Happy 10th Birthday to our "Beloved Grace"

Our Precious Esmée,


Today we celebrate your 10th birthday and all the life you bring to our family! I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on you in person. I expected you to be shy. I thought it would take you a long time to warm up to me. But I didn't know you then. I just longed to. It seems like I've known you forever now. But way back then you found me before I found you. You saw me first and you knew I was your mom. You jumped into my arms and held onto me so tight I had to pry you from me to see who it was that I was holding. I melted when I saw that it was you.You held my heart from the first picture I ever held of you. I looked at your sweet face and I knew that you were my daughter. I loved you with an indescribable intensity from that moment on. This is why we named you Esmée. Because Esmée means "beloved" or "much loved". You are my girl and you now tell me this every day. Yesterday morning I woke up to a sweet letter from you delivered to my bedside saying, 

"We Love my Mom. 
I no (know) my mom Love me.
I no (know) my mom Love my sister.
I no (know) my mom Love my brothers.
We Love my Dad.
-Esmée Karys


You love to say you are mama's girl. You love to hear me say you are mama's girl. You love it so much you have asked to share my name (middle name) Charis (with the Haitian spelling), which is the greek word for "grace". We believe that God's grace is what has brought you to our family and how you have embraced being our daughter and a sister to Elita Marguerite, Ethan, and Evan with everything that is in you. We all feel so loved by you too. Sometimes people think you are shy, but your family knows this is just another one of your silly games. One moment you are a princess that must be carried to her room in high style. The next you are at war with the cockroaches and running laps around the soccer field with guys 5 times your size. You are the bravest, silliest, sweetest, sassiest, prettiest, most precious little girl. You are our little girl. We are so thankful for your life. And we are forever thankful that God gave us you. Today we celebrate all He has done in your life. We think these pictures show that a little. We wish our dear family and friends could see what we are blessed to see in real life. Because they too are a big part of where you are today!

The first picture I held of you. 

This is the oldest picture we have before you were brought to the orphanage.
Your hair is orange (a sign of malnutrition) 
but you still have that 
deep 
thoughtful 
longing 
look in your eyes.
I love that look.

This is the first picture we received of you after we were matched as your forever family.
I freaked out when I saw how small you were next to Marguerite
(whom we were told was the same age).
We asked how much you weighed.
We were told you weighed only 38 lbs.
Your brother Evan was a small 3 yr. old at the time. 
He weighed 38 lbs. too.
We prayed every day that God would grow you in every way. 

I met you 2 months later.
You were such a tiny little girl.
I loved you completely...
My much loved girl.

Your spirit is much bigger than your size.
This is one reason you are alive today.
And because of God's grace.

God has given His life for you.
All those years when you did not have an earthly daddy, you still had a Heavenly daddy.
But God's grace has given you an earthly daddy now.
And he would give his life for you too.

Your sister and brothers adore you!

Our prayers have been answered.
You have grown so much...
in every way.

I am honored to be your mother.
We are honored to be your family.
You are no longer an orphan Esmée Ream.

We have so much to celebrate in our much loved girl!
We celebrate all the years of God's grace in your life!
We are blessed to be in your homeland with you.
We pray that soon we can bring you to our homeland.
And get you a sassy bike like this one...
for a belated birthday present!

You are our Esmée Karys...
Our "Beloved Grace"
And we will celebrate your life every day!

With Us

Just in case we have done a good job of being too vague and you haven't been able to read between the lines on other long posts, we want to clear up any confusion. 

It is with great joy we announce that our girls are now

WITH US, 

their forever family, 

FOREVER. 

They cannot leave Haiti yet, but they are ours and have been with us for the past 3 months. We went through a difficult process to make this possible, but we have felt God's presence with us all along the way. 


Just in case there is still some confusion out there about our adoptions and moving to Haiti, we want to clear that up too. We did not move to Haiti to accomplish our adoptions or simply to be near our girls. We moved to Haiti because God opened many doors to move us to Haiti as missionaries. The fact that we got to be with our girls is a bonus blessing that we will never take for granted. Yet, because we do live in Haiti we longed to have them with us and prayed daily for this to become a reality. 


We knew that it was possible to have our girls live with us in Haiti while in the adoption process because we know many people who have done this in the past and others that are doing this now. The Haitian government approved our adoptions before we moved to Haiti, but we knew our creche director would have to give consent because he is the legal guardian of our girls until their adoptions are finalized and they receive their visas to leave the country and become U.S. citizens. We waited for this consent. We waited for 6 1/2 months. Many people in Haiti asked us why we were not permitted to have the girls full time. We were often asked if we still owed the creche money but this was not the case. We were granted permission to have our girls with our family on holidays and several weekends and we gave thanks for each and every moment we were able to spend with them during those 6 months. However the emotional trauma of coming and going back and forth from the orphanage grew with each parting. Nearly 3 months after we had received our Adoption Decree making us the girls legal parents they were still in the orphanage. We were told by several other creche directors and attorneys that we had every legal right to have the girls with us. We also had received our Permis de Sejour (Haitian residency/work permit enabling us to remain in Haiti legally long term). This had nothing to do with our adoption process, but we later found out that having this permit would eliminate any further excuse for our girls not to be with us. Our creche director did not know that we had obtained this and we wanted to discuss this with him in person as it is hard to communicate clearly over the phone. We knew at this point that the only reason that the creche would need to maintain guardianship over someone else's legal children is if the parents do not reside in the state/country of the children. We understood the concern from our creche director that even if the adoptions are completed in Haiti, there is still the investigation process by the U.S. Embassy that may or may not approve the child's visa to immigrate to the U.S. However, if the adoptive family is living in country and meets residency requirements there is no good reason that the children should remain in the orphanage. We were still met with much opposition in the weeks that followed. We decided to fight for our girls. It was an awful, painful fight. We didn't want that. We just wanted to do the right thing. But what "the right thing"was needed to be sorted out by others as well.  And as history proves, sorting out the right thing usually gets ugly at some point. Most days it felt like the darkness would suffocate and consume us. We had to daily remind ourselves that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places". We knew that God was with us. But Satan was fighting hard too. And while people were involved that both hurt and helped in the situation, we know that it was ultimately the evil one spreading fear and confusion and the Righteous Judge delivering the truth. The "right thing" was for our girls to be with us and Truth eventually won. Since then things have been sorted out and communication has been much better. We praise the Lord for this! We wish that the best interest of our girls, their orphanage, and our family would have been sought through better communication and biblical conflict resolution from the beginning but we recognize that we live in a fallen world that often prevents God's best. We are thankful for reconciliation and grace. We are thankful for prayer partners. We are thankful for those who were willing to mediate in this situation. We are thankful that God is always with us both in sorrowful trials and joyful endings. 


This reminds me of the pain in natural childbirth which some friends and I were discussing last night. You often hear that a mother does not remember the pain of childbirth. I strongly disagree. I remember all too vividly going through that fire. And yet when I remember I know I would do it all over again because of the sheer joy that is to be found on the other side of that all consuming pain. Our adoptions have been a very long and painful labor. But then there is joy. 


We are overjoyed at the miracle of how our girls have been able to bond to our family in their own culture. We know that many adoptive families have many struggles especially with the combination of transcultural and older child adoptions. We can honestly say that while we do have struggles God has been very merciful to our family in this. We know that in this long and painful process God has been orchestrating behind the scenes to bring so much beauty out of so much pain. This is the story of our redemption. Even though we haven't reached the end of the story, we have embraced each chapter fully. And tonight as we embrace our girls who are with us and continue on into the next chapter we will do so in the joy of knowing that God is with us in all our tomorrows. And if God is with us, who can be against us?