BOOM!

Tonight I'm home by myself - at least for another 20 minutes or so. Just enough time for a brief bloggy update. My adventurous husband is off fly-fishing for steelhead trout (I have NO idea if I spelled any of that correctly) and my kids are at a birthday party. I was invited to go to the party, but am feeling a little wimpy. I think I've finally succumbed to the nasty cold that's been circulating through our house the last 3 wks. with a touch of the stomach junk that just reared its ugly head Wednesday. UGH!!! I'm so sick of sickness. (Can I hear an AMEN?!) :)

So, I'm back to blogging. I've had a few inquiries as to why I took a break. Honestly, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, I was just spending way too much time on here. It's been a long season of waiting in lots of areas in our lives - adoption, move, Ross' job/career. I think I just kind of felt immobilized by the wait. Cyberspace offered a much desired respite from waiting and living in limbo-land. So much so, that other things suffered. Conviction mounted, and I knew I needed to give it up until I could find balance. Although it stunk at first, it was the absolute best thing for that season in my life - my attitude about the wait improved 100% and I became much more productive. :)

What's changed? Our pastor had a very timely sermon about waiting last fall. He said God often works like this - "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....BOOM!" And this is seriously our BOOM-time. After almost 2 years of waiting, we finally have a name and sweet face of our #5. I was encouraged so often during our wait that our "child just wasn't ready yet." And how true that's been. One example of this is that we began seriously considering "upping" our age range from 0-24 mo. to 0-48 mo. right around Christmas time. We talked about it, but didn't move on it until January. Jonah entered the orphanage in January. And we were next in line. Pretty amazing how God works, isn't it?

AND, after almost 2 years of waiting, we sold our house and we're going to be buying and moving into my parents' old house. They've been in the process of building since Spring '07. We'll be moving the middle of April. I can hardly believe it.

Finally, Ross' company has had two rounds of lay-offs within the past year and it's been pretty stressful. We found out Feb. 26th that he made it through the second. Praises!

So all of this stuff happening at about the same time has been awesomely crazy. I've always had a sneaking suspicion that everything would happen at once, but I never could've imagined we'd receive our referral paperwork, the contract to sell our house, and the contract to buy ALL in one day. :) I've learned a lot, but have so much more to learn. Right now I'm working on trusting that God continues to have all of this timing worked out. Paperwork-wise (with address change to USCIS, NVC, and the Embassy, fingerprint updates, inspections, appraisals, closings, etc...) it could line up just perfectly, or appear to be a complete train wreck...I just gotta trust God's already on the other side and there's a reason for everything! But don't get me wrong - I'm SO thankful for all of it!!!