Random Lesson on my Drive Home

While driving home from Bible study alone last night I was pressed upon to write.

After the study I was speaking to some ladies about my current situation with my foster daughter. I get to the end of my rope with her and while sometimes God hands me more line other times I fail to rely on him and fall into frustration and lash back out at her (surprise! I am not perfect…)
On the way home, having left the room encouraged and uplifted, I was ready to get home.

All of the sudden I had a verse float in my head as surely as if I had just read it on a road sign. It was clear as day. I actually tried to remember where I had seen it from my vehicle while also knowing it had not been written anywhere on the roadway. At first it seemed like such a random verse. “And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” (Genesis 3:12 KJV)

I said the verse a few times as it ran around my head, paraphrasing: “The woman you gave me made me do it…” and started to dismiss it as just a random thought. Then it clicked. God was saying something important to me. I kept complaining in my own head about “this child God had given me…”. The disruptions she had caused in our home and life. The negative impact she was having on my boys. The negative impact she was having on our marriage. The energy involved with keeping her in check. The frustrations her behaviors and tantrums caused. The lack of peace we felt in our own home and the disruption in our ability to just be a family…

I was in a sense saying the exact same thing Adam had said: God, this child you gave me is making my life a wreck… This child you gave me is ruining everything I love...This child you gave me is causing me to become angry and to lose my temper…

REALLY??!! I tried to say “It's not the same thing, Lord…” but I had to stop myself because it is exactly the same.

God placed this precious child with us for a reason. God made the path for it to work and for the placement to happen. It was only by his timing and his planning. He began this work and he will finish it to His glory. In the meantime He will grant us the grace and gifts we need to get through it.

All Sunday I had tried my best to not yell. It was hard, but I made it through. I tried my best to control my emotions when she destroyed her room. But after the drive home that night I was once again faced with a tantrum and a second thorough room demolition and I had to pause. It had to be more than just keeping myself restrained. I needed to find Joy and Peace, and to Love in the moment. I can't just be content to “hold together”. I needed wisdom.

My heart was in a better place as I waited patiently outside her room for her anger to subside. I refrained from escalating the issue and I managed to speak calmly when spoken to. I reminded myself to love in a moment where it was difficult to love. I was reminded to be thankful for this girl God had given me.

I am not perfect and I will fail (again and again). God is gracious and merciful and I will do my best to keep my eyes on Him while remembering that as He is faithful to me He is also faithful to her. He is calling me to be merciful, gracious and faithful to His precious child that He has seen fit to give to me.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Matthew 7:11 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.7.11.KJV

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
James 1:17 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/jas.1.17.KJV

Grandma

My flight was mostly empty. Everyone could have had their own row. I realized why I had gotten such a good deal on the flight. I shared a few smiles with the passengers close enough to me then I sat in my row alone and in relative quiet.

As we began to pull out and take off the sun was setting on the horizon. “How fitting,” I thought.

It was a beautiful orange and red falling over Kansas City.

I couldn't help but let a couple tears fall down my face in the silent moment.

I am heading to Tennessee to see my grandma for, what more than likely will be, the last time. I plan to kiss her check and cry with my family as we comfort each other and celebrate the woman that she is and the legacy she is leaving behind her.

This hit us all out of left field. Grandma is active and vibrant. She loves shopping and finding bargain deals, cooking, baking and hosting warm fellowship. She is fantastic at all she does.

She also has a passion for children and teaching them the Truth of God's word. She taught my Sunday school class when I was 2 and 3. I recall her songs she sang with us as we jumped around doing motions and learning that we were precious in God’s sight. Oh, how I wish time would take me back for a glimpse at her setting me on her knee to sing “the raisin song" as we share a box of raisins... and allow me to really appreciate all she has done for me.

She taught me to do laundry and tried to teach me to do chores more effectively. I tend to rinse dishes so well to put them in the dishwasher that it is hard to tell if they are clean or dirty. I blame grandma for that. Also folding laundry as it comes out of the dryer. This is the only way my clothes get folded before a week passes by while they sit in a basket or on my couch in my bedroom.

Grandma taught me to appreciate a garden. The work that goes into someone’s garden is immense and it takes a devoted person to make the garden flourish.

She taught me to pay attention to the world around me. The hidden treasures you can only find by watching and noticing. Like a bunny burrow hiding under a hedge with baby rabbits sleeping in a nest of fur and fluff, or a bird nesting in the top of a tree. The lonely lady who walked in and sat alone.

Grandma also loved to sing. Her voice may not have been the most beautiful in the world but it didn't matter much to me. I loved hearing her sing as she went about her work or driving in the car. A joyful sound that reached God’s ears as a fragrant incense. I sing while working often. Night shift at the nursing home I would find myself singing as I did rounds or in showers while helping bathe those that could not bathe for themselves. Singing praises even if I could not bluntly share my faith my goal was to have them know I knew what I believed and I was ready to answer questions if they asked me.

Grandma also taught me how to love my husband. My grandma served and loved my grandpa with a steadfast faithfulness. Hard times and good times. Through his ups and downs she was there supporting him and his decisions and working alongside him.

My grandpa is going to be lost for awhile without her. I am sure of that. They were each others perfect half.

Night is falling and a day is ending. The light is fading...darkness is coming for a little while. Praise God I know the Light is coming back to this broken world and will set all things right again!

In my headphones Bart Millard singing:

“My Jesus I love thee. I know thou art mine...My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou. If ever I loved you my Jesus tis now…”

“Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus…”

“In the sweet by and by” grandma we will hear you singing again!

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!