Mother's Day: A Reflection

Yesterday was one of those crazy fun days that makes you realize the responsibility of motherhood and the pure joy that comes along with that title.  Our oldest daughter Emily walked across the stage in an impending thunderstorm to complete a four year journey and start the journey of a lifetime.  As she walked in and got to her chair, I called out her name from the filled stadium.  She turned around and looked at me with a look of love and excitement that always makes my heart skip a beat.  I waved like a crazed fan as the tears streamed from my eyes, thinking of a lifetime of catching her eye and saying all the things there isn't always a way to say.   Now I have to let her go and be free.  And she will go as she is destined too.  She wants to make this planet a better place for my grandchildren to grow up in, she wants to educate and try to help the world stop abusing the beautiful place God has graciously given us to inhabit.  And she will.

As we were watching this great accomplishment, our youngest Nini was on my lap, shaking and scared, clinging to me with a death grip, her head buried in my neck.  Almost 5 years in an orphanage in China doesn't prepare you to be outside in wind, sprinkles and the sound of thunder in the distance. I am thankful of the trust she put in me to protect her.  Three months ago, I wanted to hold her and protect her as we drove away from the only home she had ever remembered.  She sat next to me on the bus, pushing my hand away every time I reached out to give her comfort. She sat silently, tears rolling down her face and I couldn't help her.  God heals the brokenhearted and breaks the bondage of fear.  Nini is my little shadow, following, loving, embracing me with hugs and kisses at every opportunity.

At the end of the day yesterday, basking in the quietness of the house, I thought of my journey of motherhood.  How God has comforted me and sustained me as five times I grieved for my babies taken from my body straight to heaven.  My heart aches for those that have to face Mother's Day without a babe in their arms, only in their hearts.  The mommas who made hard choices, who feeling there was alternative chose to terminate their pregnancy and the lifetime of shame and grief that brings.  I am thankful for a God of forgiveness and grace that brings freedom from that guilt and shame. For the birth mommas, who chose to let go for so many reasons.  For my children's mothers who must think of their choices, wondering if their children are still alive, in the orphanages where they left two of them, are they safe?  Do they know love?   Living a lifetime of not knowing.  I feel guilt for their loss was my gain.  Through their tragedy and sacrifice, God has filled my house with joy.  In twenty years, I had two beautiful miracles and lost five to heaven.  In twenty months God has given me four souls that were lost and needed found and I am forever thankful.

I am so very blessed to have my sweet little mother still with me.  Still helping me put together a party, still listening as I cry and process all the changes in my life, still cheering for me and sharing a word of encouragement, uttering a prayer and watching over me.   I get to work beside her in ministry every Sunday and she spoils my children and I love her for it.  My heart grieves for my husband, his sisters and brothers, my mother and everyone who only have the memories of their mother on this holiday.

May the God of peace bring comfort to the spirit of every dear one who struggled through yesterday.  Jesus cares for you and sees your heart.  Reach out to Him for peace and rest.  If you need to lay some burdens down; some guilt, some shame, some grief, lay them at the feet of Jesus and He will give you rest.  Praying God will fill your heart with joy as you surrender to His love which is wide and deep and fills are the crevices of our broken hearts.  Praying rest and peace for all the mommas in the thick of raising up their tribes of blessings.  For the new mommas to have sleep and rest.  For wisdom in guiding our children and rejoicing in thankfulness for the privilege to serve the kingdom as mothers.

Traveling at Mach 9: 24/7

I had just started typing this post in a document when son #3 is being carried down the stairs by son #2 with the  ringing announcement, "He's bleeding, he's bleeding, he's bleeding!"  Daughter #2 had thrown her microphone with precision aim and nailed him in the nose.  He's resting with an ice pack, daughter has apologized and is tucked into bed and I will attempt to start this again...


I'm not an aeronautical engineer, but I've watched Little Einsteins and have some basic rocket knowledge.  When a rocket is traveling through space the blasters come on and the G force kicks in and it thrusts the rocket forward.  Then the burners turn off and the rocket glides along for a bit while everything cools off and then the blasters go again. (If this is not correct, please don't tell me...I love to pretend to know about things.)  If the blasters were on all the time, the rocket would overheat and burn up.  When traveling with the blasters on, the pressure is unbelievably intense, to the point you can pass out.  Many of us that have children with special needs, children with trauma backgrounds or just children in general are traveling through space with our blasters burning at Mach 9 day and night, night and day.  It's exhausting, it's traumatic and it's leads to burnout.

At my house, we don't have children that rage, have major meltdowns, there is no physical violence, (except for a thrown microphone or two), no self abuse or abuse of other siblings.  I am thankful for this and my momma heart breaks for every family that deals with these behaviors and struggles daily.

What we have is five children at home right now.  Three stay home during the day and are being homeschooled this year.  Of those three, all of them have Down Syndrome, two  have been home two months and don't speak or understand hardly any English.  One of those three has a moustache and is showing signs of either autism or coping behaviors where he lives in his own world most of the time.  The other two are girls, five and six, one home eighteen months and one home two months.

At 5:30 am when three of the five children awaken everyday, I am on full alert, blasters burning, guard up, eyes peeled for signs of trouble and on the search for tools.  Tools for communication, for learning, for therapies, for answers, for understanding, for connecting, for what they will eat and won't eat, where they should be sleeping, why they aren't sleeping, why aren't the pooping, why is he rocking back and forth, why can't she walk straight, how to stop them from picking their fingers until they bleed, how to teach volume control, tone and speech.  How to teach English, how to explain that you are a fourteen year old boy, you stink and you need to change your underwear everyday, how to teach him to sit on the toilet ring and not the actual toilet when he goes #2, how to throw the used toilet paper in the toilet and not on the floor.  These are a few of the things whirling in my mind as I try to get the first cup of coffee in me.

If the little girls are quiet or out of sight for one minute (and I mean one minute).  There is trouble brewing.  Since Nini came home, now Gracie has a cohort and there are Shenanigans.  Big Shenanigans! They have used Elmer's glue as lotion and slathered themselves to the point of appearing to have a severe case of leprosy.  Nini can smell a knife or scissors from anywhere in the house.  Leave it on the table for one minute (again, I'm serious about the one minute thing) and she will be cutting something.  A box, piece of paper or the doll's hair.  They unroll the toilet paper, the empty a pack of wipes faster than imaginable, they have flooded the kitchen, the table with all of my mailouts on it, the bathroom and overflowed the toilet.  Now, you might think I'm just hiding out in the car when all this is happening.  I wish!  When I stand at the sink to do dishes, if I do not remember to bring them in the kitchen with me, chaos erupts.  They have to travel from room to room with me and when I take a potty break, they sit on the steps in front of the door and wait for me.  Occasionally waving under the door or hollering through it.

Joe loves to help and loves to be with me.  When I say be with me, I mean like standing on top of me be with me. He is three inches shorter than me and weighs in at 130 lbs.  He cooks with me and when we are in the kitchen we touch from shoulder to leg and when I step to the drawer, he steps with me.  When I go to the fridge, he's right beside me.  When we sit at the table, his chair is touching mine and our knees are best friends that can't be separated.  When we go to the store, he likes to help me push the cart, so it's my wide load and him in front of the cart, doing the bump, bump, bump as we both waddle down the aisle.  He likes to keep constant pressure on the cart so even when I'm stopping the cart, he is still pushing.  He also wants to push faster than I want to travel, so my biceps and triceps are becoming spectacular!  When he tires of pushing the cart or gets overstimulated, he goes into his "zone".   This involves circling the cart as it's traveling or pacing back and forth in front of it, speaking very loud Chinese gibberish and either running into the people he doesn't notice or hugging ALL the people he does notice.  Joe and I are learning to communicate.  It is painful, it is frustrating and it is so very slow.  He still doesn't recognize hardly any English words and when I sign, he copies the sign but struggles to use it.  I still have to take him to the bathroom and show him, wash your hands, brush your teeth, acting each action out so he will understand.  He is very loud and he talks to himself about 18 hours a day.  He has no concept that people are trying to sleep and babies are in bed.  He's a Ninja warrior and he loves to bounce and roll.  Everywhere. On the beds (he's broken his slats three times) on the couch and across the tiny living room.  He is making progress with communication, but it is slow.  I cried when he picked up a piece of pizza and said "peeeza"!  Right now he is stretched out on the couch, bouncing, laughing and rocking.  Growling in Chinese at a good, solid, yelling tone with some intermittent singing of the one song he knows.

Precious Gracie is also very loud and she talks when she is asleep  (really-all night, next to my bed) she sings and talks from the moment her eyes open until they close at night (then it's only intermittent)  She has no highs and lows, just one tone, one volume, which is what I would describe as playground voice level.  She talks with her mouth full, she talks when she's watching TV and she talks and talks and talks.  Unfortunately, she had no understandable speech when we brought her home.  She is now saying about 30 words that are understandable.  The rest of the time it's just loud nonsense, calling my name "Ma" about two-hundred times a day (not an exaggeration, I counted one day) and mimicking whenever anyone else is talking.  She also needs to touch me about every five minutes.  This involves, rubbing my arms, feet, face, occasional licking, combing my hair, touching my hair, touching my face, kissing my face, my arms, my legs, my feet.  When I sit in a chair, her and Nini take turns sitting on the arm of the chair, and sometimes they both squeeze in and sit.  I haven't sat alone in "my" comfy chair in eighteen months.

All of this beautiful chaos keeps me burning at Mach 9, with 6 g's pressing against my chest all day, everyday.  Would I trade it in and go back to the quiet of two kids, teaching career and happy go lucky life.  Not on your life.  Am I weary, exhausted, stressed and very lonely.  Yes. I am all of those things.  Most of the day to day drama of my life will get better with time.  The blasters will turn off and I will coast more than the ninety-five minutes of bliss that is naptime everyday.  I will stand alone in my kitchen someday and cook at my own pace in my own space.  But not today and not tomorrow.

The house is quiet now, the children are bathed and in bed.  My eleven year old is chatting about his birthday tomorrow and I can hear Joe upstairs, firing his fake gun over and over as he prepares for sleep.  Fortunately he shares a room with Ollie, who has 90% hearing loss without his hearing aids, so he sleeps in peace as his brother fights the good fight late into the night.  I will do the supper dishes, work on my Jamberry business, eat a snack and drag myself to bed before 10pm.  Nini, will be there waiting for me, ready to dig her feet into my back like the happiest cat on the planet.  This will continue until my hubs comes home at midnight (he's a second shifter), where he rolls her over toward him and let's me get a few hours of peaceful rest.

For those of you living out a Mach 9 life, I encourage you to find a few moments of quiet.  I hide in my car on occasion or take a leisurely walk to the mailbox.  I sit on the porch whenever possible and just breath in the air and let the breeze cover me.  I color when the kids color and I sleep when the kids sleep.  I am not ashamed to say I watch 30 minutes of Netflix and take a 60 minute nap every week day.  Let people hug you, not the patronizing do gooders, but your spouse, a friend, find a couple of good huggers and fill up.  It makes a huge difference.   If you need to cry, cry.  If your head hurts from gritting your teeth, take a moment.  If you lose it, say sorry and keep going forward.  There is no shame in feeding your kids McDonalds or letting them sleep in their dirty clothes once in awhile.  A little dirt under their fingernails builds good antibodies.  There is no condemnation if your floors are dirty and the couch is covered in laundry.  There is no shame in telling you seven year old to turn his socks inside out and wear them another day because it saves water which is good for the environment.  Let go of expectations, release yourself from the picture perfect life and know that you are doing well, you are breathing life into your children and you are creating world changers.  Leave the toothpaste stuck to the sink and take a moment.   Turn the blasters off, glide, breathe and be thankful that you have been chosen to do good, to serve, to love, to teach, to connect, to be.

Confessions of a professional quitter

I started this blog in November, our adoption process went into overdrive and I never came back to it.
So here I am...one little girl on the arm of my chair, one licking a q-tip and painting my toenails and JoJo upstairs in his bed, lost in his own world, refusing to come down until he smells food cooking.  It's 10:30 am and no one is dressed, including me and I just ate a cookie to congratulate myself on washing enough silverware so that lunch can happen.

I'm going to share my heart and give you a window to peek in and see into my spirit.  I am going to share about the journey and our children, but I want to start this series with me.

Truth bomb...I'm a quitter.  I've always been a quitter and I think it's so deeply ingrained in me that the desire to quit will never go away.  I like things easy.  I like to look like I know exactly what's going on and I like to be number one at whatever I decide to do.  These are the reasons that I don't sew, quilt, knit, read non-fiction, play trivia games, basketball, coach, mentor, lose weight, wear very little make up, or join the Y.  I love the idea of doing things.  Last year I was admiring a quilt someone had made and I have always wanted to make a quilt.  I read about quilting, joined a couple of facebook quilting groups, went to the fabric stores, went to Hobby Lobby and bought a roller scissor thingy and a mat to cut out the pieces on.  I picked out some pretty material and brought it home.  But when it came down to actually making the quilt I had forgotten a few things, well several things.  I am a terrible seamstress. I get impatient and I like to do everything as fast as I can and I can't stand to go back and redo anything...which is exactly the opposite of what you do when you sew.  I can't measure.  I've never been able to understand angles and I have never drawn, forget cut, a straight line in my life.  So, I was at a crossroads.  I could change some things about myself and learn to quilt or quit.  You know I quit.  This is my M.O.

I use to try to say that I had ADD, and I apologize to all the people who do have ADD I really did think that was my problem.  But the truth is I'm not a good finisher.  I'm a big dreamer, even a pretty good planner.  I'm the big picture gal that gets everyone fired up about doing something amazing.  Only, when it gets real and hard and the work really kicks in, I'm done.  That's why there is ALWAYS a dirty dish soaking in my sink and laundry on my couch.

Sooo...the big dream was to adopt these two children, fall in love, and live happily ever after.  We adopted Gracie and Oliver in August 2014.  While still waiting for the happily ever after, we decided to really dream big and adopt two more.  The details of that journey are for another day, suffice to say, on February 7th I showed up at the airport with two more children.  Both with Down Syndrome, one fourteen and one four.  Bring on the happily ever after.  Except for I have learned that happily ever after doesn't look like a fairytale.  It's beautiful, it's ugly, it's raw at times and most days at some point during my privilege of being the mother, I want to quit.  When the house gets quiet I remember my other life with a girl in college and a boy on the way to middle school.  My teaching career that had really just gotten started.  My freedom.  My normal.  And I want to quit and start over, like I said it's my M.O.  Except for when you are looking at five people staring up at you, waiting on you to cut their PB and J, you realize something.  There is NO quitting this.  This is forever, this is for life.  The 100+ kisses and hugs I get everyday, that's forever.  Having someone need me to help them make decisions and regulate their behavior...maybe forever.  FOR...EV...ER.  No quitting.  It's a big pill for this quitter to swallow.  But guess what...I'm all in.  I may have to go take a car timeout everyday and I may have to hide in my bathroom and let them color on the wood floor, but I'm all in.  Because of love.  Because of the love of my savior, Jesus.  Because of the love I have (even when it doesn't feel like love) for my children.  Because love is stronger than quitting.

That's enough about me for now.  The goal of sharing our story is to help myself (another truth bomb), to reach out to other adoptive families and especially the moms, who often carry the biggest load, and to share about life with kids with trauma, kids with Down Syndrome and what that beautiful, messy masterpiece looks like.

Follow this blog of you would like to read more posts.  Feel free to go back and read my post from November about saying YES.  If you have ugly things to say to me that are just mean or nasty.  Please don't bother to comment.  Life is tough enough.  If you have questions about our reality, our craziness, adoption, Down Syndrome or any other thing that I can pretend to know something about, feel free to ask.  I'm off to watch a whole box of cereal magically disappear.

The Road to Surrender

Learning to say yes to Jesus means saying no to ourselves.

"We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth." 1 John 16-18.

As I study the New Testament Church, it's such a simple picture.  Love with deed and truth.  Sell all your possessions and give to those in need.  Our job on this earth is to be "all in" for Jesus.  Putting his Love and Purpose above all people, possessions and loves of this world, for what was His purpose?  To love, to show love in deed and truth, to pour love into the sick, the lost, the broken, the poor, the lonely, the forgotten.

 Following Jesus has nothing to do with what Jesus can do for me.  It's only about what can I do to bring His love to someone else.  He meets my needs and I stand on His promise that he will take care of me.  I don't need to ask him for anything more except to say yes to Him daily, no matter what He asks of me.  The word surrender means to  cease resistance and submit to authority.  Surrendering daily means resisting the desire to put myself, my family, my kids, my wants, my Netflix down and submitting to His agenda, for the day, for the next week, month year, until my journey comes to an end.

Jesus has been breaking my heart, piece by piece for almost two years.  Chipping away the traditions of Christianity that I have learned, used to judge others, build myself up and have allowed to replace Jesus in my life.  Surrendering to nothing, resisting authority because I was busy being about my Father's business by working in ministry, creating programs, longing for accolades and sacrificing myself for the good of ministry.

Two years ago, I was sitting at the table, dishes stacked to be washed, resting in the quietness of the end of a long day.  Enjoying the peace after a wearisome day of living out my nobility as a teacher of broken children.  Comfortable in the knowledge that I was doing more than my fair share to help the world, Proud of my Christianity, proud of my position of leadership in our church, proud of my daughter excelling in college.  Proud of my sweet son.  Feeling complete and looking ahead to an empty nest in a few years, maybe full time children's ministry, travel, a new car.  The word surrender never even encroaching it's way into my spirit.   I was scrolling through Facebook and a picture of a little Chinese girl with a pixie hair cut caught my eye and I turned  the computer around to Frank and said, isn't she a cutie. This little girl is now Winnie and has a beautiful family in Texas.  I clicked on the link and it took me to an adoption advocacy site that was called Reece's Rainbow.  I clicked a button and up came these two  pictures.

This little girl was standing at the beginning of my road to surrender.  Sitting at that table, in that very moment, we looked at that picture and, not knowing the way, where the road went or how we would travel, we turned onto the road of surrender and began our journey to the beginning of understanding what Jesus asks of us following salvation. That moment when He requires us to pick up our cross, sell our possessions, leave our father, mother, brother, sister, sons and daughters and follow Him.   

My prayer for all of us today is to ask the precious Savior to open our eyes to the road we are on.  To meet us right in the middle of our journey and offer us another road, the road of surrender.  Trust in Him today to meet your needs as you give up resistance and submit to His authority.  Allow him to begin to chip away the trappings of Christianity that are not tied to His Truth.  

This is only the beginning of a precious story of forgiveness and grace and glory to my King Jesus...