Present moment

The Lord is speaking to me a message I have ignored for quite some time... it is NOW. It is living in the NOW, not the past and not the future. I have had seasons of my life where I live in the past and seasons in the future.... very hard to say I have had LONG seasons in the present. These past few days have been almost eerie to slow to a pace so slow that the present can be absorbed. Watching Bobby pitch in his first baseball game was surreal not because of what it was, but because I was taking in that he will never pitch again for the FIRST time. To drink in that moment without an infant crying or a child calling my name... I could just breathe it in and thank God for that moment. Margin is a word my friend Karen taught me a few years ago, and it summarizes so much of what we cut when we are busy. To allow your life to have wider margins, allows these slower moments, allows us to take them in. Andy couldn't come to the game until late due to work, but I felt this sense of urgency for him to come. I called him twice, telling him to hurry, he might miss it. I used to call because I "needed" his help or didn't want to miss a picture perfect moment... this was entirely different; it was that he would miss a moment that is couldn't be captured on a camera. It is those moments that no one else sees, but that a family feels the tune of when you are together at a game, watching baseball, and eating dinner on a picnic table. Those seem insignificant at times, yet the tone of your life is what gets absorbed by your children. I am so thankful for the book I am reading that has the most beautiful words to describe the NOW. Go out and get yourself a copy of "The Gift of an Ordinary Day".... an entire new lens you will put on... it is much brighter and lighter!

Funny adoption moment

I had friend call me up this week and ask for my forgiveness... of course, I am thinking, uh oh, what did I do or what did she do. She confessed that when she talked with me a year or two ago about adoption, she judged me. She said in her mind she said "why does Martha have to be so negative in terms of adoption." She was in a place where she was about to bring home her two children and was just excited. I remember being with her and thinking, "I need to tell her it is hard to bring home two kids and one being older and one being a baby so she can remember this when she hits some rough spot." She laughingly said, please forgive me... it is soooo hard! I just had to laugh. Aren't we all that way! It is just so hard to admit sometimes and you certainly don't want to be a complainer so sometimes you are just torn on what to say... I think assurance and encouragement is the way to go... reminding them no matter how hard it is, it is GOD who carries you through it, NOT you! I guess that sounds daunting to some too... because that actually admits you need to be carried. Who wants that in our little world... "I can do it myself world". I think maybe we need a new world that says, "I quit. Your turn".

Nana

Nana was 91 years old and what a lady! Her presence was just sweet and smiley. From knowing her for the past 15 years, I could have NEVER guessed her story. Some people you just make assumptions and assume you know how they were raised and what type of family they had. Nana was one of 12 children and I think she was number 9. Her mother passed away after giving birth to her 12th child... WOW. The reality of this I can't even comprehend. Can you imagine how her husband must have felt at the end of this birth? After this, the children were split up and the younger children were put in foster homes because the fathe was unable to care for all of them and circumstances in his life. The older ones raised themselves for quite some time.

Nana was put in numerous foster homes and it is hard to know if she doesn't remember a ton of stories or if she blocked them out. Andy's mom and siblings were able to piece a lot of stories together over time. She lived with some loving parents, but many who were not and used her as labor around the house. One house, she slept under a kitchen table. It wasn't until her teen years that she was reunited with her older siblings and they helped raise her. She got a scholarship under FDR and then after college became a dietician. According to Andy's mom, her faith was the kind that was what you imagine in the olden days... just simple, like Jesus probably just jumped for joy over. She knew that God has his eye on her; he was her protector, the one who loved her. She never complained about how hard life was; she walked around with just smiles, joy, and love of family. I think she knew how to appreciate this life. I am so thankful to have known her; what an inspiration she is to my life of simple it can be.... "His eye is on the sparrow".... He cares for us and that is enough.

One month of our life

In the past month, circumstances have not been going in the smooth way you would dream of as a little girl. I will just recap it to give insight into one month of our lives...

1. I got the flu for a week
2. Andy then got it; had a cough that lasted 3 weeks
3. Planned a 6 year old football birthday party ( then Sydney threw up in the car, had diarrhea 3 places in the house same day)
4. Had 25 agents go through our house since it is for sale
5. Got carpet at 9 pm one night with 4 kids running around without dinner
6. Painter came for an entire day, then carpet the next... meanwhile I am packing 4 kids to go to 8 different places while andy and I go on our 10 year anniversary trip that was given to us as a gift for Christmas
7. Day before we leave, get a call that Andy's grandmother is sick and Andy's parents can no longer watch 2 of the kids
8. Wake up at 5:45, I have diarrhea... nervousness or sick? 1 hour later.... SICK... pack the rest, find childcare last minute
10 minutes before we leave, Andy's parents report it would be hours before Nana passes most likely; I throw up
9. Cancel the trip
10. Throw up all day, 2 hours later, Nana goes to be with the Lord!
11. Plan to go to visitation, funeral
12. Night before funeral, Thomas gets major diarrhea
13. Go to funeral, then plan night away in Atlanta for Andy and me with babysitter
14. Arrive at hotel, 15 minutes later, Andy gets chills... I order wings and a beer, he gets fruit cup and soup.
15. Andy throws up and is sick all night
16. Go home defeated... :)
17. Work stress for Andy the next week, change of job positions
18. Find out Ethiopia adoptions slowed by 90%, meaning it could take 8 years to adopt
19. Two days later, Thomas falls, breaks his wrist
20. Sydney chipped half of her tooth with a cap of 400.00 :)

I think you get the point.... I could go into detail about all the other relationship stress as well that happened, but no need to belabor the point.... life is messy. Life isn't perfect and clean... it is just messy. But here is the deal.... God CARRIED us through the entire time. There were so many times I wanted to just throw in the towel and yell, "SERIOUSLY", but yet God gave me grace. He showed me I didn't have to handle all this perfectly; I was allowed to cry. He loved me just the same. I won't brag about any of the times that I did get to just laugh at the whole thing because truth be told, I just felt like a walking zombie that God was carrying... It was a test that revealed; He somehow carries us through these storms. We weather it. It doesn't mean that we do it well again, but that we survive, not bruised and battered and left for dead, but maybe scraped and bruised, yet still thanking God. That blows my mind when I think of those whose past months were filled not with minor things like this, but tsunamis, cancer, death, rape, or homelessness. There are people who endure all of these things still waking up praising God, thanking them for their breath and praising Him for saving them for eternity.

With all of that, I have had two days of air. This air I am breathing is so fresh, so real, so wonderful to my spirit... I can taste the abundance I have been given because of the past month. I typically would be complaining that my husband had to work all week, etc.... but this week, I am just thankful I get to bathe my children, tuck them in, read a book and have food in my fridge! It is nice to have some normal even if it is for 48 hours. The song I sang over and over was.... "Come away with Me, Come away with me... It is never too late, it is never too late. It is going to be WILD. It is going to be GREAT. It is going to be full of ME." Indeed it has been all of the above...

Welcome home Valor!

Little Valor came home with our friends a month ago... to be on the other end waiting in the airport was surreal. It brought back so many memories of when we brought Andrew and Sydney up the escalators to meet their extended family. To watch their children get excited and see their friends and family gear up for this moment was incredible. When they came up the escalator, you could hear a pin drop and time seemed to stand still for a moment as momma embraced her little cubs, tears streamed everywhere, and you just felt each gesture each of them made. It was incredible to see sweet Valor just smile through the entire event. Welcome home little man! You are dearly loved.

Formulas...

This is from Beth Moore's blog on Living Proof Ministries... it spoke volumes to me about how we try to reproduce a formula as to how God speaks and how we learn it one way and think we can predict Him in the next move... love the reassurance of how differently God spoke to our Fathers of the faith...

Joshua 6:4 –
“Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets.”



Perhaps it won’t surprise you that the word “march” makes regular appearances in this book of the Bible so, if you’re in the wilderness longing to cross that river of fear and enter a land of fruitfulness, you might venture a fresh look at it. Here’s what hit me about Joshua 6:4 –


Marching tends takes a heap longer than we expect and a different form than we might rationalize. Think how odd all that marching-around-in-circles must have been to some of those Israelites. On top of that, consider that God never instructed another group of people to take exactly that same approach again in the pages of Scripture. He told Abraham to do one thing. Moses, another. Joshua, another. David, still another. All were in keeping with His will and His character but the variance in prescribed acts of obedience reminds us that God is resistant to our relentless pursuit of formulas. God knows, if we could rationalize it, we’d institutionalize it. We’d have 2500 satellite locations of the “First Church of Seven Circles.”

Grace

With each day that goes by and little more age is added to my days, I am learning just how uncomfortable I am with "mess"... the mess inside each of us, the mess in others, and even the physical mess. I realize from my last post that it is me who has been in the "particular" camps in my life, and how humbled I have been to see God lead me into the other camp that completely contradicts the one I held so strongly years or even days before. I think the tricky part is sometimes mentally you have to make a decision to live your life, which puts you in a "camp" at times. I am so afraid that I will get it wrong sometimes, that often I analyze it and analyze it, instead of just resting in that God is in control of either way I choose. I think I make everything into a "moral" decision instead of just a decision. What confidence comes with decisions that are just made with the assumption that grace is there either way.

The reality of having five children has been sinking in lately. Not sure exactly why, but just realizing the magnitude of the time, energy, money, and more it takes. I used to think I had faith in the past, but now looking back, it must have been seasoned with ignorance as well :). It was my friend Karen who pointed out to me, faith is a gift from God. I think we feel like we have to muster it up, try harder to get it, but there are sometimes in the situations we are in, we just don't have it or have so little it feels as if it isn't much. I had to admit today to God, I don't have enough right now, and in certain areas, I have none. I just prayed, "God it is yours; give it to me. I have tried and tried, and I am embarrassed that I thought I could conjure it up." Talk about freedom... I walked out of my kitchen, wiped away tears, and thought, "Yes, it is done. It is not burden to bear... HE can do all things." Being honest with God is so awesome, and it is almost comical that we have to remind ourselves to be.