Overcome

Dear friends, I just wanted to share a few thoughts with you as we get deeper and deeper into this adoption process. The best way that I can explain how I'm feeling right now is overcome. I am overcome in good ways, bad ways... and ways that I don't even yet know how to process! I'll try to explain a bit, but please bear with me because I just have no idea how to really put into words what I am experiencing.

First, I'm overcome with an amazing feeling of gratitude for the MANY friends and family who care so much about our family and who have continually supported us on this journey. It is so incredible to have people reaching out, asking how things are going, making us feel so loved! We are truly blessed to have the most incredible support group and I pray that you will all stick around as things threaten to get even crazier!!!

I am overcome with so many mixed emotions about this potential adoption of this sweet, 9 year old boy. First, it breaks my heart to have experienced life with him this weekend and come to the realization that he has maybe never really felt loved. We were probably the first people to ever read him stories before bedtime... and he is so deserving of love and respect! I honestly can't even wrap my head around what it must be like to not truly feel loved and feel like you belong somewhere. Oh, what a broken world we live in!!! I'm also so excited about the prospect of him joining our family. It feels like we have been waiting so long that it really has just become this proverbial carrot dangling there, but I was honestly beginning to wonder if we would ever catch it! And now it is so close! Of course, I'm cautiously guarding myself as well since there is another family involved, and no matter how it plays out, one of us will be disappointed in the end.

I am overcome with a certain type of sadness or grief as well; grief over the loss of our family of three, but yet it is also overshadowed with joy over becoming a family of four! It's such a strange emotion and I don't know if people experience it when they are expecting their second child? Maybe it's completely normal, I have no idea! I absolutely adore our little family, and while I know that we have been called to be adoptive parents, it's also a little sad to know that things will change.

And while I hate to admit it, I'm also overcome by fear. I am scared of parenting alone, especially parenting a child that I hardly know! While it isn't my first time to be a single parent, it's so different to know that I could be responsible for a child who I don't even know what foods he does and doesn't like. It scares me to think that I will not have Ben around if I need a break, especially during the summer months when there is no school. I'm scared for Hunter who is already upset about his daddy leaving. He cries everytime Ben leaves the house, whether he is in uniform or not. And every tear breaks my heart in two! How am I supposed to deal with that while also caring for a child who has been abandoned by everyone he has ever loved. I'm afraid that many of our friends will not want to spend time with us when we have a child who has come from a difficult past and needs a little extra care and attention. Not only that, but as silly as it sounds, I am overcome with fear of how to get class work done while caring for two children on my own!

Finally, I am overcome with the realization that all of this is so much bigger than us. This is completely out of our hands and it would be the greatest blessing of our lives to have the privledge of raising a child that we didn't give birth to. Even in just the short time that we had with this boy we were able to see glimpes of how amazing our God is, and just how much he must love us since we are his adopted children. I am overcome with gratitude for a Father who loves us and cares about each and every one of us enough to help us through these tough things. How could we possibly deny this child a place in our family??? Every difficult moment will just serve as a reminder that our God loves us no matter how difficult we are and he gives us GRACE no matter what.

I'm overcome by so many thoughts, feelings, emotions... Some moments I feel like I have it together and I can conquer the world! Other moments I just want to run away and hide from life. I wanted this blog to be an accurate portrayal of what our family is experiencing through this adoption process. I hope that this gives you a little more of a glimpse into what we are feeling right now.

Please keep praying, asking, encouraging... we need it! We would really love nothing more than for this child to become ours, but we know that it can only happen by God's grace. And that grace will sustain us through any and all difficult times that are to come.

Love you all!

B, E & H