Travel and Beijing Day 1

**We are HOME...but I am going to attempt to recap our trip for y'all so I don't forget anything**

Wed. Feb. 8th was a travel day! It was our first experience together going on a flight of that magnitude, think BIG plane for 12 hours..NUTS but not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Good movie options, free wine or beer and they fed us 3 times. We also had the opportunity to meet a family that became our lifeline on the trip. They sat right in front of us and the rest is history as they say!

We arrived in Beijing Feb. 9...picked up by our guide Selina navigated the airport and immigration in Beijing, which is really just a madhouse...no lines, tons of people, tons of luggage, tons of nerves! We got settled into our hotel late evening on the 9th. We were able to get our VPN up and running so we could skype with the kiddos and that turned out to work so well for us, we were able to talk to them 2 times everyday morning and evening...it saved this mama's heart.

Feb. 10th we started what I will affectionately call our "honeymoon" stage of the trip. The next two days felt like a vacation to Matt and I. We had a quiet hotel room (even though we had jet lag so sleep was lost on us) and we got to explore a part of the world that I had no idea God intended for us to walk. Now granted there were many hours of "Oh my I'm going to puke we meet our boy in __ days/hours" but over all we enjoyed our time in Beijing.

First Day Feb. 10 - Great Wall and Jade Factory

The Great Wall was breath taking. The size of it alone is enough to take your breath away and then as you start to walk it and you see the details that were all made by hard working hands so many years ago it's hard to comprehend. There are different fortresses along the wall, there are so many stairs (some steeper than others and none the same size) and there are also little ditches all along the paths and stairs for drainage (so detail oriented) Matt was brave and obviously in better shape than me because he went up another fortress even taller than the one we all stopped at, on the steep side. I stayed at the one below and ended up being photographer for others visiting the same site. The air quality is not all that great plus it was cold so my chest was on fire. So much respect for those that made that guarded that wall and made that climb regularly.

After the Great Wall we went to a Jade factory where we had our first big meal in the restaurant upstairs and then got to take a tour and see how pieces are made from Jade. The food was good everywhere we went in Beijing and we had Selina to order for us which was sooo helpful, we never went hungry in Beijing! (different story at our next stop) The detail in the pieces made in the Jade factory were beautiful, jade comes in so many colors and types, I had no idea. We got to watch a guy making a "Happy Family Ball" it is a big chunk of Jade that they then carve into 3 separate balls (sometimes more layers) to represent the generations of a family.

We were happy for a nap and then another big dinner after our first day of site seeing.

From this expectant mama's heart

Can I be so raw and real right about now? I haven't just sat down and spilled my heart in words in a very long time. It seemed too hard, that we were spilling so much into something that to be honest I could not see coming to completion. We started this journey 6 years ago. This feels like the longest pregnancy of all time. I have prayed for a child that I knew nothing about, I prayed for a birth mom that I knew nothing about, I prayed for a country that I knew nothing about. Y'all I KNEW NOTHING!! You know who knew all of this while I was praying, God. He knew my son, he knows his birth mom, he knew he was from China. I kept praying, I kept researching, I kept saving, I kept talking my poor husband's ear off about how adoption would not leave my heart it was ingrained in my every fiber.

We are less than a week from traveling to Beijing China where we will begin the 15 day journey that is bringing our Theo home. I am terrified if I'm being honest. America is not looked super highly upon by many right now so traveling abroad feels scary, we know no Chinese (although we got some good laughs practicing some phrases we hope to master before we arrive), we will be leaving our 3 kids and 2 pups for 15 days, we will be taking a 3 year old boy from all he knows. I find myself pouring out prayers to God in what can only seem like verbal vomit to his ears. I am so scared and heartbroken for my boy. I love him so much already, I think that happens after 6 years of praying for someone. He has had no time to prepare for this change, we are taking him away from all he knows and throwing him into a hotel room with 2 strangers, we are bringing him home to a new country where everything smells, sounds and looks different. The fear and uncertainty he must be getting ready to feel leaves me in tears and shreds my heart...I cannot imagine this being my little Garrett in his position but at last that is where we are, a 3 year old boy is about to come into a family and for that to happen there has to be great loss.

I cannot help but think we are on the brink of a lifetime experience that will put a permanent mark on the timeline of our life. There will always be before children, there will always be before this house,  there will always be before China and there will always be after China. This last one is where all the work starts. Yes, we have put in 6 years of money, paper cuts, conference calls, training, home study's and sleepless nights getting to this point but the work starts AFTER China. This is where we as mom and dad, sister and brother, grandma and grandpa pour our hearts and soul into a little being that has no idea what those roles mean in a little one's life. We start the task of making up for lost time, we start the work that is healing the brokenness and restoring what has been lost.

We start sharing about a God who heals the broken hearted, who knows our whole story and loves us anyway, we start sharing this God with a little boy who needs him more than he needs us. I won't be able to give him all the answers when the time comes to hear about where he comes from, although over our 15 days in China I will do my best to get as many of those answers as I can. He will need to learn to trust a God that knows his whole story, he knows what was going through his mama's heart when they were separated or she decided to give him LIFE, he knows those first days and he was with him through it all.

My heart feels like it can hardly fit inside my chest as I write this. There is such a feeling of expectancy, almost that of that last week of pregnancy when ever twinge might be the moment. It's that feeling of not knowing the details but knowing that I will never be the same when he is placed in my arms!