As a woman, I find it very difficult, at times, to live in the moment.  I am a planner.  I am cautious.  I am constantly thinking about what I have to do next, what I’m making for dinner tonight, what I have to do tomorrow, next week, next month…you get the picture, and are probably nodding your head in agreement.  It is hard to live in the moment when you are constantly aware of, and planning for, the future. 

I have a perfect example, in my life, of this horrible flaw and the effects it has had on my life.  My husband and I have said for some time that we want four kids.  Since I delivered my third child, I’ve been pondering and planning when to get started on the “final number four”.  People ask me ALL THE TIME if I’ll be “trying for a girl”?  NO!  I have three boys and I would be completely content with FOUR boys.  If I were to have a fourth boy, there would not be a “baby #5″, I can guarantee that.  However, I have been putting a LOT (and I mean, A LOT) of pressure on myself to plan this out perfectly (like that is really possible).  In my perfect plan, I would lose about 20-30 pounds by the beginning of 2009 and get pregnant sometime between February and April of 2009.  I wouldn’t be very big during the summer, the baby would be due in the winter, and I would have at least three months to lose my baby weight before getting back into summer clothes. 

Jeez, that wears me out just thinking about it!  I finally came to the realization that the pressure of all that planning for another baby has really gotten me stuck exactly where I am and I haven’t been able to budge.  I haven’t lost a pound, despite working out rigorously.  Every decision we make as a family, I’m thinking about baby number four, etc. 

The bottom line is, I love children.  I love having babies, I love babysitting, I love helping children in need.   I’ve never really felt like I’m a “teacher”, as in Sunday school, or early childhood education in the school system.  I just know I love kids.  As I was leaving the gym a few weeks ago, I noticed a sign above the coffee station asking for anyone interested in foster parenting to please call ‘this’ number.  It certainly peaked my interest and I called the next day.  I had just missed the orientation that morning, but the lady on the other end of the line offered to do a one on one orientation with me the very next day if I was available.  Yes!  I made arrangements and went the next morning.  My husband has always been open to foster parenting and adoption, so he was looking forward to hearing about this agency.  I left the meeting VERY encouraged and excited.  This agency specializes in cases in which the birth parents are actively working toward getting their children back.  They also specialize in keeping siblings together, which means, we would almost always have two children at a time.  Suddenly, I felt a sense of purpose.  Like this is what I was meant to do.  The desire to have a fourth child all but vanished.  I came home and called my OB doctor to schedule and appointment to get on some type of long term birth control (sorry if that is TMI).  I have kicked into a new sort of “nesting mode”.  I am sorting through our things and making bins and boxes for the children that will be passing through our home in the coming months.  I was informed that some of these children will come to us in nothing but a diaper.  That breaks my heart, but at the same time, it excites me that we can make a difference in these childrens’ lives.  We can provide clothing, necessities, food, shelter, and love.  It will also be a wonderful, character building experience for my children and teach them the true meaning of servanthood.  We will be opening our home, our resources, our food, and our hearts to these children who, at the time, have nothing.  Most of our placements will be fairly short term; just a few months at a time, and then we’ll have new placements.  The process is going to take about three months to finish.  We have to take some training classes after the first of the year, do a two part home study, and acquire a few things for our home, such as a daybed and a stand-up freezer for our garage, in order to accomodate these children comfortably.  I can’t fully explain to you how this makes me feel.  I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  A weight that I placed there myself.  I feel like I finally see a piece of my destiny falling into place.  Don’t get me wrong, I feel fulfillment everyday when I wake up next to my amazing husband and spend all day with my three beautiful, healthy boys, but this is different.  I can’t explain it.  It’s just different. 

I’ll certainly be keeping you updated as details unfold.  It seems like it will be a fairly simple process as long as I stay on top of the paperwork involved and meet all of our deadlines. 

We’re excited about this new season in our lives and I look forward to sharing more with you when the time comes.  Have a Terrific Tuesday!

~audrey

I’ve been reading a book called “Sheparding a Child’s Heart”, by Tedd Tripp.  It’s all about getting to the heart issues behind your children’s actions, words, behavior, etc.  The book has really helped me examine the heart issues in different areas of my own life as well.  I don’t know if you realize this, but there are heart issues behind the clutter and disorder in our lives (I know, you didn’t really want to know that!).  The first thing I address when helping someone get organized is how they got to the point of disorganization in the first place.  More times than not, they got to the point of no return gradually.  Carelessness, distractions, busyness, fear.  You can make your own list of reasons.  The point is, we need to address the heart issues that got us to the point of being disorganized.  Maybe you’ve been messy or disorganized your entire life.  If that is the case, you may want to contact me! :)  But most likely, you’ve got some things already running through your mind that helped you along your jouney to chaos within your home and your life.  For me, some of my reasons were busyness.  I stayed so busy over the last few years that there were seasons in which I had no spare time whatsoever to spend on “me” or my own house.  I had to rearrange my priorities many, many times.  Another reason for me was fear.  At one point I had 19 storage bins in my garage.  Most of them had clothes in them.  There were a few for paint supplies, Christmas decorations, crafts, sewing, and toys, but most of them were clothing.  I had an entire wardrobe in three different sizes for summer AND winter!  I was so afraid to get rid of those size 6 bins because “what if I finally get down to that size again!? I won’t have anything to wear if I give them away!”  Do you know that the last time I wore that size was five years ago.  By golly, if I get back in a size six again, I’ll deserve a NEW size six wardrobe.  I was holding onto those clothes out of fear and I was holding onto ‘the old me’.  I’m a completely different person now than when I wore those ittly bitty clothes five years ago.  I have three kids now, I’ve moved four times, my husband went back to school, graduated, has a great job now, and we bought a new house.  Needless to say, I gave the clothes to a skinny friend who could use them.  :)  When I finally rearranged my priorities, made time for myself and my own household, I was able to get organized a little bit at a time and that had the biggest payoff of all.  Sure, you could hire me to come to your house and do ALL the hard work for you, but the best and most important part of the process is putting your own sweat and tears into getting your life the way you want it.  Sorting through years of memories and deciding what is worth keeping and what is worth letting go of.  We make new memories everyday, but holding onto things that you should really be letting go of can completely hinder where you’re going in life and how you get there.  I encourage you to examine the issues in your life that may have led or enabled you to get to your personal point of disorder or chaos.  It’s not as hard as you think to start letting go.

~audrey

Over the years, my dear husband helped me come to the realization that I was a major control freak.  I never accepted help for anything because I was afraid it either wouldn’t get done, or it wouldn’t get done the way I wanted it done.  Of course this issue with control continued into motherhood.  When my first two boys, Joshua and Jesse, were very little, I did EVERYTHING for them.  When most parents were putting a bowl of spaghetti in front of their toddler, I was cutting it up into millimeter sized bites and feeding it to them on a spoon.  My babies never wore bibs.  They never had the opportunity to get messy!  I can’t remember the first time I allowed Joshua or Jesse to have a ‘sucker’, but it certainly wasn’t in the first two years of their life.  The clothing that Owen, my sixteen month old, is wearing right now, is clothing that both Joshua and Jesse wore when they were that age.  It is in ‘like new’ condition.  That is partly because Joshua is just as much of a neat freak as his mother and he never liked to be dirty as a toddler.  The other reason is simply because I didn’t let them get nasty.  As I’ve gained more wisdom and knowledge, little by little, whether through experience or the advice of other mommy friends, I’ve learned to loosen up.  For example, my best friend laughed histarically of the picture of Owen with chili all over his hands and face and the bowl sitting right in front of him at his highchair.  Joshua and Jesse have NO pictures like that.  However, now that I have four other mouths to feed, the convenience of having my toddler feed himself appeals to me more than the idea of a clean baby after mealtime.   Does it leave a little more work for me after dinner?  Yes.  But was I able to actually sit down and eat my own food at the same time as the rest of my family?  Yes!  Ironically, I feel like I have better control of my household as a whole as I’ve gained experience over the years.  I cook more, the laundry stays under control, my house stays pretty clean, and I’m on top of our finances.  Yet through that process, I’ve learned to let go.  I’ve learned that life is simply too short to push my kids aside for one more hour just so I can finish cleaning my kitchen.  I’ve forced myself to look back on my own childhood and what I was able to experience when I was six years old.  Life was fun.  We were care-free!  And that lead me to examine how my children would describe their lives on any given day.  I want them to be able to look back and smile because… “Mommy would let us splash naked in the puddles of our driveway after it rained.  We went on wild adventures in the backyard with flashlights and mom’s gardening shovels.  We rode bikes by the river until our legs could no longer push the peddles.  Daddy took us camping all the time and we’d stay up late looking at stars and roasting marshmallows.  Mommy and Daddy always found a way to turn discipline into a life lesson, never without quoting the word of God.  We turned everyday errands into acts of service for those less fortunate.  We learned the value of a servant spirit.  We had a great childhood!”  I’ve learned to evaluate my priorities daily.  At the end of each day, I ask myself; did I spend valuable quality time with the Lord, my husband, and my children?  Because the truth is, whether I cleaned my house, did a load of laundry, or had a gourmet meal on the table doesn’t matter in view of eternity.  Have you learned to let go?  Do you choose to laugh as many times as possible every single day?  I challenge you to let yourself relax.  Enjoy all the little things that you take for granted in your life.  Take a long bath with your favorite book.  Go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink if it means 20 more minutes of quality time with your husband.  Or better yet, let your kids do the dishes and let them splash each other and make a mess while they do it!  They’ll remember that much better than what you made for dinner or whether the kitchen was clean when they woke up the next morning.  Life is too short to sweat the small stuff.

~audrey