When They Just Want to Run

“Hold my hand…stay with me…” If you are a parent you have probably uttered those words to a wiggly toddler before. With social anxiety paired with slight paranoia any instance where I needed to take my child(ren) into a public place was met with a “worst-case-scenario" plaguing my brain. All this paired with my second child who was a “runner" caused some mental breakdowns for this momma. My child first escaped our house as a 15 month old. He made it part-way down the block before the person he was following even knew he was there. They kindly brought him back to our house before we even knew he had escaped!

He loved escaping, but he also loved running. He would take off in a moment and he was fast on his feet. I was pregnant during his second year of life and I would waddle after him as best as I could. I was not allowed to pick him up during a big chunk of my pregnancy and I had to learn the art of toddler-hand-holding.

If you have ever tried to hold the hand of a toddler who loved to run you will understand what I am talking about. There is something about their little hands that just makes them so hard to keep a grasp on. I quickly learned that I needed to hold his arm instead of his hand. This allowed his hand free-reign to wiggle but my hand could keep a firm grasp on his arm.

Last night my daughter had a meltdown. She started screaming “I wish I didn't live here! I don't want to be here! I should have never made this choice!” We are transitioning to “new". She has to get used to a lot. I understand that. At first we closed the door to her room and let her scream but it was making all of us more uneasy as the boys were trying to go to bed in the room next to her. Then she began crying that she wanted her mom. She said she didn't want me (in not so nice tone). That got me thinking about God as S and I continued to try to prevent each other from losing our cool from the things she screamed at us. How many times do we get frustrated and irritated and throw a fit at God? We complain that we don't want His rules or His way. We start wishing we had never made the choice to “give up" the world and ALL we believe it has to offer us. We pull and tug and squirm under his hand and claim he is harming us.

My daughter misses the person she believes loves her more than anyone else in the world. She misses the person who (in her mind) never gave up on her. She is just a little girl who misses her mom and is frustrated about the hand life has dealt. It has nothing to do with the discipline that caused the tears to begin with. As she cried and screamed I realized God wouldn't abandon his people just because they complained or yelled at him (Look at the Israelites as they traveled to the promised land). He never runs out on us. So instead of keeping her door shut I opened it. I put her chair back on its feet and I sat down and I just sat quietly and waited for her to slowly relax. While I sat I thought of the Roman handshake (used many times to illustrate eternal security). We can grab onto God when we call to Him for salvation but more importantly God grabs onto us. At times we can let go in life and do our own thing but God will not let go of us.

My daughter may fight this change in her life sometimes. She may try to shove us away from her and to pry herself away from us like the toddler trying to run away from his mom. But God is holding on with a steadfast love just waiting for us to grab back onto him again so He can lift us higher than we ever thought possible.

In the quiet that followed the meltdown I asked her if I could pray before she fell asleep. She agreed and I prayed aloud. I then asked if she still wanted me to leave or if she would like me to stay. She asked me to stay. So I sat there until she was asleep just praying silently that God would help build a bond between us that will withstand these hard times. I prayed that God would help me to love her like a momma should and to help S love her like a daddy should. It isn't something I thought would be so hard because it came so natural with my bio children but it is like a wall was built where the bridge should have gone. So instead of connecting we end up derailed...the love almost feels fake at times. Like we go through motions but there is no depth. It will take time and effort to move to a deeper level. We keep reminding ourselves that it has only been 6 weeks.

Please understand the meltdowns happen and the next day we are back to normal. We have learned that sometimes her feelings overwhelm her and she doesn't know how to deal with them all correctly yet (she is a child, no one expects her to handle these big feelings maturely). It will be a process and it will have ups and downs. When she is frustrated one of the first things out of her mouth is how she doesn't want to be with us. To her, families are interchangeable and behaviors can cause her to be given up and passed on to someone, somewhere else. It will take time for her to understand things like  unconditional, stability, forever-no-matter-what family. Please keep praying as we strive to teach her these important things. Please be praying as we try to tear down the walls and build the bridges to her and her brother.

Right Now

"Mrs. Coston, we have your son here in the Nurse's office. He has stapled his finger and we need you to pick him up and take him to the doctor. Do you think you could come get him right now?" (translation: Your son stapled his finger and you need to come take him straight to the ER but I don't want to make him more scared...) That was one phone call I was not expecting but just a small glimpse of life. Living life.

Life gets a little crazy with 5 kids. Adjusting to having a girl in our house has been hard. It feels a little like we lost something and there are times I miss the freedom of just being the "guys". But in reality I know we have gained much more.

We were discussing our journeys and where life has taken each of us on our way to church one evening. J said, "Mom, didn't you want to be a missionary? Why didn't you go to be a missionary?" So I told him how God had shifted our path. Sometimes we plan something thinking it is what we are supposed to do and then God shows us He has a different plan. AJ (9-year old foster daughter) chimed in, "If you had been living in another country would you have been able to have us come live with you?" No, we would not have been able to without returning to the United States and finding a home and work to support us. AJ continued her thought, "I think God knew He wanted me and Ja to come live with you before we even knew we were going to. God knew we would need a place to live and so he made you and Uncle S be able to have us come live with you!"

Listening to her piece together a small part of God's sovereignty in her life was so exciting. Since coming to our home she has grown in her understanding of God. She is a sponge and soaks in the Word she hears. It is exciting and terrifying at the same time. Lord, help me to be the witness she needs me to be...
Life is not full of peaches and cream. We have sour moments. We have faced a sense of loss of identity. Our home is no longer the same. We have yet to fully bond with the newest members of our home but we are forging ahead and building binds that we hope will be sufficient.
Hearing Ja cry out in the night does not fill me with the same sense of urgency that fills my mind when my own child cries out through my deepest of sleep. Instead it may take me a moment to realize he is crying for me. The bonds forged in infancy are so strong. I feel love and compassion for Ja but I still know it isn't quite the same. All we can do is our best. We can be there and we can care and we can continue to build the bonds that will unite us.

It is even harder with AJ. We build and build but she has been there and done that. She has her loyalties and she has her past. She is excited for the future but she is also afraid. We have no clue what she has seen. We don't know what she has been through. Sometimes it feels we are on two parallel planes slightly missing one another but never fully understanding each other.

So for now we are going and moving and pushing forward in an unknown realm. New rules, new adjustments. We are strangers in the world of caseworkers, lawyers, and foster system. Our case is more complicated with the inter-state aspect. We feel like fish in a puddle at the mercy of a greater hand. My mother reminded me of something important: When you have done all you can do, all you can do it rest in the Father and the promise that He will complete what he has started. So I don't have to put myself in the hands of caseworkers and "the system". I will put myself in the hands of God who loves these kids more than I ever could and who will work His will out according to His purpose.

Adoption

The concept of adoption should not be foreign to any Christian. The idea of a child who is wounded, abandoned, cast aside, in need of a Redeemer. Someone able to rescue and save them accepts them and builds a relationship with them, leagally makes them their child. What a marvelous thing. (Sound familiar to anyone else?)
Here I sit. All my part complete for the placement of 2 sweet kids into our home. We have crossed the ts and dotted "I"s and now we sit and wait for the decision to be made. Patiently impatient. We have a desire to bring these kids into our home and into our family. We desire to show them love and unconditional support and faithful stability. We long to let them know that family is forever and love is greater than anything and that God is the only true source of that love and that He will never fail them.
I don't know what will happen with this. I don't know how it will play out. I know it won't be a piece of cake or as simple as ABC... but honestly I feel like that should not matter. These kids need a home and we were sought out to provide that home for them if we were willing and able. We decided to be willing and the courts will determine if we are able and God will direct his will in all of this. I am truly excited to see what the Lord does with these kids. I would love to be their home and family but I am also confident in whatever the Lord decides will be the best for all involved and that in the process he will make his way known and that he has the kids' best interest (as well as my own family's) in mind. He wants our good.
So I will praise him no matter the outcome and I will be thankful for His way and his plan and His direction. I will praise His sovereignty above all else. I will thank him for Love. TRUE, Unaltered Love.

The thick of it

Sometimes life seems to hand you a bit more than you can chew. In the midst of those periods it seems that all you can do is keep surviving and pushing forward. Eventually the light will shine at the end of the tunnel. I don't think it is anything unique to me or my life. Every person has those periods of time where you just have to keep pushing through. Once you are through a few of those times and you know an end eventually comes it slowly gets easier to push through (not necessarily quicker to get through but at least easier to trust that God will get you through).
Sometimes when you are doing great and right where you feel you need to be and doing right what you think you should be doing all the sudden something happens. It sometimes isn't a bad thing either. IT could be something really good. But it throws your "normal" off and causes you to have to make adjustments.
In my journey that I happen to be walking through we have been presented with an opportunity to grow our family. There is a lot that goes into it. It would be through the placement of children of a relative. My husband and I spoke breifly when the call happened and we both just knew we couldn't shut the door on the idea ourselves. If God wanted the door shut he would have to do it.
I think about Noah with his family. He had his immideate family in the ark and he knew what God had told him. He knew God planned to save them. But he could not shut the door to the ark himself. Noah was a good man and a Godly man. Can you imagine shutting the door and knowing that the people on the other side were going to perish.
While there obviously is not such a finality to the decision of whether we try to take in our niece and nephew or if we allow the system to decide a separate home for them to go to it still means shutting the door on two children we love dearly. God shut the ark for Noah and made the path clear for him and for those outside of the ark. There was no guessing at what he wanted to do.
In the same way we just are praying for God to open the door or close the door himself. We are open to whatever he decides to do. The hoops we need to get through are numerous. And the only way we will be approved as an adoptive home for these sweet kids is if he works out the details. So if we get approved we can have the assurance that it was His will and not ours. We were not seeking this situation out. The caseworker found my husband through the internet and we were fortunate enough to get the message. We had discussed adopting or fostering later in life but that was something for another chapter of our lives. Now we know that God may have a different plan and that is okay. If this does not work out we will also know that he is the one who allowed it to not happen. And we will rejoice in His plan and trust Him to work out the details for the kids. They will have the home that God has for them.
The same way that God can shut a door He can also swing a door wide open! So we are praying for His will and for peace in whatever that will is.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
I find myself in a mix of thoughts and emotions. I feel a little overwhelmed at times. I think about what would need to happen to make 2 more kids work in our family situation: the bedrooms, the transportation, to things as simple as our seating arrangements for meals! The fact that our living room only currently seats 4 or 5 comfortably...That is until my Pastor's wife found me some stools on the side of the road as she was driving home the night I mentioned my seating shortage to her! God works out the details. And as I sit and wait on what he plans to do and what we need to do next I a so thankful that my God is a God who hears me, as well as the God who sees me (and Not only me, but also those precious kids who are waiting for a stable place to call "home").

The Expected Journey

The expected amble (as opposed to the Expectant Amble) is the journey I had planned on taking.
I had plans growing up. (Not many...But I did have plans). Today in Sunday school my husband asked the class if they had ever had plans that fell through or that didn't turn out the way we thought they should have. I had to laugh a little at the memories of the plans I had. They were not bad plans and planning is not bad in and of itself. The idea though is that we need to realize that the plans we make are not set in stone and God will direct the course of our journey.
Sometimes even when people are seeking the Lord with all their being through the plans and actions they take they can still end up looking like "failures" to the world when the Lord shifts the plan and moves them to a different direction. It can look as if they "gave up" on a dream, or "quit" when the going got tough. When in reality they were the brave and courageous one who was being sensitive to God's leading for that season and to the change in direction that God was taking them for the next.
Missionaries who leave the field after a term is complete, college students who change career paths and transfer to different schools half way through their studies, ladies who give up careers to become stay-at-home moms who homeschool their children after spending years gaining their degree and dream job. Honestly, the world (and possibly other Christians) may say "foolishness" or "weakness" or "shame". We do not know what God is calling them to do. We are not the ones on the receiving end until it happens in our own lives.
When we live by the expected amble where we are walking the way we expect our journey to go or the way we think others would expect us to go we are not sensitive to God's guidance. We have our plan and our goal and we are walking with our head down looking at our well marked map making sure we make it there in one piece. We are focused so much on our direction and end that we miss the surprises and blessings that God has for us. We miss opportunities that God places in our way. Frankly, we even miss God trying to pull us over another way. We miss him calling us to a new path.
I was like this. I had plans and I thought I was doing everything in my power to make those plans happen. I started with thinking I would become a nurse but was softened to God's call to full-time ministry. I surrendered to that call and went to Bible college part way through my nursing studies. I then thought I was to be a missionary and work with children's ministeries or possibly ladies. I found a man who was called to the ministry who believed he was called to the foreign field too. Fast forward a few years into our marriage. I had been praying and praying about which country we were called to. I had a few in my mind and just wanted confirmation from God in my husband's life. He came home one night to tell me he thought he was being called to youth here in America... I was floored. I went as far as to question God and ask if I had married the wrong man! Haha. Youth was NOT on my map let alone my plan! (Especially not American youth). I had to once again surrender my plan. I don't want to give you the impression that it was a simple thing or that once I surrendered I was magically shifted from the directional mindset to the guided mindset. I still have to let go of desires and plans and let God move me and lead me daily.
Something incredible does happen, however, when we stop living by walking the EXPECTED path but instead walk the path EXPECTANTLY. Our view shifts from self and what WE desire to looking around us to see what may be heading our way. It makes life exciting and surprising. It shifts our emotions, our focus and our steps. Instead of walking a straight and well thought out line we end up veering to take a detour or pivoting to head a new direction that perhaps we had never thought of before. Just because we do not end up at the place we thought we were headed it does not mean we are missing our mark in life. It means we are using our life to the greatest potential. We are seeing what is around us and we are more sensitive to changes we need to make. Life is not a straight line. We are not getting to the end with as few detours as possible. Instead it is a road trip where we want to find the greatest sights. It is a journey of weaving and looping. There are detours and route changes. Perhaps you end up in a completely different spot than you imagined. How foolish it would be to see a sign that says bridge out ahead but because the bridge is on the path marked on our map we continue towards it ignoring all warnings. We do that so much in life though. We try to force God's hands. Sometimes he allows us to go to where we had planned and we often end up hurt. Sometimes he forces our hand in other ways giving us no choice but to turn to him for direction. Why do we allow it to get to that point? Is it just out of stubbornness or our desire to not look like we failed? The beautiful thing about walking expectantly in life is that as long as you are walking hand in hand with Jesus wherever​ you end up will be at His feet and frankly that is the most glorious place to be!

God will FIGHT for you...my beloved...

It has been a week ago now that I lay on the bed beside my son after a particularly bad day. I had made him go to bed early after he attacked his brother. I waited until he had calmed down and I lay beside him gently scratching his back like he likes so much. He rolled over in his sleep to let me reach it better and then covered his whole self with his oversized fleece blanket that he loves. In the silence of the room my mind was running wild. I was pleading to God and I was begging Him for the answer. I thought of the Scripture that speaks that we war not against flesh and blood. Our battle is with things not seen. I had only just ran that through my head when I heard the Spirit say "I am the Lord your God... I am the Lord God... I will fight for you.... I am fighting for you. Let me fight this for you..." I then felt like He said "Let me fight this for J". It was then I realized that it is not all my fight to win. It is J's. And it isn't J or myself who will be fighting it. The Lord is standing, surrounding him, to fight the battle for him. I am a project in the making and I fail daily with letting the fight go. I feel like I need to be center-ring over and over again to fight for my child (What loving mom doesn't feel that way?).

 So here I am, having a hard time just a week later. Almost 4 weeks ago I sent in paperwork to CMH behavioral unit. They said it takes 2 weeks to make a decision... I am being taught patience once again in my life and I am severely running low. I am trying to remember that an answer doesn't change our life... it just opens up some options for J. I am anxious and tired. I wish I had his happy self always. It is like night and day with him in a blink of an eye and it is really breaking this momma's heart. Please pray for S and I to have wisdom and discernment with him. Please pray for me to stay strong. I feel like I am breaking apart sometimes.

 Please pray God moves in a mighty way in J's life.

 I have seen some Christian people post light-heartedly on behavioral issues and diseases in children. I understand over-diagnosis is an issue, but some parents are battling REAL issues with their children that no amount of belt will "fix" or "cure". We as parents do the best we can with what God has given us and some of us are just needing to get through the day so that we can start all over again the next day and pray that we will have the ability to raise our kids in the admonition of the Lord without messing it up. We do all this while knowing we probably will mess up, so then we pray that God will forgive us once again and use our children despite our mistakes, praying that He would do the work in their lives that we as parents daily fail to be able to do. And why do we fail? Because we are unwilling? Unbothered? Uninvolved? Disconnected? Inconsistent? Undisciplined? Ungodly? Unbiblical? Unstructured? Too soft? Too hard? Too mean? Too nice? NO! Because we are imperfect and dependent human beings who live in a world of flesh and we sin daily just like EVERYONE else!

 I have thought about whether I am dealing with demonic oppression or possession to some extent. I have considered it. And in some ways I have felt that there is oppression going on in our lives always to some extent so possibly J is another tool being used in our lives in moments, whether it is through a diagnosable disorder I do not know. I do know that Satan has used his behavior issues time and time again to cause sin to creep into my life. I know that I pray over my children daily to beg God to do a mighty work in each of their lives. I pray they will grow to have a saving knowledge of Christ. I pray that whatever is tormenting J will cease. I pray that if it is ASD or another disorder that we are able to help him achieve coping skills and that he will have more and more calm days. But so far we are grasping at straws trying to find something that helps or "works".

To watch him go from this "normal" happy child to a darkness in his eyes with a rage in his heart and a strength that no 5-year old should possess in a matter of split-seconds is heart-wrenching. He tackles his much larger brother to the ground and pounds on him. Or he throws everything he can get his hands on until there is nothing left and he lays there and groans until it is over. We breathe again. We breathe in and out and a sigh escapes. And I plead again to God as I watch him peacefully sleep. What is this!?

These past few weeks have just been more fits of rage and violence then I have seen in awhile from him. The violence level increased just when I had felt we were getting somewhere with what we were doing. We need wisdom and a consistent plan that works.

We leave for a week away from the boys on Monday. I am not going to kid myself that we will have a plan in place by then. I am praying that S's parents are filled with grace, strength and energy as they deal with the three munchkins. And I am praying that J is filled with peace for the week (if not the rest of his life!) And I pray S and I will return home refreshed and with a plan we can implement that will play a consistent role in our lives and hopefully help us all out.

 And as I have written this, I realized that I took up my sword again to jump in the battle... And God is whispering to me, "Let me fight this for you. Let me fight it for J"..."Let me get the glory."... "Allow me the victory."..."Be at peace child"... "Be at peace. The frustration and anger and disappointment in your heart is not what I have for you."

Love

Peace was a word for last year. I hadn't decided for sure what my word for this year would be.
It has been a mixture of thoughts. The word "strength" comes to mind, as does "courage". However a word that I tend to skip over has come up over and over again in my mind and so I am going to have to just land on it for the year. I use it so often and it isn't something I feel I have struggled with in the past and seems to come naturally until I am in the middle of something and ought to have it as my lens to see the situation through to begin with... but that word is "love". It is a foundation of my faith. It is a basic stepping stone. It comes easier for some and harder for others. I have always felt that I do not struggle with it. But looking back I have seen countless times that i have decided to judge or criticize someone without lovingly checking my thoughts and actions against them. Other times I have spoken harshly to my children or husband without first grabbing tight to love and capturing the thoughts to be sure it is necessary to say or without first wrapping the edification or correction in a strong dose of love.
In college we took a counseling class where we were taught the art of "Speaking the Truth in Love" and it has been some years since I thought about that. We can be correct and be saying truth, but when it isn't done in a loving way with love as the backing thrust behind it there is no godliness in it. God IS LOVE!