Stop the presses, she's speechless!!!

Ok, that's not all together true. I have plenty to say, just not a whole lot I can go into here. Soooo... I'll take stream of conscious for $500 Alex...

We have sickness at our house, the nasty kind. We traded in our yearly strep fest and frankly, I'd rather we all have strep. We are taking turns having gastritis. The nasty kind where it comes from both ends. It is going around at church in varying degrees and it aint fun! Sarah woke up with it on Thursday morning. Super Hubbie has it now reeeally bad. He had to go to the doctor today for IV fluids because of dehydration. Joshua had it yesterday but seems to be ok now. I've had something mild that I think is related, but not vomiting (thank You Jesus!!!).

I. Hate. Vomit. Give me blood, and give me gore. But do not! give me vomit!!! *shudder*

It got cold again. As they say on Facebook, DISLIKE!!! I was so enjoying the warm sun shiny days. They'll be back, of that I have no doubt. In the mean time, our April showers have arrived early. It is grey and dismal outside, and a bit chilly. Next week is spring break and I'm hoping for beautiful weather so we can be outside!

Several years ago I dubbed the week of spring break "Family Fun Week". Coming on the heels of winter we all have cabin fever, so I try to do something fun outdoors each day of the week. We pack picnic lunches and head out. This was much easier to do in NOVA as there are several Nature Centers where you can visit for free and hike their trails. I've not been terribly succesful at finding many things like that down this direction, but I'm still working on it. Also, the last couple of years the weather has not cooperated, which has been hugely frustrating! There are so many things I want to do with my kids next week, I pray the weather cooperates and we are all healthy!

My oldest is finally hitting a big growth spurt. He's still much smaller than his younger brother, but I still predict he will catch up and possibly eventually overpass him. He's now taller than me. I noticed it the other day when I was playing around with him and I had to look up at him when he was standing next to me. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand it's a relief to see him finally start catching up to the other boys (although he is still skinny as a rail - for ROTC they had to tailor make his pants! I tried to tell him and Super Hubby that there are not pants on the market that will fit him right, but no one wanted to believe me!). On the other hand, he is looking less and less like a little boy every day. And boy howdy, does he ever have the teenage attitude to go with it!

Having teenagers is exciting and frustrating all at the same time. It's exciting to watch them grow and mature. While we all complain about our children growing up and changing before our eyes, and we make jokes about wishing they would stay little, there is something so very heart breaking and distressing about a child who doesn't hit all those important milestones. I have a precious friend who is going through this right now and it's really testing and stretching her in so many uncomfortable ways.

It has been such a relief to see Luke blossom over the past year. We went through some very difficult months with him during a certain stage of puberty where we were really very concerned and had many doubts that he would ever learn to function on his own in society. Not that he is slow, but rather he is "absent minded professor" smart. His brain functions on such a high level that he has a hard time functioning "down here" with the rest of us. There are still some issues of quiet rebellion and a difficulty in submitting himself to authority, but when I look at the big picture of the Luke I've known these past 5 years I am so encouraged by the changes I am seeing in him. The struggles of a few years ago are gone, and have been replaced with the normal struggles that every parent and child face. He is becoming someone who can be counted on. At one point I seriously doubted that would ever happen. I am feeling hopeful for his future and I know that if he continues to stretch himself and mature that one day he will do the big things we all know he is capable of!

Flashback Friday....

Saturday, January 10, 2009
Only the REAL mother...
Only a real mother can diagnose her kid with strep throat before he even complains of a sore throat. And yes that is exactly what I did. Joshua was complaining of nausea and a severe headache, felt warm and his voice sounded swollen so I called at got him an Urgent Care appointment this morning. On the way out I gave him some motrin because he looked like and was acting like death.

Before we even hit Fredericksburg he was looking and acting fine. I considered canceling thinking maybe I had over reacted. Anyone who knows me know that I am not a run to the doctors office at the first sign of a sniffle kind of mom. I only take them for well child visits, ADHD follow ups, and when they are the kind of sick that requires antibiotics. I am thankful that I decided to listen to my gut and not question myself because I was spot on. Sure enough the culture came up positive for strep. AND I think I even caught it early enough that it is possible that he didn't infect our other kids.
In the mean time, bio mom is still riding the bus to crazy town. She still hasn't seen them since July of 2006.

And just today we got a box full of bizarre junk from her. "Christmas presents" - only a couple things that were appropriate, nothing for Luke as usual, and a ton of stuff for Emelia. How bizarre is it that she keeps sending clothes for Emelia and I?!?!?! I'm pretty sure she's the queen of crazy town.

In The Potter's Hands, Experiencing God day 3...

Day 49: My little bit of happy ~ snuggling Hosea to sleep during church.

Tonight's Bible study lesson was so convicting. This actually comes as a relief to me. My initial impression of this Bible study was that for me it would be more milk than meat, but my position on that is that even the most mature Christian needs some milk once in a while. It's good to constantly review and simmer in what God has taught us so we wont rot.

I have been a rotting Christian in a lot of ways. I have allowed the stresses and exhaustion of parenting all of these children to interfere with my walk with God. I have stresses that other mother's don't have... mothering 2 children who I did not meet until they were 8 and 9 years old, as if they were my own. When we married we each suddenly went from 2 kids to 4, none of them babies. And I have stayed home with them full time, fully investing myself in them. It has been lonely, and it has been stressful. There have been days when I felt like the burden of mothering these children was more than I could bear. There have been days when I scared myself with the realization that I could easily walk out the door and never look back, so exhausted and frustrated was I with the job set before me.

All because I was failing to make time for my Lord. "Take My yolk upon you, for My yolk is easy, and My burden is light. I failed to rest in Him. He had brought me so far, and then I foolishly set out to make it on my own apart from Him.

Page 17 of the Experiencing God study declares the following:

My understanding of a servant is depicted by the potter and the clay (see Jer. 18:1-6). The clay must do two things:

1. The clay has to be molded. It has to be responsive to the potter so he can make it into an instrument of his choosing.

2. The clay has to remain in the potter's hand. When the potter has finished making the instrument of his choosing, that instrument has no ability to do what it wants. It has to remain in the potter's hand to be effective. Suppose the potter molds the clay into a cup. The cup has to remain in the potter's hands so he can use that cup the way he chooses.

I did the first. But I failed at the second. Completely and utterly failed. So it is with meekness and humility that I place myself back into my Potter's hands so He can fix the cracks caused by misuse of the vessel He has made, so that He can use me for HIS intended purpose.

"Speak Lord, for Your servant is listening..." ~ 1 Samuel 3:11

Between a rock and a hard place...

On Monday evening my cell phone rang and it was a number from Northern Virginia I didn't recognize. I don't answer calls from numbers I don't know so I let it go to voice mail. Only they didn't leave a message, but called back. Again I ignored it (while doing a reverse telephone number search online to determine if it was a land line or cell phone to see if I could figure out who was calling me) again allowing it to go to voice mail.

This time the caller left a message. It was Joshua and Luke's (half - same biological mother, different dads - but we don't do "halves" or "steps", believing that ALL sibling relationships have equal value and importance) little sister who is just shy of 12 years old. She sounded so sad and unsure of what to say and said she was calling to wish Josh and Luke a Merry Christmas. I pulled out an old letter from bio mom and sure enough it was the little girl's personal cell phone number. We are wondering if she found the number and snuck and called it on her own or if someone (her mother) put her up to it. Likely it was the later.

As parents this sent our emotions into a tizzy. Our heart goes out to this little girl - while we don't know exactly what goes on in that home we have a good idea and we know it to not be a healthy environment for a child to grow up in. Her life lacks stability and she is being raised with a very shaky foundation. Not to mention she has spent her entire childhood seperated from her siblings. She has two big brothers who are powerless to protect her as big brothers do and she has absolutely no concept of what a sibling relationship is all about. At no point in her life has she ever spent more than a couple of hours at a time in the same room as them (unless you count bio mom abducting Josh and Luke when they were 3 and 2 and running off with them and their sister who was an infant, but she was caught in less than a month and it was 2 years before the siblings were reunited and even then visits have always been sketchy and irregular.

Our initial knee-jerk reaction was to wonder if we could find some way for their sister to have contact with Joshua and Luke. We have practically begged and pleaded with the grandmother to work with us to facilitate a relationship between them even if bio mom is unwilling to be part of the boy's lives. We are stonewalled at every turn and because this is someone else's minor child. There is nothing we can do. And it breaks our hearts.

We have offered visits to the grandmother (Bio mom stopped doing her visits 3 years ago. Again.) for herself and the sister. We created email accounts for the boys so that they could easily contact them. Nothing.

My heart aches for this little girl. I wish there was some way that we could reach her, but sadly at the age she is now the damage is already done. What will be will be... we just have to wait for them to come of age so they can have a relationship separate from their mother. My mother heart worries that that will never happen. There will always be room here for her if she wants to be a part of us, but with the lies she is being told that may never happen. But I know that God is bigger than this situation. I pray a hedge of protection around her. I pray that He will guard her jealously for Himself and that she will come to know Him personally. I pray that her heart will find Him, the truth, and a close loving relationship with her big brothers.

Reflections and Revelations...

I've always believed that the reason God gave me Elijah was because He knew how much Emelia would need him. It just seemed too coincidental that the only "accidental" pregnancy among years of difficulty conceiving and several pregnancy losses would follow on the heals of the birth of a intense personality who thrives on social interaction.

By the same token, I've wondered over the last few years why God allowed the boys bio mom to get pregnant with Luke so soon after the birth of Joshua when she clearly wasn't handling the whole motherhood thing very well and finding it to be much more than she bargained for and more sacrifice than she was willing to make. From my fleshly persepctive this seemed a harsh and perhaps fool hardy thing for God to do (although I never allowed myself to admit I was thinking of God's actions in those terms). It seemed to me that this exacerbated an already volatile situation.

However, last night as I was looking at the face of my sweet baby God revealed some truths to me about that situation, our family, and my children's sibling relationships.

I have wished for some time that God would give Sarah a close in age sibling as He did for each of my other children. Joshua and Luke are 14 months apart, Emelia and Elijah just under 19 months. There are 2 years seperating Luke and Emelia creating a nice bridge to bind the 4 of them together and keeping a certain closeness between Joshua and Elijah.

Frustratingly, at this rate even if I were to conceive and succesfully carry a pregnancy there would be more than 2 years between Sarah and that child, with a whopping 8 years between her next closest sibling. Last night Sarah came into our bed in the middle of the night and as I was watching her sleep I wondered what it would be like if there were another baby in additon to her curling up with me in the night.

And that, my friends, is when it hit me. That is precisely why there is a Luke. Bio mom's lackings as a nurturing mother and responsible caretaker are PRECISELY why God sent Luke to this earth. Because... are you ready for this???!!! Josh needed him. My understanding of relationship needs and the power and influence one small baby can have on someone elses world changed in that moment.

Yes, a new baby added more stress to the situation. However, he did not make it worse. Bio mom was/is an adult and is responsible for her own choices. We each have stress and difficulties in our lives and we can go one of two ways with that. We can respond with grace and maturity, turning our focus and lives towards Jesus and leaning on Him and those He has placed in our lives. Or we can choose to tantrum and fight and complain and make life hellacious for everyone around you, terrorizing those who love you and want what is best for you.

She chose the later, and while the combined result was Luke having to suffer for her actions, his very existence lightened Joshua's suffering. It alleviated his loneliness while she tended to everything but him as she went about her day, and later provided him a companion during the hours he was left with strangers while his father had to leave him long enough to draw a paycheck... and even more when she violated the court order and ran off with them filling their lives with uncertainty and removing every bit of stability they had.

As much as Joshua sheltered and protected his younger brother when they were little, I wonder if he realizes how much Luke sheltered and protected him. I wonder if he realizes that after Jesus his brother is the very best friend he could ever have. That because of Luke he did not have to live through those experiences alone. That no one else can relate to where he's been, what he's been through, and how it has shaped him. Other friends might be cooler, less annoying, and have better habits. But none of them will ever understand or be there for him like his brother will. I hope that one day as he matures from a boy into a man he will come to fully understand what a precious gift he has been given.

Which brings me back to Sarah. God hasn't sent her a little brother or sister yet because she doesn't NEED one. She has stability and nurturing from her parents, she doesn't need to draw it from her sibling(s). While her siblings are not her peers, at this point in her life they fill her need for companionship. And because of all of the above she gets to be a baby for as long as she needs too. I still want another baby now though. Please Jesus?!