Day 5 continued

Life is difficult, but beautiful. We each have our hurts, our past, our moments of shame, and our sin. But we also have our joys, our faith, our moments of triumph, and our Savior. In the past few years, I have been trying to figure out who I truly am deep under all those things. The truth is I am a person with many hurts and scars; some healed and others still open. Unfortunately, some of those open wounds, when probed, ooze and create a mess; if left uncared they can create even bigger messes. Having a son to care for has opened many of those unhealed wounds. I am not saying open wounds can’t be healed; what I am saying is with these hurts exposed I am more likely to allow fear into my life and not focus on the goodness of having a son. I found myself in this precise situation on Tuesday. My mind automatically went to the worst of thoughts: fears of being a person who could possibly create these exact scars in my sons heart, not being worthy enough to be his mother, feeling of impatience, hopelessness and so many other insecurities in my heart. All these thought in my mind as I am holding this child, tears rolling down my face, sobbing. Then I started to think of the hours leading up this very moment and how filled of joy I was with my new baby and my husband, how happy he had been to see our faces in the morning, how great he had slept the night before and his sweet little smile when he sees us. Then I started to think of his scars. In his short 6 months of life he has experienced neglect, abandonment, lonely nights, sadness and a million other things. He has gone from his biological mother’s arms to an orphanage to a transition house to a guest house here with me in 4 months. He has never had consistency and the attention a baby needs in the first few months of life. And thinking of these things made me realized how strong I need to be for this child in the coming weeks. Even though I am exhausted, homesick and feeling overwhelmed I know I can place my hope in something so great and He will take it all away from me. So I did and continue to do so. It is sad how easily the negative can cloud your thoughts and make you into a selfish being. Although I do have scars and unhealed wounds, I have a Father who will bear it all for me, even when I disappoint Him, He loves me. Therefore, my duty as a mother right now is to show Max the same grace and love Jesus shows me. Max needs to know how much Anthony and I love him. This will be the only way to get him to understand the ultimate love, a love greater than anything Anthony and I can give him, unconditional love.

As I type this journal entry, my sweet boy sits next to me. Holding on to my arm wanting to feel comforted by me. I ask God to fill me with the Holy Spirit, to give me strength, and ultimately to give me patience and love like his; love that is never ending, unconditional, and priceless.

After a long night with little sleep we decided to spend the morning at the guest house. There is another couple staying at the guest house from Indiana and they are really sweet people. They are adopting a sweet little girl from the same orphanage that Max came from; she is the sweetest little girl with a very spunky personality. We all spent our day getting to know each other and playing with bubbles. The weather was fantastic. We sat outside, got a little bit of sun and enjoyed each others company. Anthony and Todd hit it off and they spent majority of the day talking sports, gardening, jobs and other things men talk about. Bethany and I talked about what brought us to adopt, our process, timeline and stuff girls talk about J. In the afternoon, we went and dropped off their sweet girl at the transition house and you could tell how difficult that was for both of them. I can't imagine. We all decided to go to the market to buy souvenirs since Bethany and Todd left this evening.  We had an awesome taxi driver who was extremely hilarious and although he spoke English, it was difficult to translate specific words. For example, when I asked him what they word beautiful was in Amharic he did not understand what I was asking him. The funny part of this was when we were at one of the shops I asked one of the guys there that spoke English if he knew what beautiful meant and he said "conja" so I turn and yell to the driver "conja" and he was like "me? I am conja?" hahaha and I was like "no, that's the word i wanted to know." He was like "oh, I thought you were saying I was beautiful" so funny.