Guest Post by Emily Anderson of The Anderson Family Crew

Hey, everybody! We've got another guest post today from Emily of the Anderson Family Crew. If you're new here, welcome. Be sure and check out our whole week of posts this week. On this blog we donate $1 a week to an adopting family. This week we have two. We have been absolutely blessed to have such fabulous women contribute their experience and wisdom to us on behalf of our family of the week and the Haitian safe house. If each of us donated a dollar today, we could build the entire safe house and put a serious dent in the Gregory family's adoption. Please donate to support them and to say thank you to our guest posters this week for their generosity and general awesomeness. The donate buttons are over there to your right. Thanks! And now, our post from Emily:

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Beth asked me if I would write about what we have done to help transition our daughter from Africa to our home.

I felt so bad when I got that e-mail because really, I hadn't done much.

When our daughter, Elsa, came home back in March we were thrilled!  We had so many plans for her, for us.  Plans that included keeping Africa alive in her heart.

 But then, plans changed.  God showed us a different path when I, surprisingly, got pregnant just a few short weeks after she was home.

This normally would be a pleasant surprise, but for us, it was hard.

I suffer from the severest form of "morning sickness" (clearly a man named that cause it's not just morning sickness) and was laid up on the couch for the next several months, and in and out of the hospital.

This baby would make us a family of 8 (our oldest child is 7), so to say that I had a lot on my plate, was an understatement.

I look back on that time now, and while I was in it, I would have traded anything to not be there...but now I can confidently say that I learned so much from that experience.

It's when I'm in the depths that I cling to my Jesus.  And rest assured, I clung.

So, instead of a post about transitioning, I thought I would write up a post about what we hoped, versus reality.

Hopefully this will make some of you, who might be in the depths too, feel somewhat normal.

What we hoped for:

To learn Amharic and have totally awesome conversations with our Amharic speaking daughter.

What really happened:

No Amharic was learned.  And instead, Elsa was basically taught English by Dora the Explorer.

And a little Spanish.

I'm sure she was thoroughly confused.

What we hoped for:

Beautiful African hair that looked amazing everyday.

What really happened:

A hot mess, mainly my fault.

What we hoped for:

Injera made weekly, so that she could have a bit of Africa here.

What really happened:

A lot of macaroni and cheese.

What we hoped for:

To acquire some Ethiopian music for her to have.

What really happened:

She memorized all the words to Beyonce's "Single Ladies", thanks to my other children.

You see...life was not easy after we adopted (duh) but we can't look back and hold any regrets.

The Lord was there...even amidst the macaroni and Dora.  He knew we wouldn't be able to do this on our own...and I'm pretty sure, prior to Elsa being home, I was thinking "I got this Lord"...

Yah right, he said.

Even though it was not the most ideal transition, it was our transition.

And we might have failed at keeping Africa alive in her heart, but we didn't fail at filling that hole with love (even though it wasn't always easy).