My computer broke on this day in China, so it is now about a week later, and everything seems jumbled. Laura told me when I was in China that I'd better write things down or else I would forget. There were some things that were going ok at this point in China, and Andrew was having some great times---but the hard times, were so hard, that it was becoming very hard for me to stay positive, and to tell the truth, I was a bit relieved that I wasn't going to be able to blog for a while. I really just needed to clear my mind and focus on the reason we were adopting in the first place. I had some very unloving feelings towards Andrew. I was letting my flesh get in the way of all the things that I knew could happen during an adoption. I knew that there might be some really tough times, but i was just feeling so weak, and incapable of handling the situation. One week later, I can look at this, and realize that "yes" it's hard---but it's even harder for Andrew. Several things made it so hard for me: living in a cramped hotel room is hard, having to walk to get all your meals is hard, the lack of real good sleep is hard, being physically and mentally exhausted is hard, not understanding what your child is saying is hard, being away from Craig was hard, trying to not take what Andrew was doing personally was hard, being hit and scratched and pushed away from Andrew was hard......But the hardest thing of all was remembering that this naughty, spoiled little boy who was rejecting all our love that we were trying to give him used to be an orphan. He was a lonely, broken, little 4 year old boy who didn't have any one to TRULY love him and take care of him. He was fighting for everything he had ever known. And I would feel so guilty that I could not make things better right away. So for the rest of the trip I (really all of us) struggled with what we could do to make things better. I felt like maybe I had more than I could handle. But then things would get a little better. People were telling me that I just needed to get through China---so that's what we did! We muddled through and laughed and cried, and we made it. And now, after being home for only four days, I can already say that I would do it again a million times over, to know what I know now. I know that God was working on my patience---and it seems like I was tested over and over again to see how I would react when things didn't go just as planned. Because there were so many little hiccups along the way (missing our flight, changing our gotcha day, having to switch hotel rooms, not getting to visit the orphanage, and even having problems with our tickets on our flight home) Right now, I'm not sure if I passed or failed the tests, but I have grown stronger than ever during the past two weeks. I know without a shadow of a doubt that ALL things are possible with God!
Andrew really found comfort with Ava!
It ended up raining ALL day long! Thankfully Andrew liked the rain.
Safari on wheels!!
Andrew loved riding on the train!
He was so excited to see all the animals, he would even lean into me at times and let me hold him!
He loved mimicking the animals!
The white tigers were his favorite!
We figured out that this is what he does when he pretends he has a gun!
The hippo!
The hippo imitation!!!
We got ponchos and we were still soaked!
He looks like a little angel!
A fun, rainy, squishy, day!
Sweet girls!
This is our WACAP group we went with!!
No comments:
Post a Comment