A little blog I wrote on the way home...

(This was from January 6th, 2012)

The end of the beginning…

Our journey to adoption has finally ended, and we are now officially on our next journey: parenthood.  As I sit here in the Tokyo airport awaiting our flight to Chicago, then on to Nashville where we will introduce our daughter to waiting family and friends, I realize that now the road to adoption is over.  Now begins the daunting task of raising a godly, loving, excited-about-life daughter.  I must confess that I feel ill-prepared and tired just thinking of it.  The past nine days have been some of the most challenging of my life.  It’s funny really, because they have also been some of the happiest.  We got to pick up Amber Joy on New Year’s Eve in Taitung, Taiwan.  We were excited, nervous, anxious, happy, and so many other emotions, I can’t even explain.  It’s one thing to be first time parents…it is entirely another to be first time parents halfway around the world from your friends and family.  A foreign country where no one speaks your language, at least not very well, can make me anxious on its own, but the fact that this was my first international trip altogether has my head reeling.

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