When Your LIfe is On Hold ... for the summer

OK ... so our life is really not on hold for the whole summer but, close enough. Our adoption was coming along nicely until an email from our adoption agency saying - "I have some good news and some bad news". The good news was that our referral had come through to go and get our daughter in L@tvi@, the bad news was something in her file had caused a snag. We were so close ... one step away from buying those plane tickets, finding an apartment, packing our bags - it was not meant to be, yet.

See we thought we would have been traveling by the end of June/beginning of July but, now we sit. We are prepared to travel with just two weeks notice but, it means that we cannot schedule anything further than two weeks out. Try explaining that fun news to three children who are used to a jam packed summer of camps, sleepovers, playdates, baseball, ballet and roadtrips. I told them we are going to practice what some would call "living in the moment".

So what's a mom to do who is a planner at heart? I am just now really formulating a makeshift plan. I have to say I absolutely love this blog post by Jen Hatmaker ... you really have to pop over and read it. It is entitled "Surviving Summer". Love her list of boundaries ...

"Therapists say healthy people have boundaries, so I set some. Kids, things I am not in charge of this summer:

• Breakfast.
• Lunch is a crapshoot.
• Figuring our your snacks. You know where the kitchen is.
• Entertaining you.
• Solving all your problems.
• Enduring fighting. You fight, the thing is gone, good times are over.
• Being your cruise ship director. 

I will stock the kitchen with the goods, so if you ask me what’s for breakfast, I’m going to show you my coffee mug and give you a blank look. I taught you how to make eggs and smoothies and breakfast sandwiches and oatmeal, and I’m sad to admit this, but there is the cereal. Enjoy your chemical concoction, a nutritional hypocrisy I’m comfortable with." ~ Jen Hatmaker

I keep reminding myself this is such a short season and our life on hold and waiting is nothing compared to what the child we are adopting has endured for the last 13 years. We will practice living in the moment! We will enjoy more spontaneity and less planned activities. And, as we mark another day off the calendar, each night before we go to bed, we will do so knowing it brings us one step closer to traveling to get Hope.