Today is our 5th anniversary. Wow, the time flies by and yet sometimes if feels like it has been way longer (that may be because we have been together for 9 years). It has been full of good times and bad, richer and poor, better or worse, sickness and health. I don't know what the next 5, 10, etc. years will hold, but I know that we have come through so much and if we can handle that, we can get through much more, with God's help of course. I definitely didn't think that we would be where we are at today, though.
When we first got married and talked about kids, we had thought that we would wait 5 years before we would start trying. We wanted 4 kids and we thought that maybe, once our kids were older, we would like to adopt internationally. Life has a funny way of working out and God doesn't always follow our plans (rarely in fact). But in this time we have grown so much closer, learnt so much about ourselves, done things we would not have been able to do and had the chance to meet and talk to people who have similar stories as ours.
So, here we are 5 years later. Instead of waiting 5 years, we started trying to get pregnant 3.5 years ago. We both love children and finally decided at that time that we both wanted to start a family (we took turns being ready before that). After, not being able to get pregnant, we started talking about other options and it has been 1.25 years since we started the adoption process.
We don't know how long it will be, but just like we have trusted God through the hard times of our marriage, we are trusting him with the timing of our children (as hard as that is). The count down is at about 14-16 months till referral (but who's counting). Already the wait is getting longer for others behind us, so it might be longer for us as well. Luckily, we have been very distracted with many different things going on in our lives to get too stressed out about the wait. Still, they are always on my mind. What will they look like? Will we have boys or girls or one of each? How am I going to learn to do their hair? What age will they be? What can I buy a head of time? etc. This is the fun part, because I can think of so many different scenerios and all of them would be wonderful.
Besides the waiting for our children, Africa has really been on my heart and mind recently. We were there 1 1/2 years ago and we loved it (that's what lead us to international adoption) and we would love to go back. Soon, very soon. But until then, I just try to prepare myself, as much as I can, for my children. And I am so happy to have the support and love from friends and family around us.
