Expecting

   Scott and I are expecting parents! We don't have a due date, we don't get one of those unintelligible pictures of our growing baby every couple months or so, and my belly isn't increasing in size every week (but it will be if I don't lay off the comfort food, haha). It is a different kind of expecting. We have been required to answer all the hard questions already, we have to come up with enough money to raise this child to adulthood, but then spend most of it before we even meet him/her, and we don't know when they will be here, it could be any day or it could be years from now. But, nevertheless, we are expecting to be parents. Instead of anxiously awaiting every little kick, we get excited about e-mails and phone calls! We are excited and scared and nervous... as are most expecting parents. We are preparing for a child to come to our home, our family. We don't know what this child will look like, we don't even know what the color of their skin will be, but this doesn't matter. We are so excited to meet our child someday! We are so excited to be a family of three after over 11 years of just the two of us. 
   We are also guarding our hearts. It has been a rough and rocky two years of seeking to adopt. I imagine that we feel the same trepidation that a pregnant woman would feel who has had a miscarriage. It is a hesitant kind of expecting. You believe, hope and pray that everything will work out, but you don't know the future, you don't know what God has in store for your family. It is hard. 
   Please don't mistake our hesitancy for lack of excitement and enthusiasm, we really can't wait to be parents! It is just a difficult thing to let your heart become so invested in something after it has been stomped on a few times. We are taking it one baby step at a time. We hope to put together a baby registry soon, a very big step for me! It makes me all nervous and giddy at the same time. We have purchased paint and such for the "nursery". I am hoarding my PTO (Paid Time Off) hours like a squirrel in the fall, since paid maternity leave isn't guaranteed for an adoptive mother at my work. All of these things are small, baby steps to our hearts' desires. We know we are on the path that God has intended for us, in fact He proved it to us this last weekend (more on that at another time). We are expectant parents and we are expecting a miracle! 
   This morning I looked at Facebook on my phone and then shut off the screen and put the phone down. A couple seconds later the screen lit up again as if I was getting a phone call so I picked it up. Somehow my Bible app had opened and the verse of the day was looking back at me. "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we have asked of Him." 1 John 5:14-15   
Thank you, Lord, for hearing us! 

http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/loving-for-keeps/102675