Practice Makes Peace...

Ever have one of those things happen that reinforce how little you have control over anything? That emphasize the loving hands of an Almighty God who really is looking out for you? And that you would *never* live through again if given any choice in the matter? Today, one of those things happened at our house. I'm alternating between shaking and praising. It was terrifying. Michael ran off. No big deal, you say. Michael runs off a lot. It's his coping mechanism of choice. And you always know where he's going: the bathhouse. Except for this time. This time it happened while I was in the laundry room, so he specifically avoided the bathhouse because that's where I was. This time, not one of the other kids hollered at him to stop, thereby alerting me that all was not well 30 yards away on our little lot. This time I had no idea where to start looking. I returned from the laundry room, opened the door, and saw 3 of my 4 kids. "Where's Michael?" ...silence... ...

We had a day full of the "whatsoever things" yesterday. And it's proof that God is helping me in this area because there were some definite rough spots. Not little potholes but major construction, sections-of-the-road-missing, type of rough spots. Then I woke up this morning, checked facebook, and one of my new friends had left this gem of a quote, "I believe that no matter what the terrain, our feet can learn to dance." Sigh, smile, tears... Yes. We can choose to dance even when the road seems to be missing under our feet. Yesterday was proof. Dan had the day off for the first time in over a week. In the mornings all week, we have been spending his before-shift time handling family business. It's been stressful. It's meant dragging kids to office buildings. It's meant rushing to get Dan to work on time after the morning stuff was finished. It's meant begging kids to be quiet so we could handle phone calls. We needed a break. In our family, that ...

I've been thinking a lot about the phrase "dwell on these things." It doesn't say "remember to glance at them once in a while" or "take a walk around them then go back to what you were doing" -- it says "dwell." As in "make your habitation in" or "hang out in" or "live there." Dwell. That's really hard. When your child with Asperger's is huddled in a corner with his hands over his ears screaming "everybody hates me." When you sit down to pay the bills and there just isn't enough to go around and you've been trying to get a 2nd job but nobody's hiring. When you find out that one of your kids has been cheating on school assignments and you now have to figure out how to redeem the time without totally crushing the child - even though you kinda feel like crushing him just a little bit. When a storm rips the awning off your house and that awning provided the shady playspace for the ki...