Available

My husband and I have been married for 18 years, the last six of which have been one rollercoaster after another. We have three children: Bubba (5), Bug (4), and Bear (3). My girls, the youngest two, are adopted, and each have special needs, and living with these has made us refocus from a life of long range planning and goals to living just one day at a time.

We are also embarking on the journey of homeschooling. As a former public and Christian school teacher, this is not exactly where I thought the Lord would lead us, but I am glad he did. (I'll talk more about this later.)

We were living in Texas, and I was about seven months pregnant with our first child, when my husband felt led to find a new job. So when our newborn was four months old, we packed up everything and headed to Colorado. (I wasn't super keen on the idea at first, but that's another post.)

A year later, we received a phone call telling us that our oldest daughter had been born, and would we be willing to care for her while her biological parents worked on some things. That year was a bag of mixed emotions. At first I didn't want to care too deeply for this beautiful tiny angel; it was only going to be temporary after all. But one day, after a heart-to heart with Jesus, I realized she needed a full-time mommy, no matter how temporary the situation might be. Fifteen months later we finalized her adoption and were so proud to finally legally call her ours.

Meanwhile the biological parents had a second daughter who also came to live with us. At five and half months old, she began having seizures. The particular kind of seizures were known as infantile spasms, which most pediatricians are unfamiliar with and frequently misdiagnose as reflux. Life suddenly changed. Of my three kiddos, the oldest was still two, and life was now a maze of doctor's appointments and hospital stays. It was several months before we got her seizures under control, and they took quite a toll on her little brain. She lost all developmental abilities and became like a newborn again. Of course she was now a twenty-one pound (a side affect of the steroid treatment) newborn, which made for some interesting situations. We promised to forever be hers shortly after her first birthday.

Then my husband's job moved to Virginia, where we are now living in a tiny hamlet west of the D.C. area where he works. I have learned to be available. That's all God really wants from us, just to be available. He might call us to foreign missions, or he might just call us to teach the Word to our own children, but we must be available.