"Once our eyes are opened we cannot pretend we do not know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls knows we know and holds us responsible to act." Proverbs 24:12

Long time, no post. We are on LOA wait day 40, and have heard a lot of happy news from others in a similar paperwork situation receiving LOA around day 65 lately.  Of course, we could wait 125 days, who knows, but it has given me a lot of hope for faster travel than I thought.  Being home for Christmas would be incredible. 

Life has been pretty overwhelming lately, in a good way, but over whelming nonetheless.  I always imagined with our first it would be referral, hoopla, travel.  But we already had the hoopla over a year ago, and instead I have had to field a few, “so is this for real?” and “well, hopefully it all works out this time” and “I thought maybe you would try to have one of your own after what happened.”  Some relatives again are not thrilled with the adoption and don’t even bring it up when we see them, and no matter how much I try not to take it personally, I do. 

That part has not been easy, and my biggest sadness is in feeling in some way that some people may think my son is less my son because he did not come out of my uterus. I have been thinking of Jen Hatmaker’s post shared on Facebook about being ready to defend your child to the death, even before you have held them in your arms.  For some reason, to me, people asking me if I will ever try to conceive after finding out I am adopting, devalues my son and his place in our family as our perfect, first born son.  People tell me I should experience birthing a child and I want to tell them they should experience adoption, because I haven’t even completed one and I can already tell it’s the most awesome experience of my life.

Despite all this ironically enough, I have been so filled with this overwhelming joy and peace.  The world is bustling around me but I know this chapter of my life is about to end.   I will admit that with Poland I was happy, but I was extremely stressed, worried, and afraid.  Back then, I was really afraid of “messing up.”  It seemed like everyone around me was happy for K. to be our child, but they were all watching, holding their breath, just waiting for all of their negative expectations of adoption to come true.

Today, I don’t care.  I get a little angry (see above) about others’ reactions, but at the end of the day, I simply don’t care.  I have a family I love, who love Tom and me and can’t wait for Ben.  I have friends that are my family too, people who will have been there for us and will be forever.  Ben will be so loved by our closest circle, and nothing else matters besides.  The more you try to give, somehow, you end up getting it back tenfold, you know?  I feel like Tom and I have everything, and somehow, we get Ben too? How is this possible?  I try so hard (still need to try harder) to put myself out there for people, for anyone, to serve others, and somehow I still end up feeling like I have gotten so much more back than I ever gave away. 

Care Package Sent!

We finally sent a second care package to Ben on Monday.  The box cannot be bigger than a shoebox, and I must have become an expert on packing, because this package was $30  more to mail than the first one!  It felt strange to just send things to Ben, especially since he won’t know any better, so I added 3  tubes of Crabtree and Evelyn lotions labeled “for the nannies who take care of you”, jelly bellys with the same label, 2 packs of crayons labeled (I hope!) “for the older kids”, and 2 sweatshirts, socks, a mandarin kids’ book about colors, a toy phone and toy flashlight, all labeled, “to share with your friends”. Then I included a disposable camera with his name on it, and a ½ piece of photo paper, laminated, with his picture and pictures of us and the words “we love you” in mandarin. I also put in a picture of his new cousin, who is only 3 months apart in age from him.  IN the first care package, we included a soft album of photos, but I thought maybe they would let him hold this laminated piece of paper, or maybe hang it by his bed??  One can dream!