Day Thirteen...Goodbyes are hard

How do you close the door on three years of your life?

You don't. You let go of the control and allow God to do what He needs to do. 

I have to back up to Friday, Sept 9, the day before we left for Guangzhou.

I didn't post about it back then, but we had our "official" goodbye before we left for Guangzhou to pick up Silas. I knew that I didn't want to have the "ugly cries" when he was here because I didn't want to scare him. So we had a night of fellowship with the whole team and then spent some special time with each other that night. 

The boys

The big kids

The best friends that anyone could ever ask for. There are not enough words in the English language to describe the relationship that has grown over the last 5 1/2 years between these four people. As we go back to America, there are two large chunks of our hearts missing...our friends in East Asia and our teammates, who are more than equal to family in our eyes. As we go back to family, we are leaving family behind. Our lives will never be the same. And I thank God every single day for blessing our lives so richly and deeply!

We praise the Father for the new team that He has given. Our two families have been through thick and through thin together, and we all know that nothing will be able to replace that, but God has done an amazing job of PROVIDING!! Our hearts are full knowing that our dear friends will be very well taken care of. He has provided three families (one not pictured) that are so rich in knowledge and experience and love for the Lord. He has provided kids that are so close in age which will yield friendships that will last a lifetime for them. If we have to go, I couldn't ask for a better situation to leave behind. God is so faithful! Please be in prayer for the G family as they adjust to their new home, their new city and their new teammates. Father has very big plans for their next term and we are so excited to see how He will use them for His glory!

From the day we started...

To now...Thank you Father for how you have worked in our lives and grown us together!

Fast forward exactly two weeks to now Day Thirteen. We had such a fun night with our team and we woke up and shared breakfast together and got ready to go. We gave really big hugs before we left the house because we knew things would get crazy at the airport, (which they did) and went on our way. 

One last family picture. Our sweet kids look so grown up!!

One thing I have truly missed about America is my car and the radio. Being able to get in my car and go for a ride and at any time have the Word of God and uplifting music in my ears. We were blessed to have friends that were able to drive us to the airport in their cars. As we rode, we laughed and talked and at first it was just another day. And then all of a sudden, the kids calmed down and it was quiet, and there was the radio. And I heard these words...

"Hold it all together
Everybody needs you strong
But life hits you out of nowhere
And barely leaves you holding on

And when you're tired of fighting
Chained by your control
There's freedom in surrender
Lay it down and let it go"

A song I've heard many times, but in that moment, in the quiet, even though I had been so focused on all the happy of our adoption and all of the good things, the truth was that there is this world of unknowns stretched out before me, and those words cut to my heart and the lump in my throat grew bigger and bigger. I didn't want to cry. Silas was sitting beside me. Justin was in the other car. I had to keep control. 

And then she turned around. The woman in my life who has been my constant. For the last three years she has been by my side. We have walked hand in hand into a battle and have fought tooth and nail to hold each other up through it. We have faced the storms of culture stress and all that includes, of which I could never accurately paint a picture. We have been totally helpless together and in our weakness God's glory has been brilliant. We have been a team in the purest sense of the word. We have laughed, cried, been angry, hurt, forgiven and stronger together. Our hearts have been bound together in a way that I never dreamed could happen. And she turned around. And she gave me that look. And I lost it. 

Fortunately, Silas thought it was hilarious that I was crying and it didn't phase him in the least bit and he gave a much needed sense of humor to the situation.

We are so thankful for these guys that helped us so much with our luggage and so much more! We love you guys!!

We got through the airport craziness and had to say goodbye with lumps in our throats in the rush to security like we had figured would happen. Sean was definitely having a hard time and it showed through complete defiance as we tried to get him to stand in line. Once we were finally through security and at our gate, our boys released their built up sadness and we just let them cry. Even Silas was asking about "big sister" and said he wanted to go back to their house.

We are thankful for friendships that are hard to leave. It means that we have loved well.

And now we just begin the next chapter. God will be with us all through every step of the way.

Thankful for this play area in the Beijing airport while we tried to find some dinner.

 We made it to our hotel, which was amazing and the perfect way to spend our last night in Asia.

We finally got a hotel with a bathtub and Silas got to experience his first bath. He loved it!!!

Stay tuned for our adventure to the Great Wall!!

Day Twelve

Hello from Beijing!! Yesterday we left Guangzhou and Silas rode his very first airplane. The sweet boy was SO excited he could barely stand it. We made him a calendar at the beginning of the week so that we could count down the days until we go to America. We look at it at bedtime and cross off the days and talk about what is going to happen tomorrow. He loves it and has been so excited. And when we told him that we were going to ride 4 airplanes all together, his eyes got huge. I was nervous that his first flight wouldn't live up to his expectations, and he wouldn't be interested anymore, but he did great and loved it.

We get lots of reactions from Chinese people about our three boys. Sometimes they are amazed that we have 3 kids. Some are amazed that we have 3 boys and some are completely confused as to why one of them looks Chinese. We get all kind of comments, but yesterday at the airport we were blessed by a sweet lady who agreed with us about what a special gift from God Silas was to us. She took this picture for us. 

             

When we got to the airport and through security and he saw the big windows with the airplanes he just couldn't contain himself and he wanted to get on the first one he found. So we had to try and explain that we had to wait for our specific airplane. And at that point, we were super early, so we had a bit of a wait. But that didn't last long by the time we got some food and found our gate.


Unfortunately, we had to do the whole thing where you ride on a bus to meet the plane out on the tarmac. Well, we rode on that cramped little bus to what seemed like a completely different terminal. It was no joke probably 15 minutes long. Those rides are usually maybe 5 minutes at the most from when you get started. We thought we would never get there. And eventually, we drove up to a plan that had the little runway thing that you walk down. I don't know why they didn't just send us to that terminal. But anyway. Side rant. Once we got on the plane and looked at all the bells and whistles the waiting started. We sat there in the plane for a long time before we got moving. And then it would move and stop. Move and stop. Every time we'd start moving, I'd tell him, "Ok, soon we are going to take off." And then the plane would stop driving again. He kept up good spirits though. He was so excited he didn't really care.

I love how these pictures show the progression of all of that!!

We finally took off and he giggled the whole way up and then watched in amazement and squeals when we went up into the clouds. It's so fun seeing the world through his eyes. Makes you take a step back and just marvel at the little things that we so often take for granted.

Our first stop after dropping off our bags was to the beach! Our friends let us borrow their scooters which was such a nice gift. Before we knew that we were moving, we would talk about all the things that we would do together once Silas got here, and one of those things was adding him in on our family scooter ride outings. We would talk about how much fun it will be when Silas is sitting up here too. Or the fact that we were just missing one person on our scooter. And so to be able to ride with him on the scooters was so much fun and I'm so glad that our family was able to do that one last time before we left. If you see some crazy lady riding around Spring Hill on a scooter, it's probably me and you will know that I am experiencing some culture shock!!

Silas loved the beach. It was a super fast trip. Like literally maybe 15 minutes. haha.

We just wanted to get pictures. We only had a few hours and we had lots of other things on the agenda! Plus, I didn't want to have to try and pack wet bathing suits!! Blech!

Sean loves sand. He was completely oblivious to everything going on, except for sand.

We have to get silly for you to be able to see his real personality in pictures.

It was a little overwhelming because there were a lot of people there. (We are still in China, after all) And of course they all want pictures of our kids. We are still so thankful that we had the opportunity to give him that experience while we were here!

Culture moment: There was one point, that I may not be so proud of, in which there were so many people surrounding my two year old trying to take his picture, that I couldn't even get to him, and I finally just said "Hey these are my kids. We are not a zoo!" There are certain things about the culture here that are a little more challenging than others, and some days that are more challenging than others. Usually the picture taking, we take it in stride and use it as an opportunity to meet someone new. But it was a little much today. I just wanted to take some pictures of my boys on their first trip to the beach together! Was that so much to ask? haha.

 We had dinner together and celebrated one friends birthday. Silas did great meeting everybody. He even showed some bravery and stepped out to join the bigger kids and see what they were up to. It was so fun to see him interact with other kids, even if he was keeping his distance. He was interested.

Just cause he's cute

Ok, so our boys are color coded. When we were shopping for their stuff, it really started with just their backpacks. And then the more stuff we added, the more color coordinated we got, until it became a thing. haha

Thanks, Uncle Ricky, for our matching bracelets!!

  then we went back to the G family's house and spent the night with them. We looked at pictures of our families and all of the adventures that we have had together over the past 5 1/2 years and reminisced on the good times. We laughed and cried and got really sleepy. The kids played one last time and Silas began to understand what real life looks like. There were a few times that I could tell he was disturbed that all of the attention wasn't on him and that we really didn't sleep all in the same hotel room together. But he had a lot of fun with the kids too. The biggest take away for us was that he couldn't believe that everything in the kids' rooms belonged to them. He kept pointing at things in the same room, asking "Who's is this?" and "Who's is that?"

This morning, we got up early ate breakfast together and loaded up all 10 suitcases, 3 carry ons, 5 backpacks and a guitar and headed to the airport for leg 3 of our journey to the States. 

I will write more about today later, when I'm more awake and can organize my thoughts. But for now, I'm going to sleep because we will be up and at 'em early in the morning to go see the Great Wall! And then in the afternoon we are on the road (in the air) again.

This time, America or Bust!!