By His Grace

All morning and afternoon yesterday I was as cool as a cucumber - I wasn't nervous at all for our home study like I thought I would be and I was just so ready to meet our social worker.

About 45 minutes before the social worker arrived, I started to become a nervous wreck. Our house was clean and I had cookies baking in the oven but I was still paranoid that something would be out of place or we would have missed cleaning a spot. I also started to panic thinking maybe she wouldn't like us. It kind of reminds me of how I was on our wedding day. I was playing it cool all day and feeling great, but then as my bridesmaids were walking in and I was still "concealed" in a different room, I started to panic (I wasn't in a panic about marrying Kyle...I was in a panic about having to walk in front of everyone and all eyes being on me). I started to psych myself out so badly that I was feeling like I was going to faint (fainting is not all that uncommon for me so I know the feeling very well). That's how I started to feel yesterday. As soon as I opened the door I could tell that I really had nothing to worry about, even though I was probably nervous for the first 30 minutes of our visit. It went great, though, and it was almost as if we were just chatting with an old friend. I have found a little humor in the fact that we were so worried about everything being so clean and in its perfect place but the actual walk-through inspection lasted less than a two minutes.

The next step is for us to do invididual interviews with the social worker. I'm looking forward to that but I know Kyle is a little nervous about that one because he doesn't really like to talk to people he's not all that familiar with. I know he will do great, though. I should know in the next couple of days when our individual interviews are. Tomorrow is going to be a big day for us because tomorrow we will send in the contract, etc. to the consultant. I know it's just a simple act of mailing something but this simple act is going to change our lives. This is going to allow us to fulfill our passion and purpose of being parents. Yes, we have to wait until January to become active with the consultant because that's when her new round starts but just knowing we have a place with her starting in January is just so thrilling!

I've had a little writer's block lately and I honestly don't enjoy writing as much as I used to. The purpose of this blog was for a form of self therapy for me. I haven't needed that self therapy for a few months now and it's just getting harder to write. When it comes to writing, I've always been best at it when I have strong feelings of sadness going on in my life. When I was in high school I was able to produce poems one after the other. Losing a child last year brought back some of the writing (I would say writing skills but I don't write nearly as well as I used to). I never thought I would say this...let me preface what I am going to say by saying that I would never wish upon anyone that they experience the loss of a child. It's horrible. It consumes you. It makes you feel like a complete failure. It makes you feel desperate. It makes you feel like there will never be a sunny day again. It makes you skeptical and cynical. It makes you dislike people. Okay, so what I am going to say is that I am glad that I went through that experience. I am glad Kyle and I went through that experience together. If it wasn't for that we would not be pursuing adoption so early (well, 3 years is not exactly newlywed status, though) in our marriage. I feel like the reason everything happened last year was so God could open our eyes and say that yes, while we are meant to be parents right now He has a different plan for how we are going to become parents.

Okay, I said I had writers block but now my head is full of ideas.