Home as a family!!!

We are home!!! We are finally starting to recover from the jet lag. I will start on our trip posts soon but wanted to recap how I am feeling emotionally 1 week into parenthood.

This past week has been the most difficult and yet the best week of my life. I was not fully prepared for the array of emotions I would experience throughout this past week. I had no idea how exhausting traveling for over 36 hours would be and I had no idea how valuable your travel group is while in country. We have been stretched so much in the past week and yet our hearts have grown so much in love for our son, in love for the orphans who remain, and in love for the poorest of this world. Truly, once our eyes have been opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do.

It is such a relief to have the adoption process behind us and now we can move forward with this new incredible journey! I have spent the last 13 months holding my breath and waiting. Waiting for paperwork to be completed, waiting for money to come in, waiting to see our son's face, waiting to pass court, waiting for travel approval. I have finally been able to breath again and stop waiting for the next part of our lives to begin. All this waiting has produced the most incredible blessing and I constantly wonder how I could possibly deserve this opportunity to parent this beautiful child.

Our experiences were so different than I expected. My mind is still trying to process what I saw and what I experienced in the past week. Things that I did not expect to be emotional were very emotional and moments I thought would bring me to tears did not.

After toughing out the airplane ride that I dreaded, after an exhausting 30 some hours of travel I was surprised to find tears in my eyes as I looked out the airplane window and saw the city my son lived in.

Meeting my son was not the emotional experience I expected. It was kind of ackward to pick up a 3 month old little boy that I knew nothing about and try to keep him happy. It was ackward to just a mere hour later be sent on our way back to the hotel room with this child and hope for the best.

On the second day when my son looked around the hotel room and I could just see the terror in his eyes at this new place and new people, I couldn't hold back the tears as he wailed for 30 minutes. I was so in love with him and knowing he was scared and grieving broke my heart so much.

I was surprised at how hard it was to say goodbye to the only home that Malachi knew. It hurt to take him away from everything familiar in his life. It hurt to see just how excited he was and how much he loved his special mother's and I was taking that away from him. It was hard to watch his special mother's say goodbye to him for the very last time, these woman who gave so much love to him in the past 3 months and by the tears in their eyes I can't imagine how they love and give away over and over again.

I was surprised at how hard it was to leave Ethiopia. I was ready to come home, but taking my son from his birth country in some ways felt so wrong. I know this is the only option for him. From what the staff in Ethiopia told us, adopting is not a priority to the people in Ethiopia who are financially able to adopt and these children would truly not survive if we did not come and adopt them, but it was still hard. It was hard to think that Malachi fit in with everyone in Ethiopia and one airplane ride away he would stand out now and have to face situations of racism.

Another thing that I did not expect is for my heart to feel so full of love and joy. I knew that it could take some time to feel those strong feelings for him and while I won't lie and say I haven't been tired and frustrated over the past week overall I feel so sooo incredibly blessed that God called us on this hard, but amazing journey to our son!!! I feel so fortunate that we get to be Malachi's parents!

I will be back hopefully tomorrow with the start of our trip recap, but I wanted to share how I feel :)

And here's a little snippet of our adorable baby boy - more pictures to come soon :)