Life Changes...

Life is changing all around me. 

My good friend who has been such a huge support to me is preparing to take a new foster placement. It's been months since she has had to "deal with the system".  I am partially thinking she got too much sun in Vegas and she's gone a little nuts!  (Yes, I know dear friend, you are probably reading this!)  It's a good change and I know there is lots of love that their family will be able to share.

Another of my good friends is getting married for the first time. I've known her and her twin sister since the first grade. She just announced her engagement over Easter. It's really a blessed thing and I couldn't be happier for their family.

My mother's husband just lost his mother today. It's a reminder of how fragile life is. It's a reminder of how quickly life can change. With this change in their life, they are able to move out state in the future. At least, that was "the plan".  I am not sure how I feel about my mother being in a different state than me, but then again, I don't know if I really have much of a choice.

My father is talking about "his plans" when Harley Davidson does another layoff. He is currently expecting his job to end in April 2012.  I doubt that he will move away to another state, but I'm patiently waiting to see what changes this will bring.

Life doesn't really hold still. And yet, I feel like our life is still frozen. We can't move forward. It's a waiting game. A game to see who is going to move the next piece.  My hubby and I wait patiently on the court system, that is severely backlogged, to make decisions. We wait patiently on the birth mother to see if she is going to make the positive changes that her children want so desperately. We just wait. There really has been no changes in our case/status for months. It's just more and more waiting.

At Easter, I sat in church reflecting on how long of a process this has been.  My husband and I will be married ten years in October. It will be nine years in November that we wanted to start our own family. I have a family, of sorts, but they are still not my children. At least not in the sense that I can make all the important decisions on my own. I can't take them out of state to my friend's upcoming wedding. I cannot take them out of state to visit my mother, assuming she moves. I can't make medical decisions or educational decisions without someone else's consent. I don't know if God will have all the ends tied up so nicely by November 2012 when it will be 10 years of my waiting for children to call me own. A decade of waiting.

It just reminds me a little of Moses and his people. They waited a long time. I suppose you might even call them "The Experts of Waiting". Moses saw the promise land, but he didn't get to step foot into it.  Will that be me?  Is it that I will have these children but won't be able to call them my own?  I don't know what the plan is. I know that I will be content with whatever the circumstance is. I suppose, I'm kind of happy that things are not changing, so that I now have this time with them. That is certain. Change is uncertain. Never knowing what it will lead to.

I pray for all those people out there that are going through life changes. I hope they know that God is with them. He is walking along side them, no matter what it is that they are going through. Tonight there are tears of joy and tears of sorrow. Dear friends, know that your life changes matter to me and more importantly, it matters to God. I know that my life isn't in a rotation of change now. I also know that it cannot stay that way forever. When it does change, I hope to have my feet firmly planted on the solid rock that is my Savior.