What's with the third degree?

I feel so exposed!  We have completed our part of the home study.  This involves pages and pages of information all about us.  You get to share all of your finances, your criminal background, and even your fingerprints with a perfect stranger who decides if you are a good candidate to parent a child.  Then you get to ask friends and family to complete referrals that include questions about our mental state and ability to handle stress (we carefully chose which friends got to fill those out!)  And to top it off, there's the "personal autobiography".  This is SUPER fun (insert sarcasm here).  As prospective adoptive parents, we are given two pages full of questions and are asked to answer each question with a paragraph.  These are questions that cover EVERY aspect of your life.  What you've experienced, what you thought about what you've experienced, what you expect to experience, how you feel about all of said experiences, and what everyone who has ever known you feels about the way you experienced all of these experiences. It a lot!  I finally finished mine at ten pages, single spaced.  I know I'm getting old but ten pages, really?  I am fairly boring and am not sure how I filled ten pages but I did.  The whole experience (I'm getting tired of that word) is neither negative or positive, its just odd.  When, in your normal life, do you stop and contemplate every major and many minor events of your life?  And then, when you finally finish, you give it to a complete stranger to read.  Its just all a little uncomfortable.  But not in a bad way.  Kind of like getting a tooth pulled.  You dread it before you do it, you suffer through it, and then you are glad you did it.  The best part is when you finally feel like you've done all of the hard stuff, another complete stranger comes to your home to "go over" everything you shared.  So, there you are, with a complete stranger, asking you to expand on the event in your life that most affected you and to verify that you truly have never been convicted of a felony, etc.  Totally normal, right?  The cool thing about the entire process is that you get to really look at the big picture of who you are and how you got to be that way.  I am so glad to have had so many life shaping experiences.  Its a real blessing to stop and recognize how God has worked throughout my life, molding me.  And the best part is that we are one step closer to growing our family!!!

What does THAT mean?!

So you may be wondering why we named this blog Autistic, Average and African.   We are a unique family made of of two parents (male and female, just to be clear), two kids living in our home, and who knows how many kids-to-be not living in our home.  Any clearer?  No?  OK...
Our first child is the amazing Olivia.  She is cute as can be, so creative it makes my mind spin,and she is autistic.  Our second child is the extraordinary Eli.  He is a walking encyclopedia (for those younger than 25, that is a big ol' book of info), he is so adorable it makes my teeth hurt, and he is called an "average learner" (those less p.c. would call him normal).  Now our third child is yet to be known.  He/She is currently an orphan in Sierra Leone, Africa.
So that is where the name of the blog came from.
We are your typical middle class family.  Dan and I met twenty years ago, were married seventeen years ago, and started out like most of our couple friends.  We worked, we enjoyed our free time and we got to know each other.  After four years we decided to start growing our family but, as with many things, life threw us a curve ball.  Four years later we found ourselves closing in on thirty and still no kids.  We began researching adoption and just as we started to gear up for our home study, you guessed it, I got pregnant.  Nine months later, Olivia was born.  We had dreamed of this little bundle of joy for so long and here she was! Once again, life threw us another curve ball.  We were now the proud parents of a beautiful, angry baby who did not want to be held.  It was obvious that Olivia was unique but it took four years until she was finally diagnosed as autistic.  So what does autistic mean for our family.  It means Mama had to learn to lighten up!  I went from a strictly scheduled life of cleaning and organizing my home (so everyone who didn't live there would approve) to a life that included lots of deep breaths and going with the flow.  It meant that sometimes our family would get those sour-faced stares at restaurants or stores when Olivia's volume button got stuck on LOUD.  It meant that sometimes we would have to learn to just smile at strangers when Olivia would stand at the most crowded part of a store and announce loudly "I like animals", making sure everyone present was aware of her affinity for fury creatures.  It meant that we try to go to movies when less people are there because Olivia enjoys a full body (and vocal chord) experience when at the cinema (imagine a overstimulated child in a seat that goes up and down).  It also means that we have discovered the joys of simple accomplishments that other parents might take for granted.  Things like getting hugs and kisses, her being able to dress herself (more or less), and seeing our children hold a real conversation in the back seat.  We are so blessed to have the requirement of slowing down and counting EVERY blessing.  The day that Olivia was diagnosed, I remember the doctor looking me in the eye and telling me that my amazing little girl d was mildly retarded.  She said Olivia would be very limited in her ability.  Four years later, I look at this beautiful young girl who can read, do complicated math problems, and knows more about biology and animal species than most adults.  She is amazing!!!
When Olivia was two, her brother was born.  He has brought a whole other dynamic to the family.  He teaches us all to be carefree and to sing at the top of our lungs.  He challenges us to find the answer for any question and won't settle for "I don't know".    Being born into a family with an older autistic sister, he has shown us what it is to live with autism as a fact, not a new occurrence.  He has an amazing heart and he stuns us with his compassion.
So here we were, a perfect family of four going about life in a normal fashion.  We could have just let it ride.  We could have been content, and we were... until Africa.  Africa changed everything.  Dan and I joined with our church and agreed to go to Africa on a missions team at least three times each.  I went first and when I came home, I was changed.  Dan tried very hard to understand but how can you understand another person's experiences?  Then Dan went.  He came back and one of the first things he said to me is "I get it now".  We never planned on ever going outside of this great country's borders but once we did we could no longer be the same.  We saw the reality of a third-world war-torn country.  We saw beautiful people who need to know that God loved them.  We saw children with no one to hug them each night and kiss their little foreheads as they drifted off to sleep.  We saw for the first time how small we are and how big the world really is.  We saw that our lives had more to give and we could never be blind to the need of all people around the world.  During our time in Sierra Leone, Africa, we visited an orphanage.  Oh, those beautiful children, hurting through smiles.  Those eyes showing the pain of being an orphan.  Those little hands desperate to hold ours.  Dan and I returned to the orphanage together and before our visit was over we knew that one of our children lived there and one day we would bring him or her home.
It now almost a year later and we are so excited that we are now on our way to having our newest family member united with our family.  We have done our home study (more on that another time) and are now starting our fundraising.  We have worked our budget down to save every dollar possible as we prepare for some very expensive days ahead.  Every once in awhile, I worry that I am taking from the children I already have.  I wonder if we should stop this process.   Usually the thought  barely forms in my head when my children will make some comment that encourages my heart.  Olivia will mention how much her future sibling is going to love playing with her toys in her room.  Eli will mention how much fun it will be to take his new brother or sister to the zoo or aquarium "since they never got to go before".   These two precious children have so much love in their heart and, as much as they can understand it, can't wait to have a new brother or sister.
So there we are autistic, average and African.  I hope you will join us on this crazy ride.  I promise that we will be honest which may mean some post are not all sunshine and rainbows but behind all the difficulties, we will share our hope.  Thanks to everyone who has supported us as we step out on this crazy journey.  Here we go!