Rocky Road

If only it was the ice cream. As long as the nuts are almonds, I can't stand when they are pecans or walnuts. I mean, that's just not rocky road ice cream. But I digress.

Things are a bit tough for me right now with the whole family thing (if you didn't pick up on it in the last post). I am trying to stay positive, trying to focus on the things I do have control of right now, and trying to work through a lot of the issues that our journey towards children has brought up. In general things are good, Travis and I are getting along quite well and I am so happy with our crazy aminals. Too much fun to be had by one person, let me tell you. I guess I have just reached a point now where I really don't believe that this is going to happen for us. Even if we were continuing with fertility treatment, going crazy with in vitro, or if we were trying every adoption agency out there in hopes of finding one that would approve us I would have little to no hope that things would work out well for us. I guess I have just decided somewhere in my subconcious that some things aren't meant to be and the sooner I realize that and come to terms with it the sooner I will be able to mourn that loss and move past it.

I am a bit nervous about posting this for multiple reasons. I don't neccessarily like exposing myself on the internet, and I am of course paranoid that this will in some way come back to haunt me when it comes to us pursing adoption again. But this struggle for us has been very lonely, lots of topics are so taboo in certain circles so it is hard to talk about all of your feelings and issues, so I guess I am hoping that someone will read this that has been through this sort of thing themselves. It is very unnerving to not know if what you are feeling is normal, or if all of the decisions you are making are for the right reasons/in the right frame of mind.

I do appreciate the love and support we have gotten so far from family and friends alike. But as much as people try to help and be supportive, I feel that right now I just really need to hear from someone in the same boat as us. All of this ignoring what has happened, not talking about certain things with certain people, and the feeling that everyone really wants us to just stop talking/feeling about it so it will finally go away and stop making everyone feel akward is starting to take it's toll. All of this bitterness and resentment is building up inside, and as hard as I am working on not taking my feelings and turning them into guilt, that is exactly what is happening because I don't feel like I can relate to anyone about this experience and therefore it is staying pent up.

Thanks to those of you who actually finished reading this. I am sorry to unload, and I am not saying in any way that I am not totally appreciative of all of the love and support we have recieved. Some of this is just my personal paranoid perception of life and how others perceive me. I love you all. And if you have some similar experience to this, please let me know, even if I don't really know you, or if you don't even usually read this blog. Thanks.

All Quiet on the Home Front

Long time no hear, things have been quite crazy with us lately. Travis is working hard to keep up with his planning and grading for his classes, and I am having a mid-graduate life crisis (no, nothing new, just the latest in a long line of debilitating 'what have I gotten myself into and what do I do with it now?' freak outs). Puppies and kitties are growing and loving and being ornery as always. I love them. :-)

Not anything new on the adoption front, I think I am protecting myself for a bit while I heal. I still feel the draw, the desire, the promptings, but I just can't sit around an dwell on it day in and day out right now. I have tried to push it back to the back of my mind until I get through some more pressing issues with stuff, then I will bring it back up with myself. I don't really keep up with the list-serves I am on because it gets really hard to read about everyone bringing home their little ones. It also helps me from feeling bitter as people complain about things they are going through with their agency or their kids and a part of me just wants to shout 'Why can't you be happy you are in that blessed situation in the first place?' That is not very constructive, and also not very fair to those people who are dealing with such issues. So I am laying low for a while to work some of those things out and get myself to a better place.

I am hoping that things are going well for everyone, we love you all and can't wait to start seeing family at the holidays.

Say a Little Prayer

Today makes it exactly 8 months since we lost our baby. Hopefully everyone can take a couple of minutes out of their day and say a prayer for all of those out there who have gone through a similar experience, it is devastating to anyone at any stage of pregnancy. We knew our angel for exactly one week before God called them back home.

It has been hard to deal with the fact that we would have a tiny one of our own right now with Travis's eyes and my tiny head and curly hair if only things had gone differently. Then I think about how much Travis and I have grown in the past 8 months, and even though we went through some really difficult times, we are closer now than ever before. And I have done a lot of soul searching and have decided that the time is here to make a lot of changes about how I view the world and how I deal with hardship (good-bye guilt, mostly). Most importantly I have come a few steps closer to really surrendering it all to God. I have realized that my pursuit of children was obviously on my terms and was a reaction to the fact that I feel as if I can't control anything in my life. While I am by no means there yet, or perfect in any way, I know my relationship with the Father is closer than ever before and it has given me a sense of peace that I have not known in a very long time. I suppose there truly is a silver lining to every situation, sometimes it just takes a long time to pull back far enough to see it.

So again, please say a little prayer for those who have angels in heaven, that they may find a sense of peace with their grief and not give up hope on having children in their life.

Hidey Ho

Well, all is quiet on the home front. Travis just had his last day at Circuit City (so he says), he is getting ready for school to start, and I am plugging away on my manuscript. I just wish an experiment would work. Just one. But then what fun would science be?

We have talked to the agency, and it sounds like things are positive and we are going to remain optimistic. We were told that it looks pretty certain that our application will be accepted the next time we apply, in about 6 months, as long as we are through counseling. So we are not too worried, we are going to continue counseling, and we are going to be patient. God's time, not ours.

The past two messages at church (which are unfortunately the only two we've gone to this summer, shame on us) have really hit home with us. The summer series was 'Say What?' and focuses on tough/weird lessons that are in the New Testament. The first one we saw was about Jesus walking on water, and Peter getting out of the boat. The first part was kind of ho-hum, where exactly is this going. But when Pete got to the actual verses, I felt like I was the only person in the audience and he was talking directly to me.

28"Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
29"Come," he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"
31Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"
Matthew 14
I had never really thought about this passage, except of course Jesus can walk on water, he's Jesus. But Pete made a statement about what Jesus said to Peter that really hit home. Jesus was not condemning Peter's lack of faith in God, otherwise Peter would have never been able to get out of the boat in the first place. He was upset about Peter's lack of faith in himself. Then Pete said these words and I felt them to my core.

"Jesus is saying 'Don't lose faith in who I've called you to be or what I've called you to do.'"
So I feel quite affirmed in our choice to adopt, not that we were questioning it to begin with, but it was a message that I needed to hear and I felt it came right from God to my ears.

Last Sunday was about dying to yourself in order to have life. Kent had a great visual with a tandem bike and talked about letting God in that front seat to steer and to brake and to light the way for you. And we all have a stuff basket (full of food, or alcohol, or other vices). And even when we are on the back seat letting God drive, we can still be buried in our stuff basket and miss things that God is telling us, and the directions in which we are going. I think that the adoption has been in my stuff basket. I have been so obsessed with controling some aspect of my life, and I had decided this would be it. Since the decision to have kids naturally had been taken away from us, I thought maybe this would be a way to take back some control. Sunday helped me to realize this, and I have let it go (or am actively trying, it is always a process) and I think it is going to help me immensely.

Well, thanks for sticking with me this whole time, I know it has been a bit long, but I really wanted to share this with you all. Love you all.

The Adoption Community

Okay, besides the fact that these ladies (representing awesome adopting families) are an endless fountain of information I can not believe the support I have been getting from people I don't know. How awesome is that! So I would like to thank them 'publicly' for being so wonderful. Especially Julie. Check out her blog OurJourneytoEthiopia, the link is also under blogs on the sidebar. She spent a couple of hours on email with me on Saturday morning, talking through things with me and has been a complete blessing to have in my life right now.

The more I think about this, and the more I pray, the more I know that this is going to be a wonderful experience. There will be some heartache, but the reward will be infinitely greater than whatever may try to get us down. And I am lucky to have a husband as wonderful as Travis to go through this with me. Where would I be without him (besides probably still living with mom and dad :-))? God has blessed in so many ways, it is time for me to start focusing on those instead of on what I think we need but don't have.

Crazy Days

Well, it has been kind of crazy here lately. Then I went to post and I was locked out of my blog because somehow it had been flagged as SPAM!! But it is all cleared up, and blogger said it actually happens kind of regularly. But worry no more, I am back.

So, some of you have heard, others have not. I recieved a phone call this past Wednesday and was informed our application is not going to be accepted at this time. We are not exactly sure what is going on, we have been told two different things, but what I actually was told on the phone was it was due to our couples counseling. They felt our we were not ready to start a homestudy if we were still going, so maybe in 6-12 months we could try to re-apply if we have completed our counseling and everything is taken care of.

I have ranted and raved about lots of things related to this to anyone who will listen (it is probably a good thing I couldn't post), done lots of thinking, not enough praying, and soaked up advice like a sponge. We will not let this get us down. We both know that our hearts are 100% into this and it is something that God has layed on our hearts. So the question that I am sure everyone is asking is WHAT NEXT? I am glad that you asked. Here's the list.

• We will continue to persue this. We plan on calling and talking to the agency about the issues, what we need to do, and what the chances of us getting accepted by the 6 month mark (12 months seems way too long to wait, I am still working on my patience).
• We are going to continue our counseling. It is not something to hide, or be ashamed of, and personally I applaud any couple who seeks help seeing as it is so much easier to either 1) ignore the problem and pretend you are the greatest married couple of all time or 2) throw in the towel and just get a divorce. I think that the more we work on our communtication, the better our relationship will be and the stronger we will become by going through this experience. We are also going to have our counselor write a letter for us to send in. Will this help? Don't know, but it is worth a shot.
• Keep our options open. There are a lot of agencies out there with wonderful, ethical practices that people have had great experiences with. And whether or not we choose to stay with CHI, I think that these places could be a wonderful resource for us in better understanding what is expected by the Ethiopian government and what is more of the agencies personal requirements.
• Despite my initial impulse to delete this blog the moment I received the phone call, I am going to keep on blogging. Not only to help you, our friends and family, stay up-to-date, but maybe to help someone else out there that is having a similar experience. This whole adoption thing is new to us, we don't know the best/easiest way to get through, and so therefore we are going to have struggles and hardships. Not everyone (would guess not even a fair percentage) of families who adopt are perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes big ones, but the important thing is did you learn from it?
• PRAY PRAY PRAY! The one resource I have not relied upon like I should is God. He lead us here for a reason, and though we may not know why or even how, we will trust in Him and remain faithful. I get frustrated because I feel like there were signs that lead us to adopt from Ethiopia through CHI, and now it hasn't worked out the way I wanted so were there signs, is this really what we are supposed to do? I could make myself crazy second guessing every little detail about the past 3 months, but I don't really feel like being crazy. I like being *relatively* sane at least most of the time, and well, God probably likes me that way too.

So please pray for us, and continue to pray for those who are in the process of building their family in this way, as well as those who are losing it. We love you all, and no worries, there will be kiddos one way or another. ;-)

What Better Way to Procrastinate?

So I should be working on my manuscript, only one week until the boss-man is back. But instead I am hanging out on the internet trying to make myself feel better about life. I do however have a bunch of little updates and blurbs for you all, so here we go!

OUR NEW NEPHEW!!!!

Welcome to the newest Martin, Cale! He was born via C-section Friday morning around 7:50. I couldn't believe how stinking cute he is, and he has the tiniest head! Maybe I will post some pics later and you can see the differences between Cayton and Cale on their birth days. Cale was so quiet, he seems like he is going to be a pretty laid back kid. Brandon and Brandi are so excited to take him home, and Cayton is going to make a great big brother. He was loving on Cale Friday afternoon, and it was so adorable and sweet!

OUR BLESSED FAMILY AND FRIENDS

So on our way to KC we hitched a ride with my SIL Gretchen, Ashley, and Andrew. Of course the kiddos sat in back, so Gretchen and I had a great time having grown-up time up front and Travis was enjoying quality niece and nephew time in the back. Gretchen and I talked quite a bit about lots of things, including the adoption, teaching, future plans, and even family vacations. Just so you know Gretchen, I LOVE to drive everywhere too, especially if it is east. It is so wonderful to have people in our lives who are so supportive and so involved in this process with us. And so willing to let me know if they need to back off, just to let them know. Let me tell you, that quality is rare.

I also want to give a big cyber-hug to Pam. Travis and I are barely acquaintances with her and she has gone out of her way to to be super helpful and so there for us. Every time I have emailed her with a question it has taken less than 20 minutes for her to respond. I know she doesn't just sit there on her computer all day waiting for me to ask her a crazy I'm-freaking-way-out question, but none the less she is always there for me. How could we be so lucky to already have such a support network before we have really began the process?

And of course, all of you who even take the time to read this blog. Although it would be nice to get some more comments :-). Some people may think this whole internet blogging thing is way to public, and our issues are very personal, but this is so therapuetic for me, and it means so much to me the interest that everyone has shown. I want everyone to be able to stay up to date with what is going on without the giant phone tree/email list serve that it would otherwise take. So again, thanks for taking time out from your day to check in on us. We love you for it.

RANDOMNESS

• I love to check out other people's blogs to see how things are going with their Ethiopian adoption. Sometimes it makes it hard though, it seems they already have their kids, or at least pictures, and it makes me long for that time when we will first be able to see the beautiful faces of our children who are waiting for us. And then we can have pictures of our babies, and the nursery, and all the adorable stuff my mom has bought for them. Seriously. I think she has a secret stash of baby stuff already and is just waiting for the green light to give it to me. I am not kidding, I specifically had to tell her not to buy stuff yet. Although this may be an acception. Love you mom!!!
• On Friday while we were in the waiting room at the hospital in KC, there was this so stinkin' cute baby girl walking around. She was about 1, had the cutest curly hair, a beautiful smile, and was so happy to see everyone. She played around with Andrew for a bit, then came over to say hi to me and to give me a high-five. Then she went over to Travis. She just stood there smiling at him, and reaching like she wanted to be picked up. So Travis picked her up and she giggled and started to play with his goatee. I almost cried because she was African-American, and Travis looked so right holding her. They were so smiley with each other. Ohhh, I can't wait!!!
• So all of our stuff is in the mail and I am waiting patiently to get the email from Sharon saying if we have been accepted. Patiently as in I check my email about 5 times a day (even today, which is Sunday, which they are not at work, and which no postal service runs). I will let everyone know as soon as I know, which will hopefully be in a few days. So keep checking, important news will be posted here soon!
• HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS WAS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No spoilers, I just had to express how happy I was with the book. I think JK ended the book series in just about the best way possible. Although I am very sad it is over. Very sad.