Waterspouts, Hurricanes, Hermit Crabs,Sunburn, OH! MY!

God gives and takes away!  Mark was really upset that Flo would not be able to swim this summer due to bacteria in all types of water that people enjoy in the summer.  Gross if you think about it.  Due to the graft the doctor put water off limits for the summer.  Mark had hoped and prayed that we would be able to take Flo on a mini-vaca before the big surgery.  I did not see it in the money cards, but on the last day of school I got paid twice.  Two paychecks.  Crazy right.  They went ahead and paid us for June.  This has never happened to us and Mark saw it as a gift from God.  So, I had 3 days to plan our little mini-vaca and he had that same amount of time to see if he could get a day off.  Sunday he got the news he was off and I started searching for a place to stay.  We needed something close, something cheap, and something with beach and pool amenities.  If anyone out there reading this blog knows me, know that I am cheap and a huge planner and this was way out of my comfort zone.  I like to plan for everything and I had no time for that.  I went to the Internet and prayed that I would find a spot that was cheap and covered all of our criteria.  My husband really wanted to go to Jekyll. One of our most favorite spots.  We just love it there.  I scored and Wednesday morning our journey began. It was a pretty easy drive.  The kids did great and we only made a few stops.  I have to admit that we made the kids think we were staying in a tent.  They were very surprised to find out we were actually staying in a hotel with two pools on the BEACH!  That was a little bonus.  I had found a coupon online.  I had already scored some cheap rates at booking.com, but the coupon would not work online, so it said to give it to the clerk at check-in. When I gave it to the clerk it would not work and so the clerk called someone who informed him that the coupon was third party and had to be used when booking. The consolation prize a room on the beach.  Momma scored a 205.00 a night room for 118.00 and free breakfast to boot.  Yeah!  Love this hotel and we will stay there again. 

We had a great evening.  We went to the beach first thing and it was just awesome.  Beautiful as always.  We then went to the pool and let the girls swim.  We had a picnic in the room and went to bed. Thursday morning we woke up to some clouds, but it was not too bad.  Then we went to breakfast and the entire room was abuzz with chatter and the weather channel was on with the news of Andrea and the direction she will take. As we sat and enjoyed our breakfast the weather channel gave us a grim description of what our day would be like. The wind started to pick up some as we sat.  We decided to go down and check things out before we headed out for the day.  We went to the beach and then to the pool.  The rain started and we decided to get dressed and head out.  We went to the little village of shops on Jekyll. Mark went to the post office and we went to the shop next door.  It was sprinkling but no big deal.  Flo fell in love with the Hermit Crabs.  She had brought the remainder of her money to the beach and she was itching to spend it.  Hermit Crab was her goal.  She walked around the store and told me all the reasons why a Hermit Crab would make a great pet. It would keep her from being board, etc., etc.   I explained to her that we would go to Walmart and see if they had a cage cheaper than $25.00.  We got back to the car and informed Daddy of our purchase plan.  He agreed to take us to Walmart since our day at the beach looked to be a wash.  I know at this point many people are wondering why getting wet would be an issue at the beach, but the winds kept picking up and the water was very choppy. The mom in me said a trip to Walmart might be a safer bet, plus Daddy was craving Mexican and since little Miss Flo would not be able to eat chips for 3 months Mexican one the family vote for lunch.  We went to Walmart and it started sprinkling rain.  The hurricane was close to touching down in Florida at this point.  Momma was right and the $25.00 cage was a mere $6.00 at Walmart.  Whoo Hoo!  When we made it to the Mexican restaurant for lunch it was pouring down rain and when we got inside the Weather Channel was on every television and again it was the main topic of conversation for the lunch time rush.  We sat and watched the footage of it hitting Florida and then going full speed ahead across the state. We then saw the path the hurricane was taking and it was heading to Jacksonville, Florida.  We were only one hour and fifteen minutes north of Jacksonville.  We decided to stop on the way back to the island to get some extra snacks and other supplies just in case. We got to island and we were in a torrential down pour.  We had to get to the little island shop to pick up our Hermit crab before heading back to our room for the night. When we got back to the room we decided to put our crab friend down and walk down to the beach.  Everyone had their televisions on the Weather Channel and their windows open.  You could feel the wind as you walked out and the rain was coming down in an angle. We walked down to the beach and water was unbelievable. It was dark everywhere in the sky and the wind was just unreal.  I have never felt so scared and amazed at the same time. It was just hard to describe. I will say that the power of these storms lets you know that you are very small and powerless.  After about 15 minutes we decided to go back to our room and bunker down for the night.  We stayed glued to the weather channel and about 5:45pm a waterspout was seen near the sub station next to Cumberland Island.  Not far from us.  Also a tornado was seen forming near St. Mary's just south of us.  Then the alert came on for us to go to the bathroom.  The girls grabbed pillows and the crab and headed in.  Mark and I stayed near the television waiting.  Mark went to the window and was just speechless at the water and storm surge.  The wind was unreal.  Earlier the wind was about 20 to 25 miles per hour but now it was closer to 35 or 40 mph.  At one point we told the girls to stay inside the bathroom and not leave.  Mark then told me to come out on the balcony.  We took pictures of what we thought might have been a waterspout forming.  I stayed as long as I could taking pictures but then fear came over me and I went back inside. It was just so unreal and real at the same time. We were in the middle of a real tropical storm and we had no place to go.  At one point we heard the causeway to Amelia Island was closed.  I was concerned about the one to Jekyll.  By 7:00 the first wave of storms was over, but another band was due to hit around 9:00pm.  I could not sleep until after midnight.  The wind was so strong it was hitting the building and causing the over hang to move and make this awful sound like it was about to blow off.  It did that all night long so I continued to wake up and look outside to see if the entire pool area was flooded.  The next morning we awoke to broken clouds and Mr. Sunshine.  There were palms from the palm trees everywhere.  We found out at breakfast that the parking lot did flood briefly in the night.  We were excited about a day of fun in the sun and we spent the entire day out in the sun.  Good and bad. Good because we had a blast on the beach.  We walked about 2 miles on the beach checking out all the good things the storm brought in. It was bad for mating Horseshoe crabs. They were dead all over the beach.  We also saw driftwood, huge pieces that came in.  Hermit beach crabs were among our many treasures to pick up and release.  AG and I saw our favorite Welks strewn along the beach edge and we also threw some Welk eggs back into the ocean.  Mark and AG got ahead of us and headed back to the pool.  Flo and I decided to take our time and look for shark's teeth. We were right at the edge of the water when we saw a couple looking out at the water. We looked and we saw a crew of Dolphins.  One of them was less than 5 feet from us.  They were just swimming along.  We could see their noses and everything.  It was amazing. We stood still not saying a word until they were out of sight.  This is big for Flo and I. We are talkers. God is amazing and His creatures are impressive. I have never honestly been that close to a wild dolphin. Watching one on a boat is one thing but for it just be that up close and personal was truly amazing for both us. Flo will never forget it.  We hurried back to the pool to let AG and Mark know what we saw.  I think AG was a little sad she missed it. With a day of sun and fun came a little sunburn, but it was so worth it.  Sunblock used and reapplied, but we still got burned.  I, of course, got the worst of it.  Everybody else just got burned around their bathing suit lines. We did have a great day though and we added a new family member, "Hurricane" the Hermit crab. Evidently, Hermit crabs need to live with a friend.  They get lonely.  So "Hermie" got a friend.  We went to St. Simon's for a late lunch and prepared for our trip home. It was so much fun and we are glad that Flo got this last mini-vacation before surgery. We had breakfast Saturday morning and headed for home. We had two days until surgery.                                                                  

Bucket List - Wild HORSES done!

Have you really embraced the idea that God is amazing by just looking at the beauty in Nature?  Seriously, take a time out and check out the world around you for just a second. God is amazing and the creatures He has placed on this earth for us to enjoy are astounding. There is so much detail and planning into each one. Each time you learn about a creature you have to say, "God is in this!" No way anything else could accomplish so much detail in so many things. Big bang, I don't think so!

In May my oldest daughter had a field trip in coastal Georgia.  For years I have been trying to convince my beloved husband to take us to Cumberland Island and it was just not anything he was interested in.  The field trip included a day trip to Cumberland Island.  I was not expecting a great deal from this experience because Wild Horses are myth in my small little world.  There was no way we would actually see one and every person I have ever talked about this with said sometimes you see them and sometimes you don't. 

The start of our day trip was just amazing.  We went to St. Mary's and got on the ferry.  A boat trip was what I was expecting.  It included so much more.  It was one of the most beautiful rides I have every taken.  Just gorgeous views of wild life and scenery. The Marshes may be full of mosquitoes, but they are beautiful.  Just amazingly beautiful.  My oldest and I just looked at this beauty in awe.  Just amazing.  Before the trip ended we were being followed by dolphins.  A little bonus.  We left the boat and traveled up a small dock to a museum and some beautiful live oak trees.  It was just like something in a book.  I was in awe of it all.  As we started our 7 mile trek, we were engulfed in these beautiful and majestic trees.  Then we traveled through a small forest area.  All along we kept seeing signs of those illustrious wild horses but none presented themselves to us.  We continued to on our journey to the Carnegie's  "Dungeness".  The grounds themselves are quite breathtaking. As we entered the gardens we realized we were not alone, we saw a huge wild turkey.  He did not seem to be bothered by us and just kept on doing his thing as we walked by.  We walked past the beautiful "Dungeness" to a trail and we once again saw signs of the ever illusive wild horses.  We came to a clearing with dampness and under our feet were thousands maybe more teeny, tiny crabs.  They were every where and upon silence you could here them crawling across the sand.  It was just amazing.  As we crossed they would just separate and make room for us.  We also learned that the ones with the large white claw were the boys.  So you could look at the thousands of them and tell which ones were boys and which were the girls.  Just amazing.  A sea of crabs that went on forever.  They were about 3 inches wide.  Just little bitty guys, but still amazing.  We continued on our path and once again signs of the wild horses, but no horses.  Then our guide just stopped us.  She said, "listen." We could here horses.  They were right there in the woods near us.  She made us stop and back up to give them an opportunity to cross.  There they were in all of their beauty.  They came from the woods beside us and traveled across the path and just ate grass in front of us as we stood in awe.  They were large, majestic, beautiful, and in the mix were two amazing miracles.  One was a little foal born in the spring and one was a solid white yearling.  They were absolutely amazing.  The story of these horses is mythical and takes many twists and turns.  Some believe they were left by the Spanish, others believe other Europeans brought them to the island, and others believe they were brought later to the island.  They are mixed with many breeds due to the Carnegie's and others mixing domestic breeds in with the herds.  They are beautiful and look like no other horses I have ever seen. 
The entire trip was a memory I will never forget.  The nightly exhaustion and painful sunburn were just a small price to pay for memories with my daughter we will never forget.  It was just awesome. And the fact that God created it all makes me just continue to be in awe of what He can do in all things.

Adventures in Washington, D.C.

Adventures in Washington, D. C.

Day 2

    We spent the afternoon at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  It is also known as “America’s Catholic Church.”  Words truly can not describe the beauty of this church.  When we as Catholics speak of God’s Church this is what I will see from now on.  It is all of what it means to be Catholic.  Catholic means universal church.  It is that.  It is beautiful and the mosaic tile work is not only exquisite, but it represents Catholics around the world.  We even got to see Our Lady of China in mosaics.  It was breathtaking and to see our Asian princess underneath it was amazing.  Every finite detail of this mosaic work is so hard to describe.  Each scene, each person, represented with millions of pieces of mosaic tile. 
    As you walk through the Basilica there are also statues. In every form that you can imagine. They are marble, bronze, and even some that looked gold leaf.  They are large and small. They too have just amazing detail. As you walk through you realize that the entire shrine is dedicated to the Holy Family and particularly Mary, the mother of God. 
     Many non-Catholics do not understand the relationship the Church has with Mary.  Mary was called by God to give birth to His son.  She brought the Church into being and that is why she is seen as such an important part of the Church.  She brought us into God’s family by giving birth to Jesus.  Without Jesus, Gentiles would not have become Christians.  Mary was called and she answered yes.  She is the bridge between David and Jesus.  She brought us into the family.  We do not worship her, we show gratitude, enormous gratitude for what she did for all of us as Christians.  As we continued to tour, I stopped to look at each statue, each mosaic, to see not only the artistic beauty but the meaning behind each scene, each statue, each architectural detail.  I tried to just quietly take it all in(which I should add was very difficult when standing next to a whinny chatty cathy).  As we went from small shrine to small shrine, I was just amazed. 
     I have always been drawn to “the Pieta”.  Since the first time I saw it I have wanted to venture to Rome and see it first hand.  I would love to just touch it and feel every single detail, but I believe you can go to jail for that.  I feel such a connection to the statue.  I have always felt connected to Mary since the loss of our son and that just says it all for me.  The look of distress on Mary ‘s face, the lifeless body of her son on her lap.  It all screams everything I felt the day our son died.  I am sure I had that look, uncontrollable pain, excruciating heartache and exhaustion.  Mary is just done, but the agony of loss won’t let her rest and she just cradles her sons lifeless body.  She knows He is gone, but her mothering heart won’t let go of Him.  She just can’t let Him go.  If she let’s Him go then it is “truly” finished.  In her mind, at that time, she was in the present and He was dead. She could not let Him go.  Some deaths are ones you can rejoice in because of long suffering and age, but when you bury your child, that is a different deal.  It is not a rejoicing moment.  I think Mary felt great loss and Michelangelo captures this in the artwork.   The Basilica has its own version of the statue.  I was just in awe of it.  I just sat there and took it all in.  I quieted the chatty and just looked at every detail. It was breathtaking.
    Once I saw this I assumed that nothing else could compare, but I was wrong.  As you make your way through the Basilica you realize that you are being watched from above.  There are angels, and scenes of all kinds on the ceiling of the Basilica. The Basilica is built in true Church form- it is indeed built in the shape of a cross.  If you look at it from above it forms two distinct crosses.  One cross is inside the other cross.  It is an amazing architecture design.  And when you come to the North apse, you see are once again in awe.  Before you is this enormous mosaic and it is titled “Christ in Majesty”.  The Lord’s image flows from the ceiling to midway down the wall.  Underneath Him is what appears to be the Trinity.  It is breathtaking because it shows you in bright visual detail the amazing enormity of our LORD and Savior.  It is just amazing.  I would recommend that all Christians take the time to visit the Basilica when they are in Washington. 
     We attended Mass before we left.  It is not the structure that makes the Mass so incredible, it is the members of the Mass.  As you look around you realize that probably a majority of the people around you are from somewhere else. That just like you, they have come to worship while on vacation.  They are fellow Catholics and they are worshiping here, with you, as a member of “the universal church.”  This is my favorite part of being Catholic.  Anywhere you are in the world, when you worship and take Communion you are among family.  It is overwhelming to even comprehend how amazing that is.  Many Christians I know do not even attend church when they are out of town or on vacation.  In the 21st Century, Catholics can go on-line to websites such as masstimes.org.  These sites give Catholics a list of churches around the world.  Today, we can give the zip code or city of where we are going and within minutes we have a list of local parishes and the times of the Masses held at that church.  It is amazing and more proof that the Internet is not all bad.  We try our very best to attend Mass wherever we  happen to be when we are out of town.  We have been to Mass in Tennessee multiple times, in North Georgia where we attend we even know details about the priest and his family because of our attendance over the years.  We even attended Mass in China.  I still love that story.  I feel blessed to be a part of such an incredibly large body of Christians world wide.  Wherever the road takes me, I know that I will not be far from my fellow Catholics.  I find great comfort and peace in knowing that.  I thank my Heavenly Father for bringing my Catholic husband into my life and giving me my Catholic roots.

Adventures in Washington, D.C.

DAY 1

    Once again the Dessez family is on a little vacation adventure.  We have our loving Poppy to thank.  One of his wishes for his family his entire life was for us to travel to Washington together and visit his beloved city.  We began the Dessez descent onto the city streets Friday.  We traveled by car, foot, and subway throughout the day.  We saw all types of human existence.  God has to laugh at the menagerie of what we, the human population, has become on this earth.  Today we have seen a lady visiting the zoo in at least five inch hills and matched with her ensemble I would not see her as a typical zoo goer.  Throughout the day we saw ladies of all ages, nationalities, and sizes in see-through clothing.  At home anywhere these ladies would be in jail.  We saw a pretty serious car accident and Secret Service Police drive by multiple times and just ignore it- Who knew this was an option?  We met countless members of the ACLU.  They are very concerned about Gay Rights and our feelings about it.  We saw the sadness of countless homeless people.  Although our youngest was very concerned about one of them smoking a cigarette.  And I forgot to mention probably over 300 Girl Scouts from all across America were doing all of the fun tourist stuff we were doing also.  I must say they are a very polite bunch. 
    We had one of the best adventure days in our lives and saw everything that makes us proud to be a part of this wonderful country.  I am amazed how incredible our Founding Fathers were to create and build what they did and I am just as amazed how day by day we as a people watch it be destroyed bit-by-bit.  We saw everything you could imagine that was against our own personal beliefs and then we saw a Bible verse with letters the size of our youngest hanging from the side of a building.  As they try to chase us out of town we stand tall and show them the Word of God.  I love this country and I know God built it for His purpose.  I pray that His purpose and no one else’s is carried out.
    I leave you with one of the most moving and amazing things we saw today, the actual STAR SPANGLED BANNER.    It is encased in this huge glass structure.  It is tattered and torn, but yet it moves you.  It truly moves you to tears.  This banner represents red (the blood of all), white (washed and purified by GOD), the blue (our bruised and battered, soldiers, leaders, and spirit), and gold (the color of the streets in Heaven that shine so bright).  As I looked at it, that is truly what it all means and then as you look closer pieces have been cut and torn off.  Why is our banner so battered?  Because people wanted a little piece for themselves and the owners allowed them to cut it.  The cloth represents nothing if it is not intact.  The Constitution is no different.  It represents nothing if it is not left intact.  Our souls are similar to the Banner itself, they are red, purified, they shine with God and some day they will walk on those streets of gold.  A great day in the District.  We can’t wait for tomorrows adventures.

BEHEMOTH CROSSING

Have you ever used the term “BEHEMOTH” in a sentence?  I have when talking about something large.  I have used it and thought it was a made up word just like “ginormous”.  My kids and I use that one when it is really, really huge.  Would it surprise you that the term “Behemoth” comes from the Bible?  Would it surprise you that it is the name of a giant dinosaur mentioned in the Bible? 

Job 40: 15-24

“Look at the monster Behemoth;
I created him and I created you.
He eats grass like a cow,
but what strength there is in his body,
and what power there is in his muscles!
His tail stands up like a cedar,
and the muscles in his legs are strong.
His bones are as strong as bronze,
and his legs are like iron bars.
The most amazing of all my creatures!
Only his Creator can defeat him.
Grass to feed him grows on the hills where wild beasts play.
He lies down under the thorn bushes,
and hides among the reeds in the swamp.
The thorn bushes and the willows by the stream give him shelter in their shade.
He is not afraid of a rushing river;
he is calm when the Jordan dashes in his face.
Who can blind his eyes and capture him?
Or who can catch his snout in a trap?”

    So what is this Behemoth creature?  It would appear to be a dinosaur and it would also appear to be living with man.  This creature could not be any animal that we know of that is living today.  Lets consider which animals from the Bible live with us today-- sheep, donkeys, lambs, lions, snakes, but not this one.  The Behemoth is an extraordinary example of how human reasoning can not compare to Biblical truth.  There is no explanation for why this is except dinosaurs lived among humans in the last 4000 years.  “Who knew “The Land of the Lost" was so accurate.  BEHEMOTH lived among humans.  Take it all in and breath it.  Dinosaurs lived among people.  In the garden with Adam and Eve they breathed air and ate plants.  They are mentioned in the Bible during Jobs lifetime, so they were here for a while and it was not billions of years ago.  Amazing.  Truly amazing.  TRUTH is not a grey area, it is BLACK OR it is WHITE.  God wants us to read His Word.  This is from God’s word and this is what I believe and accept as Biblical truth.  I am in awe of this knowledge.

May the Marion Month

Marion Month is the month to celebrate mothers.  It is indeed the month we celebrate Mother's Day and us Catholics also celebrate the Blessed Mother of Jesus.  It is right and fitting to celebrate the Mother of our LORD the same month we celebrate all Moms.  I feel like Mother's Day is a gift to me and I treasure it each year!  I was blessed to be a mom and it is so special to celebrate this day each and every year.  The gifts are not what makes the day meaningful to me. It is the means I went through and the end result that make me so happy on this day.  It was a struggle for us to have our children, but I am thankful each year that I have this day to celebrate with my girls.  I know many women who would do anything to be so blessed.  What a gift I have in my girls and I do treasure them. 
Many want to know why Catholics put so much emphasis on Mary, the mother of  Jesus.  She was the mother of our Savior, you really can't get more important to that. In all of my worst hours as a mother I have called to her because she knows suffering and I was suffering and I needed somebody to get what I was going through.  Miscarriage- I probably said The Hail Mary a hundred times in the ER that night.  It was painful, emotional, and horrible, our Lord's mother-she has that t-shirt.  She can relate to all of those things. She got it.  I needed that because at the time I felt no one else did.  Most people who are non-Catholic may not even know the words.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the LORD is with thee." Luke 1:28
What does that mean to me?  It means Mary was given grace by our Lord and that she is presently with our LORD and Savior.


"Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." Luke 1:42
She is the most blessed of all women and mothers. Elizabeth says it to her when she visits.  The baby Jesus is the most blessed.  Blessed by His father in Heaven.


"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."
I always ask for her to pray for me in my darkest hours.  The prayer itself has calmed me, but also, I feel that when I have had enough and I just don't think I can bare anymore pain or heartache, Mary pray that Jesus will hear me and stop it sooner rather than later.  I find hope in her grace and it helps me to survive these types of life changing events.  As my children are getting older, I have started saying the prayer when they are nervous or scared.  Both of my girls have a fear of speaking in front of people on stage or with any type of crowd watching.  I think it comforts them that Mary, our LORD's mother is watching over them as they go up on a stage in front of people and speak.  It just seems to calm them when I tell I will pray the Hail Mary prayer for them. 

As I think of Mary sitting at the foot of the dead Jesus on the cross and then I think of the Pieta- holding her dead son in her arms.  The sadness just washes over her and it washes over me.  I just can't bare to watch that part of the "Passions" movie.  It hurts me every single time.  It also pains me to look at the detail of the Pieta statue by Michelangelo.  Mary is holding her grown dead son, Jesus like a mother would hold a 4 year old, but the anguish, sadness on her face is just hard to see.  My sin caused her this pain.  It is my sin that Jesus died for and she too is suffering from my sin at that moment.  It is very hard to accept the realness of it.  I am blessed to have my Catholic faith and have this understanding of Mary and also the saints.  It has truly helped me over the years.
Mary don't forget me and please intercede for me to your son.
  

God is GOOD!

I know my last post was very, very sad! I think the song theme for this week is "Praise You In This Storm", by Casting Crowns. When you praise Him in the storm His mercy falls upon us. I have always felt blessed and as we entered last week and worlds were crashing around us, I knew that we truly were blessed by GOD at that moment in time. Our girls were with us safe and sound as others around us dealt with loss and pain. GOD is a merciful GOD. Last week we got the wonderful news that my husband got a promotion! He has been going through the process for over a year and our youngest prayed every night that he would get his "commotion". Well, Daddy got his "commotion" and we could not be happier. Now she thanks GOD each night for Daddy's "commotion". She is also praying for other things I will share later. She does know that the Lord here's her prayers and answers them. She has no doubt now that he here's her and that is the best gift of all. I prayed for months that God would let her know He hears her prayers. I wanted the promotion for my hubby, but also for her and her faith in GOD. If that was not enough, one of my adoption advocate friends announced today that her family is adopting a little girl. She has been praying that her husband would want to adopt again for years. I think like five years. He told her it was time and he knew this little girl was meant to be theirs. He gave in to his uncertainty about the finances. They are trusting GOD to provide the means to bring this little girlie home. I am so happy for her. I am just filled with joy for her and her family. How exciting! I know she is feeling the same way! This is a true blessing. GOD has answered serious prayers in their household. I am just giddy! So, He is the God who takes away, but He is also the God who gives. He provides, He cares, He opens doors, and He opens hearts for His will if we let Him. I pray for His will for us. May GOD continue to bring peace and comfort to all those that are still hurting. May He bless each and everyone of them. May He keep those of us that have been blessed this week humble. Amen

When it all falls apart

There is a song by FEE. It is called, "Everything Falls." My favorite lyrics are the following- "When everything falls apart Your arms hold me together When everything falls apart You’re the only hope for this heart When everything falls apart And my strength is gone I find You mighty and strong You keep holding on, You keep holding on" We have had a wonderful week at our house, but it has been tragic in our Church and community and even with some bloggy friends. True tragedy. I don't even feel like a real hip hip hoorah on our front because of all that has happened around us. It is hard to imagine what these families are going through. I will share a little just to get it out. I can't keep it in any longer. If you read this blog or you know me you know we lost our son at birth. It was a tragedy for us, but to loose one of my living children today I just can't fathom what that would be like. I really can't. On Thursday a week ago, our church family lost an 11 year old boy in a tragic car accident. The boy was hit by a car while trying to catch the bus. Although we did not know him personally, his family attended our church and many of our close friends knew the family and their children were friends with this child. The whole thing has just been so tragic for this family and for this group of middle school children who just don't understand GOD's timing. It is so hard for us as adults to explain this to children when truly GOD has not given us the ability to explain it. It just is and that is all you can say. My precious oldest is now an alter server and two months ago we found out that her alter serving buddy has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He is 11. Should an 11 year old boy have to know what Hodgkin's Lymphoma means? I personally don't think it is fair that such a sweet, funny, and caring kid should have to know what this is and how it has to be treated. He should not have to go through grueling chemo treatments and loose his cute hair and deal with very adult life and death issues. My girl is seeing it up close and personal. Her friend served with her on Saturday. He is still the funny, sweet, caring kid he always was, but he is also pale and bald. He has had some very bad days and probably still has some ahead. I cried when I saw him walk up this week with my girl. I just tried not to show it. His parents were two pews behind me. I just am heartbroken to see him like this and we as a family are praying for him every time we pray. My heart breaks for this family. I am sure his mother had a rough week as a member of her sons youth group was buried. It had to hit her like a ton of bricks. I have weeped for her and her husband as she has had to deal with her own son's illness and now this tragedy as well. We are stacking tragedy here. I have blogged about a single mom whose husband died last summer. She and her husband have two young children and had just started the process to adopt again. After dealing with several months of anguish over what to do and then finally deciding to go through with the adoption she has once again been thrown a very heartbreaking blow. She had to go through more months of paperwork to bring her precious little girl home due to the fact she is now considered single. She finally got approval before Christmas and three weeks ago she received her paperwork to come to China. What a journey it had been. Then she got the news that has shocked our adoption community. This child that she has fought her own heart for is dying in a hospital in China. She has a terminal brain tumor and she is dying. I can not understand GOD's timing. I truly don't understand it. I don't. I can not imagine how this has happened. One dad on an adoption blog, who is quite insightful, came to a conclusion. Is it possible that this little girl's Daddy in Heaven, the father that fell in love with this little girl when he saw her sweet face in a picture, is it possible that he wanted her to be in Heaven with him. Maybe, just maybe, God thought she needed to be in Heaven with her Daddy. I am going to cling to this conclusion because nothing else makes since. Nothing. Once again this mother and her children grieve. They grieve the loss of a child and sibling. I am sure they are once again grieving the loss of a husband and father as well. I pray that this child does not suffer and that she dies knowing she has a family that loves her and is painfully mourning their loss. It is just so sad, so tragic, and so awful. As I and other parents think through maybe it truly is God's timing. If this mom had been able to bring this little one home sooner, all of this would have been on her. She would have been dealing with this tragedy by herself and with her young children in tow. She would have had the day in and out of it all on her. Maybe GOD thought this way was easier. It has been an insane two weeks. Our lives have changed for the better and all of these lives have been hit with tragedy. I don't understand God's timing and I guess I never will. I pray that good will come from all of this. I pray for comfort in each of these circumstances. I pray that God will heal and give peace to all, especially these children that are trying to make since of it all. As the song says, "God is mighty and strong and He keeps holding on!" If we don't cling to GOD in our worst times, he can't be there to carry us. He has carried me through many a heartache and I pray that he carries each of these families through this time in their lives. 29“Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. ...” Matthew 14:29-31 NIV

GOOD Friday

As we commemorate the death of our LORD, many things come to mind. Why did it have to be this way? Why could not have been a different type of death? You know most of us would not have ever known about crucifixion death if it was not for our LORD. I really feel a whole life time without knowing how gruesome and painful it was would have made my life less sad. It is just a horrible way to die. No way could this have been pretty or less awful. GOD had a plan and this was it. He chose His own son to endure it for us. I wept tonight as our priest reminded us of the scene in the Passions movie where Jesus looks at his mother as He falls on His journey to Golgotha. "The place of the skull" Even Google recognizes the word. It is not on spell check. Amazing, for a world that normally turns its back on our LORD. Jesus is holding the cross on His back and His mother has desperately been trying to maneuver around the crowds to get close to Jesus. As He makes His way he falls several times, but this time He looks up to her. She desperately wants to help Him, but knows she can't. She remembers a time when He was just a boy. The boy Jesus falls and scraps His knee and she takes care of Him. She can't at this moment. She can't help Him on this journey. She is distraught by it all in this scene of the movie. I believe she is thinking, "God in Heaven, I did not sign up for this. Take this from Him and this pain in my heart from me! Please!." I could not imagine in my life time the agony she felt at that moment. Or the moment they actually put the nails in His flesh. Her little boy defiled and destroyed in such a horrific way. I know the loss of a child, but I can't comprehend the pain of this helplessness in so much suffering of a child. I am sure there are parents in this world that know, but I am fortunate not to be one of them. I remember the scene where she cleans up His blood from the scourging. I can not imagine what was going through her mind looking at the site of so much blood. I just can't. My father told me right after we saw the movie when it first came out that there was no way that the LORD endured that scourging and then carried the cross on His back. It was just a Hollywood thing, that our LORD could never have endured that. I think He could have. Have you ever heard of someone picking up something extremely heavy to save someone else- a car, tree, metal pole, etc. They always say that something just gave them the strength to do it. I think it was GOD or a guardian angel. Something divine helped them. Maybe Jesus' love for us was so strong that it helped Him carry that cross to Calvary. Maybe GOD was helping Him at that one moment. I think about all that He went through and through it all He had love for us and even those that were mistreating Him to the very end. We will never know that kind of LOVE here on earth. It will never happen. GOD had to be right there watching it all play out, the agony of our LORD and the inconceivable pain that Mary endured watching all of it unfold before her eyes. One of my favorite pieces of art is the Pieta. If you have never seen it, please GOOGLE it right now. It is beautiful and every time I see it I visualize Mary holding her dead son and looking to Heaven for answers. It had been a long 24 hours for her. She had gone through an emotional nightmare and still it went on and on. There He is in her hands gone. That I can relate to. I have held death in my hands and it is not a pleasant experience. It is just not anything you can or will ever be prepared for. No one is prepared for it. I have held life and death at the same time and that makes it even harder. You can physically feel the difference. It is horrible and the greatest sadness you will ever know. It is just awful. As I think of that moment, I think that Mary must have just been spent. She looked down at Jesus and then she wanted answers, but she got nothing. When that baby was in her arms in the stable, she knew He was the Messiah. She knew that, but did she know the gruesome details? I doubt it. She, like any other caring mother, would have hid Jesus for as long as possible to protect Him. She would have done something to save Him from that death. She would have accepted death, but I don't think this was what she had in mind. Through it all she did not turn her back on GOD. She, just like I, wanted to go to Heaven someday and be with her LORD, her son, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace. She knew that she had to keep her sights on Heaven to be reunited with the LORD. I am sure it was very hard at times, but she was chosen for a reason. She was probably very strong-willed and that made her the perfect mother for Jesus. I have a strong-willed child myself and she has a great purpose in this life. I can't wait to watch it unfold. May GOD be with all of us and we praise Him for sending His only son, our LORD!

30 pieces of Silver

How do you pay for a persons death and feel good about it? You don't. Judas was all smiles until the deed was done. He knew that money was tainted and he did not want to have anything to do with it. It really became more than he could deal with. The guilt of it all literally killed him. He saw no other way out. I wanted to know what was 30 pieces of Silver worth. I got several opinions. At the time, 30 pieces of silver was four months pay. So, today that would be anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 dollars for the average American. Judas had a money issue. According to John chapter 12 Judas did not like the fact that Mary was washing the LORD's feet with expensive Nard. Jesus basically told him to get over it. Money meant something to Judas and he realized it meant more to him than our LORD. Did he know what would happen to Jesus once he turned Jesus over to the Sanhedrin? Did he care? We will never know the answers to these questions. What we do know is that Jesus knew the outcome and he still seems a little hurt, but after that scene with Mary I am sure he knew who he was dealing with. I know that GOD probably filled Him in that someone was going to betray Him. After the Mary scene he probably was no longer guessing who it was. Really, there were probably tons of clues. I bet Judas was the first one to pipe up and say, "Lord, send them home, they are going to want food and we have no means to feed these people." Some people really get obsessed with money to the point that it takes over everything. Security I get, but money obsession is something else. I have a grandmother that her whole world evolves around her money and everyone what everyone else has. She can't have a conversation with you without mentioning money in one way or another. She has very little money, but obsesses over it and all that others have. Money means nothing if you don't have life. Life means everything to me and all lives have meaning with or without money.

The Forty Days of LENT

What is the purpose of Lent? The Church teaches that it is a time of reflection and sacrifice to prepare for Holy Week. Reflection. Many of the recent homilies and scripture readings over the past few weeks have been on Holiness. What does that mean? We should reflect on our goal to be Holy like Jesus. We should aspire to be Holy. How do you become Holy? What do you do to move toward Holiness? I gave up yelling for Lent. I have caught myself yelling more in my house over the past week. I was good for the first few weeks of Lent but as my frustration mounted last week with my childrens' behavior I went back to old habits of yelling at my kids to get my point across. It never works especially since they are at the age that they can yell back. It takes me a while to reflect back on these behaviors and realize that yelling does not achieve Holiness. What does achieve Holiness? Reading the Bible, going to Mass, praying for others, taking care of others, doing what is right in all situations, standing for Christianity instead of popular culture norms, being active in spreading God's word. I try to do all of these things and many times I truly fail. God blesses me with another day. Each day He gives me a "do-over". Each day I take it. I don't know if it is God's goal for us to achieve Holiness here on earth, but I will try each day to move forward and not look back. I think of Abraham. He was a Holy man of God, but he did things that were not Holy. God told Abraham he would have a son that would become many nations. Abraham and Sarah speeded up the process by bringing Haggar into the picture. Bad idea, it caused them more problems later on, but God worked His plan around Abraham and Sarah's sidetrack plan. He just moved on with His plan and helped them deal with the issues they created. Abraham continued his trek toward Holiness and God continued to lead him on that trek. I think God does this for all of us. He has plans for us and we get side tracked and He continues on His plan for us and deals with the consequences of the messes we make along the way. I pray that the Lord will continue on with His plan for my life and will give me each day to move toward Holiness. As Holy Week comes I pray that every part of Lent offered me ways to learn, reflect and move toward Holiness.

REJECTED AND ALONE

I was just today watching a Christian show with Michael W. Smith performing. He was singing about our LORD being crucified and in the background they had the video of the LORD being crucified in the movie PASSION OF THE CHRIST. I was listening to the words, "CRUCIFIED, REJECTED AND ALONE." It made me think of the older children that are still orphans in China. They have not been crucified, but the words "rejected and alone" are words they know. I could not imagine waking up in the world each day and knowing that you are all alone. Another baby died last week waiting on the shared list. He had a seizure and died. It was a complication from the seizure. It does not make it any easier. I was taken aback because I knew this boy. I had seen him countless times on the shared list. He was so incredibly cute and his name was Tia Xian. I have a girl from Xian myself and that name and face just stuck with me. He was a beautiful boy and just a little fella. I just can't imagine how this happened. I know the LORD wanted him home, but it just seems so sad. I know that one of the charities I follow and send money to has lost a lot of babies this year due to pneumonia and other complications of winter and illness. It just saddens me that so many have passed away. I know that my baby could have been one of these statistics. Charities can work in any of these orphanages, but they can't change the fact that some do not have heat or air condition. They can only do what they can do in someone else's building. It makes me think how wrong life can be for some of these kids. How they must feel to be all alone? How God must feel that we continue to leave them there to die alone. It is hard to understand, but I am sure GOD will use these deaths to lead people to adopt others. I pray that happens.

Visions of Children Dancing in My Head

I have had a bout of insomnia recently and I hate when that happens. I get a little nutty and I start analyzing every part of my 40 year old life. Between 1995 and 2000 my husband and I went through years of infertility treatments and several doctors. In that time we had a miscarriage and countless disappointments on the pregnancy front. I also met my very good friends the Jays. They too had dealt with infertility much longer than we had and had given up. They were just a few years older than us and just at the point we met them they just did not care anymore. Dogs were good and they borrowed kids often when they needed a fix. For the life of me I could not understand how they just gave up and put it in GOD's hands. I just could not grasp it. I was constantly giving them doctors names and suggestions. They were nice about it, but just did not care. I was envious at the time because I did not want to care either. However, for me it was a nightmare and it was doing our marriage in. GOD brought me this couple to show me that life will not stop if you don't have kids. It does go on and you won't self destruct. Being Catholic is hard without kids. People at Church just don't get it. They always ask and they assume the worst about you. They assume you are on birth control and you are not leading GOD's plan for you. They can be rude and not really mean to be. Anyway, I was crazy at this point. I was hyped up on fertility drugs and lived this insane roller coaster life. I can not imagine how I kept my job and my husband. But in all of that my friend started praying for me and out of nowhere I had this crazy dream. In the dream there was a little light-headed toddler in the background and in the foreground (art teacher in me, lol)was my husband carrying what appeared to be a dark-haired boy and holding the hand of another dark-haired boy. They were toddler age and you could not see their faces. So, I woke up and I was at PEACE. I knew finally that I could no longer try to control when and if I would have children it was completely and totally in GOD's hand. There was nothing I could do. Absolutely, nothing. I had to let it go and live on. GOD's way of saying, STAY CALM AND CARRY ON! It did not make fertility drugs easier, but I knew if we struggled through, it was going to happen. I pleaded with GOD after my miscarriage to help us. Within in three months we were pregnant again. When we found out we were pregnant with twins, I decided that the light-colored baby must have been someone else or our miscarried child and the boys were our soon-to- be twin boys. When we found out we were having a boy and a girl, I just thought it did not add up, but I knew GOD had a plan. I then decided that maybe the dark-haired boys were a boy and a girl. When we found out that Will had the heart condition, I knew he was going to be fine because of the dream. I just knew it, but I prayed every day for him to be healed. In the end I gave birth to my son, who was stillborn and our daughter. I could not figure out what GOD was trying to tell me in that dream I had 3 years before. I did not get it. Both of my children had light hair. No dark-haired children were born that day. So I just questioned GOD for days and months after we lost our son. I just did not understand because I had been living on the dream and it was blown apart. It exploded before me and I did not understand why I was given a revelation that did not relate to my life. I also wanted some serious answers to why my boy was gone. In the end all I got from the LORD was peace and joy. Peace and comfort to heal my heart and Joy from spending all my days with my precious little girl. That was what I got that year and the years to come.

Who knew that five years later we would travel to China to bring home our Asian princess. Where did she fall in GOD's dream for us. I did not know. I thought just maybe she was one of the dark-haired children I thought was a boy. And the light-haired child, I just assumed that was our oldest. That is all I had and I clung to that throughout the adoption. I just assumed that we would go back and bring home the other dark-haired toddler some day.
TODAY! In the past five years not a day has gone by that I have not thought about adopting again. NOT A DAY! As I get older the more it comes to mind. Every thing I do in my life I consider what the ramifications of that would be if we adopted again. Purchasing cars, going back to school, getting a job, etc. Every decision that is made adopting again comes to mind and plays out in my head as we consider options, etc. So in the last few days of insanity due to lack of sleep, I have been racing these ideas of adopting more children through my mind. My husband is done so he says. If I came home tomorrow and told him I was pregnant, I think he would be thrilled. If I came home and told him I had paper work so we could be paper pregnant, he would ask me if we had won the lottery. I feel in my heart that GOD would provide the funds for us to adopt again. I am not sure my husband has that kind of faith at this point. As I was trying to sleep during insomnia insanity this weekend, I had another vision and it took my breath. It took me aback. It was a what if? moment. I had this realization that came over me and literally knocked the wind right out of me. It has been coming for a while. Just little things have reminded me of that dream I had more than thirteen years ago. It has been weird now that I think about it. About six months ago I had this horrific thought that something was going to happen to our oldest daughter. Like it kept me up at night. I got this feeling that the child in the dream that looked like my daughter was going toward Heaven or was near death or was dead. This child was like way in the background and there was like clouds around. Okay that has always been part of the dream, but it came to me that maybe death is what it meant. I freaked out and I let GOD know that I could not bury another child. It was not anything that I could do again. I just could not. So, realizations like that have been coming to me for six months to a year now about this dream and I guess it is because of my turning 40 and wanting another child obsession thing I have been dealing with over the course of six months or so. I think GOD was revealing things to me in small snippets before He gave me the big Kahuna. It all came together the other night and here it is. What if the light-haired child was my son in Heaven and the two dark-haired children were boys? What if the vision had nothing to do with my girls at all? What if the dream was given to me to let me know that even though GOD was taking my son, He would be blessing me with not one, but two little boys. What if GOD gave me the vision to help me through my soon to be darkest hours and I was not versed in Him enough to understand it at the time or at the time of my grief? What if it was a plan prepared 13 or 14 years in the making? What if we are still supposed to go back and bring home twin boys? What if I am just loosing my mind? Or What if GOD has genuine plans that we have to willingly ask Him to let us participate in? What if we just let Him have all the control and leave it in His hands? This is how I see it. I am going to pray daily for my unknown boys and my husband, their father to be. I am going to ask GOD to provide the means to bring these babies home and I am going to ask GOD to make this happen in His time and not my own. I will also ask Him to give me Peace in my heart about it and to truly let Him take control over the entire situation. If it is part of His plan that has been in the making for all this time, then the financial plan is in place as well. I know that GOD almighty will make it happen and there is nothing I can do about it. I can't force it to happen and I can't control when it will happen, but in my heart I know that GOD HAS THIS! He is all over it. The money will come and the babies soon after. I just have faith that it will happen. I am in awe of HIS love for me and our family. Just at peace and know that the LORD hears my prayers in all situations. I am just going to take it all in and watch GOD work right before my eyes.

He is after all, as Chris August sings,
"From the Birds that Sing, In the Tallest Trees.
To the Human Life, of you and me.
From the Desert Sands, to the place we stand.
He is God of All, He is Everything.

Waohhh

I'm giving my life to the only One who makes the moon reflect the sun.
Every starry night, that was His design.
I'm giving my life to the only Son, who was and is and yet to come
Let the praises ring, 'cause He is everything
'Cause He is everything

From the autumn leaves, that will ride the breeze
To the Faith it takes, to pray and sing
From the Painted sky, to my plank filled eye
He is God of all, He is everything"

Not only is He everything, but He can do anything, and these mountains will move!

Welcome the Year of the Dragon!

So we find ourselves celebrating another Chinese New Year! My heart once again pulls back to China. We watched videos of our first trip. The first second we saw our baby girl. I am still amazed at the whole process of adoption and how it works and how GOD makes it work. Mark and I both cried tonight as we watched the video and watched our little girl cry. It was very hard to watch, but we did and this time MA watched it with us. She was amazed by the whole thing and she had tons of questions. Some I told her we would answer at another time. As I watched the video I had so many thoughts going through my mind. Where does the time go? Were they both that tiny? I can't even remember that tiny? Am I a horrible mom because I don't even know where all of our videos are of them when they were small? I miss that age so much and yet I am enjoying them now. They are so grown up and I just love hanging out with them and watching t.v. or doing nails, or going out to the "smelly, smelly store" a.k.a. Bath and Body Works. We call it this because we walk around and spray stuff and say to each other, "smell this, smell this, no smell this." All we do is "smelly, smelly". If they charged for smelling, I would be broke. MA also likes to wash her hands in the sink and use all of the different soaps. She washes and we smell and then she washes again and we smell until the lady in the store starts coming toward the sink. We leave at that point and go mess around in the lip gloss which I still think is not germ proof, but the girls think different. I would love to think that some day China will call us once again, but my husband continues to say no way. I heard last week that some friends in our China group are going back to adopt 2 more boys. This will be adoption 5 and 6 for them. Mark believes they are millionaires. I don't think so. I think they do fundraisers for their adoptions. He just thinks financially it is out of our grasp at this point. I trust him, but I will continue to pray that we will be able to afford to go back some day. The thoughts of having another little one in the house brings a smile to my face. I don't know how I would do it with work and the girls and their activities, but people with many more kids make it work and I am sure we would too. The largest migration of people in the world has taken place over the last six days. People from all over China and the world migrate back to their Chinese families for the Chinese New Year celebrations. Tonight thousands of orphans have no one to celebrate with and they are heavy on my heart. I could not imagine my baby being anywhere but here. It hurts me to even think about it, but somewhere tonight there is a China baby waking up with 10 others laying next to him. He is alone in this world with only one caretaker for him and his 10 friends. He fights each day for attention and he receives little. He needs a Mama and Baba to love him and care for him. I pray his family finds him soon. I pray the Year of the Dragon is his year to have a family. Happy Chinese New Year to my sweet girl and to all the babies and older children that still wait for their family. May GOD give you peace in your heart and may the guardian angels come down from Heaven and protect you while you wait.

Faith and Love Amaze Me

I was just reading a blog of an adopting mom. She is waiting to go to China to get her Princess in the next month or so. She starts her post with we and ends it with me. She is now a single mom and she hasn't even gone to China yet. Her husband became ill 18 months ago and passed away last summer. They both kept thinking he was going to get better and he didn't. She buried him in June and within a few days she got a yes from China that her and her husband were accepted to go and get her girl. How GOD works amazes me. GOD knows she needs this girl and this girl needs her. How do you explain to your girl that Daddy is not going to be a part of this family picture? I know that will be a tough conversation. She chose to get her girl anyway. I am just amazed by that. They decided together that this little girl was theirs and then tragedy happened. What a heartbreak and miracle at the same time. 18 months ago, she would not be able to get her girl. The rules about single moms has changed in the past year. Everything is in God's time. I will pray that this sweet little one will bond with her mommy quickly and they will lift each other up this next year. I am sure it will be a hard one for this mom. May God Bless Her and Keep Her!

I am the worlds worst mother!

Every now and then, my oldest daughter likes to remind me that she has never been to Disney World. I am always excited to here how she is 10.5 and she has never been but everyone in her class has been to Disney World. Mark and I have looked into it several times and it is really expensive. And our girls don't like amusement park rides. And we chose 6 years ago to sacrifice ourselves so we could send our girls to private school. It would cost one child's tuition for a year to take our family to Disney World. I told our oldest that we love her and her sister and we have taken them on great vacations, and we took a trip to CHINA. NO ONE in her class has ever been to CHINA, but she never brings that up. I finally told her that all of the money that has been spent on Disney Vacations in her classroom could probably feed 10,000 starving African children for over a month and possibly longer. Disney World is not the reality that I know of the world. It is a fantasy. Why would I want to spend the money to go to a fake China in Disney World when I have been to the real one. I just don't think I am going to change my mind about this. Parents have asked me,"Why don't you take the girls to Disney World?" Honest answer, "We can't afford to spend that much money on any vacation." And the whole time I would be thinking about how far that money would go in any orphanage program around the world. I would think of how it could pay for one installment in an adoption. I just can't forget what I know. "I am forever changed." I just can't erase the scars on my heart. The experience of what I have seen with my own eyes, what I have read about in other parts of the world, and what I know to be reality. No, I can't save them all, but I don't want to feel guilty about spending money unnecessarily for a short good time. I can't explain to my sweet girl that reality is harsh and it does not involve Disney World. The real world involves homelessness, starvation, and endless poverty. If you have ever read about the real world, your world will not be the same. We sacrifice for our girls in many ways, but I just can't bring myself to sacrifice for this when a charity somewhere could use that money to feed hungry babies. I am the world's worst mother!

A Turtle named Ed

We took the girls on a wild adventure vacation last summer. In our journey we spent a couple of hours at the Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island. It is now one of our favorite places to visit. If you have never been, you get to take a tour of the hospital and a guide walks around to the tanks and tells you about the turtles they are currently caring for. Ed was my favorite. Ed was found originally stranded on Cumberland Island, GA. She was brought to the hospital at Jekyll and evaluated. She had an obstruction that was pressing on her lung. The lung was not inflating and deflating properly and so she could not dive to get food to eat. She was rehabilitated and was released off the coast of Jekyll only she would not go. She just looked at the staff and would not go. They did everything to get her in the water and she would not go. So a few weeks later they took her by boat out in the ocean and basically sent her on her way. She was finally released and the staff and volunteers were so happy. In May she was found off the coast of St. Augustine. She was floating. They brought her back. See I really think in the year she spent at Jekyll she developed a bond that she was not ready to let go of just yet. She was a young turtle when she was found. So, young that they named her Ed because they had not determined if she was a boy or girl until they did a CT scan and saw her ovaries. So at such a young age she formed a bond with her caregivers. They became her family. They loved her and took care of her. She just kept coming back to her family. She did not want to go that first time and she probably would not have jumped off that boat. She wanted to be with her family at the Turtle Center and GOD found a way to get her back there. She now is waiting for a permanent place at an aquarium. I guess the staff figured Ed prefers spending time with people rather than a big, huge ocean of fish. The staff and volunteers found her quirky, but I related to her. She stands for all that GOD wants for us. He wants us to be a part of His family. I think about Ed and how she swam in the big blue sea probably hoping to get back to her little pool at the turtle center. She had no idea how to get there she just swam until she could no longer swim. I wonder if she just floated off the coast of Jekyll for hours wondering if the turtle center boat was coming back to get her. I am sure turtles have feelings too. I wonder if she felt abandoned. You know most of the turtles there probably feel captured and want to get back to their life in the open sea, but baby Ed did not like what the sea had to offer. She wanted to be with her hospital family. For her the ocean world was way too big for a little green sea turtle to take on alone. I wonder how a baby in an orphanage feels on that first day they find themselves in an orphanage or abandoned on the street or in a bus station. An infant probably only knows how cold they are at that age, but a toddler or older child knows that their whole world has been turned upside down. I met a couple that adopted their daughter at five years old. She was beautiful and I met her when she had only been home about a month. I spoke to her in some broken Mandarin because her parents knew none. She shyly answered my questions as she partially hid behind her new mother. I was in awe of her ability to bond so quickly and to trust so wholeheartedly. Her mother told us when she left the room that at the age of 3 she was abandoned at a large train station in Beijing. They have no clue where she is originally from. They were told by the citizens they met in Beijing that she was definitely not from there. The Chinese have different features and different dialects of Mandarin in every region and those citizens in Beijing knew she was not from around there. I am sure when this little one found herself in a sea of people at that train station she felt a lot like Ed. She was in a big train station and all she wanted was to get back to the family that had taken care of her over the last three years. GOD has great plans for this little girl because the possibilities of what could have happened to her in such a huge place are truly endless. Besides being kidnapped, she could have fallen onto the tracks, or been knocked down by the sea of people coming on and off the trains. GOD does have plans for her and what a blessing she is to her new parents. Five years from now her memories will reflect the love she has in her new family and the prayers sent up to bring her into their lives. Ed the sea turtle was born somewhere on an ocean coast, but that was not what she knew as home. She knew the hospital pool as her home and that was where she longed to be. I am sure this precious child has memories of many things, but for those weeks before I met her she had the love she had been looking for since the day she was left at a train station all alone. I think of all the aged out and aging out children in orphanages around the world. I know they all seek the same thing, LOVE. God is LOVE and that is why we all seek it. I pray that these older children find the LOVE they are seeking in the Father and not in drugs, alcohol or prostitution. I pray that GOD will protect them from the evil of this world and help them find the LOVE they seek in the right places. I know Ed is swimming in her pool right now at Jekyll. She has no clue that they are seeking a new family for her at some aquarium. I hope Ed is happy in her new adoptive home wherever it may . I hope Ed finds the love she found at Jekyll that kept calling her from the sea. Jekyll calls me once every couple of years, too and every time I am there I feel like its home at least for a few days.

Life: Part II

If anyone out there has read the book, "Heaven is for REAL." Wow. It is a little overwhelming and yet I want to read it again. I could read 100 times over. Amazing little book and has truly impacted my life. If anyone has every lost someone they love, please read this book. It will give you some healing, some closure, and some serious peace. Life is amazing after reading this book. I have this new I don't care attitude about things. I just don't care if my checkbook is empty today. GOD has provided us with paychecks and it will be replenished. Bills will be paid and GOD will make sure of that. He has taken care of us in the last five years. He has given Mark the opportunities to work part-time at times when we thought their were no jobs left out there. He has truly gotten us through some really hard times and the money is always there when we need it. I know in all things he has a time and a place. Everything that happens to us in this life is to prepare us for the next one. He truly loves us and wants us to help Him tell everyone about His love for them. In this life we are to live our life with the goal of getting to the next one in Heaven with Jesus. I try each day to lead my life in the direction that GOD would want me to go. However, some days that path feels like a game of Candy Land or Shoots and Ladders. I wake up on the right path moving forward and I pull a card that makes me go backwards on the path. I want to have a life of no worries. I want to live without worry, yet our American life still does not allow us to do that. I have watched several interviews with Katie Davis. She is a missionary in Uganda and at 23 years old she is in the process of adopting 13 girls. The oldest is 16 and the youngest is 3. Does she wonder at any point in time how she will pay to feed and cloth them? No. She gets up each day in Uganda and she home schools them, she feeds the community, she takes care of anyone that needs her in the community, and in her spare time she raises money for her Amazima non-profit organization. She is an amazing young woman that is doing all of this and she is half my age. At 40 I just want GOD to take over. I want Him to run my life. I feel like He could make it work whole lot better than I could. If I come to Him like a child, I will enter Heaven. I want to just loose the control materialism has on me. In the last five years I have discovered that many things no longer matter to me. I used to buy everything new. I now buy most things used. Craigslist and Goodwill are my favorite places to shop. I like to make things myself rather than purchase them. Being an art teacher, I have discovered the fun in the process. I no longer spend all my money on pre-made things. I want to create and learn in the process. It is much more fun. I have also discovered that little things mean more to me than expensive things. On our 10th wedding anniversary I got this beautiful ring from my husband. It was from a pawn shop of course, but an expensive gift even from there. I look at it sometimes and think about how many cleft surgeries it would cover in China or how it is worth two months salary for an adoption guide. I think about how it would feed 30 children for a month or one child for 30 months in Haiti. I think about the money we spent on adoption expenses and what a small price it was to pay for a life filled with so much...hopes, dreams, giggles, laughter, smiles, "I love yous" in the morning and at night. This is truly priceless. I have big dreams in this life and they include touching little children. I just want to hug them and kiss them and let them know that around the world in a 2000 square foot home somebody loves them and knows they need a family. I pray for the orphans of the world everyday and each day I ask the LORD to make their life count to someone. Let them know that they mean something to somebody. I can't imagine living in this world and not count. No one care if you live or die. Sure someone is going through to motions to care for you and 300 others. Going to work and doing a job and being a mother are very different. Can I save the whole world? No. "GOD will take the small, and make it into something HUGE." I got that quote from Katie Davis. In an interview she said that some days there are more starving children in the next village that she can't feed, and there are more medical needs than she can get to in her life time, but in a small village in Uganda she is changing the lives of 13 little girls and her entire little village. Each morning when she wakes does she care if she missed Desperate Housewives, or if she forgot to Tivo the People's Choice Awards? No. She is grateful to GOD for her 13 children and her ability to feed them today and help them with their school work. That is it. Does the Machine Gun Preacher care about his mortgage being late? Nope. He asks GOD to pay it and sends the mortgage payment to His non-profit in Sudan where he feeds 300 children a day. Money is not his focus nor is it Katie Davis'. They live in for real time not our American real. If 'Heaven is for Real", then I need to get my life Real for GOD. He will deal with all of this monetary stuff if we follow Him in all we do each and every day.

Life: Part I

You can't talk about death without talking about life. Poppy was 81 when he died a few weeks ago. I turned 40 this year. I am at the halfway mark. Of course, I may not live to be 81 but based on his age I am half way there. I look at the past 40 years and I think about how many ups and downs and turns my life has taken. I have read several books over the last few weeks both of them dealing with life journeys and death. I think about how my life has changed based on those two things. I am not the same person I was at 20 that is for sure. At twenty my whole life evolved around a boy and college. That was it. I wanted to marry the boy and I wanted to graduate from college. I did both of those things. I then wanted to have a child. That was a snag on our life journey. I experienced death before we were blessed with life. I had a miscarriage and nothing in this world can prepare you for that. Nothing. I was devastated. I did not even enjoy the first twelve weeks of my second pregnancy because I was terrified that death was looming. Little did I know at the time it was still looming. So after the death of our son, I was just never the same. Then 9/11 happened and I definitely was changed forever. I did not see the world the same. I was fearful of many things after that and paranoid at times. I really probably needed to see a therapist, but GOD has a way of getting you out of your funk. He moves you to a new place and you can make it good or you can make it bad. I went in a new direction for the good and this time it was a point of no return. At the age of 3 our oldest decided she wanted a sibling and so after months of begging we decided to start the adoption process. It was hard and at times heartbreaking for us. In retrospect it was really pretty painless compared to other people's journeys, but at the time I thought it was rough. We found our girl on an agency website right around New Year's Eve. I just fell in love and my husband was hopelessly in love with his Asian princess. Little did he know what was in store for him. The next five months went by fast and I was sick at my stomach the day that we left to go to China. I had no idea what we were in store for but my stomach was in knots. I lost part of my soul in a hospital room five years before and somehow I was feeling restored or at least it seemed that way. As our journey took us to the city of Xi'an I got more and more anxious, but it was less sick and more joyful. I don't know what our girl was thinking when she came in that room, but all I could do was cry. Mark was crying too and this time it was tears of joy. WE HAD LIFE BEFORE US AND IT WAS AWESOME. Our two girls checking each other out and playing with toys. The emotions were overwhelming. I was just in awe of that moment. I could not move much. I just absorbed it all in. I just looked at her and realized she was real and she was ours and it was really happening and I needed to absorb this moment. Neither of us went near her we just watched her and looked at her. We had both read stories and books and information. We wanted to give her space. We wanted her to feel comfortable with us. I just wanted someone to pinch me and tell me she was really ours and we would really be taking her home in 13 days. I just thanked GOD for her and just watched her every move. She probably thought we were crazy at the time. I was crazy in love with her. She represented life for us. I went out of my comfort zone on an airplane that I was afraid to be on because of 9/11. I just wanted to sit and look at her. That was all I needed. The money, the time, the effort, the everything came down to this. Just watching her play. That was good for me at that moment. It was everything to me. She was real and she was close enough to me that I could smell her. I did not need anything else. International Adoption is a crazy thing and if it does not change you nothing will. It is a GOD thing and it is real... as real as it gets. There is nothing more real than that. At the moment you lay eyes on your child you know that all of those pictures have real heartbeats behind them. There are 2200 children today on the waiting child list. These are not pictures these are little heartbeats of children waiting for someone to bring them home. They are not just somewhere on a shared list computer file. They are living, breathing, children that need a home of their own. My heart aches as I think back to the day we went to the orphanage. My girl was rotten. I am not going to lie to you. She had been spoiled based on orphanage standards and we got to see some of that while we were in China. She had some fits and she showed us what she was made of on more than one occasions. Each day our guide would ask us how everything was going. I found it odd. Later that week I found out that a week before we arrived a family had left their little one in China. They chose not to adopt their child. I don't know the circumstances, but all I can say is heartless. How does one human being do that to another? How do you do it? How? Please tell me. I could not for the entire week wrap my head around that and it still bothers me five and half years later. I just don't understand it. This child was a toddler. I don't get it. Still don't and only GOD will be able to explain it to me. So with all of the joy I had in my heart I smiled every moment. From the time we got up until the time we went to bed. Every day we dealt with temper tantrums and tiredness and whinnies from both children, but my smile rarely left my face. I had a smile for thrown food and poop diapers. My whinnie husband and his tiredness I did it all. Screams when we were touring I still smiled. My heart was not prepared for the orphanage. It just was not prepared for the magnitude of it all. I was not expecting what I saw and it is engrained in my memory forever. It will never, ever leave me. I think my husband prays each day that he could erase it, but it will always be with me and it hangs on my heart like a noose at times. The girls were taken from us at the car. Evidently word got out that the spoiled princess was on her way to the castle and the spoilers wanted to see her. They met us at the taxi and took her and her big sister with them. ROTTEN. They never put her down the whole time we were there. I got her back when it was time to go. They needed closure even though she was too young to need it. I got that. Other moms probably would not have, but being a high school teacher and dealing with teenagers, I totally got it. These teenage girls had raised her. They fed her and diapered her and held her. They loved her and she loved them. They needed to see her one last time to say goodbye. So, she and her big sister went with the teenage girls and Mark and I had paper work to finish. We were sent to an office where the only man on campus gave us a receipt for our contribution to the care of orphans. We gave him the money and he put it in their safe. I know my baby's money went to feed other orphans and not to the government. I saw it go in the safe myself. Pretty cool actually. We were given a bracelet with her name on it and many thanks. We returned the thanks and gave the director a small gift. He again thanked us and we were taken to the atrium where our girls were by now. This was like a huge entrance into the orphanage. It was open and it was four stories up to the ceiling. The winding staircase was right next to us. I had this little index card file with me. In it I had twenty parent names and email address and underneath each one I had a Chinese orphan's name. I went all over the building seeking out these children and taking their picture. I think the most heartbreaking was the first room I went to. I had my guide with me and told the women in the room which child I was looking for. As I sat on the floor in front of the baby gate I saw twenty little faces looking at me. They were all dressed the same and none of them had on diapers. They had little slits in their outfits and they just went to the bathroom on the floor and the ladies would clean up the mess. It was odd to say the least, but it was the culture and I got used to it. What I could not get used to was the shear number of babies in this room. It was a room of one year olds. They were all just beautiful babies and they all wanted to know what I was up to. I just sat and touched there little hands as they reached for me. It took just a minute for the ladies to point out who I was supposed to photograph. I took her photo and then they picked her up and I took a few more. I touched her little fingers and told her her mommy was coming soon. I went back to the floor and touched the hands of a few more cuties and then I had to go because this was only one of the twenty I was supposed to photograph. The baby rooms went all the way down the hall and I knew that somewhere in that hallway my baby spent her first few months here. I never found out which room, but I knew it was on that hall. I continued my quest to find the girls and boys I was photographing. I had studied the older age group for weeks. Every time a parent emailed me a picture I would study it and really focus in on the child and their features because I wanted to make sure I photographed the right children. I saw a group of four and five year olds that had gathered in the atrium for the events that would soon take place. They were all sitting in metal folding chairs and waiting patiently. I asked my guide to let the ladies know I was taking pictures for families in America. She helped me out. I first saw two faces I recognized and started photographing them. I spoke to a little man I recognized and took his picture. I could not stand it I had to touch his little face. I made him cry. He was real. He was not a picture I had in my file. He was a sweet-faced innocent little boy who was scared of strangers. He was beautiful and I wanted to hug him and let him know that his mommy was coming very soon, but I let the caregiver near by comfort him knowing that his cries would be comforted by his mommy in a few short months. I did this all day long. We were there about 3.5 hours and I took as many photos as I could. As I stood within the sea of children to watch the Children's Day celebrations I had an observer. I looked down and a severely handicapped girl sat in awe of me. She was fascinated by my video camera and by my camera. She was looking for attention and I had to take her picture. She was about 12 and she was what we called in school MOID. Moderate to severely handicapped. She had little function of her legs and she had a little drool issue. I assumed she had severe cerebral palsy but I never confirmed that with anyone. She was sweet and I wondered if she had parents preparing here to bring her home. I found out later that day that she was on the unadoptable list. She would never have adoption as an option. She would leave here and go to a nursing home to die. That was the reality of her future. Welcome to the real world outside of Georgia. Wake up to what the world has to offer a handicapped orphan. I still think about her and wonder if she is still in this world of if she made it to Heaven.
My oldest sat on the front row with a girl about her age. She was talking up a storm with this child and I just could not comprehend that her Mandarin had improved that much from earlier in the day. We found out later that Pippa knew English. My oldest was talking in English to an English speaking Pippa. We spent the next four years praying that Pippa would get a family. My oldest always hoping it would be us that brought her home. Last spring she finally went home to five brothers and four sisters. She had a huge family now. GOD answered that prayer in a big way.
As I talk about all of this I am reminded that on that particular day there were 550 children living at the orphanage. Each one waiting and hoping their family would come. How do you think they did that? How could the beautiful, healthy Pippa deal each day with the reality that another family had taken home their little one while she had to wait. She knew where she stood in the grand scheme of orphanage life. She was 10 years old when she came home. I met her when she was five. This is reality. I fell in love with a little man who was four years old on one of the many blogs I follow. He was a cleft baby too and he had the sweetest little face. The adoption agency that had his file had a video of him riding a bike. He was so cute. I begged Mark to bring him home. Money is always the issue but this momma's heart never gets that. I just wanted to bring him home. He was six months older than our Asian princess and he needed a momma and I really wanted to beg people to help us bring him home. I got a real no. I placed his little photo on the fridge and we prayed for him forever. I know it was months and months. I go through phases where I keep up with the adoption world and then I go through times where I just ignore it. I just can't bare to look at those little faces on the pictures because when have had the opportunity to touch one of those pictures up close and personal you realize that the pictures on the website are real children that live and breath and need a mommy and daddy. They don't want to be a picture on a website they really want to be somebody's child that gets tucked in at night and they want to be held when they are sick. They are real and they need a real home where people love them. So, little man sat on my fridge for months and finally his picture fell off the fridge and he disappeared. I prayed for sometime after that he would get a family and then he seemed to fade off of the agency website. I tried to find him a couple of times but he was gone. Last year he reappeared on another agency list. He was part of an older child camp some agencies do. He was still on the waiting child list and he had had three surgeries in China. Okay my baby has been through some cleft surgeries and they are painful. The thoughts of this boy enduring all of that pain alone made me feel awful. I just felt awful and there was some shame attached to it, too. I really did not have the nerve to look back at his file. I would check it every now and then to see if he had been matched with a family, but I no longer looked at the page that showed his face. I advocated for him on several blogs and I told people about his video and which agency had it. I did everything I could think of to get him a family and to this day I don't know if he ever got his family that he so deserved. I still feel awful. See if I had control of everything in my household I would have a house full of Chinese boys. They are the last to be chosen. Everyone wants to go to China and adopt a girl and people forget that the orphanages are full of living breathing boys. Little boys and big boys all needing a family to call their own. I read a recent interview with some orphan teens and it was truly heart wrenching to hear their stories. They know the day they turn thirteen that they will drop off of the adoption list. That is the end of the line for them. It is the saddest day of their lives. My nephew turned 13 this year and that is really all I thought about the whole month of his birthday. I just thought about how many 13 year old Chinese orphans spent the month knowing they had run out of time for a real family. It is just sad. I look at these little sweet faces knowing the clock is ticking and before they know it their time will be up too. So this is life for me. I am stuck. I can't seem to get past this. I want to bring more home while my husband says he is done. I want boys in this house of girls. GOD took my son and ten years later I respect the decision, but I still would like to raise a couple of sons. I think Mark would too, he just has cost issues. It is a good thing that he thinks about that because right now we would have six Asian kids and we would be living under a bridge somewhere with our kids in tow. I go with my heart and he thinks dollars and cents. Which is good, but I am getting older and the list is getting longer. Babies are now little boys and soon they will be teenage boys. I have literally watched children grow up on the waiting child list and I find it to be a hard pill to swallow. I wish I could have done more. I wish had some way of making this happen for us. Some way to bring these boys home. I have my eye on this little guy and some ladies on one of the blogs were talking about him today. He is a heart baby, but he is the cutest thing. He had surgery when he was a year old but he is not doing well right now. He is five and he is way past the time he should have had another surgery. Here he would have had four surgeries by now and he would be done until he was older. Unfortunately, an orphan can only hope that some charitable organization will find him and get him the surgery he needs. That happened for him at one and he went back to his home orphanage after he recovered. Today he is having issues and he needs a heart repair but he still waits. He is still cute as a button, but he is a tired boy because his heart is tired. I pray that his family will find him soon and bring him home. His little heart can't wait forever. He is one of thousands in the same situation. They need homes yesterday, but they still wait. My husband does not see what I see and what I know. Joey finds himself still waiting for someone to see him and want him for their very own. There is another little man that waits with no real medical problems but he continues to wait. He will be four on his next birthday, yet he waits. Why do they wait? Why? Because we have a hard time giving up our luxurious lives to help someone in need. We personally don't live extravagantly, but we like to do what we like to do and we like to eat out and we like to buy our girls nice things and we don't compromise much on that. I am not sure that we could afford another adoption or two but at this point I would be willing to find out. I just ache for these kids and even if I am putting my adoption blogs on ignore any Asian child I see reminds me that there are 2200 children on the Chinese waiting child list and 2 out of 3 are boys. So ignore the blog, but the heart still knows the stats. I can't erase it because it hangs like a noose around this living, breathing, heart. It is there and it is very hard to ignore. At some point the heart will be heard and GOD will place it in our face at a time we least expect it. I am not sure how either of us will respond but I pray we make our LORD proud. My life is forever changed by the journey I have taken so far. I have been down a path of life and death of death and life and death and life. It curves in and out like a snake slithering through the grass. At times I have felt the life knocked out of me and at times I felt GOD breath the life into me. I go day to day praying that it will end with me feeling some sense of accomplishment on the life side before death catches up with me again. I continue to believe and have faith that GOD has plans for me. He says so in Jeremiah. I am happy with my life, but I know there is more that I have to do for the glory of GOD. Our children are our legacy they are what we leave behind. We have to teach them the right thing to do in all circumstances. We have to be examples of faith and love and hope. We must show them what it is to live our lives for GOD. We must be faithful to GOD's word and we must live by His word. It is what keeps on the right path until He takes us home. So, I pray for His guidance daily and I pray He shows me the right path to take in all circumstances. I pray for the boys of China and I pray for my own heart and the noose that lives around it.