An Unexpected Journey

So I took a road trip with just my girls for spring break to visit their grandparents and family in Alabama.   It's  barely lunch time and already the adventures have begun!  It only took Abby about twenty minutes to get her hand stuck in a mouse trap at her great grandmothers house today.  Thank goodness it was only the kind the mouse sticks to and not the metal one that breaks fingers! So it took us a lot of hand washing to get all the sticky poison off those little fingers and especially that thumb she still likes to suck...  Never mind that I am a speech therapist and I can tell this thumb sucking is doing bad things to her mouth! But the one that takes the cake was when mom and I were dressing the twins this morning and Maddie Grace, who had only left the room for a minute, comes walking back in with her face stuck down in the bottom side of a plunger!!  Ughhh!  Oh the things I will have to tell them when they are teens!  You should have se...

"Mommy I'm poopy. Change me." I sigh and start to change my now three year old's diaper. We just can't seem to conquer this potty training thing. We are trying everything... sticker charts, m&m's, wearing panties for days, setting a timer to keep our potty times regular, watching potty time Elmo dvd's over and over. At a friend's suggestion, I have even tried making the twins wash out their own poopy panties in the toilet! They were grossed out, but obviously not enough to bring change. So when I open this kid's pull-up, I am surprised. It is clean and empty except for a small Winnie the Pooh toy. I pull it out and say, "Baby, you aren't dirty, this is just a toy in your pants." To which she responds with uproarious laughter, "But Mommy, I pooped a "Pooh!" Oh. My. Surely if you are old enough to be this witty, you are old enough to use a potty!!! I admit I did get a good laugh though... If ...

This session of the conference was titled, “The Agony of Defeat.”  The speaker talked about praying for God to heal people.  Most of the time we hear the miracle stories, but this time he only told stories of when God didn’t heal.  He didn’t offer platitudes or try to explain away the irony.  He simply said Christ says we must take up our cross daily and follow him.  This speaker believes that the cross we must carry if we are willing to pray in faith for people to be healed is the pain and disappointment that comes inevitably when some are not healed.   Many of the stories he told were of children who continued to suffer or even die after receiving prayer for healing.  In every story I was the parent.   Because I am that parent.  I had believed for a solid hour with all my heart after the accident that God would raise Makiah from the dead, if she was indeed dead.  I just knew all the healing stories I had read were in me for faith ...

A dear friend sent me a photo today of a bubbling brook and peaceful rushing waters.   She texted me “as I watched the crisp fresh water bubbling from that spring it reminded me of Makiah, and I grasped my necklace of her Living Water Well that I wear 99.9% of the time.   It made me smile as I remembered all the sweet little girls that are now able to go to school and live somewhat normal lives because of Makiah’s dream.   This photo makes me happy and helps me to remember her beauty.   It has no filter or editing, simply God’s creation in all its splendor.”   Tears sprang to my eyes.   Happy tears that Makiah still comes to my friend’s mind.   Joy that the money Makiah gave from her piggy bank shortly before her death to help build a well at church has multiplied into many wells.   And amazement that this text came today, when today was the day I planned to blog about all the new wells! Yes there are more!   There are elev...

This blog has been about sharing my journey.   Being vulnerable.   There was a time when I needed to scream my pain to the world.   Not so much now.   I tend to find myself wanting to wait to write about things until they are resolved.   Perfect.   Or at least not so messy.   But the truth is we all wade through messy in one way or another.   And sometimes we might need to know we are not alone in our uncertainty. So here is a peek at my messiness… and the reason why I have been tired and nauseated and slower to blog than I should be! There is only one color that every pregnant woman dreads, even if secretly.   And one   Tuesday night a few weeks ago it showed up out of no where.   We were eight weeks pregnant and had just seen the newbie (yes, baby number 5!!)   on ultrasound for the first time a few days before.   Every thing had seemed perfect.   But now it seemed almost certain I was miscarrying.   I ...

The sky grew black as the eastern hemisphere   rotated into the darkness.   Away from the light of the sun the night became cold.   The hearts had grown cold long ago.   Plunged into darkness by a wayward choice.   A stretch for power beyond ourselves. A taste had sentenced the generations to darkness of heart and coldness of spirit that even the   warm morning sun   could not drive away. Except that night there was a rather brilliant star intruding on the inky blackness.   The   dazzling twinkle taunted its pale brothers in the sky.   And it drew the eye.   Captured the gaze.   And for centuries before there had been twinkles of light that seemed to point the way.   Signs of hope given in the midst of despair.   The light of miracles and divine intervention.   Dotting history, they had grabbed the heart and drawn the gaze.   Illuminating the path and giving hope of ...

I have had one Thanksgiving with Maddie Grace, two with the twins, Abby and Alena, and four with Makiah.  I don’t know what it is about the holidays that makes us want to look back.  I guess memories of love and togetherness, good food and fun all roll up into a sort of intangible slice of heaven.  Despite the chaos  and perhaps even wreckage we may pull those memories from.   I mean its messy down here for sure.  Just in our family this week my grandmother had emergency brain surgery (she is doing great though).  My parents new house didn’t get built in time for us to get into it until this afternoon despite my mom’s lovely plans of being settled in weeks ago.  Two of the four littles here with the family have been sick so we are quarantined from the older folks and other littles.  Even though we are here in Alabama, we will likely need to have a separate Thanksgiving and miss out on visiting.  I mean, it’s just plain messy.  ...