and again, god shows his hand

i found the note below on a friends' facebook page...i love the messages that god keeps leaving for me...i feel like they are the bread crumbs leading me out of the forest...everyday, a little closer. (sorry for the creepy hansel and gretel reference, but it just came to me!)

You're Not Going Under- James MacDonald

You're Not Going Under.

"Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right." - 1 Peter 4:19

I've said it for years, there is nothing good that God brings into your life by way of transformation that He doesn't bring through the funnel of perseverance. If God can get that one characteristic into your life, He can truly make you what He wants you to be.

First Peter 4:19 encourages us with, "Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good."

Did you hear what you're supposed to do? Entrust your soul to your faithful Creator. God is faithful to you. He's got His hand on the thermostat. The fire will not get too hot. He's watching the depth gauge; this trial will not get too deep. God puts up the boundaries to your trials. "That's all. That's my daughter. I know what she can handle. Not that much. Not there. Not now." God protects His own. He will not allow you to be tried beyond what you are able to take. And in the middle of it all, He tells you to entrust yourself to His care.

God knows you better than you know yourself. You're not going to lose it; you're going to be okay. You don't know what you are capable of when you're resting in God's strength and not your own. You're going to get through this one way or another. It's not going to last forever and you will get through it - because God is faithful. He's not tired and He's not wondering when this is going to be over.

Reassure yourself, "I'm not going under." You can keep going for another day, another week because God is producing staying power in you. The ability to remain in that marriage - as hard as it is. The ability to remain in that job - as hard as it is. The ability to stick with it in that difficult circumstance - no matter what. If God can produce in you that staying power, He can give you everything else.

The good's not coming if you quit. Listen, God can get every characteristic of Christ into your life if He can just teach you to stay in the game.

a new season...same sweet faces

bumbum bumbum bumbum...

nora is just about to wake up for the day...and it's about 11:04pm.

so it turns out that she's a night owl. i can't blame her really, she gets the trait from me. however, spending these long hours awake in the wee hours of the morning have reeked havoc on daytime activities. nora does have three siblings, after all, and they keep regular sleeping hours...and waking hours. while she's settling in at about 5:30am...sophie and ellee are up by about 7am. capitol ugh.

but having a new born and being tired is nothing new. this is more than being tired. this is feeling weary. and this is where i need to focus.

it feels like i have walked through each day of nora's life bleary eyed and unkempt. when i look in the mirror, i can remember when i was the only person who needed to be fed in the morning. when i could wake up, shower, drink coffee and catch up on the news before i even spoke a word to anyone. i remember feeling 'put together' and important.

today feels like a different life to me...and really, it is.

i do try and keep some perspective though...in those moments when i feel like i can't take another second of being me (and there are those moments) i think back to when i thought we wouldn't have the chance to be parents and it helps.

the road to where we are has not been a smooth one for us. adoption is hard and the two years of unsuccessful infertility treatments before that was like a personal emotional holocaust. when i did get pregnant, it was always complicated and filled with risk. each time we faced a crisis with the pregnancy, i was instantly brought back to the winter of 2006 when we lost our very first baby. to say that surviving those days was 'hard' would be like saying that the devil is 'mean.' having a miscarriage made me so fragile and afraid of what each day of being pregnant would bring that i struggled to enjoy any aspect of it. except...the end. ahhh...the babies...i love that part.

on the day that nora was born, i was so excited to have another new baby. matt and i arrived at the hospital, checked in, and were shown to my room where they would prep me for the c-section. when the nurses came in and began hooking me up to the monitors, they suddenly became very quiet. they could not find a heartbeat. they looked. and looked. and looked. after about 3 or 4 minutes, they sent for an ultrasound machine to try and solve this mystery.

throughout those moments, i was frozen in uncertainly. i lay there remembering that in hours before matt and i were joking about names and wondering how we would survive the sleepless nights ahead. now i found myself imagining how this scenario would end. what way would this go? if it came to it, how would these women tell me that there was no heartbeat? or, when we finally did hear the heartbeat, would we all joke about this baby giving us such a scare? my mind was racing and fear was creeping up on me and pulling me back in time to a place i certainly didn't want to go. and then...bumbum bumbum bumbum. there it was. loud and clear. the nurse made a joke and i laughed along.

never before had i felt so sure that we loved her. that i was so grateful for my life and for each of my kids. that the challenging days ahead with our new born would be worth it as long as that heart would just keep on beating.

don't you find that we become prepared for the things that are to come with what we endure today? (to me, this is becoming so clear) i have thought of those moments in that tiny sterile room a hundred times since nora was born. i remember how lucky i felt when it went our way. it was more than luck, of course.

when i'm tired and gross and spent i remember what it felt like to think that we may not have her...that it could have gone the other way. thinking, even for a minute, about not having any one of my kids is so sickening to me that it puts into perspective how little it matters that some days are hard. however, it is true that a balance needs to be struck between me and them. i continue to juggle the hard work of being a mom with the importance of finding time for myself. i need to take care of me too. it's so clear that being good to myself will make me a better mom, but it's a tricky thing to bring to fruition. i'll keep working...and writing.

my dad told me a long time ago that no one ever said 'this' would be easy and nothing is more true. it is, however, worth every second spent.

so sleep on, little nora...it's only 11:21pm. i look forward to chatting with you when you wake up at 1:00am my sweet sweet night owl.

dear god, i'm finally getting it. love, shannon

there is a cup stuck in my garbage disposal.

yes, that's right. after a stinky dinner of canned ravioli, i piled up all of our evening's dishes in our sink. this pile included a little blue tupperware cup...you know the kind. about half way through my pile, i was in my cleaning grove. grab, rinse, put in dishwasher, grab, rinse, put in dishwasher. then, oddly, the sink began to fill up with dirty water. with a sigh, i stuck my hand in the sour smelling oily water only to feel that a cup had perfectly wedged itself in the drain of my sink. i wanted to scream. why does this stuff always happen to me?!

after struggling to get it out and failing miserably, i enlisted matt to come and help. needless to say, his giant ape hands only pushed the cup all the way down into the disposal. aaarrrgggghhhh.

in a move that is totally un-shannon-like, i walked away. tonight i am choosing to trust that it will work out and i am taking a deep breath. you see, these days, i am trying to look deeper. to find the message in each of my day's challenges instead of responding with anger, or fear, or action. this, my friends, is what i consider 'growth'.

growth, in my case, does not come easy. sometimes it takes a bit of...prodding. this week for example, i have found myself asking repeatedly 'why me?!!' aside from all of the everyday struggles, there have been a few real kick-in-the pants kind of bummers that each left me wondering why i was being royally messed with.

first, while taking pictures of casey, i took a corner too short, hit my hand on the wall and dropped my camera. broken.

next, my coffee pot, usually a friend i would sacrifice my dog for, failed me. it began by leaking coffee all over my kitchen when the stopper on the spout gave out and met its end when the heating component stopped working all together. i don't know anyone who has time for luke- warm leaking coffee...especially without having consumed any coffee!! broken.

in an effort to remedy my coffee crisis, i pulled out my trusty toddy cold press coffee contraption. i dumped in an entire pound of coffee (that i made a special trip to the dreaded walgreens to purchase), carefully poured in the measured amount of water and thought briefly about how wonderful this would be the next day. i snapped out of my haze only to see coffee dripping from the bottom of the contraption. can you imagine the myriad of profanity that ran through my mind? (a weakness, i know. at least it's not (usually) coming out of my mouth.) upon closer inspection, i discovered a crack. a crack that could not be stopped because believe me, i tried. broken.

throughout each of these miniature trials, i have been dealing with a child that does not sleep and loves to cry. after working perfectly for weeks, suddenly, her swing stopped swinging and with that, my mind stopped minding. again, broken.

one night last weekend, i compiled a list of all the things in my life that were broken. the coffee pot, the cold press maker, the camera and the swing. haphazardly, i posted on facebook that these items had met there end and thought nothing more of it. until today.

someone i love so dearly, someone who is a better version of myself, reminded me that good things can come when the chips are down. to my surprise, my dear brother and his lovely wife did some online shopping. they ordered me a new camera, a new coffee pot and a new cold press maker. his message on facebook just said that i could spare myself from having to shop for these items because soon, they would be arriving in the mail. upon reading this, i broke out into an ugly cry of disbelief and gratitude.

it's not the 'stuff' that i care about (although i do love the stuff). i am reminded through this act of selfless generosity of how kind people have been to me in my time of 'having less'. as i have mentioned throughout the last few posts, matt and i don't have a lot of spare funds to throw around these days. each dollar coming in has a new home before it even hits our bank account. but over these months, we have been shown real love by family and friends who i am sure know nothing of our finances. out of no where, we have been taken out to dinner, our kids have been given gifts, our fridge has been filled with food and now...my inbox with a reminder of god's faithfulness in times of challenge. god has shown me his hand and it is good. his love is bigger than money. his love is bigger than fear.

while there are times that i cry because i'm stressed out or because i want more, that doesn't mean i don't already have enough. today i was reminded again that i am abundantly blessed with enough of the most important things. and even more, i was shown a glimps of the kind of person that i want to be. a picture of the things that i look forward to doing for others when we find ourselves on the other side 'having less'.

thank you brian and ramey for the reminder. my cup runnith over...except the one stuck in my garbage disposal.

just thinking about character...mine and yours.

who doesn't want to be proud of the way that they are living their life? who doesn't want to look back on hard times and feel good about the way that they responded...to know that the words they said in a stressful moment were kind and loving instead if biting and blaming? to know that you were present as 'the mom' even when all you wanted to do was run and hide from everything.

as nora snoozes before her midnight meal, i am listening to some music on youtube and i am wishing i was better. (am i the only one who gets like this when i listen to music...it ALWAYS gets me thinking!) i wish i was better at being brave when when our backs are to the wall. better at listening to the whole story (no matter how long and rambling) that my kids are telling me instead of listening to the tv. better at being active and involved in my life instead of being tired and overwhelmed at everything that my day entails. tonight leaves me wondering if i will regret who i was when the chips were down...and i don't like it.

the reality is that i have a lot to learn about being...oh, i don't know...super mom. super wife. super christian. super friend. (or maybe...i just have a lot to learn about being super at being a mom, a wife, a christian and a friend...) just to make things hard, knowing i have so much left to learn can feel overwhelming and exhilarating all at once. part of me feels so badly defeated about my short comings while there is yet more of me knows how boring life would be i were good at everything by the time i was 32... (ok, now i'm rambling...stop listening to the tv...i'll get back to the point soon!)

perhaps the question i should be asking myself is is it enough to want to be better...to activly seek out improvements even while in the midst of struggle? i say yes...remembering that god doesn't demand of us perfection, only effort. but i wonder...who do we look to as earthly models of what we want to become? for me, the person i want to be is found not in any one person, but in the characteristics of so many people i hold dear.

i want to be a mom like kelli and nadia. i want to be a wife like tricia and a believer like ramey. i want to be an activist like laura and a friend like carrie. i want to be as brave as missy. i want to be passionate about my career like heather and brian. i want to love my kids until they're grown like my parents have done.

so...as i keep looking to those amazing and strong and brave and loving people in my life to continue to teach me ways in which i can be better, i am so grateful that i want to get better. i am thankful that my god-given desire to be a good mom and wife and friend is stronger than my desire to be lazy.

thank god i can be me...i can be imperfect and still be loved. i can continue to struggle and in that struggle be less than what i want to be. i can say hurtful things in a time when i shouldn't. i can be weak. i can be distracted. and through it, i am loved.

in a time that's hard, i'm so thankful...i am learning so much...i am richly blessed by the Lord God who created me in His image. in difficult moments, when i'm searching for something to be proud of...i know there's that. and tonight, that's enough.