11 years later!

11 years ago I married my soulmate, my absolute other half.  The past 11 years have been full of joy, hardships, pain, separations, love, growth, and innumerable happy moments.  Each year I have looked at the man I married and loved him more.  

Today our anniversary is falling on the exact day of the week that we got married!  It's still funny to me that it was on a Monday.  Who gets married on a Monday?!  Someone whose committed to caring for every need of their future wife, that's who :)!

I can still hear M2's voice when he called a week before we got married asking me to fly to DC and marry him earlier than planned.  He was so confident that I would say yes that he had already gotten a plane ticket.  I was more than happy to oblige.  Neither of us knew what kind of fierce opposition we would face from friends and family regarding that decision.  We have always explained our decision in light of how the Army works since this was the easiest for everyone to understand.  In the pre-911 Army world things were still run by Army personnel instead of civilians.  It took weeks, if not months, for an enlisted guys status to change from single to married and receive BAH.  No enlisted single soldier under E-5 could live off post and those under E-5 that were married definitely would not make it in the suburbs of Washington DC without BAH.  The solution that was counseled to soldiers wanting to marry was that they would have to marry, then have the new wife stay with her family until BAH was established and permission was granted to the soldier to move.  M2 was pulled aside one day and told that his Squad Leader could guarantee him on-post housing if we could get married in early July instead of August.  So - there you go - a Monday wedding :)!

BUT ... that is only part of the story.  When I finished out my school year in May at Mississippi State I had to go home to a home life that I had not been part of for more than 7 years.  I had to endure harsh criticism at every turn for giving up a full ride scholarship to marry.  Some remarks from this period of my life still sting to this day.  My refuge came late May when I started work at the summer camp where M2 and I had started dating.  It was a home to me for the summer and a place I absolutely loved!  Summer camp would end just a few weeks before our planned August wedding.  I literally had no where to go and the prospect of a few weeks being extended to a month or more while M2 tried to get BAH was enough to cause severe anxiety for me.  I have always felt an enormous amount of gratitude for M2 taking his commitment to take care of me serious even before vows were exchanged.  He boldly took control, told me I was going to fly to DC and marry him on that Monday, return to MS to finish out the last 3 weeks of camp and then he would have a place ready for me to come to - a loving home.   

He has cared for me from that phone call till this day.  Never letting me down.  Never giving up on me.  Always loving me.  Always caring for me.  Always showing me something so sacrificial. 

I love him.  More than words can express. 

So, this is the story that resulted in a Monday wedding at the funeral chapel in Arlington Cemetery. 

Crazy cool, huh? 

Thankful

We are finally finishing up our school year.  I am completely thankful for the opportunity to school my children at home but at the same time, May always brings with it the exhaustion of unlimited hours of being at my children's disposal.  I am sure that teachers in a traditional classroom feel the same longing for an end come May, possibly sooner! 

We have several projects that wrap up our year. The kids each have an end of the year memorization.  I posted E's on FB awhile back.  Here is a B's! 

It's from Joyce Kilmer's "Trees". 

E wants it to be known that she wrote the background music herself :)!

Also, E has been writing all year long.  We still have a few scattered writing assignments but today's showed to me how far she has come this year.   She first had to read a quote from Matthew Henry. 

"I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed."

Her assignment was to think of something that happened in her life that she may not have liked and find what she could be thankful to God for out of that circumstance, using Henry's model.  I loved what she turned in!

"I thank Thee first for discipline, for Thy rod, even when it hurts, because without a lesson a hard life I would have, second, I thank Thee for my parents and the command to discipline, third, I thank Thee for my getting disciplined from my parents and not from life itself." - E

I had to giggle when I read it.  Good to know that the only hardship she could think of in her life was the discipline lovingly bestowed upon her! 

Just a few more weeks and I will be completely satisfied with a year well done! 

I am planning a future blog highlighting all the accomplishments that we have made this year - they are numerous and I am so proud of my kiddos! 

Flexibility - I hear you calling but I don't want to answer!

I have been described by many a friend as "super flexible". M2 as well. No not in the sense where we can put our feet behind our heads or anything crazy like that, although I might try that today! More in the sense that we can go and do on a whim. We adjust quickly.

Or so it seems to the world!

Really that is all on the outside and mostly due to the lifestyle that we live. The Army lifestyle. It demands flexibility. That is one main reason we seem flexible another is that M2 and I are both a little flighty! We get going on one path and see a butterfly and say "ooh look" and head the other way without ever realizing it. My youngest, bless her heart, got a double whammy of flightiness. Seriously though, we will be driving over an hour away to go do something specific and on the drive I will google something else in that city on my phone and before you know it we think that new thing is what we went to the city for all along and it will not occur to us until we are home that our original intent for the trip was never reached!

On the inside though, deep down, I am not a flexible soul. I am a rigid homeschooling mom and I am a rigid disciplinarian. There is no flexibility within my realm of parenting. Mostly, I understand this to be a great thing. It means that my children have no doubts as to what is expected of them most the time. It also means that at the end of every school year I know my children received a solid education and I get to lay any homeschooling doubts aside. Yet, where there is goodness in all this there can also reside something not so good. Children with spirits that might be breaking. This is something I completely do not want.

I have exactly 8 1/2 weeks of curriculum left in this year. I have exactly 8 1/2 weeks before I send E off to summer camp. I so desperately want to finish before she leaves. We have pushed so hard this year and come great strides. Yet, she came to me heartbroken this morning and said she felt pressured to get "all this work" done and I could tell it was really causing her spirit to suffer. Unlike myself, I took a DEEP breath and decided to stretch out our weeks - who says we can't just finish after she gets home from camp. I attend a homeschool forum with other moms using the same curriculum, just with older kids, and most of them stretch this particular curriculum into 2 years anyways. It covers A LOT!

This is just a mild example of me hearing flexibility calling my name. But I think I must be in a season of learning flexibility because every day I am having to rethink a ton of ways I operate and become more flexible. I am having to give a lot up.

This brings we to the car situation! My, oh so wise, husband informed me that we will not be getting another car. We will learn to be (you guessed it) more flexible!

Let the adventures begin ...

Oh, the car drama!

I should probably put the laptop down right now and not proceed with blogging. Sometimes on days when your eyes are red from countless tears and your heart feels burdened you should back away from the keyboard before you type something dramatic to only regret it tomorrow!

But I'm going to throw caution to the wind ...

Today has been HARD! I have spent almost half of every hour since I woke up crying. My only consolation at this point is that maybe this emotional roller coaster I am on means I am pregnant!! (Lets all collectively cross our fingers!) I am sure as M2 reads this he will be pleading that no one sends up a prayer for me that the "Vacancy" sign on my womb suddenly flashes to "No Vacancies"! Ignore him though - we need another baby pronto! I'm getting old people! I am also getting WAY off track here ...

Back to the reason behind the emotional roller coaster because let's face it - the tubal ligation I had probably means it is NOT a pregnancy. We, as a family, have fought hard for the last 4 years to maintain ourselves as a one car family. We have reasons. Economical ones, environmental ones (yes we are tree-huggers, love us anyways), but most importantly, familial ones! We have gone through stages where we both had a car and the kids and I did our own thing and M2 did his own thing and we got very disconnected in ways we did not even know. Then, through a set of circumstances that an entirely different blog could be written about, we ended up selling our second car to some friends. This was going to be temporary because M2 had already planned on buying his dream car, at the time a Honda truck, as soon as we moved to our next duty station. But then something kind of cool happened. We squeezed into a routine of one car. It made us rely on each other more, it made us compromise and work together, it forced us to communicate more, it meant that we went EVERYWHERE as a family. When you face challenges and work together to overcome them - it only makes you grow stronger. We grew stronger as a family. We made a decision to stay a one car family and keep working to make it work.

Each move we go through some growing pains as we figure out new routines and new ways to give and take. This move has been especially hard so far. We live off post. The schedule M2 works is not predictable in the least right now (not that in the Army it ever has been but we have been able to guesstimate pretty well in the past). We have had several episodes of disappointment as schedules change and activities are missed. Right now we are on the verge of throwing the towel in and heading to the nearest Honda dealership and for some reason that is causing me to be an emotional wreck! I feel like the entire dynamic of our family is about to change, entirely! (I know I am RIGHT in the midst of crazy right now - who else in the world thinks purchasing a second car will throw the entire world off balance? Not a sane person, I tell you!)

Maybe it is time to give up on the one car dream. Or maybe it is time to reach down to our depths and stretch ourselves in a way we never have and figure out a way to make this work. Which is why I shouldn't be blogging this. Usually I blog right as I am coming out of a whirlwind and have come to some conclusion or learned some lesson that I feel like sharing with the world.

Not this time. I'll cry on it some more and let you know ...

"Big, Fat, Dummy"

We have been at our new post for almost 1 month now. All the tears of moving away from a place we loved have dried and we have REALLY been able to make this new place our home. We decided to hit the ground running as soon as we got here so that everyone would have less time to sit around and dwell on what was left behind.

In the process of leaving our kids were VERY emotional. They had to leave some people behind that meant a lot to them and they truly loved our home. It was hard. They were also very certain that the new post was not going to ever be home. I told them a story that I once heard at a PWOC. This lady spoke about moving to Germany last minute and how her kids were so devastated and so they decided to have them pray specifically for something they each wanted upon arrival to Germany. They were VERY specific prayers and they were all answered!! Her message was that God cared about the small things in our lives! So, I had them start praying for very specific things. E prayed hard that a friend from 2 post ago would miraculously have moved to this new post and be living in the same apartment building as us. She took specific to the EXTREME. We convinced her to tack on to the end "or give me a new friend that will be an even better friend".

I am so happy to say that a week ago she exclaimed, "God DID answer my prayer - and I do have a better friend now!" Even better than that God gave all 3 of them several great friends! I prayed for other homeschooling moms I could relate to since that was the one thing I lacked at our last post and that has also been answered several times over! We are so overwhelmed with thankfulness!

Moving on to what's behind this post. Most of those prayers were answered through a local homeschooling group we joined on Yahoo. We meet at a park on Fridays and the kids get a few hours of GREAT playtime. This particular Friday the park was a little crowded. Soon after we arrived I saw my son break down in tears and run to his sister. I went to investigate. He explained, through heaving sobs, that he asked a boy if he wanted to play with him and be in his club and the boy in return called him a "big, fat, dummy". (Let me intervene right here and say that in NO way, shape, or form do my kids hear that kind of talk at home, they do not understand it so to B that boy was literally saying; you are big, you are fat, you are a dummy.) After he explained, E instantly was like, "show me where he is and I will go tell him something." In my mind I was all like, "show me where his mother is and I will go tell her something!". Matter of fact, I didn't even ask him to point the kid out for fear I might "accidentally" trip him later. Yet, trying to be a good mom I reminded them both that they needed to do what they knew was right and forgive. He dried his tears and thankfully ran to find another friend.

We talked about it again tonight so that I could make sure no scarring existed. I told him I was proud that he got back in there and did not let that keep him from trying to make other friends. Then he broke my heart ...

He told me that later he went, with the help of his new friend, and told the boy that what he said to him had really hurt his feelings. The boy responded with, "well I don't have feelings". B just walked away. But he said that telling the boy how it made him feel made him feel so much better! Sometimes I forget how strong our kids can be! I would have been terrified to tell him to do that for fear the boy may say something worse - but B is right - telling someone how they make you feel can make a situation so much better no matter if they respond in kind.

So - looking back - maybe if I had found the mom and told her what I thought about her parenting skills or lack there of I would feel better now instead of still being angry ...

Eventually I will take my own advice and just forgive.

More importantly - why is he not this small still?!

"We are happy that ... "

I love that my little ones pray on their own. We have never given them a specific prayer for meal times or bed times. We have just encouraged them to talk to God from their hearts and say anything they want.

Months ago they really started opening up at prayer time and being very vocal and at first I really wanted to steer their "language" toward what I felt appropriate for prayer. Lets face it, most of us feel the need to pray in very specific ways. This is not necessarily a bad thing but I think the simplicity of a child's heart tells us so much!

I am SO glad I held off on correcting what I thought needed to be corrected and just let them be because through their words I have been blessed!

Here goes a typical prayer from one of the kids.

"Thank you for this day and we hope to have a good day. We hope to obey. We hope to make new friends and we hope to have fun at the park. We are happy that you gave us this food. We are happy that we got moved and we are happy that we have already met people. Amen."

So what I really wanted to change at first was the "hope to's" and the "happy that's". I wanted them to learn to ask for things. Like this,

"Father we ask that you help us obey this day"

or to praise God for the great things like this,

"We praise you and thank you for the people you have provided for use to meet and be friends with".

Then I realized in the simplicity of their prayer - there is abundant truth.

First, God created us to be happy and joyful beings and I don't think anything else in the world pleases God more than for us to find joy and happiness in what He provides. There is no better "thank you" than to tell someone that what they did for you made you happy!! If M2 came home and said, "Look at all you did today, it makes me so happy!" I think my heart would find great delight! (I might just faint from shock as well but that is for a different post on what little men recognize when they come home ;)!) It would definitely go further than, "Thank you for taking care of all this"!

Secondly, I looked up the definition for hope and came across this,

"to expect with confidence: trust"

What more does God ask of us than "to expect with confidence" that He will provide! Or to "trust" that He will hear our hearts!

Sometimes we can accidently steer our children from a true, pure, relationship with their creator and into a religion of traditions by accident. Don't get me wrong - we NEED, oh so desperately need to steer their hearts towards what is right but in some things we should let them tread the waters for themselves and make for themselves what is true to them. In doing this, my hope is that when they are adults they will not wonder if what they believe is what they believe or just the beliefs of parents that were handed down!

So, for this day I am happy!

Being Available

Here's a little lesson on being available from an 8 year olds perspective.

"So, being available means like, it there is a spill on the floor it's the cleaners job to clean it up. He can use the mop but if the mop is locked in the closet then He will have to get something else that IS available to clean it up with. It's not the mops job to clean up the mess, it's the cleaners, but the mop can be used." ~ E

Sometimes we think we are teaching them just to be surprised that they are teaching us.

That time again ...

Moving is FAR from a new concept in this house. It has only been 9 months since we moved last. The place I just leased in NC will be E's 10th residence in 8 years of life and currently we are only guaranteed to be there a year - so moving has always been a big part of our life. I think in the midst of it all though, I have failed to see how it affects my precious kiddos!

Let me start by saying that I have truly been blessed with the most adaptive children there must be - hands down! They are VERY flexible and considerate of all that is involved in moving. It's because of these unique qualities that I think I have failed to see how much it actually affects them! We have been living out of suitcases for over a week now and they have had to forego all their playthings until we finally move and unpack. They are plagued with uncertainty about where we are going and even when that will be. We should be loading a Uhaul today - that was the "plan". Have you ever heard that saying, "Man plans and God laughs"? Well we have a similar one that goes, "We plan and the Army laughs"! So true for us. We are still sitting here waiting on our RFO to be converted so we can actually move. We have no clue as to when this might happen. We could be sitting here another week, or heaven forbid, longer! I have gone through the gamut of emotions at this point and settled into acceptance. The kids on the other hand have NOT settled into anything! They are not being themselves at all. I started to think our parenting was lacking somewhere - that somewhere we had slipped up - creating the current hellions that are residing in my home! They are hitting, biting, screaming, tantrum-throwing, crying every. minute. of. the. day ... it's like someone took my kids and left me with 3 that were just released from the nearest juvenile detention center! It's full rebellion!

In my ignorance of the situation I have tried to tighten my reign. I have gotten cold towards them and harsh with my words. I've been disappointed and angry and hurt. Yet, thinking it over this morning I had an epiphany.

That was me! JUST LAST WEEK!

I wasn't sure why things weren't going my way. I lashed out at those around me. I cried A LOT! I yelled at Matt, I yelled at God. It culminated in the biggest tantrum a grown up could throw on Thursday afternoon! Luckily I bypassed the hitting and biting, but there were moments where IF I thought I could bite to get my way I would have! My problem is their problem. Sin. We want things to always go our way. We see a way that looks best and we want that. Someone tells us no and we LOSE it. Not all the time. But mix those selfish "my way" desires with feelings of uncertainty and apprehension (which we all feel right now) and the perfect storm is created. Our trust in our creator fails momentarily and we feel abandoned and unloved. My question of, "Does God even care about what is going on with ME right now?" can easily be converted to theirs of "Does Mommy even care what I am going through right now?". The answer to both is YES!! God cares about every thing I feel and go through and he GENTLY stirs my heart towards Him allowing me to lose it and accepting me back in the fullness of His grace! I care about what they have to endure through every move - but so UNLIKE God I am much less adept at showing them grace. I am not as quick to just listen to the cries of their hearts and soothe them. I am far from gentle!

Sometimes it is nice to be reminded that our children's heart condition is the same as our own heart condition and that Grace can cover us both!

"...My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness..." II Cor. 12:9