Life Unexpected

A couple of weeks ago, Nate and I found ourselves sitting in the waiting room of a pediatrician's office.  We were surrounded by pregnant people.  We had signed up for a "new family" and "new parent" open house to learn more about the practice.  When we arrived, the doctor looked at us funny and said, "Are you expecting?"  Well that was a loaded question.   While I hoped that I didn't physically look like I was expecting, I felt very much like a new expectant mom who knew absolutely nothing about pediatricians!  We quickly explained we were adopting from Ethiopia and she immediately made us feel at home. As I sat through that orientation with four other couples, all who were physically "expecting," I couldn't help but think how different our story has been written.  There have been so many times in my life that I have imagined what it would be like to be pregnant, what it would be like to go to doctors visits for sonograms, and wh...

It's been three weeks since we passed court and it feels like eternity.  Every day that passes is one more day that we are away from Biruk, and we are not big fans of that!  We are praying that we get submitted to embassy, pass, and travel as soon as possible.  In the meantime, we are "prepping" to be parents, and basking in all of the "firsts" of pre-parenthood.  I realized tonight that not only has it been three weeks since court, but it has also been almost three weeks since I last blogged.  I am behind and so much has happened. For starters, my family threw us the baby shower of the century and I haven't even had time to blog about it. Several months back, my mom and sisters came to me attempting to find a date that would work for all of us to have a baby shower.  After a lot of debating, we chose a date, and then several weeks later, changed the date in fear that it would be too close to traveling for our first trip.  Little did we know that o...

Today was a huge day in our life.  I woke up extremely nervous, wondering if everything would turn out as we had hoped and prayed for.  It was court day.  Court day was the day where we would go in front of a judge, be asked a series of questions, and in the end, we would either be Biruk's parents or not be his parents.  Everything we had prayed for came down to this day.  Let's just say I didn't sleep well the night before and I woke up earlier than the morning chanters! We ate breakfast and headed out the door.  Typically, the van is right there outside of the gates.  We looked around and didn't see it.  Our social worker was inside the house at the time, so we began to look around.  Off in the distance we saw a van stuck a dirt pile.  Nate said, "Hey...I think that's our van."  When our social worker came out, he told us that the van had to go around the block because of a road block.  Nate said, "I think that's our van...

It's hard to believe that it's only been about a week since we came home from Ethiopia.  The past several days have felt a blur to me as I got off the plane, was thrown the most amazing baby shower (which I will blog about next), jumped into work, hosted a graduate banquet for our youth ministry, battled serious jet lag, all while trying to process the fact that...WE HAVE A SON!  I realized tonight that I skipped out on sharing the last few days of our journey in Ethiopia, so without further ado...here is what I can remember! Tuesday, we woke up and it was difficult to think about the fact that our "son-to-be" was three hours away from us and there was nothing we could do it about it.  That is one of the "not-so-fun" parts of the adoption process.  Nevertheless, we wanted to see and experience as much of Ethiopia as possible, so we ventured on a day long excursion to the Northern part of Ethiopia with an incredible family we met at the guest house. They ...

The past three years of my life, blogging has become somewhat therapuetic.  At first, I wrote to share about our journey, but it quickly turned into so much more.  Writing became a way that I could not only share the details of our journey, but the also the chapters of a story written by a God who had so much more in store for my life.  He has never ceased to amaze me as each chapter has been revealed, chapters that contain some of the darkest and hardest moments of my life, and chapters that contained a level of joy, grace and love that I didn't even know existed. As I have shared each chapter, I have always imagined writing about the one that would contain the details of meeting our child(ren) for the first time.  There were so many days I didn't think it would ever happen, and even as I type this morning, I am in awe that it has finally come.  I am not sure that my words and writing can do the  moments of grace that God has given us justice, b...