A shift

I have decided to stop blogging for now. It may be forever. It may not. I set up the blog with the intentions of sharing our adoption journey with friends and family. It seemed to be an easy way to update people on the progress we were making and to watch us work our way through piles of documents and expand our family. It turned into something much different. It turned into something that I don’t want to read. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to print out and have made into a book for later. There has been a shift in the purpose of the blog. It’s not fun. It’s not even close.

I have really come to understand that it doesn’t matter how much we want it. It doesn’t matter how hard we try, how much research we do, how much money we throw away, how much we pray, how much we prepare, how desperate we are or how long we wait. In the end, all those things don’t matter. If it came down to effort we would have a house full of children. We have worked extra jobs. We have researched. We have prayed. We have cried. We have prepared a nursery not once, not twice, but three times. We have drained our savings. We have gathered books and gifts from every holiday or special event that our children have missed since we started this process. We have named four children.

This journey has impacted every facet of our lives. There isn’t a corner it hasn’t touched and eventually taken over. mI need to take about 50 steps back in an attempt to reclaim my life and expand on what little sanity I have left. There was a glimmer of good news from Rwanda months ago but that glimmer hasn’t manifested in referrals. The government wouldn’t even accept our updated documents. We have no news on our file. I can’t even think about what to do next. We will pack up the nursery this time. We have walked past the door for almost three years. We have always left it up because we had a plan of where to go or what to do. We have no plan. We have been here before, twice.

There has been a shift in our home. It’s been a gradual shift over the last few months. Maybe even over the last year. A shift towards the end. The blogging has decreased. No more buying baby gifts for all the missed holidays. No more walking past the nursery. No more planning for children. No more planning around the adoption. No more dreaming about birthdays or holidays. No more talking about travel plans to Rwanda. No more calling the children by name.

So this may be the end of this blog. Only time will tell. Nine weeks time to be exact.

November 6, 2011 is Orphan Sunday. November 6, 2011 is also the end date for our adoption in Rwanda.