Whitacre Family Update
2012 at 2:29 pm | by Nicole WhitacreFiled under Motherhood Adoption
So I’ve been trying to write this little update for over a week, but I am very much in a “new mother fog” right now. Exhausted. Can’t remember what day of the week it is. Trail off in the middle of my sentences. The past two weeks have been magical, grueling, and a little blurry.
Thus far, things have gone even better than I expected. The children are adjusting remarkably well. It brings such joy to my heart to look around our breakfast table at my four children, to watch Jack and Jude play soccer in the driveway or Tori and Sophie splash together in the bathtub. I love it when they run to the door as a pack to greet Daddy when he comes home from work, or when they sing songs from our “Slugs and Bugs” cd in their beautiful Ethiopian accents. My favorite time of day is after morning school is cleaned up and all four children run around the house laughing through their daily game of “Tori’s It!”
We’ve had our challenges to be sure. They are learning to respond to our loving authority. I quickly discovered that “embi” repeated over and over means they do not like what I have decided—and I have to stop myself from nonsensically replying “no embi” (literally “no no”). When we served them vegetables the first night they were home you would have thought we had shoveled dirt onto their plate! And all four children are learning to be kind to one another. But considering that they have left their country, family, friends, every familiar sight and sound and smell and taste, and come to live with our family—including two siblings very close in age—they are doing amazingly well, and I am so grateful for God’s grace.
I am sure we will have more challenges in the days ahead. The adjustment period is only just beginning. But for right now, my prayer is very simple: strength and wisdom. I desperately feel my need for both. Strength to get out of bed in the morning and finish the dinner dishes before 9pm. Strength to insist on obedience for my children’s good. Strength to still be smiling by the end of the day when my husband comes home from work. And wisdom. Wisdom to know how to handle a myriad of moments with two precious children who don’t speak the same language. Wisdom to know when to comfort and when to correct. Wisdom to know which child takes first priority when all four our vying for my attention at once.
The Proverbs 31 woman is “clothed with strength” and “speaks with wisdom.” I’m a long way from either but I know that God is eager to answer this simple, desperate, prayer on behalf of this helpless, happy, mother.
