My girl.

I don't think I could ever adequately express...

...just how much...

...I adore...

...this...

...little girl.

Summer.

We only have one week and a couple days left of summer vacation, and all I can say is, where did the summer go? I can't believe just how fast it went, and although I felt very apprehensive at the beginning, I would say overall it was a great summer. Here are some snapshots to prove it:

Amelia celebrated her third birthday....

...she got a Barbie house.

My big boy lost his first tooth.

We played lots of Lego...

...spent lots of time at the waterfront...

...went to the beach a few times with Daddy...

...dug in the sand...

...visited a museum...

...had a fabulous vacation in PEI...

...got to see Anna...

...had a tea party...

...Jacob played on a soccer team for the first time.

Those are just some of the highlights. I, terrible photographer that  I am, did not document a lot of what we did. We also had two weeks of swimming lessons at a lake, we did DVBS, we spent lots of time outside and visiting people and lots of other stuff. Hope you all had as great a summer as we did!

Wild child.

So, I read this article a couple of days ago, here, and I copied and pasted the whole thing because of what an impact it had on me. I don't ever want to forget it. Although my 'difficult' child is not nearly as 'wild' as this lady's was, I still sometimes feel that my oldest son is on the outer edge of normal. I am that sarcastic mom she talks about, who feels cynical when other moms tell me how to parent this kid of mine. Anyway, feel free to read or not. If you too have a 'wild child,' then maybe it will help you as well. 

THE WILD CHILD

Today, our guest author is Pearl, who says about her article, “It was spawned by Julie Sibert’s posting of May 8th.  I wish to impart hope to those who are currently rearing difficult children.  I was in such anguish during those years, any kind of encouragement would have been cherished.”

Blessed with a Wild Child?
I lovingly refer to our difficult first son as the wild-child. Faced with a group of moms, I can usually gauge who has a wild-child by watching her reaction to this sentence. “Well, you just make them do it,” meaning an authoritative parenting style is used in instructing the child how to behave. Mom’s with a wild-child will raise their eyebrows, look me straight on, and with much sarcasm say, “yeah, right.”

One in twenty children is labeled as having a difficult temperament (Thomas & Chess, 1977). This disposition can display:
1. Extreme emotional reactions (meltdowns)
2. Negative response to new situations (hard time adjusting)
3. Not easy to please
4. Bad moods
5. Hypersensitivity to loud noises, clothing irritants, food textures/tastes.

These children can also exhibit high IQ’s and creativity. Thus, difficult temperaments may also be called the ‘artistic temperament.’ Within this difficult temperament there may be other specific disorders.

During the early years of my oldest son’s life, it seemed all we could do was hold on for the ride. At 9, he said he wanted to die on several occasions. At 11, he was provoked and choked a fellow student. At 13, he jumped from a two-story ledge for fun and broke both bones of both legs six inches above his ankles. He was handcuffed and put in a paddy wagon at age 15. And yet, he won first place for his Drug Awareness speech. He won an award for the most volunteer hours at a local nursing home. He was certified as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) his senior year of high school. He taught himself to play guitar and now in his mid-20’s composes soft jazz to play at local restaurants.

My husband and I gave him knowledge of God’s Word and Jesus’ love through our words at home, Bible class, camps and youth rallies. Homelife had structure. I only worked part-time. His father and I tried to work as a team in parenting. But, we never had control. We lived in a world of extremes. Each morning, I held my breath wondering what the day would hold. Each night, I collapsed in bed weary from mental exhaustion.

The good news is we all survived. Our wild-child evolved into a highly philosophical, kind young man who is beautifully quirky. God has allowed us to use our experiences in raising him to encourage those who are bewildered with their own difficult temperament child. I wish to impart some hope and tools for those who are still in the trenches.

NETWORK – If you notice discrepancies at an early age and behavior that is extreme, find other families who are dealing with similar issues. You will start to get a sense of who is dealing with a difficult child. Through sharing, you may gain awareness of effective therapists and much needed support.

ADVOCATE for yourself – Carefully consider if health care workers play down your concerns with your child’s behavior. If you have any inkling something is wrong, it probably is. Don’t let anyone question your ability as a parent. I loved when the Lord gave me the opportunity to gently clue in the clueless.

ADVOCATE for your child – My son was empowered when he saw that I was on his side when dealing with school problems. That’s not to say I condoned his behavior. When he saw that I was his representative and empathetic, he would take counsel better when we got home.

REMEMBER THE CHILD’S BEHAVIOR DOESN’T REFLECT YOU – Your precious child was born with this temperament. You are separate and apart from the child. They make their own choices. (Please, remember this when they hit teen years.) Their behavior is NO indication that you are a bad parent.

PRAY
1. Relinquish Control – Relinquish control, gain freedom. I gave my wild-child over to the Lord daily. Inside or outside of my presence, I couldn’t control my child’s behavior. The Lord could protect him, calm his mind and help his decisions. The Lord was faithful with my trust in Him.
2. “How do I get through this, Lord?” – Although I couldn’t control the situations, I prayed God would give me the wisdom in how to proceed. God consistently put resources in our path at just the right moment (books, comments from strangers, good teachers, out of the blue suggestions.)
3. Hope – Daily ask for hope and the ability to see it. I needed daily reassurance of my child’s goodness. I knew that his behavior wasn’t bad, it was just outside of societies accepted norms. Still, I needed to see the tiniest bit of positive. I had to work with the Lord by being observant for the positive action. Even if it was just an instant of sharing kindly with his brothers or petting the dog lovingly. Those moments were my joy.

No Difficult Child in your life?
If you do not have the blessing of a difficult child, please remember this verse.
Ephesians 4:29, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”
Nothing hurt my heart worse than a negative comment about my son, even out of ignorance. Parents of difficult children are beaten down enough by society and its behavioral standards. Don’t contribute to their weariness.

Final Hope
Wild-child parents, your life will never suffer from boredom. If you’ve given your child to the Lord, know that your child is going to grow into a productive godly adult. Never doubt it. However, you may have to shift your expectations of what that adult will be like. Frankly, I’ll take beautifully quirky over sedate seriousness anytime!

Tea party.

Sometimes all a girl needs to be happy in life is some tea in a pretty teacup!

When I am weak.

How do Christians really bear another’s burden, if we refuse to bear any burden at all?

Am I a Pharisee tossing a painless coin from my excess or a bowed lady giving a tender offering, a bit like the painful, joy-filled last mite? How many times has my “I can’t give” really mean, “I can’t give without bearing a burden myself?”

How can we take a load off someone else’s back without taking a bit of a load on ourselves and what else can it mean to pick up His cross and follow Him? - Ann Voskamp

Read this quote today, and although the author was not talking about a mother-child relationship, it really spoke to me as such. It's where I'm at and lately my thoughts have been consumed with the how of child-rearing. Sometimes I feel so frail and so spent. Most often, I feel like I want my life to be easy. I want everything to be sunshine and rainbows, but the reality is that life with three small children is hard. I am selfish enough to fight against my reality most days. If we have a bad day, more often than not, it can be traced back to the fact that I just don't feel like it anymore. I get tired. Being a mother is so much about pouring yourself out on others, and even when you've wrung out the very last drop of yourself, you are called to continue pouring from your utterly exhausted emptiness. 


The older I get, the more I realize that this life is not meant to be easy. God wants us to constantly seek Him out for help in our weakness; He wants us coming to the place of realization that we can't do it on our own. If my life was always a bed of roses, if everything was so plush and perfect all the time, I would never have need for prayer. It'd be easy to do life on my own if nothing was ever difficult. But that's not how God works to refine us. 


I'll end with another quote I read today that ties in with this thought:

Heaven is not here, it's There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for. - Elisabeth Elliot

A few thoughts.

I was really nervous about sending Nicholas to public school. I don't know, as a parent you just want to do the best thing for your child and it seems there is never any easy, black and white answer. To homeschool or not. To send them to public school or not. So many questions. Everyone has a different opinion on what is better for kids in general, and even have ideas about what might be best for my child specifically. Anyway, when the time rolled around for Nicholas to be registered for Primary (kindergarten to the rest of the world) two years ago, I was extremely anxious. I cried when I thought of sending him to public school (which also translates into "sending him to the lions" for some, myself included). I wrestled with whether to keep him home and teach him myself, going from one end of the schooling spectrum to the other in my mind so often that I'd give myself headaches.

I don't think I've ever prayed so hard for something in my life. What I really wanted was for God to just shout down an answer to me. Since I knew that was not going to happen, I continued to wrestle. Meanwhile, my very calm and un-anxious husband was there, my ever-constant source of reason and sensibility. "Just send him to school, at least for Primary. We'll just take it year by year and make a decision based on where we are in life at that point," he said, sensibly. Life is so easy for him. No fuss, no muss. "You don't understand!" I cried. "I can't do this! He's my baby! I can't just send him into the unknown." Lucas responded the way he always does, "He'll be fine. The Lord will be with him." I silently raged at Lucas for not being more convicted about homeschooling. What I really wanted was for him to say, "Let's homeschool." I'd only have peace then, or so I thought. But there was no way I was going to homeschool if he was not 100% on board with it. No way that I'd go into it without his complete support. However, he was not changing his mind and it looked like I'd have to go register Nicholas for school.

I don't think I can describe to you the struggle I felt. It seemed so preposterous to me to send my precious baby to school, where unthinkable things could happen to him. Plus, I read way too many blogs of people who homeschool and have thousands of reasons why God does not want us to send our kids to school. (Basically, they seem to think that homeschooling will save their children.) So I prayed and prayed. Finally I said to myself (and it was no thunderbolt or revelation, but a gradual realization), "Laura, there is no clear indication in the Bible that you have to homeschool. You won't be sinning if you send your child to school. BUT there is a clear indication, a command even, in the Bible that you are to respect what your husband has to say, and to listen to him." The answer seemed simple: Send Nicholas to school. As soon as I came to that conclusion, I felt peace. Deep, unquestioning, satisfying, peace. I don't mean that I never cried about it again, because I surely did. I still had nights where I cried, begging God to take care of my boy at school. But underneath it all, there was a strong sense of God's peace that I was doing the right thing in sending Nicholas to school, and above all, submitting to what my husband had to say about it, and therefore, obeying the Lord.

Can I just brag a little bit about God's grace now? I don't think I can even begin to describe how gracious He was to me those first few days of sending Nicholas to school, and the whole year afterward. It is only now, in hindsight that I can really see how much He cared for me then. First of all, Nicholas adjusted so well to school. He did not fight me, at all. He did not cry (maybe one little tear the first day, but nothing I couldn't handle), and although he went through a bout of crying for a week in March, I was much better equipped at that point to handle it. Second, Nicholas had the most amazing teacher and the most special class. His teacher was actually subbing for the "real" Primary teacher who was on maternity leave. She was awesome. Just perfectly what we needed, both Nicholas and I. In hindsight, now that Jacob had the "real" teacher this past year, as good as she is, she would have scared me if she'd been Nicholas' teacher that first year.

His class? Everyone remarked about how special they are: The parents, his teacher, and myself all saw how great this group of kids was, and actually it was only this past year, when I see how Jacob's class is, I realize that Nicholas' class is not the norm. Nicholas' grade one teacher actually said that in all her twenty years of teaching, she has never seen a class like it. She said that 98% of the class is above average, and there are no "problem" children, aside from what you'd expect of active kids in that age group. Would this be an indication of God's loving grace? Another thing that really hit me the other day, is the school situation. Because of boundary issues, Nicholas ended up going to a much smaller school than what we'd originally thought. A few months in, we found out the boundary was going to change back and that our neighbourhood school was now going to be a much bigger school, which I would absolutely hate. Besides which, it's a school that is very "keeping up with the Joneses" whereas the school my kids go to has more of a wide and diverse range of kids of all walks of life. But, because Nicholas was already enrolled in the smaller school, he was allowed to stay there, and it was easy to get Jacob in too.

God's grace? I just see it everywhere. One thing that I have realized the last couple of years is how much He cares. He cares so much about each little detail of our lives and not only does He care, but He finds little ways of showing us His gracious heart. I am amazed and my faith has been fortified. 

"...do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-7

THREE!!

Amelia, I cannot believe you are three! When you were born, I couldn't believe that I'd gotten a baby girl, and I still can't believe I have you. You are everything a mommy could hope to have in a little girl. You are beautiful, inside and out, and I love you even more than you love pink! :)

Your first name means "industrious" and your second name speaks for itself - "Grace." We could not have picked a better name for you; you are the essence of "industrious grace." You are my busy girl, always finding a way to keep yourself occupied and reaching out to help mommy or anyone else who needs it. Yet you do it with such a graceful spirit, and mommy loves your gentle, caring heart.

I feel so utterly privileged to be allowed to raise you, and watch you grow up. I have enjoyed every second of seeing you become such an amazing little girl! Happy birthday, sweet girl!