System Processing...

That's how I feel most of the time. I hate self checkout lanes at the grocery store. No matter how hard I try, I always end up needing assistance. One particular self checkout I've been to says, "System Processing, Please Hold On." And that's exactly how I feel about life in general.

In the past I've used my blog as a place I process my thoughts. I haven't been doing that lately, mainly for fear of being judged. I know I don't have a lot of readers, but I do know that many readers read because we've adopted.

The last four months have been hard. Really HARD. We lived with friends from the end of December until the end of February. That was humbling. Chuck hasn't had a "real" job since the end of December. Humbling. As of April 1st, he didn't even have a not-for-real job. Scary.

We moved here to Las Vegas to help start a church. Our hope was that Chuck would work for that church with his salary raised through supporters. That didn't come together. Additionally, Chuck applied for numerous jobs. One of them was as a police officer for Veteran's Affairs. He interviewed for that position at the end of January after beginning the application process late last summer. He was given a preliminary offer of a position, but had to go through all kinds of testing and evaluation. He will begin his job on Monday, finally, thank God!

In the last 4 months I've truly learned how to live one day at a time. Thinking about the future was just too scary. It's one thing if you don't have a job and it's just you and your spouse. Quite another thing when you have three children involved, two of which were entrusted to our care because a number of people thought we could give them a good life. And then we don't know how we are going to keep a roof over their heads. I just couldn't share that here because I didn't want Haitian officials to think we weren't able to take care of adopted kids. (And yes, they've been known to read blogs online).

Here's what I've learned: God provides. I know, that sounds too simplistic; too trite. But, it's true. We have truly been provided for. I haven't had to beg. We haven't gone without. Our kids are well fed and have a comfortable home. I was able to fly to MI for my grandmother's funeral last month. I got to meet my new nephew. I could go on and on. It has not been easy. Fear has crept in, heck it has back flipped in. I have felt so much shame because I know of so many adoptive families who are able to give their adopted kids the world, it seems. I know that Satan is at work in those thoughts. Without a doubt, I know we were led by God to adopt Noah and Samuel. There is such peace in knowing that.

I recently had a friend applaud my faith. But, the truth is that I have cried many tears of fear. I have vaccilated between "How has my life turned into this?" and "Wow, what an incredible life I get to live." I have had some serious pity parties. I have been frozen in fear to the point that I haven't known what to do. I have been close to God, but I've also been extremely far from Him.

And I still have so much to process. In less than a month, three family members died, and one of those deaths was quite tragic. I'm still processing that first year with kids. We lived in survival mode for most of that year with many people abandoning us along the way. I still look back on that time frame in shock. It was a lot to walk through, and I honestly don't know how we made it. Well, God is how we made it, but we didn't really have much time to spend with Him. Then there's the last 6 months... we made the decision to come to Las Vegas a little over 6 months ago. We left our home, our friends, and our church of 7 years. We are still grieving. We truly lived life with people in Virginia and we miss them. They became our family. There were a lot of great relationships over those 7 years. We became parents there. We brought our children home there. It was familiar and Las Vegas is not. It's just a lot to process through and I'm not done yet.

And now we are here and the church has started and it's going well. I'm still learning how to balance kids with volunteering. I'm an all-in kind of person, and I feel very limited with the kiddos. I've experienced not being able to keep a commitment because my kids are sick. And I obviously want to be home with my kids when they are sick, but there's that nagging sense of letting others down when I can't show up.

We are still sharing a vehicle, and that's tough. We are hoping to get some inexpensive transportation for Chuck soon and he really wants to get a motorcycle. And that terrifies me. People drive terrible here. Just the other day I surrendered that to God. I have been fighting the motorcycle and I just had to stop fighting. If that's what we end up with I'm going to learn a new lesson in trusting God to keep a loved one safe. And I'm going to learn to ride :)

I feel like I've been holding my breath for a really long time. That is alleviated some by Chuck's new job. Financially, we will be O.K. And I totally realize that in this economy, there's really no such thing as job security. And I feel like writing this post has allowed me to breath a little more too. These thoughts have just been swirling for a while now.

I honestly don't know if Las Vegas is "home." It is for now, but I really don't see us being here for years and years. I don't know... I just have the sense that this isn't the last stop in our journey.

Okay, I've rambled long enough. I will hopefully post some updates from the last few months sometime soon. All three kids continure to amaze us and bring us joy daily.