China Part One

Let me begin this post by saying thank you. We have received so much love and encouragement from my last post. It's really hard to be open and honest about our struggles. We never expected it to be as difficult as it has been but we are learning and growing each day. Life is slowly finding a peaceful rhythm and it's hard to remember life before Lila. She is teaching us to be better. 

As I get older the phrase "hindsight is 20/20" becomes more and more true. Our China trip may be the greatest example of this I have in my adult life. Jon and I were given the option to condense a typical fourteen day trip into just ten days. This seemed like such a great idea. It would save travel costs and time away from our boys. It seemed like a win/win. Hindsight, people. I should have thought a little more about this. This post will explain the first few days of our trip. They were long days with lots of emotional stress. This stress may or may not have been avoided had we stayed the extra couple days in Lila's province. I'm going to offer you a pictorial timeline of the first 3 days. 

September 18th-Leave Memphis EARLY

We had a layover in Detroit and then we were China Bound. 

The flight to China from Detroit was so long. Like 13 hours long. The food was less than ideal but we made it to Beijing and then had to navigate the Beijing airport, go through customs and recheck our bags without speaking English. To say we were a little stressed might be an understatement. I have never been as uncomfortable as I was that moment. We had some McDonalds then boarded a flight to Nanchang. We arrived in Nanchang about 9:30pm some 27 hours after we left Memphis. 

September 20th: Nanchang: Lila's city

We woke up the next morning to one of the coolest views. We would meet Lila at 10:30 am at the Civil Affairs office. The red bags are gifts for the Chinese officials. 

10:30-Civil Affairs office. Most Nanchang gotcha days take place in the lobby of the adoptive parents' hotel. Since we expedited we completed what most people do in the first two days in about an hour at the civil affairs office. We met Lila in a very hot, empty civil affairs office. She did not exactly take to us right away. It was a very emotional and scary day for all of us, especially Lila. 

We then took our van to the notary office and signed more paperwork. The lady in the picture above is Shirley. She was our wonderful guide. Zoey tried to keep Lila happy while we signed paperwork. I have absolutely no regrets bringing Zoey. She was an enormous help. Lila was very scared. Very scared. I can imagine how it was so overwhelming.

After the notary's office we went back to our hotel. We spent some time playing and napping and then we took her to dinner in our hotel. For a brief couple of hours we thought she was starting to realize that we were going to take care of her and love her. 

September 21st-Orphanage visit/Travel to Guangzhou

If we had a typical trip we would have spent at least 3 maybe 4 more days in Nanchang. We would have had more time to bond and connect before we went back to visit our orphanage. We expedited part of our trip because we were running into the Mid-

Autumn Festival and China shuts down their government. We would have had to wait at least 2 more weeks before we could have travelled.  Again all hindsight. This is where our struggles really began. I am going to keep these pictures private. Lila started to become weary of Jon. She did not want him to hold her or really be left alone with her. We packed our bags that morning and met our guide to visit Lila's orphanage and foster family. I had hoped that visiting her foster family would have given her a little closer but I can now see how it was so confusing and scary for her. Hindsight. Lila had literally left these people the previous morning. They had loved and cared for her for most of her life. They were her family. She had spent a very brief and terrifying 24 hours with these strangers and now we took her back home. You can imagine how confusing this all was for her. In addition she was in completely new and scary places with these new and scary people.  She had an absolute meltdown when we left. She shutdown and started getting sick. We put her on an airplane that afternoon and I'm still amazed we all survived that day. Her body was under complete stress. 

I will finish up the rest of the trip in part two-Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Thanks for sticking around and thanks for always loving and supporting our family. 

If you only knew...

I’m sure most of you haven’t noticed the gap between my posts. Maybe you have or maybe I am just now bringing it to your attention. I wish I could offer some logical reason but I have none. Once we received LOA for Lila life seemed to fast forward for the next two months and then she was here and life has been an absolutely insane roller coaster since. I do plan to share more details about our trip to China in the next few weeks but the emotions of that trip have been very fresh and raw up until the last few weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Over the last year Jon and I have heard phrases such as, “You are such wonderful people.” Or “What a blessed little girl.” It’s pretty hard to hear those things because we do not feel worthy of any of those words. They are painful reminders of how we are struggling. Please allow me to try and explain.

We met Lila on September 20th in a hot, empty Civil affairs office. She was a very sad, very scared little girl who had been taken from the only people she had ever known. She was so very loved and cared for in her foster family and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with us.  Nothing. She ptretty much hated us. The trip was so physically, emotionally and mentally exhausting that I lost 5 pounds. It was so very hard in China but once we returned life began to sort itself out. We still endured lots of fits but poor girl had seen so much change in such a short period.  After a few weeks the fog lifted and I truly believe this is where Satan entered.

You see, Jon and I are most definitely not perfect people or parents. We will never claim to be. We are simply people who have been blessed with a quiver full of arrows. We are trying to love them hard and show that life is more than ourselves. We want them to be different. We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Once we settled into life at home I could feel Satan start to work himself into my thoughts and actions. The transition of Lila into our family has been of the hardest things we have ever done.  Not because of her but because of us. Because we allowed Satan to whisper words of doubt into our hearts and minds.  I wanted to try and portray that we were doing so well and that our Facebook profile picture was a great indication that we are so happy all the time. It’s not. It’s not possible.  I realize more and more that a picture is just a prettied up glimpse into people’s lives. It’s not reality. Satan used self comparison to make me feel worse. Lila is teaching to see the beauty that comes from the hard and broken.

Thankfully my God is so big, so strong and so mighty. :) He always see the good and forgives our shortcomings. I’m so grateful for what that little girl is teaching us. I sent Jon a text recently that said “She is showing us God’s love.”  It’s amazing to me that we can be so impatient or frustrated with such small, insignificant things and she can look us in the face and smile. It’s pretty wonderful and I’m so lucky she is mine.

Loving our Lila

This post has been seven months in the making. It is the one I have been wanting and dying to write since we started this process. I have wanted so many of you to see the face of the one you are help to bring home.

I guess I should start this post telling those of you who may not know-China granted us our Letter of Approval today. That is the single most important approval of the entire process. LOA is China saying yes-she's yours. I can not tell you what an amazing feeling that is. I don't want to draw this post out so I'm going to start with the very first picture we saw of her and end with the most recent. Here is Luoka Hong soon to be our little Lila love.

May 2016

November 2016

March 2017

 May 2017

Lila's birthday is coming up (the day before Thad's) and we hope to see pictures of her smiling with the birthday cake we get to send her. I am in love with this face and it is so awesome to see my kids talk about her and pray for her. 

What's next? I wish I could give a simple answer for this question but I'm not quite sure myself. We are hoping for travel within the next two months. Most all of the next several steps are working towards getting her US visa. 

I also wish I could put into words how emotional and overwhelming this last month has been. I cry every other day because of the amazingness (that's a word) of you. I will never be able to express these feelings to you. Please know I love each of you. 

If you want to keep up with more of the daily updates of the adoption just request to join our FB group. Here is the link-Loving Lila.  

Love you all. 

It's not about me.

This past week has been a very real reminder how my life is one hundred percent not about me. We live in a culture that teaches us from a very young age to take care of ourselves first but I can say without a doubt my life is not about me. When I step back from that thought it leaves a very hard lump in my throat. It's a difficult thought to process but it's an idea that has very rapidly been forced upon me over the last few months and even days.

Throughout this adoption process and over the course of Seth's eye trouble I have been told multiple times, "y'all are amazing." Or "I don't know how y'all do it." Sorry for the overuse of y'all. I just can't write you all. It is so unnatural, anyways. We have been praised for our ability to handle what I believe people view as difficult or overwhelming situations. Let's be honest. Most people just think we are crazy and they are just trying to be nice but they heap praise on us regardless. I don't take praise (or criticism) very well. My sister Allison recently had a wedding shower and she confided that she was nervous about being the center of attention. I guess those feelings are in our genes. I don't want attention and I sure don't want praise. But Allison gifted me multiple blessings on her shower day. Let me tell you about one of those things.

Allison  asked for a recipe shower since she lives far away and she also requested that if anyone wished to give monetarily that they give to their favorite charity. After the shower we came home and Allison opened the cards given to her that day. She opened several cards and then came to one that contained money. After reading what was written she handed the money to me. She answered my puzzled look with this reply "I asked that people give money to bring Lila home."  Yall I could  not hold myself together. It's been a crazy emotional week that culimanated, ironically on the same day as Allison's shower, with the passing of my Papa. I mean I am a wreck just writing this.

Each day I am reminded of the complete selflessness of Christ. There was a man who deserved nothing but praise and adoration. He could have easily spent much time in the spotlight but yet he walked away from it to be crucified. CRUCIFIED WITH SINNERS. I have to let that sink in. Crucified not sitting on a throne. Crucified. It was not about him but all about the Father.

Allison's simple yet powerful gesture just reminds me that my life is not about me. This adoption is not about our family. Seth's health struggles is not about us. All of these things are for the glory of the Father.

It has been almost exactly a year since I started this blog. It's clearly been therapeutic. Hang on let me wipe my eyes. My stories and words are not for me. I pray they will always be for the Father.

Sometimes there are no words.

There have been very few times in my life that words escape me. Times when I struggle to find things to say. Those times usually correspond with death. Death leave me speechless and rightfully so. Other than those times, words are not something I struggle with.  It all goes back to my genetics. I mean, "Have you met my father?" Here's an example of just how easily words flow from me. When I was in elementary school I tended to be a Chatty Cathy. So much so that my teacher took me into the hallway and proceeded to pull off a VERY long piece of tape. She explained that if I continued to be as "social" as I was that tape would be applied across my mouth. She then hung said piece of tape up in the room where it remained for the rest of the school year. Yikes! I still cringe at that one. Later in my life I married a man who has slowly morphed into my father. That's not a bad thing. They are just social people. We have no trouble carrying on a conversation.

On several occasions over the last few months I have found myself speechless. Left in awe by the generosity of people. People who love us, believe in us and even some who don't know us. On these occasions I think to myself, "What are these people thinking? Don't they know me at all? If only they could see me lose my patience with my kids or Jon. They wouldn't have so much confidence in us. They surely wouldn't have given us money to bring another child into our family. " But you have. You have given and given and given. We are blown away. We feel so unworthy. There are not enough words in my vocabulary to convey my gratefulness. No words and that's saying something. Thank you. Thank you.



Now that I have feebly attempted to convey my thankfulness here is a Lila and family update.

Seth:

Well it finally happened. Somehow we lost Seth's contact. So we are waiting for a new one to come in....ugh. He also graduated preschool tonight. This has been the hardest year of his short life but everyday we are seeing his amazing personality shine. I love this kid so much and I am excited to see how he blossoms in kindergarten.

Lila:

The quilt fundraiser has been amazing. Thanks to so many of you and several extremely generous people we have funded our next step and then some. Y'all you have no idea how amazing this is. When we first started seriously talking about adoption I talked with a precious friend who told us to trust God when it comes to the funds and she was so right. Y'all have really shown us the love of God. Here is where we are. We have one final piece of paper we are waiting to come back from DC. It is our I-800a approval. It should be at our agency sometime next week. Once they receive that paper they will double check all of our paper work and the huge mound of paperwork we have been working on for the past 5 months gets sent to CHINA!!!!!!!! That paperwork is called our dossier. Once our dossier arrives in China it will get logged into their system (LID) and then it gets, translated, reviewed and then we will be officially matched with our precious Lila. That official match is called a Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and it is China officially saying yes to us. It sounds pretty simple by the process from LID to LOA can take 45-60 days. It is going to be an excruciating wait but once we are granted LOA we are about 8-10 weeks from traveling. Y'all pray for a quick, uncomplicated LOA process. Also please be praying for our Lila's heart. This is going to be a very traumatic process that she won't understand at the time. I will talk more about that later. Thank you for constant love and support. This process has been one of the most encouraging and powerful experiences of my life. 

Love you all. 

Lila Update

So many of you ask me on a daily basis what is going on with our girl. The best answer is a lot and a little. We have finished our home study which was an enormous piece of our dossier and a key to filing for approval from the US government to adopt a child from China. If you are confused by this let me remind you of the chart.

If can read the chart we are on step 3. We actually got our letter for a fingerprint appointment to obtain that  I800a approval today. We are probably about 4-5 weeks out from that approval. Once we receive the hard copy of the approval we will have a few loose ends and then our dossier will be sent to CHINA!!! It's beginning to look more and more like our estimated travel time will be early fall. It's not what we wanted but we trust everything will work out for the best. We are really at the mercy of governments right now. We are doing everything we can to stay on top of the paperwork. 

We also found out this week that China is putting some stricter requirements in place in regards to visas. Because Jon is a minister he is heavily scrutinized. He will be only be granted a single entry 30 day visa. I will be granted a multi-entry 10 year visa. See what I mean. The developments that came out this week is dependent on where your visa is processed (Chicago, NY, San Fran). Your home jursidiction determines whether or not you will have to appear in person to be fingerprinted(again) for your visa. Our jurisdiction is Washington DC so there is a possibility that we would have to travel there to get his visa. So far, Chicago is the only city that is requiring it. Please pray this does not happen to us. It would add some extra expense and stress. 

Now to the worst part. I really hate to talk about this part but then again many of you have asked about the financial side of it all and to be truthful we can't do this without your help. You have given and given so much already and I am reminded constantly of how much love you've show my family. Complete strangers have bought puzzle pieces. People who I will probably never meet on this side of heaven are helping to bring our girl home and it is such a humbling feeling. I want to be totally honest with you because we are doing our best to contribute as much as possible but to be fully funded will absolutely not be possible without your help. 

We have planned to do 4 total fundraisers.

1. Puzzle fundraisers-as of today you have bought 326 of the 500 puzzle pieces. Wow! Those pieces are $10 each. Several people have had difficulty with the PayPal donation button so I will tell you in a minute about a new option. 

2. T-shirt fundraiser-Most of you know how much I ADORE a good t-shirt. They make up about ninety percent of my daily wardrobe. We are currently working on a couple of different designs. We plan to have adult and children designs. These shirts will not be geared towards adoption phrases but they will apply to each of us. I am super excited about this one. Keep your eyes out over the next few weeks.

3. Quilt fundraiser-This one is extremely personal. Shortly after we told my family about our decision to adopt I approached my mom with an idea. 

I asked my mom if she could make a quilt. The idea behind this fundraiser is very similar to the puzzle except it's geared more towards families. I asked my mom if we could monogram the name of each family who bought one of 50 squares we are offering. This quilt will be something Lila can touch and feel. She can run her fingers over the names and hear stories about the love that brought her home. It took my mom about 2 seconds to make her first quilt for her future granddaughter and I am so excited that I can tell Lila of the love Nena put into that quilt. Oh me, oh my. I might be crying just a little bit writing this. Each square is $50. 

4.  Both Hands Project-this is the biggest fundraiser we hope to do. The idea comes from James 1:27. The basic idea behind it is we identify a widow within our community who needs some manual labor projects done around her house. We then ask friends and family to help us and we seek sponsorships or give to our project. We are responsible for getting the necessary materials to complete the project. 100 percent of the money raised goes to our adoption fund. It's a win-win situation. We get to bless a widow and an orphan is brought home. This fundraiser is something we are doing in the months ahead. 

Thanks for sticking with me. To make the donation process a little easier I have created a crowdfunding page. Please put in the comment section what you want to use your donation towards. For example, Jones Family $50 quilt square. It is not tax-deductible page. The Both Hands project will be if you are looking for that. Yet again, I can not say Thank you enough. You humble me and bless my family so much. I got new pictures of Lila a few weeks ago and I wish I could show them to you but we are getting closer to being able to share those. I will tell you it is very clear she being well cared for and that is so reassuring. I love each of you. 

https://www.youcaring.com/jonandkatiemorris-797836

Lord, help me to remember.

As a thirty one year old woman my memory stinks. Really. I can't remember what I wore the day before unless I am still wearing it. Hello, stay at home mom. I can't remember what I had for lunch or what I said in the middle of an argument with my husband. That's a real kicker. It stinks. No vitamin or miracle supplement can help boost my memory. My brain is like an iPhone with a 16g memory capacity. You have to constantly delete stuff to be able to hold new stuff. It stinks.

I laid in bed tonight unable to sleep because I have also hit the age where I can no longer have caffeine after noon. My, sometimes sweet, sometimes defiant two year old laid beside me. He looked so precious and peaceful in sleep and yet so big and grown. It's hard to face the fact that I will carry no more children. I will have no more newborns to wake me constantly through the night. It's a tough pill to swallow and my prayer in that moment was "Lord, please help me to remember."



Help me to remember dirty dishes mean my family has food.

Help me to remember piles of laundry means plenty of clothes to wear.

Help me to remember toys on floor equals fun and creativity.

Help me also to remember they want to sleep in my bed because I make them feel safe and loved.



At the same time,

Help me to remember the small hands and fingers you allowed to me hold.

Help to me to remember that first grin and giggle.

Help me to remember that first basket or hit.

Help me to remember they are learning everyday, watching me and how I will respond.

Help me to remember what it was like to be scared in the middle of the night and how safe my parents made me feel.

Help me to remember that I won't get this day back EVER again.

Help me Lord to soak it in. ALL OF IT. You have blessed me to be their parent and I am blessed because they are my children.