Life Is Hard and then You Die ...

I can hear my great-grandma saying this over and over and this week it rings truer than ever. If I'm being completely honest, the past seven days have been the hardest of my life. In.Every.Way. We arrived home last Saturday with our newest US citizen and it has been a week of challenges, tears, questions, sadness, loss, grief, desperation, and a little bit of happy sprinkled here and there to keep us going.

I feel like we walked out of that Care Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia completely unprepared for what was ahead. This was avoidable had those involved been forthright and preparatory in the final days of our adoption in country, but that is another story altogether, and I am too caught up in a cluster of emotions to begin to fairly or properly write about our experience. But, I will and those accountable will be called out.

First order of business ... school. I need a routine. The girls need a routine. School is a comfort to us all and it frames our days. After a week home with our little Ethiopian, I have learned quickly that I should have heeded all advice and waited until he was home to decide what to do this year for not just him, but for all of my children, when it comes to school.

This little boy is likely two to three years younger than we were told (we even had to update our homestudy because a doc in Ethiopia decided he was 7, and that is complete lunacy), he potentially has an illness that we were promised he does not have, and he has absolutely no readiness for Kindergarten. He is developmentally very behind (and on par with some things) Jack, who is 2 1/2, and he speaks not one language.

Right now I am in survival mode while also being everything I was pre-Zeb to my other three kids. Our school year begins tomorrow and I am relieved for the fresh start with the girls. To give us all the grace we need to be happy and to have a year filled with more than academics, we are simplifying our curriculum for now.

Praying for peace and patience to cover me as I (we) wade through this very, very hard time.