how are you doing?

Hundreds of people have given to our adoption.

No, not our adoption. Their adoption.

THANK YOU!


This isn't about us. If it were fully about me, I'd be buying the cute goods in our last auction and the one starting Wednesday instead of getting them donated to sell to others. I'd be playing Barbie and reptiles and peek-a-boo more with Jocelyn and Robbie and Zoe and filling out paperwork less for the newest ones. I'd spend more time exploring the neighborhood with the three I have and less time limping around as I wait out the week I have left before restarting my RA meds following the live vaccines we received last week.

It's worth the price we're paying, though, just as God considered my adoption into His family worth the price paid by Christ on the cross.

While I know God's adoption of us was far more costly than any of our earthly adoptions, today the expense of this current adoption is on my mind.

The financial aspect is in my thoughts, but that's not weighing as heavily as it used to. So many precious friends and family members and strangers have sacrificed financially for us, and I think the odds are good that we'll raise the final funds we need through this final auction - starting tomorrow - and t-shirt sales - starting once I have the energy to stop by the last couple of printers to decide who can provide the best product for the best price - and a Shop2Adopt event - in which friends selling Mary Kay and 31 and Tupperware and Pampered Chef and a few others are donating their profits to us - and a few grants we haven't heard from - though one will notify us in the next couple of days. Many of you will receive thank you notes, many of you already have, and some of you sadly won't because currently Project Hopeful isn't able to provide a list of donors for us at this time. Know this, though: we are thankful beyond what words can express. 

The cost of adding three more children to our brood will be high. Feeding and loving six, including three who have experienced devastating loss, while keeping clean clothes on them and clean plates in the cabinets and clean enough for us (though maybe not for the health department) conditions throughout the house? I really can't imagine what that will be like.

But, as crazy as this sounds, I can't wait to find out.

I can't wait to gather all six together, holding and kissing and cuddling and cleaning and playing with and praying with and loving them all. I long for the massive Pluto to be filled with precious cargo in a half dozen car seats and boosters. I am strangely looking forward to the jet lag and the hours of travel with little ones and the lack of air conditioning and the mosquito nets and the constant reminders to our current ones not to open their mouths when we're bathing them, because they can't drink the water.

I know it will be costly to all of us, but honestly? I'm not scared.

I'm just thankful and jittery with excitement.

Ready to get through this adopting thing and on to the parenting thing.

And, most of all, full of longing for the babes in my heart to join the ones in my home.