Ok God...I GET it.

most of you know we've moved around a LOT in our marriage. at first i loved it. until i had to move away from florida the weekend my mom and dad moved in to florida. that was a hard move. i had so been looking forward to living close to her again and then paul got the job out here in boulder. but. as i look back at all of the moves and see the direction we are heading in now, full steam ahead-I might add, it all seems to make sense. like a puzzle coming together one peice at a time. although, i have to admit...i feel like i'm putting the puzzle together from the middle and stretching outward, although i have no idea where the edges are and how big this puzzle will end up. here's the pieces i've been putting together this last week.
when we first got married we moved to colorado because, hey, who doesn't love colorado? and paul was finishing his bachelor's degree out here. that led him to the job in DC. i thought-how fun! i've got friends there and we'll get to see erica peters (now mongelli) again! so we moved to DC. she invited us to go to a small group her friends had just started. even though we had yet to go to the church they were affiliated with we went to the small group. there we met a group of great friends and that time in our lives, although it was just tuesday nights, will never be replaced. that small group is where we met jason and liz. we then moved to florida because who doesn't like florida? ok-so i've found out some people have strong opinions of florida, i am not one of them...i loved everything about it. the heat. the humidity. the sand stuck to everything. we bought the cutest house on the planet and fixed it up. it even had a spare bedroom that we could put kids in! ok...yes...so the original plan was to fill the house with kids. we pictured the backyard with a swing set. the location was perfect distance to my mom's house. the cost of living was good enough that we could afford for me to stay home once paul got a job. and then paul never found steady work. so his search broadened to, basically anywhere. landing us back in colorado of all places. this time the job was in boulder. we looked at a map and said "we can either live in westminster, where we've been, or longmont where we've never been....let's try longmont." turns out jason and liz moved here too. they live approximately 2 miles away. in late summer we tried our first (and turns out only) attempt at IUI. not to be too graphic but when i was laying at the fertility clinic with my feet up in stirrups and the nurse, was attempting to impregnate me i said "gosh, i never thought my first child would be concieved by a woman named carolyn." it was at that moment i realized it just wasn't natural for me to get pregnant while paul was at work. needless to say, after our first failed IUI and the thought of going through more fertility treatments we started down the path of adoption, even had our application filled out for a chinese baby. we became more open about our fertility woes and Jason & Liz told us about the wait no more conference down in the springs. we decided to go because we were going to be down there that day anyway and this would give us a chance to find some good heart stirring questions to ask ourselves to make sure we were ready for adoption. what we didn't know was that it was about adopting colorado foster kids. as we walked through the booths and picked up information from the various departments and agencies that were there we found the table for our county. deciding that would be MUCH easier than commuting 2 hours to the springs we picked up a flyer and started thinking. and reading and thinking and reading and thinking. one meeting led to another and that brought us to where we are.
had we not moved to DC we wouldn't have met Jason & Liz.
had we not moved to Florida we wouldn't have been open to moving anywhere for a job.
had we not moved to Longmont we wouldn't have gotten back in touch with Jason and Liz.
had we not gotten back in touch with Jason & Liz we wouldn't have heard about the wait no more.
had we not been through 2 years of fertility woes we wouldn't be open to adoption.
and that leads us to where we are. twice in the last week people have asked me how i'm ever going to deal with sending the kids back home, if and when that happens. all i can say is, it's a god thing. three months ago this was the farthest thing from my radar. and now i'm not anxious, or worried, or scared about the day that we would have to send the kids back home. i would not have this attitude on my own.