The Bailey Brag

I was a mess yesterday. That isn’t good for me or my family. When I am down, everyone suffers. It was just a bad day. I wish I handled disappointing news better but I haven’t found a way to just yet. So late in the afternoon I began picking myself up and decided to go to The Well. The Well is my church’s Wednesday night service. I have been attending Two Rivers Church for more than 8 years and have never been to The Well (although in fairness it was only started a few years ago, I think). I love it. It is largely 2 or more hours of worship through song, dance & prayer. Childcare isn’t available so my kids go with me. They love it, too, and I love seeing them get a different taste of all the many ways we can worship our God. River & Lake especially love waving the banners.

So last night I went in prepared to just try and relax and to clear my head of all my frustrations and worry I had been moping in all day. After the worship team glorified God through some amazing song we entered into a time of prayer and listening. I found myself sitting on the floor reading my Bible. I ended up in the book of Matthew, chapter 6. It was for me. Especially for the day I’d had.

I journaled a lot that I wanted to read over the coming weeks to remind me once again that every detail of my life is in His hands and that He is in control. I forget this every day.

I KNOW that the same God who created life in me can be trusted with the details of my life.

I KNOW that worrying about the future hampers my efforts for today.

I KNOW that worrying is more harmful than helpful.

I KNOW that God does not ignore those who depend on Him.

I KNOW that my worry shows a lack of faith in and understanding of God.

I KNOW that there are real challenges that God wants me to pursue and that worrying keeps me from them.

I KNOW that living one day at a time keeps me from being consumed with worry.

Lord, help me to trust You,
the same God who created my life,
with all the details of my life.
I know You will not ignore me
if I depend on You.
Give me a stronger faith
and understanding of who You are.
Help me to focus on today
and worry less about tomorrow,
living one day at a time.
Amen.

Yes. I said that. It has been one crappy day. But when I feel like this because of mediocre crap that I am going through (because, selfishly, I do not like to have to go through crap. Ever.) I stumble upon words like this written by those who have really had a crappy day…and this author is a mother to 14 young girls in Uganda, all adopted.

And every single day, it is worth it. Because ADOPTION IS GOD’S HEART. He sets the lonely in families. Adoption is the reason that I can come before God’s throne and beg Him for mercy, because He predestined me to be adopted as His child through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

My family, adopting these children, it is not optional. It is not my good deed for the day, it is not what I am doing to “help these poor kids out.” I adopt because God commands me to care for the orphans and the widows in their distress. I adopt because to whom much has been given, much will be demanded. I adopt because whoever finds his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for HIS sake will find it.

Some days, my friends, it is not easy. Today, it is not easy. The HURT in my daughters’ hearts is big and real and as their mother, I want to fix it and know that I CAN’T. So I lay it at the feet of my Father and rejoice to know that if we are children, then we are heirs – of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings – in order that we may also share in His glory. And I call out to the Holy Spirit knowing that He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for us.

A sweet friend pointed me yesterday to Genesis Chapter 33. Esau and Jacob are meeting for the first time in a long time. As Jacob approaches Esau, with his many children following close behind, Esau asks, “ And who are these with you?”

Jacob’s reply: “These are the children that the Lord saw fit to bless me with.”

We get all the questions. “Why do you do it?” “Why so many?” “How in the world…” “Why these specific girls?” “Why the number 14?” “Do you think its ok to adopt as a single Mother? Don’t they need a father too?” “Do you think they will have issues since you are not the same race?” We also get the compliments. “I don’t know how you do it!” “Good job!” “You must be so responsible!” “Your girls must be so well behaved.” We get crazy stares and huge smiles and every look in between.

Adoption is beautiful. Adoption is hard. Adoption is the Gospel of Christ and the promise of God’s love and redemption lived out in our lives. So I ask for your prayers. Prayers for understanding and peace and trust and the power of God that is more than all I can ask or imagine. And to the questions and the comments and the compliments, this is my reply: “These are the children that the Lord saw fit to bless me with.”

So I think I’ll go fold some laundry or something and get myself out of this pathetic pool of tears that I have been swimming in all day…

We went on a very short hike with friends this past Saturday during the warmest part of the chilly afternoon (which was only about 47 degrees). Our friends, two families, have seven boys between them so with our four boys we had eleven. Love it. This hike might have been a mile long and on the way out we (when I say ‘we’, I mean the 11 boys) picked up NO LESS THAN a dozen bags of trash. It was devastating. The bluff we hiked to is a little known treasure (and one of the few) in Lenoir City and it was ransacked by the careless. Our friend snapped a pretty cute little family photo of us being silly.

If you like adventures, check out our friend’s web site HERE or click the link on my sidebar called Adventures Beyond. We love this family!

{Click the image to enlarge}

A few weeks ago we camped at Melton Hill. I am just now figuring out a decent way to post pictures without my JJ’s face being exposed so pardon me if you get overwhelmed by photos of the Baileys in the coming weeks. I am behind. Terribly.

If you are from around here, you know that Melton Hill is close to our house. We’re lucky. Although we largely enjoy finding new and remote areas to camp when you do put forth the effort (huge effort) to go, we opted to stay close to home this time for many reasons. Our little J was one very big reason we decided to. He did not do well the first night and I almost tossed him into the truck several times to take him home to sleep. It was awful. But we made it through the night and was very sleep deprived the next day but managed. The kids had more fun than they could handle….especially because all their cousins were there. Even our little precious Carsadilla (my niece, Carson) was in town from Chattanooga for her very first camping experience. She did great, of course. We highly recommend this spot in the campground, too. It was perfect for our family of 21!

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And then there were six. We’re down to four kids again. Just our three boys along with our little ‘J’…still. Our little 3 year old girl who we referred to as “big J” and her 1 1/2 year old little brother “E” went home to their parents this past Thursday after a judge awarded them a 90 day trial home pass and gave them back full custody of their kids. We knew it was coming so it wasn’t a surprise. It was what everyone was working towards for many weeks and they gladly did every single thing they were asked to do by the judge, DCS and even myself. So if anyone deserves their kids back, it’s people like them who realize they have to submit to authority and do whatever it takes to get them back. And that they did. Big J and little E came in to custody the very same day our little J did and they are now back home with their mom and dad. And I know they are happy.

Our little J, however….he’s still here. In fact, DCS has now filed a termination or parental rights to take before a judge in the upcoming months to try and terminate her rights as his mother. Her child, like big J and little E, has been in custody six months and she has yet to do even the most minuscule of tasks she is required to do in order to get her son back. She also lost visitations five months ago and has not done what she has needed to do in order to even obtain supervised visits with him. He has forgotten her. I believe it. He has begun talking while with us, with extensive speech therapy and other help, and calls us mommy and daddy. There is so much I could say about this but I am afraid to let my mind wander there again for the hundredth time today. I pray all day, every day, whenever I feel the panic setting in for God to just take it away. I wish He could take away the feelings I have for this child because just feeding and changing a diaper on a child would be so much easier but doing that with the love I have for him and fear of losing him is so heartbreaking. His situation is not good and his future if he went back to his mother would be so bleak. Yet it is a possibility. The odds are against her but it happens every day that parents with her odds or worse get their kids back. We have now taken in, parented, and let go of six children and all were doable. But all were very different than him. I am terrified. I don’t want to wish away the next six months but I wish there were a drug I could take to put me in a coma like state so it would just be over quickly, either way. If he goes home, I need to feel the peace I feel about the other six and I can’t even imagine feeling that at this point or ever with what I know to be true about his mother and what his life will be like with her. He has been transformed with us. He is so polar opposite than the child we took in six months ago. He still has a long road ahead but with our love and what we can give him he could be normal. This placement could very well break me and it be the end of our stint in foster care. We’ll just have to see.

Meanwhile, I am praying for peace in my heart for now while we wait and already thinking about the next little beating heart that will sleep on the fresh sheets I have dressed the empty beds with to occupy my mind. I have been cleaning and nesting, getting things organized and ready for winter. If you had asked me a few weeks ago if we were going to take in any more kids I would have said no. Now that we actually have empty beds that could be filled I find myself carrying around my phone all day in anticipation of a call. It is addictive and I have an addictive personality so better this than booze, eh?

Here’s a photo of all the angels in our growth group. My closest friends happen to all be in our growth group and we have the absolute best bunch of kids and they all love each other so well! I love how colorful this photo is. A rainbow of colors built through foster care and adoption.

I am not really sure if that is even a word. I like to put lots of suffixes on words to make new ones. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. The older I get, and more mature in my relationship with God, I notice more and more about others’ selflessness. It’s challenging. Some people might look at me and think I am a very selfless individual because we have taken in three children in addition to our own three but I have to fight the selfishness in me daily. I have a ways to go. Seriously. If I experience any frustration at all while mothering my six pack it is solely because I am being selfish and they are inconveniencing me.

I watch others when they look at me with all my kids, six stair steps all under the age of ten in all different colors, and wonder what they think of me and how they think I acquired all these kids. I walk past people in stores with my six pack in tow and just a few seconds after I pass them I do a really quick whip around sort of thing with my head to catch their reaction while they are still starring at us and it is always a look of perhaps “what is that girl thinking?” or I see people counting the heads with their pointer fingers. {If you don’t know me, I am 34 years old but look like I am 20 maybe and about 110 pounds so it probably is hard for people to believe I gave birth to all of them} It is really funny at times and other times it isn’t funny at all because the looks I often get and not very nice and it makes me wonder why those people are looking at me like that. Every time we leave the house I get at least four people ask me “Are all these kids yours?”. I have gone through the line at the grocery and have had clerks ask me if I would be using food stamps and/or WIC to pay for my food. It is hard for me to keep my mouth shut but lately I have been responding with “No, our government doesn’t provide low income families with healthy, organic foods so I buy my own.”

And then I remember that they are not selfless. They have their agendas and their lives that they would never want to be interrupted or inconvenienced by anything, much less God’s work. I try to remember to say a prayer for these people. There are a lot of bad things in this world but in my eyes it doesn’t get much worse than an individual living a life for themselves, walking around breathing the same air we breathe, who do absolutely nothing in this world for anyone else besides themselves. They aren’t for me to judge and I don’t. Our Creator will take care of that. Others I see make conscious choices to do for others and help on occasion but turn around and complain to someone about what they “had to do” to make the person who needed help look like a reject or an idiot because they couldn’t help themselves.

I like mentally stepping out of my skin and hovering above people to see the way some people look at other selfless individuals. They look at them the same way they look at me. It is sad. They probably think they look poor, especially since they have a ton of kids. I think they look rich. When I look at a selfless individual my eyes well up with tears and I am enamored. When I see acts of complete selflessness it inspires me to be a better person. The older I get, the more I want to do for others. The more money we earn, the more I want to stick it away and save for someone else in need. Have you ever asked yourself what you are doing for the greater good?

Someone recently asked me why I would want to adopt a child who has so many issues {particularly one that I already have in my custody}. I hadn’t ever thought about this before. I guess maybe because all the “good” and “perfect” kids out there are already taken.

I have been following this family’s blog for a while now and she says it best… click HERE to read it…

“… whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:33

If you’ve ever wondered how many footsteps a 19 month old active little boy can take in less than two minutes….I think I have the answer. It’s easy to know when you’re on your hands and knees on hard, bamboo floors with Chlorox wipes scrubbing up every one of those footprints. More on this in a moment…

Let me begin this post by talking for a second about how uncanny it is that nearly every single time I try to stop and eat a meal it gets interrupted. Each day, on average, I probably sit down to eat a meal a full hour after everyone else. That’s because I begin preparing a meal and kids begin eating and then I feed the little ones because most of the things we eat they cannot feed themselves and they have a habit of cramming too much into their mouths the things that they could eat independently thus getting choked so I still end up feeding them the finger foods. So by the time they all finish and I clean up the table it is at least an hour later. Ironically, this is also when little babies like to poop….shortly after a meal.

So today I sat down with my sandwich and iced tea at my computer hoping to upload some photos. I hadn’t taken two bites of my sandwich before hearing “MOM…POOP!!!” So I assumed one of the boys just picked up on the odor but not today….River pointed out to me that there was actual poop on the floor. So I stood up and looked, quickly spotted the little drop of poo, and then began noticing all the little drops, smudges and smears of poop in circles all over the living room & dining room floor. Apparently, a little bit of poo plopped out of little J’s diaper, he stepped in it, and proceeded to carry on as usual running around doing this or that.

So bring about the panic. I hate poop. To me, it represents everything bad in the world. And not only that but it smells like crap, too. I plucked the culprit up and took him into the empty bathtub and sat him in it and handed him a bath toy. I came back out and grabbed the other baby, inspected him, and placed him in a secure place where he couldn’t get into any poo since he passed his inspection. I instructed the three others in the living room not to dare get off the couch lest they end up in a bleach bath and then grounded. I yell down the hall to the remainder of the kids (I have lost count by now) playing Legos in their room that they are hereby quarantined until further notice. I go back to the bathroom, lay the boy down in the still empty tub and give him a “pre-bath” using wipes and then run a bubble bath. While he plays, I go back and check on the living room and make sure no one has left their assigned spot. All is well so I returned to the bathroom, scrubbed the child, got him out, diapered him, dressed him, tossed him into the bed for a nap and returned to the living room. I spent no less than 30 minutes on my hands and knees with a full container of Chlorox wipes scrubbing up now dried poop footprints off the floor, one by one, until it shined.

Incidentally, I am and have always been a largely conservative person when it comes to laundry. If we aren’t leaving the house, my little ones will be running around in nothing but diapers most of the day. In the last couple of months I have learned that if there is any “spillage” out of the diaper, it is less likely to end up on the furniture, or your lap, or any other surface when they have clothes on. Yes, it will end up on the clothes, but that is as far as it will go by the time you smell it. Needless to say, I’ve been clothing them a lot more as of late but apparently fell short today. He was only wearing a t-shirt and a diaper when all this went down. Shame on me.

So back to the footprints. How many do you think a little one can make in under two minutes? About 50. And that’s only with one foot. Today I am thankful for the blessing of hard wood flooring and Chlorox wipes, clumpy poop instead of diarrhea, chocolate, tired little ones who have now been asleep for an hour and 45 minutes and a mom who is never so grossed out that she can’t ultimately return to her sandwich and eat it without thinking about what her hands have been doing. And more chocolate.

I know. Just a week or so ago I was griping about how bad Fridays stink for us because we have had to let our little guy go with his mom for the weekend. Well, as it turns out, his (and our) luck has changed. J’s mother decided to skip out on her hair follicle drug screening that the judge ordered her to do a few weeks ago. She took off leaving J with a friend when the caseworker was due to pick them both up for the screening before she was to bring him back to us following their weekend visit. Apparently, J’s mom knew some things would show up that she wasn’t thrilled about. Not only did she flee the drug test, she showed up for her court date on Thursday complaining and placing blame on the system saying they had failed her and that it was the system’s fault she didn’t make her appointment. Wrong again. The caseworker made every effort to get her there and continued trying to reach her all week before court. The judge wasn’t happy at all. He asked her if she had nothing to hide would she be willing to take a urine test right there at the courthouse and she agreed. Moments later, she tested positive for marijuana and meth. So sad. The test showed she had taken meth within the last 72 hours of the urine test, meaning she had likely done it while J was with her over the weekend and also knowing she had court in a few days and that it would show up. Needless to say, this didn’t bode well for her and the judge no longer took pity on her showing her favor as he has in the past. He had given her a large amount of rope and she ultimately hung herself with it. The judge yanked the rug out from under her and pulled every visitation from her. She cannot even see her son while supervised until hse has been clean for 30 days. I heard she was devastated. I would be, too. This will be hard for her. She has known what was at stake with him already being in custody and she couldn’t stay clean for him then. Either this will be a huge wake-up call for her, or it will drive her to dive deeper into her addiction. I pray it doesn’t. She has apparently found herself with an addiction serious enough that she cannot abstain even for a short amount of time for the sake of her son. I have met her and I believe she has good intentions. I can’t imagine how broken she feels right now. I pray someone will meet her and help her through this time.

As I heard the news and began feeling all the emotions of sadness for her, relief for us, frustration for him and thankfulness that he has remained safe each weekend with a drug addicted mother attempting to care for him, I was reminded by a good friend why things happen and how there is a reason for every thing. Had J’s mother never received weekend visitations like she had, this may have never happened. Yes, she may have still had a hard time providing a clean drug screening but we would have never seen this type of reluctance on her part as she has shown while she had him half of each week. We may have never seen how much depth there was to her addiction, how she was unable to abstain even given the amount of grace she had been given. It has been hard, very hard, parenting a child living with such confusion in his life at such a young age. It has been hard having to detox him every single week and trying to get him into a routine again only for him to go back just as soon as he adjusts. Now that I understand and am shown the reasoning behind it all, I can toss it all to the side and wipe the sweat off my brow. If only everything in this world were explained this well.

So today I will begin praying for her. I have prayed for little J a lot these last couple of months. Now that I know he is safe for a while, I can’t help but be sad for his mom. I know I haven’t prayed for her as much as I should have. Addictions are heart breaking. She is broken and needs a Saviour. I put myself in her shoes and nearly have a panic attack thinking about my son(s) being taken from me without even the hope of seeing them for a few months. As hard as it sounds, please remember her in your prayers.

We don’t kill things here….like, not anything. Even bugs. We breed bugs for Pete’s sake (good kinds for feeding to our pets) so bugs are our friends here. We only recently began using actual store-bought ant killer when our sugar/borax solution wasn’t quite doing it for us anymore. So a huge dilemma we’ve had lately are the bees. We have an enormous back deck. It is like oddly huge almost like our previous owner was compensating for a lack of something. Every time we go out on the deck we are gravely annoyed by the bees. Today was no different when I decided that if we’re gonna finish school lessons this year it HAS to be outside in this gorgeous weather. So we packed up everything and set up camp on the picnic table and got to work. Within minutes came the distractions.

Lesson learned: I love honey bees and know their population is dwindling away. It’s easy to identify these as they are much smaller than a carpenter bee or bumble bee but larger than a sweat bee. I also know bumble bees largely burrow in the ground. Bumble bees don’t store their honey in large enough quantities to make it practical for commercial purposes and they do a great deal of pollinating our beautiful plants and flowers so we leave those alone.
Carpenter bees…well…I’ll go ahead and admit that I just sent 4 to live with Jesus and am feeling no guilt whatsoever. Bottom line: My quick research has concluded that they are useless and when I am out trying to school my boys on our back deck while enjoying the sunshine and a bully male carpenter bee hovers in my face….Imma grab my badminton racket.