Life Unexpected

Our Hope Endures from carly beee productions on Vimeo . Christmas is one of my most favorite seasons of the year. This week I have been able to come home and spend a few days with my family before I leave for Honduras, and it has been great. I feel really thankful this Christmas that every step of this journey Nate and I have been on, God has walked with us, and never left us. He has given us hope every time, regardless of what circumstances we have found ourselves in. I am celebrating this Christmas a God who deeply loves us and cares for us in a way that we won't ever be able to wrap our heads and hearts around. It is pretty amazing! For some, this Christmas has been marked with some unwanted circumstances. Just this week, as we were traveling down to Bel Air, I found out two teenagers had died...one from the school I coach at, and one from the school that I work with their FCA at. There are now two families who find themselves in "unwanted" circumstances. I

This week has been extremely busy! I have found myself trying to deliver presents, pack for Christmas, make chocolates, and pack for my upcoming missions trip to Honduras. In the midst of all that, WE GOT OUR USCIS I-600A APPROVAL! It's kind of the missing link to sending out our Dossier packet. We have been working diligently to get papers notarized, put together forms with our pictures on them, get references, fingerprinting, and a whole lot more. The I-600A is the first form we have to fill out with the US Citizen and Immigration Services. While that may not make a whole lot of sense to anyone, it basically means...WE ARE ONE MORE STEP CLOSER TO GETTING OUR DOSSIER SENT! We are so excited for that small Christmas blessing this year.

I thought I probably should update everyone as to where we are in the process. Nate and I have been working hard on our Dossier. We are waiting for our I-600 form to come back to us so that we can actually send the Dossier in. If you aren't familiar with adoption stuff, the Dossier is the big packet that is our last step before we start a serious waiting process! This morning we had to leave at 5:45 am...yes I actually got up that early, thankfully stopped at Dunkin Donuts, and headed to Baltimore to be finger printed a second time in this process. It was the USCIS fingerprinting (which basically means...very important finger printing!) I am not sure why they can't share all the fingerprinting! We wound up paying 11 dollars to park for about 45 minutes. Anyway, it is done and we are one more step towards finishing the Dossier.

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to speak and sing at my Dad's church for their Service of Remembrance and Transition. It's a service that is geared toward people who have lost loved ones this past year or have dealt with big transitions in their life. It tends to be a crowd of people who are searching for healing and hope. I had the opportunity to speak at it last year, when we had just found out our last fertility treatment had failed. This year, I got to share a little bit about the healing that is taking place in my life and our journey toward adoption. My Dad started the service off by sharing a little bit of Steven Curtis Chapman's story. Most people know that Chapman lost one of his daughters, who happened to be adopted, due to a tragedy. He wrote this song that I want to share with you, called "Beauty Will Rise." I love the line in his song that says, "But buried beneath all our broken dreams, we have this hope...out of these ashes beaut

As promised, throughout this advent season, I am going to post some of my favorite songs from the year that have really spoke to me. If you have ever dealt with infertility, you know that it is a constant battle to believe that God really has a plan for your life. When you want to have a baby...and can't seem to make that work...at times the reality is that you feel like something about you is wrong, that something is missing. While I believe with my whole heart that God walks every step of the way with us through our journey, there have been times when he has felt so distant. Somehow, in the midst of our pain, we begin to believe that we are worthless, that we don't have what it takes to be a mom (in the case of infertility) and the lies begin to outshine the truth that God has for us...that we were made for something, that we are treasured, that we are sacred, that we are His...we are beautiful. I have had a lot of days like that throughout the journey. I still have day