Up to Speed....or JUST SPEED UP!?!

I thought I would bring everyone up to speed on our wait. (there is nothing speedy about it!) We were awaiting an amendment to our homestudy, stating that we wanted to adopt a child between the ages of 6mos-4yrs. We had originally put in our home study that we wanted to adopt a child between the ages of 6mos-3yrs. Since my mooncake will be almost 3.5 when we get travel approval, we have to amend our immigration application...that was approved based on our homestudy. All of this paperwork feels like a wobbly table full of dominoes...one wrong move and they all go down. Not to mention being charged $360 to change the age bracket of my approval by 12months. Yes ma'am, that will be one dollar for every day!?! The $360 is for the amendment to our immigration paperwork, so we would have to pay even if we had a change of address.

There have been those moments of....."grrrrr! why does this have to be so stinkin hard....and why does it cost so much...and why do we have to wait so long to go get her!?! I am not proud to say that there have been many....many......many moments like this for me. I recently started a book called "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp. It is about Eucharist. Eucharist is the greek word for thanksgiving.

"Eucharist [thanksgiving] is the state of the perfect man. Eucharist is the life of paradise. Eucharist is the only full and real response of man to God's creation, redemption, and gift of heaven." Alexander Schmemann

The thing that drew me to the book initially was the beautiful cover...I mean, if I am being honest...then I read the words "A dare to LIVE FULLY right where you are." oooooooh but I am living fully. But am I always at the table of thanksgiving?....where God wants me to be? No....sometimes I find I am rushing to the next thing, and the next....I want this process to speed up...but in all my speeding up and rushing to the next, I am losing the here. So I thought I would share some of the here. I am committed to journaling one thousand gifts. Gifts given from a very gracious Heavenly Father. The goal is to look through the lense of gratitude to find those gifts. The task is to slow myself down to see.

1. A tenderhearted daughter.......gift.

2.Giggles from happy children...gift

3. Sweet sandy messages....gift

4. Sweet giggles from an Ethiopian baby with her forever family....gift
.....It seems that I "counted my blessings", so they say, but this list has helped me to see them more clearly. They are brighter and sharper than ever. As we wait, I will turn my focus to the here, where my children are 15, 9, and 3. Where I have been married for 17 years, where my parents and brother are...where my God waits for me to show me His many gifts the easy and the hard eucharisteo [the attitude of gratitude].