The Ol’ Switcheroo, Pt. 2
I know I promised for more updates, but then a crazy summer set in! We’re back from our travels and finally settling into this new chapter of our lives: Chris working at the church full time, me being a stay at home mom, and Story spending her days with me instead of a daycare. It’s been quite an adjustment for us all!
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE spending my days with her. However, it is quite challenging at times! I found it very easy to be super mom when I only got to spend 3-4 hours out of my day with Story. Now spending 24/7 with her, I quickly learned I had to retire the cape. I had to be real and I had to quickly learn new ways to let out my frustrations because you know “monkey see, monkey do”. It is scary to see your own sin played out right before your eyes in the actions of your children. WOW! Eye opener!
Amidst all this, there are so many moments where I sit in awe and praise Jesus for giving me the opportunity to spend my days playing dress up, dancing around the room, having tea parties, making silly faces (hence the picture), giving baby dolls baths, teaching to cut and glue, cooking together, praying together, reading together, and just being together. My eyes fill up with tears even now thinking about how grateful I am for the sacrifice and gift my husband is giving me. I love him!
I am 90% back to normal with my knee injury. I’m out of my brace and walking normally. AND we finally feel like we can focus all our energy back on the adoption. We had our last meeting to complete our home study back at the end of July. During this meeting our social worker said she just had to tell us that the agency (Lifeline-which we have LOVED working with) was beginning an Ethiopia program. She said we came to mind and she just had to tell us. I think we were pretty taken aback and took a few weeks to think through things and pray about this. We didn’t want to seem like wishy-washy people who kept changing their minds, but the truth is my heart had always been in Ethiopia.
After speaking with the director of the Uganda program, we were a little discouraged. She informed us that it might take longer and that actually the Ethiopia program was less risky at this point! We prayed, we asked lots of questions, we talked with the Ethiopian director (who has adopted 2 children from there), we prayed some more, we lay in bed at night talking about what to do. And finally, with much peace, we’ve switched back to Ethiopia. We’re so very excited!
Our home study is finally complete and we are one paper away from completing our dossier! I’ll write a more detailed post on our dossier later. We have finally been given a timeline too: around 9 months! 9 months! Hold on sweet baby Haven! Mommy, Daddy, and big sister can’t wait to bring you home! Two Countries…One Family!