Postponed

It looks like my little kiddos will be postponed. Originally we thought Thanksgiving was a realistic timeline. This week it was suggested that the end of December is more realistic. Maybe even two or three more months. It was a bit hard to deal with that information. What difference does one month make, right? Well, when you have been waiting two and half years, it is quite frustrating. Of course, having an extra month means one more month of planning, cleaning, and mommy-daddy time before chaos begins. It also means being able to hang out with friends and having an extra month to save up money for things we want to have for them (bunk beds and a kitchen island are at the top of the list).

Today I hung up all my girl's clothes according to size. Since I don't really know what size my daughter wears, at least she can start with her size, and I can give away the items that are too small. Next weekend I hope to organize the boys' room. I probably won't hang up all the clothes, but I might fold them neatly into piles and move a second bed into that room. In two weeks, my friend will be visiting. She is a crafty person, so I have enlisted her help on some other projects: bathroom and bedroom name art as well as a headband holder (thank you, Pinterest). So I guess I am rolling with the punches as postponement becomes an expected part of our lives. I will be so glad when this is all over. 

Faith

I admit that I have a high-strung personality, and I constantly operate with a state of stress running my life. I have always been like this, and it is my "normal." I am not sure I would ever get anything accomplished if I didn't  feel like this! It is the same type of stress that some people cite as reasoning for saving things until the eleventh hour. It motivates me and keeps me on track.

My current level of stress is something I cannot get used to. Waiting for the next task to complete in a series of tasks I have done over and over again, not knowing when my children will officially become mine, waiting to hear when I can meet them and bring them home. Add this on top of just the every day things (housework, parenting, groceries, school work), and I am tipping the scales of what I can handle. How am I supposed to get up each day and do what needs to be done while all I really can think about is my family? I feel like the right answer is to just have faith that things will work out for the best.

If I am honest with myself, the last two and a half years have been the biggest struggle I have ever had in my faith. I know the scriptures and cliches about waiting for God's perfect timing. They were quoted to me regularly over the last few years. I am supposed to be faithful and wait for everything to work out in a way that should overshadow all the pain and loss of the last chapter of my life. Once I have my family, I am suddenly supposed to feel thankful and joyous and understand why God chose to make my parenting journey such an intense struggle. I just don't believe this. God is good, and He is heartbroken as well. He is hurting because of our intense pain. He didn't decide my husband and I needed to learn a lesson or that we weren't good enough to be parents. Our babies died. God could have saved them, but that isn't what happened. He didn't make us lose our babies. I think the book Empty Arms  by Pam Vredevelt explained this best for me. After my first miscarriage, I was really struggling with people telling me that is just wasn't meant to be, and the timing must just not have been right. It made me feel like I was truly to blame for my miscarriage and that God didn't think we were ready. What a horrible way to make a person feel! I felt pressured to turn my frown upside down and pretend I was thankful that God was teaching me a lesson and causing my struggles. Some things just happen. God doesn't make them happen, but He allows them to happen. What we do with those struggles is what shapes us as a person.

So here I am, still waiting on my family. Worried that this will all fall through, for one reason or another, and that I will be back in a state of grief and loss, and stressed out to the max. I am trying to turn my fears over to God, but it is a risk. If I turn them over to Him and something bad happens, how will I process that? Will I feel like God is punishing me? Maybe it would just be better to avoid talking to God about it because then I don't have to worry about feeling abandoned. Am I supposed to act like I have no worries about everything going on, and that, no matter what happens, I will be full of thanks? The only thing I can do or control in this situation is to be honest with God and ask for His peace.

Father God, 

I don't know why things happen as they do. I am still hurting every day over many losses: my two babies, motherhood through pregnancy, passing on my genetics to my children (for better of worse), my innocence and joy related to pregnancy, the children I have fostered, and so much more. I refuse to believe that You would cause these struggles. I choose to believe You, as my loving Father, are hurting through all these things too. Even when I am silent for awhile, fearful of the future and putting my faith in You, You still love me and know everything I am feeling. You never leave my side. God, I need to release my stress to You and breath in Your love and peace. I ask that You intervene in our adoption process and help us jump through all the hoops we have in front of us. Renew my faith, and help me to be a witness to Your love and compassion despite my struggles.

Amen

Hope

Today we received some hopeful news! Instead of having to do everything over again for the home study process, we might be able to skip the fingerprinting. In addition, the worker was able to complete her home study questions in 2 hours, and she will be able to use our other home study for almost everything! This saves us hours and hours of interviews and paperwork. Apparently she did not know that we had been chosen for specific children that were just waiting on the paperwork to get in order. I am so thankful! I am still hopeful we can have our children in our home by Thanksgiving, even though it might be a bit of a pipe dream. Anytime before the holidays would be great :) What a relief to know that we are all on the same page and things are looking up again! Thank you God for some blessings!

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is one of the vocabulary words in my classroom this week. That is very ironic. As I spend nearly every evening filling out paperwork that I have completed multiple times over the last 21 months, I understand bureaucracy. I feel frustrated because I don't know how to be my own advocate and say, "Hey! I have already done fingerprinting for the state and FBI, reference checks, and home inspections. And, by the way, I paid $400 for a home study in May, so why are you doing another one?" From what I have been told, we don't really need to do all this again, but when the lady in charge of my fate tells me to do it, I can either try to prove she is wrong or I can spend that time in quiet compliance, hoping someone else will tell her and save us from the pain of going through this process again. I wish I knew a way to PROVE that we don't need to do this all over, but I just don't.

October

October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. It is a time to remember babies we have lost or never got to meet. I did not know about this until this year. Sometimes I wonder why I never knew about it before, and if I still wouldn't know about if I hadn't lost two babies. Some people post on Facebook, some hold remembrance celebrations, and some people do nothing at all. We fall into that last group. I am thinking back to when we were invited to a ceremony for our first baby. I had already planned a trip with my friend, so I couldn't go. I don't think we would have gone anyway because the pain was too raw. Let's face it, sometimes the pain is still too raw, and it's been 2 1/2 years. But maybe I am ready to deal with the pain rather than run away from it. Or maybe thinking about the pregnancy loss is easier than thinking about having my foster child leave in a few weeks. Whatever the case, I hope that we find a way that less people can be affected by pregnancy and infant loss in the future. It is a loss beyond losing the life of a child. It is losing your dreams as well. Dreams of a family, dreams of happy pregnancies in the future, dreams of showers and nurseries and Christmas cards. It is good to have a time to remember and reflect so that we can move forward and hope.