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In my first guest blog for AutismSpot, I write about Emily’s (Lovebug) very first sleepover! Wow, when did she get old enough for sleepovers, anyway? As you know, she lives with a few special needs including her diet so, my question was "To Prepare, or Not to Prepare?". Check it out to find out how we as a family handled the first sleepover and thanks in advance for supporting me as I join the ranks of writers at AutismSpot. I often learn things from my daughter – like that Asian elephants have smaller ears than African elephants, or that tarantulas can go several days without food. God also uses her often to remind me how to be more like Christ. Today, as we were doing our morning chores and getting ready to head out for the day I heard her singing. “Hallelu hallelu hallelu hallelujah, praise ye the Lord! Hallelu hallelu hallelu hallelujah, praise ye the Lord! Praise ye the lord, hallelujah! Praise ye the lord, hallelujah! Praise ye the lord, hallelujah! Praise ye the Lord!”
I thought to myself that she was certainly in a wonderful mood and as I looked to see what she was doing, this is what I saw.
Yes, one of her chores is cleaning the cat’s litter box! Not only was she doing it without grumbling or complaining, she was PRAISING the LORD while doing it! What an awesome example, that girl!
Lately it’s become increasingly obvious to me that I’m not just suddenly going to have the time to sit down and write all the things I want to write – I need to make the time. I need to let God prioritize my day and be mindful of my time so that I am using it effectively to do the things He has called me to do. I have countless blog topic ideas, notes, recipes and pictures that I have saved with the intention to put them all together into something that makes sense and is worthy of being read, but time keeps getting away from me and the list just keeps growing. I love writing, and I truly feel that it is an area where God wants to use me to reach others. He is making very clear to me a few areas that I am to focus my time this next year, and this is one of them. I’m thankful for that because I like knowing that I’m making a difference when I write, rather than just wasting time that I should be spending doing something else. God is so good and has shown me over and over that this is where He wants me. I am so humbled when someone emails me to thank me for talking about how a gluten-free/dye-free diet helps my daughter because they themselves have just been handed a diagnosis for their child and are searching for answers. I get excited when I hear from someone that they are going through a similar situation and joining the military “later” in life and we can email back and forth sharing our feelings. I sit in awe as I read a comment from another SPD mom that understands my daughter’s super stressful day and offers her understanding and support. Hubby and I have talked a lot about this lately and have decided that I will take a night each week (at least that’s the goal) to get out of the house and just write. Sure, I could just go back in the bedroom and sometimes I will, but it also helps if I leave the house so I don’t feel compelled to involve myself in whatever my husband/daughter/dog/cat is doing (my control issues are a topic for another post altogether). So tonight, I am sitting at a local coffee shop near our new house (yes, we moved – that post is coming) working on my writing. It’s a coffee shop I stumbled on after buying a Groupon and I am so glad I did! It is owned by a veteran, Christian family and they have great coffee! I’m still a fan of the huge coffee chains, but whenever possible I much prefer finding the local, family owned businesses. I have a feeling that we’ll be spending some days here doing our homeschooling work, and I’m looking forward to enjoying the atmosphere quite often as I work on my writing. This year is a year of surrender for me in many ways – letting God lead my path instead of running ahead of Him. Surrendering my priorities to Him and focusing on the areas that He is leading me is just one more way that I can serve Him, and serve others for Him.
I’ve heard people say that having a puppy is a lot like training to have a baby. After having a puppy for a month and a half, I can see more and more similarities between the two. When my daughter was little, I used to sit her in her high chair with some cereal or a toy to eat or play with while I prepared dinner. Now, I give the dog a Kong filled with peanut butter to keep him occupied while I prepare dinner or while we eat. It’s all about stimulating the mind and keeping them busy so I can use both hands to do something and still know exactly where they are and what they are into at all times!
The cat, on the other hand, can always be found curled up sleeping somewhere. Cats are much lower maintenance, but not quite as playful. We are moving to a house off post this upcoming weekend, so most of our belongings are already packed and our house is full of cardboard boxes. Since it was our choice to move from on post to off post, the Army doesn’t do the packing and moving for us like they usually would. Bummer! I really enjoyed that last time. Actually, it’s not too bad – we even managed to score some free moving boxes from someone else that had just unpacked from a move. Someone is always coming or going on an Army post! Lovebug can’t wait to play with the cardboard boxes (her favorite toy) once we unpack, but for now she’s having to make do with whatever she can find that hasn’t been packed yet. Yesterday, she created an “igloo” in the middle of our living room and spent the majority of the day sitting inside and reading her new library books. After spending some time in the sunshine today, she’s now back in the igloo enjoying a snack and a good book!
A couple of my really close friends have husbands who are currently in Afghanistan, and I have another good friend whose husband will be there very soon. This morning, I felt led to pray strongly for these soldiers, and for their families – for protection and comfort. It’s no secret that things are challenging over there, and that there is spiritual warfare involved in addition to the war on terror. It is critical then, that we as Christians bind together and send our prayers to the Lord on their behalf. Will you join me today and say a prayer for our soldiers and this war they are fighting – for wisdom, discernment, and a safe arrival back home? Will you pray for their loved ones back home – that they will seek the Lord and He will give them a comfort and peace that only He can give? As one of my close friends said to me this morning…God is bigger than any statistics! We serve a mighty God who is in control of all things and who can work miracles beyond our wildest imagination. Be bold, and ask Him to return our soldiers safely home.
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On days like this, I really wish I could just snap my fingers and make the Sensory Processing Disorder go away. I wish I could take the pain and the struggle away from my daughter and take it upon myself. I would do that in a heartbeat for her, as I know most moms would. The day started like any other with my sweet 7 year old daughter bounding down the stairs to say good morning to me and our new puppy, even if I did have to remind her to greet people before animals. What can I say? She’s an animal lover to the core! After breakfast she went off to do her morning chores – getting dressed, feeding her pets, brushing her teeth, etc. About 30 minutes later, I went upstairs to check on her and found her in tears sitting on the floor in her room surrounded by a dozen or so pairs of pants. She looked at me with her sad eyes and said “None of these pants feel comfortable today!”. Her favorite blue jeans (with the patched knees) are in the laundry after being worn for 2 weeks straight. If I didn’t wash them today, they were going to start walking themselves. I was hoping she’d find a pair of comfy sweats to throw on until I can get the jeans washed & dried. No such luck. She was doing all the right things, and was working hard to solve the problem herself without getting angry. She was rubbing her legs in an attempt to desensitize them & doing her exercises, but her body was failing her. She was heartbroken and dejected, looking to me for a solution. A solution I didn’t have. I can’t magically make the clothes that felt fine last week feel fine today. I wish I could. All I can do is offer options. “Did you try the brown sweats?” – The seams were itchy “How about your light blue jeans that you love?” – They didn’t feel right today “Let’s try your thermal pants because those are tight and snug and can provide pressure while you watch a movie” – Those almost worked, but then her feet felt funny. Suddenly it hit me! It’s BATHTIME! (She needed one anyway, and a benefit to homeschooling is that we can take one in the middle of the day.) Water ALWAYS works for her! I wish we could afford a house with a pool in the backyard because she is a different person in the water, but the bathtub will have to do for now. We ran her a nice warm bath with some bubbles, gave her some toys to play with and shampoo bottles for ‘experiments’ and she was good to go! As of this moment she’s been in there for almost an hour, and she’ll likely stay another hour if I let her (and add more warm water). After she gets out, I bet the clothes will feel better and we’ll relax with a snack and a movie. Homeschooling can wait until the afternoon today. Why is it sometimes so hard to turn my troubles over to God permanently? He loves me more than anyone else, yet I find myself trying over and over to take back control of things I’ve turned over to Him. I find myself feeling heartache and pain over something that I previously surrendered to God (more than once!). I don’t understand His plan, so I try to create one of my own – hoping that my desires will become His will. Instead, I should be praying that His will becomes my desire. Isaiah 55:8-9 says,
I know we all have something that we struggle to understand. Something in our lives that we need to completely and totally surrender to the Lord. For me, it’s dealing with my infertility and inability to have another child. My infertility is not a temporary condition. I dealt directly & actively with it for 3 years after our miracle daughter was born, waiting and hoping and wondering month after month after month. Almost 5 years ago it then became permanent when I had to have a complete hysterectomy due to a lot of complications brewing inside me, leaving me with no chance of another miracle baby in my tummy. I can’t tell you how often I go down the “what if” path. How often I think, “What if I had just waited a little longer for God to perform another miracle?”…“If I hadn’t given in to the pain…if I had endured longer…would I have gotten pregnant again?” By the way, that “what if” path was completely designed by Satan. It is a tool he uses to make us stop trusting God. When I’m feeling down and heartbroken about not being able to have another baby – the devil wants me to feel like it’s my fault. He tells me I was weak and I didn’t wait long enough. He wants me to think there is something I could have done about it. He tells me I’m alone. The TRUTH is – God is in control. The surgery turned out to be a huge blessing in our lives and in addition to some other things I won’t go into here – it saved me from a potentially dangerous cancer that was in the early stages. The TRUTH is that God always has a bigger plan than the one we can see. He knows what’s around the corner and if I will let him lead, he will keep me on the path he has prepared for me.
A couple years ago, God placed another baby in our lives as a foster baby. We brought him home from the hospital and raised him for 10 months – being told the whole time by the “powers that be” that we would almost certainly get to adopt him. We didn’t. He ended up being adopted by another family rather than returned to his birth mother. It hurts. Over a year later it still hurts. Even in the pain, I am blessed because I was able to form a relationship with his birth mother and have been able to be there for her as a “long distance big sister” of some sort as she has no family and needs to be reminded of how special she is and how much God loves her. Because it was an open adoption, she gets pictures often of her little boy. As a result, I get lots of pictures of him from her. He just turned 2. Each time she sends me a text message with another picture, my heart does flip-flops. I’m heartbroken. I look at the picture and my stomach just seizes up in knots. I feel weak in my knees. I miss him terribly. However, I am also overjoyed that he’s happy, healthy, and with parents that love him and can provide for him. I have to be thankful for that.
I have to admit, this past year or so has been rough. I have 6 people super close to me that have either had a baby this past year, or are pregnant and will be having one soon. That doesn’t even count all the people that I’ve barely met or seen with adorable baby bellies or new babies. Don’t get me wrong - I am crazy excited for them! I really am. I’m just also jealous and trying really hard not to be. It’s even worse when I hear some women complain about how easy they get pregnant or how they can’t stand the thought of having more kids, yet they get pregnant with little effort. I want to scream, “Fine! Give them to me!”. But that’s not God’s plan, and I don’t have to understand it. He still doesn’t want me to be jealous. It’s even one of the 10 Commandments!
That includes babies. Hubby and I still feel called to be foster parents and eventually to adopt (we think), but due to some circumstances out of our control we are having to wait a while before we can pursue it again. Once again God is showing me that I can’t control this – even the timing is HIS. Fine. So, I surrender it again. My goals. My dreams. My desires. I submit myself to HIS will and pray that he would align my desires with His will and not the other way around. I truly want to feel content and to trust in His plans. I also want my deepest longing to be for HIM. That’s really what He wants too, isn’t it?
Ok, so I surrendered! What next? Well, just as I think I’ve “got it” and have surrendered it all over to God, I get news that a good friend of mine is expecting.
I’m supposed to be THRILLED for her. I AM thrilled for her, but I also had to pray for God to take the jealousy away from my heart and to fill me with contentment again. Amazing how God works, isn’t it? Every time I think I’ve surrendered, He tests me again. Every time He reveals that I’m still trying to hold on to control. How many more times will it take before I finally LET GO and LET GOD have it? I don’t know what God’s plan is for our family. Maybe our family will remain a family of 3 (plus the pets!), or maybe not. Either way, I pray that I will surrender my will and my desires so that God can truly use me as His tool for the work He has planned for me to do.
Let me introduce you all to Duper. As in “Super Duper”. It’s a paratrooper thing Isn’t he cute?? Now that you know what has been stealing all my extra time for the past 2 weeks, you can’t be mad at me for not posting lately, right? Lovebug has been After our recent vacation, we were finally ready to get a dog. We’ve been researching & planning for months and it was time to make it happen. A couple weekends ago, Petsmart was having a “National Adoption Day”. The store hosted many local shelters and was crowded with many, many animals that needed a home. This little cutie caught our eye. He is a Shepherd Mix, and is now 16 weeks old. He’s going to be a big guy! He’s got webbed feet, so we’re thinking he might have some retriever in him. Whatever it is, he’s cute! We aren’t sure of his background – we just know that he was “surrendered” at a Vet hospital and then he spent a little time in a foster home. I’m not sure how long he was at either of those places. I have to admit, I was NOT looking forward to the “puppy stage”, but we had decided that it would be best for all involved if we got a puppy instead of an older dog. We wanted to make sure it grew up with the cat since she was here first, and we don’t want her feeling like prey. We also thought it would be a great educational experience for Lovebug to help train the puppy and to see it grow up from a baby. She already has a friend for life!
So far, we have been so blessed! I think getting him at 13 weeks really made a huge difference in his bladder size – he was already able to “hold it” for 4 hours easy overnight. He also already knew “sit” and might have had some training on “leave it” and “drop it” because he seemed to respond to those almost immediately. We are crate training him, so there have been NO instances of chewed up clothing or furniture. He loves his toys – especially the tennis ball and the Kong (because I put yummy stuff in it!), and he can’t get enough of the sticks and pinecones in our backyard!
Potty training is going great! He’s only had a few accidents in the house, and EVERY SINGLE TIMEH it was our fault. He was trying to tell us in his own way that he wanted to go out and we missed the clues. We’re a little slow, but we’re catching on! At night, Hubby and I have been taking turns sleeping on the sofa with him in the living room so we could be close to the back door where we would be taking him out. We set our alarm to get us in the middle of the night and take him out. First night was 4 hours. After a few nights, we bumped it to 4.5 hours. Then 5. Now we are up to 6 hours of sleep! YAY! A little longer to go, and then we will be ready to move him to our room once we get him used to the stairs.
Making friends with the cat! Duper loves to chase the kitty, but only because he wants to play! He’s not aggressive with her at all. He’s responds very well to “leave it” and will back up and sit down nicely too – what a gentleman! Of course, that’s as long as we have him on the leash – still have to work on the off leash manners, but we’re making progress. “What is this thing?” “If I ignore it, maybe it will go away”
“When will they let us back inside?”
The ups & downs of stairs! He’s afraid of them. Has NO idea how to go up them. It was comical when we tried to take him up the stairs to get a bath last week. We put him on the stairs, moved his paws for him, lifted his bottom and he just FROZE. He stayed like that till we moved him again. Eventually we carried him. Poor little guy!
He also doesn’t know how to get in or out of the truck. No depth perception I guess. We’re working on it. As you can see, our stairs are wood, so I’m thinking we’ll need to get some pieces of rug and some no-slip stuff to go under them so he can get some traction. I’ve been working on him a little with with treats, and so far I’ve gotten him up ONE step on his own. I’m really glad that Lovebug finally talked us into getting a dog. We can already tell that he’s going to bring us a lot of joy! Almost a month ago, Hubby had his 2 week block leave period after returning from deployment. We tossed around a few ideas of what to do with our vacation time trying to find a balance between having a lot of fun & not spending a lot of money. One idea we kept coming back to was going to New York. Our sweet Lovebug has been Now we live in North Carolina…less than a day of driving to NYC. She’s only 7.5 (not quite 8!), but we decided that now was the time to make it happen. You never know with the Army – they could suddenly decide to move us to the West coast, or overseas (doubtful, but still…) so we opted to take advantage of the road trip while we could. I have a dear friend that lives partway between here and NYC, so we were also excited to be able to spend some time with them on the way and they blessed us with a free place to spend the night. God even threw in an extra gift of SNOW while we were at their house – bonus! We had 2 days/1 night to spend in NYC. We ended up finding a hotel in New Jersey for a fraction of the cost of staying in NYC, so we jumped on that. Since we only had a couple days to spend in NYC, we made this trip ALL about Lovebug! This was HER trip, to see the things SHE wanted. Her dream has been to see the Statue of Liberty, so that was #1 on the list. Unfortunately, the inside was closed for renovations so we were only able to see the outside, not climb the internal stairs. Maybe next time! We weren’t sure how much time it would take to navigate the city and figure out public transportation, so we opted to see the Statue of Liberty on Day 2 when we wouldn’t be rushed at all. Day 1 – We took public transportation from Jersey to NYC, walked/ran around (a fraction of) Central Park (GORGEOUS!), bought fruit at a sidewalk market, rode the subway, sang a song on Broadway (really, right under a Broadway street sign!), and saw Times Square. We weren’t sure we’d have time for Times Square but as we were riding the subway they announced it was the next stop so we jumped off to go explore! It was perfect because it was nighttime, so all the signs were lit up and it was just amazing. While in Times Square, we ate dinner, bought a city mug at Starbucks, visited a 2-story Disney store, and a 3-story Toys-R-Us (with a FERRIS WHEEL inside!). Day 2 – Statue of Liberty day! We drove over to a state park in Jersey to catch a ferry ride to Liberty Island. As it turned out, catching the ferry from Jersey instead of New York was a blessing!! We were 3 of about 10 people on our ferry, while the ones from NY were packed with probably 200 people. When it was time to leave Liberty Island, we walked past the long lines waiting for the New York ferry and were able to just hop right on the Jersey ferry! Lovebug was in AWE as she saw the statue in person for the first time! She was giddy with excitement when we saw it from the ferry, and even more so when she was able to touch the base of the pedestal itself. After taking lots and lots of photos and enjoying the view, we were ready to head back to the mainland. Lovebug had spotted a Science Museum when we were on our way to catch the ferry, so she asked if we could go see it. She *loves* all things science related! We had a bit of time and they offered a military discount, so we said YES! We spent a couple hours there enjoying the animals & exhibits before heading back to our friend’s house for the night. It was a trip full of adventure all packed into a couple of days. A trip of a lifetime for our Lovebug for sure! Rather than try to pick a few favorite photos, I’ll just share this slideshow with you.
Stay tuned for the second part of our vacation…”Hiking (part of) the Appalachian Trail!” 
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