Pressing in………

I am so excited about going to church……the Lord has really been moving in our services. It’s always so refreshing to feel His anointing flowing in the service….So we were having a weekend revival and Thurs or Fri I told the kids that I couldn’t wait for church on Sat night. Our kids asked why and I said because God is moving  and our 6 yr old daughter said “God is moving? Where is He moving to” I said He’s moving in our church. So after church on Sunday our 8 year old said mom I thought God was moving in our church? I thought we would see Him……I said didn’t you feel Him…..

I learned a long time ago back in the stone age….ok not quite that far but I was a teenager. I was with my best friend and we saw someone that went to our church and they had missed that Sunday and we told him that we missed him and I said we had a really good service and my friend looked at me and said “We did?” So I learned that day that two people can be in the same service and feel different things. We have to press in if we want to receive something from the Lord. He’s not going to just knock us on the head. He probably should some of us. I know there have been times that I deserved a good clunk on the head.

So what is different about church now than it was just last month? I’ve changed…..that’s what is different. I don’t go to church just because I know I need to …..I go EXPECTING……wow what a difference that makes. We decided this year that we are going to grow closer to the Lord so we are pressing in. When we get to church we are ready to receive. We don’t have to pray and worship in order to have our mind on Him ….we are ready!

Now I understand that when you have kids that have RAD or other issues that some mornings by the time you make it to church you have already fought a battle or two or in our case sometimes three or four. I wish I had an answer for that but I can tell you  I survived it. Those days are a memory. Thank the Lord!

James 4:8 – Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Press in and He will be there….He will help you ………Don’t try to do it alone……

Blessings in the hard times…….

This year we made up our mind for this to be the year to draw closer to the Lord. We decided that we would have family devotions and prayer like we used to do. Somewhere down the road we stopped. Probably because there was so much drama from the kids. I am so proud of our kids as we start praying they start calling out names of people we have been praying for. We made a prayer chain (paper chain) each link has a name or family or a need that we need to pray for. We go through the prayer chain and call out each one and pray. Tomorrow we are going to make a praise chain as the prayers are answered they will be moved to the praise chain. We already have so much that we need on the praise chain from this past year.

We are so blessed even when we go through hard times. This past year was an extremely hard year. Probably around Oct. Nov. things started catching up with my husband missing so much work and no vacation time. One week when we weren’t quite sure how we were going to buy groceries we were blessed with a really big box……One week after making a deposit we had $150.00 to make it a week on gas and groceries for a family of 8 . I knew we could manage until I realized that I had another bill that had to be paid so that left us $50 not so good…….I had gotten a call to stop by someone’s house they said they had a turkey for us I cried all the way there but when we got there it wasn’t just a turkey but it was also food it was enough for us to get through the week…….so now Christmas is coming up ……I knew we had no money to buy Christmas presents but I did have a little bit of credit with Fingerhut and so I knew that I would just divide it between the 6 kids…it might not be what they want but they would have something…..LOL I’ll do this again…..one gift I got them was a waffle iron and we were going to wrap it after the little ones went to bed and Frankie saw it and he started yelling he was so excited and Jacob heard him so from then on those 2 begged us to let them open it early. So next year I will see what I want and get it for everyone. I can see how this can work in my favor…..lol

Anyway I got a message from someone and they said that they had heard that we had a rough year and I said yes we had and they said that every year they pick out a family to help for Christmas and wanted to help us. I told her that our kids would have something but any way they helped our family……we thought 1 or 2 gifts but no when they came over they kept unloading gifts and kept unloading gifts……The amazing thing was the things that they got them that they either wanted or I wanted to get them…..like for instance I had a Minnie Mouse hoodie and a shirt and a skirt in my shopping cart at littlemissmatch it was on sale and wasn’t much but I still couldn’t get it…….and they got her an outfit like it…….she wanted a Barbie head and they got her one…….Jacob told me he wanted an air hockey table and I told him maybe later but we couldn’t get it for Christmas but he got one……Oh my goodness I am crying thinking about it….there were other things that they wanted that they got…….Yes it’s a little embarrassing putting it out here that we were struggling BUT I want everyone to know that God is so good……and He has continued to meet our needs and will continue to do so as we go through this…….We plan on being back on the giving end this year it’s much easier…..but through it all our kids saw how God will meet our needs so as embarrassing as it might be for us I believe it was a good experience for our kids.

The things that happened to us last year could have destroyed our family because of the stress, but I give all the glory to God for helping us through. We are not to the end yet but we will get there and God will get all of the glory . It hurt our kids some regressed some I believe it helped them to realize just how much they did love us and let go just a little more of their heart. Our daughter told me one night “mom my heart feels funny when I think about you” and this same daughter just a few years earlier wanted to kill us and we found knives in her room and other places where she would hide them. So sometimes God allows us to go through things but gives us the strength to get through them. I praise God for our kids and especially because He has helped them to heal……….

Brotherly love………

Each day that I get up is a new day. I love starting new. No problems with the kids from yesterday. Everyone is happy and in a good mood…wait ….stop…wake up you’re dreaming again. Oh yes I do tend to dream. Since we adopted children with reactive attachment disorder (RAD) our days run together. Sometimes months run together without a break.

Our kids have been doing good but every now and then we just have one of those days. Yes today was one of those……We get up I made the mistake of going to the bathroom and the kids were in my bedroom and one decided to jump off the bed and his nose landed on his brother’s knee which resulted in enough blood that I was afraid that we were going to be taking a trip to the ER. Thankfully the bleeding stopped and he was fine.

Once I got everyone settled I told our 9 year old to sit down for a few minutes because he wasn’t sitting down like I told him to do and that was all it took for him to start screaming and saying that he was going to kill us and telling me to shut up. He started pounding his chest and telling Jesus to get out that he didn’t want Him in his heart. I messaged a couple of friends and we prayed and he stopped. I asked him what all of that was about and he said that he hurt his brother. I told him that yes if he had of been sitting where I told him to sit that it wouldn’t have happened, but that his brother shouldn’t have jumped off of the bed.

When you parent traumatized kids you never know from one second to the next if you are going to have an explosive situation on your hands. It takes a lot to remain calm when your child is telling you to shut up and saying many other things that your ears may have been protected from until you got your child. The Lord has been my strength many times. I give Him thanks for helping us through the hard times.

When the boys first came to live with us he was very protective of his younger brother. He was only 2 1/2 and his brother was 17 months. They were in another county before we got them and went to the Easter Seal’s school. They told me that he would stuff food in his pockets and when they would try to take it from him he would scream and say “no, Bubba”. When we would be feeding them a meal he would scream and scream until his bubba had his food and drink. Over the years that stopped and he wasn’t worried about anyone but himself. Now I sit here crying realizing that he didn’t protect him today, he thought he had hurt him. When he saw how bad his nose was bleeding it scared him and he thought it was all his fault. So as much as they fight EVERYDAY he really loves him…………

My poor baby is sick cont………….

We took him to the doctor and it was the quickest office visit yet. The dr. said he has a nervous stomach. He has lots of reasons to have one. It started last March when our friend/therapist was killed in a car accident. She meant a lot to our family. She went to church with us and even when she wasn’t seeing our kids I could call her any time I needed her. I really miss her a lot.

That was just the beginning of our year. In April my husband was in a very tragic accident. There were several several wrecks along that stretch of highway that day and traffic was slowing down so he started slowing down and needed in the other lane because his exit was coming up and at the exact moment he looked to see if he could get over a mini van caught on fire and traffic came to an immediate stop and my husband hit a motorcycle which hit 2 more……my husband went airborne and flipped our Tahoe at least 3 times. He was able to unbuckle and get out by himself. We were very blessed God truly had His hand on him that day. While at the hospital it caused our son to have flashbacks. When he has flashbacks it takes a lot out of him. If they are bad enough sometimes it takes several days for him to be himself again.

June the first we got a phone call and my husband’s nephew hung himself…..it was devastating to all of us. Again this caused more flashbacks for our son…..Oh how I wish I could take away his past. Take away all of the pain and the hurt…..it’s one thing for him to have been abused but for him to have to relive it really makes me mad. I teach him to forgive because I don’t want him to have bitterness in his heart….I want him to always be kind and have compassion. In July my husband lost a good friend in an accident………this is the first time our son had a blockage. He was really sick and we were really worried about him…..he said the good thing about being sick was that he wasn’t getting in trouble. He was being really good. At first they thought he was going to have to have surgery but lots of prayers and medicine it passed.

In August things took another turn in the wrong direction. My husband’s cell phone showed that the internet was running in the background so they arrested him and charged him with manslaughter and 2 accounts of 2nd degree battery…….God is helping us through but it did cause our kids to regress, but through this it has helped our kids to heal. Our oldest daughter had no empathy, no remorse……now has both. I believe when she realized how close she came to losing her dad it woke her up and made her realize how much she loves us. Our oldest we talked and he decided to open up to me more and share more of the flashbacks. We would talk about them and then we would pray. He had more flashbacks last year than he has had the whole 13 years that he has been with us, but now they have all but stopped. My husband had his pre-trial at the beginning of this month so I am sure that is what has caused him to get sick again. This has been a lot for us to handle much less someone so young……..so the good news is he should be fine in a few days………

And an added note please make sure you always turn your cell phone off if it is a smart phone while driving if you are by your self……

 

My poor baby is sick……

Today our oldest son is sick. Last July he had a blockage in the upper part of his colon, and was really sick for a few weeks. After a trip to the gastro doctor they said he had a lazy colon. He hasn’t had a problem since that time until last week.

I worry about him when he is just laying around and especially when he is being quite. He don’t complain about anything when he is hurt because his pain tolerance is high. That is one thing that children with RAD do. They turn off their pain receptors so when something is causing him this much discomfort I wonder how bad it must be.

When he was in the 4th grade I had decided that year he was at a new school and I wasn’t going to share everything with them. One day when I picked him up from school I was driving through the circle and he said I had to go to the nurses office today because I bit my tongue. I said oh that must have hurt let me see. So he stuck out his tongue and there was still a little blood on it and I said ouch and turned back to go. Then I thought as I always have over the years who this was  so I stopped and turned around and said let me see again. This time when he stuck out his tongue it was split open about an inch long and it was completely through in one place. I pulled back around so I could stop and find out what happened. He was playing soccer at recess and the ball was coming towards him and bless his heart he’s just like me when we are thinking hard about something we stick our tongue out and as he was about to catch the ball another child tried to kick it but missed and kicked him in his chin. The only reason that he went to the nurses office was because another child told a teacher. The school nurse just told him to rinse his mouth out with salt water and sent him back to class. His shirt was red so no one saw that there was blood all over it. To him it was no big deal. I would have just about died.

Children with reactive attachment disorder (RAD) are so amazing. Yes they make our lives unbearable at times yet they bring so much joy. Looking at our kids today almost brings me to tears because I am so proud of them. They have overcame many obstacles and have many more to go but He’s still working on them to make them exactly what He wants them to be……

What happened in your child’s life that led up to him/her developing Reactive Attachment Disorder?

Reflecting

I was reflecting today on our kid’s accomplishments. I am so proud of them. I was talking to another parent and I just looked at my kids and started smiling. Are we through all of the hard times with them? No, but they have made so much progress. I was thinking about our oldest and I get tears in my eyes. When we first got called about him on May of ’99 I was at the lowest point thinking we may never have any kids. I was so excited I asked the case worker how many other families they were looking at for him and she said none we picked your family. We started calling him every night. He had an awesome foster mom and she prepared him to come to live with us. She sent me a picture with him holding up a sign that said Arkansas or Bust……

One night as we were talking she asked me if they filled me in about his past and I said no that the only thing I knew was that he has psychosocial dwarfism. As she began telling me the things that he went through my hands started shaking uncontrollably. It is hard to believe that a child could survive so much abuse from being born addicted to drugs to being kept in a cage. Medical records says tortured to many scars to count…..scars from the top of his head to the souls of his feet and even inside of his mouth. He has had a fractured skull, broken arm, leg, and ribs. The list goes on and on. He is a survivor!

At the age of 5 he was DX’d as being severely retarded and the school recommended that we wait a year before putting him in Kindergarten. I wanted to go a head and let him start and if he couldn’t handle it then pull him out so they agreed. Not only did he do just fine but by the end of first grade he tested on his level on everything. The only thing he needed was speech.

Because of his abuse he has reactive attachment disorder (RAD), ODD, ADHD, PTSD, and childhood sexual abuse. Although we have gone through a lot with him he has healed a lot.The Lord has had His hand on his life from the time he was in his mother’s womb. I am thankful that he is serving the  Lord with all of his heart not just part of it. He believes that God has called him to the ministry. I know that God has got great things for him to do. He is going to take what was bad in his life and use it to give God all of the glory.

Our Adoption Journey

As I was growing up, I had a wonderful childhood.  Even today, everyone always compares our family to one of the old shows like Father Knows Best or one of the other ones. Was our family perfect? Of course not!  Until my parents moved farther away though, we still had family meetings to discuss things.  I always loved little kids, and started babysitting when I was 12.  Then I started teaching Sunday School when I was 16.  I always dreamed of having an orphanage and taking in all of the kids that didn’t have parents.

In June of ’89 I was married and we wanted a family. We were unable to have kids.  I was fine with adopting, but goodness who could afford it? Certainly not us!  We received many information packets that were filed away, praying we would be able to use one of them someday.  Along the way we had several private adoptions to come and go, and my heart was broken time and time again.  No one understood the pain of wanting kids but not being able to have any.  It began to attack my faith…after all why pray if God wouldn’t answer this one prayer?

We moved and started going to another church.  The church had something after the service, and out of over 300 people attending, we sat down right bedside a couple going through the same thing as we were.  We became really good friends, and over the next couple of years, there were around 10 couples in our church that were unable to have kids.  Two of the couples had adopted.  One of these couples started a class for us and helped us.  They had someone to come and talk to us from DHS, and we decided to go through that door.  After the 4th class we knew for sure, that is the route we would go to adopt.  We didn’t want to be foster parents in the beginning, because I felt like I needed at least one child that was ours.  So we were just opening up our home as an adoptive home.  Easy right?  Not for them.  It took us 3 years to get approved.  Our home study was lost 3 times, and our file was moved too many times to count (to a new worker).  It finally landed on the desk of a friend, and she got everything done and and sent in and told us now to just wait. So we waited and we waited.  One day my sister-in-law called me and told me that her mom called her, and they were doing a show on adoption on the Maury Polvich Show.  I inquired about a sibling group of 4.  When they contacted me they asked for our adoption specialist and I didn’t have a clue.  We were turned down for that sibling group because one of the kids was 12, and when we started we didn’t want kids that were older than the years we were married.  When we found our adoption specialist, I was told that there was no way that we could ever adopt unless we were foster parents.  I told him that I didn’t think I could handle losing a child unless I had at least one that was ours.  So I called my friend from another county and asked for a copy of our home study. I sent it to surrounding states and also to AASK adoption. From Jan to May we had 4 different sets of kids that we were being considered for, and we were turned down for two of them because we lacked parenting skills.  What?  Now we have to be parents first?!

I started getting really angry with God at this point.  Why did he trust us to teach 38 three to five year olds, but couldn’t trust us to have our own kids.  I couldn’t understand.  We were starting a revival and our pastor asked us to write down 3 prayers that we wanted answered during this revival. When we got home my husband asked me what I wrote down. I said “Nothing.  He doesn’t answer my prayers.”  My husband said, “maybe He doesn’t intend on us having kids.”  So I screamed at him, “THEN HE’S A CRUEL GOD!!!”   Psalms 37:4 Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.  I really believed that if God didn’t intend for us to have kids, then he would change my desire to have them.

Finally in May of ’99, my phone rang and when I answered, the lady told me who she was and that she was from CA.  She wanted to know if we would be interested in adopting a 4 and a half year old little Hispanic boy.  Of course I said yes.  I was so excited I forgot to ask what his name was.  Six and a half weeks later he was in our home.  They said it was the fastest out-of-state adoption they had ever seen.

The next month we opened our home as a foster home.  We were no longer actively trying to adopt, but of course we still wanted to. The next year, we adopted a little baby boy that was abandoned.  He was 4 days old when he came to our home. There was a lot that happened the next year that made us decide to close our home.  We still didn’t feel like our family was complete, but we had had enough. About 3 years later we saw a tpr (termination of parental rights) notice in the paper for a four year old little girl, so we reopened our home.  Things went so much smoother this time.  It only took us a year to get everything done.  We got 2 little boys, 17 months and 2-1/2 and 3 weeks later got the little girl we had seen in the paper. She had just turned 6.  We went on to adopt these 3, plus the baby sister of the 2 little boys, after she was born.  Over the years as foster parents, we had 85 kids come through our home, and we adopted 6.