Safe!

This is a looooong post, so get ready!

In January of 2008 Cliff and I officially began the journey towards adopting a baby. I say "officially" because we really began this journey many years ago. From early on in our marriage (and maybe even before) I remember talking about the possibility. God knew when and how this would all go down, but we had no clue at the time. So, because of the costs financially we decided to have some biological babies, always thinking that someday we would probably adopt.  

There was this one time when we offered to adopt a 3 year old whose mom was in prison and grandma (who was raising him) had leukemia. The timing wasn't right then. 

We didn't know who we'd get. But God did.

Then another time (when Mason and Kaiah were little) I had mentioned to our pastor's wife that we had always been very interested in adopting. She was ecstatic when someone walked into the church the next day to find out if there was anyone in the church willing to adopt a baby. We all got chills and thought this was the one! But God said no to that situation as well. 

We didn't know who we'd get. But God already knew.

Cliff was still in school and we wanted to continue having babies (but still had no paycheck) so we had Cambria! After Cliff had been working for a year and a half, we started seriously thinking about adopting. We prayed and prayed and waited for an answer. But we didn't really know whether or not we should adopt or have another biological baby. My pregnancies were very easy. I loved being pregnant. But our family was getting bigger and we knew God wanted adoption for us at some point. 

We waited some more and our friends adopted Selah. We were really excited for them while still praying about what we should do. Then in January of '08 I thought there was a very strong possibility I could be pregnant. Every day that passed while waiting to find out I found myself more and more disappointed. I think we both didn't realize how much we wanted to adopt before that happened. I wanted to be happy if we were expecting, but I was mourning the delay of meeting our future adopted baby. It turned out that I was not pregnant.

We took this as God's answer to us. It was finally time! 

We called to get information from PLAN and filled out the application all the while praying for the birthmother and birthfather and, of course, our baby. We took our time doing all the extra stuff (Cambria was only 18 months) like writing our autobiographies, getting our physicals done, reading the required books, doing the online classes, getting our fingerprints taken, etc.

Finally in August we had done everything including a profile (a letter with pictures of our family) to be sent out to all the agencies for birthmothers to look at. 

We waited............... 

We didn't know when we would get chosen. But God did. 

We got the call on November 21. A birthmother named D'Ann and a birthfather named Percy living in Houston, Tx had chosen to have their baby boy be raised by us. To belong to us. 

Here are some letters I wrote at the time (before I started this blog) Skip to the bottom if you have already read these:

(Dec. 10th) We are praising God and pleased to announce that our baby boy was born in Houston at about 1 pm today! He weighed in at 7 pounds 6 ounces and was around 21 inches long. He had a little trouble breathing because of some meconium and required oxygen for a little while. But now he is doing great.  I was blessed to be able to speak with both the birth mom and dad. They seemed very relaxed and glad we were coming. They have decided to let us name him. So...that said....we are almost 99% sure we like the name Lochlan (lock-lun) Tilman. It's a mouthful but we like it and there is a great story behind the name Tilman.  I am thankful they like the name too.  We do have a few prayer requests:  

1. That we would have safe roads once we get there...it is snowing in Houston!!  

2. That there would be a special time of getting to know D'Ann and Percy (not awkward).  

3. For Kaiah and Cambria as they are being watched by the Carlsons, and both of our parents... and for our hearts as we will miss them sooooo much. 

4. For the continued health and growth of Lochlan. We leave in the morning at 9:30 and should get there around 10 pm. We will be able to go to the hospital Friday morning.  Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts today. We are blessed to know all of you! 

(Then a couple of days later...)

(Dec. 12th) He is a sweet little guy! D'Ann and Percy signed the papers today! We had hoped we could take him back with us today, but when he was born, it took some resuscitation to get him to breathe. Because of this they need to keep him in the hospital for at least 3-5 more days. Now it looks like we will just be spending a lot of time at the hospital. Their policy requires them to keep him there for several days and to give him IV antibiotics and to monitor his heart, breathing and Oxygen levels. Thankfully he's really stable and is eating well (I just got done feeding and burping him!) He has a great suck and passed his hearing test. The nurses are very sweet and will let us be there as much as we want. I will be there to feed him every three hours.  

We have seen God's hand in much of this situation already. We spent a lot of time with D'Ann and Percy today and we got some good pictures with them. They are a really sweet couple and actually were even laughing and joking with them! We are going to a Christmas party with them tomorrow at the adoption agency. She plans on visiting Lochlan every day until he is discharged from the hospital and we are going to take them out to eat some time next week as well. These prayers were definitely answered the way we had hoped!  

Also, he has a wonderful day nurse named Jennifer who happens to be working every day until Monday. I'm so thankful for this, because his bassinette is in the same room as 5 other babies and they spend all their time in there. We are also really glad that we ended up staying in the hotel we are. We had originally planned on staying in a vacation home 45 minutes from here... but it ended up being too expensive and we decided to just stay in a place close to the hospital. It is only 3-4 blocks away!  With us going back and forth so much, I'm thankful to be here. The adoption workers are also really great.   

Thank you for praying for us and them. I will try to get better pictures out later. This one was through the window. They don't allow kids to come in at all so someone has to be out there with him at all times. Interestingly, he seems to be a very light skinned baby. Percy is very light himself. He's very cute and has straight black hair. We can't wait for you to meet him.  Love you all.

(Then a few days after that...)

(Dec 16th) Hi!  We finally got him last night at about 8pm. He did really good all night but he did wake up a couple of times. He is a slow eater but eventually gets it done, and he burps right away.  Mason has really been enjoying him. He is really sweet. He just said, "I bet he's used to a lot of people talking to him from the hospital..." To which Cliff said, "Yeah, they've probably been saying, "I'm fixin' to give y'alls baby a bottle now!" I'm just thankful he didn't start making fun of the accent until AFTER we got the baby!   We don't know when we get to go home. They did get the paperwork in on Monday so it will now just depend on Texas and Oregon to hurry it up. I'm not too hopeful with all the crazy weather "y'all've been havin'" We are sad to have missed the snow. But we'll be home soon! We'll let you know when. Thank you for praying. This week has been tiring, but we have had many opportunities to interact with people we probably would not have been able to if he hadn't been in the hospital so long. God knows what he's doing even when we can't see why. Love you!   (Dec. 27th) Hi everyone,  I want to start by saying thank you to those of you who have been praying consistently for us while we were gone. I know God protected us in more ways than we can know. I think I wrote in the earlier letter that we make our plans but God determines our steps. Boy, was that true!   Recaps of the trip: Lochlan had more trouble than we had realized when he was born...He wasn't breathing effectively due to a double epidural and some medication the birth mother had been on during delivery. This bought him a ticket to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for 6 days. He was fine for all but the first hour or two after birth. He passed all the hearing tests, Echocardiogram for his heart (they had thought they heard a murmur), and all the reflexes, temperature tests, etc. I went to the hospital every 3 hours to feed and hold him with Cliff taking over the Mason entertainment (football and UNO pretty much) and a night feeding. I got to know several of the nurses and we had some great conversations during this time.  We got to take him back to the hotel with us on Tuesday the 17th. We waited until we had confirmation we could return to Oregon. During this time, we went out to eat with D'Ann and Percy, drove to Galveston and saw a very foggy gulf coast, collected some really neat seashells, and saw the remnants of this summer's hurricane Ike. Then we went to NASA visitors space center. We also checked out downtown Houston and went up in the tallest building in Texas.   We got the word we could leave on Friday so we bought tickets for Saturday evening. While in the air, our pilot calmly said, "Well, it looks like we are in a holding pattern until we can see if they are able to clear the runway." When we landed, we were all holding our breaths (except Cliff who thinks I was overreacting). When we slowed to a speed that we felt comfortable that we wouldn't slide off the runway, everyone cheered!   Our flight to Portland was cancelled that night and rescheduled for the morning. Then after an interesting night of sleeping on benches with strangers and listening to CNN blaring on the TV, we were 5 minutes from boarding our next flight when it was cancelled as well. Flights were getting dropped all over the board and we began to realize that we wouldn't get out for at least 2 or three days, maybe more. Sooo, my heroic dad drove up to Seattle to get us. We didn't even try to find our checked baggage. This was last Sunday. Santa was brought in to the airport to keep the troops from getting restless... The airplane getting de-iced. We made it safely back before dark, though we saw several people in ditches and some active spinouts.  We had discovered that our pipes were frozen back home (Thank You Leah and Dan! for helping us turn the water off) so we decided to go to my sister Cheryl's house in Gresham until Christmas. Then next day, Cliff went over the back roads to Corbett to get the girls (I-84 was closed) He made it as far as the end of their country road and got stuck. He hiked 30 min. in waist-deep snow to their house and hunkered down there for the night. The next day Cliff's dad plowed the whole road and got our van unstuck! Cliff came back and got Mason, Lochlan and me and we spent the next two days there with Cliff's parents. Then Christmas morning we chained up and went back to Cheryl's house for Christmas with my family. Cliff came home that night (cause he had to work Friday) and I drove straight to Lochlan's 2 week well baby check. The kids and I made it home safely yesterday afternoon.  OK, long story, but it is full of adventure and proof that God took care of all of our needs. The baby is healthy, gaining weight and HOME with us. The girls were well taken care of. We still got to spend Christmas with family, our pipes did not burst, our cat is still alive (thank you Devonte!), we recovered all of our luggage at PDX, and we feel very blessed to be a happy family of 6!  Hope to see you soon and introduce you to Lochlan Tilman. He is a very content, sweet baby and is sleeping 4-5 hour stretches at night now. I'm still a little tired, but doing really well. The kids are loving him.  (Just wanted to get those letters in here somewhere... I know it's super long!) From that first night in the hotel room, Lochlan has been our sweet little baby. We have fed him, bathed him, carried him around, taken him to well baby checks, given him medicine when he is sick, comforted him when he cried, changed his diapers, and treated him the same way we treated our other biological kids. Our love for him grows deeper every day. I had wondered if it could be true (loving another person's baby) and now I know for myself. It really is true. Occasionally when I look at him I remember his biological parents and what they looked and sounded like. But many days, he's just one of us. One of the 4 Benintendi kids.  We hired an attorney to take care of some legal matters involving the adoption. He was brought in because we didn't know the right things to say to the Judge and the right paperwork to send in to finalize the adoption. He has been working on these things since we've had Lochlan. He told us he'd take care of everything. So we just went back to lovin' on Locke or Locke-T or Locke-man or L.T. as we've been twisting his name lately. The time between when an adoptive family begins to care for their baby and the time that a baby is finalized is a waiting period that the the government has decided is necessary in case there is any problem or mistake with the adoption. I remember reading a paper that said if for some reason having the child in our home was a problem, we could give him back if it was before finalization. Also, a birthparent has all this time to prove that they were forced to give the child up for adoption under duress if they want the baby back. This means that all this time we have been caring for Lochlan and calling him by our last name he hasn't really been officially ours. Sure, he's been apart of our family and we have been caring for him but it hasn't been official. One of the days that Kaiah was in the hospital we were supposed to be at the Wash Co. courthouse participating in the finalization proceedings with the Judge. We hope to reschedule. It would be really great to have his photo with the judge. We'll see... But, a few days ago, we received Lochlan Tilman Benintendi's Certificate of Adoption in the mail. And then a few days later we had his official birth certificate... with the name Benintendi! HE'S OURS!!  This whole process has reminded me of my own relationship with God: 1. Before I even existed, He knew me. He had a plan for me.  Psalm 139:16  ... All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 2. He knew beforehand that I would choose to follow him.  Ephesians 1:4-5  For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will-- 3. Though I was formerly alienated from Him, I became a member of his family when I accepted Him and believed.  John 1:12-13  Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. 4. I have all the benefits of being God's child. He loves me, cares for me, cleans my heart when I sin, holds me when I'm sad, carries me when I'm weak, protects me from harm... the list goes on and on. 1 John 3:1  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!.... 5. He even loves me and continues to provide for me when I am ungrateful. (I know Lochlan is just a tiny baby, but there are times when he doesn't seem to care much about what we are doing for him :) I think God sees us like newborn  babes sometimes. Lochlan will mature someday (Lord willing) and we should be maturing in our faith as well. 1 Peter 2:2-3 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.  6. When I die I will inherit eternal life. 1 Peter 1:3-4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you... 7. While we as believers wait for Christ's return we have an (The) Advocate to keep anyone from taking us away from this relationship. John 10:28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. Romans 8: 38-39 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Lochlan used to be someone else's baby. God knew that he would be ours long before we did. When we were chosen as the family that would raise him, we rejoiced at the opportunity, knowing that there would be risks and benefits. The waiting period has been filled with laughter, fatigue, love, frustration, joy, and that little thought at the back of our minds that the adoption could still be challenged...  But when the judge signed that paper changing Lochlan's name from his birth parent's name to Benintendi officially, he became ours...  No more threat of anyone taking him away.  Able to be an equal heir with his brother and sisters.  Belonging to our family.  Safe. Accepting Christ has been the best decision I have ever made. I was once an outsider, now I am a child of God. God knew it would happen long before I did. He rejoiced in the possibility of having a personal relationship with me (only possible because I have been given free will). I receive full benefits of this family and will someday obtain an indescribably wonderful inheritance. Nothing will be ever be able to change or threaten my relationship with Jesus even while we are here on earth. He is my advocate. He speaks to God the Father on my behalf. We will still experience trials and sorrow, pain and disappointment here, but when The Judge either comes back to get us or takes us home, those who know Him will be...  SAFE!