Saturated

Imagine, if you will, that I am a sponge.

I think I am sitting in the kitchen sink. Above me looms a huge faucet that is leaking water. Little droplets fall every few minutes right on top of me.

I don't know what it is about the last couple of weeks, but this image keeps coming to my mind. As little irritants that would normally roll off my back keep dropping into my life, I am getting angry.

Now that my sponge-self feels saturated, I am starting to leak the frustration I feel inside to the people around me.

Seeing the look on my children's faces when I snap at them for no reason made me realize that I can't continue like this. So rather than get angry about the fact that I am too angry, I am crying out to God:

Wring me out. Please.

"My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires." (James 1:19-20)

Please.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled..." (John 14:27a)

Letting go of anger is a choice. It doesn't go away on its own, in fact it grows and takes on life when allowed to root within us. Getting rid of it is going to mean granting forgiveness that I don't feel like granting, and it's going to mean accepting that I can't control the actions or hearts of other people.

It's times like these, when I feel so much like a child, that I realize how much I need my Father.

Plan "See"

I was drowning.

My body was on fire, stabbing pains echoed through my ribcage, an invisible weight was crushing my chest, and I was so weak that I had to consciously gather the energy needed to cough out the fluid that was drowning me. I knew I was in a battle for my life, and bacterial pneumonia wanted the trophy.

But this isn't about pneumonia, and it isn't about the six weeks it took me to recover. It isn't about how my husband single parented ten children, and it isn't about my renewed love for the television show Leave it to Beaver that was my only way to share time with my kids as I chose to take one labored breath after another.

It isn't about anything like that.

It's about where I thought I was supposed to be.

I am a planner. I love plans. I spend time in the shower calculating how many weeks it will take me to lose weight, or save money, or figuring out my schedule for the week for the sixth time. It brings me joy because I love thinking that I have everything under control.

And so, months before I stared pneumonia in the face, I had a plan. My Plan A was to attend the She Speaks conference in North Carolina. It was something I had been excited about for quite a while, and as the date loomed my excitement grew. I even entered a writing contest for a free ticket for that weekend.

Then I found out that a Precepts training that I had been planning on attending was that same weekend. This was really hard for me, as I was looking forward to going to the training with a few friends, and I needed to have the training in order to teach a class I wanted to lead for church.

So I came up with Plan B. If I won the contest, I'd go to She Speaks. If I didn't win, I'd go to the training. Seemed perfect to me. That would tell me what God's will was, right? If He wanted me to go to the conference, I'd win. If He wanted me to go to the training, I'd lose. Perfect.

Then I lost, and I was devastated. I allowed for a time for the disappointment to become personal; a personal attack against my writing skills and myself. It took me a few days to come back to the place where I understood that this was God's plan and started to get excited about what God obviously DID intend for me to do: the training.

Two weeks before I was supposed to leave, things started going wrong. I was sleeping all the time, coughing, not eating, and so weak that I had to take a break just walking from one end of a hallway to the other. The pneumonia diagnosis came shortly thereafter.

Guess what I was doing the weekend of the training? It wasn't Plan A, and it certainly wasn't Plan B.

I was doing Plan "See". "See" as in, we can't See what God wants for us. "See" as in, only God can See what our path is. "See" as in, stop putting God in a box and paying lip service to Him by saying that my plans are His plans!

I learned many valuable lessons during those weeks. But the most important one for me was the reminder that I am not the one who is in control. I don't get to give God options and let Him pick which one He likes best. It doesn't mean I don't have free will and the ability to make choices, but ultimately I am not the one who calls the shots. And I don't need to be.

I still have my Plan A and Plan B, but I now know that Plan "See", when it pops up, is a detour instead of a roadblock. And God's detours have some pretty awesome views.

One More Day

"I'm going to hurt you!" my foster daughter screamed, her six-year old face red with fury.

"What are you talking about?!" I yelled back, failing in my efforts to stay calm in the presence of a little girl who had spent months doing everything she could to make me hate her.

"I don't know, but you're going to be bloody!" she threatened, punching my bed as if to punctuate her intention.

"That's it," I thought as adrenaline pumped through my body. "I'm done." I turned abruptly and walked down the hall into the kitchen. I grabbed the phone and quickly dialed the social worker's phone number. Three rings later, I was uttering the words I'd promised myself I would never say. "Come get her. I can't do this anymore."

Two days from now, I will tell this story. As I stand in front of a classroom of potential and current foster parents, I will talk about the little girl that I wanted to give up on. I will tell them that I thought I had done everything I possibly could do, loved as much as I thought I could love.

As I pass around a family picture of my ten beautiful children, I will recount the rest of that conversation from so long ago:

"Can you do it for three more weeks?" he asked quietly.

"I don't think so. I don't think I can do it one more day." Defeat was so hard for me, but with four children to take care of and my baby daughter growing inside me, I already felt like I had done as much as I could do.

"Well, it is going to take some time. I know that you feel it's impossible, but can you try?"

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Phil. 4:13)

"All right," I conceded softly. "I can try."

It won't take me long to tell them what happened next. It's my favorite part of Breanna's story. Because two weeks after I tried to give up, she finally allowed a crack in the hard exterior she had surrounded herself in.

A crack was all I'd wanted. Renewed and hopeful, we blasted her with love. And just a day or two before our three week deadline, she let us into her heart.

"When you feel like you can't do it," I will say on Saturday, "when you feel like there is no hope left...you can do it one more day."

Ten smiling children. Four children we brought into this world by birth. Three girls who we didn't even know back then, who God knew would one day be our daughters. Breanna's brother and sister, who are an integral part of our family even though they don't live with us. And my Breanna... the little girl who I almost gave up on...who I can't imagine my life without.

Holding out the picture, I'll end with this simple statement: "You can do it for this."

I hope that they will listen. I hope they will take my story and remember it when they have a chance to love their own Breanna. Because I don't want to know what my family would look like today if that social worker hadn't had the wisdom to ask me to try one more time.

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)

Snapshots

I should have known better as soon as the slightly smug smile crossed my lips. "I really don't need a Bible study on forgiveness," I told my friend, explaining my absence from our Tuesday morning study. "I've wrestled that beast and come out the other side."

Should have known better than to think I didn't need God anymore in that struggle.

It didn't hit me that day, or the next. It didn't come in a slow realization or a meditation on God's Word. It came in the form of a series of pictures that I unearthed from the basement.

"Before" pictures of my oldest son. Smiling, happy, engaged. Holding up a toy for me to see. (Do you know how many years it took us to teach him how to do that when "after" happened?)

In a millisecond, it crushed me. As if a physical weight had been tossed on top of me, my breath rushed from my lungs. Guilt. Awful, terrible, ugly guilt.

"He was fine!" I moaned aloud, touching the picture lovingly with my finger as if I could reach out and caress my twenty-month old son from the past. And just like that, all the old thoughts came tumbling through my brain...accusing me of not being there, not being good enough, not knowing enough, not getting help fast enough. WHY couldn't YOU SEE?!?! the voice screamed in my mind.

As I doubled over with emotional pain, my husband lovingly took the pictures from my hands. "It was God's plan for Joseph to have autism," he told me as he folded his arms around me.

And just like that, the physical photos that seemed to be seared into my mind were replaced with different snapshots. Snapshots of my After Joseph that I wouldn't trade for all the typically-developing memories in the world:

The first time he looked me in the eye and said, "I love you, Mom." Click

Sitting, in shock, across a hospital table from my practically non-verbal son as he clearly met my gaze and miraculously said, "Thanks, Mom, for helping the doctors fix me." Click

Joseph and I crying together in the bowling alley parking lot after I had carried him kicking and screaming from a birthday party that had too much noise, too many lights, too many people...my little boy feeling broken, but clinging to me because somehow he hoped I held the answers. Click

Defying every human statistic and praying with my son as he accepted Christ as his Savior. Click

"What will I do when you're too old for this?" I asked him as we walked across the parking lot of his favorite restaurant this week. "Don't worry, Mom," he answered, squeezing his fingers around mine. "I'll always want to hold your hand."

Click. Click. Click.

Pictures of love. Snapshots of Grace. Memories that took the guilt I'd felt and exposed it for the fraud that it is.

God doesn't make mistakes, and He doesn't punish our children with autism when WE make mistakes. When he knit Joseph in my womb, He knew and loved him just as he was, just as he would be.

When He created my son, He knew that all those snapshots were coming. And He knows the ones that we haven't seen yet...the future that will become memories that we will cherish forever.

I know now that I probably won't ever have the beast of forgiveness defeated. But the truth is, I don't have to.

Because Jesus died so that he could slay that monster for me. I just give it all to Him, and He takes care of the rest.

Leaving me with plenty of time to flip through my snapshots.