Toy guns

It is 4 am. This is my third morning of watching the sunrise while I pray for my littlest man and work on keeping his fever down. The doctor said it is merely an ear infection and the antibiotics and ear drops should certainly take care of it but for now, he is fevered again and so I am awake again. Tonight, I was awakened not just by fever, sweats and chills but also by his upset stomach and I feel especially sorry for G. So here I am, laying in a bunk bed, covering my youngest with several layers in an attempt to help him break through this thing. I have a yoohoo, a Gatorade, and a choclate pudding at bedside, in case he wakes up and will eat or drink and I am cradling my coffee cup, praying, and I am struck by how thankful I am for this moment. Not the fever, or the belly ache, or the ear infection, but the opportunity to be here in this moment with one of my greatest blessings.

I think that too often we all have tendency to let ourselves feel overwhelmed and burdened when really we should be grateful. I was struck by that just a bit ago as I was clearing a spot for me in my kid's bunk. I had to move their bags from a friend's birthday party, two children's bibles, several stuffed animals, and their guns (toy guns that is). How funny that those silly guns that I clean up too often, and that completely annoy me at times, brought such joy in that moment. I couldn't help but thank God for guns - nerf guns, marshmallow guns, army guns, noise- making light-up guns, toy guns. I am overwhelmed with the responsibility and privilege of my life often but I am so grateful for it as well. I have the privilege of wiping the sweat from their fevered brows, reminding them to put the seat down, sending them back to wash their hands with soap this time. I get to pick up their car collections, fill up their water balloons, and throw pop-ups and grounders until my arm aches. It is exhausting and discouraging and overwhelming and...perfect. I have no doubt that it's one of the reasons God put me on this earth. I know I fail often and I complain at times but I am also so grateful for every bike ride, every wiffle ball game, every time I get to comfort and hold one of my boys. I know that they are only mine on loan for a short time. Potty training so quickly turned into kindergarten and now it is multiplication tables and chapter books. I thank God for the time I get with them and the unconditional love we share. Yes, we discipline, we whine, we argue and back talk, and drive each other nuts but then there are the guns and all seems good again.

So, as I take another temperature and refill my coffee cup, I will take an extra second to add toy guns to my gratitude list, right below fever- filled nights  and ear infections because I know how very good I have it right now I want to make sure I will always remember.



Ironically, I wrote this blog entry about 24 hours before Garrett was admitted to the hospital. His little body was struggling to keep his temperature down and he was becoming dehydrated. It was a horrible three days. He hated the bed and, in fact, did not ever sleep in it. He didn't eat more than three bites of hospital food and, unfortunately, those didn't stay down. He had to endure multiple needle sticks,       x rays, scans, hourly vitals. He fevered and he had IVs and monitors. He cried and I had to restrain him and hold him and pray. We both shed too many tears and the sleepless nights turned into sleepless days. As I sat there looking out that window into the world going on below, I kept thinking about this post and it became my personal cheer. I wanted to get back to our everyday crazy. The backyard ball, his little red pirate bat, his chocolate milky juice, and the "guns". It was a blessed lesson on embracing the simple joys and irritations of life because when the going gets tough, that is what will keep you going. G is better now. As I sit here typing he is walking around in his jammy pants swinging his little red baseball bat and watching the pirates with his brothers. I love it all. The mess, the smiles, the noisy chaos, and, of course, the  "guns".

Look up

I hit a rough spot recently. I was feeling tired and fearful and anxious. I could hear it in my words, in my tone. I would see it in my actions. My mind felt too flustered to think and my breath came shallow and short. My heart beat fast and the worries and struggles of the the world were wearing my down. During those times I find myself asking questions like, how do you calm storms inside of yourself? How do you stand in the midst of the fire without fear? How can I be strong when I feel so very very weak?

There is only one place to turn when I feel this way and it is up. The Bible says that there will be fire, He has to mold us. There will be weeping, but it only lasts for a night. I am weak, but I AM is always strong.

Several things struck me as hard and wore me down a bit. Garrett is off on his sleep schedule and his routine, so he is more stimulated. With that comes behaviors and moods that are difficult to deal with and he is less adaptive and more anxious. When he is on, I have to be on too and it doesn't take long for both of us to grow weary. Also, the way that others perceive him and deal with him is different. I have noticed that some kids are immediately turned off by him and react negatively. They aren't patient and kind and forgiving and, frankly, I'm not either, with him or them. Other adults can also be standoffish with G, not sure how to take him. All of this is tough on my heart and makes me long for easy and normal, not hard and different. I find myself feeling defensive and protective .

The funny thing is that the opposite is also true. Some kids crave G's crazy and gravitate toward it. Some adults recognize and love his spontaneity and that he is always on and always real. These people become my angels in disguise, my moments of peace, G's best friends. It's like God gave me tough and tired so that He could bless me with soft and rest. I think I wouldn't be able to recognize all of His gifts if at times I wasn't desperate for them. I feel joy more intensely because sometimes I am grieving. I feel His peace stronger because my heart feels tight with worry. I want to breathe Him in because I have to. I am in awe of ALL that He is and does for me because I need His grace every moment. I find that if I am grateful, I can feel His grace filling up all my empty.

We will all go through tough spots. We will be bullied and beat down by some people and things in this life. Sometimes we will respond with love and forgiveness and other times we will hurt and hate. We live in a broken world and fall short everyday of the Savior that we serve. We all will face fire, cry tears, feel fear, and worry but He will never leave us to face it alone. When I feel frustrated and discouraged, the question I need to ask is, where would I be without my God? How could I live with out Him? Let me share a recent prayer from my journal that expresses it better,
 
    "So in the midst of feeling down, I will look up and know that He is ALL, ALL that I am not, ALL that I need and, ALL that I could ever want".

May this be my prayer of praise regardless of fires and storms, worries and fears. May we all remember to look up and let Him be ALL.

Savor the season

Our family has had several blessings lately. We welcomed three new beautiful little baby boys within just a few weeks. My sisters and their husbands entered into the wonderful world of parenting. The ups and downs, the highs and lows, the worries and the wonders. I was reflecting on this at a recent family picnic. As my sister-in-law and I were washing dishes and cleaning dirty chins after chasing down our little ones, I told her that I thought we had it easy in comparison to the newbies. She laughed and agreed. We have been there. We have suffered sleepless nights and bottles and diapers but now our lives are different and those times seem so distant.

With summer here I find myself savoring the sweetness of the season. I am loving hanging with my boys. One of my big worries is that the time will go too fast. I want to enjoy each day and very opportunity. Parker and Carter still love each other and they like us! We can have dinners without electronics, watch the Pirates, and play backyard ball. I feel like it is such a special time in our life. It's not that life is perfect, it is just that I know that seasons change and circumstances do too. I don't have to look far back in our past to see tougher times. I can well remember the sleepless nights. I know what being tired is and how to survive on coffee and goldfish. I have prayed through shots, through surgery, through school days and beyond. I can remember waiting for test results and wishing they were wrong. I have watched cartoons with no point and actually enjoyed them because no thought was required. I have snuck away to cry in the laundry room because I am sometimes alone in there and I have learned to never close the door when peeing. We have struggled through the sadness, sickness, diagnosises, and so much more and I know that there will be difficult times to come. I realize also, though, that today is good and so I am going to run with it. I am going to live up this moment. I am going to make memories, ride bikes, play ball, and savor the season that we are in.

That is really what life is about. It is about realizing that time comes and goes. We control so very little but we can control our attitudes. I don't think that we will always understand why we go through the tough times but we can know that they won't last forever. We can trust in change, sometimes good and sometimes not, but always on the horizon. We can wake up each day thankful for whatever it brings and, at times, grateful that the day before is over. I want to enjoy the sweetness when it comes so that I am ready for the struggles. I want to savor each season for whatever it brings.

The Word

If you have read any of my blog, you will notice a few things about me, one of them is that I read a lot. I love to read and always have. My oldest, Parker, is just like me. We read anything we can find and we love to fall asleep reading. I can remember being little and hiding out beside the crack in the door and using the hallway night light to finish many books. One of the best gifts Ryan ever gave me was my kindle because it fits in my purse and has its own light so I can, literally, read whenever and wherever. I read fiction and non fiction, self-help and help-yourself books.Words on a page speak to me better than spoken words quite often. I have even been known to write notes to my husband when I have something important to say. I also have several letters stored away for my boys to hopefully enjoy someday. Reading is a very important part of who I am and how God speaks to me. The book that I have been reading again and again for years isn't on my kindle, it is my Bible. It is marked up inside and sports water and coffee stains. My recently retired one was missing a bit of Revelations and the cover was mostly off but it is by far the best read in history.

I started a post weeks ago about a scripture that spoke to me from John. It said that He must increase and I must decrease. I really enjoyed the verse and wanted use it to share with you all how very important the Word is in my life. For some reason though, that post sits unfinished. I felt somewhat disappointed in myself that I was unable to express the peace and hope and joy that I find in God's Word and then I read something this week that gave me a little more direction.

This week I was reading Deuteronomy about God's instructions to the Israelites and I saw the best little tidbit. Moses was giving guidelines for if they ever had a king and he said that the king would need to copy God's instructions for himself and then read it daily as long as he lived. Deuteronomy 17:20 says, "This regular reading will prevent him from becoming proud and acting as if he is above his fellow citizens. It will also prevent him from turning away from these commands in the smallest way." Regular reading, getting into God's word and eating up all He has for us will keep us from being proud. In other words, we will decrease, just like John tells us to. And anytime we decrease, He makes up the difference. It will also help us stay focused on what God wants from us. Keep us on the straight and narrow. I don't know about anyone else, but anytime God has some direction for me, I am up for hearing it. It doesn't always have to be the big things, it could just be for what to do today or how to pray for a friend. The Word of God is not absorbed through osmosis. I can have my Bible sitting on my nightstand but it only speaks to me when I open it and listen, and I have to say, I love listening to my heavenly Father. His words speak love, peace, joy and hope to me in new ways everyday. I have been reading them for years and I am certain that there will always be more for me to learn from it. I want it written on my heart and mind and carried out in my life more and more all the time, daily. I have often come to the Lord with questions and not once has He failed to shed some light through scripture. It is an instruction manual worth copying and reading not just for royalty, but for each of us.

Another insight I was blessed by recently was from Matthew 4:4 where Jesus said that man can not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. God's word has a way of shedding light on the blessings so I can see them more clearly. It also is able to take the hard in life and shape into loaves of love and life. I usually consume God's word before anything else, except maybe my coffee, and it is often the most fulfilling part of my diet. It fills me like nothing else and equips me for my day.

Reading will always be a passion of mine, something I enjoy and try to do as often as I can. My hope is that in reading God's word, it will become alive in me and He will be glorified. I pray that I will decrease as He exponentially increases all the time. It truly is my road map through life and my daily bread. I still feel like I am somewhat failing to convey the power of His words in my life but I hope you will at least be encouraged to dig into it for yourself. Time spent with the great I Am will only bless you and your world.

Let's dance

If you ever pass me in my minivan and see me breaking down a beat don't be surprised. I get my groove on quite often while dropping off, picking up, or running errands. It is one of the rare times in my day that I feel somewhat alone and can focus. My best worship is usually in my car. I feel free to raise my hands, cry, clap, and I can turn up the volume and drown myself out whenever I want to. Recently, our family went through the Frozen phase. We listened to the soundtrack until Ryan and I could do parts and he was singing it in the shower. I am not proud of this nor was I proud of the day that the kind gentleman laughed and beeped at me as I performed "Fixer Upper" while stopped at a stoplight. The best part is that I really wasn't embarrassed. I rolled down my window and cranked up the volume so his morning could start out as encouraging as mine was. I mean really"everyone is a bit of a fixer-upper".

I was thinking of this today when I took Garrett to wash his hands. He had been playing outside and he wanted some ice cream but I asked him to wash up first. My sister, Emily, came in to assist and was surprised at the process. The water needed to be hot but then it was too hot so we switched to cold. The soap needed squirted on both hands. He wanted a paper towel not a hand towel to dry but when he couldn't find one fast enough he opted for toilet paper. Of course that was slightly disastrous and then even the throwing away of the toilet paper was extravagant.

A similar thing happened with our uncle Dan the other day. He offered Garrett a cookie. Now, at the time that this exchange took place G was in a pickle anyway but the cookie worked to distract him from his stress and he accepted it. It was a Panera cookie which was big enough to have its own address, so Dan broke it in half. As soon as he did that I was hoping that he had another one. The broken cookie was obviously not acceptable to G, who by now was on the brink of a meltdown. Now this was not a normal five year old fit. Garrett sees things different. He was offered a cookie, not half a cookie, and he was already feeling over stimulated and struggling to adapt, so he could not take even this minor change. Thankfully, uncle Dan gave him a new one but he was in awe of the particulars of my little man. I explained it to him like this, Garrett's life is like a very intricate dance. I never know the exact next step but I have become pretty good at anticipating it. There are certain people, certain circumstances that I prep him for in advance. There are other instances where the surprise tactic is better. It may be a wrong fork or turning a new age (his favorite number is four so he refuses to be five). It may be a broken cookie or chocolate frosted donut with shamrock sprinkles (we are mourning the passing the St. Patrick's Day). I dance the dance and, though I often stumble, I keep going and enjoy it as much as I can.

I really believe that we all dance through life. We all have our special things or certain steps that we like a certain way. I find that for me a morning bath and quiet time always starts my day better than any other option and worship is best in the car. Ryan likes a big bowl of cereal before bed and communicates best with his guitar in hand. Parker likes to hear a special lullaby before bed while I hold his hand. Carter wants his back, shudders, and right arm scratched often. We all dance, we just don't see it as such unless it is more extreme. I think it is how God made us to be. It keeps us from being boring and adds wonderful spice to our relationships. He knows the hairs on our heads and He knows every step of our dance. How awesome is that?!

I, personally, love dancing. I am not great at it in the literal sense but, in the case of my boys, I am a professional. I can anticipate and react better than any other and even, sometimes,  enjoy the uniqueness of each move. It has taken time and patience and prayer but I feel like I can usually find the beat of even Garrett. Yes, his dance is definitely more intricate but I am blessed to be one of his partners. Maybe God gave me an especially complex dancer because He knew of my love to groove.

The moral of the story is really this, if you see me in my car breaking down to a beat, don't be surprised or embarrassed. Heck, roll your windows down, crank your volume up and join me. Let's all just enjoy the dance that God gave us, even the more complex ones.

Achievements

This week Garrett had his last day at his little preschool named Achievements. It is a small private school specially designed for kids with delays or autism. It was a wonderful place where G made his first friends on his own and learned so many skills. It was the first time I dropped him off somewhere for more than just an hour or so. He took his first cold lunch complete with yoo-hoo and carrots. It became one of my greatest resources and a place I will always treasure as an answer to this mom's prayers.The ironic thing is that this month also marks one year since Garrett received his ASD diagnosis. That was not an enjoyable eval to say the least. It was the first time I ever witnessed hand flapping from Garrett and the entire time he only spoke baby talk. Ryan and I looked and felt like we needed evals after those three hours. When the nice woman went over the preliminary results I remember feeling lost and overwhelmed but not hopeless. Never hopeless. I remember driving home with tears and prayers and trusting for direction and victory.

In the past year, we have had so many victories. Garrett has achieved things that felt impossible at the time.  He has conquered more that we thought possible. He can carry on a conversation better, say his name, address, phone number, birthday, and so much more. He can make friends and deal with his frustrations better. He knows how to answer questions and can even read sight words. He knows when he needs bear hugged and how to find an appropriate chewy. He holds his attention better and makes right choices most of the time. His year has been full of walls he had to break through and giants he had to defeat and somehow he has done just that.

I was reflecting on this in my quiet time as I read about the Israelites preparing to go into the Promised Land for the second time. Isn't it funny that they spent 40 years wandering around in the dessert because of some reports of giants and tall walls? Isn't it funny that we do the same? I have had times when I have let the reports scare me and defeat me. I have failed to trust and wandered around looking for direction when all I needed to do was trust and obey. If the Israelites had done this, trusted and obeyed, the entire Bible would be entirely different.

Last year, I feel like I refused to wander. I saw the giants and knew how hard the walls would be to break down but I also knew Who was on my side. I was ready with a grateful heart to face whatever was coming because I had been to battle before and He had always been faithful. This morning I read Deuteronomy 3:21-22 and 4:9. They basically say to remember, to never forget, what God has done for us. My version actually says, "Do not let these memories escape from your mind as long as you live".  The harsh reality is that even as we achieve one milestone there will always be another waiting for us. Sometimes as we move forward we see things in the future that scare us more than what was behind us. That is why it is so important to remember and never forget. God has shown himself able to defeat hard times, tough diagnosis, conflicts, and struggles over and over in my life and I am certain He will continue to... I want to always remember.

A year ago we had reports of giants and strong walls and today we have a little boy getting ready to start kindergarten next year. I expect we will see more obstacles in our future but I look forward to them. God promised the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey and I know that He has awesome things in store for Garrett as well. We will continue toward our promised land with hope and trust.

"Kind words are sweet like honey"

I have several little quotes I use frequently with my kids in disciplining and directing such as "kind words are sweet like honey", "only use words that build up and not ones that tear down"," remember your joy", and, on occassion when I am being a mean mom you will hear me say "she's a cold hearted snake". These are just a few of the Moffa mantras we have and this week the kind words have been a struggle. I noticed that I found myself repeating this all too frequently and, unfortunately, not just to my kids but also to myself.

My real warning that I needed some help with this area came when I spoke harshly to my mom. We were watching my boys little league game, which doesn't bring out the best in me, and my mom was doing what moms do and correcting me. Now, I know that I am an adult and should be able to handle myself, but my mom is one of those high quality, long term moms. My parents are my spiritual mentors and my mom is one of closest confidantes. I can talk to her about anything and I always know that I will receive godly and honest wisdom. She is always supportive but also knows when I need a reality dose and brought back down off my horse. I mean who better to knock you out of your saddle than your mom, right? Well, this particular evening I needed a dose of motherly discipline and when my mom corrected me, I snapped back. The big clicker is that when I realized that I needed to apologize....I didn't.

I was struggling to practice what I preach.  Not only was I not using kind words but I tore down someone I love out of anger and frustration. I started soul searching and quickly found that this was a problem in more area than one. I do it to my husband and my kids and when I whine, complain, or envy, I am doing it to God. It is so easy to say something unkind. We think and then we speak it, no filter required. I tell my kids all the time that the reflection of our hearts is seen in our words and actions. What condition is my heart when my tongue lashes out?

I came up with a heart transplant of sorts. I am focusing on sweetening not slaying. I am putting more effort in my words, thinking through them. I am attempting to take notice of all the lovely "sugar" that God has poured on my life, how He has generously sprinkled people and things to bless me and I am thanking Him for it. I am believing and living like I can be honey to my little world. Proverbs 16:24 says, "Kind words are sweet like honey, sweet to the soul and healing to the body". That is both powerful and inspiring. Just by sweetening instead of slaying with my tongue I can help God bring about healing. This sounds like something worth working for.

Lastly, my husband Ryan actually does love honey. Sometimes I will walk into our kitchen only to find him standing with the pantry door open and a honey bottle in his hand, squeezing into his open waiting mouth. A lot of honey, a lot of love, a lot of God's goodness. What could ever be wrong with that?