a little brother for Axel and Angela

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James 1:27  Religion that pleases God the Father must be pure and spotless. You must help needy orphans and widows and not let this world make you evil.

I have so much to write about!  Tomorrow I am hoping to catch up on this crazy 21-day journey and do a little venting and insight seeking concerning the many events of my current life.
But, tonight I need to get to sleep.  Before I do take a peek at the backs of my eyelids I wanted to challenge anyone who’s been convicted during adoption month to live out James 1:27.  Are you caring for widows and orphans?  Even if you’re not called to adopt or do not personally know someone who is called to adopt, you can still “care for orphans” by supporting those who are called.  My dear friend Leah is leaving very soon to bring home her newest son.  Can you help her family in this endeavor to save a life and grow their love?  Go read her blog and be challenged…. http://networkedblogs.com/q3uyq
As a bonus, she is giving away a great camera set to some blessed person who donates.  That blessed person just might be you!

school placement

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This post is for all the Mommies in northern Virginia of children with disabilities.

We live in Fairfax County.  Last year was an amazing school year for our six year old daughter Sofija and we felt certain that she was exactly where she needed to be.  This year.  Not so much.  She is now in a room where she is the oldest, biggest, and highest functioning student.  There are six other students of which two are completely non-verbal and have NO assistive technology.  The classroom is literally 1/3 the size of the room she was in last year.  There is not even room for them to bring their coats or backpacks into the class.  The primary teacher is a first year teacher who has ZERO ABA training and the two instructional assistant spots apparently have a revolving door of substitutes.  I literally cannot count the number of different faces I’ve seen in there in the first nine weeks of school.  The one IA that was familiar with Sofija from last year, dug her fingernails into the palms of Sofija’s hands and left fingernail marks under her arms within the first three weeks of the school year.  That was her last day.

I’ve been told that I’m the only parent that comes to the class daily and keeps track of what’s going on in the classroom.  It is my guess that this is the reason I’ve been called to come get Sofija three out of the last four days that she’s been to school because she was just “having a bad day”.  We’ve had two two-hour meetings and have yet to get to the behavioral intervention plan in her IEP.  The behavioral coach and behavioral intervention specialist have contributed nothing to the classroom or to her IEP.  In fact, I do not even know who they are.  We have a BCBA and BCaBA that work with her in our home for forty hours/month and they have both spent time in the classroom.  When asked, they put together behavior plans for the class that have yet to be implemented.

She is bored!  We brought her home from Serbia in April of last year.  At that time she spoke no English and did not know letters, numbers, colors or shapes.  She mastered all of those and was speaking English fluently by the end of 2010.  In January we started working on letter sounds and writing and working towards reading.  She never quits when a new tasks is presented to her and she very quickly masters every new skill.  She is literally acquiring 40-50 dolch words a week and she is able to pick up almost any book now and read through it.  She is also able to independently write sentences.  If she doesn’t know the words from memory she sounds them out.  She can count money and make change.  She’s even teaching herself to play the piano (It’s pretty amazing to hear her picking out songs by ear and singing along as she’s playing).

Having her in a room with children who cannot speak and who have physical disabilities has created a perfect storm for aggression.  The other students have a much higher level of needs and when attention is being focused away from her and she has nothing to do, she acts out.  When all of the adults in the classroom stop what their doing and focus on Sofija, her bad behavior is reinforced and it escalates.  The more attention she gets, the worse her behavior becomes.  It’s just become a vicious cycle and the staff doesn’t seem to be willing to do anything to break it.

At this point we are simply looking for another placement where both her academic and behavioral needs can be met.  I know that APTS  is great for behavior, but not so strong academically.  We are planning to visit Phillips today.  I’m hoping that somebody out there can give us some suggestions on schools to avoid or schools that they recommend.

If you read all the way through this and you have no connections in northern Virginia with schools or autism, feel free to pray for us to have clarity and peace about where she belongs.  Our prayer is simply that she be in the environment where she can reach her full potential and be loved and nurtured.

day 10 ~ yes. i know i skipped a few days.

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The past few days have… worn. me. out.  I keep hearing that phrase, “Be careful what you ask for.”  As I continue to ask God to strip away anything in my life that is not conducive to living in His will for my life, He faithfully and painfully delivers.  Happy.  Happy.  Joy.  Joy.

In ten short days, I have given up a friendship and a career.  Ouch.  The really weird thing is that I have total peace about both situations.  Something in me has fought to hang on to things that did nothing for who I’m called to be and I had no clue how to lay those things down on my own.  Sadly, this always seems to be the case when something unhealthy in my life is pleasing my fleshly desires for achievement or success.

The following definitions are taken from http://www.dictionary.com.

ful·fill

verb (used with object)

1. to carry out, or bring to realization, as a prophecy or promise.
2. to perform or do, as duty; obey or follow, as commands.
3. to satisfy (requirements, obligations, etc.): a book that fulfills a long-felt need.
4. to develop the full potential of (usually used reflexively): She realized that she could never fulfill herself in such work.

suc·ceed

verb (used without object)

1. to happen or terminate according to desire; turn out successfully; have the desired result: Our efforts succeeded.
2. to accomplish what is attempted or intended: We succeeded in our efforts to start the car.
3. to attain success in some popularly recognized form, as wealth or standing: The class voted him the one most likely to succeed.
Did you read those carefully?  Do you strive for fulfillment or for success?  Personally, I think I’ll strive for “developing the full potential of” rather than simply having my life “happen or terminate according to my desires.”

day 6 ~ WE WIN!!!

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Genesis 1:24-25 

DAY SIX   God said, “I command the earth to give life to all kinds of tame animals, wild animals, and reptiles.” And that’s what happened. God made every one of them. Then he looked at what he had done, and it was good.

The tame animals and wild animals came on day five in my life.  They were camped out in my family room to watch the college football national championship tonight.  Just in case you missed it…. my team won 🙂

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

why fast?

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Today I have found myself struggling with the fast.  I woke up excited about the idea of getting creative with Daniel fast-friendly football food and then realized that I had to drive my oldest to a Krispy Kreme fundraiser for her high-school crew club.  With no time to dig into the Bible or drop to my knees, I suddenly had two dozen circles of sin sitting on my kitchen counter.  How nicely they would go with a hot cup of coffee….
In a desperate attempt to avoid cooking up some bacon and eggs and making myself a feast, I went to my room and began looking for fasting encouragement.  I’ve read a ton today, but the devotion at the following link gave me the most motivation.

http://www.newlivingtranslation.com/03spiritualjourney/column1.asp?aID=661

Nice to know that I’m not the only sinner around with “hell in my heart”.

day 4 ~ trim the fat

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A few weeks ago our family joined another family in purchasing half a cow and half a pig.  At this moment I have two freezers full of meat that I can not eat.  Tonight I began to think about how tasty a steak would be for dinner.  First I realized that the grilled piece of meat I was visualizing was just a symbol for all that God is doing in me right now and then I came across this verse.

Philippians 3:18-20 CEB

As I have told you many times and now say with deep sadness, many people live as enemies of the cross. Their lives end with destruction. THEIR GOD IS THEIR STOMACH, and they take pride in their disgrace because their thoughts focus on earthly things. Our citizenship is in heaven. We look forward to a savior that comes from there—the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ummm….. I don’t particularly like that part about lives ending with destruction being linked to “THEIR GOD IS THEIR STOMACH”.  Before I release my steak fantasies, I need to document their symbolism in today’s journey through fasting, prayer and revelation (revvies).

As I stood in the kitchen preparing to eat a bowl of purple soup that my friend Julie promised would be good I got one of those little cartoon bubbles over my head.  I’m sure if you were standing there you could have actually seen it.  Inside the bubble were two raw ribeyes that were roughly the same size.  One was just a big slab of bone and beautiful red meat.  The other had big chunks of white fat all the way around it.  In my mind, I chose the one with the least amount of fat.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love me some crispy grilled fat on the edge of my steak.  But if choosing between two steaks that are the same size, I’m going to take the one that will give me the most meat.  Why?  When placed on a fire the fat will melt away and the meat will not.  I like meat.  Therefore, I chose the steak that would yield the greatest amount of meat when placed on the fire.

This brings me to the fat God is trimming from my life today.  Today I grasped that every single thing in my life that is not 100% aligned with what I was put on this planet for, is fat.  I’m tired of all the things in my life that melt away and get charred when I walk through the fire.  This realization has led to some decisions that have been difficult to make, but those decisions have left me and my dear hubby with total peace.

There are really only three things in this world that bring me total fulfillment: 1) Loving my husband and having him love me in return.  2) Seeing the fruits of my parenting efforts reap a harvest in my children. 3) Writing.

Now.  If I had been given a third option of a Kobe steak that is well-marbled with the fat blended so finely with the grain of the meat that it would be impossible to remove, I would have taken option number 3.  I feel like I need to add that last bit of information because my life would be quite void without friends, extended family, our church, and my many hobbies.  But when those things become priorities, they become the kind of fat that needs to be trimmed.

For those of you fasting with me, I do hope that you’ve thoroughly enjoyed my steak story. 😉

Tonight I will lay my head on my pillow thanking God that I am free to choose whether or not I want to keep those things in my life that are not aligned with His will or keep them and live a life that is full of good-purposes, just not His purposes.  He is indeed pretty great!

day 3 ~ bring it!

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I’m physically feeling better today. I honestly expected to have painful caffeine and sugar withdrawals for a week or so. Thus far, I have had a dull headache that seems to appear at the times of day when I’ve previously consumed large amounts of caffeine, but I’m finding that by eating a piece of fruit or a handful of nuts, it goes away. The emotional and spiritual pain is probably about the same as yesterday though.

Today I walked through some big stuff. I don’t feel free to share all the details, but I had a realization that every single obstacle that exists in my relationship with my oldest daughter is based on some of my mother-wounds that have never been dealt with. Since I lost my Mom more than five years ago, I just have to let those wounds be healed without any real conversations. Maybe that’s for the better though. I can see clearly that my Mom did the very best she could and that she made choices concerning me and my sister with nothing but the best of intentions. Without saying much more on that matter, my prayer is that my relationship with my daughter is about to reach a whole new level.

The other big lesson today came once again from the sermon on the mount. This time it was on loving people.

Matthew 5:43-48 You have heard people say, “Love your neighbors and hate your enemies.” But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you. Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong. If you love only those people who love you, will God reward you for that? Even tax collectors love their friends. If you greet only your friends, what’s so great about that? Don’t even unbelievers do that? But you must always act like your Father in heaven.

While I take pride (yea, yea, I’m working on the pride thing too) in the fact that I truly deeply love people, I had to come to terms today with the fact that I have a much harder time loving some people than loving other people.

There have been several VERY RECENT occasions for me to pounce on people for not seeing my two little stimmers (autistic blessings) as equal to every other child on the planet.  The minute someone treats one of them differently or denies them any right that a typical child would have, words like “discrimination”, “segregation”, and “isolation” jump to my mind.  I’m not a huge fan of the ACLU, but when those words start running through my head I wish I had a number for their complaints hot-line on speed dial.

Today I had a big realization.  It sucks to admit it, but I’ve displayed all three of those ugly and unacceptable words towards people in the VERY RECENT past.  The sun rises and shines for each and every one of us.  The rain falls for each and every one of us.  Salvation is available for each and every one of us.  His grace is available for each and every one of us.  His love is available for each and every one of us.  The realization of just how hard it is for me to show that kind of love and grace to some people is just painful.  I’m a mess.  I’m glad God doesn’t give up on me because when I think of just how often I fail to act like Him, it’s more than a little humbling.  I need the kind of unfailing grace that ONLY He can give, more than I can probably even grasp.

Tomorrow’s to-do list is going to look a little different than the one from the last three days.  Tomorrow I am challenging myself to greet every person I meet as if they were a close friend.  I’m sure I just opened up an invitation for every nasty person in the DC metro area to cross my path. To them I say, “Bring it, Stringbean!  Show me what you got!”

day 2 part deux (boundaries)

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Don’t say I didn’t warn you. At this moment I can not begin to imagine what I will be twenty days from now. After only two days of fasting, praying and studying the sermons of Christ, I already feel like my load is a little lighter. How is it that we complicate our lives so much more than we really have to?!
I am about to climb in bed (no caffeine is forcing me to bed a little earlier than usual), but I wanted to take a second to write a bit about boundaries. That word has crept up in every productive conversation that I’ve had in the last two weeks. What’s funny is that I didn’t think I had a problem with them. I have this wonderful gift of being able to identify the lack of boundaries in the lives of others and to see how that lack of boundaries holds them back from living fully. If you were on the receiving end of any of those recent conversations, I apologize for sounding self-righteous.
Today I took a long painful look in the mirror. I’ve always been afraid that telling people they couldn’t call after a certain time or asking visitors to leave our home for fear that doing so would be perceived as rudeness. I’m a good southern girl. I don’t like to be rude.
But what if it isn’t rude to establish boundaries? What if it is actually respectable? I wanted to call someone today and thought that they were probably working and didn’t need to be interrupted. I realized that this person’s job has created boundaries that I have no problem respecting. Isn’t family supposed to come before work? If so, shouldn’t it be even more respectable to establish boundaries surrounding my family. I’m not really sure how people are going to take it, but “God has not given me a spirit of fear!”(2 Timothy 1:7) and he instructed me to “Not worry”(Matthew 6:34). So, I’m going to let go of my fears and stop worrying that people will think I’m rude and start laying down some boundaries. Feel free to pray for me in this process or share your pain if you struggle in the same area.
Change of subject…. Seth and Sofija sat at the table tonight doing their homework. Sofija kept pausing and rereading every part of her book that said something about animals. I noticed that Seth had stopped his own work and was just sitting and watching her just as he said, “I think God showed me what Sofija is going to be when she grows up. I think she’s going to be an animal scientist who studies the way that mother animals protect their young.” Maybe God was showing him something about his sister AND his Mom……

day 2

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It is still relatively early in the day so don’t be surprised if there is a part deux to day two.  I’ve read through the sermon on the mount twice now and I’m thinking it may take me a few more days of digging through it to truly grasp all that Jesus was teaching in that one sermon.  Good.  Stuff.

It’s located in Matthew 5-7.  If you don’t have a Bible go to http://www.biblegateway.com and read it!  Read several translations until you find the one that speaks to you.  I got the most out of the Contemporary English Version today.

At the end of this sermon, Christ emphasizes how important it is to hear AND obey his teachings.  The difference between hearing and obeying and hearing and not obeying is pretty simple.  It determines whether or not you stand on a foundation of rock or a foundation of sand.  When I read that the first time I thought for a second, “Hmm.  I actually like to stand barefoot on the sand and feel it between my toes.”  What does that say about me?

Today when I read it I got something totally different out of it.  He said that being obedient determines the foundation that your house stands on.  He goes on to describe what happens to a house built on rock and a house built on sand in hurricane conditions.

I grew up in south Louisiana and I have a pretty good idea of what happens to a house built on the sand.  My grandfather was born in a house on the beach in Biloxi, MS.  That house stood for more than a hundred years and weathered many powerful hurricanes.  After hurricane Katrina, my husband and I took a drive along the road where the house had stood for so very long.  There was nothing left except the concrete steps that once led to a front porch.  Not even a clear sign or outline that the house had previously stood in that spot.  I walked around the lot and weeped and took note of the fact that there was nothing left but three concrete steps and a big pile of sand.

That house was well-constructed.  It was simply built on a foundation made of sand.

Matthew 5:13-16

You are like salt for everyone on earth. But if salt no longer tastes like salt, how can it make food salty? All it is good for is to be thrown out and walked on.  You are like light for the whole world. A city built on top of a hill cannot be hidden, and no one would light a lamp and put it under a clay pot. A lamp is placed on a lampstand, where it can give light to everyone in the house. Make your light shine, so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven.

Part of fighting cancer for me involved radiation that messed up my taste-buds.  For a year after radiation treatment I could not taste salt.  Yes, my cooking left something to be desired.  After over-salting dishes for a while I finally just stopped adding any.  It served no purpose. A little over a year after losing my ability to taste salt, my family was eating out one night and I made the comment, “This is too salty.”  My husband froze and looked at me and began to laugh as I began to cry.  God had restored my ability to taste.  That day I was his favorite. 😉

What I’m gathering from the sermon on the mount is that Christ gave us infinite wisdom to live by and to build a foundation with.  Once we have a foundation that is aligned with his teachings, we become salt to the world.  We can go out and walk barefoot in the sand (just not in the middle of a hurricane) and in doing so make the world around us a little more palatable.

I’m also seeing that many of the trials I’ve been through this year have been multiplied in intensity because I didn’t heed that warning above to stay off the beach during a hurricane.  I just had this big epiphany.  When the storms come, we need to get back on our foundation.  I can see that I’ve allowed my desire to be everything to everybody around me, to keep me from my own personal growth and stability many times throughout this last year.  Lesson learned.

 

day 1

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I’m in pain. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pain. This is going to be a LONG three weeks.

I’ve had a recurring dream about Bathsheba at the end of October, for the past three years. This weekend I took note of the fact that the dream was not haunting me. This morning I was praying for God to take me where I need to be in the Bible. All I heard was 11:1:11. So… I went there. It’s 1 Kings 1:11. Guess what it’s about? If you guessed Bathsheba, you would be correct. It looks like I’ll be camped out in Jesus’ sermons and studying Bathsheba over the next three weeks.
On a side note, I need to ask a favor of any of you that communicate with me during this fast. I do not want anything spoken to me during this time that is not directly from the word of God. I’m seeking His heart and I think doing that productively means that I have to avoid conversations that are unproductive or even detrimental to what God’s cleaning up in me.
On a second side note, guess what today is? 11-1-11. Do you know the significance of this date? Actually I haven’t done any real research on the significance of all those ones, but I do know that today is the first day of Adoption Awareness Month. Yippee! For the next month I get to watch and pray for God to call people to adopt and that He will wrap his arms around those 140million orphans in this world who are waiting for their families to find them. I think I’m going to go love on my little (well, kinda little) adopted bundle of joy.
Till tomorrow…. Be Blessed!