I had to tell myself to "shut up" yesterday...

"Jesus never asked us to be comfortable, and if we are, we're not where we need to be. He asked us to make choices that could be painful, that could disrupt relationships, to help people everyone else judges, He calls us to stretch ourselves because then we can truly be disciples." ~Fr. Tom

I have never pulled out my phone in church but yesterday I didn't bring a pen for notes. Thank goodness I'm a professional texter because I was able to get that quote quickly in my phone before leaped into the cavern where I keep random thoughts. Chris had taken the boys to Children's Liturgy like he always does, God bless him, and I was sitting there along listening to Fr. Tom speak directly to me. I had faith that morning that I was going to hear something that would lift me up. I'm normally a really positive person but the few days before mass I will admit, I was sort of a wreck, bursting into tears when the boys would go upstairs to play and not talking too much, which is a sure fire way to know something's really wrong with me :).

Crazily enough for the second time this year, we were approached by a birth mother to possibly adopt her daughter. It hasn't been through our agency either time but through a family member or a dear friend (you know who you are). I won't go into too many details because we still don't know if we'll be adopting the child, but Chris and I have been overwhelmed with all of the prayers and support from our family and friends. We hadn't heard from the birth family for a couple of days so after throwing a pretty big pity party on Saturday I ended up telling myself to "shut up". I was being ridiculous. Someone was deciding to hand over their sweet little 7 lb. 8 oz. perfect little baby girl to us and I was sitting on the floor of my bathroom crying because I was being impatient. That baby may or may not be ours. We're preparing that it won't be and to move on with our agency but one thing's for sure...we better get use to it. Waiting is a part of the process. It completely sucks, but birth mothers need their time and we have to stand strong in our faith. I read back through my earlier post about how "God is big enough". I forgot that pretty quickly. It was time to shut up and listen. So we prayed. Ok, so we prayed, then we went our for sushi and a movie, but we prayed like we had never prayed before.

Sunday came around and we still hadn't gotten word from the birth family, in fact we haven't heard from them at all, and we had a strong sense of peace about the situation. All of our friends and family had been praying and I know that their prayers helped soothe our souls that morning and then I got to listen to Fr. Tom. On the drive to church I had a feeling that something would be great about his homily that day. I was right. It was a confirmation of everything we had been feeling about our decision to adopt. A call to do exactly what we're suppose to do, stretch ourselves, not be "comfortable" in our lives and to do things that most people would see as potentially painful. Chris and I know what we've been called to do, it's not the easiest thing in the worlds but He's going to stretch us and mold us into the people that we're meant to be. I have a really wise friend who's an adoptive mom herself and I emailed her last week to let her know what was going on. I told her I just needed advice, I didn't know what to say or pray or do to be honest. She just told me to pray, "that God's will be done." So that's what we've been doing. Thanks again for everyone's prayers, thoughts, texts and calls. If we get an update I'll be sure to let you know. Until then, we've got three amazing little boys who's smiles and hugs make us feel like a million bucks. How quickly we forget our blessings sometimes. I need to count them more.