The waiting game

Sometimes I ask myself "Is there anytime in your life that it would be good news to be infertile". And my answer is no. The only way it would be good is if I didn't want children. Then it would purely save me money on birth control - which I have to say even now is an upside, I guess.

The fact is: we don't plan crappy things to happen. And sometimes the timing of it is like - really? NOW? Justin and I had been 'trying' to get pregnant for a few months before I went into Nursing school over 3 years ago. We decided to stop once we found out I was accepted into school. Part of me wishes we hadn't stopped trying so that we would have known and could have planned things a bit differently.... but even though I love the back to the future movies - I know that we can't change the past so I need to stop dwelling on it.

For the readers that know me and know me well. I'm impatient. I really hate waiting for things. Why should I wait when I want this now? Although I feel like I have grown more patient over the past few years, I feel like waiting for this baby may be the ultimate test of patience. I want my baby TODAY! And today I am feeling rather hopeless.

It is incredibly painful for me to even go on facebook somedays. Don't get me wrong - I'm so excited for all you people that are having babies but somedays my pain and jealousy can really overtake that joy. I'm not jealous to the point of resenting or disliking people, I just tend to cry and wish that I could do what all you people experiencing pregnancy are doing. Knowing that I will NEVER be able to do it that way.... really leaves me ready to just sit down and give up. And say ok.... I'm done.

I was even saying to Justin yesterday "we might as well start saving up for our next baby". Justin and I have always planned on having around 3 - 4 children. Cooking them the normal way is cheaper - but we didn't get dealt that hand. If we were to adopt 4 children - that is a total of $120,000(ish) to build our family. Plus you have to wait for the one before to be at least one year old before you can start the process again and the process is about 2 years long.... So to do the math for you guys that is 9 years to have 4 babies. That just seems long to me. Even if Justin and I do decide to pursue fertility treatments, at $10,000 a cycle - it's not cheap. I guess I'm just frustrated that this isn't a right now issue.... it will be an issue for as long as I want kids, which right now feels like it's going to last eternity.

My main feelings of hopelessness come from the fact that there is no foreseeable end to this issue. Even with our current adoptive process - it could be a very long time before we get to meet our baby. The not knowing is what hurts so much. If I just had a date, then I could tell everyone - I will get my baby November 13, 2014 .... but I don't have a date, and it's probably going to be a while before I do.

I just want to educate you guys a bit on the adoptive process and where we are right now. Justin and I started the entire process almost 6 months ago. We still have our homestudy to be completed in July (where someone comes in and goes through our life with a fine tooth comb and deems us as suitable or unsuitable to raise children) and in August we will be applying to our agency in Florida. Our wait time is about 9 - 18 months once we are in with our agency, so from August.

Although I have had many interesting things said to me.... and if you want to read my blog on what to say and what not to say (warning... that blog is a bit ranty)it was the second blog that I wrote so you can check that out. I am consistently amazed however at how little the general population knows about the adoption process and how long it takes. And honestly, I wouldn't know about it if I wasn't having to pursue it. We live in a society of instant gratification and I think that's what people expect when I tell them I am adopting. This is how a certain conversation went for me last week

Lady: "So you are adopting? Congrats, where are you adopting from?"
Me: "Yes, we are adopting a newborn from Florida!"
Lady: "So when do you get your baby?"
Me: (kind of laughing)"Oh it will be a while yet"
Lady: "Well hasn't the pregnant mom told you her due date?"
Me: "Ya, my baby has probably not even been conceived yet..."

I think people just don't realize how long this process takes. And I feel bad for kind of laughing at people but everyone's asking me when and I'm thinking I would love to know when, but I don't and won't for a while. It is really hard some days to tell people that I may very well not get a baby until 2015.... but as hard as that is to swallow, it is true.

Time... I feel like it's going by fast and slow at the same time. I have been working as a RN for over half a year now... CRAZY! But I have only been pursueing adoption for half a year? That seems like it should be longer.

The waiting game is taking it's toll on me today, and I haven't even started 'actively waiting'. So I wait for August, when I can hopefully 'actively wait'.

Until then, I'll be 'unactively waiting' for time to hurry up and pass so that I can one day meet that beautiful child that I can call my own and enter into the exhaustion yet bliss that is motherhood.

WHIRLWIND!!!

Hello everyone! So I feel as though we have been caught up in a giant whirlwind the last week or so. All of our conditions and financing have been approved for our home. Right now we are just dealing with all the closing costs and paperwork and we will be taking possession of our house on May 31st - less than 2 weeks away. It's been such a whirlwind and feels really surreal, but we are so excited to get into our home! We are busy picking out some paint colours and trying to pack what we can at this point. It's been so busy.

As crazy as it is that we are buying a house at this exact moment in time, I really have seen God's hand in this. Things are never in our time but in Gods. We are a little overwhelmed some days with the move and whatnot, but we are thankful that we will be there before our homestudy is done. Our homestudy will begin in July, once I get back from Africa. It will be good to have our homestudy completed in the home that we will be raising our baby in. We think and hope that it will be easier than if we were to move after our homestudy was done and we were still in the process. We are trusting in God's timing and provision during this time.

At the same time, we are tucking away savings for the baby, trying to figure out when the right time to buy baby furniture is.... (Justin won't let me buy it until at least August), and we are also trying to figure out some fundraisers for the future. I announced our puzzle piece fundraiser earlier and I can now announce that we have finally bought our puzzle, well actually puzzles. We found two puzzles that we thought would be cute in a baby room that also will display the American heritage that our baby will have. The puzzles are each 300 pieces, so we have a total of 600 pieces to sell. A minimum of $5 donation to our baby fund will get your name on the back of one of those puzzle pieces (as mentioned earlier if you have previously given us a donation, you have already bought a puzzle piece). Our baby will be able to see daily the people that helped us build our family. The picture of the two puzzles are below.


Thanks again for all your support and prayers. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to sit down and actually write a blog that goes a bit a deeper as it has been a while since I've written one of those. Please keep us in your prayers. We are so excited to get our home, but it will be hard to prepare a nursery not knowing when our baby is going to join us. I also go to Africa in three weeks and will be spending a lot of time with orphans that have been abandoned.... I will want to bring every single one home with me. Pray that my heart doesn't get completely trampled on. It will be hard to leave them all behind. Everyday that passes I feel like I'm even more overdue for motherhood. We have been able to have our niece and nephew spend the weekend with us and it just makes me want babies even more (although I would have liked to sleep past 7 this morning). It's still hard to watch others expanding their families so easily. One day, we will forget about all this pain. I know when we meet our little one that the pain will be so tiny compared to the love that I will have for that child. I'm so excited for that day. Until then, we wait.

Love you all.

What's the plan? Our next, ongoing fundraiser.

Hello again everyone! I just wanted to give you guys an update on where we are in the fundraising department. We have been so overwhelmed with the generosity of our loved ones including friends and family and also the generosity of people we hardly know. It is so amazing. Thanks to everyone's amazing donations our adoption fund is sitting at just over $13,000! We still have another $22,000 to raise, but we know that we will get there in time. We have a few ideas of fundraisers being tossed around in our house, and I just wanted to make an announcement about our puzzle piece fundraiser. Here is how it will work.

Justin and I are going to buy a puzzle. We are still looking for one that we both like and will kind of relate to the USA for the baby's room - we will find a puzzle soon! We are then going to sell each puzzle piece for $5. When you buy your puzzle piece for $5, your name will be written on the back of that puzzle piece. When our puzzle pieces have all been claimed, we will put the puzzle together and frame it in a two way frame so that we can see everyone who was involved in getting our baby here with us. We will be able to see how each individual worked together so that the big picture could come together - the puzzle will literally come together with each piece, just like our adoption with each donation! We are going to include all people who have given us a donation already in on this fundraiser. If you have given us just a monetary donation (not including banquet tickets or silent auction items) - we have kept track of our donations and will be writing the names of everyone who has given us a donation greater than $5 on a puzzle piece.

I look forward to being able to explain this puzzle to my little one one day. So they can visually see all the people that helped get them to us. That will be such a cool experience.

I will announce and post a picture of a puzzle when we find one. In the meantime start encouraging others to consider buying a puzzle piece. It's only $5 per person, but in the long run - that could make us a lot of money!! I will be starting a spreadsheet to track our puzzle piece sales and I so look forward to putting that puzzle together. Sounds like the best puzzle ever.

Happy Mother's Day!

Good morning all and Happy Mother's Day! This day we celebrate the amazing thing that motherhood is or at least what I imagine it will be. Just wanted to give a shout out to all the moms. Hope you are continually blessed by your beautiful children, I know that I am blessed to even be an aunt and I can't wait to have a baby for myself one day.

I also wanted to announce some news that Justin and I have to share! We have found a house! It happened way faster than we expected but God really works in ways that we don't always understand. We had been pre-approved for a mortgage and not even a week later we found our house. We had looked at several houses and none of them had sparked anything within us. On Wednesday this past week, Justin had been feeling really sickly and called in sick to work. I think he really needed the sleep. He had started feeling better and we were both home, so I suggested that we go look at this house that we had received information on from our realtor. We went and looked that afternoon and fell in love with this 1500 square foot 4 level split. Our bible study was then later cancelled which gave us the opportunity to put in an offer. We did have to compete a bit as someone else also put in an offer that night and the next morning we discovered they accepted our offer! We are now in the process of getting our financing in place and our home inspection is on Wednesday. If all goes well we will have possession on May 31st! Holy Smokes! That's incredibly fast, but God is really giving us peace as we go through this process.

Our home is in need of some painting, the previous owners seem to like to colour green a little too much! The house is like I said a 4 level split, it has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, one half bath and two living areas. The 2nd basement (I call the levels - main level, upstairs, 1st basement and 2nd basement) is unfinished, which gives Justin a bit of freedom to do with it what he would like. It's so big, we will be here for a while! The area is the area that I grew up in so we will be close to my parent's house (my parents are currently in Uganda, but my brother lives there). The only downfall is that we are moving a bit farther away from my sister and their kids, we enjoy being so close to them now! But we are so excited for our new to us home! Pictures to follow!

Hope you guys enjoy your mother's day! We are heading out to spend time with Justin's parents in Caronport. Give your mom big hugs and lots of love today! Moms- love your kids (not that you don't already do that), but just know on this day celebrating moms.... I'm jealous of you all. One day (maybe next year?), I'll be a mom.

Love you guys.

unfairness, discipline and love.

The journey of infertility is definitely not an easy road to travel. It causes you to ask a lot of why questions. Our logical brains really like to believe the myth that good things happen to good people. That everyone who wants a baby should have the right to do just that. But that's not the case. And it's really unfair. But fairness isn't part of this at all.

We live in a world that strives to serve justice to everyone who deserves it. We punish the bad, we reward the good. That's why it's better to be good. But in this same world we have things that we can't control. Bad things happen to good people. Drug addicts have babies that they don't want, people neglect or abuse their children everyday, and the people that want those children more than anything in the world, can't have them. I have done my fair share of questioning why God has put this struggle in our lives. And honestly, I don't know that I will ever know the answer as to why, but it has already challenged me and changed my life for the better.

No one plans for unexpected things. No one tucks away $30,000 dollars just in case they are unable to have children and choose to adopt. No one likes the hard times in life. We don't enjoy the darkness. Feeling alone, in pieces. No one wants that. But what I am learning through this time is that we grow the most in the darkness. When we feel the most vulnerable. You know when you were kids and you had growing pains? That is what I like to think of this time in my life. God stretching me, to completely uncomfortable, dark places. But I can already see how much I've grown.

Another mentality that I have really had to speak truth into is the idea that God is punishing me. He is punishing me for things that I did in my past. This mentality is believed so much in our world. There is a Christian character on Grey's Anatomy who has sex before marriage and then you watch her fall to pieces constantly because she believes God is punishing her. This is our view of God? That guilt, doesn't come from a holy God. That is our sin and need for forgiveness and repentance. God disciplines us, yes. However we are God's children, he loves us and wants us to grow and therefore doesn't just strike us down with lightening every time we make a mistake.

So many people in our world unfortunately have horrible earthly fathers. Which then messes up their view of what our heavenly father is like. I, do have a human father, who makes mistakes, but he is a pretty amazing dad. When I think of how much God loves us but yet needs to discipline us, I think of my dad.

When I was younger and would do something bad, (I know it's hard to believe, I am such an angel), dad would often spank us (me and my siblings). Typically we would get one maybe two smacks with the belt across our hands. As an adult, I have really grown to admire my father in how he disciplined us and here's how it would go. So, I would get in trouble, get sent to my room and usually have to sit and wait, knowing that the spanking was coming (that was the worst part- the guilt and feeling of impending doom). I really think that my dad used this time as an opportunity to calm himself, as not to discipline us in his anger. I would then get called into my dad's bedroom and he would ask me if I knew why I was getting the spanking. I always understood why, behaviour has consequences and I had to face them. My father - who looks like a very hard man, but is actually a huge softy on the inside - would then proceed to give me a smack or two on the hands and then afterwards would fall to his knees, wrap his arms around me and hold me tight. His eyes would fill with tears (he often cried more than I did) and he would tell me how much he loved me. This is what loving discipline is. It hurts and kind of sucks at times but is necessary for our growth.

Although this time in my life isn't a disciplinary time, God still allows things to happen to help us grow and to glorify him. Have you guys read the book of Job? God let everything happen to him. And he continued to bless God's name. I just pray that God will give me the grace and strength to bless his name through this hard time.

The idea of fairness is really something that doesn't work, even though our world tries to force it. Nothing in life is fair and it never will be on this side of heaven. We were given a choice, and we chose to live under our own messed up rules. That's why bad things happen. God doesn't make them happen, but allows things to happen. If he never allowed something bad to happen, would we ever grow? Would we ever be forced to change and question our ways? Our hearts are pretty hard sometimes and it's those hard times in our lives that break down the walls so that we may grow.

I think I'm done asking the question why, because honestly I think the moment that I will get my answer is the moment that I will get to hold my baby for the first time. So until then, I think I'm done asking questions. Maybe it's time to "be still and know that I am God". I rest in his peace, his love, his grace, and his strength.

My brain is pretty jumbled today as I kind of jumped all over the map of my inconsistent thoughts.... so thanks for sticking it out. I just want to point out that our baby account has officially jumped over the $10,000 hurdle! Thanks so much for all your love and support. We love and appreciate all your generosity way more than you could ever know.

Money: friend or foe?

When Justin and I found out about our infertility and started questioning about our options, the biggest reason against adopting a baby was simply the cost. It came from my lovely mother in law that said "don't decide not to adopt because of the money". Words that I found incredibly encouraging, but some days it's like "why did I listen?". Justin and I have been incredibly blessed and have lived a comfortable life. Mind you, we do have our share of debts (nursing school isn't a freebie) and we are working to pay them off. But this adoption has really challenged us in how we spend our money, and we have certainly started thinking a lot more about where we put it.

Justin and I started budgeting in about January of this year, which has been really good for us. We only spend our allotted amount each week. It's been good for us to learn how to save. The funny thing is that we began budgeting after I started working, so as we brought in more money we started being a bit more frugal with it. That's an interesting concept, but we are happy about it none the less.

The biggest issue I have with all this money stuff is simply that I really hate money. I really hate it. Like a lot. I feel like because we are fundraising for this adoption that all our money should be going towards that adoption. We have put some money towards the adoption, and we continue to do so, and truthfully if we do not raise all our funds, where is the rest of the money for the adoption going to come from? Us. Whether our savings account or our lines of credit, we will be needing to fill in the deficit.

It's incredibly humbling to ask people for money. I have had people ask me if we are accepting donations and I have always responded "I am very open to taking your money!", which I am, but it's a really humbling spot to be in. Because we are accepting donations I almost feel like I am accountable to those people who are giving us money with how I spend my money. I have never been in a position like I am now, feeling so incredibly overwhelmed with where my money should go.

Although I am incredibly jealous of people that can make their babies the natural way, with all the excitement and whatnot that comes with that. Lately, I've been jealous that their baby making ways are free. Everyone knows that babies cost money, and for the most part getting to the point where you have a newborn in your arms is inexpensive. You cooked and grew that baby for free. I'm really jealous of that. To get my baby in my arms, I will spend $30,000 plus travel expenses. That's INSANE!

I guess where a lot of my worry for money is coming from right now is this. I have expressed earlier that Justin and I currently live in a rental property that has some mould issues in the basement. We do not want a baby here. Our rent is ridiculously cheap and awesome, but we want to have a healthy environment to raise a baby in. Because rent is so high everywhere else in the city, we are starting the process to look into buying a house. I think buying a house is overwhelming when that's the only big expense that you are looking at, but when you are looking into buying a house and adopting a baby with all those wonderful costs.... it's a lot. It's almost like I feel guilty for buying a house, while still fundraising and asking for people to assist us with the cost of our adoption. And honestly, I want to be completely transparent with everyone about this topic. Our income tax refund was a substantial amount this year, which has given us the opportunity to even think about buying a house. We are praying about it, and will continue to pray that God will give us peace to know what decision we should be making. This is a huge financial decision.

I guess where I am worried is again about what people are going to say. Like "they just bought a house, why should I give them money for their adoption, when they just bought a house?". I really just want to trust that everyone who is giving us money can confidently know that your money is going towards our adoption. You should also know, that our money is going towards our adoption. So far the people that have made the largest donation in our adoption fund is Justin and Charissa Jaarsma. And I'm confident it will stay that way, and it should. We are putting a lot into this.... our hearts are completely in this.

We have been blown away by everyone's generosity. Our banquet was a huge success. I was so glad when it was over! A lot of work went into planning it. My sister helped me out significantly, we were both exhausted once the day finally came. We will be having some more fundraisers in the future. And hopefully our fundraisers will be able to raise all the funds that we need.

I just want you all to know that the money that you guys are giving us, is not something that we take lightly. It weighs really heavily on our hearts. We feel an incredible responsibility to you and your generosity. We want you to know that we are putting so much into this adoption and that we are also needing to think about raising this baby in a safe environment. I also want you to know, that this hasn't come up from any person saying anything to us. We feel great responsibility with the blessings that have been given to us and we want to spend the money God has given us appropriately.

Please pray that God would give us the wisdom in making decisions with our money in terms of buying a house. Please pray for our hearts to be filled with his peace.... I've been a bit anxious about this as you can probably tell from this post.

We love you all so much. We know and feel your love everyday. Thanks for reading along, I hope you have caught a glimpse of what's on my heart today.