Gobble, Gobble!!

Despite sickness, we've had a great week here at the Paul household. I cooked my first Thanksgiving feast (with some help from Bailey, Mom, and Tink, of course), and it went beautifully. We did some Black Friday shopping, and we've been resting and enjoying each other.

I am so thankful for my Jesus! I am thankful for a home to live in, and 5 beautiful little souls that fill it. I'm thankful for a husband who is steady and strong who loves God in a real way. We have been blessed beyond imagining this year.

Sometimes I feel like we are stuck in the "in-between", just waiting for the rest of our lives to start, but I realized today that we are exactly where God wants us for right now. I praise you my Father, for right now.

Tonight is the night!!!

I am having a girls' night out tonight... and not just any girls' night out. Tonight is the premiere of New Moon! I've been a huge twilight fan for a couple of years now, and so this is a big event. Tink, Bailey, and I, along with my BFF Amber who runs EyesOfAmber (only the bestest twilight blog in the whole wide world!) and several others, are having a very Twilight-y evening, complete with a party, a showing of Twilight, and finally.... New Moon!

I hate to do it... I so hate to do it... but.... SQUEEEEEE!!!!!

Memorial Box Monday

Woohoo! It's that time again... Memorial Box Monday (okay, so now it's Tuesday since I started the post yesterday and didn't get a chance to finish)! Today's episode took place just a couple of months ago.

JP and I had taken a much needed weekend to celebrate my birthday and our 10th anniversary. If you read this blog often, you'll know what a struggle it has been to parent Sassy. I was totally burned out, and absolutely confused, and we were talking about my state of mind while driving to our favorite restaurant in Knoxville. We were on an Interstate that had about 10 lanes total, which is a little intimidating to a smallish town girl like me. Trusty JP was at the wheel, so I wasn't overly concerned.

Every day with Indie was a struggle. If she wasn't engaging in some very troubling behaviors herself, she was inciting the other children in some way. Her particular target was Jonathan. Now, Jonathan has Asperger's syndrome, and is very easily upset to the point of meltdown. She loved to tell him that he couldn't do something (like, eat or play wii, for example), so she could watch the meltdown and just smile. So, you can imagine that it was mass chaos here. Despite the fact that we were having these issues with Indie, my love for her continued to grow and take root, and I just wanted to know what was going to happen with them. Would they stay or would they go? Would Indie get better... could she get better after everything she suffered? Why did they have to suffer in the first place? Am I qualified to handle this? Have I really been called to handle this? All of those questions and more were swirling in my mind, and I was voicing some of them.... and then I said to JP, "I'm starting to wonder if He really cares at all!"

It seems like mere seconds passed before the car in the lane beside us started to move into our lane... and there was someone in the lane beside us. JP laid on the horn, moved over a little, sped up alot, and managed to avoid disaster by literal centimeters. CENTIMETERS! Folks, JP is a pretty decent driver, but he's no NASCAR guy, and there is absolutely no way that he could have pulled off those maneuvers on his own.

God was there... listening, and took that opportunity to show me that He was there, will be there, and had been there all along... and that He cared so much. Nothing in our lives are accidents; He didn't start working on another project and leave us to fend for ourselves. And I got a peace that the state of my home was still in his divine will for us, and that He was listening.

I'll put a little NASCAR car in my memorial box to commemorate JP's great driving escape, orchestrated by my heavenly father.

A New Name...

Some of you may have noted that I have *finally* changed the name of my blog. I'd been meaning to do it for forever... you know, like a year or more... and just hadn't come up with anything unique. I felt like I needed something to display that we weren't really the average, ordinary family... and I'm certainly not the stereotypical mom. June Cleaver I am not!! I'm more comfortable at a christian rock concert than at a PTA meeting (I do go, but I don't have to like it, ok?). I'm quirky at best, and downright strange at worst. So, I needed a quirky, strange-ish, yet meaningful name for my little corner of cyberspace.

I love adoption. I love my God, and I love my family. That's what this blog is mostly about. For some reason I started to think about the "I AM" statements in the book of John (I am the way, the truth, and the life, etc.), and while looking at my lovely background, the statement "I am the true vine" came to mind. I started thinking about how God takes us -- these brown, withered up, dying vines, and he grafts us in to the living vine of Christ... which is kind of a metaphor for adoption. We join his vine; we join his family. And so, I want to be a little model of this grafted vine. I want to take these little struggling plants, and graft them into our family, just as we have been grafted into His. And so, you are now at "The Grafted Vine"... the Paul family blog. It's quirky! It's probably even strange... but it means something, at least to us.

My Very First Memorial Box Monday!!!

I am so excited to finally start a Memorial Box! I haven't actually acquired the box yet, but I'm going to start gathering the items that will eventually go in the box.

So, today, on my very first Memorial Box Monday, I'm flooded with ideas for stories and items, and I'm really having trouble picking one! But, this month marks the first anniversary of our little "laundry room barbeque". The circumstances of that event have obviously been on my mind.

In Mid-November 2008, we *finally* got the call that we had been waiting for more than a year. We got a permanent placement! We were cautiously excited, and we knew that she would be coming in early December. The night before Thanksgiving, we had a couple of students at the house watching movies. I went into the laundry room, and I smelled that electrical burning smell that is s0 very distinctive. This had happened before, and last time it had been a problem with the water heater. We immediately called the owner of the house so that someone would fix the issue. I had JP scour the laundry room to make sure nothing else could be causing the smell, and we were satisfied when we went to bed that all was well.

It just so happened that we were leaving to go out of town the next day, and it just so happened that my mother had offered for us to stay in her home that night since we anticipated that we would run out of hot water. We declined her offer... thank you, Jesus! Now, my JP has sleep apnea, so he has to wear this very complicated and loud mask at night so he won't stop breathing in his sleep. For some reason, he forgot to put on his mask before he fell asleep.

Early the next morning, the smell of smoke woke him. I know, that's not supposed to happen - you aren't supposed to smell smoke in your sleep... but I absolutely believe that God made that possible. He jumped out of bed, and ran down stairs, yelling for me to wake the kids up on the way down. After just a few seconds, he yelled for me to get them out RIGHT NOW!!! For some reason, my little boy, Jonathan, had ended up in bed in his underwear... maybe he got too warm in bed? I don't know. But I yanked a shirt over his head and dragged them down the stairs and out the door and into the car (it was COLD!). Please note that neither of our smoke alarms had gone off yet, and by this time the laundry room was fully ablaze. I ran back inside (since there was very little smoke), and called 911. I went back to the porch and witnessed my studly honey running through the house (in a T-shirt and boxers, I might add), carrying a small bowl of water, which was sloshing out everywhere as he was running. Later on I would think this image was really hilarious, but at the time, I just yelled ," GET THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER!!". And it was totally a God-thing that we even had those fire extinguishers to begin with-- we were required to have them for foster care. Not only that, but we were required to carry renter's insurance by state law.

In the end, JP managed to put the fire out before the fire department even got there. We sustained minimal fire damage, but alot of smoke damage. The worst part is that we were displaced for several weeks while the damage was repaired. We were so scared that we wouldn't be able to accept our placement. But, our agency was amazing, and they arranged for respite while we were waiting to move back in. In the meantime, we were spending the rest of our meager resources on the necessities... clothes, school supplies, etc. We talked to Tinkerbell on the phone for a week or so before she came, and we found out that she was coming only with the clothes she had. We would need to provide all toiletries and school supplies when she arrived. We honestly had no idea how we were going to pay for this. Our bank account was absolutely exhausted.

Out of the blue one sunday, one of the church employees pulled my husband aside and gave him a gift card to Walmart that covered all of Tinkerbell's expenses. We were so thankful.

So, for my first Memorial Box entry, I'll put in an empty WalMart Gift Card to remind us that the Lord may give, and the Lord may take away, but he ALWAYS provides-- Jehovah Jireh.

30 Days and a Year

Thirty days ago we had a marathon court session in the county that all three of our girls are from. It was a total coincidence that the case for Sassy and Indie and the case for Tinkerbell were set on the same day.

It was quite a day people! For one, Tinkerbell's biological mom was allowed to visit her for a few days around the court date, and we actually transported her to court and generally entertained her for a couple of days. I have been so surprised to find that I like Tinkerbell's mom. Despite whatever her failings have been as a mother to Tink, I feel like she has her best interest at heart. The day of the court hearing, we also had the... um.... opportunity to meet her biological father. Unfortunately, my feeling for him is much less pleasant, and I feel that he's interests are primarily self serving. So, put all of these people in the courtroom and put them last on the docket.

THEN, add the fact that the little girls' case was in the first session, and the first thing that we heard that morning was that the case was not going to go as planned. They would probably go home that day!! Whoa. That's really all I can say. Rather that having the emotional reaction that I wanted to have, I focused on the practical problems that we faced. I mean, I needed to get the girls' laundry washed for the week, and we hadn't packed anything, and their toys were all mixed in with Jonathan and Juli's toys. My fantastic brother-and sister-in-law were watching the kids while we were over an hour a way from home, and there is no way that they could get all of that together. And there was a slight possibility that they would be gone before we ever got back to our hometown, since Tink's case was so late in the day. Would we even get to say goodbye? Of course, then I thought about Tink-- on the most stressful day in the world for her, I was going to have to make it worse by breaking this news to her before the judge heard the case so she would be prepared for the outcome.

It was such a mess, people. Tink's parents were arguing with each other, which had her crying anyway, then I had to talk to her about the little girls, and only made it much worse. We tried calling home so that Bailey could try to start making some preparations, and we couldn't get them on the phone. All this while court was in session. We were sitting on the back row, and my JP got my hands and pulled me to his side, and we prayed together on the back bench, praying only that this day would be resolved according to his Master plan.

Oh, and did I mention that the girl's mom was there, and we got to see and hear from her for the first time?

So, case number 1 was called. I expected to have to give some long disposition about the struggles the girls were having, and about the progress they have made. I only choked out one sentence in support of something that the girls' grandmother said. And it was over within a couple of minutes -- we'd review it again in six months.

I felt such massive relief! I praised my God in my head. They probably will go back home in April, but... we were given the gift of TIME. More time for the girls to heal, more time for the girls to bond with me so that they can transfer that bond to their aunt, time for them to get to know their family, and time for us to say goodbye. An amazingly precious, although somewhat bittersweet, gift from my Daddy in Heaven.

And we ran into the aunt and grandmother downstairs at the vending machine and had a really fantastic, long, talk about the girls and about God's will for their little lives. I feel very much that God wants them there, and that has given me a large measure of peace for them, and for the future of our family.

So, after lunch and recess, paperwork, squabbling and so forth, case 2 was called. We were all called into the judges' chambers to hear Tinkerbell's TPR case. Her parents had already agreed, whether for totally unselfish or selfish reasons, to voluntarily terminate their rights. It was the strangest court case I could have imagined, since my daughter was charming the judge with her mis-matched socks, and she had the whole room of suits laughing. JP turned to me and said, "She just lights up a room, doesn't she?" Yes, she really does. Soon I"ll get to show you.

There was a 30 day hold on the paperwork before we could actually file the adoption petition, and today marks the 30th day. We were assigned a lawyer, and finalization should be in late January or Early February. We have yet to actually file that petition, but it should be soon. We are so, incredibly excited by the prospect of finally adopting this "unadoptable" child. A work that only God can accomplish. This month marks one year since we were first called about her placement. It feels like she's been with us forever.