As we complete our home study and all the paperwork that entails (tax returns, credit reports, employment verification, dr. appointments, marriage license, birth certificates, driving records, criminal records, and a 38 question autobiography, just to name a few), we've also been asked, "Why are you adopting?"  As I struggled to put into words what I felt and wanted more of an answer than, "I cry when I think of orphans", I came across this blog of a family also on an adoption journey.  She writes so beautifully and also, very real.  Many of her posts brought me to tears but what had me bawling on our couch at 10pm was this post, more specifically this paragraph:

But to be honest, what REALLY made me cry was the fact that my thoughts immediately flew to my other babies. The ones who at most likely already alive, living in Ethiopia. The ones that don't have their mommy there to run into their rooms, scoop them up, and cuddle them when they have bad dreams. The ones that are alone and abandoned. The ones that don't have someone to comfort them when they are sad, laugh with them when they do something silly and allow them to be kids instead of fighters for their lives. They don't know their mommy yet and its already killing me. They have me, they just don't know it.

A lot of things scare me about adoption.  I have a lot of "what ifs?" in my mind but when I come back to this, this idea that with God's help, (which I need hourly), I can be the comfort for someone, the safe place for someone, it is all worth it.  It doesn't make the unknowns go away but it does make them doable.