A new ball

The-Boys'-Home

Click on this link and watch this video. It is amazing to think of how much joy a ball brought one of those little boys and to realize that I have 3 flat basketballs laying around the house. Lately I have been itching to leave the country again and go play with orphaned children. I don't know why, but that is one thing that I think almost constantly about. Since I don't have the money or the means to do that right now, I plan to find some volunteer work at Shiloh house for boys or with boys and girls club of America. I know there are plenty of children right here in America who also need help, but for some reason I get a travel bug:) I am convinced there is no better reward than brightening a child's future.

Dear Andrei

It has been a while since I have written you, although I still think about you every single day. I think your name crosses my mind at least once every day as does this picture of you. I love this photo; I keep it on my laptop so I see it every time I flip it open. I like the serene and quiet look on your face even though my favorite thing about you was your toothy grin and gruff laugh. This photo captures your peaceful handsome look. You are about 4 years old now! It is so hard to believe that you are a whole year older already; you are growing up so fast. I imagine you are potty trained and no longer wearing those ridiculously big blue diapers you wore at Sfanta Maria's! You must be jabbering away in Romanian and talking up a storm to all within hearing distance. I imagine you also talk to yourself like I saw you do a few times when I peaked through your hospital room window several times. Remember those magazines you would look at as you would mumble away about who-knows-what? I wish I could have understood what you were saying...

Sometimes I catch myself imagining what my life would be like right now if you were mine to raise. I have a college degree now and am exploring some different career paths I could take. I would almost be in a perfect situation to raise you as my own. I wonder if you are still in the same foster home you went to when you left last summer or if you have ended up in an orphanage. I hope you are in a home with people who love you. You would be pretty hard not to love, although you did throw some mean tantrums, bebe. You were quite impossible at times! You would get along great with our jack russell terrier. You both can be pretty stubborn, you know. 


Do you want to know something crazy? Last fall when I went through a major depressive episode, I was scared out of my whits. I lost all desire to be alive and getting out of bed and facing a whole day was a battle. And all along the way I kept thinking if I had been able to bring you home, I would have been fine. I would have had Mom and Dad care for you while I finished my last semester of school and then found a good job, got an apartment, and raised you on my own. Andrei, I would not have been able to do that. I would be on government aid and you would be in daycare or with Mom all day while I was working. Life would have been a struggle and I would have been exhausted and frustrated at being a single mom. Why did I hold on to the notion that having you in my life would have made everything just great? That I could have conquered anything easily if I just had you? I kept telling myself at least you wouldn't be in a foster home in Romania. What right did I have to think that living with a 21-year-old single American girl would make you that much better off than a foster home in Romania? It wasn't about you. It was about me. I just couldn't let you go.


I think you represented something to me, Andrei. You represented a life I want so badly right now. I want to be a mother. I want to be a wife first, of course, and then a mother. I want a toothy-grinned toddler who throws tantrums one minute and then falls asleep in my arms the next. I want to rejoice in my child's first steps and feel the warmth of my baby's breath on my neck as I rock him to sleep. I want someone to teach and to love like nothing else in this world. And I want a supporting and loving husband who plays with his children when he gets home from work and who is ecstatic to be at home with his wife and children after a long day. I want to be loved and I want to love. And the longer that dream isn't becoming real, the more the fear creeps in that there is no husband and there are no children waiting for me. That I'm going to be alone and providing for myself and watching all my friends and my siblings have children and knowing that I will never know what it is to hold your own baby in your hands and kiss their sweet little face. That fear is real and it is scary. Thus, I hold on to you and long for you as though you are the only child I will ever have had the pleasure of loving that much. I'm trying not to be afraid, Andrei. I trust in God and I know he wants me to be happy. I'm trying not to be afraid.


I love you always and forever,
Alyssa

I did it!!!

I did it! I graduated with a four-year degree from Brigham Young University last weekend. I must say that I feel very accomplished and proud of myself for sticking it out all four years and pressing forward through the tough times. Looking back on my freshman year, I am shocked to remember how discouraged I was. I made a 2.9 my first semester and struggled greatly with all the reading and tests that I had. To say the least, BYU was nothing like high school. I actually had to study for hours and hours each day just to get a C on some of my finals, and boy did I celebrate those C grades that first semester! My grades got a little better as I became a sophomore and declared a major that I really enjoyed learning about and my confidence in myself grew as I worked as a teaching assistant for three of my professors. Junior year, I applied for an internship in Romania working with orphans, and despite all the opposition, I made it to Romania and back. Harder times lay ahead of me when I returned home to the States, but I pressed through them and returned to school this summer after a 2 semester absence to finish what I started! I did it!!


Everyone has a different path to travel in life, and everyone will face different challenges and upsets as well as accomplishments and celebrations. All along the way, we learn important life lessons which force us to grow in ways we never expected. Life is certainly something to celebrate!

It's So CLOSE!

Today I received an email from Brigham Young University congratulating me on my upcoming graduation in August. After four long years of spending hours and hours in the library, reading textbooks and journal articles, writing research papers, taking tests, and sitting through lectures, I am almost DONE.

Words cannot describe how good it feels to be graduating with my college degree. Do I know what I'm going to do with it? No. But that's not the point. I, Alyssa Cook, will soon be able to say, "When I was doing my undergraduate work at BYU . . . (enter rest of sentence)." And man does that feel good to think about!

I am going to bring up the fact that I am a college graduate with everyone I talk to after August. In fact, I already do say, "After I graduate this summer..." as often as I get the chance to. Why is that? Why am I so obsessed with graduating college? Because I had to work HARD for it. I passed my classes in high school with flying colors, but when I got to BYU I had to learn how to study and think hard for the first time in my life. And man, does that feel good! I am a new person. I have lived in another country and used my knowledge of child development to enrich my life and others. I am capable. I am strong. I can finish the race.