Asking for Help and Happy Weekend

Maya’s cubby in the NICU – that little green outfit hanging on the far side is what she wore home from the hospital. 

I had another post written for today, a post about our week and how soggy-yet-warm it was, a post that honestly wasn’t filled with what is actually going on around here. Yes, it’s been soggy and yes, I’ve been working and Maya has been napping and chewing on her favourite stuffed maraca. But in reality, what’s going on behind the scenes (for the grown-ups at least) is a little more stressful than that all lets on.

At the end of this month, we’ll be required to pay Maya’s adoption fee, and truth be told, we just don’t know yet quite how it’s going to come together. We are closer than we were to the $15,000 we need, but we aren’t there yet. And that’s been a really humbling and exhausting place to be.

Michael and I are both working, Michael at his school and me freelancing as much as I can while also minding Maya full time. We had a chunk of savings ready for this when we moved over, although some of it got eaten up setting up our apartment here and with the unexpected expenses of getting our foster license. We are, to put it plainly, in a trickier financial position than we had hoped to be at this point, in part because Maya arrived so much earlier than we anticipated and we didn’t have as much time to save as we thought we would.

We’ve been scraping and saving and living as frugally as we possibly can since she arrived. We’ve received generous gifts from family and friends, which have helped us get closer to our goal. We’ve applied for grants – some have been denied (the need is great out there and adoption expenses are much too great) and we are still praying on others to come back positively.

We have been encouraged by friends and family, especially here in Texas where adoption and its associated costs are well known, to ask for help. And so today I’m asking for help. It’s not what I want to be doing today, but it’s where we are. I keep thinking about the phrase it takes a village to raise a child. In our case, it might take a little help from our entire village in order to make Maya an official part of our family. It just occurred to me that maybe it will take all of From China Village to make that happen! Wouldn’t that be poetic. But we aren’t used to asking for help; we’re used to hustling it out and working hard to get to where we need to be. It’s very hard to admit that we simply can’t do it on our own. But at this very moment, the most honest thing I can share with you today is that we’re in a position where we need to ask for help.

So here goes. If you or someone you know feels strongly about adoption or has a heart for orphans, or simply appreciates being able to come here and read this blog most days for the last few years, perhaps you’d consider donating through our adoption fundraising page. If you aren’t in a position to donate, perhaps you might consider sending our story to someone who is. Donations are tax-deductible in the United States, and donations are possible from anywhere in the world. And if you missed how Maya came to join our family (in which case you might be awfully confused right now!), you can also find that right here.

I appreciate that you’re here and I appreciate that if this isn’t your cup of tea, I hope you’ll come back next week for the regular stuff. Thanks for letting me air my honesty. I hope you all have a lovely spring weekend.