So Close

I thought that I would go ahead and post an update because I'm not sure how the next "official" monthly update will go.
It has been an interesting month for us and the other families waiting with us to adopt from Ethiopia through our agency. As you know, at the beginning of the month we found out that we had actually moved BACK a place on the waitlist. It was a difficult blow to feel like we had lost a couple months of progress on the wait. Yet, even still we know that God is ALWAYS faithful and His timing is perfect. We trust that God has ordained this moment for us and that in the wait He is constantly drawing us back to Him. I wish it didn't always have to take a difficult situation to make us cling to God. We've learned over the last couple years that God is our ONLY source of strength. God has used many things to show us that. At some moments it was because we (Bryan and I individually) really didn't have anyone else to turn to but God.
This crazy, emotional, God-dependant rollercoaster has become our comfort zone. It has been all we know for the last couple years. As strange as it might sound, it has been wonderful going through the hard times, being constantly pushed to our very limits, because it has forced us to go to God for everything. We've had no choice but to trust in God and put our faith in Him to...complete our family, provide financially, work on the hearts of the few that doubt us, allow us to just get out of bed some mornings. It's scary to be pushed out of your comfort zone. Will we be able to depend so completely on God when we have our child and things are going well? Will we have the same zeal for our faith when we have what we want, to be parents? While we are ready and excited for the next chapter of our lives, it's also kind of a scary thing.
This is all being said because right now we are unofficially #3 on the boy list and #7 on the girl list. We are so close to meeting our child. We are so close to our hopes and dreams being realized. We would both honestly say that there are many times, maybe most of the time, that it just didn't feel like this would ever happen. Like having our own child to love was just something too good that was unattainable for us. We know in our heads that's not true, but in the long...long wait it feels like that's all you'll ever do, wait. But now we are so close to not ever having to wait again to know our first child.

-amory

February #s

For February we are officially 8 on the boy list and 12 on the girl list. No, that is not a mistype. I did say 8 on the boy list. Yes, we moved back a place this month. Why? Well I don't really have an answer for that. It could be caused by a couple different things. Here is an excerpt from the email we received with our updated numbers.
1)Families may return to the waitlist at anytime due to extenuating circumstances including the difficult situation of losing a referral. (There was a failed adoption last month and it is possible that family was put back on the wait list but don't know that they were).
2)Families ahead of you on the waitlist may alter their parameters at anytime assuming they have the approval of their social worker as well as our social services department. (someone ahead of us on the girl list could have decided to get on the boy list too).

It was not disclosed to us the exact reason why our number went up on the list, so we just have to cling to the fact that God is still on his throne and is sovereignly in control of this process. That being said, it doesn't mean that we don't still get frustrated. It still hurts to every day come home to a childless home and an empty nursery. There are still days that we just want to scream because it's so frustrating that there is NOTHING we can do to speed things up. We are still completely in love with a child on the other side of the world and are just dying to find out what our child looks like. But as much as it hurts to wait, I also know that I shouldn't want this to go any faster than God intends it to. I know that for me to become a mother, another mother must lose her beloved child, and our child must lose his/her first mother. I don't wish that kind of grief on anyone, even if it means I can be a mother. I know that it is inevitable that my child will have to experience this grief and I WANT to be there to comfort my child when that time comes, but I don't want my child to experience that grief a second before he/she has to. So we wait. We trust that God's timing is perfect and that we must be obedient and WAIT ON HIM, however difficult that wait might be.
-amory

Eric Ludy - Depraved Indifference

AMEN!

Read this!

This is an awesome, humbling article. Please click on the link below and read it with me (past page 1) and when you're done reading it please pray with me for all of the children of the world to have a home, a safe place to be. Pray that these children would be adopted into God's family. Pray that the silent would be silent no more and be able to cry out loud Abba Father!


Abba Changes Everything Christianity Today A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

New Look, Same great taste..errr...I mean blog

You are in the right spot. I needed some more space to work with and had to change the format of the blog. Things were getting a bit crowded. I thought I would share really quick my new favorite thing. This necklace was my birthday present from Bryan. Don't you just love it! He got it from JunkPosse who makes adoption jewelry. You can check out her store link on my sidebar. I also have been busy making shirts while J was here setting up the nursery. She is my crafty mastermind so I had to wait for her to visit to make these. I do love my new favorite things.

-amory

January Excitement

So far January is turning out to be a fun month! We have received our January updated numbers. We are now #7 on the boy list and #13 on the girl list. In December the U.S. Embassy announced that they are conducting orphan investigations on every adoption from Ethiopia. This could mean some slowdowns in the process. For the families that were supposed to travel in December for the embassy appointment it meant cancelling their flights 2 days before they were supposed to leave just to find out a week later that they had to book flights for the next day. The good news is that they were able to travel to bring home their children and a couple more families are traveling this weekend so there will be open space at Hannah's Hope (our agencies transition home). We're hoping that this will bring more referrals of children in January.

This weekend we were visited by my cousin J and her 3 kiddos (nearly 4 yr old, 19 mo old, and 3 mo old). Our house has been bustling to say the least. Now the fun part is that J and her AMAZING friend MJ made the decorations for our nursery. It has all been a big secret to me up to this point. I knew the theme they were doing but artistic liberty was completely given over to them (and for those of you that know me that was a BIG deal as I am WAY type A). Saturday morning J and MJ set up the nursery and did a big reveal of their design. It is GEORGEOUS! I told them my theme was "elegant jungle" which they renamed "safari chic`". They did a beautiful job of turning theme idea into reality. There are still a few finishing touches to be done, but it would be great just as it is. Enjoy the pictures below.

Isn't the hippo cute! MJ made him from scratch!! (well she made everything from scratch)

December #s

Well we've done it. We are FINALLY in the single digits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are officially #9 on the boy list and #18 on the girl list. HOWEVER , I know that 2 families got referrals yesterday for infants which makes us unofficially 8 on the boy list and 17 on the girl list. While overall that only puts us one place closer to getting our child; the fact that it puts us into the single digits makes it a lot easier to handle. We have now been on the wait list for 7 months and are only 8 families away from having a family ourselves. That is pretty exciting stuff. Since it is my birthday, I'm not going to make this a long post, but I wanted to make sure to update everyone on us being in the single digits.

-amory