Family

Jul082015

The roller coaster

UnknownPicture a roller coaster.  You are on it.  You go up, you go down, you even go upside down.  And there is no way to control any of it.  You can’t skip the part where you go upside down, there is no getting out, and you certainly cannot get to the controls. It is impossible to get out midstream to push the stop button or let it go faster through the lower parts or stop at the top so you can enjoy the view.  The only thing you can do is ride it out and trust the person who manages the controls.

We are on such a roller coaster ride.  Our emotions are like the roller coaster.  The journey with our boy is hard and painful.

However, our boy is booking great progress.  In the midst of crises he can now put his head on my arm.  Just for a few seconds but it is there.  We can tell his heart is healing, slowly.  Today I realize again that working out brokenness hurts.  We cannot expect our boy to heal without a battle.

Last week when I sat with Jesus He reminded me that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  But there is no easy at the moment so somehow I am doing something not quite right.  All I could do in that moment was see the roller coaster and just breath through it.  There is no easy in our home but RESTORATION is written all over us.

I realize that I am doing so much caring for, that sometimes I feel like a little girl and I need some caring for me.  Because the journey is so crazy and unpredictable, my head has been full, my nights are broken, and my body is weak.  In that, it has been incredibly hard to sit and be still with God.  I was too consumed.  And all this when I know all too well I cannot do this in my own strength.  I stopped to look at my needs and I stopped to look at God’s work.

So just sitting with “My yoke is easy and My burden is light” gives me peace.  It might not be much, but maybe all I need to do is sit in it.  Without answers.  I need some care and God is the best person to turn to.  And since, I have put up pictures in our home, pictures that remind me why we do all of this.  Photos of high moments with our boy: the photo that tells me of the first time we took him to the beach and how priceless that was, the photo that reminds me of the moving speech he held at his 8th grade graduation ceremony that made parents, students and teachers cry, the memory of our boy setting up table in the middle of two rooms so he could be with both me and Tim at the same time.  I need to remember who God is in all this, why we are doing what we are doing and when I do that my eyes lift to Daddy and my yoke has just become easier and my burden got lighter.

 

I love that you are here and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !                                        ~ Also, be sure to check back in (or sign up for ‘Notify me of new comments’) because I may have left you a word or two in response ~

Coffee for the Heart is a place where we just see ourselves sitting down for coffee and sharing, accept it is on the internet, never the less it is very real.  Go HERE for more stories!

spacer
Jul022015

I forgot

‘I am barely holding on’, that is what I have been saying the last few weeks.  It felt like no one really understood the debt of what I was saying.  Even the therapist, she and friends have been telling me we are doing great.  That we are doing an awesome job in this trial with our boy.  But all I felt was exhaustion and emotions.  I was barely hanging on.

We are constantly trying to read our boy.  When he behaves a certain way we are constantly processing our best next move. When he is angry we try to find ways to love him, and we certainly try to control our feelings and anger.  It’s not an easy thing but we do not want to mess up and so we invest, invest, invest in doing the right thing and not become angry.  When our boy is disconnecting from us, our house turns into this place of tension that is sometimes unbearable.  We have to be okay with this uncomfortable feeling.  We have to be okay with our boy either loving us, or hating us.  For now, there is nothing in between.  And it changes all the time.

Today I was reminded that God’s yoke is easy and His burden is light.  Boy, it has not felt like that at all.

I forgot.  I stopped seeing.  Seeing the truth.  Seeing God’s work.  Seeing God’s call on our life.  I am a hundred percent sure that God chose us for this boy.  And we ARE doing an amazing job with him.  And our behavior, in many ways, shows Jesus. I really feel we are being Jesus and it is so very powerful.  We are SO determined to be the difference for our boy.  We constantly remind ourselves that our boy is hurting and broken and he’s been through too much.  That is the reason for the hardship, not the boy himself.  It’s his past that get’s ‘in the way’.  So when he yells three days straight, we try to keep it together and speak with calm voices.  When he ignores me I still will speak to him and reach out knowing he is not going to even give me a glimpse.  I still make him his lattes that he loves, knowing it will go to waste because on bad days he will refuse anything I do for him.  And Jesus has given us the honor to be like Him.

But it is hard work.  It is exhausting.  My body aches and faints (literally) because I am drained.  I cry, oh I cry a lot.  Tim and I, we are working hard to hold hands through it all and not turn against each other.  Our margins are gone and if we do not watch it, we will no longer be a good team.  So we find ways to do life in the midst of all this: we ask friends to come over on days that it is hard, we go out for drinks at a bar close to us, or we just visit a batting cage and play together.  There is still life in the midst of battle.  What a precious gift to have.

Today I thought about the cross.  Jesus was never able to reach heaven without the pain of the cross.  And He could not suffer the cross without knowing what was beyond the cross, heaven and life for all.  There is no way our boy can heal without getting through all the fear, the doubt and pain.  And there is no way we will be a family without us going through the tests and the rejection of this hurting boy.  We have to let it be okay that we hurt before we get to a better place.  And very important is that we do not forget to look beyond our now.  We know where we are headed.  This boy has a great chance of healing his heart and someday even being able to do relationships to the point he can even care for a wife.  He has great desires to one day be married and have 4 children.  He is convinced that he will be a great dad.  And we are convinced that if he stays with the hard work now, that one day, yes, he will make us into very proud grandparents.

So today Jesus let me see again.  He reminded me of the bigger picture.  He reminded me that He has picked our home for this boy to heal.  He reminded me that the future is worth getting through the pain now.  He reminded me of the privilege to be Jesus like.  We just have to remember the bigger picture.

 

I love that you are here and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !                                        ~ Also, be sure to check back in (or sign up for ‘Notify me of new comments’) because I may have left you a word or two in response ~

spacer
Jun032015

Justice versus Love

I shake.  My heart beats heavily and fast.  I can’t sit still.  I am overcome by this pressure in my chest.  When the feelings sets in I know exactly what is going on and the battle is not easy.  Justice versus Love, that is what I am up against.  That is the battle that I often fight.

There is this right that I feel, the need to punish someone, some how, for not treating me rightly,  And I am like that because of my abusive background and there never being any justice about it.  But it’s not right.  This is MY battle and has nothing to do with our boy.  Our boy… because that is where this takes place.  It is our boy who has the privilege 😉 to bring this out in me.  He can treat me so poorly, in a way I do not deserve.  He can ignore me like no other and oh, does that hurt, does that bring about memories of me being ignored for days on end by my family when I was little.  Or he lies about something.  Or he throws me this really dirty look.  Or he ignores a rule we put in place together.  Or he refuses to do his chore.  That is when these feelings take over my body.  But any child needs love the most when he/she deserves it the least.  So I have to let go of my justice, in order to love him.

He knows what he deserves and he knows he is not getting that.  When I let go of what he deserves, and love him instead, it communicates exactly what he needs to learn.   To forgive those who hurt him.  To let go.  Because it only imprisons him if he doesn’t.  He’ll get dark inside. I know what it is like to be in prison and I do not want that for him.  So together we will learn to let go of justice and free ourselves.  We will learn to love EVERYONE.

 

I love that you are here and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !                                        ~ Also, be sure to check back in (or sign up for ‘Notify me of new comments’) because I may have left you a word or two in response ~

Coffee for the Heart is a place where we just see ourselves sitting down for coffee and sharing, accept it is on the internet, never the less it is very real.  Go HERE for more stories!

spacer
May152015

I just love this

We never had stuff laying around the house… but now I love stumbling upon this constantly.

Soccer ball

 

 

I love that you are here and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

spacer
May102015

I am not so different

Our boy and I… we are not so different.  We had the most precious conversation today about being scared.  Scared of love. I was happy to be able to share a story with him, a story about something that happened just a bit earlier in the day…

Tim and I had discussed mother’s day.  I had wanted to take off all pressure.  Tim gets anxious about any holiday or special day and I didn’t feel our boy needed any pressure about doing anything.  So when I was the first to get up and find a card and flowers I was a little surprised.  Tim was quick to follow me.  “What are you doing here?  You are supposed to be in bed.” “But why, we had said we weren’t doing anything, that is still quite alright with me” I replied.  But Tim insisted: “Just leave the kitchen, just go back to bed.”  I struggled and continued to make myself some tea and make Tim his coffee and our boy would be served with a wonderful caramel vanilla latte.  I realized it was a little silly, here I was spoiling my men on mother’s day, a day my husband now had chosen to spoil me.  I couldn’t let go.  And I didn’t.  I felt the tension about needing to listen to my husband and my own uncomfortable feelings.  See… there are times that it is still really hard for me to be loved.  I was trying to steal away this opportunity from him, just so I could feel comfortable, just so that I could be in control.

Our boy had another hard week and it caused him to apologized for that today.  He said it is hard to control his behavior at times.  He said he knows more and more that he is indeed in the right place but… it scares him and so he wants to get away, and difficult behavior is his way.

I asked him if he wanted to hear a story of that morning, of what I did.  When I was done confessing to him about my morning and my struggles he was quick to answer: “But that is how I feel, that is what I do!”  and for about half an hour we kept sharing back and forth about being scared, about why we are scared and how strange it is we do what we do.  I so know this match was made in heaven.  We are so right for our boy, he is so right for us, I am so right for him.  Not just because of my past, but it certainly is part of God writing this story.  I may be a grown up, but some times I just act like our teenage boy.

 

I love that you are here and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !                                        ~ Also, be sure to check back in (or sign up for ‘Notify me of new comments’) because I may have left you a word or two in response ~

spacer
Apr092015

WOW is all I can say

It is really really too bad that we cannot post any pictures because some very precious moments took place in our home last week.  Picture our boy, the one who locks himself in his room for days on end, setting up a little dining table IN A DOORWAY. Tim on the one side of this doorway, working in the office.  Me on the other side of the doorway, working in the kitchen.  And our boy in the middle, eating his food.  It portrays our boy’s heart… That day, and more and more, he just wanted to be close to us.  He was talking, cracking jokes, being a lot of fun, very happy and sitting in the middle of two rooms, in our presence. When we offered to take him to a friend’s house (since it was Spring Break) he replied: “No, thank you.  I just want to be home.”

WOW is all I can say!  Love may be painful, but it is totally worth it.  Love prevails, Love overcomes, Love wins.  What happens in our home is living proof of that.

 

 

I love that you are here and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

spacer