and true family and love is birthed out of the heavens and spills down upon us when we ask and He has opened the floodgates of family and love upon us and we are blessed and undone.  And on day 8 I find myself scouring the internet looking at waiting child photos, frustrated that I have not found the next Ruppels.  Have I lost my mind?  Without a doubt, but now that I have seen and felt the heart of God nothing else will do and these children, these 6 children, making a mess of my front porch and screeching and squealing, these children are the heart of God and I want more of that in my life.  I want to be a part of His family.  And in the moment that I find Trae on his bed crying because his sister can not hear and he wants to learn sign language so well that he can always translate so she can hear through him, in that moment I know this family has been assembled by the hand of God.  So, in my free time I will continue to search for our children who do not know they are Ruppels yet and pray God gives us the privilege of throwing away their hidden apple cores and holding their barf bags.

He is pushing, driving His church, His bride to a new, deeper awareness of His meaning and purpose for our lives.  I see it and I feel it all the time; we were never intended to pursue wealth, success, comfort and our own glory.  Our purpose is first and foremost, and always, to bring Him glory; no guarantees of wealth and comfort, just the guarantee of those wonderful words ~ "Well done good and faithful servant."  We have placed the American dream above His purposes and we live spiritually deflated lives while millions suffer and perish without the hope of eternal salvation.  In the land of the plenty we have clasped our greedy little hands around that plenty and we squeeze the life out of ourselves and our faith.  All the blessings He has bestowed upon us have become our undoing because we have refused  to bless others with His blessings.  It was always intended to be shared, to be taken to those that are in need, it was not intended to be used to buy a bigger house or a new boat; He blessed us so that we can bless others.
 
Psalm 68:10 ~
"... You, O God, in Your goodness did provide for the poor and needy."

There is only one problem here in the American church, we are not poor and needy, not even a little bit so we do not experience His goodness.  So, He pushes us and drives us to give of ourselves in every capacity, so that we will be in need and we will feel poverty and then He provides for us out of His goodness and His goodness far surpasses anything this sad, little world has to offer us.  But,we have to be in a place of poverty and need to truly live in His goodness and He loves us in all of our extravagance and excess and He wants what is best for us so He says unbelievable things such as, sell all you have and give it to the poor!  Don't shoot the messenger, Jesus said it, not me.  Well, He did not mean actually sell everything and give it all to the poor, what He meant was give a little to the poor out of your excess ensuring that your 401k, college fund, and vacation fund are still in tact and of course we could never give up our nice, big house and eating out and trips to the salon and golf course, right?!  Jesus loves me, he would never want me to be without the perfect tint in my hair or that brand new pair of running shoes!  Here is the question for us today ~ when did we start putting words in Jesus' mouth?  and why do we pick and choose what we take literally out of the Bible?  We surely take His promise to never leave us nor forsake us literally but the one about hating your family in comparison to your love for Him, well that is a different story.  While we are busy rewriting the Bible we are missing out on God's goodness and we are allowing several billion people to live out their lives dogged by starvation, surrounded by disease and poverty, and completely unaware of the love of God.  And we all lose, we lose with all our excess and they lose with all of their lack.  And God wonders why we don't heed his call to go into all the nations and He waits for us to lay it all down and Satan laughs at us as we grip tighter to our American dream and we strangle the life right out of ourselves and the dying lost go right on dying.

We were good right up until the barf bags and apple cores right?  I know, me too, it is tough medicine to get down but get it down we must if we are going to allow God to revive His world through us, through me and through you.

On Saturday morning we drove through our base during the annual triathlon and I fought back tears; I argued with God and used words like unfair and unkind.  Why can they race and not me?  I wanted to be racing, not headed to an adoption fundraiser in my minivan loaded with kids.  Racing is fun, actually it is amazing and I loved every minute of it BUT one day I will hear "Mum" in heaven and she will smile at me with that silly, pink shower cap on and so I am reminded that I am running the right race, the only race that matters.

So, we race on and we race hard because time is short and the field is white with harvest.

Fundraiser rather then triathlon ~ a new kind of race!

Today

Eyerusalem (Rue) and Tsinat (Nat) were very excited to be in the airport before we left ET; they were completely enthralled with planes and then we took off and then the throwup came and the excitement quickly left Nat.  After 32 hours and countless barf bags we arrived in Savannah GA with a very sick, dehydrated and exhausted little Ethiopian.  Rue traveled beautifully, smiles and giggles the whole way which is interesting because it was she that concerned me in regards to travel due to her ears.  Countless times throughout the flights Nat would raise her head from her sick-enduced coma to throw up yet again and through the snot, spit, throwup and tears I saw sad and empty eyes.  I asked myself multiple times what have we done and how can I possibly care for them and quickly God reminded me that I would not be the one caring for them, that He would be handling that and I would just need to be the hands that held the barf bag and He would do the rest.  As soon as we left ET I began to see the girls differently, they seemed more broken and lost then I had realized.  One of the stewardesses was giving us advice to battle the air sickness and she mentioned that they often fly refugees out of Africa and when she said that word "refugee" I realized that we too had brought 2 refugees out of ET and the thought terrified me.  I had expected to feel relief when we finally got them on the plane to bring them home but I was not relieved, I was concerned as I looked at the girls.  The severity of their loss and pain became ever more apparent as we traveled back to the land of abundance, their lack became painfully obvious as we neared plenty.  Life in ET can be very difficult even when you do have two parents but when you are an orphan difficult does not even begin to describe life.  Our girls have suffered in ways unimaginable to me.  They lost their father as toddlers and their mother was left to raise them as a single mom.  Rue fell down 6 stone steps at the age of 3 and subsequently lost her hearing.  Then 2 1/2 years ago their mother became very ill one evening, the girls tried to get help, to find someone to get a car to take her to the hospital but that help did not come until the following morning and it was too late by then.  Rue and Nat cared for their dying mother throughout the night; this little girl that sat next to me on the plane throwing up her little guts had watched her mother die and to be honest I don't know what to do with that except pray and catch her throwup.  After burying their mother they went to the orphanage where the have spent the last 2 1/2 years waiting, waiting for a family, waiting for an answer.  So I pray that they will meet their Answer very soon and their Answer will heal their every wound and dry every tear but in the mean time we will catch the puke and wipe away the snot and the spit and give Him the space and the time to do what He does and what they so desperately need.

With the understanding that we are dealing with two wounded souls here I completely understand that we will have difficult days, but today, their first day at home was NOT one of those difficult days.  Today was perfect, perfect weather (I prayed this morning for a beautiful day) from a perfect God and through His sunshine and gentle breeze He smiled down upon my little family today.  And we have done enough laundry to clothe a small army because that is in fact what we have here and we have eaten avacados, apples, potatoes, rice and bananas and we have played UNO and Go Fish and built Lego houses and looked up a dozen or so words in the ASL dictionary and have played charades many times in our attempt to communicate with Rue and Nat and it has been wonderful, heavenly really.  We have explained quite a few times that is ok to flush toilet paper down the toilet and that it is unnecessary to wash your underwear and socks in the sink and we have figured it out moment by moment and God has been good to us everyday in every way.

Today was a day of firsts ~

First time on a trampoline ~

First time for new sisters to hang out ~

Today was a day to learn new things from your new dad ~

Right now we are the midst of showering 6 children after feeding 6 children and soon we will read Bible stories to 6 and then we will have the joy of tucking in for the night, times 6.  And while they sleep we will continue to pray that God heals them while they sleep, heals them while the play, heals them while they learn and that He will continually fill our home with His presence so that Rue and Nat will become whole in their new home.  Soon our girls will no longer be the walking wounded but rather they will walk in the joy of the Lord ~

Isaiah 35:10   "The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads.  They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."