On the verge of calmer

There are just days as a single parent when I want to hide in my room and pray no one finds me. Yesterday was one of those days. The bad thing is my kids know all my hiding spots and have No problem busting in on me when ever they see fit. We are in the process of moving to a new city and that by itself causes some stress but add some sick kids, a escape artist dog and a broke down car and you have a cocktail of stress and nervous laughter.

Moving is stressful, but dealing with moving while still living in the home seems impossible. As I pack things, my kids unpack them. As I clean the walls off they touch them with peanut butter fingers. Everything I pack away they are convinced they will never see again and so I have to practically talk them off a ledge every time I tape a box closed. I'm the most worried about my deposit right now. I really need it back because it will be my first months rent on my new place. The house has been lived in by 5 kids in 3 years and it has taken it's knocks and it looks a little like I let the kids just go wild with pointy sticks and cleats in here. The house is very old and so the paint is coming off the walls in a  few places. What do kids do when they see paint peeling? That's right they pull it off more. So I went and had the paint matched and I planned to touch up all of the places the paint was coming off. It's a perfect match. However you can see every single spot I touched up! It was a perfect match so why can I see the spots? Fail. I have bought my weight in magic erasers and paper towels and it is still not perfect. Kids are just hard on a  house period but I'm not sure my 70+ year old land lords will remember that.

So as I am packing and organizing and cleaning I am also still mom/dad/and teacher. So when anything happens in this house it falls on me. Today I have been tested in all of my jobs. My oldest son J was diagnosed today with a Autism Spectrum Disorder specifically Aspergers syndrome. It's a high functioning form of Autism. I have suspected this to be the case for sometime now but to be confirmed was quit a shock. So now I have to redo his curriculum for the year. Because I really have time for that...or not. I need to make some adjustments for him now that I know he isn't just being difficult, he simply isn't getting it. As soon as I came home from the doctor with J a bit dazed from the news I picked up my youngest son Q. Not but a few minutes after picking him up and hoping for a cuddle after my difficult news about his brother, he barfed on me. Great. I get the little one all cleaned off and what do you know? He throws up again. I had come to the conclusion he had stomach flu. The fever starts to rise and the glazed look on his face tells the story of the war going on in his little baby gut. So now packing and cleaning are on hold because the little one wont let me put him down which is sweet but seriously gross.

On the way back from the doctors office my ABS light went on in my van. I wasn't about to mess around with that so I dropped the car off at the mechanic for them to tend to when they had time. As my daughter and I walked back from the mechanic she walked right through a huge pile of fire ants. She starts squealing and smacking at her legs and then the chaos began. She is laying down in the street screaming and slapping herself. I am frantically getting her shoes off and swiping at the ants as fast as I can. I'm also trying to get her up off of the street but as she is panicking it's much harder then you'd think. We get her all cleared of the ants and shoes back on and continue walking. I walked anyway, I had to give my 46 lb kid a piggy back ride for 3 blocks in 80 degree weather because she was ant shy all of a sudden. I couldn't really turn her down though I know how bad those bites hurt particularly because I just got a few of them on my hands and arms while trying to help her. We finally make it home but shortly after arriving I realize I can't find my phone. I was thinking that because when I walked in the door earlier the baby immediately starting throwing up I must have dropped it somewhere in the bathroom. No where to be found. No where in the house. So now I think I've dropped it in the street as my daughter was being eaten alive by ants. In my head it has already been run over and I now need a new phone. Luckily I had some great friends of mine go over to the mechanic for me and looked into my car and there it was. Perfectly safe but locked in my van for the night because the mechanic was closed and they had the only key. I was just glad it wasn't destroyed so I could handle a night with no phone.

So I have scratched one thing off my mental worry list and I have sent the healthy kids out to play in the  backyard so I could have some much needed cuddle time with the sick baby. Before I know what happened here comes my son in just his underwear and my daughter with only shorts on (why they took their clothes off I have no idea) running through the house screaming about the dog being out of the yard. Without pausing they run straight out the front door and B-line across the yard for the back of the fence. So I'm right on their tail because they are running out towards a busy street I shut the door behind me but apparently sicky was able to get it open cause he was out in the yard behind me. Picture this for a moment; my son running screaming at the dog in underwear, close behind is my daughter in only shorts screaming "Come Here Now!" Me in Pj's because I have been thrown up on so much with crazy hair and running all weird because I'm getting sticker burs in my feet every step I take, then close behind the little man in only his diaper half conscience following because everyone else is running in the yard screaming so is he. Did you enjoy that? A lot of the cars driving past at that moment must have too. Oy. I'm screaming at the kids to get inside I don't care that the dog is out but they very much do and they aren't coming in until she does. So the dog hears their screams and heads home. Well she decides half way that she isn't quit ready and runs out into the street and so do all three of my kids. It was Awful! Thank God there was only one car at the time and they stopped in plenty of time to not run anyone over but I defiantly got the stink eye. Don't judge me lady! So I grab the baby throw him over my shoulder I grab the dog by the collar and holler for the kids to march in the house. We were all safely inside and the scolding began. Not 2 minutes into my lecture about never running in the street and the baby throws up again. Lecture over and bedtime prep began. This day is Over.

So here it is the next day. I got my phone back thanks to a great friend who picked it up for me. The van repair isn't going to be as much as I thought and the baby hasn't thrown up since yesterday. The dog is indoors, my daughters bug bite no longer hurt and school went a little better today now that I have changed my lesson for my sons condition. All things considered things have gone pretty darn well today compared to yesterday anyway.I made the mistake of thinking, things must be calming down for us now because just as the thought crossed my mind my baby son walked up to me and tried to hand me a handful of poop and I realized it will never be calm just some days will be calmer then others.

On the verge of full circle

I am having a full circle moment and I just have to share.  My heart and mind are just reeling with how amazing things are right now. Bare with me, when I'm excited I'm long winded, OK regardless of excitement I'm long winded. OK never mind let's just read shall we?

Some people have heard my testimony on when I "found the Lord" but for those of you who have not I will try to make it brief. When I was 18 years old my boyfriend and I decided to go to Florida for spring break. I was a senior in high school and I knew everything there was to know in the world about everything. It was my first time on a plane. My first time out of Minnesota, and I was with the love of my life, whatever his name was. Now I wasn't going to spring break to do the usual spring break stuff because I didn't drink or smoke or do any of that crazy stuff but I did want to let my hair down and have some fun. Splash on the beach and sneak into hot tubs after dark kinda stuff. I was in the prime of my life and didn't have a care in the world. I was far from an angel, I was a senior in high school and away from mom and dad I was ready to Par-tay. Part of the reason I was making some less then perfect choices was because in 1997 I lost my best friend to suicide. It ruined me and I thought I would never recover, it was at that point I decided in my 14 year old wisdom that God did not exist. No God of mine was going to let a 13 year old end her life and so I decided to live my life without him. Living a life without God was far from fulfilling but I really didn't care. I was full enough.
When we first pulled out onto the beach in Tampa bay I was speechless. I walked out of the car and looked at that Gulf and I was awestruck. I fell to my knees in the wake of that water, I turned my eyes to the sky and I asked God to forgive me. I started crying and I realized at that moment that I had been mistaken He did exist and He was powerful. It took seeing that Gulf to make me realize how small I really was and how mighty He really is. This is where I "found the Lord." I keep putting that saying in quotes because I say I found him on this day, however that does not  mean I all of a sudden changed my life and became a perfect Christian. It took a few more years and a lot more bumps in the road for me to really come around and fully get what being a Christian meant. However had I not hit my knees in the Gulf of Mexico on spring break in 2002 I would have never even believed he even existed. So basically I found Jesus enough to ruin spring Break for my boyfriend. I battered him with questions all week like "Do you believe in our Lord and Savior? Do you think the Lord would like you doing that? Do you think the Lord built everything? The poor man thought he was going down to the beach for a nice relaxing time with his girlfriend and he came home with a Holy Roller.

* I have told this story before to people and I have always reported it as going to Daytona Beach first and seeing the ocean.  However upon looking through my photo albums I have recently discovered I remembered the story wrong. We first went to Tampa, Florida because my boyfriend was a huge Buccaneers fan. I thought the ocean had changed my life forever when really it was the Gulf of Mexico.

So let's now fast forward to 2013. Some friends of mine asked me awhile back if I was interested in moving to Corpus Christi, Texas. They would help me out with cost of living by getting a big house and we would all move in together. I could help my friend out with his ministry for single mothers and I would have a network of built in friends and connections through their church. It all seemed nice enough and very tempted but I was fearful and so I needed some time to think it over. Things weren't great where I was at,  but they were good enough and I really enjoyed the church I was at. I was tempted to tell them no and stay at, good enough awhile longer. Well, it so happens God had other plans for me and he kept telling me I was supposed to go to Corpus so I called up my friend and said "let's do this!" So the search for a house began, we met dead end after dead end when it came to houses. People were treating us like some kind of religious cult or sister wives when we explained our purely good intentions. I really didn't think the idea of us living together was that strange but we met a lot of closed doors in our quest for housing. Through it all I began to get nervous and wonder if this was really His plan then why were we having all of this trouble? Well it turns out that the reason we were being shot down was because we needed the perfect house and today we got it. It is everything we need and more and I am feeling very blessed. So as I sit and think about all of the things I have to clean and pack, it occurred to me that God himself is sending me back to the Gulf of Mexico! He is sending me back to the place that I first realized He is real and he is King. Not only did he tell me to go to Corpus but he got a house that is right on the water. I will be across the street from the Gulf. My eyes are welling up right now at the thought of being moved according to his will back to the water, the place that started a change in me that will last a lifetime. I am so excited to see what God has in store for me and curious as to why he wants me back to where it all began...