Court Monday

Here we go again! We've reached our 30 day mark, and we couldn't be in a much different place than we were last month. Days are mostly sweet. Life is fairly stable (aside from an excessive amount of sickness). I am back to enjoying these boys immensely, so my heart hurts a good bit as I think of them leaving my home and my life forever.

Please, please pray for all involved on Monday. Biological mom is 100% convinced that the boys are going home Monday, and she told all of them that prediction this afternoon at their visit. The DFACS case manager thinks quite the opposite. I have no idea what to expect. Just pray, similar to last time, that the Lord's will be done, and that we have time to give K-man and B-boy a smooth transition, if that's what it comes to. Pray that my husband and I are able to manage and work through our own emotions so as not to further distress the boys. Just pray that we would glorify God in everything that occurs over the next several days.

A sweet story to leave you with as I close...this evening we where in the car on our way to a family dinner honoring my sister-in-law's 30th birthday. K-man asked if there would be birthday cake and then began talking about my nephew's birthday party, which we attended on the second day the boys were living with us...4 long months ago! All of a sudden, K-man surprised me and started to say, very seriously, "Mrs. E, do you remember I didn't even know C then, and I didn't know Mrs. E or Mr. R or (and he named several others...)." Then, he paused briefly and said, "I didn't even know Jesus." I had to bite my cheek to hold back tears...reflecting on the sweet truth of that statement and the indescribable fruit we have seen these past 4 months...wow!

I don't know how Monday will end, but I sense the Lord providing sweet moments like these recently, perhaps to prepare my heart to rest in His sovereignty in these precious lives that have become so very dear to me. Please pray for us as either decision will be difficult in different ways. I will be anxious to post an update sometime Monday.

Lifesavers!!!

Our boys are sick...again. The walls are closing in. The frustrations and negative attitudes are looming. The disobedience and disrespect is grating on my nerves, but just in time tonight, I discovered and re-descovered several resources that are sure to save the day!

I re-discovered these amazing little books I bought back when I was an intern at a children's hospital. I had no idea, then, how amazing they are!!! A mom's dream! Tomorrow, I'm already planning to pull out a big piece of paper and make a "Who Loves Me?" poster. Can't wait!

The Toddler Busy Book

The Preschooler's Busy Book

My wonderful mother-in-law gave me this treasure just the other day, but I hadn't had a good chance to study it until tonight. It is truly an amazing resource...one that I wish I had had for the last 4 months! It takes attitudes/behaviors that your child might exhibit and offers heart-based questions to ask your child as well as scripture to help your child understand which attitudes to "put off" and which to "put on." I can't wait to see the fruit this could produce in K-man's heart over the next few weeks (at least until the next looming court date, March 26th).

Wise Words for Moms

Fruit

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” 

declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, 

so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." 

Isaiah 55:8-9

How many times will the Lord have to demonstrate this in my life before I trust these words when life doesn't go my way? Since my last, somewhat dejected, post after hearing the news that the boys would, indeed, be staying with us for another month, life made a quick turn for the better. I can't even explain it apart from the Lord's perfect wisdom and timing, but since that very day, K-man's behavior has remarkably improved, but more importantly, we've seen some major fruit being produced in his heart...fruit we would not have seen had the boys gone home when they did. I want to quickly share a few things we would have missed had the boys gone home last month, as anticipated.

K-man used to absolutely panic and fly off the handle when his anger was triggered. He has now begun to come to us and say, "I'm really mad." I cannot even begin to explain the impact that this has had in our household. For a solid 2 weeks now, we've had no hitting, biting, throwing things, etc. Even more importantly, I have every hope that this will translate into a strong life skill for this boy. I pray that this skill will help him to avoid altercations at home, ultimately protecting himself and solidifying his understanding that violence is not the best way to solve a problem.

B-boy is finally crawling! Busy? You bet! Somewhat of a nuisance at times? Absolutely! But the truth is, I thank God that we've been able to see this piece of his development...so much fun watching him develop into a bright, healthy, extremely happy baby boy!

The week after court, we achieved K-man's goal of reading through the entire Big Picture Bible. We were finally able to share the complete gospel story with him. We didn't make an overly big deal about the story of Jesus's death and resurrection - no bigger than any other night of family worship, but since reading it, we have marveled at how it has impacted K-man's heart. Several days after reading it, K-man noticed the cross on the top of a steeple. "Is that a railroad crossing?" he asked. "No," I said, "if you turned it on it's side it would be, but when it's straight up and down like that, it's called a cross...like the cross that Jesus died on." All day, he talked about God dying on the cross, and I had a million opportunities to share many facets of the gospel story. Then, all was silent in the car at one point (a rare occurrence with these boys) and K-man said very seriously, "Mrs. E...I'm sad." You should know that up to this point, I had never heard him talk about being sad...only mad. "Why are you sad?" I asked. "Because God died on the cross..." he said. Every night for about a week now, K-man has requested the story of Jesus's death and resurrection to be read at bed time. He studies each page intently, and talks about it often. What treasured conversations we have had!! What amazing repair I have seen in our relationship!

On one hand, it would have been easier to let these boys go when days were long and hard and I was ready to say, "Good Riddance!" but ultimately I think I would have struggled with guilt for a long time, and I fear that K-man would have struggled with thoughts that his behavior had caused him to be rejected. God is so good, regardless of what happens in my life, but I am thankful to have seen such fruit recently that testifies to this Truth.

Thirty more days

That's the verdict. Thirty more days, and then we'll have a court review all over again. I wish I could say I'm glad, but mostly I'm overwhelmed and disappointed. Please pray for stamina and for peace in our home.

New Mercies

"Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." ~ Lamentations 3:22-23

Let me begin by saying that yesterday was miserable. I hate to be so negative here lately, but this is just real life for us these days. I must say that we had some WONDERFUL time in January that may not have gotten ALL of the blog attention that it deserved, so please don't think this has been all bad. It's been mostly amazing, but these days seem to be 90% bad...haha.

Days have been really trying for a couple of weeks now, but they seem to only be escalating recently. Yesterday, we started the day with no toys...every last one had been taken away the day before. First thing in the morning, K-man created a battle over a bowl of cereal that turned into hitting me, hitting my husband, biting my husband, throwing a glass coaster, screaming, etc. We had to put him in his room to calm down, where he almost beat down the door. Good morning!

I was at the end of my rope. My patience was just about gone, so I called and was able to take K-man to our foster agency for the morning. I poured my heart out to my (practically) extended family over there, and then I had a couple of hours to run errands and decompress. Then we came home, and I told him (by recommendation from the agency) that he would be visiting his momma after nap time. He threw his, now typical, nap-time fit, so I walked away and closed the door -vowing to him that I would not come back in the room until nap time was over. Then, I got to listen to shoes being thrown at the bedroom door for 2 hours. At 2:30, before a slated 3pm pick-up for visitation, I got a phone call that said visitation would not occur. My emotions went crazy...angry at k-man's disrespect, sobbing over the fact that they would not be visiting with mom and I would have to break the news, angry at their mom, honestly ready to throw up my hands and quit, secretly hoping that they would go home Thursday although I knew it was not best for the boys. When nap time was over, to add insult to injury, K-man was pretty much laughing in my face for the rest of the afternoon. A dear friend came over to help me survive...haha! And as soon as bed time hit, my mother-in-law came so that my husband and I could get out of the house.

We went to dinner, prayed, and talked, and my heart began to soften. Here was my struggle...up until this point, I found it rather easy to forgive K-man's bad behaviors and move on, because I was consistently hearing a very sincere "I'm sorry," after disciplining him. Even if it happened again, I knew his heart was being molded. These days, I rarely get "I'm sorry." most often, I get disrespectful laughter in my face. My strong-willed self was (is) having a hard time not just continually punishing K-man all day for his actions that morning...or even the night before! I was holding an angry grudge, and i could not let it go! The Lord called to mind the aforementioned scripture, and all of a sudden it had an even deeper meaning. All of a sudden, I was brought to my knees in gratitude for the overwhelming love of my heavenly Father, and I thought to myself, how can I best picture the gospel for K-man right now?

So...fast forward to this morning...I helped him get ready with the loving, joyful spirit I remembered showing him before this madness, and he disrespected me like crazy...talked about hitting me and laughed like crazy. We made cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and he grumbled and complained about having to wait - trying to pick fights all along. My husband stayed home from work, and we went to a place with inflatables, trampolines, and a rope swing. We gave so much grace today, I don't even have words to express it. We went to McDonald's for lunch (HUGE treat in our house)! For many reasons, we tried our very hardest to make today a good day. Was it perfect? Hardly. Was it helpful? Hard to say, but what I do know is that if K-man goes home after court tomorrow, he will know one thing for certain - in our home he was loved in a radical way. He was loved dearly despite every effort he made to pull away.

I clung to this scripture today, because I needed to know that His mercy for me was brand new today, and I needed to know that my mercies needed to be TRULY renewed toward this boy as a reflection of Christ's love for him.

Please pray for all involved tomorrow. I will be a basket case at the end of the day - regardless of the outcome. I know that the boys do not need to go live with their mom right now, so if they do, I will cry like a baby. I also do not have any desire to endure much longer in this state of existence, so if they stay, I will cry like a baby as I look out over a seemingly impossible task. However, His promises remain the same, and we will remain faithful to the task At hand until He removes it from our hands, and we will try to consider it pure joy as we face trials of many kinds. I will update when I am able. Pray that His hand is on the decision made as well as the process and timing of it all. Thanks to all of you.

Testing, testing, testing

That is the name of the game at our house these days. For the past couple of weeks (ever since K-man and B-boy resumed visits with mom, coincidentally), we have been struggling with stubborn, defiant, and sometimes violent behavior from K-man. It's been challenging, to say the least, and I felt the need to write about it.

We're learning that, although the wonderfully compliant behavior was amazing in the beginning, it was most likely born out of fear and anxiety, and potentially not a healthy thing in the long run. What we have now is a child who is learning that he is loved and who is testing my husband and I to see if we really will be patient with him and continue to love him, despite his poor behavior. Now, he's not able to articulate this, and he probably isn't even aware he's doing it, but our challenge is to continue to be firm and draw hard boundaries while still communicating love and patience. I've not had my own, biological kids, but I imagine that this is a good bit more difficult with foster kids than with biological kids. I do not have a true mother-son bond with K-man, so to be quite honest, there are times when I find it very difficult to love him - sometimes difficult to like him at all. While I know biological moms probably have similar feelings from time to time, you most likely still have a mother-son bond that pulls you to your child (shared experiences, memories of birth and infancy, etc.) We don't have that, and it makes it hard to press on sometimes.

The biggest challenge we're facing is choosing our battles. With our biological kids, we will not tolerate much of the attitude and argumentative disrespect that we must tolerate with K-man at this point. With K-man, we're having to start at square one, "You may not ever hit or bite anyone." We try to tackle the others as we can, but honestly, when he gets angry and storms off, we consider that a huge victory right now...no hitting = success!

We had recently come to a point where we were able to work on other issues such as immediate obedience and attitudes, but we've since taken two steps back now that visits have resumed and the hitting has returned. Recently, along with the increased acting out, we've noticed some really unusual comments and conversations that indicate a lot of real wrestling in K-man's heart. Just this afternoon, when we were putting him down for his nap, he had a mood swing that looked like it was about to escalate. On a whim, my amazing husband asked, "K-man, why don't you want to go to bed?" K-man simply said, "Because I wanna see my momma." "I know, buddy. Let's pray for her." And we did, and he instantly calmed and went to sleep.

So there's the challenge...always trying to decipher how to respond to these mood swings. Please pray for us - that we will point to the gospel, that we ourselves will cling to the Truth of the gospel, that He will give us patience and gentleness and abundant grace, while also showing us how to discipline. We have some new strategies to try today. We would welcome any feedback from you other foster moms out there.

Last matter of prayer is the boys' upcoming court date this Thursday, February 23rd. The boys do not have to attend, but they could still likely go home, in which case we would pack their things and take them to an office to meet their mom and go home. I don't even know how to ask you to pray. Our emotions are so all over the place now, that we don't even know what we want or need. Just pray that the Lord's hand would be on this whole process, that His Holy Spirit would give us peace, and that we will rest in His sovereignty no matter what may come.

Happy birthday, Miss M!!

Ok...so this one really makes my brain hurt! The 2-month-old baby who I was awake with 3 times every night...swaddling, barely moving, learning to smile...is one year old today! I am fervently praying for that girl today and always -that she is as loved as ever, that the Lord is protecting both her and her momma, that she is healthy, and that the Lord's hand will be on her every day of her life - bringing her to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

Miss M, I love you, girl! Looking at photos and videos of you today and thanking Him for creating you and blessing us with you for one sweet month of your life!