coasting

The same week that I had that horrible, no good, very bad experience, I also had another serious discussion at work.  I still haven't decided whether I should talk about it publicly or not, but suffice it to say, it could be life changing.  Not in a huge "near death experience life changing way", but it could literally change our life situation.  Which, in spite of the frequent travel, we rather enjoy.

A change in life is often good and I generally welcome change.  But here's the thing.  We are in the middle of an international adoption.  And when I say "middle", I literally mean "middle."  We have completed the long road of paperwork and our dossier is in China and we are waiting to be matched with a child.  We have also paid a significant amount of fees and are about in the "middle" of the long road of payments.

And this change of life situation may jeapardize all of that since our home study and dossier is based on our current life situation, so whatever decision we make jeapardizes our adoption. 

Needless to say, it has been a tough few weeks.  Tony and I have had numerous discussions and we knew we couldn't make these decisions on our own.  So we went to the temple.  At the temple, I was having one of those "blank" experiences.  I had so much going on in my head that I couldn't settle down.  My mind was a jumble of "what if's".  What if this goes wrong, what if that goes wrong.  We could push the adoption along by being a LOT more proactive and finding a child to adopt and if we wanted to adopt a boy instead of a girl, the timeline could potentially move up by MONTHS.

But what if we lost our medical insurance (which is a very real possibility).  Is moving forward with adopting a special needs baby who could possibly need surgery soon after we brought him home a wise decision?  Can you feel my heart pounding through my confusion?

We went through the temple session and I didn't feel like I was calm enough to receive any inspiration.  And then we prayed in the temple and it hit me.  I felt this overwhelming sense of calm, peace and power all at once.  It is hard to explain unless you have felt it.  I became so emotional that I started to cry silently with tears streaming down my face.  My heart was pounding but I felt calm.  I also felt the words in my mind "you can do this" and then the words "you've been coasting for too long."

I knew immediately that moving forward with our adoption was the right thing to do.  I also knew that I needed to step things up.  I needed to become more in tune with the Spirit, that there would be guidance when I sought it and that, while it may not be easy (and in fact, I thought things might very well be extremely difficult), it was the right thing to do.

So now comes the biggest test of my faith.  To take that leap and trust that we are doing the right thing.  Since that time I have had amazing experience after amazing experience that I hope to share here.  But in the meantime, I just want to say:  I'm done coasting.

p.s.  if you want to learn more about those Mormon temples, click here.