Paul and I took time over the holidays to really reflect on the last year and all that it has brought; both the blessings and the trials. We celebrated our Savior's birth with our family and friends and we rang in the New Year with them as well! The holidays were also a time of reflection on our adoption, my health stuff, and our life together. It was a year ago, the day before Thanksgiving, that Paul and I got the call from the adoption agency we are working with saying that they would be accepting us as clients to work with us! We spent the holidays last year filled with excitement and hope as well as many questions. We were also doing infertility treatments at the time and were dealing with the emotions of those over the holidays last year. This year we spent the holidays still very hopeful and full of excitement but also in "the wait."
This wait has been both wonderful and difficult, but I suppose that is how this whole process is. So many days we are positive and hopeful and talk very excitedly about the future and our little family we are building. The holidays brought all of that but they also brought some anxiety and sadness. Sadness because I was so hopeful that we would have our child by this past Christmas/ New Years and anxiety over the waiting and not knowing what this next year would look like in terms of this adventure. We have devoted this next year to continuing our education about adoption, learning as much as we can so that we can be the best that we can, and diving deep into our relationship with God and learning how to better lean on Him through this process as well as how to surrender our anxieties and fears and leave them at His feet.
For those of you that know me well, you know that patience is NOT a strength of mine. I don't know why I struggle SO much with this, but I do- and more than I would like to admit. I remember, very vividly, about nine months before we got married, I was struggling so much with anxiety and patience. My older sister had just told me she was pregnant and I, almost immediately, began having so much anxiety about starting a family. I knew it was going to be difficult for us because of my reproductive issues and I also knew we wanted to start a family soon after getting married. So between those factors and knowing that we had nine months before we were even going to start trying to start our family, I was a mess. With the anxiety, I also developed such a sense of urgency about the whole thing. Through all of this anxiety and urgency, I remember praying to God, many times a day, just asking Him to calm my anxious heart and also to teach me how to be more patient. Then came our adoption journey. When I asked God to teach me patience, I had wishful thinking that one day I would wake up and just be a more patient person. I giggle because the entire time I have known that just isn't how God works. He had to change my heart and to do this He had to test me a little. In came the adoption journey we are currently on. I have learned more about patience in the last year than I did in the first 23 years of my life combined. I am proud of myself for the 90% of the time that I am patient and fully trusting in God's timing in all of this. The 10% of the time that I am impatient and wondering why things can't just happen right now, I try to pray that God just helps remind me why His timing and plan are better than anything we can imagine. They are simply perfect.
When I am struggling with patience in this wait, I joke with Paul that we are really enjoying sleeping in on weekends, going on spur of the moment dates, not paying for daycare, and spending lazy weekends at home only worrying about ourselves and the dogs! I always add at the end of that all that we would much rather be up all night with a baby, have to plan out all of our dates and line up a babysitter, and that we would love to have to pay for daycare but that we are trying to just find the positives in this wait.
We have spent so much of this wait educating ourselves and the people around us about adoption and the entire process. We have also spent this wait investing in our marriage and just enjoying time just the two of us, because relatively soon it won't be just the two of us anymore! Our contract with our agency is two years and they have told us that almost everyone adopts in that time frame. We signed on with them officially April 1st of 2018 so we are nine months into this wait of ours.
My goal for 2019 and (hopefully) the last 15 months (or less) of this wait of ours, is to really lean into God through it all. I really want to become better at praying more about our journey and for all the people involved in not just our story but everyone touched by adoption. I want to learn to place all of my anxieties, worries, doubts, and questions at the feet of God and give all of that fear to Him. I want to spend 2019 continuing to let go of the idea that I have any bit of control in any of this and to really let God's amazing, beautiful plan play out in our life.
Here is to celebrating in this wait and for completely embracing God's plan!