Rehearsing and rehearsing

Tonight I had the first rehearsal since we started our travel preparations last week. Rehearsals allow the mind to fall into a kind of groove where escape from mundane streams of self-conscious thought is possible. The same happens when I run and sometimes on a long drive with a good soundtrack.

I found my thoughts wandering through the things we have piled up. I donated a carload today, and prepared another for the garbage and recycling. Every day this week we have purged huge bags of junk from the house, paring down what we have so we will use everything we keep. Most of it was outgrown, used up, written-on and had served a purpose.

Just to mix things up, this IS a before picture.

At the start of the day you couldn't walk through our garage, and now everything is back in its place. It's amazing what you can do with a few episodes of Little House on the Prairie, two helpful kids and some Diet Coke.

Upstairs is a pile of ALL the things we've been told we'll need and that might help Primrose become a Ward with the least discomfort jumbled in a large brown splayed suitcase. It's a suitcase so big we normally use it for our scuba gear. 

So tonight as we worked through what was frankly a slow rehearsal, I daydreamed about organizing all of that stuff and it dawned on me that this is nesting. Nesting is rehearsing. I didn't expect to feel such strong urges to do stuff to our house and our things without the hormones of a pregnancy spurring me on. 

Why does it feel so necessary?

We are being given a gift in this daughter. Part of the reason we are allowed this gift is because we are privileged to live in relative wealth and security. I feel an obligation to be sure I don't take those gifts for granted. I might have said that was true before, but it is so much more real to me in light of gaining a child through adoption. She has been monumentally UNlucky in her life. It's only because we are in an imperfect world and loss exists that any child needs adoption. It's the definition of injustice that a child is born in need of surgery and a family may not be able to provide it without relinquishing the child entirely. To we who have been given so much, well, we oughta at least tidy up the place. When she's 12 and her room's a mess it won't register any more and let's face it; our garage will be gross again long before that. But... before we leave on this trip, there is this shining moment when at least our things can be ready and it will make me feel ready. 

I have a secret conviction that out there somewhere, on somebody's blog or some agency's website, there is a story or a packing list that might tell us what we need to know. Unfortunately, we won't realize what it was until we get home so for now I guess I'll just have to read the whole thing. I need the internet to tell me how it's gonna be when we have her in our arms. 

When the truth is you can't possibly know what to do to get ready, it feels good to read the internet until two in the morning and disinfect the garage floor with clorox wipes. Despite the ludicrous ideas that I can become deserving of this gift and that if I prepare correctly I'll be proven worthy, it is so far from reality that even I know this is true instead:

Proverbs 10:22 

The Lord’s blessing enriches,

and struggle adds nothing to it.

(... but I still love that the camp art supply bins are labeled and stacked.)