Living Sacrificially

Well, it's been almost a year since I have posted. And this is a long one. :) I realized last spring that all I really did was whine on my blog, and that it wasn't healthy for me and really, who wants to read that? So I stopped. But life isn't quite as hard right now. Each day isn't as challenging. My job isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't wake up each day praying I have a temperature so I can justify staying home sick.

As I have been walking through this Fall, I've been thinking about how "easy" my life is. I have challenges sure. (What on earth do I do to get that one class to understand what I'm talking about?!?) However as a whole, I don't feel that I live sacrificially. There isn't a whole lot about my life that is uncomfortable.

My roommate and I were talking about my desire to be foster parenting by the time I'm 30.  I had this list of things to get done before then. (Travel, Buy a House, etc) As we were talking I realized how I wasn't sure I was supposed to wait that long.  We talked a lot. And we came to the conclusion that we both wanted to do this. And we didn't think that we should wait until we weren't living together anymore.

Tuesday of this week I emailed a local foster parenting agency that had been recommended to me by some friends who are foster parenting. I wanted to make sure it was a possibility for us to do this living in the same house and not against some rules somewhere. I was putting my dreams out there and waiting for an answer.

Today the answer came. It was a YES! Only one of us can be licensed (me), but I don't have to wait to be able to afford to live by myself. I was so excited. It feels so good to have this dream be within reach.  We jumped up and down and squealed a little. Ok a lot. I'm SO excited. And scared. And overwhelmed. But mostly excited.

We won't be able to start until next fall. We are stuck in our apartment lease until the end of summer, and it would be really expensive to break it.  The current plan is to do all of the training in the summer so that when we move in August, all we will have to do is the home inspection and fire inspection on the new house and start soon thereafter.

So you can pray for me. That I enjoy these next months of singleness and freedom.  That I work hard to prayerfully prepare for this.  That I hold this dream loosely so that if it isn't what God wants that I will be ok with it. But for now, I'm embracing excited.