We sat in those seats just yesterday

Recently, our family was invited to an information session at the adoption agency who helped us adopt our little girl. We were there to tell all about our journey and to answer questions.

In March of 2014 we were those people. A family came and spoke to the group and told of how they adopted their little boy from Ethiopia. He was so cute. I remember feeling awe and wonderment at this family formed out of tragedy. They had taken their own tragedy of infertility and their son's tragedy of not being with his first parents and turned it into something positive. I desperately wanted what they had.

A few weeks ago we WERE that family. I was super nervous. What would they think of us? Would they look at our family and wish they had what we have? That's what I was wishing when I was them. Would they think we were selfish for adopting a child when we already had two birth children? Would they ask hard questions? Or worse, no questions at all.

Would our three children behave themselves? They were fighting in the car on the way there and my husband and I joked that the people would see us and think, "never mind, we don't want kids after all."

I shared things with this group of strangers that I don't often share. We talked about our original plans to have children and how we had wanted six. We talked about secondary infertility and about what led us to adopt from China. I talked about post-adoption depression (just as real as post-partem depression, my friends.)

I talked about God and the role of faith on our journey. I said this to a room full of strangers. That was scary.

I wanted to tell them that we sat in those seats just yesterday. My favorite question was, "would you do it again?" I was so happy to say, "yes, we are already in the process!"

I would do it a hundred more times if I could.

I hope they invite us back to speak again.