New Jewelry! Fundraising Friday!

Check out my friends n my skillz, y'all:

Owlated Necklace

Nacre Moon Earrings

Whirled Peas Earrings

Skipping Stones Necklace

Triple Teal Necklace

Jet Shell Triple Necklace

Dirigible Earrings

Milky Way Necklace

Starry Night Necklace

Black Bean Earrings

Happy Wrap Bracelet

Stone Drop Earrings in Caramel

I mean, come on! For even more (like, so much more), visit Mrs Muenich MADE. There's another sneak peek up today, and everything will be up tomorrow

FINISHED!

Y'all. Finally, I'm feeling hopeful again. The Lord is gracious in our sadness; He gives me time to grieve-pout, then grieve-rage, then actually grieve-mourn, then (finally) accept His comfort and hope. He's so good.

It took me long enough, but I'm finally feeling like we will adopt at some point, that we're not running on a treadmill, and that God isn't withholding our deep (and godly) desires like a bully putting stiff-arming your forehead. I know, sometimes I believe crazy things about God, but He's so gentle in guiding me back to what I know to be true about Him.

Are we for sure about our direction? No. Not at all. I really wish I could say, "THIS way is THE way!" But I cannot. I really, really wish money wasn't the only thing holding us back from moving forward tomorrow, but it is. But, finally, I believe again that God will provide in His good time.

In the meantime, I've been at work. First it was a little desperate, like I must keep swimming or I'll shark-die! But now that I've remembered that it's good to have God in control, I'm just glad there are things my hands can do to help.

Y'all know I make jewelry. Honestly, I do it for fun, because pretty! But I want to sell it to raise funds for our adoption. So Jenni Olowo of Jenni O Photo was gracious enough to lend her photographic prowess to photograph two of my friends wearing my jewelry. Then Jenni sent me ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE photos of FORTY EIGHT different pieces. It was a lot of work! But I finished YAY today I finished!

Stay tuned for a sneak peek on tomorrow's Fundraising Friday!

Colorado

I'm writing this post from chilly Estes Park, Colorado! Ezra's napping, Stephen's at his LT orientation, and we're alllmost settled into the Rainbow duplex. Perhaps I'll take some pictures and post 'em. Y'all, it's rustic. But I think it'll be a great little home for us for the next 11 weeks. Boys have already taken over our house in College Station (prayers for our a/c are appreciated), and the summer is officially underway.

Do you ever feel like you've been telling yourself to "just make it to [insert point in time here]" for a long time? Man, I've been doing that for SERIOUSLY months now. It would be nice to know if things really will slow down, or if I need to somehow just make a change to this being my new normal.

I don't have an actual update for our adoption because we've been cleaning and organizing our whole house, packing what we need to live somewhere else for 11 weeks into our Ford Focus, and driving across the country. Also, we currently don't have the funds to act on a decision (probably), even if we'd made one. So I'm focusing on getting this little "house" in order and trying to start processing my feelings again (because it's been a "just keep swimming" past few weeks).

Update

Well there's no big news or something like that, but I will give you a lil adoption update. Since we're most likely parting with our current program, the fundraising countdown doesn't really apply anymore. :(

But we've pretty much narrowed our focus down to adopting from Democratic Republic of the Congo or Hong Kong. There are positives and negatives with both; I can tell you we'd rather adopt from DRC. There are children (lots of children) waiting who have no special need (and some are infants; many are toddlers). As soon as we collect the money, we could move forward.

Man, what a bitter pill to swallow, that the only thing keeping us from adding to our family is money. It rankles. [that's what I say now when I want to say something sucks]. You know what's a similar word and also a great one? Fester. Just sayin'.

Where was I? Oh yes, festering. I'm sure this is me being whatever personality I am [ENFP], but I really dislike that something as arbitrary as money is what's holding us back. Then again, I've never had much respect for it. I'm not sure how healthy it is; money just feels like tennis shoes. Sure, there are a number of things you can do without tennis shoes, but there are things you just can't without an athletic shoe, and there's no real getting around that. And I'm sure some people are desperate for and in love with athletic shoes, but I cannot whip myself into any sort of excitement over tennis shoe shopping. They never fit perfectly and I'm often not enjoying myself when I'm wearing them. Money. Tennis shoes. I mean, who gets giddy over paying bills (or fees, as it is)? Who adores keeping the budget? It's tidy, but it's not fun like a good cute pair of sandals. Is all I'm sayin'.

Anyway, if you'd be praying for us (for money to rain down from the sky, or for a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night to guide us in the direction He wants us to go), we'd really appreciate that. In the mean time, I've been working up some new jewelry to Etsify hopefully in a little over a week. I'll share that when it's done.