A year ago today...

I've been mentally writing this post since the beginning of December, but I'm only just now sitting down to type it all out. A year ago, on December 6, 2006 the kids and I flew to Guatemala to foster Soleil until her adoption was complete and we could bring her home. It was a very exciting and uncertain time for our family. Leaving Dave and going to live in a third world country with four kids, for an undetermined length of time, was somewhat nerve wracking. I took comfort in that I knew Antigua well, and I felt very comfortable there. The house we rented was in a community with other fostering families and was very safe with a locked gate and a 24 hour security guard. We spent two amazing months there and I am so very thankful for the time we spent in Soli's beautiful Guatemala. In early December of last year, as we approached the one year anniversary of leaving for Guatemala, I found myself reliving some of the emotions I had felt the year before. I found myself "nesting" as I had done to get ready for our time away. I was anxious to get dentist appointments complete and Christmas shopping done. I was lying awake at night making mental lists of what needed to be done the next day. And I found myself distancing myself from Dave, I suppose, in an attempt to protect myself from the impending separation (or the memory of it). It was intriguing to have the opportunity to examine these emotions as they came up and link them to the happenings of a year ago. It was like having a window into my own psyche and my own human nature, of which the view is usually obscured (at least from my perspective). I didn't realize that I had been holding Dave at an arm's length last year. I remember that we seemed to be out of sync before I left, but I figured it just had to do with the stress and busyness of the time. But in reality what I had been doing was shutting him out of my life as I prepared to survive without him. So interesting... Anyway, once I became aware that I was pushing him away, as I had the year before, I was able to let my guard down and let him back into my life. And I am so very relieved that we won't be leaving him again this year. Being apart for those two months (we haven't spent more than 10 consecutive days apart since the day we met 12 years ago) made us stronger, both as a couple and individually. A year ago today the kids and I were in Guatemala and Dave was home alone. I'm so happy that we'll all be sleeping under one roof tonight. Thanks for checking in. ~Heather