Thankful in the hard!

This is hard.  Wow!   I have spent the last few moments scouring the list of adoption blogs I have bookmarked...looking for a shred of evidence that other families have had super tough days.  I haven't found any.  For the most part, not a one.  There are all kinds of beautiful pictures, cute anecdotes, epic stories...but no nitty-gritty, nail-biting, fear-inducing, heart-wrenching, terrible-no-good-very-bad-day stories.  Am I the only one?  I must be...right?  Surely not.  Is it that we don't want to remember the bad stuff?  Don't want anyone to see our weaknesses?  I don't know.  What I do know...is that life isn't bad, my kid isn't hopeless, I am not a failure...but life is hard.  I breathe in the happy moments but sometimes on the exhale, I choke the tears back (or let them fall) at the tense, unhappy, uncomfortable, I-don't-know-what-to-do moments.  It has been a month today since we got home from China.  I need to stop and remember what has happened in the span of a month.  How far we've come, how far I've come, how far Emma has come...far...far...far!  There is so much progress..but the progress is in the miniscule details that are hard to see when she is screaming for hours on end, when there isn't an end to her peculiar behaviors, when the other kids just need one more thing and one more reminder and one more reprimand, when the breakfast dishes are still sitting and it is time to start lunch.  I don't know what the Lord has planned for me, maybe these struggles are more about me than they are about Emma, but what I do know is I have a future and a hope.  That what He has started He will see through and it will be good, that it is good!  That He is here with me in my mothering and He never leaves me.  That He forgives when I ask. That He redeems and His mercies are new every morning.  Phew..I need all that and more.  I have been reading a book about thankfulness and how I forget that God is here even now in this difficult day and thanking Him and finding the reasons to be thankful gives me clearer vision to approach the day with joy rather than dread.  If God isn't in the details of my day, who is?  I shudder to think.  If the challenges aren't ways to teach me...then what are they?  So I want to choose thankfulness.  Thankfulness for the big and obvious things...but also for the miniscule, easily looked over things too.   And even, gulp, thankfulness for the hard moments, struggles, and endless energy it takes to love a little one into our family.  Because as I empty myself out, that is when He fills me up.  Thankful.  Yes.  Thank you Jesus!