Day 73

I KNOW it is God's timing. I KNOW that HIS timing is perfect. I still feel like whining, though. It is been 73 days since our official log in in China's system for this adoption. We are still within the average turn around time. Anytime soon would be great!!!!!

Since ZabiChu is legally not yet our daughter, I can't share much, but we were over the moon excited to get an update on her! Do you see her ponytails????? Well, you can see one of them! She is 1 inch taller than chickadee, weighs the same, same size foot, but a little thinner. She loves to eat fruit, is shy of strangers, goes to kindergarten and is being prepared for adoption. Now if I can just get my achin' arms around my sweetie, I'll be happy!

MissE has been busy creating and sewing a Japanese kimono for a masquerade ball being held in October. She has done an outstanding job!

IBoy has recently been bitten by the camera bug! He has been traveling around a couple of counties with his auntie and snapping hundreds of shots. I'll have to share some of them later - they are really good!

In closing today, I'd like to share a poem that I recently found that touched my heart. Although we don't have any children with disabilities, we all need to understand that life throws curve balls in many different forms. We all need to open our eyes and see God's beauty surrounding us.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.