The dreaded question that every child asks.

 We were driving in the mountains on our annual fall vacation. The peak colors of the leaves had just passed but that didn't bother us. We go to the mountains for being in Grandpa's cabin. It's more deck than cabin and it's placed up a long gravel road. From the deck you can't see another building or human. Just trees, birds, deer, squirrels and the solitude is healing. I like to get up early and drink coffee on the deck - before the sunrises. I sit very still and listen to sounds in the woods. I always hope to hear a bear. 

We went to this cabin for a week after we got married. It was before our actual honeymoon, but it was the first trip we took together. We also went up that fall, after the first miscarriage. It rained the entire weekend. We went out once so I could buy rain boots, but other than that I was allowed to be alone with my grief. We went the following fall and I was finally able to wear maternity clothes. Josiah joined us that summer as I gave up the fight to breast feed and switched to formula in an effort to recover from the anxiety and depression that plagued the early days of motherhood. It's a summer vacation and a fall vacation. It's a retreat filled with memories.  

This October was the first time Josiah was able to understand where we were going. It was also the first time he could ask "Are we there yet?" 

It started around Greensboro. "Are we there yet?" 

"Not yet. It's going to be a long way. Not as far as Florida, but a long way."

That seemed to satisfy him. Until Winston Salem. 

"Are we there yet?"

"Nope. It's a long way."

"More than 2 minutes?"

"Yes, Josiah. Like 60 minutes."

 "But what if someone gets there before us and eats all the food and we don't have a place to stay?"

"That will never happen."

It really picked up after we stopped for dinner. Josiah asked with the persistence and tenacity you would expect of anyone in the Carr family. No answer was good enough. He was going to keep asking in as many ways as he could until we finally said yes. I'm certain that type of tenacity will pay off in life. 

You know....come to think about it....that's how I ended up getting my first date with my husband. It may be possible that the genetic combination of Gregory and Carr created a super human form of tenacious persistence that will wear down anyone in it's path.

That should make parenting a real blast. We are all in so much trouble....

Back to the story.....

It was a great weekend. Each day was better than the one before it. The weather was just right. We played on playgrounds, went to the cheese factory, had picnics, and skipped stones on the river.

At one point, something new happened. We were driving. Aaron and I started to sing one of Josiah's songs. He likes these songs from the Bugs and Slugs collection by Randall Goodgame. Google it. They are so catchy. They get stuck in your head and you have to sing them. We sing them all the time. Some are silly, some are Bible memory verses. At this particular moment Aaron and I were singing:

Won't someone help me?

Help me find my bunny?

I can't find my bunny anywhere....

Well have you looked under there? (Under where?)

The radio wasn't on, we just had it stuck in our heads and started singing it. Now typically, when we sing, Josiah loses it. There is nothing in this world that he hates more than our singing. We often threaten to sing his songs if he doesn't put his shoes on so we can leave the house. I could probably threaten to sing his songs in order to get him to try broccoli. Or anything else that is green and I would probably be very successful in getting him to put the food in his mouth. He won't swallow it of course, because it makes him gag. But if attempting to eat it would keep us from singing his songs, he would do it. 

So we are singing about finding this bunny and all of a sudden from the back seat comes a loud and proud....

"UNDER WHERE?" 

Then Josiah proceeded to sing the whole song along with us, loud and proud. There we were. The three of us. In the car, in the mountains, windows down, cool air, fall leaves, practically screaming out the lyrics to a song that tricks you into saying "under where?" which sounds like "underwear". A team. The three of us are a team. 

In that moment, I thought about how our hearts broke together, just a few weeks ago. I thought about how we healed together. I thought about how we felt stronger than before. I thought about how blessed we were to have each other and to have Josiah who joined our family in his own miraculous way.  I also thought about adoption. We hadn't heard anything for weeks. We had updated all of our forms and our home study. We had even expanded our home study to include children in foster care. I figured I could send it to every county department in the state. But there had been no news. No birth mom on the horizon. No prospects. No directions. Just silence. Aaron had been asking me to email the agency, and I had. But there was nothing. That deafening silence sowed doubt. It sent alarm bells off reminding us of our age. Maybe we should stop. Maybe we are too old. Maybe there isn't a baby for us. Is this it? Are we at the end of this journey? Are we there yet?

While we belted out those words, it became ok - being a team of three was fine. Better than fine. If nothing happened with adoption, we would always have this. And this is pretty awesome. There's lots of laughter and funny things that happen. There's lots of love and snuggles. And we just proved that when all of our hearts are broken, we lean into each other and look for God's unwavering love and comfort in the dark. We hold hands and walk on this road together, following the directions of a loving God. A God who makes no promise of comfort in the walk. Your feet will get blisters. But in following Him, the blessings will be more than you can even imagine. Better than you thought possible. Greater than any dream you could dream. And isn't this moment of bad singing in the car better than what I dreamed in 2015? Or 2010? or 2009? This family is better than any dream I have ever had. What God has mapped out for our family is perfect. It's perfect because we didn't create it. 

He did.