.30 cent dishes and 28 bottles of lotion

in preparation for the impending (sometime in the next six months) arrival of our (for a time) little boy (or girl, or boys and girls), we have had to take on every single room of our house. yesterday, i bought cute sailboat dishes at michael's for .30 cents each, because apparently kids break glass ones? today im cleaning out the hallway bathroom (formally known as my bathroom, home of 28 bottles of lotion). kidproofing a house is not for the faint at heart. especially if you have never met the kid and have no idea what age they are or if they have a history of vandalizing or pica (eating non-food materials). try it sometime. the anticipation is ridiculous. and you have no idea what youre anticipating until they get here. imagine being pregnant and maybe youre having a little baby but maybe youre having two 7 year old boys. its kind of like that. ambigous love that can only currently be expressed through sorting through every toxic item you own and only keeping what can fit in a small locked closet.

on foster parenting

there is a little boy who lives in my mind and probably in my city. there are moments when i think i know his name and face. when i pass kids in the hallways of my school, i wonder if he looks like them. i wonder if he is them.

i know that he is broken.

i know that we are being called to hold him until he is whole again.

i know that since we started the process of getting our foster care license last week, i can think of little else. 

there is a pile of rocket ships and dinosaurs and snowboard pjs. there is a list of 38 things that have to happen before we are able to take a child into our home. 

i baked pumpkin bread yesterday, because moms do stuff like that. 

foster parenting is tricky and right. it is what we are being called to do, and somebody will get hurt because in foster parenting, somebody always loses. i hope to do everything in my power to make sure that somebody is not an innocent little boy. (or girl, or sibling pair) 

what a wild life!

I just haven't met you yet.

Has nobody noticed that Michael Buble was totally talking about foster parenting/ adoption when he wrote this:

"I might have to wait, I’ll never give up
I guess it's half timin and the other half's luck
Wherever you are, whenever it's right
You'll come outta nowhere and into my life

And I know that we can be so amazin
And baby your love is gonna change me
And now I can see every possibility

Somehow I know that it’ll all turn out
You'll make me work so we can work to work it out
And promise you kid I'll give so much more than I get
I just haven't met you yet"

 

on migraines

the years that ive gotten migraines have officially outnumbered the years that ive spent without them. this means that the majority of my life has been dictated by the possible invasion of a migraine. i have tried prayer, chiropractors, brain scans, food journals, bathing in epsom salts, pain medication, prevention medication, vitamins, and botox. all of which have changed the lives of other migraine sufferers, and none of which have had a significant affect on me. i spent all night and all day in bed trying to will my migraine away. because of botox (yes! botox. fda approved for migraines as of april!), my migraines have decreased from 4 times a month, to two times a month. 

im writing this because my goal is to be migraine free by april of 2012.

im still alive!

i lived through my 25th year of life!!!!!! this is a huge victory. there has never been a bumpy, more turbulent year in all of my existence. this may be my biggest accomplishment yet. i think 26 will be the part that comes after the climax where everything is calm and all of the lose ends start to tie together. hooray for 26!

on restoration

one of my sweet students passed away on saturday. draven was a beautiful child, who was very sick and missed a lot of school. the few times that he came to school, he was delightful and brought joy to those around him. he was in a wheelchair, had vision and hearing problems, was non-verbal, and ate through a tube. in these moments, and all of the moments where my students are in pain or at a disadvantage, i praise god for restoration and the promise of heaven. there is nothing that gets my tear ducts going faster than the image of my sweet kiddos dancing and rejoicing with Jesus. many of us have moments of fullness or completion in this life, but many of the students in my class never do. they are born into broken bodies or minds, having to wait on the people around them to somehow meet their needs. im thinking about draven this morning, as god has restored him and he is full and free from the bindings of this life. thank you, sweet boy, for drawing me closer to jesus. i will never forget your smile and laugh.

integrity

i am in almost exactly the same place that i was in four years ago- in 2007, i wrote this:

 

being pure in heart is the single most important thing to me. people seem so fixated on what the rest of the world thinks of them, of their actions, their motives, the things they do that are seen. i think that integrity, and the purity that goes alongside it are much more valuable than public opinion. i love the way Mother Theresa says that if God calls her to clean toilets, that she will do it with as much passion and honor as if He had called her to witness to the president, or when Martin Luther King says that if you're called to be a streetsweeper, to be the best streetsweeper you can be. i dont care what anyone else thinks about my vocation, my marriage, or my ministry, as long as God sees where my heart is, the rest is just the opinion of men. every relationship i have, every "act of service" i do has nothing to do with the other people involved, it has to do with my relationship with my Creator at the time that i do them. when it comes down to it, at the end of my life i am not going to face my friends, or the people i work for, or even my husband...everything that i have ever done is going to be stripped down to the condition of my heart when i did it. i want to do everything to Him, for Him, and with Him.