Well our first visit went well! We covered genograms today, which are like family trees but focus on relationships and dynamics and not biology. So that was interesting. Todd and I didn't really think we really learned anything new (which is OK because I don't think that was the purpose) but we do think that it helped our caseworker get a better understanding of who we are which will ultimately make this process as relevant as it can be.
Our first class was fun. There are 8 other couples so it's a large group. The class is very dynamic and diverse. It's amazing to see how many different walks of life are brought together in a journey like this. We're looking forward to the rest of the classes. This first one was a lot of housekeeping and nuts and bolts, and an overview of adoption law, which unfortunately doesn't pertain to us, but I understand that the rest of the sessions are much more relational and educational about the true dynamics of adoption and I'm really excited about that.
I just got a google alert. I guess The Focus on the Family story came out today. I was surprised because she shared with me on the phone that she wasn't sure when it would come out so I wasn't even looking for it and didn't know it had been released until I just received that email. I actually just sent a quick update to some friends asking that they pray for the upcoming article!
They only used a small sound byte but that's okay. I don't care if I wouldn't have been included at all--as long as her article can help promote Embryo Adoption Awareness and save little lives, she could quote the man in the moon and that would be okay with me!
But if you're interested, the transcript is here. If you want to hear the actual sound clip, you can listen here. The EA story starts at 3:34 in to the broadcast.
We ask for your prayers for wisdom. We have some potentially exciting news and a big decision to make, but out of respect for the others involved, we'll refrain from posting the details here. We'd ask that you join us in praying for wisdom for all of the parties involved as a decision is made!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Quick Update
Just scooting off to bed. Our first Homestudy Visit for our Embryo Adoption is tomorrow morning. (Diana made the good point that I need to fully type out the word occasionally in order to show up in google and since I want to raise awareness about Embryo Adoption / Snowflake Adoption, then I DO want to show up in google, so I need to type it out more often ;)
Anyway, our first visit is tomorrow morning. I'm scooting off to bed soon but I wanted to post this off topic info in case anyone is interested.
I'm purging a lot of my scrapbook stuff to free up space and funds so I'm having a huge scrapbook garage sale this Saturday.
Here is a link to the ad containing all the details in case any of you readers are local and interested!
I'll update more after the sale is over about our first class, the Homestudy Visit, etc.
Anyway, our first visit is tomorrow morning. I'm scooting off to bed soon but I wanted to post this off topic info in case anyone is interested.
I'm purging a lot of my scrapbook stuff to free up space and funds so I'm having a huge scrapbook garage sale this Saturday.
Here is a link to the ad containing all the details in case any of you readers are local and interested!
I'll update more after the sale is over about our first class, the Homestudy Visit, etc.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Very cool!
I've been contacted twice this week about doing an interview about our IF/EA experience! I was interviewed today by a lady from Focus on the Family! It was neat to get to tell a little part of our story and we're very grateful for the opportunity to share about God's goodness. I have yet to hear back from the lady from the other organization yet but I'm looking forward to it too. I'll be sure to share the article(s) when it/they come(s) out!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Tonight Tonight Tonight!
I'm so excited. Our classes start tonight! Another couple in our church has taken the same classes from this organization and speaks very highly of the series. I'm really looking forward to learning more, and to meeting and interacting with other Adoptive Parents. Then our visit this Friday is exciting too! I was so bummed when I found out that our meeting would be a month after we turned in the paperwork but now that it's here it feels like the time has flown by!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
All finished!
I threw my best friend's baby shower today. I had a lot of fun in the actual party-planning process and the guests seemed to enjoy themselves (at least I hope they did!) In my former life I was an event planner, and I LOVED it, so this was a nice outlet for my otherwise largely-repressed skills and enjoyments.
But it's all over now, which means baby's coming soon!
Here are some pics from the day. Not very good photography, but I was rushed to take a few pictures as guests were arriving-no time for art (it takes me like 10 tries to get 1 good shot and that just wasn't happening today!)
First, my Edible Arrangement. I was tickled pink with how this turned out because I'd never attempted it before. People seemed to enjoy it. The fruit tasted good and I had a chocolate fountain next to it so people took a skewer and then dipped it in chocolate--yummy!
Half of the spread
These were the adorable cupcakes and cake. Sadly, I wish I could say I had this kind of talent, but I do not. They were made by the super fabulous Diana. I ask her for a cake, she says "they aren't my specialty, but sure" and she comes up with THIS! Isn't she amazing? I'd love to see what her "specialty" work looks like!
Then my blue punch! My Sister in Law sent me a recipe for some and I couldn't find the main ingredient anywhere, and I didn't like another main ingredient, so I scratched it and made my own. It actually turned out pretty well!
Our adoption stuff gets in to full swing this week. Our adoption education starts on Tuesday and our first Homestudy visit is this Friday.
Then on Saturday I'm doing a major garage sale to make room for baby.
A few days after that we leave for Jon's wedding in Michigan. Then we come home just in time for my mentor/dear friend C's son's wedding, which I'm doing a few things for. Then we leave for Michigan again, for my oldest friend's wedding.
We think we'll be able to breath come June! =)
TTFN!
But it's all over now, which means baby's coming soon!
Here are some pics from the day. Not very good photography, but I was rushed to take a few pictures as guests were arriving-no time for art (it takes me like 10 tries to get 1 good shot and that just wasn't happening today!)
First, my Edible Arrangement. I was tickled pink with how this turned out because I'd never attempted it before. People seemed to enjoy it. The fruit tasted good and I had a chocolate fountain next to it so people took a skewer and then dipped it in chocolate--yummy!
Half of the spread
These were the adorable cupcakes and cake. Sadly, I wish I could say I had this kind of talent, but I do not. They were made by the super fabulous Diana. I ask her for a cake, she says "they aren't my specialty, but sure" and she comes up with THIS! Isn't she amazing? I'd love to see what her "specialty" work looks like!
Then my blue punch! My Sister in Law sent me a recipe for some and I couldn't find the main ingredient anywhere, and I didn't like another main ingredient, so I scratched it and made my own. It actually turned out pretty well!
Our adoption stuff gets in to full swing this week. Our adoption education starts on Tuesday and our first Homestudy visit is this Friday.
Then on Saturday I'm doing a major garage sale to make room for baby.
A few days after that we leave for Jon's wedding in Michigan. Then we come home just in time for my mentor/dear friend C's son's wedding, which I'm doing a few things for. Then we leave for Michigan again, for my oldest friend's wedding.
We think we'll be able to breath come June! =)
TTFN!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Congratulations
If you've watched my friend list ---> over there, you may have noticed that the number of asterisks beside the names continues to increase. When I first started blogging in December, I had almost no starry friends! Now I have lots. Happiest congratulations to all of you, my friends!
Sorry for the ho-hum posts the last couple days! I finally got some decent sleep last night and my perspective is definitely better. I get so weepy when I'm overly tired. However, though it hasn't been fun to feel crummy this week, I'm so grateful for the continued pruning and revelation God is doing in my soul and I appreciate the things I have learned this week!
God is good my friends. Even in the midst of heartache, we always have cause to rejoice!
Sorry for the ho-hum posts the last couple days! I finally got some decent sleep last night and my perspective is definitely better. I get so weepy when I'm overly tired. However, though it hasn't been fun to feel crummy this week, I'm so grateful for the continued pruning and revelation God is doing in my soul and I appreciate the things I have learned this week!
God is good my friends. Even in the midst of heartache, we always have cause to rejoice!
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
To Everything there is a Season
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.
Grief, infertility and adoption can cause a sort of identity crisis in a woman.
I started down this journey as a starry-eyed bride, full of hopes and dreams about what was to be in our life, and I pontificated with all the earnestness afforded by innocent ignorance and lack of life experience, about wifery, marriage, and parenting. I couldn't wait to be that SUV-driving soccer mom with a car full of kids, and I thought it not only my Christian duty, but the duty of every Christian wife, to stay at home and raise kids for Jesus. Praise God that His glory is not hinged on our biology!
As we continued, I found myself in a job I loved, but always afraid to love it too much, because it was just an in-between place while we waited on God's timing. I found myself wholeheartedly believing that pregnancy would come in the right time, and thanking God that He gave me something else to enjoy in the mean time.
As time wore on and no baby came, I struggled with the notion that everything I had professed about faith and trust in God's timing was a Christianese facade. If I really believed those things, why did my heart ache so badly? I began to rail against the Christian culture that put the suburbian family with 2.4 children and a dog up on a pedestal as the "highest calling" and scorned those starry eyed lovers as "small minded" and limiting of God, despite the fact that I myself had been one of them and longed for that place of ignorance where one can just assume that bodies work correctly and babies come easily. I resented the Christian culture and then resented myself for resenting it. I felt betrayed by everything I had believed about God's plan for my life, by my friends and family who couldn't understand, and by my own dark heart.
I decided that it wasn't the starry-eyed lovers who were in the wrong. After all, God had seen fit to bless them with children while withholding them from me, so I must be the problem. I threw myself in to soul searching and prayer, thinking that if I could just uncover that rock and expose the cobwebs and spiders and put my God-slot machine coin in and say "here, Lord, I give it up!" and He would reward us with baby.
That didn't work either. I began to feel guilty and believe that my soul must be really dark and if I had worked so hard and still couldn't figure out what was disqualifying me from entering the Parenthood Party. I was consumed with guilt and shame and fear, dreading entering the courts of my God for lack of anything to give Him. I felt nervous in my own skin, unsure of how to fit in a culture that DOES praise motherhood. Gradually, I developed a spiritual hunch. I skulked in the shadows of the Temple, feeling more like a leper than a princess. I hid myself as best I could, offering what meager remnants of my broken spirit remained, and ashamed to keep company with those who walked upright and full of grace.
Slowly, it all turned to grief, as I really began to mourn all that had been lost. I'd lost a dream, I'd lost a sense of self, I'd lost my understanding of my place in God's kingdom, I lost my knowledge of my identity in Him, I lost the will to Hope, and to believe in God's loving kindness. I cried and cried and cried, and asked the questions I'd been to afraid to ask, and uprooted the bitter root that had taken foot in my soul.
I'd tried everything I could to fix the situation, and to make myself a better Christian for it, wanting desperately to prove that I could accept God's sovereignty in any situation, and yet it was only in my brokenness that He began to heal me. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to a life-long Christian, but it did. He began to teach me that I am not the bride, the bitter, the betrayed, the broken, or even the barren. I am Jennifer, daughter of the most High God. All of these things were a chapter in the story of my life that He has written for His glory.
I began to appreciate the chapters. Instead of skipping through them to get to a better one, I hung on every word. And carefully, slowly, exquisitely, He continued writing.
Now, as God has filled my heart with a new dream, and has begun a new chapter, I understand how much He has used the past to equip my heart for this new journey. I was and am all of those things and yet none of them. Before teaching me the role of mother, He has taught me the role of daughter!
Now in this new chapter, the canvas on top is blank, yet I can still see the layers underneath of works gone by. I find myself pausing when grief still catches me by surprise, and pausing when it doesn't. I am not a mom yet, but I am a mom in my heart. I no longer identify myself entirely as "Primary Infertility" and yet I still occasionally grapple with the fact that I will never have a biological child. And I've realized that this grief will always be a part of my story, because like all seasons, it has its time and place. God does not deal in selective amnesia (though how wonderful is it that He himself forgets our sins!) But sometimes it does feel a bit like he deals in schizophrenia. ;) Here I am, the barren and the mom-to-be, the grieved and the joyful, the full and the broken, all fearfully and wonderfully knit together in the same soul. The lover of my soul Has excited my passion in ways I have never known before, and has stilled my spirit with the knowledge that I was never out of His hand nor far from His heart.
How grateful I am for the marvelous ways He has done all of this to prepare my heart for this new journey and for the children that may one day result from it. I look back on who I was when we first longed for a baby, and who He has made to be now, and I am grateful that His plan is so much greater than ours. Anxious I am to meet our child, but God through this grief has brought me full circle and with my whole heart I say "yes, Lord, in Thy divine timing!"
Grief, infertility and adoption can cause a sort of identity crisis in a woman.
I started down this journey as a starry-eyed bride, full of hopes and dreams about what was to be in our life, and I pontificated with all the earnestness afforded by innocent ignorance and lack of life experience, about wifery, marriage, and parenting. I couldn't wait to be that SUV-driving soccer mom with a car full of kids, and I thought it not only my Christian duty, but the duty of every Christian wife, to stay at home and raise kids for Jesus. Praise God that His glory is not hinged on our biology!
As we continued, I found myself in a job I loved, but always afraid to love it too much, because it was just an in-between place while we waited on God's timing. I found myself wholeheartedly believing that pregnancy would come in the right time, and thanking God that He gave me something else to enjoy in the mean time.
As time wore on and no baby came, I struggled with the notion that everything I had professed about faith and trust in God's timing was a Christianese facade. If I really believed those things, why did my heart ache so badly? I began to rail against the Christian culture that put the suburbian family with 2.4 children and a dog up on a pedestal as the "highest calling" and scorned those starry eyed lovers as "small minded" and limiting of God, despite the fact that I myself had been one of them and longed for that place of ignorance where one can just assume that bodies work correctly and babies come easily. I resented the Christian culture and then resented myself for resenting it. I felt betrayed by everything I had believed about God's plan for my life, by my friends and family who couldn't understand, and by my own dark heart.
I decided that it wasn't the starry-eyed lovers who were in the wrong. After all, God had seen fit to bless them with children while withholding them from me, so I must be the problem. I threw myself in to soul searching and prayer, thinking that if I could just uncover that rock and expose the cobwebs and spiders and put my God-slot machine coin in and say "here, Lord, I give it up!" and He would reward us with baby.
That didn't work either. I began to feel guilty and believe that my soul must be really dark and if I had worked so hard and still couldn't figure out what was disqualifying me from entering the Parenthood Party. I was consumed with guilt and shame and fear, dreading entering the courts of my God for lack of anything to give Him. I felt nervous in my own skin, unsure of how to fit in a culture that DOES praise motherhood. Gradually, I developed a spiritual hunch. I skulked in the shadows of the Temple, feeling more like a leper than a princess. I hid myself as best I could, offering what meager remnants of my broken spirit remained, and ashamed to keep company with those who walked upright and full of grace.
Slowly, it all turned to grief, as I really began to mourn all that had been lost. I'd lost a dream, I'd lost a sense of self, I'd lost my understanding of my place in God's kingdom, I lost my knowledge of my identity in Him, I lost the will to Hope, and to believe in God's loving kindness. I cried and cried and cried, and asked the questions I'd been to afraid to ask, and uprooted the bitter root that had taken foot in my soul.
I'd tried everything I could to fix the situation, and to make myself a better Christian for it, wanting desperately to prove that I could accept God's sovereignty in any situation, and yet it was only in my brokenness that He began to heal me. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to a life-long Christian, but it did. He began to teach me that I am not the bride, the bitter, the betrayed, the broken, or even the barren. I am Jennifer, daughter of the most High God. All of these things were a chapter in the story of my life that He has written for His glory.
I began to appreciate the chapters. Instead of skipping through them to get to a better one, I hung on every word. And carefully, slowly, exquisitely, He continued writing.
Now, as God has filled my heart with a new dream, and has begun a new chapter, I understand how much He has used the past to equip my heart for this new journey. I was and am all of those things and yet none of them. Before teaching me the role of mother, He has taught me the role of daughter!
Now in this new chapter, the canvas on top is blank, yet I can still see the layers underneath of works gone by. I find myself pausing when grief still catches me by surprise, and pausing when it doesn't. I am not a mom yet, but I am a mom in my heart. I no longer identify myself entirely as "Primary Infertility" and yet I still occasionally grapple with the fact that I will never have a biological child. And I've realized that this grief will always be a part of my story, because like all seasons, it has its time and place. God does not deal in selective amnesia (though how wonderful is it that He himself forgets our sins!) But sometimes it does feel a bit like he deals in schizophrenia. ;) Here I am, the barren and the mom-to-be, the grieved and the joyful, the full and the broken, all fearfully and wonderfully knit together in the same soul. The lover of my soul Has excited my passion in ways I have never known before, and has stilled my spirit with the knowledge that I was never out of His hand nor far from His heart.
How grateful I am for the marvelous ways He has done all of this to prepare my heart for this new journey and for the children that may one day result from it. I look back on who I was when we first longed for a baby, and who He has made to be now, and I am grateful that His plan is so much greater than ours. Anxious I am to meet our child, but God through this grief has brought me full circle and with my whole heart I say "yes, Lord, in Thy divine timing!"
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