Hair Cuts, Anyone????

Several days ago after continuous urging by my wonderful husband over the past two years, I took the plunge and gave the three little boys a hair cut. I don't know why I have never learned to do this. It is not like we have a shortage of boy heads to learn on. It is just the learning part of it I was afraid of. After all, it would not be me who would have to have a horrible looking hair cut. It was also a pride issue because I enjoy my children looking nice and neat when we are out and about. However, with the slow down in the economy, multiple adoption fees and college tuition, we have lost our pride and are cutting corners wherever we can. My wonderful husband works in the building industry running a window and door factory and people are just not buying right now. Thankfully, the company he works for is stable and they have been earning enough to cover pay roll and bills. Praises sent up above for this because Paul has people call him every day looking for work.

Sooo, let's get back to the topic. I decided I could do this. However, my little boys picked up on the fact that I was nervous about it and decided that they would not do this. It was quite humorous watching them run in the opposite direction as I got out the clippers and read the directions. My devoted and loving Patrick did not let Mommy down. He offered himself up to be the first guinea pig. The first picture directly above is of him on the way to the hypothetical guilllotine. Once Phillip and Jeremiah saw that Patrick had survived and didn't look too bad, they took the plunge. I only included the top picture of Jeremiah pouting because it showed the finished product. I even have some of the older boys asking me to give them a trim.

Next project ........learning to make my own laundry soap beause there's a whole lot of washin' goin' on around here. Does anybody have any other thrifty ideas??

All Grown Up

I couldn't resist posting the top picture. We gave Joshua a spoon and he knew exactly what to do with it. I love the expression on his face. The next picture is of our oldest son, Matt and our youngest, Joshua. There are 18 years between the two of them. The next picture is of our second oldest son, Zack and Jeremiah on Zack's 16th birthday last week. He let Jer blow out a candle. In searching for pictures of my girls, I realized they have been dodging the camera. I told them to watch out that I would be hunting them down.

Our oldest son, Matt, got his welcome packet for college this past week. He leaves August 29 for a small liberal arts college up north. It suddenly hit me that he would be gone. I mean as in 11 hours away gone. He is our first to fly the nest. Next year, Zack will be graduating our homeschool. The year after that will be Melissa's turn and the year after that will be Sherita's. The one thing that keeps going through my head is have we prepared them for the world. After all these years of homeschooling, it is time to let go. I never thought I would be one of those clingy mothers who would have a difficult time seeing their children grow up and leave home, but I understand now. Raising children is an intense labor of love if you do it the way God intends. I pray for the grace and wisdom to help my children make the transition into adulthood and to encourage them to stay on the narrow path that leads to true happiness.

Images of God

I have been meditating lately on how we are all images of God. We are all made in His image. Red, yellow, black or white, we are all reflections of our Creator. In Genesis, we are told how He created humankind in His own image. It brings me back to this, "and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?' He said to him, ' "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets.' Matthew 22:35-40 So, essentially, we are called to see God in all those around us and love them selflessly. This can truly be a test of our faith because if we wholly and faithfully love our God, then it should reflect in our treatment of those around us. I use this with my children often. I encourage them to see their siblings as images of God and to love them selflessly. I will jokingly say to them, "That is not your little brother on the potty waiting to be wiped, that is Jesus!" It often makes those unpleasant tasks so much easier because we are doing them out of love for our Lord.

I have often been asked by acquaintances how I get my children to be so helpful. This is the result of years of training. We are called to, "Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray." Proverbs 22:6 I do not encourage them to seek employment in their high school years, but to seek service opportunities. Our oldest son, Matt, just finished high school with over six hundred service hours. Society encourages our teenagers to be incredibly focused on themselves. We have taught them from a very young age to have the heart of a servant and to be focused on the needs of others. Our Savior became a servant and sacrificed His life on the cross for us, so who are we to consider ourselves to be too good to humble ourselves.

Most years we attend the March for Life in Washington, DC. It is held on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade which is in January. Thousands and thousands of people invade our nation's capital and stand around for hours in what is usually the freezing cold waiting for the march to start. Before the march, we usually try to attend the youth mass held at the Verizon Center. One year, Steve Agrisano, who is a Christian music performer shared a story told to him by a close friend. This friend felt called to go and serve with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. He was disappointed to discover that Mother was out of the country when he arrived. He spent two weeks helping in one of the houses, but had never gone out into the street to do direct care of the poor. On his last day in Calcutta, there was a knock on the door to his room and he opened it and was surprised to see Mother Teresa standing there. She told him to come with her and he obediently followed. She took him out into the streets of Calcutta. They quickly came upon a man lying in his own filth in the street. He appeared close to death. Mother asked Steve's friend to pick the beggar up and despite his reservations, he obeyed. When they arrived back, Mother Teresa instructed him to bathe the man and make him comfortable. He gently bathed the man's emaciated body and picked him up out of the tub and wrapped him in a towel. He looked into the man's face and the man opened his eyes for the first time and then it was no longer the beggar's face he saw, but the face of Christ. He was shaken and overwhelmed by what he had seen. He sat in a rocking chair and rocked the man and as he did so, the poor man took his last breath and died. Mother Teresa came back in the room. She looked at him still holding the poor beggar in his lap and said, "You saw Him, didn't you?" His reply was a simple, "Yes." May we all be called to see the face of Christ in those around us.

Working Man

Our oldest son, Matt, recently started working at a local grocery store. He is heading off to college this Fall and is saving every penny for his college tuition. The years have flown by and I cannot believe he is finally "grown up". I remember when he was born, I never thought past that newborn stage. Look at him now. He towers over me and is quite pleased by this. He calls me "short" all the time and will put his arm around me and peer down at me.

Matt helped with a talk we gave on adoption at our church earlier this year. He started his part by saying, "My parents have five teenagers, three preschoolers and a nine year old right now, so any prayers you might want to throw their way would be greatly appreciated." The congregation laughed. Matt has always been supportive of our adoptions. In fact, most of our children say they hope to adopt some day. How incredible would that be if adoption became a muti-generational tradition for our family!

Here is a humorous anecdote. A co-worker of Matt's saw him come into the store on his day off with his sister, Melissa. Well, next time Matt was working with this young man, he asked Matt if the girl with him that day was his girlfriend. Matt said, "No, that was my sister." The young man said, "Oh, I see the resemblance now." (I can only assume this resemblance was that they both have curly hair.) Matt replied to his co-worker, "She's adopted." The young man then said a bit embarassed, "OK, I'll just shut up now." I thought this was very cute.

Caleb's 10th Birthday

No deep thoughts this time. I just wanted to share these great pictures I took at the local pool where Caleb celebrated his 10th birthday with some of his buddies. Everybody had a great time and the weather was gorgeous. I love the picture of Joshua with his Daddy. Paul kept tickling him on his back. Patrick has become quite the daredevil in the pool. He loves the water and it is even better when your big brother can throw you around. Melissa was helping Jeremiah learn to paddle. He is not too sure about not being able to touch the bottom. I can't believe Caleb is 10 years old. Time flies by so quickly. Thank you God for the privilege of raising these children for you. Thank you for my incredible husband.

"Do small things with great love."

I keep running into Mother Theresa. I ran into her in a book store a couple of days ago and I ran into her online today on another blog I read. I also ran into her during a conversation with a friend this morning. At the book store, I bought her book, Total Surrender, and they also had a little plaque which I did not purchase that had a quote from her on it. Mother Theresa left us many wise gems to ponder, but this one we have adopted as our family motto-"Do small things with great love." In my conversation with my friend on the phone this morning she shared another. I do not remember the exact wording, but it went something like this-A worldly person (a reporter probably) asked Mother how she expected to make any difference in the whole scheme of things because of course, the efforts of she and her Missionaries of Charity would not end hunger, poverty and sickness in India. Her reply to this person was that her Lord did not require her to be "successful", but only to be faithful. Here is a quote from Total Surrender that inspired me, "There is so much unhappiness, so much misery everywhere. Our human nature stays with us from beginning to end. We must work hard every day to conquer ourselves. We must learn to be meek and humble of heart. Let us try to give everything to Jesus, use my eyes, my ears, my feet!" When people ask Paul or I, "How do you do it?' It is not us and this is hard for the world to comprehend. Use me Lord, use my eyes, my ears, my feet. Help me to avoid the sin of pride. Help me to teach these children to be filled with your joy-to know and love and serve you.

Triplets??????

These are our three "little" boys-Phillip, Jeremiah and Patrick. I guess this makes the baby our tiny boy. This picture was taken about 6 months after we adopted the twins-Patrick and Phillip. Jeremiah was a little over 2 years old and the twins are about 3 1/2 years old in this picture. Considering that Jeremiah has always been a little ahead developmentally and the twins have been catching up developmentally, it is definitely like having triplets. I call them my multi-racial triplets. I would probably call them bi-racial triplets, but this brings to mind children of mixed African American and Caucasian heritage. So, I settled on the term multi-racial.

When we first brought the twins home, Jeremiah was sooooo jealous of them. Patrick was terrified of Jer because he would show his displeasure as any not-too-verbal toddler would-with his fists and his teeth. We had to watch him like a hawk. Not too long after the twins came home, Paul called me into the family room. He thought it was quite funny. The three little boys were sitting on the couch watching a pre-school show-well, Jeremiah was watching the show. The twins were watching Jeremiah. I can only describe their expressions by comparing them to the villagers in a Godzilla movie waiting for the monster to pounce. They were plastered to one end and Jer sat oblivious on the other end of the couch.

Now, they love each other so much. The twins are taking up for themselves and holding their own against Jeremiah. I rejoice in this because it says they feel comfortable to be themselves. They have formed and are continuing to form attachments. When they were smaller, I used to call them the three stooges with Jeremiah being Moe, the bossy one. Now, I call them the three musketeers-all for one and one for all. It has truly been a joy to watch their relationships with each other develop. I am so happy we were able to give them the gift of brotherhood.

Total Surrender

I read another adoption blog called Transformed from Glory to Glory. It is also a blog about a large adoptive family. They are missionaries in Africa. I have been really inspired by this woman's goal of total surrender to God. This idea also came up in a bible study I have been participating in last night. A good friend also recently lent me a little book called Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence-The Secret of Peace and Happiness. Oh! I get it God. You don't have to hit me on the head with it. Alright, I am paying attention now, Lord. What does total surrender look like? How do we go about it? Total surrender is letting go of our self-righteousness and pride and bending our will to God's will. Not a real popular thought in today's world because it's all supposed to be about ME, right?? Am I getting fulfilled? Are my needs getting met?? The world tells us this and they have absolutely no idea that this is the direct antithesis to true happiness. It is only by serving others and trying your utmost to do God's will on earth that you will ever get anywhere near true happiness here on the earthly plain. This was brought home to us with our latest adoption of our son, Joshua. We had been waiting for a year for a special needs placement when we realized we would have to use the money set aside for his placement fee to do a major repair on our home. So, I thought it is good we haven't heard anything because we don't have the money right now. Well, lo and behold, as soon as I thought this our social worker called us about Joshua. He has some issues with his brain and they said his prognosis was unknown. We called our social worker back with a definite yes thinking we would probably finance the placement fee. This all came about at the beginning of this year when banks were tightening up their lending policies and our credit union turned us down even though our credit is pretty good. Maybe I shouldn't have told the loan officer the purpose of the loan was so we could adopt our tenth child!! Ha! Ha! Well, a friend put out a fund raising e-mail for us and we raised $725 and I was so thankful. Then, a couple of weeks later a distant relative felt called to send us $1000 not even realizing that we needed the money for our adoption. Then, on Easter our pastor asked for donations for us and raised another $2500 for us. I was in tears and so overwhelmed with thankfulness. I thought we can do this, we will figure out the rest Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Well, He wasn't done with us yet. An anonymous benefactor came forward with the balance of the placement fee which was $8000. As the friend who dropped off the check sat in our family room visiting with me, our social worker called to tell me she was supposed to call me last week to tell us she needed the balance of the placement fee by the next day. She was very apologetic. I told her there was no problem. I would drop off the check tomorrow. I was smiling to myself as I got off the phone because I know why I didn't get that call from her the previous week. God did not want us to worry. He had it all figured out for us. We were surrendering to His will. We were doing His work. He would take care of us. A couple of weeks ago, I took Joshua to Johns Hopkins to see a pediatric neurologist. He said Joshua looks great and so far, we don't see any delays or problems from the issues he has with his brain. His sweet personality lights up a room. As my friend, Tam says, he is a total distraction. All smiles and cheerful sounds. So, what does total surrender look like?? For our family, right now it looks like a little boy named Joshua.

Brotherly Love

One of the questions I have been asked in the past is if our children truly consider each other brothers and sisters. I believe these pictures say it all. I have to admit that I have honestly never been offended by ANY question a stranger has asked me about our children or our family in general. I view these as opportunities to share about adoption. I have lost count of the number of people who have said to me that they always wanted to adopt, but didn't know quite where to start. Maybe hearing a little of our story will encourage them to persevere. All the work involved in a home study is more than worth the effort. "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."Matthew 18:5