Thursday, January 9, 2014

Contentment amidst the chaos

Roaring fire. Coffee. Napping toddler right upstairs. Sweet sleeping baby right next to me. Husband at home. Pretty perfect moment.

All moments are not like this. That's what makes this so special. Last night as we were on our way to church I just took a deep breath and thought "Whew..that was a crazy 20 minutes." My next thought was, "No way I would want to go back to constant calm where we had all the time in the world to worry about just ourselves."

I love this crazy life!!!

As many people know we became an instant family of 4 the day after Christmas. We have been in the process of adopting internationally for 20 months now. It's a roller coaster of peace, frustration, impatience, trusting God's timing, and all under the theme of "waiting". We have been so anxious for our family to grow at so many points in this journey. We've dreamed of hopping on a plane to meet our children and imagined brining them into our house and letting the beautiful chaos ensue as we look at each other and say "They're finally home." Those are still our thoughts and dreams. We are still pursuing international adoption. However, amidst the waiting and the trusting, God sent us a sweet little blessing wrapped in a blue blanket with our adoption agency's name on it.

We didn't jump on a plane to bring Wyatt home. We drove a few hours and went to Target just before meeting him. The journey to Wyatt was 9 days. From one e-mail where we learned about him to the day we brought him home. We had about 36 hours of notice when we found out he was coming home! We got the "Yes" e-mail just after Santa Claus jumped back up our chimney.

God does amazing things.

I was all ready to make some awesome New Year's resolutions and run a really fast half marathon in April and read like 100 books, learn a language…who knows. Today my goals were to empty the dishwasher, wash some bottles, do laundry and drink a lot of coffee. And I couldn't feel better about what I am doing. We watch a lot of movies in this house right now, we eat a lot cereal, but my  husband bakes things like cheddar bacon scones sometimes and he's a serious diaper changer.

I'm now typing and holding a baby. My better half is making cookies. The other night our power went out while Ryan was on a formula run and I was giving two little boys a bath. We clean our house and then it explodes at least 6 times a day. We've moved to being a "pot of coffee a day" family--Keurig just couldn't keep up.

We don't have a glamorous life. We don't go to fancy restaurants. We don't have cable. We barely have the Internet. But, we have an exciting life and we know God has many adventures awaiting us.