Simply Trusting

Where am I?

admin — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:29:28 +0000

We had our annual Thanksgiving dinner at our church the Sycamore Tree this past Sunday. There was a huge crowd so we were standing in line to get our food. Along the way is a wall with pictures of all the baptisms that have been done in our church since it was planted. I’m standing with Anna, David, and Bennett and looking at all of these people who have become followers of Jesus. Bennett sees Anna’s baptism picture and our whole family in the river with her. We keep looking and see Courtney’s baptism picture but it’s just me and Georgia in the river with her. Bennett says “Where am I?” in the picture. I said “You weren’t here yet”. “You mean I wasn’t born yet?”. “Well, yes, I don’t think you were born yet”. I really meant that he wasn’t ours yet – that we hadn’t adopted him yet.

Bennett was so young when we adopted him from Latvia that he doesn’t really remember the orphanage, the people, Latvia. He doesn’t remember not being our son, not being a Vaughn, not being part of our family, not having a family. He remembers little glimpses of Latvia but not the full realization that he was not always ours. It breaks my heart every time we come to one of these little moments. I know at some time in the future he’s going to come to the understanding that he was born of another mother, lived in another culture, was abandoned as a baby. The questions are already coming.

In my mind there is going to be a hole of some kind there; some sort of heart ache that we’ll have to help him through. Who knows if he’ll just be thankful we’re his parents and forget about it or if he’ll want to explore his past more fully. Maybe go back to Latvia to see for himself. To see Tukums where he was born; to see the old Soviet apartment where he lived with 13 people; to smell the smells, to eat the food, to see the orphanage, the people, the buildings, etc. – I wonder what it will be like.

Then I thought about my relationship to God. Does His heart ache in this same way for us? If my heart aches for my son God’s heart must ache for us like a zillion times more. I guess that’s why He sent Jesus to fix it once and for all.

Not sure exactly what to do with all this but just thinking. Maybe it’s just that God reveals Himself to us a little bit more each time we encounter something like this. Bottom line – I love my son Bennett with all my heart and I’m tempted to go back through all the pictures and photoshop him in because it feels like in my heart he’s been here all along. (smile)

Hmmmmm…..

2010 Family Update

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:41:06 +0000

Well, dang ya’ll it’s about time!

It’s been quite a past year for us here at the Vaughn household. We’ve been through quite a bit with our children, with our finances, with our extended family, you name it. Faithfully though God has stood by us and continues to bring us through these times. Our children are such a blessing to us and we love watching them grow and mature, helping them with struggles – David with learning, Bennett with his behavior, Stephanie with her school, boyfriends, job drama; Courtney with her high school teachers (it’s like a prison), and Anna with ? (well, she doesn’t really have any struggles – hmmm).

God continues to draw us closer to him through our circumstances I think. We know that everything we have comes from God and that he can give and take away. This has been a season of uncertainty and some has been taken away like many but God continues to meet our needs like Manna from heaven we rely on him daily. It’s sort of a constant thing in our house because it takes so much to keep everything going with 5 children. My salary was decreased by 22% last year but God has used this to draw us closer to Him so He can reveal himself more and more to us – I’m convinced of it. He continues to provide richly in ways we’ve never considered. God is so creative. He’s also put on our hearts to start our own business using our family’s skills to do design, video, technical work on the internet. We started down the road of wedding films and may still do some of those but it’s very hard with my current job and the work of a wedding business. So it’s back to the dream of trading bits for dollars rather than hours.

Over the summer we finally took a family vacation to the beach which was the first time since adopted the littles ones that we’ve really taken a family vacation like that. It was so refreshing to just get away and relax and forget about the world for a while. We played in the ocean and had such fun. Pictures are over in the pictures section.

We learned that Stephanie is going to France next spring with her college choir and she is so excited. I’m so glad for her as I never got to do anything like that when I was her age. Our children are having such privileges that we didn’t get to experience – I think it’s a good thing. They’ve seen other countries – some very poor like Latvia and Hungary and others very wealthy like France and Germany. They’ve experienced the Latvian culture and know that not everyone has the things we have in the USA. We’ve cut back our own lifestyle so that we can still afford to give to others.

We’ve been helping to support kristaps, Andjeys, and Renate – three siblings just like our three – over in the orphanage in Jelgava. God has provided enough for us to share with them and also prompted us to involve others in helping give to those children.

Well, enough rambling for now. I’ll try to write more as time goes on and keep this site alive for those who might venture here.

Take care,
Barry

Kid Faith

admin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:40:20 +0000

So I last wrote about being depressed and now I’m writing about something joyful. It seems to go like that these days – periods of blah and periods of joy and glee. This was an email exchange that I wrote first to Katie Logan our Youth Director and long-time close friend of the family. I wrote to Katie to encourage her in what she is doing with our children. I told her of a discussion at the dinner table around helping the children in Africa and the letters that our children had written to them with Katie’s help. Next is the email…

So this happened last night at the dinner table on September 2nd, 2009…

Anna at the dinner table tonight – "Daddy you know I don’t feel adopted; I feel like I was always meant to be here". We were talking about the letters the children wrote to the kids at CandleLight school in Nairobi, Kenya. Anna, David, and Bennett were asking about why those kids needed help – I reminded them of when they were orphaned and left without food and no one to take care of them. They totally get it!

Katie it’s so cool the work you do with our kids – you really make a difference in them. They ask me questions like this all the time after the lessons with you and others. It’s really good! God has placed you and so many other people in their lives. Thank you so much!

Then here’s Katie’s response…

That’s great – thanks so much Barry! The letters, especially the ones the preteens wrote, were SOOOOOOOOOOO good. It was eye opening to even me and I generally have high expectations and don’t underestimate kids. We’ll definitely be doing more of this. This was Anna’s letter – I’ll type exactly as she wrote – it’s precious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Dear Candlelight School,

I hope you all are doing very well. My name is Anna and I am in 4th grade. I am happy to help you. We are raising money at our church. It is cald the Sycamore Tree. It is a great place to learn about God. I love to read the bible some times and I hope you do too. Wright know we are learning about love. Love is to show your time and friendship no matter what. We all at our church love you all. I hope that we would rais enough money for you. I will pray for you night and day. We LOVE you very much.

Your friend,

Anna”

SOOOOO sweet – One thing I’ve noticed about Anna (and I’m not sure if I can totally describe it here) is that she is really smart when it comes to integrating what she’s learning into life, which is such a valuable life skill. When I ask questions it is clear she truly understands and hasn’t just memorized or learned the right answer. If I ask them to turn a verse into a prayer (kind of an advanced concept), she does that really well and “get’s it”. And then when I saw that she’d incorporated our definition of love in her letter I was sooooo excited. And as far as her feeling like she was always meant to be here – she ABSOLUTELY was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (All 3 of them were – this one just focused on Anna because of the letter).

My cute moment with the boys last night – we were playing a game that required one person to sneak out of the room and “it” had to turn around and guess who’d left. Well, every time I chose Bennett to sneak out of the room, David would yell out, “Where’s Bennett going,” thus telling everyone, including “it,” who was missing. I kept pulling Bennett back in the room and making a last minute change. Well, the 3rd time David said his name Bennett was really mad and yelled at David, sending David under the table crying. Bennett said, “GREAT, now he’s crying.” I just said, “well, I bet you know how to fix that” and Bennett crawled under the table with him, gave him a hug, told him he was sorry, and that everything was ok. REALLY SWEET! Next time I looked David was smiling. They are really fun and I’m really excited to hear that they ask questions at home – that’s definitely the goal!

Katie

So I just think it’s wonderful that once again God has placed people like Katie in our children’s lives. Now if we can just get over this depression.

PAD

admin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:55:11 +0000

How time flies – it’s been almost a year since I’ve written any thoughts down; strange. As wonderful as the past three years has been with out expanded family it’s also been very hard. I’m not sure if it’s coming off the mountain top of international adoption and then the next year adding onto our house or if it’s just general doldrums. Georgia and I have both been in a rut for the past year it seems. I took a week of vacation this summer and we literally did nothing. I’m not sure what was in my mind except just inertia. I’m not even sure what I was feeling. The week of vacation went by and I found myself still sitting in my chair.

I know that other folks that we’ve talked to have experienced similar situations after adopting. In fact this condition I’ve discovered has a name – Post Adoption Depression or PAD. Now if you know me you’d think I would be the last one to be depressed – Barry’s always happy and joyful. Well that is mostly true and even now I find myself trying to stay positive but I too go through these periods where I just feel like a lead weight is around my neck and I just feel blah and it’s been going on for a while now and I can’t seem to shake it – or we for that matter as Georgia seems to be experiencing it even more than me. So why does this happen?

Well, after doing a bit of reading, I’m thinking that this is very common in fact about 65% of adoptive parents experience PAD even higher with international adoption. Parents who adopt internationally usually get older children, we get children who have suffered through unimaginable loss. Our children often have hidden emotional, psychological, neurological, and other medical conditions. On top of that has been the economic recession which hit us and set back my earnings to the level they were 10 years ago. Yes, we’ve hit a wall I think. But even in all my reading I still can’t figure out the “why”.

I’m sharing because it feels good to write it down but it also may help others recognize it earlier. Georgia and I have been sort of struggling through this but I think it’s time we do something and get some help. Maybe if you’re going through an adoption or have already adopted then beware because you’re most likely to experience PAD as we have. We knew there might be some coming down off the mountain but like everything else, it was harder than we thought.

Special prayers for Latvia

admin — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:26:31 +0000

So today the coolest thing happened in church. We were going through the normal routine of arriving at church early in our family bus aka. the suburban. All seven of us coming marching through the back door of the church and pick a spot to lay all of our stuff down. We make the children sit and behave in somewhat close proximity to the stage and preferably me (Barry) as the boys seem to behave better when we’re up on stage in the band if they’re sitting directly in front of their father. I guess it’s the healthy fear that I instill in them that brings them into compliance. As Georgia, Stephanie, and I are practicing the songs we’ll be singing later in the service I notice that Jeff our pastor is over talking to Anna, David, & Bennett. This is a fairly normal thing so I didn’t think much of it.

Fast forward to the church service. We are going along smoothly finishing up out third song and Jeff (the pastor) comes up on stage as usual to do some sharing, prayers, talking, etc. – he calls Anna, David, and Bennett to come up on the stage. Georgia and I didn’t know what was going on but they marched up there and it was clear that’s what he’d been talking to them about earlier. So he pulls out a candle and it has a little note attached that says “Please light this candle during your morning service and pray for our Latvia United Methodist congregations”. Anna read the note loudly and clearly to the congregation with her face beaming with pride as she read. Of course Georgia and I were beaming as well because of the children. Jeff explained to those who were new that the children had been adopted by us from Latvia.

Jeff prayed for Latvia and then came time to light the candle and he asked which one of them wanted to light the candle. Stephanie was standing beside me at the back of the stage and I quietly leaned over to her and said “Hey Bennett is good with fire” (because he’d gotten hold of the matches and took them to his bedroom once) and then almost simultaneously Bennett asserts himself and says loudly that he will light the candle. Jeff strikes the match and hands it to Bennett and he oh so slowly moves the match toward the candle. There’s a breeze coming from the air conditioner and I can see that the match is burning down swiftly and that Bennett is holding it with the fire pointed downward as in the flame is coming up the match stick toward his fingers. So I’m watching and thinking that he’s moving too slow to get the match on the candle before it burns his finger. Well sure enough, he gets almost to the candle and then starts to feel the pain and slings the match down onto the top of the stool where the candle was sitting. Everyone laughed hysterically including myself (imagine that). Not to be daunted, Jeff immediately struck another match and handed it to Anna this time who successfully fired up the candle.

All that to say that it was so special to see our children in that element and know how far they’ve come and what they’ve been through. They’re now just able to be normal little kids and have normal little everyday things like this happen in their lives.

My Family

admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:03:46 +0000

So this is another really cool thing that happened this week. Every week on Wednesday night at our church is prayer time. We get together and pray for everything and anything to do with our church family. In fact the Sycamore Tree (our church) bases all of its decisions through the mechanism and outcome of prayer.

Anyway, we were at prayer and those of us there were sharing about answered prayers, prayer concerns, ect. – Jeff Wadley, our preacher asked me saying “Do you know what your children said the other day during children’s church”? He said the subject was about things the children value. Anna didn’t understand what the word “value” meant. So it was explained that it was something that was really important to you. Some kids were mentioning their iPods, Nintendos, bicycles, video games, and others. Anna was still somewhat puzzled and finally she said “Can it be your family”? Then David and Bennett also said their family (actually I think one of them said his brother) – anyway, I thought this was so cool and it just made me realize how real it is to her. I hope this will always be the case.

It made me think too about how it’s so easy to forget about the things that are really important. Just having a family is one of the most important things in life to all of us. It’s no wonder there are so many broken lives as a result of broken families. Georgia’s father left her when she was 16 and said “he’d been her father long enough”; she carries the scars to this day. She tells me that I rescued her and yet I’m still not big enough, strong enough, loving enough to take away those scars – only God can heal them. Even so the scar tissue I think will remain while she is on this earth.

I never ever in a million years want to be one who would do this to any one of my children.

Communion & Adoption

admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:26:07 +0000

After taking somewhat of a summer hiatus I decided it’s time to get creative again and return to writing down some thoughts.

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Communion at church. Of course I was deep in thought as usual when it hit me – something I’d been thinking about for a while suddenly had a new twist. The subject was about how adoption here on earth is a visual picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact Steven Curtis Chapman calls adoption the “visual gospel”. It’s a miracle.

As we were taken communion it hit me how much God must love us. The bible says that we are all adopted into God’s family through the shed blood of Jesus. Romans 11 talks about being grafted into the olive branch, Romans 8 talks about our adoption as sons, Ephesians talks about our sharing together in the promise of Jesus. On and on the bible talks about adoption – God invented it. This rang true because of our adoption of Anna, David, & Bennett. I look at them and know how much I love them. What a miracle it is that God presented us with three little strangers who were meant to be ours. I love them the same as Stephanie & Courtney – there is no difference; only in the way we got them.

I think about that too – that we had to go through this long process of getting them. Filling out paper work, traveling half way around the world, worrying about money, not knowing what was going to happen next. Yet all the while knowing that God was fulfilling all our needs as he promises. It was almost like all of them were in my heart all along. Praying fervently and worrying about David’s learning abilities, Bennett’s behavior, and Anna’s mothering self. In fact, every now and then I have a nightmare about one of the new kids – that something awful would happen. I suppose that’s when you really know they’re yours.

So back to communion. It hit me in that moment – one of those times when you think back about the past 2 years in and instant in time – that if God has given me the capacity to love these children as much as I do with all my heart then how much does God actually love me given that I am also adopted as his son.

It truly is a miracle to think about adoption. To experience the joy of your children; knowing they know they have a forever family and seeing that in their faces every day. Seeing three little children get on a plane to go half way around the world with a family they barely know. To see a mom, dad, and two sisters accept three strangers into their family forever. To see those two big sisters shared their mom and dad so willingly with their three younger siblings. To see God moving other people around the world to help us. To see God working through the relationships of those other Christians and bringing us all together as if we were literally one family in him.

It truly is a miracle.

Surprise Pictures

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:20:53 +0000

We got a great surprise the other day when I received an email with the picture above attached. It’s an early picture of Anna, David and Bennett right after Bennett’s arrival at the orphanage. They’d been separated for almost a year and are just getting to know each other again here in this picture. Bennett was left at the hospital after having some problems with his umbilical cord and so was sent to an orphanage for babies. Here in this picture he is about 1 year old and because he was in an orphanage where they really just left him in a crib most of the day he didn’t develop muscles to sit up by himself, to crawl, or do any of those things a little 1 year old would do. I think this picture is so sweet and shows how God had in mind for them to be together all along and eventually to be with us. I’ve also place a bigger version of this picture over in the Surprise album under the “Pictures 2008” section so you can view in full resolution. You may also notice that the picture is titled with the children’s Latvian names Nastya; common nickname for Anastasia, Arturm; kind of like Arthur but pronounced “Artoma” and they called him Toma for short, and then Dema which is short for Dmitri and is now David’s middle name.

I keep saying it over and over but we are truly blessed by our children.

Daddy’s Day

admin — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:04:37 +0000

I have to share some thoughts about Daddy’s day with Anna. It was absolutely an amazing time to be there with my daughter and make a mother’s day present together with her. I showed up at around 9:30am and we worked together to create a book of all the reasons that we love Mommy.

It was really special because I remember the time when we were living with the children in Latvia. We did all the same things we do here – we’d get up, make breakfast, take them to school in the morning, pick them up in the afternoons. All those good things. I remember particularly having a conversation with Alyona (the kid’s main caregiver at the orphanage) who was talking about how it was hard sometimes when the school had functions that included mom’s and dad’s but because the children really didn’t have a mom or dad one of the orphanage workers would go with them; even though they loved and cared for the children it really wasn’t the same. One day when I was taking Anna to school she brought with her a little Polly Pocket set that we’d given her as a gift. Immediately when she went into school, she brought all her little friends together to show them the present. I didn’t think much of it at the time but later her teacher was telling me how proud Anna was to show off this gift because it came from her new mommy & daddy. This daddy’s day reminded me of that occasion when she was so proud to have her new family.

I got to thinking about this afterwards about how lonely and vulnerable Anna must have felt during this time of not having a family and wanting a new one but being a little scared of that as well. By contrast she’s now confident, smiles constantly, and feels completely at ease. It’s such a blessing to see her come so far and to be reminded of the difference a family makes. To belong to someone; it’s not enough to just have folks around that care.

We’re continually blessed by what God has done in our lives as a family.

David’s progress with writing

admin — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:22:47 +0000

Well, David continues to amaze us in many ways. We worry about him constantly about whether he’ll ever be able to read well, to write, to graduate from high school some day, or hope beyond hope to be able to go to university some day. We worry so much because David was the most affected by the neglect that he and his siblings suffered. Many of you may know that David could not speak any word except for “machina” (Latvian for car) when he came to the orphanage at 3 years old. We’re told that his caregiver Sarmita worked with him dilligently to try and get him to say her name over and over reapeating to him. She would say “Sarmitas Tante”, in English “Tante” sounds like “tauntay” and in Latvian in means something like “aunt” (sorry my Latvian friends if I’m not being symantically 100% correct) – kind of like we would teach children to say “Miss Sarmita” or something along those lines. Anyway, after some time David finally picked up on the last sound of the last word “tay” and would run around the orphanage saying “tay, tay, tay…”.

This language problem manifests itself in some not so obvious kinds of ways as well. One of the reasons that David has had such trouble in writing the letters is his ability to use those fine motor skills that are developed in early childhood right along with his language skills. Because of this he’s had lots of trouble writing the words in the prescribed way and in coming up with shapes that look like the examples that are given. It’s been hard working with him because we didn’t know exactly how to help him. It turns out that he is instinctively repeating those developmental steps that he’s missed – that children like David have to go back and repeat those steps no matter what. It seems that all children develop these skills through certain developmental steps and even if they miss those steps at a younger age, they must go back either through guidance or instinct and repeat those steps to gain the skills that are needed for learning.

Well he’s come from not being able to speak in Latvian, his native language, to now learning a brand new language and being able to write the letters as well. We bought this little practice dry erase board for David to practice and on his own he sits down and practices his letters. It’s better that way than for us leaning over his shoulder because he is free to practice on his own terms and mess up a little or correct himself as he sees fit. We of course give him guidance but he is motivated to learn on his own. It’s amazing! I told him that I was so proud that I would take his picture and write about it on our web site. All of this has come in the last year and a half.

We’re absolutely blessed by this little boy and are continually amazed by his attitude and his loving nature. He is a blessing to so many people! Way to go David. I’m so proud that God chose him to be my son!