Joy Comes

"Some days are diamonds.  Some days are stones.  Some times the hard times won't leave me alone."

If you're old enough to recognize these lyrics, you'll know they are from a song written by storyteller and songwriter, John Denver.

And for some reason, I woke up today with this song in my head.

I find that each day I awaken is a crapshoot in terms of my emotions.  I've been encouraged that this is normal.  That I'm a mere five months away from a life-changing event in my life.  That I should cut myself some slack.

But I'm a "pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps-and-get-on-with-it" kind of girl.  So I'm not so good in the "cutting myself some slack" department.

I woke up this morning, early, not by choice, but decided to use the time to sit quietly before the Lord.

He was silent.

Or maybe I wasn't.

It's most likely the latter than the former.

I awakened with a heavy heart for no particular reason.  Perhaps I dreamed dreams that bore a weight only my spirit perceived.  Even His Word, normally quite comforting, seemed like print on a page. And though it said, "the joy comes with the morning," I felt no sense of that; only a deep longing for the truth of it.

Then my morning beckoned me (and by "my morning" I mean two singing four year olds who had awakened at 4:30a.m. and never fully gone back to sleep), so I closed my Bible, sighed heavily, and headed upstairs to quieten the "morning" before it awakened my husband who worked most of the night.

I confess, I was quite frustrated as I walked up the stairs to their room.  Was there no peace to be found this morning?  And then I opened their door.

And the whitest eyes grinned at me in the darkness.  And the sweetest voices said, "Good Morning, Mommy."

All that to say, funny thing about the Lord.  Sometimes he uses what we see in the darkness to bring light to our troubled minds.  I love that about him.  He's a "teachable moment" kind of guy.

"And though the sorrows will last for the night, His joy comes in the morning." - Psalm 30:5

When Their Story Isn't a Fairy Tale

Of late, Shannay has been asking lots of questions about adoption.  There were a couple of colliding factors that prompted these questions.  One was that we were in the pediatrician's office and the only reading material they had in the exam room was pregnancy magazines (weird).  The other factor was that we fostered two babies right in a row, within a week of each other.

For a four year old, both the notion of a baby growing inside of someone, as well as the idea that there are babies who don't have homes, is quite disconcerting and prompts all kinds of questions.

Shannay's questions started off with "Why is her belly so big?" and "Did I grow in your belly?" to "Why doesn't she (the foster baby) live with her mama?"

These might seem like easy questions to some, but with Shannay, you can rest assured that whatever she is verbalizing is just the tip of a very deep iceberg.

Her questions eventually grew to "Are you my real Mama?"  and "Why are we giving her (the foster baby) away?" and "Are you gonna give me away?"

So we've had lots and lots of dialogue about birth moms and real moms and fostering and homelessness and so on.  It's definitely unfamiliar territory to me, and I am constantly praying and looking for books and words about how to talk to my daughters about their story because their story is not an easy one.

This morning, I was up early and working when Shannay got up, came downstairs and snuggled up under my arm while I typed.  In the sidebar of the particular client's blog I was working on was a picture of a Compassion International Child.

Our dialogue went like this:

S:   "Mama, why is that girl so sad?"
M:  "Well, she's probably hungry and dirty and maybe she needs a drink."
S:   "Where is her mama?"
M:  "Well, baby, I don't know.  Maybe she doesn't have a home."
S:   "Why she not have a home?"
M:  "Shannay, some people, even little children, are homeless.  They don't have a place to live or sleep. Isn't that sad?" (I figure, it can't be too early to teach about these things.)
S:   "Mama, we have to help her.  Like we do.  Til her mama can help her or she gets a new mama."

WHAT?!!!  I was stunned at the depth of her understanding.

Now, she wasn't too thrilled that I didn't know who this little girl was or how to get to her to help her.  But I assured her that someone was going to help her, and then we talked a little about Compassion and groups like them.

All that to say, I'm still struggling with the right words to talk to my daughter about her adoption and her very difficult story.  I know at the right time, God will give me just the right words to speak over her and into her heart.  In the meantime, I love that God is already giving her a heart of adoption.

I plan to write about what I am learning and post it to my blog,  "What Color is Family."   You'll find it at ThatCarolJones.com coming March 25th.  (Yes, it's a shameless plug.  Deal with it.) :)

Drowning

The other day we were visiting some friends whose house backs up to a lake of sorts.  It's really more like a really, really big pond, but nonetheless, a substantial body of water.  We took a walk, my friend and I, and our two sets of 4 year old twins, down a path that eventually led to a gazebo that overlooked the lake.  Very picturesque, even with the lifeless pall of winter overshadowing the scene.

The girls, all armed with a small twig, knelt down at a small pool of water just alongside the gazebo, pretending to fish, as my friend and I talked.

And then, almost as if it were happening in slow motion, Shannay leaned ever so slightly too far in and the weight of her off-balanced body caused her to topple, head first, into the lake.  My friend moved with ninja speed (I don't actually know if ninjas are fast, but in my mind it sounded right) and rescued Shannay from the water.

The other girls thought this was delightful and laughed with glee, but Shannay didn't think it was too funny.  Once she stopped screaming, she said, "I kept draining."

I feel it important to note that at no time was she actually "draining," a fact she realized as soon as she stood up in the knee deep pool of water.  But nonetheless, a very scary thing for a 4 year old.

Today, I was thinking about her feeling like she was drowning, and as her fear overtook her, she was incapable of simply standing and taking a deep breath.  In her mind, she was actually drowning.

I understand that feeling some days.  I think I'm drowning, but in reality, if I could just look past my fear and stand up, I'd realize I'm actually okay.

All that to say, fear has a lot of power in our lives; too much power.  Funny thing is, it only has the power over us that we let it have.  So to you, Fear, I say, "I'm not draining.  I'm standing.  And I'm breathing. Boo ya."


So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10

The Facts of Life

Mike and I were at Chic-Fil-A yesterday with the girls.  It was miserably cold and rainy, so any outside playing was out of the question.  Finding an indoor play area becomes critical on days like this.  The mall area was overcrowded, and quite frankly, people do NOT watch their kids at that stupid place.  (The sign says "For kids 6 years old and younger" so the fact that it is overrun with older kids is a teeny weeny bit problematic for me.  I guess when my kids are 7, I might be thinking differently . . . but I digress).

So we went to Chick-Fil-A and enjoyed a nice, healthy salad and then let the girls play for a while.  Like most kids' play areas, though, there were some unattended kids in there just not being nice.

(As an aside, one of my FAVORITE things about Mike Jones is that he is the ENFORCER of the play area.  He's not gonna let any anyone get away with anything, and he ESPECIALLY is not going to let anyone be mean to his daughters!)

There were a couple of older boys, way beyond the height limit for the play area, being naughty and running over the little kids.  Someone went and got the boys' mom, and she came in to check things out.  She dropped a few expletives at her sons, at which point Mike Jones aka "The Enforcer" politely asked her to watch her language.  (I told you that he won't let anyone get away with anything!)

A couple of small girls came out of the play area and sat down near their mom.  They complained about the boys to their mom and one of them said, "They are mean.  They didn't like me."  I expected the mom to say, "I'm sorry that happened."  But instead she took that moment to teach some real life lessons.

She said, "Well, those boys shouldn't be mean, and they shouldn't even be in there.  But people don't always do what is right, and people are not always nice.  Sometimes you can only be responsible for yourself and do what you know is right."

The little girl said, "But Mommy, they didn't even like me."

The mom said, "That's okay.  They don't have to like you.  Everyone in life is not going to like you.  That's just life.  As you get older, you will discover many more people who don't like you.  But you will also have people in your life that love you, no matter what.  Those are your true friends."

She went on to say, "You will also see that there are people in life that you don't like.  You will have different personalities.  Maybe they will be loud and you are more of a quiet person.  Maybe they will be more into sports and you are more into reading.  There can be lots of reasons why a person doesn't "like" someone, but as long as you treat them like Jesus would want you to treat them, that's what matters."

The little girl looked at her mom.  You could tell she was really taking it all in.  And then she said, "Well, I was nice to those boys.  Even though they didn't like me.  But they hurt that little brown girl and her grandpa got really mad about that.  I don't think he liked them very much."

The mother looked over at me, a little chagrined at the girl's faux pas, and I laughed, assuring her that happens all the time (being mistaken for the grandparents).

Then the little girl said, "Can I have some ice cream?"

I love kids.  They make life so simple.  And they move on quickly.

All that to say, wouldn't it be awesome if all of life's lessons ended in ice cream?

We Cannot Choose Fear

My favorite time of day is bedtime.  Bedtime at my house has always been relatively easy.  Our girls don't get out of bed, not even once. No requests for a drink.  No excuses that they need to go to the bathroom.  They just go to bed and go to sleep.

Not only that, they go to bed at 7:00 p.m. and sleep until 7:00 a.m.

It really is bliss.  (Minus of course Nikki's head banging that sounds like someone is building furniture, but even that is getting better little by little, and we are assured that someday she will outgrow it.)

They would get in their beds and lie down and go to sleep if that's what we wanted, but they always request me to rock them to sleep.  Whenever possible, which is most every night, I do, in fact, rock them to sleep.

On the nights that I don't rock them, they don't sleep well.  They toss and turn.  They have bad dreams. Nikki bangs her head particularly hard.

And on the nights that I do rock them, they crawl up into my lap, wiggle themselves into a little ball, snuggle under their blanket and melt into my arms, and fall fast asleep.

It is one of the best moments of our day.

There is something incredibly comforting about crawling up into the lap of the person in your life that provides you comfort, security, unconditional love.

It's how I feel about Jesus.  And some days, I don't know what else to do but to crawl up into his lap and melt into his arms.

Putting my kids on a school bus, thinking about their safety all day, thinking about the parents whose children went off to school one day and never came home again.  It's too much.

All that to say, I have long since learned that we cannot protect our children from all this world can do to them.  And I have long since learned not to live in fear of those things.  We simply cannot choose fear and all that it will drive us to do.

I have learned to pray and trust God.  And sometimes, when I am overwhelmed by life, I crawl up into His lap and sleep.

All That to Say: Grow

For the past seven days, I have been watching a sweet, little, now 9 day old, baby girl do her thing. Her "thing" is to wake up, eat, poop, sleep, repeat.

That's the sum total of her existence.  The whole cycle lasts about 3 hours.  Every 3 hours she relives her life.  And in the less than one week that we have had her, she has changed before our eyes.  

At first, each time she awakened, she awakened with one need; eat.  Then, as she would eat, she would leisurely suck down about 2 oz. of formula, maybe a little less.  Then she'd poop, burp, get drowsy and fall asleep.

Now when she awakens, she demands to be fed, hungrily sucks down 3-4 oz., gets annoyed that we stop to burp her, then does the rest of her cycle, but now she stays awake for a while.  Not a long time (really just long enough to prevent us from going to sleep).  But she's more alert during her awake time.  She makes eye contact.  She's trying to raise up her little bobble head while I'm burping her.  She's taking in the world around her.  She's growing.  Each day she is becoming a better version of herself.

And watching her I have been struck by how much work it is to grow, just to grow.  That's her one job.  Growing.  That's why she sleeps so much.  Because growing is exhausting.

I think that's true no matter how old we get.  Growing is hard work.  And at times, it's exhausting.

But the benefit of growth is that we become better versions of ourselves.  And if we are open to the hard work that comes with growth, we become more like the people God created us to be.

All that to say, becoming a better you is hard work, but so worth the effort.  So go, grow.  And get some sleep.

*Photo courtesy of Shauna Maness Photography who shall someday will these GROW letters to me.