Noelle Dreams & Beyond

I thought I'd take the opportunity on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to put in another plug for this amazing and important webblog - Anti-Racist Parent . We've got a long way to go yet.

This past Thursday was a difficult day that turned out to be a very good day. After writing my depressing blog post, I had an acupuncture session, during which I was able to release a lot of sadness. Right after that while browsing in Ten Thousand Villages, I came across the following poem for the second time in recent weeks. (I figure I best pay attention.) Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Don't search for the answers, they could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. -Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Austria Perfect lesson. Perfect timing. Today I had another gift. I attended a silent retreat at my church with sessions of sitting meditation, yoga, mindful eating, walking meditation, and a long guided rel...

Lately I've been wondering how long a person can wait for something she wants so desperately without risking her sanity. I was lamenting to Chris that this wait for Noelle is not normal. It's not normal to be on the verge of becoming a mother and to feel like you're a mother in your heart, yet without a child, for years on end. It can't be healthy, and there's no way one can prepare for this. For most people it takes no more than a year to have a child -- a year to learn about becoming a parent, a year to create the nursery and stock up on baby gear, a year to save up and buy the video camera, a year to do all the "last before kids" things, a year to savor the moments of one-on-one time with your spouse, a year to dream about everything that's to come in so little time....But not for us. Sometimes I'm OK with this. I imagine there's a bigger plan that perhaps I can't comprehend, but that I can trust. And then sometimes I feel like I...

Well, we're not exactly official yet. Our new social worker called last week to tell us our file is on hold because we haven't done CPR and first aid training, which of course we would have done had we known! Apparently, this is a new requirement that was created after we took our classes last spring, and the information never made its way to us. We're actually not that irritated - maybe it's because our expectations are just so low at this point! Having said that, we received a call from the program director yesterday out of the blue, apologizing that we were not informed, which was nice. It's honestly not a big deal - we're doing the training next week (which is something I've been planning to do for a long time anyway), meeting with our social worker the following Tuesday, and then we really will be official. Supposedly you can get the call pretty quickly once you're licensed, so perhaps this one last delay is even a good thing as it gives us a ...

Well, folks, we finally have that piece of paper in hand we've been waiting on for months. Our foster parenting license arrived in the mail on Friday. We're a bit guarded in our enthusiasm considering it's been such a long, bumpy ride -- within a couple of months it will have been a YEAR since we started that process. Whew! We really weren't expecting it to take that long....sound familiar? We've also hit the two-year mark since beginning our journey to Noelle. Perhaps things will come a little easier for us this year than they have the past few. One can certainly hope. It's a new year, and it looks to be a BIG one on MANY fronts. So here's to 2008!! P.S. I was reminded this past week of a wonderful, old African proverb: When you pray, move your feet. Amen to that!