365 days.

365 days.
So long, yet so short. This time last year our family was battling fevers, illness, and GI bugs. Little did we know that our sweet Hudson would be hospitalized in one week for four days, battling a tough case of RSV. We felt overwhelmed in the midst of it that we were battling the enemy full-force. We had just returned from Passion Twenty-Ten where our lives had been changed as we served the 20,000 college students attending. Our hearts and minds were under attack and as a result, so was our health. It. was. stressful. We had over 25 days of someone having a fever in our home.
So long, yet so short. It doesn't take much to put me back in those days, how I was feeling, what I was thinking, and how I was changing. Yet, it also feels so long ago. So much has changed, so much is new, so much is different. Today we are all healthy and strong, enjoying a fun snow day at home. Mark is off to Israel and the kids and I are in full force... still wearing our PJ's, talking about playing games in a few minutes and making us some hot chocolate. It just feels so, so....different. Not just physically, but WHO we are. The conversations I have with the kids over the hot chocolate are focused on silliness, playing in the snow, and Regan's newly made-up game show she's hosting in the play room. Just as quickly, the focus changes. Brycen is a contestant on Regan's game show, perfectly named "Guess What?". He is, of course, winning and winning big. Regan, as the game show host, asks Brycen what he plans to do with the load of cash ("forty hundred thousand dollars" as I recall) he is about to win. He, in all seriousness replies, "Well, I am using it to pay for my family's adoption." Regan, playing along, asked, "Why are you adopting and from where?" Brycen, "We are adopting me a new sister from Ethiopia. And why? Well, it just seems easy to me, so I don't know why people keep asking. But, we are adopting because we want a new sister and she needs a family. See? It just works."
365 days.
I wish I could magically go back in time and play this game last year to hear his response. Something in me tells me it would be so different. I love how God has begun something big in them. He has continued to put words and simplicity to us amid all the complicated politics through them. As we have been talking about adoption, their sister, challenges that will inevitably arise after she comes home, and our responses to others, I have been reading a lot about how to foster healthy transitions for all of us. In the reading I have come face to face with the reality of adoption loss in a fresh new way. The idea that our joy, our addition, our new life, our new family, our answer to prayer is someone else's great loss, source of deep grieving, product of tragedy or oppression, and worst nightmare. In those conflicting worlds rests a little girl caught in the middle of grief and searing pain as well as new-found love and family. It's a lot to take in. It's a lot to wrestle with and pray through. Yet, I think back over the last year and I am confident in God's sufficiency.... His ability to be right there in the middle where pain and joy meet. His capacity to bring beauty from ashes is overwhelming, though I have seen that process isn't always easy, it IS always beautiful. My heart and mind are preoccupied today with thoughts about the past year for us and what changes it has brought. For some reason, I can't separate that from the last 365 days for our daughter's family. Even if her "family" is an orphanage and caregivers. Somewhere today lives a little girl who has had her own "last 365 day journey" and I don't know how her last year coincides with ours, but I know it does. I know God is crafting her for us and us for her. I know that the next 365 days will somehow merge those worlds... even if only on the basis of identity and putting faces with names. In it all, I am confident that though our family will have it's own unique hurdles and struggles, it, too, will have it's own unique beauty. "See? It just works."