The Hard Truth

It's been a couple of days and I feel like I'm ready to share with you some of what has happened here. We both needed time to process it all and deal with the emotions we have experienced. First I will say that although we don't have "official" word of our interpol being in, Oleg did schedule court for us on Wednesday. Nadiya said we won't know 100% until Tuesday but she feels pretty confident.

I'll start by saying this. Some people really do have fairy tale adoptions. I know they are out there. Some people don't but they aren't willing to tell you and they suffer in silence. Some people don't and they are honest. Now, I'm not a person who normally enjoys putting my feelings up for the world to see so this might not be brutal honesty but it's the best I'm willing to do right now.

The reality is that no matter what you are told about how "good" an orphanage is, or how much you convince yourself that because your child hasn't been sent to an institution yet she should be OK....it's not OK. An orphanage IS an institution and these children show the affects of that, some more than others. Facing that has been hard for us. 2 days ago we went to visit Oksana. When we arrived all of the children were outside so we went in to let them know we had arrived. They told us that she was inside. I walked up and peeked in her room (which I normally don't do, she's kind of kept behind closed doors) and what I saw was disturbing. She was in a dark room sitting in the corner on a bed, rocking herself. If you haven't seen an institutionalized child rock themselves you may not understand what I am referring to but just trust me that it is disturbing. When they brought her out to us she seemed "off". Our visit went fine for a short time and then she just lost it. We still don't know of any trigger but she started sobbing, hitting us, and biting herself. We brought her to the caregivers hoping they could help us figure out what was wrong but they just told her to stop crying. One of them tried to take her from us but she refused. It took quite awhile and she finally calmed down and played (this was the day she climbed through the tunnels on the play set) but we were badly shaken by the whole experience. Really typing it out doesn't adequately describe how disturbing this was. It makes it sound like a typical temper tantrum....it wasn't. This child has experienced things we may never know or understand and I have to confess that this is the first time I thought "I can't do this".

We are thankful for our Reece's Rainbow community who have walked this journey, listened to our fears, confirmed that we are not alone in those fears, and have rallied around us. Some of these people are right here in Keiv with us (Thank you Lord), and others we've never even met in person but we knew we could open up to them and they have wrapped their arms around us and encouraged us greatly.

Just so you know our next visit with her was very pleasant. She was like a different child. I've told you before that these orphanage visits are very hard and after our good visit she had an absolute fit when she had to go back. I feared that she would be punished. When we came home we made a final decision regarding our 10 day wait. We are coming home...when I say "home" this time I mean St. Louis where our boys and our family are. Sometimes what is best for a child is that their parents are emotionally and physically healthy. We feel that if we stay here we will come home with her beaten down and emotionally fragile. That would be a horrible start for all of us. We need to come back and be re-charged and re-connect with our children to prepare them, and us, for what life will look like when she comes home. So...if court is Wednesday we will fly home on Friday. Thursday's flights are all horrible so we pushed it back a day and we will visit her one more time before we leave. I absolutely can't wait to see my kids! We will get to be home for 4th of July and Evan's birthday. Again...assuming court is Wednesday we will fly back to Ukraine on July 10th and finish things up on this end which hopefully will only take a week to 10 days.

Today we are meeting with some other Reece's Rainbow families here in Kiev to pray and have our own version of church. We are so blessed to have them here. Tomorrow is a holiday in Kiev similar to our 4th of July so we look forward to more sight seeing and finding out how they celebrate here. I hope this helps you understand better how to pray for us. I'm not even sure how to tell you to pray sometimes. What I do know is we want to go to court Wednesday so you can definitely be praying for that. If you've read this far, thanks for listening. We will be OK.