Hey there everyone, first of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who has continued to visit the site each day, even with the inconsistency of new content. I’m hoping to get more consistent in the future, but I’ll talk more about that in a minute. First, I wanted to give you a quick update on what’s been going on with my family and I over the last few months.

Adoption Update

As many of you know, my wife and I are pretty deep into the process of adopting a little girl from India. We began this process back around March or April of this year and things started out great! We finished our home study and all of our paperwork in about half the time our agency expected us to, and even though the cost of adopting a child is astronomical, God has been faithful and we have seen a many people come along side us donating over $35,000 in the course of just a few months so that we can bring our daughter home.

Over the summer we cleared our adoption with the US government and are just waiting on approval from Indian government, which is where we are today. The adoption division of the Indian government, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), went through some restructuring recently and as a result our case has been waiting for approval for 16 weeks instead of the typical 2 – 4 weeks. However, this was not the only concern we’ve been dealing with.

Last month we received word that another family had pulled the file of the child we are pursuing. What this means is that when someone pulls a child’s file they are given 30 days to look over it, see doctors, and consider whether they want to adopt that child. These were 30 of the longest days we’ve had to go through as a family. Each day seemed longer than the last as we waited to see if this child who we’ve invested in making our daughter was going to end up going home with another family, however the 30 days came and went and her file was returned to the waiting child list. We know that there’s no guarantee this family, or some other family won’t come along and choose her, but until then we are doing everything we can to bring her home. Over this last month we have had to lean into God, but also be brutally honest with him about how we were feeling. I was sad, but also angry even though there wasn’t really anyone I could be justly mad at.

I, like most men, struggle with being open and vulnerable about my emotions and tend toward apathy as a defense mechanism; however the last month or so has been an opportunity to share those emotions with God and with my wife and to process them in a healthy way. As a result, my wife and I drew closer together as we shared each other’s burdens and prayed for one another and for our boys who were hurting and afraid that their sister whom they love already might not get to come home. While I’m sharing the benefits of having gone through this time, I am not saying it was easy because it was anything but. I am, however, thankful that God doesn’t let us go, and that he’s big enough to deal with our anger and frustrations even when they’re misdirected toward him or other people.

I share all of this with you not for your sympathy, but to let you into my heart and to remind anyone who may be struggling with hard situations in their own life that you are not alone in the hurt, the anger, and the sorrow that you feel.  I don’t ever want Ancient Abandon to focus so much on having all the right answers to theological and moral questions that it misses the gritty reality of what it means to be human and the real life issues people face.

As far as the adoption stands today, we are still waiting for CARA approval, then approval from the No Objection Committee, and finally approval from the the courts in India. We are also a few thousand dollars short of being fully funded.  Please pray for my family as we continue to navigate this process. Pray that we would get approval sooner rather than later and that we wouldn’t have anymore problems along the way. Also, if you want to help out financially by donating to the adoption fund, reach out to me by email (ancientabandon@gmail.com) or you can contact me on Telegram @RebornJumpman.  Finally, I ask that you join us in praying that we would be approved and legally matched with our daughter before Christmas. She has been waiting for a family for 10 years and we would love it if one of her gifts this year could be finding out that her family is coming for her.

Blog Update

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted any new content on this blog, and I’m sorry to those of you who follow or subscribe. You expect better and I’ve been wanting to do a lot with it. Part of the reason I haven’t been better about posting is that I’ve just not wanted to write lately – even the last few updates, song posts, and study posts were a chore to put out and that’s not normal for me. With the stress of the adoption as well as dealing with burn out from being too politically active and constantly aware of current events I found myself not wanting to read, or write, or do much of anything. As a result, I listened to the leading of the Holy Spirit an I took some time away from blogging. I’ve intentionally avoided most news outlets for the better part of a month now, and I’ve removed all the social media apps from my phone. Not surprising, it has been a wonderful time of getting back to what really matters.

I plan to come back to blogging. While I’m not exactly sure of the timeline, I will probably start publishing more regularly after the New Year, but I’m not going to rush it. Please pray for guidance, wisdom, and discernment as I try to balance family life, a career, and blogging along with my other hobbies. Until next time, I love you guys.