Busy Nothings

As we re-start the international adoption research, it’s amazing to me how in tuned I am to anything regarding adoption. I was reading Ephesians this morning and ran across these verses from Ephesians 1:

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will

I think about how much I want a child–so much so that I’m willing to pay tens and thousands of dollars to adopt from a different country that not only doesn’t have nearly the economy we have, but has a government and society that we as Americans probably could never survive in. I want to pay thousands of dollars to that country to bring one baby home to love and nurture and make a part of my family. I want to take that baby out of the third world country it’s currently struggling in, make it mine, and give that baby all of the love possible. I want to invest in that baby (maybe I should say spoil?) and give it everything we have, including any inheritance we may have to pass on someday. That’s adoption.
How much more beautiful, then, is the reference God gives us to being adopted as sons (daughters get no inheritance). I know the love and life I want to give my Moses or Phoebe is nothing compared to the perfect love and life God wants to give me. He didn’t just pay $20,000–he gave up his only son! That’s a much bigger sacrifice than any money my husband and I might be required to pay. God wanted so much to take me out of my “third world” sinful world that He gave everything just to bring me Home someday and give me my inheritance of eternal life. And just as I can’t wait to finalize our adoption, whether in India, Africa, or wherever we end up adopting from, God can’t wait to finalize our adoption when we get home to heaven!

I think everyone has a list of things they want to accomplish in their lifetime. I have a few, too: write a novel, compose a serialistic mass, publish at least one choral piece. I haven’t had the drive to finish (or in some cases, start) any of them up to this point, mostly because I lose interest. Yet I find myself not losing interest in things not on my list: scrapbooking, crafting, and sewing. Those are things I find fulfillment in, so I continue to do them. Especially when I do them for people I love.
When I was in MT in February I had a very intense dream. It was a story start to finish with plot and characters, and although it was a little outdated and perhaps far-fetched in today’s American society, I spent the plane trip back writing down the basic plot. I thought it would make a pretty good novel.
I’m on page 107, chapter 9 of it now–all hand-written in a journal. Tonight I typed up the plot outline so I could keep the story straight, although I’ve been tweaking it along the way. I have covered 5 points of a 27 point outline, so I have no idea how long it will be–although I’ll probably need at least one more journal. The more I write, the more into it I get. I started writing every week while at the laundromat, but lately I’ve been doing a few pages nearly every day. I write by hand because it’s hard to pour out emotions on a keyboard, and it’s interesting to see my handwriting change the more intensely I write.
I don’t particularly want to pursue publishing it, I’m just writing it for myself. I’ve always loved to write, and have stories I’ve written dating back to elementary school–my mother kept them for me and it’s fun now and then to read the silly little things. But at least I will be able to cross “write a novel” off my list and revisit serialism.

My hubby does! A couple weeks ago he bought me gardening supplies and a pink garden bucket! Today he picked out and bought me the most comfy tennis shoes ever! A while back a friend from church sent me this link so I decided to buy some fat laces and give it a try. They’re really cool!

Wasn’t it great being a kid where the biggest decision was what flavor of yogurt to have for lunch? I remember in 2nd-4th grade going to a Christian Day School in a town 15 minutes away. There were three ways to get into town–County Highways 3, 5, or 7. Every morning Dad would ask which way we wanted to go. Hwy 3 was pretty much a straight shot, 5 was a bit curvy and went past a pink house, and 7 had lots of curves. But each road got us to school.

That’s how I feel about life right now. There are several ways to go–especially where money is concerned–and no wrong answer, just a different way to get there. I think about the major things we’d like to accomplish: Redo our half torn apart kitchen, replace the nonexistent floor in the bathroom, adopt a child. Those have been on the list for quite some time.
Adoption has been on the list since our second year of marriage when we discovered my infertility issues. I was diagnosed finally with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome a month ago and have been on medication that was supposed to change things, but isn’t, so I have yet more tests to undergo on Tuesday. So adoption has been on our minds for almost 5 years, but we haven’t been financially able to do it yet. In the meantime our dream of adopting from Africa has fizzled, probably mostly thanks to Angelina Jolie. When we applied for adoption 3 years ago the waiting period for a referral was about 3 month, total time from application to completion 6-8 months. Now it’s 24 months and the agency is not accepting applications for Ethiopian adoption at this time. Recently I discovered an agency that works with a Catholic orphanage in India with a relatively short referral and waiting period. Information is being sent to us and again my hopes are up–at least until a celebrity decides to adopt from India. But again, money is an issue as is room until my mother-in-law is able to get a place of her own.
When we bought this house a year ago, the previous owner had torn out half of the kitchen cupboards and the stove. The other cupboards and drawers are usable, but a couple of the drawers are broken and can’t be repaired. We now have a stove, but need to remodel the kitchen. Even though a lot of the work we can do ourselves, it will still be a large expense.
The downstairs bathroom has no floor–just cement with glue and nail strips currently covered by bathroom rugs. Not a large expense, but one that has to be done.
So which highway to take? They are all priorities, but there is no right or wrong direction to go. Repairing the kitchen or bathroom would make us better stewards of our possessions. Adopting a child would allow us not only to fulfill our God-given desire to be parents, but also an opportunity to present the Gospel to at least one person from a non-believing nation. I guess we just continue to pray. Please pray with us.

Today was my day to be with my hubby, and I actually agreed to go with him to the rifle range with our .22 rifle and my dad’s 30/30 Winchester. I was quite patient and happy to be out there target shooting with him for almost 2 hours as he’s been wanting to go all week. When he finally got it out of his system and said it was time to go, we headed home. That is until he stopped by Blockbuster to rent a Wii game which was–you guessed it–a first person shooter game. Oh well.

In my plight to eat less carbs, I had to do something with all the cereal, sugar, chocolate chips around the house, so I came up with this recipe by compiling a couple and adding my own stuff. They’re in demand at my hubby’s work, so you might want to try them yourself!

1 c. Crisco, margarine, or both combined
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar (or Splenda like I tried today)

Cream those with Kitchen Aid mixer (a.k.a. the Cookie Maker)
Add:
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. vegetable oil (I guess you could try applesauce but they’d be very moist and cake-like then)
2 eggs

Beat some more and then add:
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking soda
3 1/2 c. flour
1 c. (1/2 pkg) chocolate chips
2 c. cereal (I’m using honey bunches of oats with almonds!)

Drop by very rounded tablespoons on greased cookie sheet or pampered chef stoneware and bake 10-12 min. until brown on top.

…I became an Alaskan. I came up on a Travel-Canvass-Witness opportunity intending to stay only a year but instead met my husband and decided to become a permanent resident, something I’m sure he’s grateful for.

I’m sure he’ll tell you the whole story, but it’s up again here. Re-bookmark it!

Happy Mother’s Day to Mom and Ma–both great moms to me and my hubby!

It is hard not to be selfishly bitter today, though. The struggles of infertility have made me super-sensitive to things like Mother’s Day and women who are pregnant, and lately it seems like all women around me either have children or are pregnant–even one of our ghost shrimp is pregnant!

My husband and I started this devotion book which has helped already to not feel like we’re the only ones going through this.

Okay, so no one will probably get that title except for my sis, but it’s a play on a line from this movie which we had to watch in World Religions class back in college.
Anyway, sometimes I astonish myself with my crafty talents. Usually I have this picture in my mind of what I want, then I go about making it. Most of the time I don’t question if something is going to turn out, but in crafting this project I wasn’t so sure. Yet when I finished it I discovered it actually turned out better than I thought! It’s in recognition of now owning my own laundromat after 14 months of going to someone else’s.

In recent years I have come to question Confirmation—not the need for instruction before Communion but rather what it’s developed into.
As a teen my classmates and I treated it as something we had to do between the ages of 12-14. Two of my classmates went to public school until 7th grade when they transferred to our church’s school so they would get the confirmation instruction without having to come to an evening class. Confirmation was then marked with a big party for friends and relatives with cake and presents celebrating more the confirmand it seems to me now than the public declaration of faith and desire for membership and participation in Holy Communion. I regard those vows I took as serious as my wedding vows, yet I don’t believe I fully understood what they meant at the time. And in the years after, I only saw a few of those classmates in church. In my adult life I have witnessed the confirmation of those whose public actions defied what they professed to believe and promised to be faithful too. The most disturbing was the confirmation of a girl who was involved in Pro-Choice and Gay Rights activities at her school. And, of course, there are the startling statistics of the dramatic drop in church attendance and membership in the years after confirmation. Are we confirming too young? Are we not stressing enough the seriousness and significance of the vows and profession of faith? I don’t have answers, but every year during “Confirmation seasonâ€? I seem to ask the same questions.

I don’t know why it took us so long to figure it out, but we finally decided to pay off our credit card debt, truck loan, and 401K loan with a home equity loan. This means we now get the title to our vehicle, have no credit card balances, and the only debt we have is a low interest home equity and a mortgage–both of which the interest is tax deductible. It feels really good–especially the fact that in 3 yrs. 3 mos. we’ll be debt free (pending emergencies of course) which means 3 yrs. 3 mos. til we start saving for a baby! or toddler!