We wouldn't know the difference

Recently, (and in this blog that could be anything from this morning to last year :-)) I had one of those really special rare moments along the journey of motherhood:

I was enjoying a sweet Sunday afternoon nap, (don't judge, it's self care 101).  My sweet four year old came to "snuggle" with me.  Her version of snuggling and mine are very different.  Soon she was making silly noises and talking loudly.  I placed my hand over her mouth and she made one of those obnoxious sounds that can only be made by blowing, vibrations on a hand or from your backside.  Yep, in our house we call it "fart" noises :-) Which were followed by belly giggles and more of the same sounds, and repeat, for way longer than I would typically continue this silly behavior.  You know like when a little dog wants to play fetch the little rubber ball, long after the fun is gone for the person throwing the ball.  I laughed right out loud with her.  I don't laugh often enough and this wasn't lost on her.  She looked at me and said, "why are you laughing?" I said something like, "because you are silly and I like laughing with you." We laughed and giggled some more.  I looked deep into her little pixie face and her bright blue eyes, which meant being very close to that face, because I wasn't wearing my glasses.  This beautiful gift of a child.  This sassy, crazy, wild, child.  You see we didn't have to say yes.  She came to us a different way.

She reminds me of a song I heard many years ago at a woman's retreat, a song I have never heard again.  There was a line in the song talking about God's creation, "He could have made everything black and white and we would never known the difference."  Just as that song was being sung the sun set on the lake in one of those glorious sunsets with colors from deep violet, to mango, and pink blush.  The blue water of the lake only emphasized the beauty, every woman in the room was staring at the sunset, as that song ended.

<img src="http://www.freeimageslive.com/galleries/nature/sky/pics/skyclounds02531.jpg">

Here's the thing this little girl and most of my children were a choice we made.  But especially her.  We were fostering two of her siblings at the time, her birth mom became pregnant for her.  At first we were thinking of saying "no" to bringing home an infant when we were 47.  But we were told the other two children would need to go wherever the infant was placed.  We talked, we prayed, and we said, "yes."  In those moments when she is close to me and the belly giggles are abundant I look into that little face, and think "wow, I could have missed all this."  Truth is I wouldn't have missed her like you do a child you have loved and lost.  I would have gone on my way nearly every single day not knowing what I was missing, because ... well, you don't miss what you never had.  How precious that  God gave us color just for our pleasure, how precious this child and all of my children color my world, and their hand prints are all over my heart.  <3

This same feeling washes over me when I look up and see all seven of the children still at home stretched out on furniture and floor watching  an episode of "Andy Griffith" or a family movie.  I am filled with awe and gratefulness when our 16 year old sits next to me in the car and has to tuck his knees to fit into the seat, or he bends from his six foot plus height to hug me good night.  I am abundantly blessed.

Because this blog is all about the journey, I should also include a little more about the week before the cuddles and giggles with my four year old. This blog isn't called Chasing Wounded Hearts for nothing, it's our journey!! All these things happened in one week, yep seven days, seven kiddos, and a mom and dad who love them and each other,  so in no particular order:

• Child off meds for three days
• one child to ER for head injury - glued together
• one child lost computer privileges at school for generating a document that could be called cyber bullying (he was naive and did not make most of the comments on the document, but)
• homeschool ups and downs with one child
• I had to re-certify part of our health insurance
• Back door pulled off hinges
• dishwasher broke - won't drain
• my hormones are making me CRAZY!! menopause stinks
• Strong willed four year old - is there any other kind?
• telling three brothers their mom is trying to get custody of their 1/2 brother, the one they are in contact with and see at least every month
• telling son his birth dad was recently in the hospital
• baseball, t-ball and track practices
• missing shoes and permission slips 
• my own health issues

And some good things too:

• Countless hugs & snuggles
• laundry successes (see previous post)
• laughter
• coffee & conversations with my hubby
• belly laughs and what we could have missed.   

LIFE IS ABUNDANT AND SOMETIMES HARD!

Aren't you glad God made sunsets, sunrises, rainbows, and seasons....Oh, Fall in all it's glorious color praises the Lord, and so can we!

http://www.freeimageslive.com/galleries/nature/weather/pics/autumn_leaves_00195.jpg

My laundry is done!

Do you see those empty appliances?  That's how I know my laundry is done.  Yes, there is still dirty laundry in my house. I'm sure there are more than a few socks hiding under beds and in closets, but for this week my laundry is done!  I will not be thinking about it again until Sunday night (it is Tuesday morning).  Thanks to a wonderful book: 
How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets 

I tried something new.  Once a week laundry.  The first week, my husband and I worked like some people work on  a remodeling project.  We washed, dried, and folded laundry, every day for five days!!  The second week I did the same thing for 2 1/2 days.  This week I really could have been done Monday night, but I didn't want to fold the last load of laundry at 10 o'clock at night.  

I feel like a new woman!  I feel a huge burden has lifted off my shoulders.  If you don't understand my excitement then chances are you don't struggle with laundry and you can stop reading right now, because you won't "get it."

I have struggled with laundry all my life!  Adding other people and their laundry/clothing needs to my routine .... well, lets just say it has never been pretty.  I did laundry everyday! But it was never done, and people did not necessarily have clean socks and underwear when they needed them.  This always made me feel like a terrible mom.
The laundry was never done, but constantly in motion.  There were always piles of dirty laundry on my kitchen floor ('cause that's where my washer and dryer live.), there were always piles of clean folded laundry and baskets of clean laundry waiting to be folded in my dining room.  Dirty laundry was in every bedroom and in the bathroom hamper.  Occasionally, baskets of laundry made it to the living room couch or floor or both.  That laundry reminded me every day that I wasn't keeping up.  More mornings than I want to think about my children and I would be pawing through baskets of clean laundry to find socks, or a uniform shirt, or.... I have maintained a large laundry basket full of mismatched socks, for way too long, because I might find the matching socks, and because I never seemed to want to match them.  With the help of a sweet friend we mated socks for an entire afternoon during the five day renovation project called "laundry." I'm giving our new system a couple more weeks and any mismatched socks that remain are going in the trash.  Freedom!  I feel free to do this because I now know that all (most) of the dirty laundry has been washed, and my family has enough socks in their drawers already.  

I'm also excited about this new system because now it is Tuesday.  Without the pressure of rebooting laundry or moving it from place to place I can address other areas in my home, like the piles of never ending paper.  I am free for another 5 - 6 days to do other things.  Bake, food prep, clean out a drawer in the kitchen, whatever my happy little heart sees a need to do.  

I finally see how I can start to sort through my kiddos clothing and eliminate the truly unneeded.  Before they may actually have needed 20 pairs of underwear, but now that seems unnecessary and borderline ridiculous.  I now have a good idea how many pairs of jeans they actually own.  Freedom!!

Yep, I'm almost giddy about this new laundry system, which was probably very close to what our grandmother's did.  I am also excited, because God has been showing me for a few weeks now, that I am to "occupy the land" he has given me.  I am doing my own little study of the first few chapters of Deuteronomy, because that's where God has me right now, and I'm seeing time after time when the Lord said, "obey" and "occupy" the land.  For me it boils down to Owning My Own Life and taking control of it, embracing it...don't be afraid of it...do it the way God shows me.  

There is so much freedom in following God's ways, and in embracing our own lives.  

We have to live the life we have

We recently took a family vacation.  Our family is definitely large, but our children can also only handle so much.  There were many struggles. Most of the disappointments were because I had expectations that didn't fit our family.  To continually stay in the moment and enjoy my family and make memories for my family I had one recurring thought.  "We have to live the life we have"  This is who we are and we can't pretend to be something we are not.  Every day is different.

It would seem there is a book written for every situation you might face.  What ever your family or personal struggle might be there's a book for it.  If you are struggling with gratitude you can read "One Thousand Gifts" by Anne VosKamp.  If you are struggling with loving in the face of fear, I highly recommend "Keep Your Love On" by Danny Silk.  There are books on parenting, marriage, homeschooling, housekeeping, spiritual growth, weight loss, exercise, and on and on the list goes.  The problem with so many of these books is that when you finish reading them you can compare your life to the books.  I walk away from so many of these books with a a "To Do" list that leaves me feeling inadequate and sometimes a failure when I cannot Do the "To Do's".

Recently, I read a wonderful book.  This lovely mom raised her kids with candle light, lovely music, tea, and cookies.  I knew I couldn't pull that off even on the best of days.  But I really believed I could pick my children up from school on a Friday, buy some munchkins at the coffee shop, make hot chocolate and just put a pause on our busyness for a few minutes once a week.  I had visions of pleasant conversation (loud but pleasant).  As soon as I picked up my children from school, the fighting and bickering began. Fights over seats, and placement of backpacks.  All the silly unrelenting sibling bickering, continued through the drive thru, and then all the way home. When we got home everyone forgot how to put away lunches and backpacks, and the bickering continued while the water heated on the stove top.  Finally, we got all the children to the table, we filled cups with powdered hot cocoa mix, added the piping hot water, and a little milk to cool the beverage for the little ones...I skipped the music, because it was loud enough.  I stepped from the room and rushed back to screams from our littlest child.  She had poured her hot chocolate down the front of herself.  I stripped off her clothes quickly rushed her into the bathroom to cool her skin with cold water.  All this excitement lead to a call to the doctor's office and some quick decision making about the seriousness of her burn and the best course of treatment.  The pause I longed for would have to wait for another day....

I can learn to accept the limits as I did on that vacation or I can embrace the disappointment and frustration.  Honestly, I struggle....I do both, but I tend to end the day frustrated and disappointed that we can't have a "normal" life.  But I am realizing that I am as much a part of the problem as my kiddos.  I have to remind myself all day long that this is "Our Life," it does not look like anyone else's.

It is now Spring Break, but that is just what the calendar calls it.  It is cold and windy, and this morning we have snow.  We have been struggling for over two weeks to get a prescription filled, so one of our wounded hearts is struggling with EVERYTHING.  There have been blanket forts, and donuts, and a couple creative boys made wind sails for their scooters...they worked too! But there have also been more fights than I can count:  fights over blankets, bowls, seats, TV shows, toys, books, toaster use, tape, etc, etc, etc,   Arguing, and back talk,  I have been doing a lot of yelling. :-(
We even went to a Science Center.  One of my kids (the one off his meds)  took off and ran through the Science Center when he found out it was time to leave.  It took 20 mins to corral all our kiddos.

Life is hard, my wounded hearts struggle, I am the biggest wounded heart of all, but we do things!  Hopefully, we make memories, and at the end of the day they sleep!!    I know that  two or three of my kiddos will fall apart when we go to the Science Center, but we go.  Our trip is over an hour, so I hope and pray that they sleep or at least decompress on the trip home, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.  I Expect it, so it doesn't frustrate me.  I prepare for it, the long drive, snacks, coffee for me, an audio tape in the tape player, etc.  I am prepared for the fall out, and it does not unnerve me.  Now if I can get to the place where I am prepared for cold Spring breaks, loud bouncy boys stuck inside (although I have also kicked them all outside, too), fights over pillows, cups, and chores... I will be better able to accept "our normal" and approach it with grace and more patience, less yelling.
It's our journey, good days, hard days, and it won't always be this way.

Blessings on your journey, where ever you are in this season of life.