Off

It has seemed for the last week or so that life is just a little bit off. You know, like out of whack. Or maybe its just me. Just as we were getting back to some semblance of normal after all the sickness -- back to work, back to school -- we were thrown a snow day. Just plopped right in the middle of the week. The roads were bare everywhere we could see, but the school district still felt compelled to delay the start of school by two hours. Ugh. Don't they know what that does to people? Not only did I miss Bible study for the third week in a row, but I had a out-of-sorts, who-messed-up-my-routine, psycho 6 year-old on my hands. What's a mama to do? Oi.

You know I'm out of sorts when I'm not excited about the Missions Conference at church. I love the Missions Conference. I always love missions-related stuff. But this year it just made me sad. Sad because a piece of me is with a child in another country. Sad because her family doesn't know Jesus. Sad because given the chance to do so, I would gladly pack up and move to another country and do what I could to show them Jesus. Sad because it seems I'm supposed to be here instead. Sad because I don't know what to do with myself here. Sad because I don't know what I'd do with my particular family there. Sad because that leaves me in limbo land where it seems my only purpose is to keep my family intact. Sad because I don't think I'm doing a very good job. Sad because I don't know how to bring God glory in where He's planted me. Sad because I wonder if my desire to participate in missions isn't just a misguided vision of how to serve God.

Boy, I sound like a mess, but really I'm not. My heart is just really heavy right now. And my mind is just a jumbled mess of thoughts.

Having my eldest child so sick for such a long time was really a strange thing to experience. When he's sick, he's almost "normal". Someone should really do some research on this. Its really true. When he's sick, his whole body just sloooows waaaay down (I joked with my mom that its what he'd be like on Ritalin -- a lump of his true self), he takes the time to be polite, he accepts affection without resorting to hitting or name-calling, he acknowledges people when they speak to him like any normal child would. And now we're not only back to his particular normal, we're back to that point in his cycle where he's at his worst. (The irony being that he loves the Missions Conference too, and has just been thrilled at the idea of participating in the kids' program. Kudos to Mrs Carter and Mrs Galle -- two of his very favorite people!) I haven't blogged about him in such a long time. I think its because what we deal with now on a regular basis is just simply too complex to describe. Sometimes its so subtle, other times its these glaring moments when I wonder how on earth he's going to function in the world. I want to blog more about it because it helps me think things through. It makes it a little less abstract in my mind, this crazy thing we deal with on a daily basis.

As we worked through the adoption process, one thing we've been told repeatedly is that we should prepare to become conspicuous. Ha. If you've ever been around our family -- especially at church -- you know we're hardly just part of the crowd. Mama's blubbering over the hymns, one boy's under the row in front of us building a fort out of hymnals, the other boy is jumping from chair to chair like a kangaroo (during service), and daddy's grinning away in spite of it all. Adding a child of another race is only going to make the party that much wilder.

Speaking of the adoption, we hauled our crazy family to Walmart today to use the Coinstar machine to count the change we've amassed through garage sales and our change drive. I should note that we had hoped to avoid the Coinstar machine, as they charge a whopping 9% on each dollar counted, but we ended up with so much change we had few options. We had been told by our bank that we could bring our change to their main branch and they would count it for us. Today we found out that wasn't true. So, it was either roll it all by hand or go with Coinstar. We had over 1000 quarters, 1000 dimes, and over 6000 pennies -- we were not going to roll it by hand! In the end, after a whole lot of clamor and an occasional audience, we totalled $467.76 in change! How about that?!

Even in my "offness", the Lord still blesses....