Thursday, July 31, 2008

Tagged

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was probably day dreaming about Kyle or talking to him on the phone. I had just graduated from H.S. and met Kyle and was about to begin my first semester at A&M. So I knew everything and was very excited about my new life "on my own" and hoped it included Kyle :)

Things on my to-do list today:

Today is almost over, so I'll tell you what I did. Pack up to drive home from SA. Listen to Kylynn whine, "I'm ready to go" 2267 times. Get the payment for S&W post marked. Went to the ATM and paid our dog babysitter. Planned meals for 4 new moms. Played in the sprinkler with Kylynn (in my clothes :). Made peach cobbler.

What are some snacks you enjoy?

If it's bad for me I probably love it. Pepperoni pizza, moose tracks ice cream, cheese puffs, soda. And most recently this amazing dip my sister-in-law C made, it was to die for!

What would you do if you were a millionaire?

I don't know that I'd do anything much different truthfully, but that's boring. So, I would buy us new cars (ours are 10 and 11 years old). Buy a bigger house, one that can hold lots of kiddos. I'd love to start a non-profit...but that would have to be once all my children are grown.

Name some places you've called home:

WY, OH, MD, TX. I was born in CA but I didn't call it home as was only there for 2 days :)

What are some of your bad habits?

Being a control freak, being bossy, being slightly OCD about my house, eating for fun.

What are some jobs you've held?

CPS caseworker, admin, Mom (or as I like to say CEO of the C household)

Who are you tagging?

Johnna, Angie D., and Kristen D.


*Sorry this is all in italics, being the computer genius I am I couldn't figure out how to get it off :)

Monday, July 28, 2008

Congratulations Myles and Laura!


My brother-in-law got married this past weekend. I can't believe that he is old enough to get married, considering that when I married his brother he was 14. But as they say, time flies, and now Myles is all grown up. I couldn't be prouder of the man he has grown into and I have rarely seen someone in love as much as he is.

I love my new sister-in-law and can't help but think she had a lot to do with the man Myles is today.

I pray that the two of you find a way to use the amazing love God has given you for each other to glorify Him. I pray that you are blessed with many joyful years together. I pray that you are blessed with children that love and respect you. I pray that you make people jealous when they see the way you look at each other for years to come :).

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

COBRA

Well now I know. Why they call it, "COBRA".

For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about when you "lose your job" (I was told saying "getting fired" implies that Kyle did something inappropriate at work :)) you are entitled to continue receiving your insurance for 18 months. The catch is you have to pay the premium, both the part that the company paid for and the part you've always paid for. Let's just say that adds up to such a large amount of money, that after one year you've paid more to COBRA than Burger King has paid to a full time employee. As a friend of mine said, when you're paying that much it's no longer "insurance" you might as well just pay for stuff out of pocket.

So they decided to name it "COBRA", you know like one of the most venemous snakes in the world. Or an Army attack helicopter. So now I know why they chose that name. COBRA: a deadly attack on American families, those who have lost their job and therefore their income, being asked to pay an absurd amount of money for health "insurance".

So hopefully the local health insurance you can buy into will except us quickly and even better we'll find a job quicker!

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Running away from Home

When I get really overwhelmed by life I have this desire to run away. Very mature, I know. For some reason I do not possess that ability to just relax, to ignore all that's going on around me and breathe. Instead I feel like the walls are closing in on me, every little to-do jumps out at me around the house, every small problem is magnified, and I very quickly begin to become frantic.

So this past week we ran away from home. Really, you could call it a vacation, but it wasn't that as much as it was just pretending to live a different life for a week. We visited some family on our way into town but then Sunday evening through Thursday we just hung out at my parent's house (they were on vacation) and just relaxed. And it was very relaxing, there wasn't anything I "had" to do, no one asking my questions about my life, no one wanting some of my time. Just me and Kyle and Kylynn being still. We read, sat on the front porch, went to the river a couple of times, but mainly we breathed.

Do you ever get out into the middle of nowhere alone and suddenly feel your breathing change. You realize normally you breathe so shallow and quickly then you feel yourself relax and suddenly you're really breathing again. It was good to feel myself at calm, breathing again.

But now that we're home again I want to run away again. There was a huge pile of mail waiting for us, 8 messages on the machine, and huge questions to solve regarding our future. Something tells me that's not the answer though, instead I think it's to really listen and obey what God is trying to teach me. To trust Him, even when it's not making any sense right now. To allow Him to be in control, when I don't feel the need to be in control of all things I am so much calmer. To learn the possibility that God's perfect life for me is different than the perfect life I designed for myself, and His perfection is real, mine is not.

As crazy as it sounds when my life gets turned upside down, after the franticness I begin to feel such praise. I think what I love most about my God is that He doesn't make sense to me most of the time, that He is not someone I can fully comprehend. That His "perfect plan" can feel like a mess and yet really be good and perfect. And that He is in control, I cling to that with all I have, and in that fact, I find rest.


Tuesday, July 15, 2008

A blog to read

I know this is a cop out. But we're on vacation and I want to relax and not blog, so if you want to read a great blog entry on adoption click here: Sit A Spell. I love this lady's blog, she is currently going through a private domestic open adoption. This particular blog is on one more thing she's learned about being adopted into God's family by going through the adoption process. It is really well written and as always made me laugh. I hope you enjoy it. I'll catch y'all up on our vacation soon!

Friday, July 11, 2008

This is an adoption blog...right?

Ok, I know it has been a long time since I gave any updates on our adoption. Frankly that's because I don't have any, I wish I did, as much as for you as for me. Months and months of no news is not fun, but unfortunately that's just the way it goes during this process.

So to continue to keep this blog up I fill in the gaps with happenings and thoughts from my life. I hope that follows my goal to have an "adoption blog", after all I am a person involved in an adoption and these are the happenings of that life. It's a stretch I know! :)

We do get an email update each month, but really it's a huge letdown. Every time I see it in the in box I get so excited...but then it just says currently adoptions are taking x number of months, etc., etc. The worst part is the x continues to become a bigger number as the process goes on.

Here's what I'm telling people now, because I know people are always kind enough to wonder when we'll get our baby. Hopefully we will have a child assigned in the next 3 months, it is then taking anywhere from 3 to 6 months for paperwork to be completed in order to travel to pick up your child. So hopefully in the next 6 to 9 months our child will be home. Personally I feel like God has given me a specific date to pray over and so Kyle and I pray for our child to be home by that date.

I will try to update y'all as much as I can, even when there's not too much to say. And I will continue to blog on my feelings on adoption and the aspects of it so that I remain true to my purpose of this blog, however in between I'll just have to tell you about my life, I hope that's okay.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

If you ever need a little boost, maybe you've forgotten just how loved you really are, I recommend losing your job. I know that would be a little extreme just for some kind words from friends and family, but trust me by the end of a week you will feel loved! The reason I know this is Kyle was laid off from his job on Monday, we knew it was coming due to the financial situation the company is in, but to suddenly have no income that's a bit shocking.

After he came home at three in the afternoon and let me know that was his last day, I waited for me to go into hysterics or at least a major case of the butterflies. But it didn't happen I was calm and Kyle was calm and maybe dare I say glad. This past week of unemployment has been filled with joy. Anyone reading this who knows Kyle and I, is now thoroughly convinced that there is a God, because the way we are acting must be the Holy Spirit living in us, our inherent nature would be to freak out and figuring out how WE would fix the problem. Man, do I feel loved by God, that He would give me His peace and joy about this situation, it must be one of the biggest blessings I've ever received, to be saved from my own franticness.

Then Kyle began his networking, we live in a smaller town, so to find a job networking is key. God has just blown our minds at the number of people willing to help Kyle find a job, some of them strangers (friends of friends). I have absolutely no doubt that God will provide Kyle with a job as I watch His people work selflessly to help their brother in Christ.

So then I sent out an email to some friends and family to request their prayers, because I believe in the power of prayer! How they blessed me. Besides praying for us they sent me notes of encouragement that made me cry at how loved we are, how supported we are, and how good it is to hear, "everything's going to be okay". I loved how everyone had something slightly different to say, how my aunt responded the way she does best by telling me a story about when she was fired. How my dad responded so much like himself, short and to the point, only one line long, yet it commiunicated an abundance of love and just the right amount of support, the perfect balance of I'll catch you if you fall but I'll stand back and let you be an adult. So many friends with their well wishes and words so kind I knew that everything was going to be okay. Time and again I read or heard, "this just might be the best thing that's ever happened to you" and that's how we feel too. To be saved from a job that was not ideal, to be reminded what's really important in life, to be told again and again you are loved, to learn to depend even more on God, already this is one of the best things that's ever happened to us.

So all week one of the verses that kept popping into my mind was, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35. And suddenly it made sense to me, what these people are doing in my life speaks volumes about the God they serve. It perplexes those who don't know our God and draws them to Him. My biggest prayer during this week has been, God be glorified in this situation, and you, my friends and family, are doing that. I hope I remember this lesson always, to reveal the God I serve to the world in desperate need of Him, I need to love people with His amazing love. I need to have more love, not more religion, more love.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

"Reverence doesn't live here anymore"

I read this article today by Leonard Pitts, he is an opinion columnist for the Miami Herald. I always really enjoy what he has to say. This article was so relevant to my generation and especially timely with the 4th of July around the corner. I really hope you'll reflect like I did, just how little we revere our military and their service. I'm embarrassed to admit when I think of the 4th of July my first thought is fireworks, not freedom that was fought and died for time and again. Enjoy.

"I have no idea when reverence fled these shores. That it did, however, seems obvious.

What else can you conclude when the service of military men becomes a routine object of mockery and misinformation in the name of politics? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John McCain: traitor.

In most quarters, of course, the senator is regarded as anything but. In those quarters, he is a war hero, having survived over five years of beatings, solitary confinement and deprivation in a Vietnamese prison camp, even refusing an offer of early release because it meant leaving fellow prisoners behind.

But John Aravosis, who blogs on Americablog.com, has a different take. In a posting Sunday, he accused McCain of ''disloyalty'' because at one point, his captors tortured him into reading a propaganda statement.

I submit that John Aravosis would read a statement denouncing his own mother if you beat him long enough. Most of us would. We would trust Mom to understand that we acted under duress, that we did what we needed to survive. We would trust that 40 years later, no one would raise this as proof of ``disloyalty.''

That Aravosis has done precisely that is bizarre, shameful and crude -- but not unprecedented.

Indeed, if you were making a movie out of this, you'd call it Swift Boat II: The Revenge, after the equally bizarre, equally shameful and equally crude 2004 attacks on John Kerry, another senator who was regarded as a war hero. Kerry was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for braving enemy fire while wounded to rescue a Special Forces officer. But that heroism was slimed (Kerry was never under fire, they claim) by people working for the re-election of a president who served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war and a vice-president who dodged service altogether. Delegates at the GOP convention even mocked Kerry's wounds, sporting bandages bearing purple hearts.

Some may feel McCain is simply the gander being served a sauce first tasted by the goose. But it seems to me that something has gone haywire in a nation that forgets how to revere the service of military men and women, political expediencies and affiliations be damned, a nation where a Max Cleland can leave three limbs in Vietnam, yet have his patriotism questioned or a John Murtha can serve as a Marine for 37 years, yet be called a coward.

I make no case for sainthood for these or any other military personnel. I make no case that military service exempts you from criticism, however vigorous and sharp. No, the case I make is for simple respect.

Maybe I am hypersensitive, maybe just old-fashioned by the standards of an era that regards earnestness as a character flaw. Still, it strikes me as viscerally wrong, offensive at the mitochondrial level, to trivialize, demean or diminish, particularly for political gain, a man's service and sacrifice on behalf of his country.

Am I dreaming, or wasn't there once a time that did not need to be said? Where did reverence go? Was it voted off the island on Survivor? Did it fail its audition to be the next American Idol? Was it not sexy enough for America'sNext Top Model, or ruthless enough for The Apprentice? Maybe it just lacked the zazz to survive an era where irony is the preferred prism, irreverence the preferred pose and our lives are so self-referential, so much me me me, that for entertainment we watch ourselves watching ourselves.

We pin flags to our lapels, tack ribbons to our bumpers, and yes, some of us do so in earnestness. But for many of us, I think these are simply props, a means to display what we are supposed to feel but, as children of a shallow, glittery time, are no longer able to. After all, feeling implies reverence.

And reverence doesn't live here anymore."

lpitts@miamiherald.com