Thanksgiving and Hope

This week, as we approach Thanksgiving, I feel that I am very thankful this year. Although we do not have children yet, I have such a strong sense of joy and peace in my heart about the future. God is guiding us on this journey. It is so amazing to personally see how far I have come since this time last year. I have hope (which pretty much didn’t exist), joy, peace, faith and even excitement. It is wonderful to enter into this time of year feeling like this – with my heart, which has been broken for so long, ready to give and receive the blessings of this season.

We had our second home study interview on Wednesday, the 14th. This time it was mainly questions about parenting. And even though we hadn’t really talked about specifics, we had the same thoughts and ideas. I believe that we are already on the path to being like-minded parents.

We also gave our social worker all the paperwork that we had completed. When I kept reaching into our file folder handing her papers, she got excited. I think she was really proud of how much we had accomplished. We have realized that this process is more of an independent study – where we have to be motivated and complete each checklist ourselves.

And before we left, she told us a little bit about the “system” in China. She also told us a little bit about our time in country. We both thought it was interesting that China has a Wal-Mart. And we found out that after arriving in the country on a Saturday, we go and get our child on Monday morning – and then she is OURS! We do have a while to wait until travel time – but when it gets here, things are going to move fast!