Weekly Carter Highlights

This week has been a fun eventful week for my Carter Barter and I thought I'd capture my favorite weekly carter memories :) 

This week Carter had been making some comments about salvation and I could tell he was a bit confused. I decided to clearly tell him the plan of salvation without asking him to make a decision and just let the Holy Spirit work from there. After I talked about it he said he wanted to pray and become a Christian, so I asked him questions to assess his comprehension. He was hesitant on praying so I told him that he didn't have to do it right then and we would wait til he was ready. Later that night he came tiptoeing into my room and told me he was ready :) We prayed together and he asked Christ into his heart. Its neat to see Christ working in his little life :)

One of my favorite Carter comments of the week: 

Carter "Mommy I know why girls do not have beards."

Me (anxiously awaiting his logical explanation) "Why is that?"

Carter "because they use those shaver things"

Me "ohhh, so they shave them off?"

Carter "yes"

Favorite Creation: Carter was able to participate in Operation Christmas Child, where we picked out items to donate to children around the world for Christmas. Carter wanted to decorate his shoebox, and well... I just didn't think that needed to be supervised. I came into the kitchen to see this...

I thought he had drawn the devil on the box, but he assured me it was a jack-o-lantern... so much better right :P

He then proceeded to add this note to the top of it...

                                                               (Jesus is good to you)

And completed it with this...

                                                                (tic tac toe templates)

Favorite Outfit creation of the week:

Proud mommy moment:

Love this little boy :)

Ideals and Grace

Here recently I have been plagued with guilt. There is a certain way in my mind I have decided my life must be. For example I've decided that I will be the best parent I can possibly be. Everything you say a mom is supposed to be I will be. Therefore I think I'm supposed to single handedly do homework with my kids, read to them at night, have conversations with them about school, play games with them, play with them outside, and cultivate a relationship between them and God (I've given up on the whole fixing dinner thing.. and don't really feel guilty about that one :P).

Then I just can't do it- I try and I can't- I usually ask the boys' daddy to help out- Then I'm filled with guilt- Which typically causes me to avoid the Lord-Then I resolve to try harder. And so the cycle goes on...

I typically get frustrated when people tell me that I need to simply pray for God to help me. In my mind I interpret that to mean that my life can be the idealistic way I want it to be if I just prayed. I know its not possible to be all those things, so I typically don't pray for God to give me the grace and power I need. I just try REALLY REALLY hard.

It hit me at church yesterday that I am trying to do this all on my own. I've got this attitude that everyone is depending on me and its up to me to be the mother my kids need.... going a little deeper I also feel like its up to me to be a good daughter of Christ. He needs me to not mess up my walk with Him again. But it doesn't work like that. He wants me to empty myself and admit that that even my best for Him is filthy. What if when I sinned and didn't measure up as a mother or as God's daughter... I came to Christ and simply told Him that I needed Him... I didn't resolve to be an ideal... but simply admitted what I was and asked for His grace and power... and got right back up? I don't want it to give me an excuse to sin and be a lousy parent, but it does give me a sense of freedom. It takes the pressure off ME a bit and gives me excitement to see how HE is going to work through me...

Wacky Tacky Day

Thank you everyone for your sweet words of encouragement after yesterday's blog. I was able to go out to dinner with Tabatha last night and had a break from life for a while while she counseled me :) We actually came to some awesome conclusions about what God is up to in my life and how to handle this season...you will hear all about it later :) So thankful for her :)

So today started out on a humorous note and I thought it was worth blogging about :) Today my children were able to participate in wacky tacky day at school. It was cute seeing how excited they were about this day. Carter typically will not participate in any kind of dress up activity...let me rephrase...any PUBLIC dress up activity ;) But he was excited about dressing up today and even told me all about the out fit he would put together last night. 

I decided I would let them just go at it. I didn't want to interfere and thought this would be a good time to express their creativity. Carter was fine. He thought he was EXTREMELY wacky....but not really...shh don't tell him that ;) 

Quinton...bless his heart....Despite my determination to not interfere, I still definitely had to interfere...

Outfit #1
Quinton walks out of his room with his batman easter basket on his head...that didn't really fit on his head...with batman protruding from the back of his head- I tried to very sweetly tell him that I didn't think his teacher would like that

Outfit #2
Quinton walks out of his room with a pair of underwear on his head- Me "seriously... you seriously want to wear that to school?..... no..... I just can't let you do that"

Outfit #3
Quinton comes out with a couple of t-shirts hanging off his arms. Me "honey, I.... I....I just can't let you wear that.. you won't be able to write with those hanging from your arms"

Outfit #4
The T-shirts are now hanging off his legs. Me "Go change"

Outfit #5

Perfect :)

We pulled up to school and the blessed child had forgotten his book bag. When I scolded him for forgetting it he told me "I was just soooo excited about wacky tacky day. I was just thinking about how this is the best day ever and it made me forgot about my book bag." Needless to say, I think he is going to have a good day :)

Tantrums

This past week, really the past couple of months, have.been.hard. Typing that feels like quite the understatement. People ask me how I'm doing and I just don't think they'd understand, nor could handle me explaining how crazy life is right now....so I simply smile and say I've been busy. They reply that they are busy too and I force myself to empathize with them... and shove my anxiety and overwhelmedness (pretty sure I just made that word up :P) down and try to ignore it. I guess I've figured accepting it will only cause me to be incredibly sad and angry, so I choose not to accept it. I'm realizing that's pretty dysfunctional and is a sinful strategy as choose to not be vulnerable and expose my pain in order to keep people from hurting/rejecting me. It is also creating bitterness inside of me as I'm disappointed with people for not being there for me. 

So with that said the past few months Kydon has been difficult to deal with. When I pick him up from preschool It feels like he has one long tantrum til bed time. I know something is wrong but I can't figure out what it is. His reflux has been worse, and I want to blame the tantrums on that, but honestly I don't think that is what it is. I know part of it has to do with development. He can't communicate well and he will scream the few words that he knows to tell me what he wants. But honestly I just don't know what is going on. 

I have tried to disassociate my feelings from his tantrums and just mechanically deal with them. I will seriously loose my mind if I think about them too much and become angry. Inevitably I'll hit my breaking point from time to time and take a "mommy time out". Yesterday was awful. I finally accepted my frustration and had a tantrum with the Lord. Why....why, why, why do I have to deal with this!!! My life is seriously already incredibly hard!!! What are you thinking Lord? Aren't you supposed to be good?! Honestly I'm still trying to figure this out. This isn't the first time I've felt this way and I know that God was working in my life in the past when I felt surrounded by chaos. That gives me hope that I'll be able to look back at this time in my life and know that He was actively involved and working His plan in my life. I just want some sweet assurance right now that He is for me...that he is rooting for me. I heard this song, Not For a Moment by Meredith Andrews, on the radio and it has been my rock the past few days:

                                                                         You were reaching through the storm 

walking on the water 

even when I could not see 

in the middle of it all 

when I thought You were a thousand miles away 

not for a moment did You forsake me 

not for a moment did You forsake me 

after all You are constant 

after all You are only good 

after all You are sovereign 

not for a moment will You forsake me 

not for a moment will You forsake me 

You were singing in the dark 

whispering Your promise 

even when I could not hear 

I was held in Your arms 

carried for a thousand miles to show 

Not for a moment did You forsake me 

and every step every breath you are there 

every tear every cry every prayer 

in my heart at my worst 

when my world falls down 

not for a moment will You forsake me 

even in the dark 

even when it's hard 

you will never leave me 

after all 

not for a moment will You forsake me

Good stuff right?! I can't say that I am now in perfect peace with my circumstances, but I do know with assurance that I'll be able to look back on this stage of my life and see God's hand even though I can't see it right now.

musings on single parenting

I am amazed at how much my thinking and views have been transformed in the last 5 to 10 years. When you turn 20 you think you have gotten this thing called life figured out. You think Christianity is black and white and that there must be a set/default answer and solution for every problem that comes in life. I personally thought as I matured in my walk with God I would learn all of these default answers and my Bible would essentially become my reference book. Larry Crabb calls this recipe theology, where we treat the Bible like a recipe book. Yes there are definite answers and solutions within the Bible that we are commanded to follow, but there are some topics that are not so black and white. We are forced to become completely dependent on the leading of the Holy Spirit to direct and guide us to His will for our own personal life.

One of the ignorant conclusions I had come to when I was younger is that churches should not reach out to single moms. I remember hearing about a single mom's outreach ministry on the radio and being filled with a wave of judgement. They should not be reaching out to those in sin. It almost sounded like they were supporting single moms. Yes if you were a single mom during this stage in my life I probably had mentally cast some judgment on you :P

Oh, how the Lord has transformed my thinking. But He hasn't given me a new set of default answers to my thinking. I'm realizing that there are some topics that just aren't answered in the Bible. One of these topics pertains to single mothers. Previously this was a "black" area. Single moms...bad. Marriage....good. Maybe there were some women that couldn't prevent becoming single mothers, but surely they could have prevented getting in bad relationship. If they became pregnant and didn't get married...that was their fault. If they got married and their marriage failed...they could have somehow prevented that. I now see that my error was in believing that we as humans have to power to control others and our circumstances. I now realized that we don't. God was the perfect father and husband, but Israel still rebelled against Him. Would we dare say to God, maybe if you were just a little more gracious to them they would have remained true to you? or "if you could have just showed them a little more tough love...?"

 And then God took me off my prideful throne and I become one of those single moms. I became frustrated with people who judge or stereotype single moms. I'm finding people/churches reach out to them because they see them in sin. My skin cringes when I hear people say that they will reach out to single moms because they are in a ditch (implied that they have fallen into sin). I've realized there isn't a default answer to this topic. Yes, some single moms are rebelling against the Lord. Yes, some married women are rebelling against the Lord. We can't put a "good" and "bad" label these categories. I get frustrated and worked up over the judgmental views of single parenting, then the Lord ever so gently reminds me that this was me 7 years ago! I wish I could go back in time and explain 20 year old me why single mom's need to be reached out to and supported. What reasons would I give you ask? Stayed tuned and find out... ;)

Random memory of the day

Today I was sitting at Panera Bread attempting to get some work done and started watching the Panera Bread employees (Yes, I love people watching and can figure out their whole life story in a matter of minutes....or so I think...). Watching them and figuring out their stories brought me back to one of my own stories. I started to chuckle to myself as I reread a completely ridiculous story in my life. So I shall tell it to you...

I had the big sweet 16 birthday, which meant that I could now start driving, which meant that I could get a job. The idea of looking for a job scared me a bit because that would require me going to places by myself... talking to people I didn't know... about stuff I didn't know anything about. That was pretty terrifying to an insecure shy 16 year old girl like me! Sooo, my mom (what a good sport she was) came with me to go job hunting.

First stop... Wendy's. The manager went to church with me, went to high school with my mom, and had managed two of my aunts when they worked at Wendy's back in the day. That seemed like a pretty non threatening place to start. My mom pulled up to the restaurant and dropped me off as I nervously went inside to ask for an application. The manager pretty much hired me right then and there and told me stories about my mom and aunts during our "interview".

Fast forward a couple of days and I am driving to my first day of work. My mom is in the car with me for moral support :) I am wearing my huge oversized Wendy's shirt, but I was determined to still look good in my Wendy's outfit, so i paired the huge shirt with some cute dress pants, matching bracelets and earrings. I attempted to style my hair around the ugly wendy's hat and spent an hour on my makeup.

I pulled up to the building and turned into the parking lot...the wrong way. (later I found out that my future coworkers were watching this whole scenario). I drove past the drive through window, where the whole wendy's crew could see their new coworker coming the wrong way...got out of the car so my mom could switch from the passenger's seat to the driver's seat.. and we hugged right there in the parking lot.

So to summarize up this story. My coworkers looked out the window to see someone coming the wrong way into the parking lot, get out of the car somehow completely dressed up....in a Wendy's uniform.... driving their mom...and hugging her in the middle of the parking lot :)

Yep I was cool ;)

Prayers for Kydon

                                                                        (His latest trick :)

Last week Kydon had a developmental evaluation and I've had a hard time processing everything, and therefore haven't given any updates on him. Let me back track a bit...

This summer he had a "developmental spurt" so to speak. He went from saying no words to putting a couple of words together all within a few months. We were all thrilled and his therapists were very encouraged as well. I think we all didn't realize that he was still lagging developmentally bc he had improved so quickly. His therapist told me that they will do another evaluation in August and that there was a good chance he wouldn't even need therapy and was finally caught up for his age.

We had that evaluation last week and the results were pretty discouraging. A 30% delay in one area is significant and he scored over a 30% delay in 3 of the 4 areas. He was showing up at an 18 month level and he is almost 2 1/2 now. Most people who see him think he is just fine because his size and development are on the same level, but when you put him with kids his own age you can see the delay.

I have had to put in him daycare this year due to work & school and I felt VERY guilty about that during his first week there. The therapists that evaluated him told me that is the best thing I can do for him right now. They are very hopeful that the interaction with children who are at a developmental level where he should be, will help him to catch up. They also think the rigid schedule that they are on will help his development as well. He is even trying new foods there he would have never tried for me at home! I can tell he wants to be like/eat like the other kids at his table. You can imagine how much of a relief hearing about his actual NEED for daycare and seeing him thrive there has been. I no longer drop him off with guilt, but with assurance that this is best for him right now.

One more tidbit of information. I received a phone call last week from a research group from UNCG that is conducting a research study on children within his age group that have developmental delays, and trying to figure out the cause. (He has seen every medical & developmental specialist and we still know nothing!). Kydon qualified for their study and they will be doing tests and surveys on him, me and his daddy. I will actually receive compensation for this study which will be a huge help in paying for his daycare. Wow, right?! Isn't God good!

So with all that said, please pray for Kydon. We are all really hopeful that he is going to thrive in daycare, especially as I'm already seeing improvement. I REALLY want to keep him in christian daycare, but if we don't see improvement after this year, I will have to look at other options. So please pray for him and pray that God will prepare my heart if His plan is different from the one I want.