study? i thought i was done with school...

our orientation interview is on friday and as soon as that wraps up we begin our home study. for those of you not familiar with a home study, it's basically someone interviewing your family including finances, a physical, background check (think i'm good on this one), and then they visit your home. so many things i've read about the home study process talks about the fact that it's not so important to have everything perfect in its place or every piece of dog hair off the floor (thank goodness) but more that you have your ducks in a row, that you are prepared for another family member, and that you are going to be decent parents. no matter what specifically anyone will be looking at, anytime you have someone go over your life with a fine tooth comb you are making yourself vulnerable. the truth is, jack is rolling over every which way but sunday these days and will be mobile before we know it so it's not bad to be baby-proofing and de-cluttering already. it's just that i have a hard time believing that how i keep my house determines how good a parent i will be. i love my jack jack but sometimes i am a slob! sometimes i have dishes left in the sink overnight and there's usually a pile of dirty laundry outside the laundry room and not in the basket and i'm sure i don't vacuum up after the dogs enough...but does that make me lesser of a mom than someone that does?

on top of this, i keep thinking about how we "clean house". whether it's before company comes or before a home study, we can become some cleaning fools. i'll never forget when i was young that we cleaned like we never cleaned before when my grandma was coming to visit (sorry mom). but that's not how we lived. i'm not saying we lived in a dump, i'm just saying it wasn't reality. what if a social worker popped in on some random day to do a home study, would i be prepared? i don't know. i don't think we would fail as much as i know it's not going to look the same as when we have this planned visit.

justin and i have been talking about how God is calling us to be prepared for whatever he has in store for us. part of our preparations are doing some "cleaning house" of our own. it's so easy to fall into a rut by setting expectations for our lives and working toward those expectations. this last weekend we had the pleasure of worshiping with Bridges church in Winston-Salem and the lead pastor, Patrick, preached about preparing for action even when we don't know what that action is. we realized we had been putting expectations in place without preparation and really we need to prepare and then just be ready for God to move. this is how our adoption is going to be and how our lives need to continue to be. we are preparing our home, our lives, and our hearts and then we wait for action...a baby, a move?, who knows? we just know we need to ready ourselves and wait with bated breath! man that gets me excited!