the night before

Tomorrow at 2:00 we will leave the hotel to meet Lydia.  It is hard to imagine that this part of the journey is almost over.  For three years we have imagined her and come to love her and now we will be able to know her and bring her home. 

I don’t feel like I would have imagined.  If you had asked me a month ago what tonight would have felt like I would have described butterflies and anxiety and excitement and joy.  But I find myself somewhat sober.  Sort of not wanting tomorrow to come in this weird sort of way.  I guess maybe what it boils down to is that I am scared.  I am scared about having 4 kids, scared about parenting Lydia, scared about our attachment, scared that this whole thing is going to overwhelm me and I will never recover!  As Eric reminded me, it is almost exactly what I felt like before Josiah was born.  And I mean right before he was born.  All of a sudden, as he is stuck in the birth canal, I panicked and the emotion overcame me.  “I don’t want to be a parent!” I screamed (at that point, I think it was a little late!)  I was so afraid of what this new little boy was going to bring and wondering if I was ever going to get on top of life again. 

I think that’s where I’m at tonight.  The realities are looming over me and I am feeling very weak.  Very not together and not so ready for this journey.  Of course, being in a foreign country and surrounded by the unfamiliar doesn’t help…but it is more than that.  The weight of A-D-O-P-T-I-O-N is heavy, the idea of taking a child from all that they have ever known and promising to raise them and see them through all the twists and turns that adoption brings.  Add in there a different race, a different language, a different culture…it is a lot.  I know it is what God wants us to do, and I know that Lydia belongs to us; I just need to see her sweet little face and be reminded of that. 

I open up our suitcase and see her clothes and toys and my heart leaps.  I close the suitcase and look out the window to a world so different than mine and I am quieted.  Life is about to change – for her, for me, for our family. 

Dear Jesus, help us to love one another well.  Through the good days and the bad, the happy and sad, allow us the grace to persevere and the patience to see your hand.

We will update with pictures of our new little girl as soon as we can!

Wow…it is really happening.