Nesting and waiting

I spent the weekend nesting, so to speak. I had a dream on Friday night about getting a call for a placement, and I woke up and realized that we were very, very unprepared to put a baby anywhere in this house.

The third bedroom, a.k.a. the baby's room, has been used for storage for anything that I wanted to keep out of reach of the kids. As a result, the usable space in this room kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So, Saturday I spent nearly the entire day cleaning out this room. It still needs some work, but you can now access both the crib and the dressers without climbing over anything AND you can walk into the closet...which was not possible before the great clean-up. I now feel like we could put a baby in there without fear that he or she would suffocate from the sheer volume of STUFF in the room.

I have a whole list of other "nesting" projects to keep me busy in the next few months. I've found this is necessary to keep from obsessing about the actual, ellusive baby in our future. I try very hard to appear very calm and confident about this whole adoption waiting process. I talk a good line about waiting on God's timing and all. But occasionally things happen to rattle my confidence and make me question why we have to suffer all these things simply to build our family.

I got a Christmas card from a friend I met in Omaha when we were both training to become FertilityCare Practitioners in 2000 and 2001. She was in her early 30s at the time, married and dealing with some major infertility issues. She welcomed her first child through adoption several years later, a couple of years before Olivia was born. And then, when her baby was less than a year old, she discovered that she was pregnant. In her Christmas card this year, I learned that they are expecting their fourth child (third pregnancy) in July. Now in her early 40s, she is classified as an "elderly multigravida"- a title she NEVER would have expected to carry. She is overjoyed. I am overjoyed for her. I understand her struggles to get to this point and am so happy that she is filling her house with children, which has always been her dream.

And yet, such an announcement makes me question again..."Why me? Why us? Why are we continually burdened with waiting while others celebrate such unexpected blessings?"

I was reflecting on this a couple of weeks before Christmas and a quote from Narnia popped into my head. From "The Horse and His Boy," Aslan is speaking to Shasta as Shasta questions why certain things had to happen to him and to his friend as they were on their journey.

"Then it was you who wounded Aravis?"
"It was I."
"But what for?"
"Child, I am telling your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own."

I think about that a lot when I get overly frustrated with the wait. I think about it now when someone announces a pregnancy or gets a really quick adoption placement while we wait. God is in charge, and He has reasons for His timing. Maybe there is something we have yet to learn or experience. Maybe there is a baby especially suited for our family who isn't to be born for awhile. Maybe there is a birthmom who needs extra prayers and is really, really struggling with a decision that will ultimately affect us, but right now affects her more than she ever thought possible. It's really not just about me or us or our little family. But ours is the only story WE are told.

So we must be patient, or at least try. And pray. I remain confident that another child is in our future. I'm just a little frustrated with the foggy details. That's the planner in me...always frustrated over things I cannot control. So if you want to pray for me, pray for patience. I could always use an extra dose of that.