So yesterday Seth climbs in the car all mopey-faced. I ask, “What’s wrong?”
He replies, “Well, nothing really.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing. You look like something is wrong. Did something happen today that you need to tell me about?”
“Well, you see. I had to write a letter to Mr. Woodburn. You know. We’re learning how to write letters. (I silently cheer on his teacher) I wrote, Dear Mr. Woodburn, and then I started writing next to the comma. Mrs. Barrow said I have to skip two lines before I start writing sentences and she made me do it over.”
“Well Seth, that’s how you are supposed to write a letter.”
“But, Mama. I kept trying to tell her that it was just a mistake and she just wouldn’t listen to me when I kept telling her that God’s grace covers ALL mistakes.”

How do you define progress?

I have many definitions myself, but at this very moment, I define it as a news reporter referring to victims of human trafficking as “victims” and not as just prostitutes or members of a prostitution ring.

People, this is HUGE!!!  15-face-charges-after-prostitution-bust-020711

It’s no secret that I’m a nut-magnet.  Seriously disturbed people have fought their way through huge crowds just to be in my presence.  If there are a hundred people sitting in a room and I’m in the exact center of that room when a crazy person comes in the door, they are likely to ask the person next to me to move so they can have the seat.  I’m serious.

It’s also no secret that one of my top three biggest fears is hitting someone with my vehicle.  I have recurring dreams about it and several people have been in a car with me when people have literally ran out in front of me.

We lived in Korea from 1998-2000.  While living there, I witnessed several pedestrians get hit by cars, but there was one incident that had a huge impact on me.  I really don’t think the man had any hope of surviving and I sat there in shock as the driver and a few other drivers who witnessed the accident hopped out of their cars, picked the man up, deposited him on the sidewalk, hopped back in their vehicles and drove away.  It’s a scene that plays out in my mind in slow motion.  I was right behind the driver that hit the man.  He flew in the air, landed in the middle of the intersection, and then the driver actually pulled forward and stopped on top of the man.  After stepping out of his car, he had to get back in and pull forward in order to get his vehicle off of the mans abdomen.  I watched the man who’d been hit lay on the sidewalk with blood coming from several locations and his limbs twisted in very unnatural positions.  And..NOBODY stopped to help him.  People literally just stepped over him as if he weren’t there.

I pressed the emergency number on my Korean cell phone and was connected to a lady  who spoke no English.  I spoke little Korean and we could not communicate.  Eventually an ambulance came to the scene.  The paramedics actually lifted the man up and just carried him into the back of the ambulance and drove away.  No gurney.  No police.  No accident report.  For eleven years, I’ve seen that scene in slow motion.

My magnetism and fears caught up with me today.  Today I should have been reading and writing.  Instead I spent my time doctoring my sick hubby and doing load after load of laundry.  I am attempting to find a happy reconciliation of the five different edits that I’ve made of the book I’ve written. I have never laid all of the different versions out in front of me and read them in parallel fashion.  Now that I’m in the process of doing exactly that (and I’ve promised to deliver it), I’m having a hard time deciding what to keep and what to toss. Prayers on this matter are GREATLY appreciated….

While I should have been sitting in a quiet place searching for what will be in the final version of my book, I called and made myself an appointment for an eye exam.  My prescription expired in December and I ran out of contacts a couple of weeks ago.  I had this brilliant thought that having brand new contacts in my eyes might just be the one thing that would help me find the motivation and clarity to complete my project.  I waited an hour past my appointment time before they called me back.  To be honest, it wasn’t that awful.  The place was quiet and I hadn’t brought my laptop so I felt excused from my obligation to work on the book.

After seeing the doctor, discovering that my vision has improved in the last year, and leaving with a brand new pair of contacts, I stopped at the drugstore to grab my hubby some meds and distilled water for his humidor.  As I left the pharmacy, this burgundy Oldsmobile Silhouette that was built about the time Chad and I got married, pulled out in front of me.  He immediately started tapping his brakes.  So, I slowed down, kept a good distance between us, and made a mental note of his license plate.  A little over a mile after the van pulled in front of me, he pulled over to the side of the road and came to a complete stop.  Like anyone who’s tired of driving behind someone who is driving erratically, I had been waiting for an opportunity to get past him.  Here was my opportunity.  As I pulled alongside the van, the driver’s door flew open and in a second this crazy man was pounding all over my husband’s car.  He started at the hood and then moved to the passenger’s window about the time that I realized my doors weren’t locked.  Since he was no longer directly in front of me and because he was scaring the crap out of me, I slowly pulled forward and put at least half a football field between us before I pulled over.  I looked back and he was standing in the road with his arms spread wide, screaming at me.  I grabbed my phone, dialed 911, and stepped out of my car before pressing talk.

I then screamed, “What were you doing?”

He responded, “You were riding my a$$!”

Me ~ “No I wasn’t.  You were driving like an idiot and I kept enough space between us to see your tires and read your license plate.”

Crazy man then starts closing the gap between us, limping, and screaming, “YOU RAN OVER MY FOOT!  THAT’S A FELONY!  YOU ASSAULTED ME WITH YOUR CAR!”

He was probably still twenty feet away from me when his eau-de-liquor drifted my way.  I pressed talk and informed him in the calmest voice that I could muster, “I’m calling the cops.  I’ll get you an ambulance.”

And then…as I put the phone to my ear, he hopped in his old dirty nasty oxidized van and sped off into the neighborhood.

The dispatcher asked if I’d like someone to come to the scene or if I’d rather have an officer meet me at home.  I opted for home.

As I started to give the kind officer my description, he stopped writing and shook his head.  ” I know who the guy is.  What was he driving?”  Once again he started shaking his head as soon as I gave a description.  I handed him the tag number and he said that he was going to run it, but it probably didn’t match the vehicle.  He then said, “The guys a little coo-coo and unpredictable. He lives around there. If you see the vehicle again and he sees you, just call us right away.”  Great, Officer.  Just great.

He ran the plates.  They belonged to a 2010 Toyota Camry.

My dear friend Kim listened to my story tonight and then prayed with me.  In the middle of her prayer, I had a moment of realization.  The man is hurting.  I’m not just talking about his crushed foot.  He’s really hurting.  People don’t drink and rage like that without experiencing some pretty big emotional wounds in life.  And…he chose me.  He could have jumped out of his car and raged at someone who already had their concealed carry permit (I haven’t gotten mine yet).  He could have continued to drive drunk and killed himself and/or others.  But he didn’t.  He chose me and now I have a choice.  I can be freaked out and frustrated.  Or I can be compassionate and pray for him.  I’m gonna sleep on it, but I’m sure tomorrow I’ll choose option 2.

Well crap.  I really don’t have any choice.  Before I could even finish typing “option 2”, this went through my head…..

Philippians 4:6

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” NLT

And then this….

1 Thessalonians 5:14-18

^“Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone.  See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.  Always be joyful.  Never stop praying.  Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” NLT

and lastly this….

Psalm 34:18

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted;
he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” NLT

Seth was home today with an earache so he went with me to pick up Sofija.  She had boarded the bus this morning with great disappointment over the fact that we were out of milk.  As I walked into her classroom, she looked up at me and said, “Millilk, Mama.”  She continued to say it over and over again as we walked back to Stan the Wan and loaded up.  Less than a mile from the school she became insistent.  “Look to me, Mama. Look.  To.  Me!”  Seth said, “Sofija, she can’t look at you and look at the road.  Do you want her to crash?  Sheesh!”

A mile and a dozen, “Millilks” later Sofija yells, “Mama.  When I say Millilk, it means MILLILK!”

We stopped for a gallon of milk.

We get back on the road and Sofija starts demanding it again.

Seth says (in his most authoritative voice), “Sofija, stop being demanding.  Nobody is going to meet your wants or needs if you keep demanding things.  You have to ask nicely!  Got it?  Sheesh!”

Where do they get this stuff?

I make every effort to keep up with any great post that’s out there in the adoption, autism, cancer-defeating blog-world. Somehow, I’ve missed this one. HeatherBee, Thanks for posting the link on FB.
Enjoy!
http://itsalmostnaptime.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-dont-want-my-children-to-be-happy.html

Sofija walked in my room, began batting her eyelashes and saying, “Pretty, pretty Sofija.”

I thought she had gotten one of my sharpies…..

She took me to my purse and showed me that she had used my mascara.  Then….she proudly showed me her eyes AND her breakfast.

I began to snap away with my camera.  She cooperated for a brief moment.

And then informed me, “No more smile, Mama.”

She meant it.

As promised….. (borrowed from Dennis Rainey on FamilyLife.com)

Rule 1: Marriage isn’t about your happiness.  It’s not about you getting all your needs met through another person.  Practicing self-denial and self-sacrifice, patience, understanding, and forgiveness are the fundamentals of a great marriage.  If you want to be the center of the universe, then there’s a much better chance of that happening if you stay single.

Rule 2: Getting married gives a man a chance to step up and finish growing up.  The best preparation for marriage for a single man is to man up now and keep on becoming the man God created him to be.

Rule 3: It’s okay to have one rookie season, but it’s not okay to repeat your rookie season.  You will make rookie mistakes in your first year of marriage; the key is that you don’t continue making those same mistakes in year five, year 10, or year 20 of your marriage.

Rule 4: It takes a real man to be satisfied with and love one woman for a lifetime.  And it takes a real woman to be content with and respect one man for a lifetime.

Rule 5: Love isn’t a feeling.  Love is commitment.  It’s time to replace the “D word”—divorce—with the “C word”—commitment.  Divorce may feel like a happy solution, but it results in long-term toxic baggage.  You can’t begin a marriage without commitment.  You can’t sustain one without it either.  A marriage that goes the distance is really hard work.  If you want something that is easy and has immediate gratification, then go shopping or play a video game.

Rule 6: Online relationships with old high school or college flames, emotional affairs, sexual affairs, and cohabiting are shallow and illegitimate substitutes for the real thing.  Emotional and sexual fidelity in marriage is the real thing.

Rule 7: Women spell romance R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P.  Men spell romance S-E-X.  If you want to speak romance to your spouse, become a student of your spouse, enroll in a lifelong “Romantic Language School,” and become fluent in your spouse’s language.

Rule 8: During courtship, opposites attract.  After marriage, opposites can repel each another.  You married your spouse because he/she is different.  Differences are God’s gift to you to create new capacities in your life.  Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different.

Rule 9: Pornography robs men of a real relationship with a real person and poisons real masculinity, replacing it with the toxic killers of shame, deceit, and isolation.  Pornography siphons off a man’s drive for intimacy with his wife.  Marriage is not for wimps.  Accept no substitutes.

Rule 10: As a home is built, it will reflect the builder.  Most couples fail to consult the Master Architect and His blueprints for building a home.  Instead a man and woman marry with two sets of blueprints (his and hers).  As they begin building, they discover that a home can’t be built from two very different sets of blueprints.

Rule 11: How you will be remembered has less to do with how much money you make or how much you accomplish and more with how you have loved and lived.

I found this list on the FamilyLife website.  It’s followed by 11 rules for marriage you won’t learn in school and yes, you will be seeing those soon.  For now, I’m trying to figure out how to embed this list in the brains of my teenagers.

Here are the 11 rules of life that you won’t learn in school:

Rule 1: Life is not fair—get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make $60,000 per year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping—they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault.  So don’t whine about your mistakes; learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you “find yourself.” Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

I’ve had lots of people ask me why I haven’t blogged more about Sofija lately and I’ve spent quite a bit of time in prayer and deep thought about what’s okay to put out there for the whole world to read.

Just before Christmas we interviewed behavioral therapists and decided on a man/woman team.  The woman develops the therapy plan and does oversight and the man is with us for forty hours every month.  He’s amazing and we are extremely hopeful and grateful for all that he is doing with her.  Sofija’s feelings toward the therapy situation aren’t quite in alignment with the rest of the family.

We were warned that her attention-seeking behaviors would escalate and that she would regress for a while before we would see the bad behaviors begin to disappear.  So…it came as no surprise when she began to pee all over us and the furniture, and make every attempt to torture the dogs.  The one thing I wasn’t quite prepared for was seeing her self-injury return.  It’s been months since we’ve seen her actually hurt herself and she’s gone back to biting her arms in the middle of her tantrums.  It may sound heartless, but watching her do it is not so bad.  Usually by the time she’s doing her best Cullen impression, she’s already broken several things in the house, screamed every defiant term she can muster at us for fifteen or twenty minutes, and urinated on a couch or a rug.  The biting is usually a pretty good sign that she’s at the end of her meltdown.  Bath-time, bed-time, and any time she’s changing clothes are when it punches me in the gut.  It’s bad enough that her arms are completely covered with scars from her teeth.  But the scars look so much worse when they are covered with brand-new mouth-sized bruises.

Marky-Mark is her therapist.  (His name has been changed to protect his innocence.)  When he steps in our house he gets his own personal “funky bunch”.  Hah!

Marky-Mark is amazing with Sofija.  He never loses his cool and he never waivers on his expectations.  And….he’s teaching us how to do the same.

Today I feel free to share because today I saw a little glimmer of light at the end of her bad-behavior tunnel.  Yesterday was a different story.  Yesterday I got to hear that her attention-seeking has increased at school and I even had the joy of receiving a phone call from Seth’s school saying that his “pretend” has increased and gotten louder in the last few weeks.  We’ve witnessed it at home too.  He is very upset by Sofija screaming and throwing tantrums and right now we’re dealing with that for two to three hours/night.  He tries to block it out by making louder noises himself.  Chase just complains about it all and Kira just tries to stay away from home as much as possible.  Thank God for ipods and noise-canceling headphones!

Today’s glimpse of light came in the most unexpected environment.  Marky-Mark is working with her in several different areas right now, all of which require her to “keep her hands to herself”.  Our biggest priority right now is to stop her aggression towards others.  On Saturdays the indoor pool on Ft. Belvoir has free swim for special needs children and their parents.  We haven’t been for a while because the last visit left me wondering how many parents out there think that brat is a disability.  I listened to a little worship music, did some writing and took my girl to the pool.  As we walked in I thought it was our lucky day.  There were only three other children in the pool and they appeared to be siblings who were there with their divorced Daddy.  I could sit on the bleachers, get a little reading in, and Sofija had a huge pool to explore with little competition for space in the water.  My reading lasted about five minutes before the oldest girl in the sibling group started jumping all over Sofija.  I put my things away and prepared to apologize for the brutal attack that she was about to dish out.  As Sofija whipped her body around and got in her attack stance I reminded her, “Sofija, I need you to keep your hands to yourself.”  I repeated that line two or three times.  Guess what?  She backed up and then swam away.  My heart slowed to a somewhat normal pace, but it was only a few minutes before this bratty girl was jumping on her again.  This time she jumped on top of a foam noodle that Sofija was playing with and then ripped it out of her hands.  Divorced Daddy swam in circles and said nothing.  Parent of the year award goes to…..DD!  I stood up and reminded her again to keep her hands to herself and I offered to get her another noodle.  She said, “No float, Mama.” and then swam away from the bratty girl.

The obnoxious behavior continued throughout Sofija’s swim.  Once when Sofija was slapping the water with her hands and stimming pretty hard, the girl came up to her and asked (with a scowl), “What’s wrong with you?”  This girl was probably nine or ten years old and I have to confess, I wanted to get in her face and put her in her place.  I kept looking back and forth between my beautiful little girl and this big kid who got uglier by the second.  God, please forgive me.  But she was ugly.  And everything in me wanted to say that to her when she continued to antagonize my child.

I just wrote a little piece today on things we’re told as children that damage us as adults.  I kept hearing what I had written and seeing the written words of Romans 12:2.  The English Standard Version says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

I didn’t want this little girl to grow up and need a renewing of her mind because some mean lady at a pool told her she was ugly at age ten.  It wasn’t easy, but I bit my tongue.  I walked out of that place with a clear conscience, a happy daughter, and big ol’ smile on my face as I grasped just how huge it is that my happy daughter was able to “keep her hands to herself.”

I thought about inserting an old Calvin Klein ad or the video of Georgia Satellites singing “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” in this post, but settled for this……Enjoy!

This weekend will be wonderful.  After last weekend, the wonderful bar is set pretty low.  The whole weekend wasn’t a wash, but there was a big huge absence of marital bliss in this house.

Without completely throwing myself under the bus with all the details I’ll sum up my fault in the matter in as few words as possible.  On Saturday afternoon a dear friend offered to stay with the kids so that Chad and I could go on a date.  While cleaning up the kitchen and talking to my wonderful husband and dear friend I apparently said, “…..I’M going to move MY children…..”.  I realized a short time later that my husband was not speaking to me.  I asked what was wrong and got a response that went something like, “You said, ….’I and MY children’….  You have no respect for me and you don’t trust me to make decisions for our family.”  ~Insert loud growl here~  A very large, angry, hungry tiger overtook my body.

For the next 24hours there is nothing that came out of my mouth or his worth bragging about or even repeating.  We got down-right nasty.

The saddest part of the whole situation is that on Monday he had to fly to San Francisco for the week.  Yes, folks.  We managed to throw away an unexpected and much needed date-night and the limited time we had together between our travels.

At some point Sunday night, after the kids were in bed, we were done.  The tiger in me was tired so I walked across the family room, sat next to my husband, and laid against his chest.  As we both sat there crying, you know what he did?  He started kissing my hair and then praying over me.  He thanked God for all the things he values in me and he started claiming all the things we wants to see God fulfill for me.  I love him 🙂

I have to be honest though.  I was just tired of fighting.  I wasn’t ready to admit fault.  I said I was sorry, but I couldn’t actually even remember saying the thing that he got mad about in the first place so I had no clue how I was going to learn from this fight or try to avoid a similar one in the future.

After dropping him at the airport on Monday I came home and started cleaning off the kitchen island.  The children’s ministry at our church uses the Kidmo curriculum and sends home these nifty little paper booklets each week called the MAP (Mission Action Plan).  As I picked up this week’s map and walked towards the trashcan I did something that I rarely do.  I opened it and began reading.

If you’ve followed my blog since last June, you know that I kind of got stuck in Deuteronomy around my thirty-ninth birthday and the onset of my fortieth year of life.  The first thing I read in the little mapbook was something about reading Deuteronomy 1.  No need to read it.  The whole book has been my theme for the year.  It’s the one that says that the Israelites set out on an eleven day journey and forty years later they had gotten nowhere.  It’s the chapter where God has Moses tell them, “You have been on this mountain long enough!  Go occupy the promised land!”  It’s the one where Moses says countless times that the Israelites screwed themselves over (pardon my language, but come on…FORTY YEARS to make an ELEVEN DAY journey) by not trusting God.  And….it’s also the one where they are constantly reminded that they have the power to CHOOSE whether they, and the generations after them, will live a blessed life or a cursed life.

Next thing on the M.A.P….”When Moses was leading the Israelites, they chose not to….”

a. trust that God would help them.

b. eat what was provided.

c. exercise and get healthy.

d. go into the promised land.

So technically both a and d are correct answers, but I think the mapbook creators were looking for that big TRUST word.

My eyes then skipped to the bottom of the page.  Just for the record, I have never read an entire page of the M.A.P.s we’ve been collecting or throwing in the trash for the past few years.  At the bottom of the page I found this….”Read Joshua 1:5-9.  40 years later when Joshua was leading the Israelites, they did something right.  What was it?”

a. learned how to make pancakes

b. They imagined what God could do.

c. They believed God was with them so they had strength and courage.

I guess the creators wanted to make sure I got this one right since they narrowed down the answers to only three choices.

If you guessed c,  DING, DING, DING!!!!  You win!  “The prize?”, you ask.  A big ol’ healthy dose of conviction.

In the same moment that I read that third choice, I heard this question.  “Are you a Moses follower or a Joshua follower?”  I immediately went to my knees on my kitchen floor.  The picture I saw was painfully clear.  One of those crystal clear revelations that you can never erase or pretend you haven’t seen.

The Israelites forty years of slavery (bondage) and misery was not just about a lack of trust in God.  It was because they didn’t trust Moses as their leader.  They didn’t trust that Moses was actually hearing from God.

Forty years later (theres’ a theme to that big 4-0), Moses dies and God speaks to his assistant Joshua.

Here, read it for yourself….

After the death of Moses the Lord’s servant, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant. He said, ² “Moses my servant is dead. Therefore, the time has come for you to lead these people, the Israelites, across the Jordan River into the land I am giving them. ³ I promise you what I promised Moses: ‘Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you—⁴ from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, including all the land of the Hittites.’ ⁵ No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.

⁶ “Be strong and courageous, for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them. ⁷ Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or to the left. Then you will be successful in everything you do. ⁸ Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. ⁹ This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1 New Living Translation

Just in case you don’t know the rest of the story….

The Israelites trusted Joshua.  They trusted that what he told them came from God, actually did come from the one true God.  They followed his instructions and because of their trust and obedience God was able to carry them across the Jordan River into the land that he had promised to their ancestors.

Their trust in Joshua’s leadership brought freedom and prosperity not only to themselves, but to their children and their children’s children.

I don’t know about you, but I kind of like the idea of living in freedom.  I also like the idea of being prosperous.  I loathe wasted time! I have written it before, but for emphasis I will repeat myself.  I NEVER WANT TO TAKE FORTY YEARS TO MAKE AN ELEVEN DAY JOURNEY!!!  And with everything that I already have on my own plate of responsibilities, I’m warming up to the idea of trusting my husband to lead me.

So here’s my own multiple choice question.

Are you…..

a. a Moses follower?

b. a Joshua follower?

c. a purple toad?

(hint: the answer is not c)