Simple Woman's Day Book

Outside My Window...An especially mild winter rolls on.  For the last two years, we have had snow in February.  Don't think that is going to happen this winter.   

I am thinking...about something I can't blog about...

I am thankful for...the visit with Danee this week.  Whatever happens, we had one more opportunity to set Levi in her lap, take lots of pictures, and stow away a few more memories of her.

I am wearing... Oh, my, you would know that I pulled out the scrub pants for the first time since turning in my daycare keys today, and now I am being caught by the blog in my slovenliness.  Laundry day is tomorrow, and then I shall have some blue jeans to wear. 

I am remembering...what life was like when I ran the daycare.  Not because I am wearing my old uniform, but because I reconciled the daycare books today for taxes.  Filling in those records took me back to the days of shopping, planning, payroll, and purchases of a 50+ center.  Small wonder I was stressed out!  I actually shuddered several times as I made my way down the pages.

I am going...to be spending some quality time in various doctors' offices this week.  Levi and K both have appointments on Wednesday.  Thursday we go to Dallas for the master's hip consult (He is looking at having his hip and knee replaced.  He's going to end up like the bionic man.)   After the appointment, we'd like to go by Texas Children's and get a feel for the office there.  The trips to Houston are really beginning to wear on us.

I am currently reading...The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Dr. Laura Sleshinger

I am hoping...that we like the Dallas office.

On my mind...the whole ordeal with the master's state exam.

Noticing that...I lose weight first and foremost in my breast.  The one place I DO NOT need to lose weight!

Pondering these words... "The Old Testament was a testament of prosperity; the New Testament is a testament of adversity." --Charles Spurgeon

From the kitchen...venison tacos have done been cleaned up.

Around the house...Children are finishing up their Bible reading with Dad.  The story of Jacob and his many wives--Abby and K are beet red and asking the master if the can PLEEEEAASE skip this chapter?!!  There is quite a bit in Genesis that is a little awkward for family alter time, ya know.

From my picture journal: Going to have to pass on that. *sigh*

Oh, The Places You'll Go

Does anyone know how to get pictures from facebook up on your blog?  I feel bereft without photos of my family making periodic appearances here.
Things are at an odd place.  Odd for many reasons.  Unsettling.  I'm considering opening up a private blog to unload some of those.  But then I wonder if I should "unload?"  Is that just a handy veneer for "complain?"  A thing I'm commanded not to do?  Anyway, opening up my blog and seeing my beautiful children's faces always was grounding, fortifying for me.  Seeing as financial relief is nowhere in sight, we will not be purchasing a new home computer in the foreseeable future, so I will be on this laptop.  I'm getting better at maneuvering on this thing, but still can't figure out the pictures.  There must be a way.
Back to the financial part.  The master did not pass his state board exams.  At least we are 90% sure he did not.  That means that his salary will not double at the end of this month as it would have had he passed.  From a purely human standpoint, we NEEDED his salary to double.  I don't see a way out of this place we are at, but I will keep looking.
We were called to Houston, Friday.  Levi's birthmother was very ill.  Actually, we feared she might die.  We had not had any contact from her since before Christmas.  Our cards were returned with the note, "No such person at this address," and our text went unanswered.  We feared, like so many open adoption placements, our contact with her had fizzled out.  On Wednesday morning early, Levi stood for the first time.  My first impulse was to grab the phone and text her.  But there was nowhere to send my text.  I got  the kids dressed and went out to do my shopping.  It was a cold, wet morning.  And she was weighing heavy on my heart.  Did she have shelter?  Was she fed?  She should know that he stood up today.  It is something I know she would want to know. Where was she?
I came home from the trip to find an email from our agency.  God was about to answer all of my questions.  She was in a hospital, well fed, but sick.  Of course, I wanted to come see her, but agency didn't know if she would be open to our seeing her that way.  When they mentioned our offer to visit she broke down crying, saying that she had been praying that God would send us to see her. She is better now.  Maybe out of the hospital.  We don't know.  She doesn't have a phone right now.  She was overjoyed to see Levi--that he was strong and healthy.  She picked my brain about him.  There was a man there in the room with her.  Her new "boyfriend."  (Pimp?) A Latino gangster.  Of course, he didn't introduce himself that way, but that's what he was.  Exactly like the one who tried to have her killed nine months ago, and the hired hit man who left her badly beaten instead of dead.  An attack which caused ongoing infections (that still might claim her life) and precipitated the birth of my son.  Why?  Why doesn't she get out?  Why doesn't she stop the cycle?  I want Levi to know her.  She is so sweet and optimistic; I can't help but wonder how she came to the place she is.  Doubtful that I will ever be close enough to her to ask.  Oh, Lord, I'm sick with worry for her.
On a lighter note: Never thought I'd be sitting in a hospital room with my husband, my son, his birthmother and a gang banger having a pleasant conversation as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  And I bet they never thought they'd be doing the same with a Baptist pastor and his wife.  Makes me smile to think of it.

Levi, Marina, and Jesus

I just got off the phone with the legal assistant in Houston. We will, most likely, finalize on Levi's adoption on February the 24th.  I'm excited to get that lose end tied up. But strangely, another adoption is weighing heavy on my mind and heart today.
 Marina's adoption into the Kingdom.  These days, Marina is the first person I see when I wake.  After many months of power struggle over her hair and the grooming thereof--which brought her perilously close to a second butch cut--she has submitted to my arrangement of her do's.  It crossed my mind that in three short months she will be eight years old.  Wow!  That shocks me.  How can she be that old?  This is the age I start to look for the signs.  The signs that God is knocking at their heart's door, the signs that they are listening, that they are beginning to see their need of a Savior.  Sometimes, they show themselves in their artwork--stick-figure drawings of Jesus on the cross or a love letter to God.  Sometimes, it is questions from the back seat about last week's Sunday School Lesson, or a face of rapt attention during service.  Signs that I haven't seen in Marina in the smallest degree.
And so, I pray.  'When you can't trace His hand, trust His heart,' right?  I pray that I will be ready to council her, maybe answer questions that she will never ask out loud. Perhaps ask some of my own.  She's been taught the Truth from infancy on, but she's characterized by stubbornly clinging to fantasies in total contradiction to what she had been told, and wouldn't Satan love to spread some lies in her heart and watch them take root?  From a child that never did anything by the book, I shouldn't look for the normal indicators.  In the words of the Russian caregiver on the day we took her from the orphanage, "That Olga....she goes her own way." Parenting her for seven years, I can Amen that statement.  She goes her own way, in her own time, with her own little way of walkin' it.
But, ultimately, for peace, love, joy and life, her way must become His way.

Test

I Can't Know About That

My friend posed a question this week on facebook asking how and when couples arrived at the decision to start building their family.  I had to laugh.  Her question suggests that there is a plan--that people discuss this and arrive at a decision or come to an agreement regarding when the time is "right" for their family.  And maybe for most people that is the case.  I can't know about that.  I do know that I get asked on a regular basis why I have seven children.  Some people have too much tact to voice their question, but I still see it in their expression--the rounding of the eyes, the slight drop of the jaw--"How on earth does anyone end up with that many kids?"  I can't blame them for wondering.  I look around the living room some times and think much the same thing.  It struck me today that at some point, my children may wonder the why's and wherefore's themselves.  Life in a large family is all they have ever known, but already they are catching quite a bit of incredulity when they announce to a new friend that they have six brothers and sisters.  The oldest ones are, by now, well aware that we are, "weird."
So, in case, being my friends, you have not wanted to offend me, but inwardly questioned our motives, beliefs...perhaps our sanity, read on.  If curiosity is not one of your failings, skip it.  It's going to be a long one.   And kids, if you are reading this when your daddy and I have gone to be with Jesus, if you wonder why you had to grow up wearing hand-me-downs and being the center of unwanted attention in any restaurant we frequented, here is your answer.  And after you are done, call one of your brothers or sisters and check in on them, o.k.?
First off, we do not believe contraception is a sin. I recognize that God is in control of everything that happens.  When I get in my vehicle and drive to Wallmart, I know that it is possible that the Lord has purposed that I die in a car wreck that very day.  He is Sovereign.  But I still put on my seatbelt.  We have used different methods of birth control throughout our marriage (some more successfully than others, ha, ha) and I've undergone sterilization. I have never felt conviction from the Holy Spirit that I was in sin regarding this.   I believe life--which is sacred--begins at fertilization, and there are certain forms of contraception that because of this belief, we would not be able to conscience the use of, but for the most part, we're good.   We do NOT think we are more holy than a couple with three children, two children, or no children.  We DO feel that some of the reasons people "choose" not to have children or limit their family size in our culture are selfish and greedy--and that is sin.  Then again, some of the reasons people HAVE children are equally self-centered.  But we are not in the business of judging people's hearts--God is.  Sooo...if we aren't opposed to birth control, and we aren't putting in for sainthood, what gives?
I grew up in a nuclear family, one mom, one dad, one marriage, three kids.  The master the same thing, only with four children.  Pretty rare, I know.  We both loved children and whether or not to have them wasn't a question, whether they would be genetically linked to us was.  Doctors told the master that due to an extremely high fever with measles as a small child, there was a very good possibility he was sterile.  I took this information in stride.  God laid adoption on my heart from my childhood on (for years I diligently campaigned for my parents to adopt a baby brother), so now that I met the man I would marry, this tugging toward adoption made perfect sense.  I told the master not to worry about it, we would adopt.  Having just returned from mission work in Latvia where they taught summer camps for orphans, the master was a 100% on board. Our plan: Get married, graduate college, let the master finish seminary,  get a few years start on our careers, then start a family either through birth or adoption. We were young, I was 19, the master was 25, we had plenty of time.
I couldn't know.
Finding out I was pregnant with K, was devastating.  For us, a baby was not a blessing, not even an accident, but a consequence. The months leading up to his birth was the worst time in my life.  Of course, I'd had a happy carefree life up until then, so the bad seemed so much worse.  God must be very angry with me, and I worried that He would punish me further.  Would my baby be sick?  Would he die?  Would I love him as a mother should?  I couldn't know that from the first moment that I laid eyes on him, God would give me a love for him stronger and truer than any I had ever known.  He is and--though I couldn't see it at the time--always been a blessing to me.
Our second child is the only one I can say was actually "planned."  Our plans for how are life was going to unfold were shot to heck anyway, and--having grown up with siblings close to us in age--we wanted the same for K.  We timed Abby to arrive the day after I walked (more like waddled) across the stage, and she arrived healthy and beautiful and right on schedule.  One boy, one girl: The American Dream.
Graduating in December, I thought I would take the next year and a half to be with the baby, do some substitute teaching here and there, and try for a full-time classroom when she was 18 months.  Once we got our feet under us financially, we would look at moving out to Fort Worth for that seminary degree.  I think we both wanted more children--after all, we hadn't adopted yet--but they were wanted in a shadowy much-further-down-the-road kind of way.   I couldn't know.  I couldn't know that we would be surprised--despite BC, despite breast feeding--with Ian at the exact same time I should have been starting to teach.
Well, we were three kids into this thing, we might as well go for broke.  And broke was the operative word.  It didn't make sense for me to teach with three children in childcare; my entire salary would go to daycare.  The master was pastoring a small country church and I was at home.  But I'm not too keen on odd numbers. Three is an odd number. We got the crazy idea into our heads that we would "finish up" our family by adding that long expected adoption.  We went to our first meeting thinking we would adopt from Guatemala (little brown boys just melt my heart and that was the cheapest, easiest International adoption at the time).  We left the orientation both burdened for Russia (much more difficult process with a 30,000 dollar price tag.  Did I mention we were broke?).  We told the kids to prepare for a three year old brother; boys were more available, and once out of infanthood, the children were much harder to place.  We couldn't know.  We couldn't know how God would provide. How He would make a way were there was NO way.  We couldn't know that a baby girl, blonde, blue-eyed Marina Joy, was meant to come into our family two long years later.
Maybe it was because we moved shortly after Marina came home, and we were all out of our normal routine.  Maybe it was because I was teaching full time and we were making more money than we ever had before.  Maybe it was because we could do it without getting a social worker's approval and a  Russian apostile on 15 different documents.  Maybe we were unconsciously rebelling against the dozens of family and friends who commented, "SURELY, ya'll are done now."  For whatever reason, without ever sitting down and "planning" another baby, we weren't as careful as we should have been.  One morning I woke up feeling pregnant.  I was.  When Randy arrived, I had my tubes tied.
There we were.  Five kids.  I was surprised to find that we were now considered a freak of nature for having SO MANY kids.  My family didn't seem crazy big.  In fact, some time after Randy turned a year old, it began to feel a little small.  I felt like someone was missing.  And, I was starting to see how important it would be for Marina to have someone in the family like her, someone who was adopted.  I thought about the rows and rows of full cribs in baby house #19. No one to hold them, no one to love them.  We would go over there again and get a sister for Marina.  I couldn't know.  I couldn't know that our agency would enforce a new policy barring large families (which I found out we were now considered) from adoption. I was deflated.  Maybe our family was finished after all.  And, drat, it would have to be an odd number
I couldn't know.
In my adoption surfing one night (I would scroll down the photolistings of children, waiting for a mommy and daddy, and I would pray for them), I came across a tiny domestic adoption agency in Houston.  I never considered domestic adoption before.  That was for couples who couldn't have children.  And didn't infertile couples wait for years to have a child placed in their arms?  But the director of the agency had adopted six children, and another worker had raised 15.  Maybe this was worth a try.
We fell in love with AIM the first time we stepped into their office.  Here, at last, were some like-minded people. We had our homestudy updated.  But around that same time, John's bone disease flared up, and he had to have his leg amputated.  We were in a financial bind (when have we not been?), with no available funds to complete an adoption, and to top it all off, we were staring down the barrel of a move.  In my heart, I gave up on the idea of adopting another child.  I couldn't know that a tiny, sick preemie was making her turbulent, brutal, way into the world.  And that she would be mine.  From the moment our agency worker Denise called me with her information, I wanted that baby.  I remember the drive down to Corpus Christi--the master warning me over and over that if she was too sick...if her needs were too great...we just weren't in a place to take her home and give her the care she needed--knowing in my head that he was right, but my heart screaming, "You are her mother."  And I was. Thankfully, one look and John was clean gone, too.
That brought us up to six.  Stick a fork in us, we're done!  Three boys, three girls. Four birth, two adopted, both even numbers. :0) But two and a half years later, and that old, familiar ache returned.  The one that keeps me turning around, looking for who is missing.  I don't like that feeling, and the master says eventually we MUST STOP.  I told the feeling--in no uncertain terms--to go away.  We were done already.  Six kids done. You don't get any doner than us. D-O-N-E. I couldn't know.  I couldn't know stopping by AIM to say hello one afternoon on a trip to Houston would change my life.  Couldn't know that there was a young woman in the exact same situation as Marina and Cara's birthmothers.  Couldn't know that she had called the office just that day and requested information about adoption. Couldn't know that our agency would offer to place this child with us and would tell the birthmother about us.  How could I possibly imagine that this woman would choose us--not in spite of the fact that we already had six children, but because we had six children--to raise her healthy baby boy?  It is unheard of; anyone in the adoption world will tell you that.  How could I know that two weeks later, I would bring that little boy home?  That he would light up my life with his smiles, and that I would feel for Levi the same overwhelming Mommy-love that I felt for K the first time I lifted my eyes over the nursery window seal so many years ago.  I couldn't know.  I couldn't have even guessed.
There you have it.  How we ended up with seven kids.  The master does not have a seminary degree.  My teaching certificate has a thick layer of dust on it. We are eternally broke, and our car has not NOT had at least one car seat strapped into it in thirteen years.  I've come to point where I don't make plans anymore. I wait and see what God is going to do.  It's so much more exciting this way!  Are we done?  I'm 33 and starting to feel my age.  To you it sounds crazy that I have seven kids at 33; to me, it sounds crazy that most couples wait until their thirties to start this insanity.  Yesterday, when Ian broke his sternum, Abby was drama diva over her first pimple, Randy wore through yet ANOTHER pair of sneakers, and Levi tried to choke himself for the 1,000 time that day, I swore that we were.  If that old feeling shows up, I will slam the door in his face.  And the master is right, we do have to stop some time.
But snuggle time is awesome.  Playtime is uproarious. Surely with seven, one of them is bound to be a doctor, right? I am never lonely. And you know, seven is an odd number ;0) The truth is I don't know. So, don't ask me.
I can't know about that.
  

On Again, Off Again

My Internet that is. Just when I think I've had to painstakingly use the master's IPhone to post for the last time, I lose it. But, will make this short and sweet, and hope for good things when I take the computer in to geek squad tomorrow. There is no way we can afford a new computer right now, and we purchased a my-fi system that--since we have already spent the money for--sure would be great to use.
As of Wednesday, we are parents of a teenager. Not sure how I feel about that. K has been an easy-to-parent, precoscious, oddly mature child. Throughout his childhood I was repeatedly warned, "just wait until he gets to be a teenager," in a tone that clearly indicated all hell would break loose. So, we shall see.
Wednesday night Ian broke his sternum. He was leading a chase game with Randy in the church fellowship hall. They had just overturned a chair with their horseplay, when I hollered at them from the kitchen to take it outside. As they made one last lap, Randy caught up to Ian, pushed him, and he fell, full-force onto the metal leg of the upturned chair. A few seconds into his cries of pain, I knew it was no kiss-and-make-it-better bobo. His breathing was labored and he couldn't stop crying as much as his macho, nine-year-old heart wanted to. Not wanting to alarm him, I stepped into the hall and called my best friend who happens to be an RN. Could you seriously hurt yourself falling onto a chair? The answer, my friends, is yes! A trip to the ER revealed he broke his sternum. Now, no one knows what to do with him. Since the sternum bone is usually only broken in the case of a severe car wreck or by a surgeon during heart surgery,when the patient's movement will be confined for an extended period, they are not sure what level of activity to allow for an otherwise healthy child. And how am I supposed to keep this kid inactive while the doctors decide? He climbed before he walked.