Perseverance

Well, as Amy said, now it's my turn.

Up till now, Amy bore the burden of keeping folks updated with our adoption progress, and tonight I hereby take charge. (Or else I'm in trouble!)

As you may notice, there is a significant silent gap between November and April on our blog. Like the old adage goes, 'silence speaks' and here thats as true as ever. The second half of last year, Amy was experiencing nagging health problems that developed into troubling, constant pain. Long story short, in December she was diagnosed with IC, or interstitial cystitis.

"Inter-what?"

You can google it and learn way more than you'd ever want to know, and half of it will be wrong. Basically it's very painful but not life-threatening. The doc that made the diagnosis said there wasn't much we could do but try to watch what she eats. In fact he said, "Just do what you've been doing." Which wasn't going to work for long because Amy was losing weight like I lose my car keys and the pain wasn't subsiding.

After a difficult Christmas, once we all got back to Nashville, we found a homeopathic doc that said he could help, and we pushed all our chips on the table and said, "yes please."

And finally, after a few months of intentionally avoiding the issue, (which was really hard with the kids), we made the call to America World to ask if we could put the adoption process on hold, since Amy was sick and we had no idea what to expect for the future. They mercifully agreed to let us take a few months out of the process while we figured things out.

All of this is running parallel to the track of struggling mightily with God. At least, it seemed that way to me. God was probably not so worked up. It's so hard to see your loved ones in pain, and I cried out a good bit.

I flipped between being mad and sad and numb and just coping. I was about to leave my part-time job at the church and go back to full-time music, and we were deep into the journey of this adoption which had already been more trying that we would have liked. We have said all along that this was not our plan. We had submitted to what we thought was God's plan, and he's the one wrecking it. Now that just seems mean.

By the second week of January, we had come to terms with the situation and had agreed together to stop the whole adoption process if things kept going as they were. She was in too much pain to consider anything else. And then, ever so slowly, like a Plutonian sunrise, Amy began to improve.

Sometime in mid-February, she turned the corner we had all been waiting for... not for the adoption, but for the return of the personality that had been consumed by all the pain and hunger and confusion and fear about what to eat. And late one night - I think it was on my birthday - she wanted to talk, and it was about the adoption, and now here we are.

The thing is, from the beginning, this was never about wanting to adopt. We simply wanted to grow our family. And as we may have articulated on this blog before, we planned on the old fashioned way, and then as mysteriously as is typical for these kind of things, we lost our peace about that. We prayed and talked and struggled and finally landed on adoption. This was God's clear path for us, as far as we could tell - which is never very far, as it turns out.

And then it wasn't, and now it is again (or, maybe it was all along)... And we are thankful. As ridiculous as it sounds, we are thankful for the trials that we have been through the last few months. God brought us to our knees, which is a pretty healthy place, metaphorically speaking. We see his hand in every step of the way, even when it seemed like he was just being mean. (It makes me think of Livi, screaming when I wrangle her down to pick out a splinter.)

And... we are pumped UP!!! We are going to Ethiopia to find our son, and if he's got a sibling, we'll take him(or her) too! Thanks for being pumped with us. It means the world to have the encouragement and support of our friends and family. We're so thankful for all of you!!!! Tune in again soon. I'm going to try and write something every day or two. (even if it means staying up past 2 AM)