I will survive

Thanks to the person who inspired this blog!

A friend e-mailed me to tell me she was going to do a 5K. She said, "I figure if you can teach yourself to swim from a book and do a tri I can run a silly 5k!"

Here was my reply:
You go girl... set your time goal too!
Sprint. Run sprints, run as fast as you can, breath rest and run that sprint again. Power, you want to have power!

My goal was to survive, you can have that goal too, but now I wish my goal was to have power!

All I did was survive that Triathlon, that's not me! I am not here to survive, I am here to live!

You'll do great!

And she will do great, she is great at everything she does. I think her creativity gets her wherever she wants to go in life.

And my determination, my goals, will get me where I want to go in life.

Survival brings me to another friend inspiring today's blog.
This friend has been given the assignment to pick a middle name for our son. She has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. Her ability to survive and exceed in life is an amazing inspiration to me. She's always felt a part of me as much as any sister would. Though she has, in my opinion, faced many huge challenges and many loses, and life has shorted her on opportunities, she has showed her strength and determination to achieve what she knows is best for her. She learned to be an amazing mother and I've watched her grow into a career woman with so much potential. But the special piece here is that she sought out the resources she needed to survive, and exceed, and overcome. She allowed my family to bring her in and accept her. If we can impart only a small part of her determination onto our son, I am absolutely confident he will exceed, "just surviving" and he will do great things! So as a symbol of imparting that determination, she will chose his middle name.

I sent the following e-mail to her and thought I would share this bit of insight for others who may be confused on "labor" in adoption.

She said, "How great...no labor."

I said, "As I understand it labor comes in the following form:

30 hour flight with child being "kidnapped" by strangers from everything he knows.
He is sick and he may even have a few contagious viruses now affecting me.
I am sick from the water and I have jet lag.
He screams the entire 30 hours only stopping to rest long enough to build up energy to excrete more bodily fluids.

Sister, I think I would take labor in an American hospital as far as "ease"... Now, for how great I look for just "giving birth", that's all good! But the compromise is complete lack of control about the process and going way more insane than the normal "pregnancy brain" and forgetfulness. I am just plain incompetent.

Thank God you are in charge of the name, who knows what I would have picked... Rudolf seemed acceptable!

One more thing...

As you can see, all the pain in the world is worth bringing home that little face.

He's mine!"