Hello New Year!

This is the year!  This is the year that I finally become a mom!  Not a waiting mom, not an expecting mom, but a REAL mom with a child!  Surely...hopefully...maybe.  If the paperwork is like making the baby and the wait is like carrying the baby, then I am 6 1/2 months overdue.  I tell Paul sometimes, "I don't know how much longer I can wait."  His response is reasonable, "what else are you going to do?"  The other day I brought up these conversations and told him "I think I'm really just going to explode.  I mean really.  You are going to come home one day and I'm not going to be there because I exploded."

I hate to even make a prediction that we will bring her home this year.  Every time we have said when we thought it might work out, we were so very wrong.  I'm starting to feel like its a lot like Jesus' Second Coming.  No one knows the day or time just the Father and He will come like a thief in the night.  So, you know he isn't going to tell some crackpot in a foil hat the day.  I don't think He told some indians in Mexico, either.  I feel like our adoption is the same way.  He knows what He is doing and the more I try to predict it, I'll just keep being wrong.  But, surely...hopefully...maybe...this year.

I don't know how to explain the longing.  It does threaten to tear me apart all the time.  I have decided though that this since it is a new year and I can't imagine making it to the end of this year without Clarissa, that I am going to channel this longing into something else.

What else?  Well, the nursery has become a storage room again.  I have to get that cleaned out.  There are several rooms in my house that need a new coat of paint.  I can't paint with a baby so I need to get that done before she gets here.  I have all kinds of plans for this new year!!  The hard part is the follow through. 

We had a wonderful Christmas!!  We spent time with family, ate too much, and got some great gifts.  Now I'm looking forward to January where I'll be taking a weekend to go out of town with my mom and sister.  This is a Christmas tradition for us.  We get money for Christmas and then take a weekend-long shopping trip.  It is always so much fun.  A couple of weeks after that I'll be headed to the Created For Care retreat.  I'm also very excited about that. 

I hope everyone of you had a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!!  I look forward to sharing some good news this coming year.