So, it's been awhile...

...and I have all but disappeared from the blogospehere.

My previous post probably helps to explain my absence.  Life has continued to feel much like a broken treadmill with the many unpredictable snowstorms and ice storms blowing the way of Northern Virginia this winter.

But I have learned to alter my gait and we have been cranking along--doing normal weekly stuff and finding time for some family fun, some dinner parties and lunch dates, a women's retreat with my dear friend Gracie, a trip to Florida to mourn the passing of dear friend Cindy, and lots of laundry along the way.

Blogging, however, has been scarce.  Even finding time to think deep thoughts has been scarce.

What have we been doing, you might ask?

Well, since I'm sitting here in the surgery waiting room at CHOP for Lilly's 11th surgery and I have a little bit of time all my myself (with dozens of other waiting parents, some of whom seem pretty relaxed--probably frequent flyers like us--and some of whom look anxious and weary) I thought I'd take a minute and let my fingers bang on the waiting room keyboard.

Tom is working so very hard at Malcolm Grow at Joint Base Andrews.  He is a strong leader and works hard to take care of patients, his people, and processes to make things as efficient as possible.  The snow this winter has prompted him to implement new weather policies, more popular with some people (the patients!) than certain others, but he's always sure to press on to do what's right.  He works equally hard at home to take care of me, keep the house in good repair, and connect with the kids.  I love that man and am so grateful for him.

So, we attended a junior college prep night with Jared a month or two ago and the fact that he will he a senior in the fall and it's time to gear up for the application process is sinking in for all of us.  Jared's words, when I asked him for his thoughts on our way home from the evening, were "Wow.  It's really time for this for me.  Wow."  I concur. The summer--we hope--will involve him working as a lifeguard and thinking deeply about his ambitions and getting those college applications well underway.  He has dreams of attending the Air Force Academy and becoming a pilot, with back up options including civilian schools (such as Embry Riddle) and doing ROTC or even a year of prep school or military enlistment before going back to school.  Praying for God's clear leading and direction for Jared.

Anna is having a good school  year despite her dislike of the snow days, and I suspect she's pretty ready to be a high schooler.  She's not one to partake in middle school girl drama, and she sees a bit of it each day.  She does have some good friends that she enjoys and most of her time at home is spent quietly in her room doing things she enjoys--playing games and reading.  She's done with swim meets for this season...surgery timing has meant we couldn't take part in some of the final meets of the season, and she is pretty middle-of-the-pack for her age group so doesn't usually qualify for the bigger championship meets.  She's happier when she's swimming hard during the week, and recognizes that she is physically stronger and just feels better when she's swimming, so she pretty much tolerates the meets but is in it more for the training and the discipline.  She has a piano recital and festival coming up--I'm glad she still enjoys her music.

I often lump Lilly and Isabel together when I talk about them because they are so close in age and tend to do things together much of the time.  But other than their ethnicity and their age and their last name, these two little girls really couldn't be much different from one another in terms of their personalities.  Lilly, my nearly-8-going-on-38-year-old daughter, is mature beyond her years, thinks deeply about all things, asks serious and probing questions about life and the universe, and get anxious about doing her best at all times.  She takes prayer seriously (today as we waited to go back for surgery, she prayed that God would help her beat me at a card game we were playing--she beat me 5 out of the 6 times we played!) and she puts into practice the things she is learning and memorizing from God's word (when frustrated with Isabel I notice her taking deep breaths and whispering to herself "an angry man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel." Proverbs 15:18)  She does question why God made her with an "S" in her back, and she has begun to ask more questions about her biological family.  I have no answers for either of those questions, other than to tell her how very thankful I am to be her mommy and sometimes God lets us go through hard things for our good for reasons we don't always know.  We celebrated Lilly's 5th anniversary of joining our family this weekend, and it's surreal how quickly 5 years has flown while at the same time not being able to fathom life before her or without her.

Isabel, having been in our family now 2 years, has, in many ways matured and grown astronomically.  When she's relaxed and happy, she is a true joy.  She loves school and her teachers, she loves her family, and she has many friends.  She is happiest when she knows what's on the agenda and things go according to plan, when her tummy is full, and--I'm slowly learning--when mommy is relaxed and happy.  During the time she has been with us, we have been hoping and waiting for her tantrums and episodes of extreme emotional dysregulation to begin to subside.  Sometimes it seems that they have, that the instance of them has decreased.  But truthfully, they still happen frequently, nearly daily, and sometimes our afternoons can feel like just a cascade of emotional stress swirling downward.  As I alluded in earlier posts, the disruption to routines with all the snow days was not helpful, but since it's a part of life, we have been trying to help her learn to cope with disruption.

Because the emotional meltdowns were continuing and--due to my own expectations that they should be gone by now--were leading to my own ugly place of emotional angst, I reached out to a wise adoptive-mama-counselor-friend for some advice.  She recommended a book by Heather Forbes entitled "Beyond Logic, Consequences, and Control" as a starting place.  I quickly devoured the book and its second volume as well.  I'm now in another of her books and have found myself implementing a whole new parenting paradigm with Isabel that is so very counter-intuitive and unnatural to me, but is making a huge difference in how I feel about Isabel as I interact with her, and my hope is that with more positive interactions and less emotional stress in our home, this approach will eventually help the emotional dysregulation in Isabel to diminish as well.  Naturally, emotional stress affects every family member and every relationship in the home, and my hope is that this approach will benefit all of us.  I love her fiercely, but am realizing that my love needs some effective tools to back it up to best nurture her emotional development.

So, in a hefty and long overdue blog post with no photos whatsoever (sorry!), that's what's up with us.

For anyone who has read to the end of this--I thank you!  You obviously love and care for me and for my family!

I just got word that they are now closing up in Lilly's surgery and expect to see Dr. Campbell soon.  I am so thankful for this facility and the excellent care here that allows Lilly to have good quality of life.

Overcoming the Broken Treadmill

This blog post is a reprint of a devotion I gave to my local Community Bible Study Leaders' Council this week. I reprint it here as an encouragement to anyone who feels like life can sometimes be like a broken treadmill.

 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:6

I love to run.  I know some of you can relate, but others are probably tuning out right now because the only good reason you can think of to run would be if you were being chased by a deadly wild beast.  But, please, hear me out anyway.

I love the feeling of the wind on my face and the cold air in my lungs, the sights, sounds, and scents of God’s amazing creation, and the freedom and release that accompany a good hard run outside.  And most of all, I enjoy the rhythm from the pounding of my feet on the ground, the thumping of my heart in my chest, the inhaling and exhaling.  It is steady and predictable, unlike many things in life.

Running on a treadmill is not quite the same experience.  The exhilaration of exercise is still good, but much is lost and I’m more aware of my own fatigue.  I’ll run on a treadmill only if I must—if weather or other circumstances dictate that it is my only option for any kind of a workout.    

Even worse than running on a treadmill is running on a treadmill that has a stutter.  If a treadmill is not consistently steady in its pace, if it has a hiccup in its belt, it throws off the rhythm of the run and makes me want to just get off the treadmill, foregoing the benefits of the run.

Sometimes life is just like a treadmill.  We have our routines, we have our rhythm.  We have our sources of encouragement, joy, and motivation right alongside those things that suck our energy and our time—all of which together make up the fabric of our weeks.

The treadmill of my life developed a stutter this winter in a number of ways.  Several of the things that were on “my plate” that gave me joy—and if I’m honest, gave me a sense of value and self-worth—were suddenly and nearly simultaneously taken away.  First, the blog for which I had been a periodic contributing author for about a year ceased to publish just days before my next guest post was due.  A few days later, the local gym where I had been teaching weekly indoor cycling classes for about 6 months decided to do away with all of its cycling classes.

A double blow, just before the holidays.

To top it off, right when the joy--and chaos--of the holidays was finally about to give way to “normal routines” again, the January ice, snow, and cold—and their resulting cancellations and delays—created a disconcerting stutter in the pace of life’s treadmill.

Exacerbating this was the fact that for my youngest, disruption to routines can result in a highly dysregulated emotional state, challenging my patience and reserves of motherly love.

Each of these items, taken individually, seems rather minor and inconsequential, but in sum, my rhythm got thrown and the result was discouragement and a downward spiral of self-pity.

But God, in His goodness and grace and sovereignty, allowed all of these things to converge in my life to have me hovering over Romans 8 at just the right time and for an extended period of time.  So many rich verses to ponder for several weeks:

Romans 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8: 5: For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

Romans 8:18: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Romans 8:26: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And one of my lifelong favorites:

Romans 8:28: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

But the verse that most spoke life to my weary heart was the one I quoted at the outset of this devotion:

 Romans 8:6: “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

God, in His mercy, used these words to open the eyes of my heart to see the degree to which I had been so intensely focused on the flesh, on my own perceived “needs” and “rights.”  The result was a chorus of the “D” words--Discouragement, Despair, Depression, Dejection—which amount to what Paul describes in Romans 8:6 as “death.”

And God, in His grace, gave me a heart to appreciate the preciousness of the Holy Spirit dwelling within me, and gave me a renewed desire to walk by the Spirit moment by moment through unpredictable days. His Spirit indeed has filled me with renewed life and peace.

So, keeping it real here, what do all these fluffy word pictures really mean?  What does having life and peace by setting the mind on the Spirit look like?  I can only speak for my own experience, but for me, it means being able:

• to trust that the unexpected removal of those activities that I enjoyed will clear my plate for new avenues of serving The Lord and using my gifts for His glory;
• to recognize the fear and hurt behind my daughter's emotional meltdowns and love her through them, rather than focusing on how they make me feel and the way they inconvenience me;
• to use kind words and offer a reassuring presence in the darkness when another daughter has insomnia lasting from 1am through the rest of the night, rather than feeling angry and put out because my own sleep was disturbed;
• to acknowledge that, when I do feel my patience waning, the very core of who I am in this season of life need not be threatened by the feelings of failure at motherhood that sometimes emerge;  
• to accept God's grace and shed self-condemnation when, in my flesh, I hear the “mean mommy voice” coming out of my own mouth after a long afternoon full of my beloved daughter's meltdowns;
• to recognize my own failures as teaching opportunities for my girls that we are all equally in need of God's grace;
• to embrace yet another "snow day" and disruption to "my" plans, choosing to relish the birthday gift of another day with my kiddos at home with me, rather than lamenting what I didn't get to do alone that day;
• to recognize the Spirit's call to get out of bed when awakening early on a morning when I purposely didn't set an alarm, in order that I might seek Him in prayer, meditate on His word, and find the words for this devotion. 
• to seek The Lord in earnest each morning to allow Him to set my day's agenda rather than seeing my morning devotions as the first on my list of tasks, or--even worse--not taking the time to meet with Him at all.

More often than not, life's treadmill will have a stutter.  Things will go differently than we had planned.  Disappointments will come.  Dreams for ourselves or our children may not be realized.  People will hurt us and fail us.  We will fail ourselves and those we hold dear.  Loved ones will die.  Sickness or injury will slow us down.  Snow and ice will come on yet another Wednesday morning and CBS will be cancelled.  Fill in the blank.

Praise The Lord for giving us the remedy for the broken treadmill of life.  My prayer for myself and each of us is that He would graciously prompt us contiually to set our minds on the things of the Spirit.  And I thank The Lord for the opportunity to serve alongside each of you as I see you model with such grace what it is to walk in the Spirit.