>I want a new checklist, that doesn’t change from child to child or for that matter from day to day. We have some hard and fast rules in our family. We also have some guidelines that we pray continually over, seeking to protect the purity of our children’s hearts and integrity and like it or not, those guidelines and what we allow are often dealt with based on the people (besides our children) involved. This is difficult at best, I ask for God’s grace, often in successive moments. As a momma of one teenager and 5 up and coming teenagers, I now realize I don’t know it all. What I know today is that I want the best for these kids. That my ideas have changed would be an understatement. When we found out that Zachary was going to be, it was the night that Clinton was elected….the first time. I was far more liberal AND at the ripe old age of 19, I had the entire plan for the coming 21 years completely set out. Fifteen years later, during one of the nights of the Democratic National Convention, I am far more conservative and I am trying to plan out tomorrow and how I will answer the questions, the big questions of the big kids, because I don’t have all the answers anymore.

>My sweet mother, Marner, Rachel, mom….is moving in with us and for those of you that have actually seen my home you are now saying, “huh?”, but God is good. I need to say that a lot lately, that is a side note.
I worked for years to get away from my mother, was out of the home on and off through out adolescence and on my on young, pretty independent even younger. Our experiences were those of two people surviving pain together and independently often at the hands of the same people/person. We did….survive, but not without scarring and deep bruises to our spirits. For the last few years God has graciously begun to redeem our relationship, to heal our hearts and to give me a heart of forgiveness and hope. My mom is not well, she has struggled with lung and ear issues for years and while surviving the first 50 years of her life in addition she worked, alone, to provide for me, during a season. Pain doesn’t disappear and hurt has not been allowed to be covered with me in the most recent past, I have been forced to deal with it. I am grateful. The dealing with it and continuing to deal with it has put our family in the position, to once again defy the odds of the American Dream and re-shape the family, to how God intends it to be. So here in our small 1500 sq. ft. home, where I have said it is more like camping ….hot and sticky and you never sure what you are going to eat, we have put up curtains and made a room, moved kids around, mopped a floor and started transferring my moms life directly into ours, to make a new ours. DJ proclaimed upon looking at the twins new room “wowee, a biggest tent ever.” We have always let the kids enjoy building sheet tents in the house, I guess this will be an extension of the Great Adventure of always Having and Being just enough….with tent/forts in the dining room.
Pictures will come
Just enough space.
Just enough time.
Just enough of me….to get us by.
Always Just Enough of Him.