All aboard!!
And away we go…
Well this is and will mostly be, for now, a blog about growing our family through adoption. Our own amazing lil’adventure! When I think of adventure, I think of rollercoaster’s and the very true words of my mother (right before I got married). She told me that life was just one big rollercoaster. Sometimes you hang on for dear life and other times, you toss those hands up out of pure joy. I went on my first rollercoaster while on my honeymoon in June of 1996. It was indeed full of ups and downs. I loved it and the fact that Steve was right beside me made it even more outstanding!!
I, the great and fabulous, cow loving, soccer playing, truck driving, country loving girl know as Angie, grew up in a small town. I went to a small school and met a nickel arcade loving, comic book reading, computer programming, artistically nerdy and VERY good looking boy who lived in a medium town, who went to a medium sized school. We met in early spring of 93 at Wal-Mart. YES! It is true; you really can find everything at “wacky wally world” even love! I’ll have to write about that adventure too..Someday.
Anyways.. Mooving along here.
At the ripe ol’age of 16, I met my future husband. Three years later, we were married in June 96. Steve…where to begin? He is amazing. Smart, funny, kind, witty, charming and every bit a goofball as I am! Best of all he loves me even with all my flaws…
And together with our powers combined, we are the future rulers of the universe and..oh wait, wrong blog.
Steve is a super great guy! He has all those wonderful qualities I knew I wanted in a man plus all the qualities that God knew I’d need in a man. Plus as an added bonus, free of charge, to help us build character, God tossed in a few annoying ones for us too. You know.. just to keep things interesting! My SteveO is my heart and he completes me. Yes I know it is corny but what else can I say?
So we were busy living life and loving our adventure so far and thought after 4-5 years, we should upgrade to the new and improved version of us.
I.e. Start our family. We did all the right things and patiently waited. And waited. And waited
And waited.
Lots of tests, poking, prodding, and getting personal with people we didn’t know. All this just to find out they just didn’t know why it wasn’t happening. It seemed so easy for everyone else. We waited some more. We watched our friends and family as they grew. Bitter sweet! So happy and yet a tinge of sadness, then came the guilt for being selfish.
And the whole time we’d get advice from friends and family and even people we didn’t really know too well. Try this, do that, bla..Blaaaa BLAAA…Yadda yadda..relax..bla bla..have a few drinks..Bla bla bla..
While, I’m sure it was well meant… Good grief… The things people say!! Hahaha! Thankfully, we don’t take things too personally and most of the time we get a good kick out of it all. We know that Love was/is the biggest motivation. Sometimes though, I still dread meeting new people because it’s usually one of the first things I’m asked. I say no we don’t have any children. Then there is that vague, awkward and sometimes embarrassing moment where I don’t know if I should give more explanation or what.
So after all the testing, and waiting and not really knowing, we just took a breather. At some point you have to decide when to stop and move on in a different direction. After a long time, we finally decided to pursue adoption as a way to grow us into a family. Now, please understand that what I can easily write in a few paragraphs doesn’t begin to tell of the emotional sadness, pain, hurt and anger that we went through to get to where we are now. Even now we still have crazy mixed emotions to deal with day to day. There is a song that I like and one line of it goes “This is a story about a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world” Sometimes, I feel like that girl.
Most of the time, we try to keep our happy faces on! Fortunately, God gave us a good sense of humor, a large dose of faith and His undeserving mercy.
So this is our story...so far...
“Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning” (Lamentations 3:23).
