Learning How to Pray

A spiritual retreat, a family wedding, an anniversary vacation, recitals and end of the year programs, work transitions and travel, and Nathan starting a doctorate - the last several months have been a whirlwind of activity for our family.  We are grateful to finally catch our breath and share a brief update on our adoption journey. 

Our dossier was successfully accepted in Ethiopia in March 2014. We are happy to share that we continue to move up the waiting list toward a referral for our new child. Each month, we receive an email update with a progress report indicating our place on the list. We started at #30 four months ago and now are down to #25. Some months there are several referrals, some months none at all. At the current pace of referrals, we will be waiting another 20 months. It could be shorter, it could be longer. 

On the one hand we want to pray that the process will move more quickly. We are excited for our family to grow and are filled with anticipation to meet our child and bring him/her home. Naturally we don't want to wait any longer than necessary. 

Yet we are conflicted in praying that way. To pray for the referrals to speed up means that the need for adoption is increasing. More referrals means more children not being able to stay with their birth parents, and more parents giving their children up for adoption. The circumstances that have led or will lead to the child being orphaned are inherently full of pain and loss. 

We wish we lived in a world in which adoption wasn't necessary. The grace-filled beauty of adoption is born out of the deep pain of the need for it. 

So, as we continue to learn patience we believe we have discovered how to pray during this time. We have felt encouraged to pray not only for our child, but for his/her birth parents. Whether or not our child has been born yet, we pray for the health and wellbeing of the mother and father.  We trust that God has knowledge of this situation and cares. We also trust that God is like an attentive parent and when we, God's children, make the desires of our heart known, God's creative and healing Spirit blows through their lives. 

As we wait, as you read this, will you join us in praying for our child's birth family? 

We deeply desire to show God’s love to one of His own by making him or her one of our own. Please pray for all five us during this journey.

In God’s Grace, 

Nathan, Kameron, J. Henry, Amelia (and Baby #3!)

Now the REAL waiting begins...

After months of baking pound cakes, scribbling over paperwork and running around Birmingham our dossier is in process with the adoption agency in Ethiopia and we are on the waiting list – thanks be to God!

So now that we are on the waiting list, here is how the rest of this process will unfold. When our name moves to the front of the list, we will be matched with a boy or girl who will be from birth to five years old. We will be contacted and given a profile of the child. Once we accept the referral for this child, Kameron and I will make plans to travel to Ethiopia within a few weeks to meet our child in person and to initiate the paperwork in their court system. We will stay for 6-8 days before returning home, leaving our child in the care of foster parents (we expect it to be very difficult to leave our new little boy or girl, even if for just awhile!) We will then return within a 60-90 period to appear in court and to complete the legal work, over a 4-6 day stay. At the end of that time we will return home with our new child with us. While there will be a little paperwork to do in the weeks after we return home, for the most part the adoption will be complete.

So now we wait. We expect the wait to be between 18-24 months for a referral, given the current pace of referrals. In the mean time we will continue to pray for them and to work toward our fundraising goals. We ask our friends and family to please keep our family and our child to come in your prayers. We need patience and faith beyond our natural ability during this time of waiting. Thank you all so very much for encouraging us, for generously supporting us, and for lifting us before God in your prayers. We could not do this alone.

One day, we will walk through the doors of an orphanage in Addis Ababa and scoop our child up into our arms for the first time. It will be a joyful moment as we get to touch them and see and hear them in person. And as they are physically embraced by us for the first time, the true power of the moment is that while they will only see and feel us with them, we will KNOW that a whole army of friends and family has been giving, praying, encouraging – all so we can bring them home.

We deeply desire to show God’s love to one of His own by making him or her one of our own. Please pray for all five us during this journey.

In God’s Grace,

Nathan, Kameron, J. Henry, Amelia (and Baby #3!)

Imago Dei

For our family, our faith teaches us that every human being reflects the image of our creator. Every person. Each member of our family. The child who will become a part of our family. It is innately in everyone. Every person who has ever lived has within them the image of God. People define this in different ways: freewill, a moral compass, ability to contemplate the future, etc. Of course, some people reflect that image very poorly. The Light shines in, but is absorbed into the black hole of poor choices, self-centeredness, and indifference. So the Light isn't reflected very well and we don’t see God in much they do. Others reflect the Light very well through compassion, joy, and creative generosity. In the bright eyes, warm smiles, and caring actions of those people, we clearly see the face of the One in whose image we are all made. I have learned to recognize that image in many wonderful friends over the years. Over time, I have almost come to anticipate that I will have to squint a little in their presence because the Light is reflected so glaringly. 

But, sometimes, unexpectedly, we see the image in the face of a total stranger. 

Yesterday was a big day. After 9 months of paperwork and jumping through administrative hoops - all very appropriate and necessary for the adoption of a child, of course - Kameron mailed our dossier off to Oregon to the Dove International Adoption office for them to review our file, make any amendments, and forward to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and then on to the State Department (equivalent) in Ethiopia. If all goes as we hope, our dossier should in Ethiopia in 3 weeks! At that time we will be put on a waiting list with an average wait time of 18 months before we are placed with our new child.

Kameron went to the UPS store located at 1919 Oxmoor road in Homewood to mail the dossier. The gentleman who was helping her was named Josh and had brown hair and a beard. He is always there. He told her through ground transport the dossier would reach Oregon next Wednesday, Feb. 26. She then asked how much other options shipping would be. He told her that he would check. She waited for what felt like a long time. Finally, he returned to the counter and had her verify the address on the package. When she finished, he said, "I know a guy whose dad is adopted. I know how important this is. Your dossier will be in Oregon tomorrow by 10:30. No charge for this one." 

Kameron asked if she could give him a hug, and he said yes (who would say "No" to my cute wife? :0). When Kameron made it to church last night to tell me, I could see the excitement and blessing in her eyes, before she could explain what happened. This was a brilliant public relations move for UPS. She eagerly told EVERYONE. Turns out that the image in Josh was reflected so brightly, that it radiated from the countenance of one of his customers for the rest of her day.

We hope that all our local friends will increase their patronage to the Homewood UPS. Perhaps the next time you are in there, you will give Josh, the guy with the brown hair and beard, a hug or a handshake. Kameron plans to take him a pound cake next week as a small token of our appreciation. It wasn't just the generous gift of the cost of the shipping that means so much to us. It is the reminder that the Light is shining in a dark world. And with folks like Josh out there reflecting it, there is no way the darkness will overcome it. 

Thank you, Josh at UPS. 

We deeply desire to show God’s love to one of His own by making him or her one of our own. Please pray for all five us during this journey.

In God’s Grace,

Nathan, Kameron, J. Henry, Amelia (and Baby #3!)

Waiting...

The week of Thanksgiving, we received the good news that our Home Study, the first major portion of our adoption journey, was completed – Thanks be to God! Over the course of the 5 months it took to complete it, there were many moments when it seemed as the though we would never be able to cross-off each document and task on the checklist. Thanks to Kameron’s diligent organization and many professionals and agencies who assisted us with paperwork, we have sent our Immigration paperwork off for approval and are compiling our dossier to send to Ethiopia.

So, now with the Home Study in our hands, a new, shorter and less complicated list of requirements to check off, with a major leg of the journey in the rearview and with renewed gratitude in our hearts, we move into the second major phase: waiting.

Waiting is difficult. We have been looking forward to welcoming our new child into our family since we began praying about this possibility last year. But the waiting will persist. The average wait time from submission of our dossier to Ethiopia to a referral for a child: 18 months. We are longing for this new, youngest member of our family to become a permanent member of our family. We look forward to when the number of faces you can count on our Christmas card will be five rather than four. For now, we simply imagine and pray for a face that may or may not have been born yet. We are forced into waiting, yearning, longing.

I am not used to waiting. In an age of instant gratification, when food passes to us through a window, 2 minutes after ordering, when we have limitless information a finger swipe across a laminated screen away, and a buffet of entertainment awaits us in our living rooms or around the corner, I am reminded that things worth loving and living for cannot be rushed. A birth, a wedding day, a graduation, a reunion, retirement, an embrace - the best experiences in this gift of life demand that we wait.

Waiting might be the hardest part. Especially when the waiting is without visible, measurable progress. It is one thing to have a “to-do” list of requirements to champion, one task at a time. It is another to wait in the stillness, the wondering and the silence of possibility – waiting for a phone call announcing the good news of great joy to us, that our child will finally join our family.

As a family, during this Advent season, we not only remember Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago, and look forward with eager anticipation for Christ’s return, when all creation will be renewed and peace and fulfillment will reign. For the first time in my life, even if in a very small way, I think we can identify with the longing of Israel, through Mary and Joseph’s experience, for the Child to come.

We deeply desire to show God’s love to one of His own by making him or her one of our own. Please pray for all five us during this journey.

In God’s Grace,

Nathan, Kameron, J. Henry, Amelia (and Baby #3!)

Blessing Cards

Being a minister is a unique profession which has, like every occupation, its challenges and benefits. The challenges include things like moving often in the early years and not being able to put down roots in a specific community, and the routine of trying to write sermons, teach classes, plan worship, attend meetings, provide counseling, manage budgets and personnel, fundraise, recruit and train volunteers, perform weddings and funerals - all in a "typical" week. Like other professions, the work is never finished or caught up. But what makes it really tough is that preachers are supposed to do all this, AND always be upbeat and smiling when you see us...:0)

But the work sure is rewarding. To be able to offer the hope and challenge that we believe to be the Good News for everyone, is a daunting responsibility and high privilege. To walk with people through births, baptisms, confirmations, graduations, weddings, Communions and funerals; to share with them in the most vulnerable and universal of human experiences, is pretty incredible. And while it is perpetually exhausting, it is wonderful and I cannot imagine doing anything else. I am grateful for the gift of being able to dwell in the House of the Lord, with his people. 

But tonight, I just want to briefly lift up one gift we have experienced from being a part of Christ's church. 

For whatever stories you hear about "church people" being judgmental or hypocritical or whatever, and despite the truth there may be in the stories, we have experienced that belonging to a network of Christian friends has been a tremendous gift. Our brothers and sisters in Christ have brought us  great encouragement, especially through this adoption process. Over the course of the last few months, we have received "Blessing Cards" from friends and family who we notified of our intentions. We invited them to write out a prayer or blessing upon a card that we sent them and return it in the stamped enveloped we included. We have received about twenty-five and love to read through them together every few weeks. Below is a card we received from a dear lady and friend from Pell City, AL:

It is our plan to take all of these and put them in a scrapbook to give to our new child to keep for the rest of their life as a reminder of how we and God loved them before they ever knew it. If you are reading this post and would be willing to offer your prayer of blessing, please send it by email to nathan.l.carden@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you and allow your well-wishes to echo through the years of our child's life. 

We just want to say how thankful we are for sharing life with people who are willing to support us in this journey. And on a night when I am exhausted from the demands of a Sunday, it is little gifts like the one above that let me know we have good people in our corner. 

We deeply desire to show God's love to one of His own by making him or her one of our own. Please be in prayer for all five of us during this journey. 

In God's grace - 

Nathan, Kameron, J. Henry & Amelia ( and Baby #3!)