What would you give up?

As many of you know, I had a yard sale a couple of weeks ago to help raise money for our adoption. What you may not know is how much some of the things that I sold had previously meant to me or my husband...please note that I said previously. In the yard sale, I sold my daughter's solid cherry crib. I had hoped some day to use it for our next child, and then give it to our daughter later for her children, but my precious little boy will be too big for this crib by the time we get home from Bulgaria. And, our daughter (who is only seven) may want to buy her own crib for her children years from now.

Rob sold a large case of his music CDs. Yes, he has almost all of the music on his iPod, but as any serious music enthusiast knows (think John Cusack in "High Fidelity") there is more clarity and better sound quality on a CD than can be found on a digital version of a song downloaded from iTunes. After he sold the case of CDs, he looked at me and said, "There was some great music in those CDs." I then asked him, knowing how much they meant to him, why he sold them. He simply replied, "Anything for our son."



Yes, indeed...anything for our son. This last week Rob canceled our vacation to Sanibel Island in Florida that was scheduled for the first week of August. Our deposit check for the condo on the beach is on its way back to be deposited into the account that we opened for our adoption. We had also planned to take our daughter for her first trip to Disney while we were in Sanibel since Orlando is only a couple of hours away. When I told her that we would not be going to the beach or Disney this year, I really expected her to be a little upset. She has been talking about Disney and the beach for months. Instead, my little seven year old eternal optimist said, "It's okay Mommy. We can go to Disney and the beach next year when it's the four of us." Yes, we will my sweet girl.

There are other things that we have had to give up over the last few months, and there will be many more things to come over the months as our adoption journey continues. Rob is taking on more hours teaching at his second job. I am clipping more coupons and being more frugal with the grocery budget. Our daughter is realizing that she can't always have a new book every time we go to the book store. We are making changes that become more and more comfortable as we continue. After all, most of the things we have given up are just stuff. It can all be replaced ...or not. What our family has realized is that nothing is more important than bringing home the other member of our family. We are not whole until our son who is that missing piece is home.