everything has changed.

We’ve been back from vacation for five days, and what a blissfully slow week it’s been. It took the kids a bit to recalibrate from a week without us. Oh yes, there were melt downs. And drama. Complaints of “But Mum Mum didn’t make us do that!”

All of that’s to be expected and after our week on a mountain we’re happy to be home and riding out the storm in a routine. I’ve purposefully kept things quiet around here to give us time to adjust and find our rhythm again. Lots of reading library books, taking walks, trips to the pool, drawing, cooking together, whole stretches of time where my phone and the computer were turned off. Which is basically how I want the whole summer to be.

Some of you are asking about news from the adoption front. There is no news for now. Typically we would’ve had our day-long adoption training by now and probably started our home study, but there was a waiting list, so the next available class is June 27.

It seemed like an eternity away when we found out back in March, but the time has flown, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

In the beginning, when we were making our Big Decision of whether to expand our family or not, I experienced so.much.anxiety. Racing thoughts, sleepless nights, panic attacks, the whole nine yards. My entire consciousness was just consumed by this decision, especially after a good year of mentally accepting that we’d always be a family of four.

The decision rocked my nicely-structured world and put me right back in my least-favorite place: being Out of Control. Yep, I’m a control freak. My world and all the relationships in it just seem to work better when it’s all going according to my prearranged plan and people act the way I think they should.

Funny, looking at my life, the lengths God has gone to break me of that compulsive need for control.

And you know what? I’m happy to report that it’s working. With each Big Decision, each change of my plan, each person that throws a curve ball my way, I experience that knee-jerk, gut-wrenching fear. The loss of my ordered universe (which, oddly enough, can be an unhappy universe as long as I’m in control of it) throws everything in me off-kilter.

But then, after the deep struggling, my shoulders start to relax. My grip loosens. My eyes clear. God uses the upheaval to remind me: You’re never in control, Julie. Not even when you think you are. It’s all an illusion. He digs up the anger that spurts out when I lose control, reveals how quick I am to blame people and circumstances around me when things don’t go my way. He says: That’s not the way of life.

He’s right. So there’s an easing as I accept reality and enter back into my proper place. I am not God. I am not in control. The fear doesn’t completely leave, but it takes a back seat to my anticipation of the story God’s writing for me — this story where Unpredictable Things Happen and People Don’t Behave the Way You Think They Should and You Learn New Things and You Experience Victory Over Long-Held Idols.

These lessons that used to take months and even in some cases years, now come a bit quicker. In a matter of weeks I’m lifting my head up, talking to God about everything. Everything. Telling Him, “I trust You with my whole life. Do what You want.”

There’s a spring in my step again and I’m back to sleeping at night. It’s not a shallow kind of “Look on the bright side” attitude. No, it’s a settledness. Like there’s a big old storm raging, but in Him I’m rock-solid.

I’m telling you friends, this struggle is worth it. It gets easier. Let go. Let go of your need to control, to know what’s next, to defend your reputation, to manage your image. Just let it go. You will be so much happier for it, I promise.

And so there’s no baby in our house yet, and not one for awhile I’m sure. But everything has changed for the Gentino’s. We’re growing. We remove the back of Judah’s car booster seat and he says, “Can we save this is the attic for our baby?” We make plans to move furniture and switch around bedrooms. I get on an organizing kick (which, let’s face it, I was never really off of).

We read adoption books and educate ourselves on the unique relationship we’ll have with our child and their birthmother. I track down my Ergo carrier which I loaned out years ago (and can’t believe I found it!) and watch my friends with infants extra closely, trying to absorb their rhythms and routines, reaching back in my memory for what life is going to be like with a newborn.

We’re a little nervous and excited and mostly just deeply happy that God is giving us a chance to do this all over again. Our children have made our life rich beyond belief — have stretched us and shaped us and filled us up with joy — and we can’t wait for more of them. For more stretching and shaping and lots more joy.