My Apologies Please

I'm sitting here quietly while my son is taking a bath and my daughter is slaving away at open house with my Gypsy, cleaning and running errands just so she can get some daddy time. I'm so overwhelmed, as many of us are right before school starts. In between thinking about where money for school clothes and shoes will come from, our 18 year anniversary (yeah baby and man we're old), and my baby girl's 17th birthday, I sit here trying to contemplate this nagging in my heart. See, I used to be a parapro for special needs, and I used to be one of those snarky people who used to judge others. I admit it. I confess. I used to wonder why in the world they-those moms- wanted school to hurry up and start, or why in the world their child acted the way they did, and just why in the world did they look like they were at the end of their rope? I mean, I would give anything (at that time, way back when) to have a child and couldn't they see they were lucky? As providence would have it, I became one of those mothers. I am now the mother who, although, loves her kids, CANNOT WAIT FOR SCHOOL TO START!!! I love my birds, I do. But we've had a rough year, and summer. We have gone through an expulsion, worldwide move, a suicide attempt, a teen pregnancy attempt, two moves in 6 months, two new jobs and a partridge in a pear tree. We've also gone through many blessings, heartaches and laughing/tears moments. We are ALL ready for forgiveness, grace and mercy, not only from God, our awesome, heavenly father, but from each other. So as I sit here, contemplating all that we've gone through, it pains me to remember that judgmental, naive woman I was, who had no clue that there are mothers out there doing the best they can and that they absolutely need that break and more importantly, instead of my snarky comments and judgment, they needed a hug, an "I got ya girlfriend" or you know what, he/she is not doing so bad and you are a great mom, even though you don't feel like it. That's what they need. So, as I sit here, looking at this stupid crystal gel nail that won't come off even with industrial strength acetone, I have to say I'm sorry. I am humbled and hope that I have grown in heart and spirit enough to know that I was wrong, and pray that if I ever made anyone feel judged, they find it in their hearts to forgive. I hope and pray that so many moms out there get the rest they need. I pray my teacher friends, my teacher moms and dads, all have a blessed year, cooperative parents, and that God blesses each and every one of you.

Gratitude for a Gypsy on Mother's Day

Mother's Day. Not too many years ago this was the worst day of the year. I remember sitting in church having everyone being honored and feeling like I'm wearing a BIG FAT F for FAILURE. Wondering, waiting and hoping that someday it will be me. 6 years later, it's still pretty awful. Although I sit there feeling the same F for FAILURE, it's for a different reason. Infertility, adoption, finding out our children have RAD. Yeah, Yeah, all that stuff. Our children didn't bond to me, are still choosing not to have a deep relationship. This post isn't about that. This post is a letter to a Gypsy, who loves me like Christ loves His church, who leads our family like no man I know, and who gives 100% from sun up to sun down. This man I love, who tells me I'm the most beautiful mother, most fun mom, the most wonderful---anything. The man who hugs me when my child tells her secrets to anyone else instead of me. The man who tells me I'm beautiful when my daughter makes comments about my weight. Who encourages me when I've planned a special night and it gets ruined by my son's tantrum. The man who defends my honor when my child tells me to "eff off." The man who holds me when I still cry at commercials of happy families, and who squeezes my hand in silent understanding when I've made a favorite meal that's not appreciated and left sitting on the table, uneaten. You are the biggest blessing and I want you to know you have the utmost respect this woman can give. I love your kindness, thoughtfulness, generous, hardworking, dedicated, loyal and every top notch character trait there is. I love you. You are amazing. For Mother's Day this year, I thank you for acknowledging me when our children couldn't care less, for telling me everything I need to hear, and for giving me courage and love to make it through this thing called motherhood. I would never want to live this crazy life without you and I want you to know I see, recognize and appreciate everything you do and are for me and our birds. You know when all those people asked if I was going with you to Thailand? I would follow you to the ends of the Earth and live in a cardboard box to be with you. I love the adventure that God has us on and I want you to know that while we may not celebrate me being a mother this weekend, you are the only gift I need. Now and forever. I am grateful to you, my Gypsy Face.

Forgiveness

When I'm getting ready is when I talk to Jesus the most. This morning, the questions on forgiveness, grace and mercy are still there. Something happened one day, long ago that still makes me wonder. I was working at an elementary school as a teacher's aid and my teacher and I were discussing my infertility and our decision to adopt. She pointed out another teacher's aid and said, "that girl, over there? If she can have children anyone can. She was awful in high school and if God can bless her you don't have anything to worry about." This woman had no idea that what I did in high school and college probably made this girl look like a saint. I coldly told her that if we were all judged on what we did in high school that we'd all already be in hell. I was floored, and granted, my response could have been more gentle, but as we all know, gentleness is not my strong point. This leads me to the question, what DO I believe about forgiveness, grace and mercy? I saw this thing on Pinterest, that says: Grace is when you get the good things you don't deserve mercy is when you're spared from the bad things you do deserve God is generous with both. Wow. What an awesome thing to behold. Ponder. So let's start with Mercy. I believe that God has given me serious consequences for some things. I do, seriously believe that He loves me, wants the best for me and wants to bless me so much. But like every good father, He knows that if I don't get correction, that I'll never learn and that I have to depend on Him at ALL times. He is merciful. If I was punished for every sin, every bad thought that led me to gossip, every covetous, lustful or hateful and angry thing that led me to sin, I would've given up long ago. My life isn't always full of fun, laughter and dripping with glittery awesomeness. Matter of fact it is often hard, sad, disappointing. But looking at what mercy God has chosen to show me leads me to think about His grace. I have so many things to be thankful for. I'm thankful God has chosen to be merciful, to grace me with so many blessings and the faith to know that when my life is a disappointment, or things don't go my way, that maybe He has something far more wonderful in store for me. One of the best things I ever learned to do was journal every day. I can look back to 2007 and go through page after page of things that didn't go my way, but went God's way and was so much more fulfilling. I can look back to answered prayers and to unanswered prayers. To struggles I have gone through to lead me closer to Christ. Those pages are filled with evidence of His love, mercy and grace. So what do you believe? Are you still walking around filled with shame or pointing fingers and holding others' past sin over their heads? Or do you practice living in the freedom He's granted us by grace and mercy?

Looking Back

Wow. I just realized it has been one month today that we were waiting at the airport with all our belongings, two kids, two dogs and some faithful friends who loved us through the whole shebang. Sitting here, I am AMAZED at all that has happened in two months. Really, 6 weeks ago my sweet Gypsy was looking for jobs in the U.S.A. so we could come back and get our bird some help. He applied to everything in the free world and then we prayed for ONE ANSWER! And of course, as faithful and fun as God is, He completely surprised us with that one answer. I'm flashing back over 7 years ago when I said I'd never move to Thailand and that is EXACTLY where He sent us when I realize Dr. Chris Wolski said he'd never teach middle school. Guess where he is? Guess what he loves? I'm telling you, God can use everything for His good purpose. Here we are in Atlanta and now that we have had time to breathe, I realize so many things that came out of this awful time has really made my faith stronger and has allowed me to see God's hand in it all. The most amazing things I am focusing on is that I have friends who came over and cleaned, bought, priced and sold everything I owned in two weeks. I had friends who came and made pricing lists, cleaned, rolled all four of our clothes and prayed and cried with me. I had friends make meals and bring them or invite us to their homes so we could take a break. We had friends take us to the airport and wait for us to be denied flight because of improper paperwork and then do it all again the next night. I'm telling you, saying goodbye to that community was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But boy did it teach me what love is. Coming here was so scary, and I can't tell you how many times I've bowed and wai'd the Walmart greeters or hostess at the restaurant and how hard it is to drive again after riding in a taxi on the "wrong side" of the road. Starting all over again after doing it 2 1/2 years ago was even more nerve wracking but it showed me how far the Gypsy and I've come in our faith that we'd just trust in Him to make it all happen. Thanks to yet more amazing friends and family on this side of the world, we now have an apartment, furniture and a car. I mean, it's so weird to know how loved and how much people really do care. I think before all of this I would never have even noticed, been able to accept or even think of leaning on friends or family for all we've had to. God is amazing. He really is faithful and my faith has grown tenfold over this experience. Yet as you all know, it hasn't been perfect. We haven't gotten everything we want, and we've had some pretty rough patches in the month that we've been back. But to all those who've helped, offered to help and will help in the future, thank you. Thank you for showing us that there can be community here in America. There can be people who reach out and that we aren't as alone as we thought we'd be. Praise God for all the blessings He's bestowed and for those who've made our transition back to America a good one. He's blessed us with you all and hopefully, the Gypsy and I will be able to bless someone in return.

Adventures Turned Upside Down

Some of you know there is something wrong and some of you know bits and pieces. Before I give all the guts of our situation I give a warning, it's brutally honest and not an ounce of pretty. Anyone who knows our family, knows we struggled with infertility and after fostering, adopted our children in 2009. We've had our baby birds for almost 6 years and I can't even imagine what our life was like without them. It has been so hard, emotional, gut wrenching, disappointments galore, frustrations abound, and yet it has also been silly, fun, inspiring, passionate, and more than a bit on the ridiculous. The Gypsy and I have learned so much about life and love and perseverance in these five and a half years. Nothing about our lives have ever been "normal." That being said, you all know we came to Thailand two and a half years ago for Chris to teach in an international Christian school and for us to work in the missions. Let me state, for the record, it is hard to live here, but the community is amazing, uplifting, supportive and have become family. We have an amazing student ministries lead by the most wonderful woman who loves kids and truly wants to see them grow spiritually. My birds have been exposed to so many wonderful things. They are international travelers, they've gone on service projects where they help serve slum kids and elderly who are living in poverty. They have helped at orphanages and bagged rice and fish for the people who lost their homes in the flood. They have traveled to some of the most beautiful beaches and have seen wild monkeys and exotic animals from the land of Thai. We've even ridden an elephant through the tropics. All the adventures and love we've poured into those birds and yet, it's come to this awful place. See, sometimes love isn't enough. When someone chooses not to heal from being broken, hurt and scarred, what do you do? We are left with this question and have no answer. My son has been expelled from school. There, I've said it. Some of you are rolling your eyes and saying I'm so dramatic, but the truth is, this means so much more for us than just him not going to school. It started last year around after Christmas. Defiance, rude behaviors, door slamming, eye rolling.....you know, normal teenager behavior. Then, in May, it took a turn for the worst. He became physically threatening and would act like he was going to hit any one of us at any moment when told no or not getting his way. The summer came and we started with a new therapist and began intensive therapy three times a week and got a new psychiatrist with new medications. One summer night the violence escalated in the bathroom downstairs where the Gypsy contained him so he couldn't get to the kitchen and get knives, which he was threatening to do. After about an hour of trying to talk him down he was wrestled to the kitchen floor and prayed over, the only thing that allowed him to calm down and cry out his fight. Therapist came out to our house and we, as a family, made a new contract with this baby bird that told him which behaviors were consequence-able and which ones were call the police-able. He agreed with these consequences and it seemed to work for a while. When school started he had to be pulled from regular 7th grade classes and put in small group because he was constantly resisting and lying about doing homework, falling behind and having trouble. This seemed to take a lot of pressure off him and he was doing well in small group. He was also doing well enough to make the basketball team and take pride in being a part of things. We thought life was looking up. Even though the normal teenager like things were still happening, the violence and disrespect had gone. Then, the stealing started. Yes, please, allow me to remind you at this point that I already told you this was brutally honest and not pretty. At all. Not easy to read? Well, imagine me, mamma bird, typing this all out. No, not pretty. I won't go into all the details of the stealing, let's just say that it's bad. So bad he got expelled after paying back (well, us paying it back ) and apologizing and having another contract and breaking it over and over. Now, what shall we do? There is no juvenile detention in Thailand. Thai prison. Forever. So, if we stay here in Thailand, my son has no school to go to and will have no where to go. We've looked into boys' homes in the states but guess what? Missionaries don't have 60,000$ laying around for boys who get kicked out of school! Most homes require a lot of money and we just don't have it. We've looked into so many places that all require us to live in the U.S. Department of Family and Children Services won't help us because we don't live in the U.S. and quite frankly, to them we have been a successful adoption for five and a half years, so why would they help us? So, we are stuck my friends, between a rock and a hard place. As much as my child is loved, we have no idea what to do with him. No such thing as alternative school here. So, come two days from now my Gypsy and one bird will be going to school and the violent bird and I get to stay home. So, I will be saying no to a lot of projects, I will break commitments to people and I will be heavily burdened. So, when you see us, know we've been and are going through hell. We love our birds. Just love us, and keep judgments at home, or at least behind closed doors because quite frankly, I don't care. All I care about is my family, getting my birds help and lifting my Gypsy up as he's held me in all these months. And seriously, I know some of you may wonder if we are questioning our faith and the answer is, no. Our faith is so much stronger and I know that Holy Spirit has been with us through all of this. I mean, we are all alive, right? We're waiting on God's divine timing and His answer to our questions in all this. It's hard, but we're clinging to the hope we have in Jesus and bending our will to His. Prayers, we could use them. Help. If anyone knows of a boys' home or some type of agency that would be willing to work with missionaries who live over seas, please send us information. If anyone's church would like to support us, raise money or send letters and prayer. These are the things we need. Thanks to all my friends and family who have supported us through these hard times. We have certainly been blessed with wonderful friends who have walked this walk with us, an amazing school that has gone above and beyond to help our family, and friends all over the world praying. We feel the love.