Our Daily Waiting Prayer

We are not gonna lie - infertility and this whole adoption process has been extremely difficult lately filled with ups and downs, sadness and joy, doubt and hope, and anxiety and peace. We have always believed that when one feels down, sadness, doubt, and/or anxiety that it is a summons to prayer. This prayer doesn't take away all of the difficulty, but it helps a lot. So we are going to start praying the following prayer (slightly edited by us) that was shared by another married couple who struggled with infertility and adopted a child. Isn't it beautiful? The lines really touched us when we read it. It is written in the style of Charles de Foucald's famous Abandonment Prayer (which we highly encourage you to look up too no matter what your situation is in life).

A Waiting Prayer

Father, 

We abandon ourselves into your hands to send a child or not as you see fit.

You, by whom the Word was made flesh, send us a miracle if this is what you desire,

Or lead us to a miraculous child through adoption if that be your will.
We do not ask for guarantees, no parent can,
Only light enough for the very next step.
We do not ask for a perfect child, nor can we promise to be perfect parents.
Whatever you choose for us, whatever you desire, we abandon ourselves to your perfect will.
We are ready to offer our daily “yes” until that perfect will be revealed in us;
And until at last perfected, we will bear witness to the work of redemption you began in Eden.
We love you, Lord, and offer ourselves to you, wholly and without reservation.
We surrender ourselves, moment by moment, knowing that this is only the first small step of a Lifetime of surrender so that we may be made more perfect in love...
And that we may imitate, on earth as in heaven, the redemptive love, the adoptive love, and the Selfless Love with which you first loved us.

Written by: Heidi Hess Saxton; slightly edited by us

Baby Quilt Progress aka Photo Dump

We wanted to share an update about the quilt that Bethany is making for our future son or daughter, which will have everyone's name on it who prayed for us or donated to us! (There is still time to be added :-) !) As it turns out, work + life + adoption paperwork doesn't leave much leftover time for quilting. But despite the lack of posts about this project, progress has been made :) Slowly but surely! We are still on track to finish the quilt as a "welcome home" gift for our child. (.....unless we get a call, say, tomorrow...just sayin!)

So without further ado, here's the status of the quilt.

Getting the strips ready - fabric is cut into strips, sewed side by side to other strips, and then cut vertically into still other strips. Those multi-color strips of blocks are what are sewed together to become the squares. Trust me, it's not as confusing as it sounds!



Sewing with Mom, an excellent seamstress and my trusty guide:





Piecing and ironing a few squares (months ago, obviously!):



Sewing with Dan's mom during her New Year's visit:











I think it's really special that both of our child's future grandmothers had a hand in the quilt!

Here's what the quilt top looked like a few months ago - four rows, twenty squares (not all sewn together - most of these are just laid side by side):



Here's what the quilt top looks like as of this morning (again, mostly just laid side by side) - all five rows. Oops! Clearly one square still needs to be sewn! Haha. I didn't realize that was missing until I laid it out. Our living room rug is the backdrop:




And finally, here is the fabric we picked out for the back of the quilt. This is where we'll list all the names of everyone who has supported us during the adoption:



We liked the star motif - it fits with a quilt used for sleeping (starry night, etc.) and also with the idea of wishes and dreams that's also evoked by the dandelions on the front of the quilt.

So there you have it! The next steps are to finish that one square, buy fabric for the borders, attach the borders, and then it's time to take the quilt to my aunt to be quilted together. In the meantime we can start adding names to the back fabric - we may do some before and some after the actual quilting, and leave space for other names. We have SO many to add, thankfully!

2016 The Year of Our First Adoption (We Hope!)

Happy New Year! We here at Adoption Pilgrimage are dubbing this new year as "2016 The Year of Our First Adoption." We know this is bold, but we just have a good feeling that it will be this year! (Okay, our adoption placing agency also has only an average of seven months wait time, so it is a pretty safe bet to say it will be this year! We. Can't. Wait.)

To go along with this title we have several New Year's Resolutions related to adoption. Here they go:

NEW YEAR'S ADOPTION RESOLUTIONS:

1.) BECOME INFANT CPR EXPERTS

• This will be pretty easily accomplished as we will be taking an infant CPR class this Thursday. Then we will be trained to save our baby and yours! Motivational speakers also say that it is important to make at least one resolution that you can keep, so here it is! :-) ...but in all seriousness, if your baby is choking, call 911, not us.

2.) BECOME ADOPTION GRANT EXPERTS AND APPLY FOR 4 GRANTS

• Bethany has already done a lot of research over Christmas break (no rest for us adoption warriors!) and we have narrowed the many grants down to four applications sitting on our dining room. (Sadly, there are zero Catholic Adoption Grants!? Can you imagine that? We need to change that as it just does not make any sense. Catholics have lots of adoption agencies. Catholics have crisis pregnancy centers. Catholics have counseling and charities to help birth moms keep the child or to place the child for adoption. But not a single charity - that we've found, anyway - to help adoptive parents adopt and thereby to help birth moms find through adoption good homes for their children who also need good homes? Huh? One day, some way we can do this. If you have lots of money and you want to start a charity, then we suggest you start this one!) 

3.)  LEARN ALL ABOUT PRE-NATAL DRUG/ALCOHOL EXPOSURE

• We have one excellent resource, a book called "The Mystery of Risk: Drugs, Alcohol, Pregnancy, and the Vulnerable Child" by Dr. Ira Chasnoff (how's that for uplifting reading?). If you have any others, then please by all means email us or comment below!

4.) READ UP ALL ABOUT ADOPTION AND ADOPTIVE PARENTING

• Stay tuned for posts about books related to adoption - starting with our favorite - The Connected Child. Really, this is a book every parent should read and re-read. 

5.) ADOPT!

• We are ready to be parents and we can't wait to meet the child God has prepared for us!

6.) PRAY !!!

• Obligatory Catholic Resolution! No seriously, we have been praying every day for our little one, the birth parents, us, the agencies involved, etc., but we are going to ramp up the prayers the closer it gets.

7.) BEFRIEND ADOPTION BUDDIES

• We have been blessed with many family and friends who have been supportive of our adoption journey. However, we have realized we really need to befriend adoptive parents and friends who are also in the adopting process. Through a variety of circumstances, we have a several of the latter (woo hoo - our adopted children are going to be BFFs!!) but only one or two of the former. So we are seeking friends in the adoptive community this year.