"Hoping" to Adopt

It's been over a year and half since I posted, and what a year and a half it's been. In some ways I feel like  completely different person than the one who wrote the previous posts, with the biggest change being that I am no longer a closet Taylor Swift fan. You can't admit to yourself that you like her and her music and not have it change you.

There have been other significant life-changing events over the last couple of years. Every day is a battle to decide that I am going to be okay not knowing what the future holds in store for our family of two. Will it grow or always be just the two of us? I've become the person who I talk to most, telling myself that I can do this. I can have faith. I can be  patient. I am okay turning my life over to those who know my needs better than I do. I guess that's what this whole thing is about.

The route of the emotional roller coaster began with excitement, turned into sadness and anger, took a loop through pride, and is now settling somewhere on the border between pride and impatience. I hate that I have to share so many personal details about my relationship with Dan with so many people I don't know. It's something that seems too precious to post about on a public site. And to know that someone who reads about us will not really know us authentically, because to only write about the good things is to say that there is no value in the challenges we face and the flaws in our human nature. How can anyone ever really appreciate the whole of a person without knowing those things? Those battle scars and quirks are what make a person relatable, likeable, and well, a person. The whole process feels so uncomfortable to me that I would much rather live out the dream when I show up on the first day of school to greet my class only to realize that I don't have pants on.

But, nevertheless, here we are  . . . hoping to adopt. And I'm working every day at the "hope" part of the process. I had no intentions for this to be the most depressing post in the world, but I felt such a need to communicate the reality of "hoping to adopt." I look at others' profiles and wonder how they seem so happy and patient while in this oversaturated pool of waiters. I click through and count the number of couples or families I would choose over myself. How are there so many ridiculously good-looking, super wealthy, or over-educated people in the pool of hopeful parents? I can't imagine that there are too many birth parents who sit down to write their ideal adoptive parent attributes as not bad looking, enough money, and some education. But, hey, if they did, I would be just the person for them! Sometimes, just when I feel completely hopeless, someone comes out of the woodwork to share with me a story about someone in their family who adopted and the story is remarkable, the kind of story that makes you know in an instant that there are forces greater than ourselves at work here.

There are a lot of things that I don't know. But I do know for some reason that I am supposed to write about my feelings and experiences. I'm much better at working through my emotions in writing than I am in person or even in my head. Maybe that's the reason why I'm supposed to share these feelings. I can't imagine that there is anyone who could benefit from reading about my experiences since I'm still working in remedial levels when it comes to understanding things in this life.

I pray every day that the Lord will forgive me for being so proud and hard headed. And I pray for patience, hope, and faith . . . lots and lots of faith. And for now, I'll just keep taking things one day at a time, hoping to adopt.

DanAndMeganAdopt.com

Life lessons . . . Again and again

Adulthood is just a series of life lessons. In my early 20s I learned that life never turns out how you plan. It took me a really long time to learn this lesson, being the planner that I am. But the bigger lesson learned here was that things always work out like the should, and often even better than you'd planned. So I still make plans, but I keep them flexible and *try* to roll with the changes that inevitably come up. I'm a work in progress. But I am getting better at it all the time. I am so grateful for all the things that have happened the way they have up to this point. I am so happy.

I know what my current life lesson is, but I'm also having a hard time learning this one: be grateful for the things that you do have instead of focusing on the things you don't have. I have a body. I am also having a really hard time being grateful for the body I do have. I have a lot of physical limitations. I've always had some, but right now I have more. I have been really lucky up to this point, because even though I have had some limitations, I have still been able to do most of the things I wanted to do. The past eight monts I have been severely limited in what I can do. This is really hard for someone who is used to being as busy and active as I am. I watch a lot of TV now. I used to hate TV. Now I hate that I like it and that I have "shows." I'm crying just thinking about it. I want to go, run, weightlift, do yoga, go, go, go, but I can't. And if I do, I can't walk for the next few days. I want to have babies- lots of them, right now. I can't. I want to hold a crying baby and change poopy diapers. I want to teach a child to read and share my hundreds of books with them. I want my days to have meaning. Instead I keep waiting. And I know that this will all make sense someday, because it always does. That's the beauty of faith. So for now I take it a day at a time and try to enjoy want I can do, while plotting to kidnap other people's children. I can walk. I can do water aerobics with the women over 70. I can do Zumba, which is surprisingly fun. And I can take advantage of all this me time to write a thrilling romance novel about vampires. Maybe I'll write an entire series and someone will turn my series into blockbuster movies. Who knows?

Why is it so hard to be content with what you do have? I'm trying so hard. I even force myself to smile when I feel like crying. It doesn't do much for my face since I'm an ugly crier. I take a mental inventory each day of my many blessings and then I feel so silly for ever feeling sorry for myself . . . Until the next time I feel frustrated with my situation. I feel really silly publicly admitting to this weakness, but I know I'm not the only person who goes through these emotions. Sometimes even knowing that everything will turnout okay doesn't seem to make things immediately better. And the truth is, as soon as you make it through the current trial, there's a new one waiting for you. So maybe I am grateful that I have this trial and not a worse one. And I should be grateful that my Heavenly Father thought highly enough of me to send a trial my way. Maybe I even chose this trial before I came to Earth. Even as I'm typing this I feel a little bit better. So, thank you for taking this journey with me through this sappy post. Here's to being strong enough to handle any trials that come our way!

Where is my mind?

 . . . aaaaaand we're back.

I apparently had a bit of an emotional breakdown/identity crisis yesterday. That might have been apparent in my blog post asking for new friends. I don't know, maybe normal people do that. But I'll tell you what normal people don't do: make plans to move across the country to New York City, a place they've never been. But I found Dan a job, and a job for me at a large publishing company. I was going to start wearing Spanx and eyeliner and cut my hair into a sleek bob. I was ready for the museums, and restaurants, and "culture." I just kept saying "culture." I was there. In my mind, I was there.

But here I am today, wearing sweat pants, one of Dan's T-shirts, a long blonde pony tail, sans bra, and working for an independent publisher struggling to make a place for itself in this digital world. I live near a Target and an In 'n Out Burger. I guess some might call that culture. This isn't "the life," but it's my life. And, after eight hours of sleep last night, I'm happy to be a part of it. Until the next time that I get only a few hours of sleep.

Sleepless in the suburbs,

Now Serving Humble Pie

I am honest enough with myself that I can admit my last post was a bit on the whiney, emotional side. But don't worry, because you know what they say about karma.

Our lesson in Relief Society yesterday was on charity. And for some reason the majority of the lesson took the spin of forgiving others and giving everyone the benefit of the doubt because you don't know their story. It's as if the heavens opened and God grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, and said "Get over it." So I did. The end. :)

decem part 2

So, by now you're probably thinking that I'm a total scrooge and maybe I am.

I get notifications almost every 30 minutes that someone else has written a comment on my class of 2001 reunion facebook group's wall. From what I can gather, I'm the only person in my graduating class that isn't making a countdown chain to this reunion. It's not that I hated high school, it was just a rough time for me.

For starters, I was 17 years-old. I was a completely different person emotionally, socially, etc. I would hope that the other people in my class could say the same thing about themselves. So maybe part of me is embarrassed to think that someone might remember what a dork and then what a brat I was. Right, I think that's a really big part of it.

But most of it is that I spent the better part of my senior year in and out of the hospital, was "home-schooled" since I was too sick to go to school, and was completely deserted by a number of "good friends." That sounds so stupid because it was so long ago and I have completely different adult friends now, but it still makes me lonely to think about it. I had a close group or really good, really fun friends. But when I found out I was sick and wasn't able to be present for most of the important things that seniors do, I found out who my real friends were—and that was really disappointing to me. The friends who were there for me when I was sick were a couple of girls who were a grade younger than me and a few of their guy friends. And most surprisingly, the other friends who stood by my side were a group of rowdy boys that lived an hour away. They drove up to see me in the hospital after both surgeries and would skip school to drive an hour and hang out with me on the couch when I was too sick to get up and out. These boys and girls are still my good friends today! They are people that I will always hold in the highest regard. And although I don't see them too often or talk to them regularly, they have proven themselves as people worthy to keep as friends for all of my life.

So that's my baggage with high school. Maybe you can understand now why I'm not too anxious to go and hang out with a bunch of people who deserted me when I needed them most.

This is a pretty dramatic post. At which point am I so broken up about this that I need to go see a therapist?

decem

Well, elephant in the room: I found my Cadbury eggs. Thanks to all of those who supported me and stood by my side through this challenge. I knew we could do it.

I have a lot of unrelated thoughts going through my head tonight.

The first is a facebook group. I don't understand a lot of things behind the technology of how facebook works. Somehow I was added to a group that didn't require my approval. Didn't know you could even do that. It was a group for the 2001 graduates from my high school. Apparently there is a ten-year reunion in the works. As soon as I saw the page I was sick. Is that weird? Actually, don't answer that. As I scrolled down the page and hovered my mouse over the thumbnail images of people in the group, I didn't know who a good third of the people were. My high school was huge. Incidentally, so was my graduating class. Then as I saw faces of familiar people, it threw me back to a different time from which I knew these people. I was a completely different person then. It just seems so strange to me that one would want to go and spend a bunch of time with people they haven't spoken to or seen in over ten years. I'm not a total heartless witch. I'm always glad to run into people I knew from school and catch up when I see them. I still keep in contact with some, I'm facebook friends, and a blog follower of many. But, why dwell on history? We keep in contact with those we wish to and wish well for those we don't keep in contact with. Is it just me that feels this way? Everyone was writing such excited comments on the group's wall. One person even mentioned flying in from Germany to come! High school has come and gone. We were kids. The best part of our lives is happening now, now that we're old enough to make it happen.

Needless to say, I won't be going to my high school reunion. But, I'm sure you figured that out by now.

And all of the other thoughts floating through my head, well, I was going to pass on them because I'm too tired . . . and as I typed this last sentence, I decided I am, in fact, too tired to go on rambling. Plus I figure it might be one of those emotion-filled posts that you end up regretting later. And although you can un-publish it, the post still remains on others' Blogger home pages and GoogleReader. And that's just not a risk I'm willing to take this late at night. I'll give you a teaser though, I hate it when people dislike, de-friend, or blame me for ruining their lives. I'm only human, Harry!