Stream of Consciousness

This is a hard post to write. I guess for no reason other than the simple fact that I don't know what to say. I have plenty to say, don't get me wrong. But... what is saying too much? Where's the line? Where's the rule-book?

I guess we'll just see where this goes. Someone I consider to be one of my greatest friends recently called it the Stream of Consciousness. I'll stick with that versus my creative title; Brain Vomit.

You're welcome :-)

Hannah and I have been sick this week. Not just sick... really really sick. Hannah had Flu Type A (think, H1N1, but it wasn't... it was just that bad) that turned into Pneumonia. Thankfully, her tiny body responded well to her antibiotics and she was back to normal early this week... minus a lingering cough. I was another story. I can't remember a time when I actually wanted to be in the hospital before this week. I was in bed from Monday to Thursday and my amazing husband got to take care of both me and our sick baby-girl. He stayed home all week, cooked for both of them and cleaned up after himself, went to store a few times, took Hannah in the car to get her out of the house, and managed to stay healthy the whole time. Meanwhile, I had high fevers, an awful cough, was throwing up, and basically convinced myself that I would never get better.

Oh, but I did :-) Thank goodness! And I'm SO thankful that baby-girl didn't have to go through half of what I did... I know God was protecting her and I would do it a million times over to keep an illness like that from touching her body.

I've been having a tough time lately. Waiting for your family to grow is an excruciating process. It's painful. And awful. And ... wonderful. But right now, it hurts. I look at my sweet Hannah and I SEE the reward of being faithful. I get to experience His greatness every single day when that precious girl calls me "Mommy". She is a living testament of how much God loves us and of how awesome His plan is.

But this adoption stuff? It still hurts. I'm not sure if it gets better and easier as you continue adding to your family through adoption or if it always hurts like this. It doesn't seem to me that waiting is something you practice over and over again until you're a pro. I wish it worked like that... because I'd be a pro. And I'm not.

I stink at this, friends.

Over the past few months our story has changed and evolved into a more powerful, more incredible, more inspiring testimony of God's love and power and control over our lives than I ever imagined. I know this to be true... and I can't wait until the day when I can share this story with every one of you. But when that time comes, I don't want anyone to read it and think, "Wow. They have it all together. They're so good at waiting." Or whatever you might be tempted to think....

This is hard. This is brutal. It's painful and awful and heartbreaking, at times and depressing and it makes me angry and makes me doubt and makes me lose all the faith that I have spent years and years and years trying to build up in a vault inside my heart for times like this. Like now.

And I can't find it. Where is my faith? I have it. I desperately need to find it.

I know that the reward is great. I see how great it is every day. But right now, that doesn't seem to be enough. It should be. And it's not. And you know what?

Those feelings just add 'guilt' to the long list in the excruciating process.

Our story is already unbelievable. It has been made even more so over the past few months. There are quite a few babies who have become part of our story recently and though none of them are yet in our home, they will NEVER be far from our hearts. Each one of them has become a part of our family and our hearts and our story.

We dreamt of them. We planned for some of them. We pictured our home and our family with them as an integral part of us. We fell in love with their birth-parents. We celebrated them all.

We even named some of them.

They're all a part of our unbelievable story that continues to grow. I'm thankful for it. I wouldn't change it. But right now...

I wish our story of waiting could read....

"The End."

I guess I have a little more left to learn.

Definitely not a pro.

I'm off to dig up some faith... it has to be here somewhere...