just another day ...

I've been reading through some blogs I have found online. Blogs written by women just like me ... women who long to have a baby of their own to love. Their stories of their long journey to living out their dream. It's been really encouraging to read their words ... just knowing that I'm not alone or wrong in having the feelings that I am feeling.

Here's a song that one of the women posted....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqfGqOx2iDQ

"Not Lacking Anything"

So I have been reading through James ... and honestly most of my time I have been focusing on the very first chapter. I read through the whole thing the other night (not that it's long or anything lol) but I just kept coming back to the very beginning. These are the verses that seemed to demand my attention:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance."

I guess this really stuck out to me because of how much I have been thinking about how our long journey to be come parents has been so far. Just thinking about where I was when we first began this journey to where I am now. I'm sure that someone along this journey has quoted or referenced the beginning of this passage to me ... and I'm sure in my head I thought of some smart mouth thing to say back because I was so bitter towards God at that time. But as I kept on reading this passage something else hit me ....

"Perseverance must finish it's work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Not that I would ever really voluntarily go through what we have already been through on our journey to become parents again ... I totally see how God has been preparing us. I mean it's been soooooooooo hard, and my heart has been broken soooooo many times throughout the last two years. There was so much that I just didn't understand. There were so many questions I asked ... without ever really feeling like I had ever been given and answer. I cried too many tears, hated God too many times ... but through it all I know that God was still waiting for me to let go ... to simply trust ... I had to face everything that we did so that I could be complete ... have complete trust, complete faith, complete love, not lacking anything. Now, I don't know how close I am to all of that ... but I feel like I am a new person. I had to go through the deepest valley I have ever gone through in my life. This part of the passage reminded me of the "old me"...

"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." James 1:2-8

It seemed never ending ... 2 1/2 years of emptyness and heartache. I would ask God for a miracle ... but I don't know how much I believed that he would really give it to us. I thought that I was being punished for something ... thought that I had to take the situation into my own hands. (boy was that a stupid thing to do!) And being unstable is an understatement I think ... I was a mess! But I have never felt more alive than I do now. And I have never felt so in love with my husband than I do at this very moment. We both needed to go through this time together I guess to really become ONE. I still long for the moment to be a mommy ... and I pray everyday that day comes soon ... but for the first time I feel so thankful to be chosen for this journey. Not everyone is called to love someone else's baby. And I feel so priveldged that God chose Alya and I for this adventure. I keep calling this time in our life and adventure, because I truly see it just as that. And adventure is amazing and fun ... but a true adventure can also be scary at times, and you might not be able to see your way out. But I've learned to completely trust God through this time and I have never been happier. I feel like the hardest walks through the valleys are only necessary to prepare you for something extrordinary on the mountain top. I can't wait to see what ours is going to look like! :0)

Brokenness

Sometimes it's hard to really hear God. Like I'm ready and waiting to see what He is going to do or ask me to do next ... but sometimes in that waiting I get a little confused on whether or not it's Him telling me to do something ... or if it's just my heart jumping in because I want this so bad.

We asked to have the boys removed a few weeks ago. I don't regret this decision at all ... I do think that it was in the best interest in everyone involved. But it took a week I think to really let the idea of them being gone set in. Looking back on it three weeks after the fact, I think that it was just Satan trying to attack. Trying to get me down, trying to bring doubt back into my life. I just felt like I had completely failed in loving those boys. I can't tell you all the people that would say, "Oh but you gave them the best home and care that they have probably ever had." And although that may be true, I didn't feel like it was the best that I could give them. I felt like I quit on the situation, and I am not a quitter. I felt like God had trusted me to take care of the orphaned ... and I had let HIM down. Basically I just felt like a failure ... THEN that very next weekend Alya and I were enjoying just being together down in St.Auggie when we get a call from FSS in Duval asking us to take a THREE day old baby boy and his one year old brother. OMG! Alya told me to say no because we just didn't know for sure if the boys would be adoptable or not and he didn't want to see me go through what I went through when we lost Hope. God, I was a mess! I mean I was so torn ... on one hand I was 100% done with working with FSS. I felt like they had screwed us over so many times. I was so tired of giving them my heart to break over and over. But then when they told me that he was only THREE DAYS OLD! I was like man, are we going to be missing out on something? I just got done saying no to one set of boys ... are we making a wrong decision in saying no to yet another set of orphans??? I know that God has called us to take care of the orphans ... but which ones do you want US to take care of God? What we really should have done is both of us needed to cry out to God right there in the middle of Kmart and ask God to give us direction. But we didn't.... I listened to Alya and I told the woman that we just couldn't take the boys right now .... and I felt ill. I felt sick in saying no to these perfect little babies ... but I didn't know if it was because it was because God really wanted us to take those sweet angels, or if it was just because it was a way for me to control getting to have a baby in my house again.

The rest of the weekend seemed kind of ruined to me after that. I still kept thinking that we had made a mistake. Nothing new was really happening in our private adoption journey at the moment. Just kind of in a standstill right now ... some things just because I have been busy or procrastinating which ever one it seemed to be depending on the day. But that Monday I got a message from a friend that I had met in a totally random place. :0) (Don't you just love how God uses the random places to work??) She was just starting out in her photography business and wanted to share what God was blessing her with to help out two couples with their adoption funds. She will be donating 10% of her photo sessions to our adoption fund! I was reading her message while I was at work, and I just completely lost it right then and there at my desk. I desperately needed a word of encouragement ... and I truly feel like God used her to give me some peace back to my soul. I just felt like God was saying, it's okay Lindsay, I've still got this. Stop worrying that you are missing out on something, you'll know when it's right. sigh .... sometimes I think that God uses our brokenness to calm our soul. He needs us to be completely vulnerable to really be able to hold on tight and trust Him, because honestly we don't really have a choice to do anything other than hold on to Him. I am so thankful for the reflection time that He has given me over the last few weeks. I'm thankful that He is so patient with my stubbornness. I'm so thankful that I don't have to do this alone.

Some Good Things:

* We now have $1,476.86 in our adoption fund.
* We have another fundraiser going on at http://www.adoptionbug.com/babycotton
* Julie Paisley is helping us out with giving us a portion of her photo sessions ... so check her out on Julie Paisley Photography on Facebook!
* We might have a potential professional fundraiser that wants to help us out??? Pray about that!

We had a photo session with Julie last weekend ... and she took some awesome pics of us in our adoption shirt from one of our fundraisers. Check them out! :0)










If there is one thing that I have learned through this whole long journey that Alya and I have been on, it would be this: Together we can do anything. We are more stronger today than we were yesterday ... and everyday God brings us one more step closer to seeing our dreams come true. He is a God of miracles ... and He is constructing one of His finest masterpieces right at this very moment. :0)

cuddle time

I'm longing for some sweet cuddle time with a little baby right now. I think that is one of the things I miss most about not having our Hope here anymore. That sweet baby smell is like nothing else when you are cuddling with your sleepy baby. Sometimes it's so hard to wait when your heart feels so empty. I know that we are on the right path right now, but I'll be honest in saying that raising $21,000 feels so daunting when I let my mind think about it. I have no doubts that God will provide in one way or another ... it's just the time part that gets met thinking. How much time Lord will we wait for our perfect miracle that you are going to give us?

It's been a year this month that our sweet little Hope came in and changed our lives forever. Words will never express how much I love that little girl. And I still can't describe the emptyness and pain that my heart feels every day that she is not here with us. There were so many people that told me that it would get better with time, that God had a plan and that there was a perfect baby out there for us somewhere. I have no doubt that God has a perfect forever baby out there for us ... but it does not in any way lessen the pain that I feel after we lost Hope. I think that I am able to deal with that loss in a healthier way now than when we first lost her. But the ache of having her not be apart of our lives will never go away. I still pray every day for my little girl to come back home to us. She will forever be apart of our lives.

I'm not going to lie, I'm tired of playing a waiting game. I know that God's timing is perfect ... but I have finally come to the conclusion that I am just not a very patient person. lol We are going to go to Bundle of Hope on Tuesday this week for a CPR training course that we have to take. I am excited to possibly meet some of the staff there. I finished our "Lifebook" online the other day and it should be here by Monday hopefully. We just have a few more documents to turn in and then all we are waiting for is to save and raise enough money to adopt. I am still praying for that miracle. It's hard too because Alya and I are committed to not take out a loan for this adoption. Although, it would be so much easier to just have the money quickly and get our baby even faster ... it's just not something that I believe God is wanting us to do. After going through our Financial Peace University class by Dave Ramsey I feel like it would be like taking a huge giant step backwards from all that we have learned and tried to incorporate into our marriage. I just don't believe that God is going to give us a baby by making us go farther into debt. I know that we get a big tax break at the end of the year, but I would much rather use that money to go into our next adoption fund than to pay off a loan from a bank. I get probably five loan offer emails a day. It drives me mad, because it's such a temptation to click on the email to read what they have to offer ... but I haven't I just immediately delete everything. I'm just praying that through our faith and dedication to wait on God, that He will provide in crazy ways ... soon :0)

For now I guess I will just have to dream about cuddling with my soon to be forever miracle baby. I can't wait for those dreams to become my reality. It will be such a sweet gift to my waiting heart.

just one of those days ...

You know yesterday was just one of those days that just really sucked. I woke up feeling super emotional and hormonal (the joys of being a woman), had a puker at school, had a major incident with stealing to deal with when I got home and I just pretty much had a bad day. It felt like bed time couldn't come fast enough so that I could just sleep the rest of the day away and wake up to hopefully a better one the next day. But you know what ... God was pretty amazing. ha, when isn't he really ... I got a message from a very dear woman in my life saying that they had received one of our support letters in the mail and wanted to contribute towards our adoption fund. It just was a really amazing way for God to be like "Lindsay, even when your day is full of dissappointments and you are too tired to even want to deal with anything, I am still writing your adoption story. I am still providing for you." What a relief that is ... it felt so nice going to bed knowing that even when the world around me is chaotic, God is still holding me close and taking care of the things closest to my heart. Thank you Father for always providing, and for continuing to allow me to see your hands working in my life.

"Do you want to get well?"

This is from part of Daryl's message this morning ... it just kind of touched my heart and made me think of what my life has been like these past 2 1/2 years trying to become parents.

John 5:1-6
"Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem or a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethsda and which is surrounded by five covered colonades. Here a great number of disable people used to lie - the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?""

When I heard Daryl read from this passage this morning I thought to myself "huh, that's what I have been for the past 2 1/2 years,an invalid. I was unable to move on, unable to accept that God was in control of my life and not me. I was unable to truely live again ... because I just layed there in my dark and dreary pit of a life that I had created. I wasn't able to see at that time that it was really myself that had created that pit ... and that it was only me that was in the way of moving on. That I was the only one keeping myself from really being able to live. That question that Jesus asked the invalid in the story seems so simple ..."Do you want to get well?" That man had layed there for 38 years and made excuse after excuse of why he was still an invalid. Finally it just took Jesus being blunt with the man and telling him to "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." What an easy thing to say, but such a hard thing to do when you just don't believe. This passage really brought back how dark these past couple of years have been ... and how much of my life I let slip by being miserable and losing faith each and everyday. It makes me sad to think of how much I hated God during this dark period in my life. How much bittness I had towards him ... Right now I am trying to figure out how I came out of that period in my life. I don't really remember making a conscious decision to "Get up!" But I feel so thankful that I am not in that same place anymore. I am so glad that God never gives up on us ... because if He did he should have given up on me a long time ago.
:0) I kind of feel like this passage was a gift to my soul this morning. Last week I started feeling really overwhelmed by everything that is going on. It's all because I have had some down time with the whole adoption stuff and my mind was able to start thinking ... always a bad thing! haha But I just started thinking about how impossible this was going to be to save up this much money. This passage really woke me up and made me realize that the thoughts I was having this last week are exactly where I was and where my mind always went during that really dark period in my life. I don't want to go back there ... I am refusing! So I am just going to "GET UP!" and trust God in this amazing adventure He has Alya and I on right now.

We recieved a call last Tuesday (1-26-10) from Bundle of Hope telling us that we were officially approved into the agency. They also told us to consider having our profile be reviewed by a birthmother. If we agreed to that and were chosen then we would need to put down $6,000. When I got off the phone with her I just started crying ... it hadn't even been a week since we had mailed off our application and here we were getting a call about a possble match. How quickly all of this is going! Alya and I prayed about it that night and decided that it just wasn't time yet ... and we felt total peace with that decision. I would have loved to tell them yes, but again that would have been me taking control ... and I just don't want to do that anymore. We have a few more fundraisers in the works right now. Tossing around some ideas of some coming up, and really praying that we get approved for a potentially really big one! We should be hearing back from someone on that in the next couple of days hopefully. We still need to get our home study sent in from FSS (hoping our new one for this year is done quickly so that we can send in a copy of that one since the one I have is from last year) We also have to get a Lifebook completed which is kind of like a little scrapbook for the birthmothers to look at when they are selecting an adoptive family for their baby. I typed up fundraising letters today and copied and mailed out 53. I am just in constant prayer about our journey all day long. I dream about it ... dream about our baby. I just can't wait for that day to come ... praying that it will be soon. Praying that God moves in powerful ways!

It's officially started!

Our adoption adventure that is ... I just mailed in our application this afternoon after school. After I got back into my car from leaving the post office I just started crying. Crying tears of excitment, tears of anticipation, tears of amazment in how big our God is! I know that this journey is only just starting ... and I know that it's probably going to be a roller coaster of emotions over the next several months to however long it takes to bring our baby home ... but I just can't help getting so excited to see what GOD is going to do. I know that this new journey in our lives HAS to be all him, because there is no way for me to have control this time. I just keep praying that I keep a positive attitude toward everything that we will go through on this new journey. I just want to sit back and enjoy everything that we get the priveledge to experience. I want to remember everything so that I can tell our little baby how many amazing miracles God did in our lives to bring them into our family.

It's been awhile since my last post ... just trying to get though the holidays and all of the buckeye making we did. We have raised $1,458.00 so far. $500 just went towards our adoption application fee which leaves $958 in our adoption savings account. We still have three more bottles of change to turn in as well. The next step is getting approved by the agency and then applying for as many grants as I can to raise more money. We are still trying to come up with more fundraising ideas to help us out as well.

I approached Alya just a couple of weeks ago when I was doing the finishing touch-ups to our application ... at first we had decided to just put that we would accept any sex and any race for an adoptive baby. But I just kept feeling like a little girl was being placed on my heart. I asked Alya what he thought about it, and he agreed that he wanted a little baby girl in the house again too. So we have decided to request a bi-racial baby girl on our application. It's going to cost more money than we had originally thought because we have chosen a different race. But I really feel like this was placed on our hearts for a reason ... and our God is bigger than any amount of money! Her name will be Amiah Grace Cotton and we just can't wait to see her beautiful face. I can't wait to bring my baby girl home with her mommy and daddy that have been waiting forever for her. <3