I am such an blessed girl! I don't say that with a prideful attitude, but rather with a humbleness that can truly only come when you realize how undeserving you really are of all that is in your life. It's the kind of gratefulness for the life you have that words are really not able to express. I am literally brought to tears when I realize how much grace and forgiveness I have been given to go so far beyond "you are forgiven" to "you are favored of God". Wow, stops me in my tracks! Praise God I AM favored of God and I willingly except all he has for me (at least this is what I am determined to keep telling myself until I KNOW that I believe it deep down in my soul!) Even when those blessings don't initially seem like blessings - and often the biggest blessings don't - I am going to be grateful and remind myself to stay humble. Many times what is going on in my life isn't for my benefit at all, but for his plan and in order to bless someone else. When I sit an ponder all that is going on in our lives with the adoption I begin to feel so very blessed! Blessed to have a husband that is supportive and also wants another child - and not a child that is biologically his. Blessed to have the financial ability to adopt a child - something that seemed like may never again be the case after the financial stresses that we went through in both our business and personal life just a couple of years ago. Blessed to have such an incredible support network. However, when I look beyond me and my families blessings I feel God's heart for one of his children. A child that without a family like us to adopt them into their home may never know him or know what it is to be loved and nurtured. Could we possibly even begin to be as blessed as the little girl that he has set aside for us? She doesn't even know to dream for a family or pray for God's provisions and yet He will bring them to her all the same. He will use my family, my friends, my church, my neighborhood, my city to bless her life and her eternity. He will surely use her to bless many others throughout her life, as well. We will be able to witness God's work first hand. Yes, I am a very blessed girl!
As I write this I am looking at a Christmas tree with many unwrapped gifts strewn about underneath. Just waiting to be distributed to their rightful places in our home. Since returning home from visiting with family yesterday we have been busy putting things at home back in order. The last of those things will surely be many of the new gifts we received that have remained under the tree.
I think that this was one of the best Christmas I have had maybe ever, but certainly in recent memory. We did less because of "tradition" and more based on relationships, family and fellowship. We were blessed to be able to spend Christmas Eve celebrating with my husband's cousins, their children and his mom. It was something we haven't done in at least 15 years! Chaotic, loud and down right perfect! We had at least 15 kids here with at least that many adults. Eating, laughing, talking, playing games and not one present was exchanged!
This year for Christmas day we celebrated in the morning with my Dad and 3 of my brothers and then headed to church to celebrate with our church family. What an incredible blessing it was to be able to worship and celebrate as a church body the birth of Jesus!
As soon as church was over we headed out - entire family in tow, including the dog- to McKee, KY. It's a very small town in the hills of Kentucky about an hour south east of Lexington - just outside of Berea. It is where my mom's side of the family originated. As a matter of fact, my grandma and grandpa live on the piece of land (in the old footprint of my great grandparent's home) where I used to visit as a child and see my great grandparents. My mom lives just behind them where you look up the hill and see their home. It really was special to share that with my kid and Derek, who had never been there before (my mom just moved down there a couple of years ago).
Things have changed over the last 30 years since I used to visit as a child, but many things had not. The very fact that my children can even visit any of their great grandparents is such a blessing! They will be visiting my Dad's mom in April who lives in Florida and is doing well. We are a blessed family indeed!
These are the things that make life so rich. It is not the gifts or the perfectly decorated house or tree that make Christmas such an amazing time of year. It is coming together with the people that you love and love you. The people that make you who you are for better or for worse and sharing in the celebration of our beloved Savior in an imperfect but utterly thankful way!
At any rate we had to draw up a non-traditional owner financing agreement to purchase our home which further complicates the paperwork that China wants to see. We needed the seller, Daniel, to write up a letter stating that we are indeed the owner's of the home and are just doing non-traditional financing through him. We have been ready to refinance with a bank now with the great interest rates for some time, but we now have to hold off on that until this process is over since changing things now could hold up our process and cause us to have to submit updated paperwork. None of that really matters I guess....again we know how blessed we were to find the right house owned by the right person to help us make all of this happen. There are no coincidences....God had a plan for us! We will wait until the right time for everything to fall into place :)
Anyway, we got a phone call moments ago from Daniel saying that he will have the ownership letter ready for us this evening and we can stop by to pick it up. Since I completed the financials this afternoon that means we will have EVERYTHING complete on our end!
And in perfect order, in the mail today arrived our USCIS appointment confirmations! This is a very important step in our process since this step alone often holds things up (waiting on the government, imagine that! ;) and ours seems to have arrived in record time. This is the appointment where we must appear in the USCIS office at the downtown Federal building to be fingerprinted and receive permission to be able to adopt internationally.
My first thing to do after the New Year is to meet up with my notary and have all these documents notarized. It will be the first step in this new year to what very well may be the best year yet! To what I know will be a truly AMAZING 2012!
Thank you all who are reading this for your continued prayers and well wishes. It means so much to us...having support is paramount as we go through this process. As I look over the gifts I am about to put away I notice 2 little books that my mom gave us in a package marked "Granddaughter" at Christmas. I know soon she will be here with us and I will be reading her those little books....that is the kind of support that pushes us forward and gives us the hope we need to continue forward expectantly! :)
"For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord......" Jeremiah 29:11
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Overwhelmed.....
Do you ever feel overwhelmed? Like there aren't enough hours in the day or just not enough of you to be all the places you need to be during the day? How about like if one more thing gets added to your "to do list" you will scream? I assume most everyone reading this is answering yes, yes, YES! If not, good for you. You must have learned the elusive "balance" everyone talks about. For me life is usually a juggling act where I am just trying not to actually let ALL of the balls hit the ground, but usually a few bounce off the floor every now and then anyway. I am not sure that there is such a thing as "balance" for me because I just don't give everything the same amount of weight. Some things in my life will always out weigh other things so I am usually struggling to keep that ball in the air while I will let others fall. You know - the things that no matter what else has to give you simply will not compromise on? Maybe it's your work, your family, your spouse, your friends, your time at the gym, your faith, God.....different things weigh more or less during different seasons in your life, perhaps.
Lately for me I have been trying to focus a great deal of my efforts and time on our adoption process. There are piles (and I mean PILES!) of paperwork to be filled out, meeting after meeting to attend. Numerous appointments with doctors to determine our mental, emotional and physical well being and so many other things that I just don't want to go into. The above has been filling my every week and nearly every day since August 11, 2011.
Prior to beginning this process (back in July) my days and weeks were filled with play dates for my boys, lunch with girlfriends, attending various classes at my gym, working with Derek in our real estate office, jogs with my dog, shopping for,preparing and serving my family dinner, volunteer activities, time studying God's word and His direction in my life, etc., etc. Since then I have struggled to get to any of my classes at the gym, spend little to no time at all in the office helping Derek with our business, rarely prepare a from scratch meal anymore, have missed out on too many volunteer opportunities and the jogs with my dog are spaced way too far apart and I feel like I more less pass by to say "hi" to God on my way to the next "thing". While I struggle to keep the things in my schedule that makes my life mine - and one that I truly love and enjoy living - I feel that I am starting to lose the wheel. You know that feeling when it feels like life is getting away - verging on out of control and into something you didn't want and never intended - and you aren't sure how or when you will be able to get it back?
Anyway, kind of got me thinking.....a few weeks ago was probably the peak of this feeling for me. I was just so overwhelmed. I had felt like I was breezing through this process and even our adoption agency said we were. They even said they were going to have to slow us down because we were too efficient! I thought, "wow! we are just going to breeze through all of this and we will have our daughter home quicker than we even imagined!" I was naive and way under estimated the amount of emotions and fatigue that was waiting just under the surface for something to trigger them.
It was at that time that we had finished up all our interviews and reports for the Home study portion. Now while our social worker wrote up our family biographies to present to the Chinese authorities and powers that be, we were to begin working on all our final dossier paperwork (please refer to my last blog entry to learn more about that process). With much enthusiasm I began all that I needed to do for that. Then we received a call that a close family member had a life threatening emergency and would likely not make it more than a few days on life support. We had family flying in, people to meet with, doctors to talk to, a nephew who needed support and guidance and, of course, we dove into this situation without hesitation. The adoption paperwork could wait - this, our family, was top priority.
Meanwhile, our real estate business was relentless (as it has been for several months). Everyday more clients, new contracts and more closings being set up. 18 total closings set up for December alone right now and more on the horizon! A blessing we give God all the honor for, but overwhelming none the less. Unlike the adoption process this is not something we can set aside and say, "oh, it will wait". It became the juggling act of all juggling acts to be sure!
Once we got through the difficult week of losing our brother-in-law, laying him to rest and seeing our precious nephew off back to California it was time to start preparing for Thanksgiving. So I decided to leave the next steps in our dossier paperwork wait a little while longer. Now here it was a couple of days from December and I have clearly just been avoiding going back to the process and not just because of the calendar that we keep.
Every time I started to think about picking everything back up I started feeling very anxious and overwhelmed. I realized how big the mountain was before me and how small I really am in the whole process. Emotionally I sometimes feel defeated. I often have pity parties for myself and ask why? Why does there have to be SO many steps? Why do I have to go back to the doctor for the same test and paperwork twice? Why do I have to ask our police department to run new reports on Derek and me after I just had them do it once 2 months ago? Why do I have to re-visit all the seminar classes I already passed and got certificates for? Is this all worth it? Are my boys suffering because I am stressed out? What kind of mom does that make me? Am I stepping over what I have now just to get to what I want in the future? Is Derek under too much pressure and stress and we wade through our busiest December ever and I am not even able to help? Why can't Derek give me more assistance on this - I am not supposed to be doing this alone? What is "it" exactly that we are going through this for again?! Aaaaagggghhhhh!!
Well, after many hours of pity parties, crying out to God and finally being quiet long enough to hear Him remind me why I have a renewed strength. I am not actually sure what the answer is to most of those questions with the exception of one; the "it" is our daughter. She is the little girl that God knows and has set aside for us. She is the little girl who was born into an impossible situation, by a woman who loved her so much she risked everything to try and see to it that she would find a family to love her and cherish her - OUR FAMILY! That is why I HAVE to keep pushing forward. That is why I have to take a deep breath with I start feeling sorry for myself or feel like I am lacking as a mother to my boys or a spouse or business partner to my husband or when I feel like I just can't take one more step forward. Anything worth doing will not be easy and I know that with God walking beside me even when I fall I won't be down long because it is He who lifts me up. I have to remind myself that when I feel out of control it is because I AM! Ha - I was never in control to begin with! God is. He never promises us that things will be easy, but that when He is in them He will see us through. Of course, we are coming up against opposition - we can't expect anything less. The enemy is ticked that we are following God's plan for our life and will be adding another little warrior to our family and who knows how many more souls she will win for Heaven! He is good at playing with my emotions and filling me with doubt and fear, but God is better at reminding me who I really am and who He was called me to be. When I feel guilty that I don't have as much time to spend with my boys right now I have to remember that we agreed as a family that this process wouldn't be easy, but we all agreed to make sacrifices to bring our little daughter/baby sister home. Our condition right now is so temporary, but the end results will last for eternity!
Thank you all for reading our blog and for being a support network for us. I know that soon all this will be a distant memory and we won't be able to remember what life was like before our daughter came to our family.
For now I am going to step away from all the paperwork and enjoy a Christmas celebration tonight in downtown Montgomery with my husband and my boys. One that most likely we will be attending next year with one more person in our family :)
God bless!
Joshua 1:9-11 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
Lately for me I have been trying to focus a great deal of my efforts and time on our adoption process. There are piles (and I mean PILES!) of paperwork to be filled out, meeting after meeting to attend. Numerous appointments with doctors to determine our mental, emotional and physical well being and so many other things that I just don't want to go into. The above has been filling my every week and nearly every day since August 11, 2011.
Prior to beginning this process (back in July) my days and weeks were filled with play dates for my boys, lunch with girlfriends, attending various classes at my gym, working with Derek in our real estate office, jogs with my dog, shopping for,preparing and serving my family dinner, volunteer activities, time studying God's word and His direction in my life, etc., etc. Since then I have struggled to get to any of my classes at the gym, spend little to no time at all in the office helping Derek with our business, rarely prepare a from scratch meal anymore, have missed out on too many volunteer opportunities and the jogs with my dog are spaced way too far apart and I feel like I more less pass by to say "hi" to God on my way to the next "thing". While I struggle to keep the things in my schedule that makes my life mine - and one that I truly love and enjoy living - I feel that I am starting to lose the wheel. You know that feeling when it feels like life is getting away - verging on out of control and into something you didn't want and never intended - and you aren't sure how or when you will be able to get it back?
Anyway, kind of got me thinking.....a few weeks ago was probably the peak of this feeling for me. I was just so overwhelmed. I had felt like I was breezing through this process and even our adoption agency said we were. They even said they were going to have to slow us down because we were too efficient! I thought, "wow! we are just going to breeze through all of this and we will have our daughter home quicker than we even imagined!" I was naive and way under estimated the amount of emotions and fatigue that was waiting just under the surface for something to trigger them.
It was at that time that we had finished up all our interviews and reports for the Home study portion. Now while our social worker wrote up our family biographies to present to the Chinese authorities and powers that be, we were to begin working on all our final dossier paperwork (please refer to my last blog entry to learn more about that process). With much enthusiasm I began all that I needed to do for that. Then we received a call that a close family member had a life threatening emergency and would likely not make it more than a few days on life support. We had family flying in, people to meet with, doctors to talk to, a nephew who needed support and guidance and, of course, we dove into this situation without hesitation. The adoption paperwork could wait - this, our family, was top priority.
Meanwhile, our real estate business was relentless (as it has been for several months). Everyday more clients, new contracts and more closings being set up. 18 total closings set up for December alone right now and more on the horizon! A blessing we give God all the honor for, but overwhelming none the less. Unlike the adoption process this is not something we can set aside and say, "oh, it will wait". It became the juggling act of all juggling acts to be sure!
Once we got through the difficult week of losing our brother-in-law, laying him to rest and seeing our precious nephew off back to California it was time to start preparing for Thanksgiving. So I decided to leave the next steps in our dossier paperwork wait a little while longer. Now here it was a couple of days from December and I have clearly just been avoiding going back to the process and not just because of the calendar that we keep.
Every time I started to think about picking everything back up I started feeling very anxious and overwhelmed. I realized how big the mountain was before me and how small I really am in the whole process. Emotionally I sometimes feel defeated. I often have pity parties for myself and ask why? Why does there have to be SO many steps? Why do I have to go back to the doctor for the same test and paperwork twice? Why do I have to ask our police department to run new reports on Derek and me after I just had them do it once 2 months ago? Why do I have to re-visit all the seminar classes I already passed and got certificates for? Is this all worth it? Are my boys suffering because I am stressed out? What kind of mom does that make me? Am I stepping over what I have now just to get to what I want in the future? Is Derek under too much pressure and stress and we wade through our busiest December ever and I am not even able to help? Why can't Derek give me more assistance on this - I am not supposed to be doing this alone? What is "it" exactly that we are going through this for again?! Aaaaagggghhhhh!!
Well, after many hours of pity parties, crying out to God and finally being quiet long enough to hear Him remind me why I have a renewed strength. I am not actually sure what the answer is to most of those questions with the exception of one; the "it" is our daughter. She is the little girl that God knows and has set aside for us. She is the little girl who was born into an impossible situation, by a woman who loved her so much she risked everything to try and see to it that she would find a family to love her and cherish her - OUR FAMILY! That is why I HAVE to keep pushing forward. That is why I have to take a deep breath with I start feeling sorry for myself or feel like I am lacking as a mother to my boys or a spouse or business partner to my husband or when I feel like I just can't take one more step forward. Anything worth doing will not be easy and I know that with God walking beside me even when I fall I won't be down long because it is He who lifts me up. I have to remind myself that when I feel out of control it is because I AM! Ha - I was never in control to begin with! God is. He never promises us that things will be easy, but that when He is in them He will see us through. Of course, we are coming up against opposition - we can't expect anything less. The enemy is ticked that we are following God's plan for our life and will be adding another little warrior to our family and who knows how many more souls she will win for Heaven! He is good at playing with my emotions and filling me with doubt and fear, but God is better at reminding me who I really am and who He was called me to be. When I feel guilty that I don't have as much time to spend with my boys right now I have to remember that we agreed as a family that this process wouldn't be easy, but we all agreed to make sacrifices to bring our little daughter/baby sister home. Our condition right now is so temporary, but the end results will last for eternity!
Thank you all for reading our blog and for being a support network for us. I know that soon all this will be a distant memory and we won't be able to remember what life was like before our daughter came to our family.
For now I am going to step away from all the paperwork and enjoy a Christmas celebration tonight in downtown Montgomery with my husband and my boys. One that most likely we will be attending next year with one more person in our family :)
God bless!
Joshua 1:9-11 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
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