Counting My Blessings

I will be leaving for Ethiopia on October 8th. I won't believe that 100% until I'm on the plane over the Atlantic. My adoption agency does tell me that it would be extremely rare for that to change again, so I am really banking on this working out, and my Mom and I being on a plane on that date.

I feel better just knowing. The weekend was brutally stressful, as was yesterday morning, and I think it was just the uncertainty of the situation. In 17 short days, I will be leaving for Ethiopia. I can handle that.

I feel so blessed to have what I have. I feel blessed to have T to go through this with. I feel blessed to get to come home from work everyday and see TT, and I feel blessed to have Nur. Even though I would love to be leaving for Ethiopia in 3 days, I don't want to waste the next 2 weeks being sad about it. I want to be present in all that I do, and not waste a minute of the goodness that has been bestowed on me. Waiting is difficult, but I don't want to live my life in so much anticipation for the next thing, that I forget to enjoy today.

And here are words I love by author Shauna Niequist:

"I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away... I love movies about "The Big Moment"- the game or the performance of the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that with change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn't what it looked like in the movies. John Lennon once said, 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.' For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment... Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you've been waiting for is happening all around you...You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage all have the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages..." *