Busy Day!

Yesterday was a very busy day. As many of you know, June 9 is our anniversary. Usually, we try to rest and relax each year on the 9th, but this year that was not an option for us. The alarms started going off at 6:30 (on a Saturday!), and Adam, who is much more of a morning person than I am, sprang into action. He was up, showered and dressed before I had even rolled over. And so I was understandably confused when he kissed me on the head (which was still on my pillow) wished me a happy anniversary and told me that he and Daisy were going to run an errand. And POOF, they were gone.

I dragged myself out of bed and started getting ready. We had Crossings training all day yesterday, and it started at 8:00. In the midst of straightening my hair, I heard Daisy tearing through the house and heading my way. Adam was close behind with a sweet good anniversary morning surprise...Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks! Just what I needed to wake up my brain.

                          See how happy the right combo of cinnamon and caffeine can make this girl?

So we headed out the door to Lifeline. After a brief detour (thanks a lot Google Maps!), we arrived at the Lifeline offices for our training. I have to give a quick shout out here to our instructor for the day. She did an AMAZING job getting us through an insane amount of information in just one day. Crossings is an all-day class designed specifically for parents who are adopting internationally. The class focuses on how to parent children who did not have the kind of birth and/or upbringing that we are accustomed to here in the West. A lot of the information provided in the class came from Dr. Karen Purvis, author of The Connected Child (required reading for us). That woman is brilliant, and I would really recommend that anyone considering adoption or foster care or ever working with kids read her stuff. Crossings really opened our eyes to how parenting our sweet little one can and will look different than parenting a biological child. We were also in class with other adoptive parents, and most of us were adopting from all different places. Very cool to hear their stories.

     Here is our agenda for the day. The check marks are Adam's (and he accuses me of being type-A!)

My favorite part of the day was the parent panel at the very end. Three different sets of adoptive parents came in to share their stories and answer our questions. It was incredible to hear how God has used each of the families to impact the lives of children for the sake of His kingdom and His glory.

At 5:00 we left Lifeline and headed home to get ready to go out and celebrate the last five years of our life together. We went out to dinner and thoroughly enjoyed just spending time with one another. It was wonderful to sit and talk and reflect on our first five years of marriage, and we are so blessed to be able to look back and so clearly see God's hand in our lives. That reality causes us to look forward, with great anticipation, to all that He has in store for us through this crazy adoption journey and with the rest of our lives. I am so grateful that the Lord saw fit to bless me with Adam as my husband, and the more we go through life's trials and tests, the more I see that God knew exactly what He was doing when He matched us together.

                                                   Hard to believe this was five years ago!

                                                     Still love him more than life itself!

So after all of that busyness yesterday, I would love to tell you that we spent today resting and lounging about, but that is not the case. We started this morning with a doctor run for Adam, went to church and then came home, where I began sorting and pricing for our yard sale (COMING YOUR WAY ON JUNE 23) and Adam worked on fixing something that had broken in one of our cars. Whew! Not exactly a restful weekend. We also have our individual interviews coming up this week, so we are making some serious progress.

God is being SO good to us during this busy and hectic time. He is sustaining us and giving us the energy we need to get through the tasks at hand. The more we lean on Him, the better life gets. We continue to pray that He would guide our footsteps and that we would seek His will above our own.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6

Love,
Baylor