One Less

One Less by Matthew West (The Story Behind The Song) from emicmg on Vimeo.
A fellow adoptive mother shared this video on her blog. I loved it too much not to share it on mine. I hope it touches your heart, as well.

The Times They Are A Changin'

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone.

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'.

- Bob Dylan

I guess I'd better get swimmin'.

August

August. The eighth month of the year. The month that comes after July and before September. It was named after Caesar Augustus. It is the month that many go back to school. It is also a month that never had any real meaning for me until 1991.

In 1991, I came back from my church mission 6 months early due to health reasons. That is another blog entry for another time, but I came home feeling like I never finished something I had committed to do. I spent a lot of time on my knees, praying, and trying to figure out what was next for me. After praying one night I had the distinct impression to wait for August. I had no idea what that meant and I wasn't given any more detail. It was June, so I assumed whatever was going to 'change my life' would happen in 2 months.

August 1991 came and went. If something life changing had happened, I missed it. I decided to wait for the next August. Again, August 1992 ended with no significance. Perhaps I was mistaken about my impression. August 1993 arrived, then left, leaving nothing of interest at my doorstep. By this time, my eyes were only half-opened to any experiences that might prove meaningful. My faith was waning, and when August 1994 proved to be just like the previous years, I had all but given up on anything I may have felt on that hopeful June evening 3 years prior.

Then August 1995 arrived. Without going into the many, lengthy details of the evening of August 18th, (again, another blog post) the night ended with me having met my future husband.

Fast forward a few years. John and I have been married for 2 years and have tried in vain to have children. Another 2 years have passed and I've had it with all the fertility procedures. It's too much and I'm tired of having hope ripped out of my hands by holding negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test. After a lot of talking and research, we decide we will adopt our children. It takes us a year to finish our paperwork and we are approved for adoption in July 2002. We were told it takes an average of 2 years to get a baby, so we didn't have high expectations. In May 2003, we were called into the adoption agency to 'update our paperwork'. It turns out we were called into the agency because we were chosen to adopt a baby boy. Our son, Alexander was born on August 3rd.

Fast forward again. We want to adopt another child, but after waiting 5 years, we decide we need to look into other options. We discovered international adoption as a viable option for us and more interestingly, we found out that the country of Serbia was a wonderful place to adopt a child. Serbia is where John's paternal grandfather was born, and we loved the idea of intersecting our past family with our future family. On March 27, 2010, we received an email asking us if we were interested in adopting a little girl from Serbia whose previous adoptive family had backed out. Of course, we said yes, and we began the paperwork process again. We were told that the little girl was 16 months old, so throughout the whole process we believed she was born around the end of November or beginning of December. As we were booking our plane tickets, we needed a ticket for Hannah, but the travel agency said they needed her birthday in order to book her ticket. I emailed our contact to see if we could get Hannah's birthday. I received an email back from her with Hannah's birthday listed.

That's right, August 27th.

Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."

Romans 8:28 "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God..."

2nd Nephi 10:17: "For I will fulfil my promises which I have made unto the children of men..."

Alma 37:17: "For he will fulfil all his promises which he shall make unto you, for he has fulfilled his promises which he has made unto our fathers."

A date! Finally!

So okay, I'm not the greatest blogger. In fact, I hate writing, but I will do my best to catalog this important event in our life and the life of Hannah.

We worked very hard to get all of our paperwork ready and thought we would be traveling to get our daughter in July. Unfortunately, we found out that adoptions are not processed during July or August. It was almost more than I could take. It's like thinking your 8 months pregnant and then finding out that you're really only 5 months along. I told John that I would go crazy and we needed to plan a vacation, pronto! In less than a week, we planned an awesome vacation to Spokane, Washington and stayed at the Riley's cabin on Loon Lake for a week. Aaaahhhh.....it was one of the most relaxing vacations I've ever been on and it did wonders to ease my anxiety.

I feel it was an act of God who mercifully made the next 2 months go by quickly. My only heartache was knowing that Hannah was still in her orphanage instead of being in our home. I spent the time painting her room, shopping for her clothes, remodeling her closet, shopping for her shoes, setting up her crib and bedroom furniture, and shopping for her dresses and hair bows.

In record time, September was here and I sent an email to our contact asking her to let us know the latest update on our progress. She let us know that she was meeting with the MO this week, and it would be easier to let her know when we were available to travel. We let her know our schedule, and this morning we received an email asking us if October 20 would work.

I was taking Alexander to school when I received a call from John. He asked me if I had anything going on on October 20th. I answered, saying that I knew that was the day Kenny was going into the Missionary Training Center, but other than that I didn't know of anything. I asked him if it was the evening that I needed to be available, and he said that no, it was more of an all day thing. I had no clue what he was trying to do. He then said that it was the date that we had been given for our appointment. I was shocked. I have no idea why it didn't click with me, but I will blame it on mom brain.

Now I have 6 weeks to go. It seems like an eternity now, but I know it will pass quickly. There is still a lot to do. We finally get to book our plane tickets. We finally get to find an apartment to rent. We finally get to tell people that we know when we're going to get our little girl.

I wonder how much of the language I can learn in 6 weeks?