Am I being effective?

It is amazing how years can go by not knowing that you have believed a lie. How can I not of seen it? Once the truth shines its ever so bright light on a lie it is so wonderful and freeing. God has done that for me in the past week and half.

I have since childhood believed a lie that I am ineffective. What I felt I was ineffective in doing would change. When I was younger I believed that I wasn’t a good enough child to my parents, good enough student, good enough Christian. Later years to the present  I kept believing at certain times that I could not be a good enough mom, wife, friend, and teacher. I was always trying to be perfect to show I was effective. Problem…I was “trying” in my power while still believing a lie. I wanted to be Christ like in all those areas, while believing that I am ineffective or to put it in another term…I will never measure up. When I “got it wrong” I got frustrated, down, and overwhelmed. Take is from me when you are in those times of believing a lie you won’t be as effective as God could use you! Also instead of getting down in the dumps, frustrated, and overwhelmed during those times that I am not perfect I need to stop and see what I need to learn from it. Face those times with joy that God is trying to teach me something because He love ME!

It was during a weak moment that I was crying unto God for help and feeling like my prayers were just “ineffective” that He was talking to me. He sent a couple of dear friends and my husband to point out that He was trying to show me something, to grow me. One dearest friend led me to 2 Peter 1: 3-8. Verse 8 is what she had me focus on. WOW! She pointed out that I do demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit and that shows I am not “ineffective” and I am growing in the knowledge of my dear Savior and King! Then my husband really helped me to open my eyes to when, where, and how I was blinded to the truth. Now I am at the place I am asking God to open my eyes to when and where I am trying to do things in my strength and NOT my Father’s all powerful strength!

God is so good. I feel free and have unspeakable joy! God is my teacher and yes I am not perfect and will fall down, but I will get up and run again for that prize, but in God’s strength!

If you read this Blog because of your interest in our adoption you may ask, “What has all this have to do with adoption?” EVERYTHING! The children that you bring into your home I would make a guess that 99.9999999% of them were born into a home full of lies, deceit, and fears. All of those are not from God. They are going to come with generational sins (whether an infant or grown)…Pray for God to wipe those clean! You have the job to clean yourself of lies so you can be “effective” in helping them see what lies they believe! I feel like I have a renewed vision on how to help ALL of my children!

Just to clear up one thing: according to the world many struggle with “self-esteem” The Bible teaches us that our self-esteem comes through Christ alone and His Word is ALIVE!

Thank you Jesus for you Word and using us an imperfect people to be effective for YOU!

Ice Cream!

So this last week was very hard with behaviors with Beth. She has been through a lot in her life and many times acts more like a 2 or 3 year old than a 6 year old. I know one day she will catch up, but only with a lot of love and structure. But how do you show a child that has been hurt and always has her guard up that she can trust, love, and bond with you? (She is REAL good at acting like all is well with the world and that she is just fine.) I have discovered many things trying to build a lasting relationship with her and hopefully still going to learn.

Some things I have learned:

1. Cuddle much, but on my terms to limit her controlling issues.
• This also will help her get past her infant stages that she never got to go through
2. Use a lower, soft voice when disciplining
3. Must be patient: When I get frustrated she will either:
• shut down or
• get agitated
4. Keep reminding her when that "ugly" behavior comes out:
• "No matter what I will still love you!"
5. Get at her level and look into her eyes.
6. Remind her all the time how beautiful she is but God is concerned with her heart.
• This helps with her tendency to REALLY brag.
7. Find what helps her to feel love so she can trust me.

I had to take a photo of this
memory!

Well I think I found the last one! Putting fragments of information together after our adoption was final we believe Beth at the age of three was responsible to feed herself and her brothers. It was mainly sugar items like cereal, pop, and lots of candy. That is why she had bad cavities at age 3. It answers a lot. Every time we would give her a treat she would inhales it. At the beginning we greatly limited her intake. We are not a big candy family, in fact our Halloween candy usually is still around by Easter for that candy. I was more concerned with her getting a weight issue. However, I started to think what if I use this to teach and show love to her. So that is what I am doing. Tonight was amazing. No one was around, but Beth and I. I cuddled with her and told her how I loved her. Then I spoon fed her chocolate chip ice cream while teaching her how to savor the flavor. I had her tell me what she tasted over her tongue. All the time on my lap telling her how I was loving having this time with her as we looked at each other's eyes. What a treasured moment! She didn't want to go to bed tonight and it wasn't because she had to sleep, but that she had to leave me. More of these moments I pray come. Thank you heavenly Father for this moment.

Bonding...one way street or two??

So here is the question of the week...can you bond when a child sabotages the bonding process? I have several discussions this week on this and still don't know exactly what I think. Love is most defiantly a choice that one person can choose even when the other person does not. So is bonding a choice that can be made one sided? One person told me yes. According to this person I can bond with Beth by my choice. Even when she seems to always push me away with frustrating behaviors where trust keeps getting lost. Another person told me that the bonding process has to have two willing participates because bonding is a two ways street. So even though I love Beth so much and desire to bond with her with all my heart I can not if she chooses to not bond with me. Love her, but not bond. So what do you think? I desire to have a close relationship with her like I experience with all my other children. I have tried to bond, but still feel alienated from her. Therefore, I am leaning towards agreeing with the second person.

How do you discipline your kids?

How do you discipline your kids? That question can stir up many emotions and lots of different ideas. What is really interesting that when you adopt many people have lots of opinions on how you should discipline them. Have we got flack on how we discipline our birth kids? Yes, but nothing like the flack with our adopted children. In fact it started from the day we got them almost. Finally Joe started saying, “Hey you like how our girls turned out so let us do our job!”

We are dealing with some interesting behaviors. Our birth children at one time or another have struggled with a few of these behaviors, but not to this big of scope that we have with our adopted children. We face lying, deceit, hitting, screaming, (not normal 2 year old) temper tantrums, huge fears, manipulations, and man the control issues. Some days it is all day long with something. It is so much better than when we first got them. One of them would scream every time we were in the van and when we would pray. Now that child begs to pray and just asks a million questions in the van! One thing I have learned is you will think a behavior is finally not coming anymore when WAM it hits with a vengeance again. It boils down to sin. Sin, sin, sin, sin, sin…icky sin. For years they were surrounded with it and in fact were encouraged to encage in it.

I hesitate to share more, because I don’t want anyone to treat my children differently so I will try and be sensitive to what I say.

Our adopted children’s birth mom was in the paper and many people commented in the paper about her for what she did. I have sympathy for her. I know she had no one to turn to and struggled much with her sinful nature. It is no excuse what she did to MY children. With that said my children will not be victims. What I mean by that is having self pity for what happened is not God honoring and will be dealt with in my family. We will deal with the hurt in a godly way by learning about grace, mercy, and forgiveness. However, the tendency that people have when hearing (a shorten version) of their story is to lean towards having pity, cuddle, give them things, and just “love” them. What ends up happening is behaviors are over-looked and this is not love. Yes, I have pity (dog-gone-it I weep when I have to read the court records or when one of the kids tell me something they remember), I cuddle lots, I give them things, but the love I and Joe give is balanced with firmness. Some people have a real problem with this. They call us too strict, harsh, firm, and mean.

God has given me as THEIR mom an instinct to know when they are lying, manipulating, controlling, and being deceitful. I can not explain it except that it is from God. Joe calls me the lie detector. The loving smiling faces people see when we are out are from the large amount of talk and discipline from their mommy and daddy. Also those loving and smiling faces can be a façade that is trying to manipulate and control you. Yes many people I know have been controlled by our kids and they did not know it. We would watch this going on not saying anything, not wanting to cause a scene. Interesting for us was that as soon as we went home behaviors of trying to control us and the siblings would start. From now on I will make a scene if I have too. I won’t say I am sorry here, because I am building up and teaching my children to be respectful and honoring to all people.

Yes we may appear harsh and you may not agree with us at times. We are all in a fight against our sinful nature. Our heart is to serve God and to raise up warriors for Christ.. Warriors that are not deceitful in their attacks but know how to be honest, loving, and truthful. Awww Truth… when you don’t have it you do not have trust. Trust is a foundation of relationships. Everyone would agree that we need trust for a relationship. Because of the you need trust to bond…I want to bond to my kids. In love I am hard on my kids because it is what is best for them and they, you, and me will benefit later.

God please give me wisdom in loving and teaching my children the right path.

Oh My, the Questions!

A family of eight we are because of God grace and mercy on each one of the 8. Because we are now classified under the category of large families there have been some interesting insights.

One thing is we get stares now that we are a large family. Every where we go it seems that people are counting the little ducklings I have. What is funny is I did it too and still do except now I do so I can ask the mom for advice. One day we were at McDonalds and I saw a family with 10 kids and I figured she homeschooled, because it was the middle of a school day. So I sought some advice from her. Praise the Lord she was a Christian and really nice. We especially get the stares at restaurants. And when I say stares I am serious. They won’t look away. The older girls hate it. I feel like we are a show. So anytime it happens I have started to make the show interactive. Yes the folks that seem to just continue to stare get included in the drama. I start talking to them and joking around. Pretty soon they start either laughing or decide to stay to themselves with a minimal glace of the eyes. Works for me!

Another interesting insight is the questions. Oh my, the questions!! At first I relished the questions. I don’t know, but some of the same questions over and over can be annoying. Why…well I am still trying to figure it out and learning to handle it gracefully. To be honest a lot of the questions could be stopped by me by not sharing that my younger three are adopted. I try not to share and I usually don’t if the kids are present, because they are my kids no matter if they come from my womb or from my heart. God has it that they look a lot like us too so it is not that obvious.  However, I feel like I need to tell people for a couple of reasons. One is that it puts adoption out there. If some people I know had never said they had adopted I would of never got to learn more about adoption from their godly eyes. Another reason (and this one I need to get over and just deal with) is that the behaviors of the younger three can be out there (and sometime embarrassing) and I feel that I must explain them…that I am having to come to grips with and is another BLOG subject.

When I do share that the kids are adopting I get either two responses… usually. One that hurts is, “You are crazy!” I know it is said in humor, but yet deep down I feel they meant is seriously. Joe and I have just been obedient and it hurts when people say it. If obedient is crazy then I will be crazy for God! Or instead of flat out saying that I am crazy they try to say it a little different, but I feel they mean it in the same way. “I could never do that…you are amazing!” I know you may think that I am wrong here and that is ok, but if someone starts the sentence with a “I could never” then if that person doesn’t think they are crazy/weird/wrong for not doing it then they must think that I am. Yes I am an over thinker, but I get this sooooooooo often with adoption and home schooling. With God all things are possible!

Another question that pops up all the time is if they were foster, domestic, or international adoptions. That I really don’t mind. I guess the question that seems to always follow is a little weird to me, but I think I now have a better come back. The question is, “Were or Are they siblings?” Umm in my mind it doesn’t matter because they are now!  So I say, “They are now!” If this question is asked with them around it pushes the older sisters out of the equation…they feel alienated. They have enough problems not separating themselves and sharing parents… (another BLOG subject)

God wants me to respond in a loving way and I do most of the time, but I just want to share these thoughts to help others to think who is around and what the motivation for asking is. Unfortunately there has been WAY too many times I have asked a question or said something that I just wasn’t thinking how that person may take it or why I was even asking it. My mouth gets in my way toooooooo many times.

Other insights are obvious. Pinching pennies more (learning this one especially this month…everyone is going through a growth spurt and Christmas presents), takes more time to get ready, home schooling is harder, time flies by (really it just was January 2011!), planning is more important, time with husband is more important, and many more. The biggest insight is how faithful and good our God is. I am consumed with His mighty power and love for us. 2011 has seen us go through so much, but in every single joy, sorrow, pain, cry, laugh, fear God has meant it for each member in this large family for his or her GOOD! Thank you my King of kings for all those moments in 2011…even the moments where I am still trying to figure out where the good was, but I have trust in YOU my Rock that it was and will be for Good.

"Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" Psalm 46: 10