it's mother's day again. officially my fourth to celebrate. i tend not to succeed in the "be really excited on holidays" category. the pressure of it all causes me to recoil. when given a gift on a particular holiday, i've never been the demonstrative recipient who makes the whole gift giving event fun. so four years ago, when i awoke on a sunday mornin with a 4 1/2 month old precious little girl in our house, i was taken aback by the delight swimmin in me. mother's day. my first mother's day. after years of this day bein soaked with ache, occasionally sprinkled with confusion and anger, my arms were now full. a squishy, dark haired little girl captivated me....and turned mother's day on its head. i remember tellin josh, "now this is a holiday i can enjoy!"
so here we are, four years later. my delight this mornin is less expectant and more....restful. mothering a 3 year old is a continuous mix of pleasure and pain. equal parts laugh out loud fun, melt your heart sweet, and infuriating. and i don't expect anything less or anything more than that today. maybe that's why it's a restful delight.
there's an ache here, too, though. a small part of it is, i think, tied into a broader world....the horrors mothers and fathers and children endure, like in nigeria. but admittedly, the ache i am more familiar with is my own... as we await another baby to be grafted into our family.
the ache now is different than it was before riley came home... it's not as tumultuous, and i'm not angry about it. that's enough different to make it different....not to mention the tectonic changes that come with having just one baby-toddler-preschooler fill your home and your life. but it's an ache all the same. an ache to love and an ache to hold...and ache to stretch and break...an ache to graft a friend and brother/sister into riley's world.
so we wait. we wait for an agency staffed by diligent women to tend to an unborn child....we wait for a long-suffering social worker to match us...we wait for a brave birthmother to choose us. we wait to be grafted into a stranger's forever life. we wait to graft the stranger into ours.
and that's where we are right now. we're living life here while waitin for a call from there.
for a year, we've waited and worked toward meeting the financial requirements of affording this next adoption. workin more (for me), workin extra (for josh), workin creatively (both of us)...and humbly receiving the generosity of family and friends. i don't think there's a single person who's given to us that wants to be named, but i have to mention at least one.
betsy reynolds. she contacted me several months ago about doin a fundraiser for us. she was starting up as a new consultant for usborne books. it's not like she'd been selling books and such for a long time and was reaping the rewards of success. she was brand new to it. she wasn't offering to help with a fundraiser out of the abundance of her success...she was offering to work on our behalf so that we could benefit. i wrote about this fundraiser several weeks ago here. well, the book sale and the card fundraiser were quite successful - thanks to betsy's hard work and the extended generosity of other friends and family (some of whom are reading this post as we speak).
thanks to yall, we received $445 that's now in our adoption fund. what's more, this $445 directly helped us meet our goal. our adoption funds are now raised and taken care of!
happy mother's day.... to all the women who have taught, loved, and helped. and thank you to all who generously participating in betsy's fundraiser. we're so grateful.
