The Gratitude of Hope by Renee Knowles

Gratitude seems like a small gift to return to the universe for all that I have been given. I have a wonderful husband who really “gets” me, a supportive family, a job as a writer that makes me happy to get up every day, and a cozy, warm home that I adore. But for all I’ve been given, I briefly lost sight of the blessings. For a short time all I felt was numb. All I wanted was what I didn’t have.

My husband and I are in the middle of an international adoption. We’ve been in the process for over a year and half and the wait time for placement of a baby was only increasing. It was looking like we would be eligible for AARP before we would receive the wonderful gift of a child that we so desperately sought. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but it was certainly looking like we wouldn’t be parents for several more years.

But when you’re down life has a way of bringing you hope, and we have since decided to adopt from another country in the meantime. Our paperwork for this second adoption is nearly complete, and now we’ve learned that a child will be home with us by the end of the year! Hope has returned, along with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the twists life takes. If we hadn’t had the long wait on our first adoption, we wouldn’t have decided to apply for the second one. We wouldn’t have opened ourselves up to the possibility of having two children, instead of one.

We’ve begun to buy the nursery items and can picture our baby in the bright crib with Noah’s ark bedding. We will finally be a family. How great is that?

So even though it might sound strange, I’m forever grateful for the wait and for having to examine all the possibilities in life. Not only did it teach me about patience (something my husband says I have much too little of J), but it taught me just how much I want to be a mommy. How much I want to be the best parent I can be. And it taught me how to be open to anything.

Sometimes the best things in our lives end up being the ones we don’t plan.

Bio: Renee Hagar is a freelance writer, editor, and fiction author. Writing as Renee Knowles, her debut novel, an erotic chick lit called Going Topless, came out in December 2007 from Siren Publishing. It has received several five-star reviews. She has a new contemporary romance series called Pleasures, Inc. coming soon. For more information, go to www.reneeknowles.com.