The Journey: Loving the Hurt While You're Hurt

It has been a rough three weeks. The honeymoon is most definitely over! For all of us! Isabella is still doing amazing! Truly, when I stop and think where we could be, I know we are blessed beyond measure. But even with that, It. Is. HARD!

This past week, my biggest struggle is learning how to love the hurt through my own hurts. Just this morning, as I prayed and begged God from relief from the battles, He revealed to me that my struggle right now is in having to love a child unconditionally through my human heart that is hurting over my own wounds. I am so thankful that God's love is not mine! I am so thankful that He loves me with a love only He can give! Our amazing Pastor is actually doing a sermon series on that right now, but we missed this Sunday because Ava was sick. Can't wait to catch it on the website and can't wait to hear this weeks! While I am thankful for the love God gives me, I am realizing more and more how flawed the love I offer my children is.

Over the past three weeks, I have felt myself pulling back from my children...all of them. Not just "the adopted ones", but all of them. I have become more and more overwhelmed with the demands of loving, training and guiding six children. I have entertained the idea many times over the past few weeks that the critics were right, and we have too many kids. Then days like yesterday happen when I realize I have missed soccer sign-ups and baseball sign ups. We didn't know about a parent meeting at honors choir, so couldn't stay because one parent was home with 3 kids + a sleeping baby and the 6th child had to be picked up from track before the parent meeting would be over. I just kept thinking, "if we didn't have this many kids, we wouldn't have this problem right now." Monday Noah was walking in front of me and I looked down to see his ankle above his socks above his shoe. This means his pants are WAY too short! Over night, the kid has outgrown his pants...AGAIN! Immediately, I hear a voice say, "Now you LOOK like a family with a bunch of kids! Your son's pants aren't even long enough! If you didn't have all these kids you would have noticed sooner and you would have the money to go buy new ones right now instead of having to wait until payday!" My friend Emily and I have always joked about looking like "one of those" families with all the kids! While we can joke about it, it really is a real battle of fear and image that I seem to be fighting more and more lately.

I am exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually exhausted.

The thing is, I know that each of these things I am talking about are attacks from the enemy. I have amazing friends around me who send me e-mails filled with truth that I really don't want to hear at the time, but appreciate their honest truth none-the-less. But because of my hurts from the past few years with God and some people close to me, I have a hard time believing those truths right now. Which ultimately boils down to my trust issues with God rearing their ugly head again! Yuck!

I shared my fears about adopting an older child at the time we were considering bring Isabella into our family. I had real fears about my ability to emotionally and spiritually support even one more person. Those fears come from some real struggles that are currently happening in our family life. But as the reality of all that mothering six children means has come to pass, those fears have become reality. It is scary. It is overwhelming. It looks impossible.

But what is the truth? The truth is God hand picked each of these children to be in our family. His fingerprints are all over every single one of their births and adoptions. Each one of them truly were not planned by John or me! Even Callie who we say is our only "planned" child was conceived after a miscarriage ~ had we not lost our first baby, Callie would not be here. Every other child has a God print on their existence in this family, including the one I'm carrying...and don't get me started about thinking about adding a newborn to the mix!

The Truth is also, as one dear friend reminds me frequently, satan wants our family to fail. He wants John and I to divorce. He wants us to give up on parenting Isabella (it would truly be giving up on parenting, not on her because she is amazing!). He wants us to be poor examples of Christ followers to our children so that they grow up thinking following God in hard things makes you bitter and angry. He wants us to turn down any other children that God may already have planned for us. NO, I'm not looking for any! But with my feelings right now, I never would even be open to more children.

The truth is satan wants me to believe that I can't do this. I find myself saying it all the time, "I can't do this." But that is not what the Word says! It says, I can do ALL things THROUGH CHRIST who gives me strength! God, if I let him, can heal my hurts so that I can love my children despite my hurts.

As you guys know, I'm transparent..and in light of that, I'll just share....I'm not there yet! I'm struggling. I'm trying to believe God for the promises that have been spoken over this baby and our year. I was at a birthing center last week praying for a friend as she walked out a promise from God that she would successfully deliver a baby totally naturally after two c-sections. God has used her experience over the past week to speak to me when I chose to listen. John and I are in an all out war for our family right now. These promises that have been spoken over us would be healing of 13 years worth of hurt and disappointment. These promises would mean our family would be healthier than it has ever been....yes, even with six, soon to be seven, children! Since I've had c-sections on both my births, I don't have the experience that my friends who were with me at the birth center have had. As I heard them talk and we prayed for strength and perseverance and bound fear and cast it out for our friend, I know God was implanting that analogy in my heart. John and I are in labor with our family. I am at that point where fear sets in. I am at that point were the pain seems like it will never end and is not worth it! The ladies all talked about how towards the end it gets so hard you want to quit, but if you persevere, you end up with this amazing little baby and a euphoria that cannot be described! I think about my amazing friend who delivered all 10 lbs and 11 oz of her sweet baby boy that night - totally naturally! And I am encouraged to keep laboring through this process. It's ugly, it's messy, it's not fun, but it's necessary to produce that family God desires for us and the healing He has promised us. It's necessary to love my hurting daughters who need more love and reassurance from me than I feel like I can offer in my own wounded state. So today, which is what God tells me to only be concerned with, I'm going to kick fear out and walk in belief and faith that God will bring to pass that which He promised. I will not allow the enemy to taunt me with the failures of the past or the disappointments of the past. And try desperately to be as confident as those last sentences sound! :)