Well this is it. We have passed court, recieved our last document needed to travel, and purchased our plane tickets. We leave August 30th. That's 3 1/2 weeks away! I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything. Just a week ago we were bracing ourselves to have to wait until November. Now that it is coming up so soon, I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on anything. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the trip and all that it will include. The funniest thing about it is that I'm not at all afraid. The reason this is especially strange is that I am usually anxious about everything. I have OCD. Trips like this should be rocking my little Sierra world to the point of being under the covers in the fetal position. I'm not though and I know why. When I prayed about adopting I asked God for a lot of grace. One of the reasons we decided not to have any more biological kids is that I mentally couldn't handle it again. With all of my complications during pregnancy, I lived in constant panic. Everything was so out of my control that my anxiety took over and robbed me of many precious months of enjoying the new life inside of me. I never never wanted to go through that again. So I prayed and told God that I wanted another child but asked if He would please grant me this feeling of peace that I have always craved but never been able to grasp. He chose to give it to me. Today I feel the greatest joy and peace of my life. I wish I could take a picture of it. I don't know if I will ever see it again in this life. I feel like I'm getting a glimpse of heaven. I'm thinking ahead about all of the logistics of leaving the girls for 12 days and trying to figure out what to do about the new girls with school. And on top of that there are all of the feelings of uncertainty that go along with picking up 2 strangers and bringing them home as my children. Everything in my head screams FEAR, but yet I feel none of it. I'm trying to figure out why this time is different and realizing that there is no answer to "why" when experiencing grace. There is no answer because nothing I did or ever have done would cause me to deserve it. It's just given. With OCD you live in a world of checks and balances so this concept blows my mind. I love it when He does that.
