The Mommy voice

Well, I finally read what Daddy posted, and I want to tell you my side, because my perspective is different. I am responsible for just this post ;)

I wasn't surprised by Addis Ababa. I've spent the last year reading adoptive parent blogs, and blogs of people living and working in the city. It was pretty much exactly what I expected, in fact, I was surprised I didn't see MORE street people and beggars, but if we had gone out more or to different places that probably would have been different.

I really enjoyed the trip and plan to go back, and plan to travel to Wolaita when we do. There were times that were very tired or exasperating, and this experience definitely has taken me to the end of myself.

That beginning was typed the day Desi emailed me that I needed to post. It's taken me over a week to finish, here's the rest for now.

In a way, I feel incredibly humbled that God loves me so much that he wants to purify me so specifically. These kids really bring me to the bottom of what I have and now that they're repeating me, I know have a synopsis of what my parenting sounds like, which is.... educational.

Your devotional thought for the day:

Before the children came home we had an assortment of clothing of different sizes, some given as gifts/donations, some hand me downs, some we bought. We didn't know how big the kids would be (and I'm still a bit vague on one of them... but I'm narrowing it down). So their drawers had a variety of clothing in them.

After coming home Daddy received more girl clothing from a friend at work. I wanted to go through it and get the clothing that didn't fit out of their dressers and give them clothing that did fit.

I could NOT get the girls to give up anything in their dresser, and in fact I had to reconfiscate clothing they had plundered from the bag for our goddaughter. Clothing for a 6 year old in the dresser for an 8 and 12 year old, and I have clothing that will FIT them and they won't let me take out the clothing that doesn't for the clothing that does.

Matthew 7:9-11
"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

This verse and this experience are profound in their truth. And it brings to me an incredible Bible study lesson that God gave to Elaine Snow. I won't do it justice, but it is the one lesson from Ladies' Bible study at Mount Oak that I remember vividly. She gave all the ladies a lovely carnation. It was beautiful. But at the end, she had roses. But we had to give up the carnation at the altar to receive the rose. So often in our spiritual life we hold onto the good thing, or the thing that looks beautiful to us, or the thing we are familiar with. We are scared to let go of that thing even with the promise that God holds something better for us.

I was one of the last people to go up to the altar to let go of my carnation and I had to spend a lot of time there weeping, repenting and comprehending before I could give it up, because this lesson was so true to me. I don't want to let go of what I have (we have a storage unit to prove it). I know in my head that if God says to let go that He has something better but everything else in me wants to hold onto the good thing instead of letting go in faith for the better thing. I am so scared to lose what I have.

1 John 4:18-19
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us.

I need to work on learning that perfect love. All of us do to one extent or another because we first learn about love from imperfect humans. And no matter how lovely the people around us are, every one of us has reasons in us to not trust perfectly which we carry into our relationship with God.

Praying that we can all open our hands and let God take what He needs to out of our sweaty grasp. When you're wrestling with God over something that you think is important, I want you to think about my daughter, insisting that she'll keep the skirt with a 4 inch hole in it for wearing around the house when I have brand new skirts from my family for her instead. Think about my twelve year old daughter begging for the green skirt that won't even hit the knees of a 6 year old when I have at least 3 30 gallon garbage bags worth of clothing that would fit her in my room waiting to be sorted.

Yeah - the skirt may be glittery, green may be a color you love - but is that a reason to hold onto something and prevent you from the "good gifts" that your Father wants to give to you?

Love you all,
Mommy

Well, today I don't feel like a total failure

Not that I ever felt like a "total" failure, just a partial failure :) Anyway, things seemed to work today, so maybe we are getting into enough of a rhythm that the kids know what to expect, or at least they've picked up enough English that we aren't totally confusing to them all the time.

Jesse's actually been the worst one :) I honestly can't say if it's just that he's being the way he's always been, but with 3 other kids to worry about, it's just too much, or if he's purposely being worse, but hopefully that behavior will go away.

The kids seem to be getting along with Jesse well - although they still want to spend a lot of time alone with just the three of them - I figure we might as well give them some space every now and then.

Now if we can only get them to sleep past 4:30 AM... Today's strategy was to give them coffee (buna) with supper and hope they'd stay up later and maybe sleep until 6 at least. I tried my hand at home roasting, and actually came up with something better than most anything I've gotten in a store. I ordered a real roaster today, since the shaking a pan for 10 minutes method gets old :) Sela actually complimented me on the coffee, and on the steak I made (although Fasil didn't eat much of his).

More later, as there's something to say :)