2 years later...

Almost two years ago, we made this announcement.

Two years.

24 months we've been on this crazy emotional roller coaster better known as international adoption.

I think back to two years ago, we were so different, so naive.  We were ready to open our home and our hearts to a little baby boy from Ethiopia who was between 0-12 months old.

Hold the phone! That's definitely not how things have worked out.

In two years we've traveled to Rwanda, to Ecuador.

We were totally rocked by  not only adoption but whole orphan care, which sometimes doesn't always equal adoption.  We went from thinking everyone should adopt (I know, I know) to beginning to fight for children to stay in their first families, because that's how God intended things, but sometimes that doesn't work out.

We saw our son's face for the first time..but SURPRISE he wasn't in Ethiopia, he was living in a tiny little country in West Africa.

So now, two years later, we wait to bring home our precious (now) 3 1/2 year old. And we continue to wait and pray for our sweet one in Ethiopia, who probably won't be 0-12 months anymore, from our original "plan."  We've learned that God has a totally different plan than ours (at least that's how it looks for us)

Sometimes people tell me they could never do what we're doing, and how we do it.  Well, I'll give you some pointers; some days outright suck.  Just being real.  Knowing your child's on the other side of the world is tough, it's freaking hard, but you know what? Some days are good, and we get updates, and we see pictures, and we see how he's growing!

Today I started thinking, if I knew now what I knew back when we started, would we still be here? I think yes. Definitely yes. Wouldn't change a thing, wouldn't take back the tears, wouldn't take back the anxiety of waiting on foreign countries, because that has totally changed us.