Last Post - Join us at our new blog

This will be my last post in Waiting for Hannah. I have started a new family blog at www.mcbryde-family.blogspot.com. I invite you to start following us there. I posted several posts all at once, so remember to start from the bottom and work your way up.

Hannah has been home for 3 1/2 months now and she is really settling into the family. She seems to laugh more and has started being "silly". Today for the first time, I saw her doing imaginative play all by herself with a piece of cheese. It became a school bus and it was zooming across the table and she was talking about it while no one was looking. This is a big milestone for her. She didn't really know how to play when she came to us. Now she will feed her baby a bottle, play with blocks/connectagons, and finally imagine. I am so happy for her.

She likes to pray, likes her Sunday School and preschool classes, loves to paint and draw, and her language is really starting to come together. I am forcing her to say complete sentences and she is able to say them. Of course, there is still much to learn, but we are thankful that she can communicate better and better each day.

As a family, we are still finding our new balance but it is getting easier. I remember a discussion I had with Lauren and Andrew early on about just trying to make it to Christmas. Well, we made it, with God's faithful hand upholding us all the way, and things are so much improved. We will start homeschooling again in January, so I am hoping that will bring more normalcy back into our lives. Yes, it will be more challenging, but it is what we know, it is what we do, we need to get back to just being us again.

As for my anxiety/depression, it comes and goes, but I really feel like I am starting to get my life back again. I had 2 bad reactions to anti-depressants, so I decided they just weren't for me. I know there are other medical options out there, but I am seeing so much fruit from just lots of time in the Word, in prayer, and talking with dear Christian women. My pastor gave me an awesome book "Depression, A Stubborn Darkness" that has been pivotal in my healing. I am so thankful to God for all the people He has sent my way to aid me in this journey. I am hopeful again. I am starting to make plans again, but now much more reliant on Him. I remember hearing someone who adopted say she was glad they did it because it taught her how to really trust God. I know what she means. One journey is over, but another is just beginning. I pray for strength for that journey constantly. He is faithful. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.