Quietly Waiting

It's been a while since I wrote about anything adoption related.  The reason for that is that all has been quiet on the adoption front. It seems that the start of our wait was a frantic, chaotic, emotional wait whereas the past few months have been a quiet kind of waiting.  It's been about two months since we were last presented to a mother and I have been thankful for the quiet.  The first few months of our wait took so much out of me.  It seemed as if there was one situation after another and while I was thankful that we were being presented, I was drained from all of the rejection.  So the past two months have been a welcome quiet for me.  

While we wait, we try to do things that keep us focused on what we are doing all of this for anyway.  On one hand we want to make sure that we continue to live our lives and enjoy our moments as a family of two.  But on the other hand, it helps to do things every so often that help us keep in mind the delightful outcome that will come of this process one day.

So here are some things that we have been doing as we wait...

We continue to find things for the one-day nursery.  Our latest finds include a delectable elephant lamp and a few new pieces of artwork to add to the walls.  Here they are:

Our perfect green elephant lamp!

Two new pieces of artwork from a local art show we went to.

Close-ups of the two pictures made from recycled magazine print 

And in the hallway between the one-day nursery and our room, we found this beautiful piece of art work at an art fair this past summer.  We love it and the way it represents the family that we will one day be.

A family of three!

One of our bigger projects (and a big shout out to my wife for making this one happen) has been our family photo collage that we have created on the wall going up our stairs.  It took a whole lot of measuring and patience, but here is the amazing final product:

View from the bottom of the stairs.

View from the top of the stairs.

Now every time we walk up our stairs, we have the beautiful smiling faces of our families look down on us.  Throughout the photographs we sprinkled a few pieces of artwork that we had purchased at the art show we were at recently.  Here is one of them up close with a quote that resonated for both Carla and I: 

It's hard to see with the reflection of the flash, but it says, "Mighty oaks grow where tiny acorns dare to hold their ground." What a perfect quote to speak of where we are in our journey towards adoption.

Besides all the new things hanging on our walls, we continue to grow our book collection.  We have received several books recently from friends and family.  We acquired one more today.  My dad and sister and I decided to have a father/daughter day.  In our family that involves lunch at a kosher restaurant, a trip to the Jewish bookstore, and a visit to the local American Indian Museum which was approximately the size of my kitchen and dining room put together.  While at the Jewish bookstore, my sister insisted that she buy for us one of the books that I got a real kick out of.  Here's the book:  

Again, in case you can't read the text here, it says, "Crossing the street safely, is that a mitzvah too? You bet it is! Be careful! We need each precious Jew!" I love it! I truly laughed out loud in the bookstore, and thanks to my very generous sister, this book is now a proud member of our book collection.

Well, I do believe that is it in terms of what we have been doing as we wait.  As we wait, we continue to try to fill our home with as much love as possible so that when we do bring that baby home one day, he or she will feel all that love and know that we have been waiting, as patiently as we can, for him or her to come home.  

And we will continue to wait.  Quietly or not.  I won't lie, the holidays had their challenging moments.  It can be hard to be surrounded by so much family tradition while you are waiting to build your own family.  Luckily, we found ourselves surrounded by such love, that it gave us strength and made the holidays easier to get through and enjoy.  And through it all, this quiet faith has settled into my heart.  A faith that reminds me that this will happen one day.  One day we will be that family of three that is already hanging in our hallway.  One day we will fill our home with more than just paintings and lamps.  One day we will fill our home with a child and we will be glad that we spent so much time getting ready for that day.