Day 1: Travel

The past 24+ hours have been exhausting; there is no eloquent way to express how it has been. We left Orlando at 11:15 a.m. on Friday it is now 4:10 p.m. Saturday (East Africa time) and we are still on a plane. I have slept a total of 3 hours, if that, but luckily the flights have not had much turbulence and everything has gone according to schedule. Anthony and I have really enjoyed the hospitality of Lufthansa. The meals, being they are prepackaged, are decent, then again the last time I had prepackaged food was from an MRE and it sucked. Ask the Parker kids, they used the whole package (obviously I didn’t eat it) as a homeschool lesson and their face of disgust expressed my same sentiment. Anyway, as exhausted as I am I got a burst of energy in the past hour. Not sure where it came from considering my lack of sleep, but the answer may lie within that same consideration. Well my plan for this trip is to keep a day-by-day journal of what I (we) am feeling through this process. It may not happen every day as I am soon to be a mother, incase you hadn’t heard, and the requirements for the job are quite demanding, but I will try to manage J.

At this point in the journey I have a surplus of emotions, therefore making it difficult for me to tell you all exactly how I feel. My emotions have been sporadic. It’s as if my body knows I am going to become a mother hence causing my hormones to go haywire. In a span of 40 minutes I cried, laughed, sat in silence, and cried again for no apparent reason. I usually am good at keeping it together, but this past week I have been a little crazy to say the least.

This week, leading to this very day, has been incredibly amazing. I know it is very cliché to say, but truly it has been. Everything people get to plan for in months we accomplished in a week. And by we I don’t mean Anthony and I alone, I am talking about many of our friends and family members coming together to orchestrate this trip. Many times this week we came home to package after package at our door steps, gift cards in our mail box, huge financial support from friends and family, a more than generous grant from Summit, emails with tips on what to pack and what to expect, medicine for Max, diapers, formula, clothes, you name it. People gave and gave. It was evident God was present and continues to be in this process. It is evident we are following His will for our lives and Max.

People continue saying what a blessing we will be to this child, but really what a blessing he has been to us and we haven’t even met him. And this friends is what eases my nerves, my anxiousness, the fact that this child has already made our lives better. He has clearly been a gift in our lives long before we had even seen his face on a photograph.  I really think this is the beauty of adoption. The ability to trust and love blindly. The ability to follow God’s will before my own or our own. I mean, am I really ready to be a mother? I have posed this question to myself so many times. I don’t think I will ever be able to say that I am 100%, but knowing that this is God’s will for our lives and how clear he has made it for us truly makes me ready, as I will ever be. Plus, I am so ready to hold that sweet little guy and tell him how much I already love him, that I will love him more than he will ever know.