Someone takes your hand...and then a smile!

Something that I have noticed about my family is that when the blessing are flowing, or getting ready to flow in my life, the trials begin to happen in my mom's life, and when the blessing is flowing or getting ready to flow in my  mom's life, the trials begin to happen in mine.

The devil knows that to get to me, going to the source doesn't work, because I have faith that God will bring me out of whatever he throws at me.  But if you want to get to me go after my mom. 

 

My mom and I are very close.  She can say anything to me, even when she knows I don't want to hear it and I will always at least listen.  I don't always take her advice and run with it, but I do always listen and hear her out.  She knows me better than anyone in this world.  She knows when I'm making a mistake or doing the right thing.  She believes in me as a mother, which more than anything means the most to me, because if in the end I'm even 1/2 the mother to my children, that she was to me and my sisters, then I will have done better than most mothers out there.  

She taught me just about everything I know, and showed me how to be a woman.  She believed in my weird and far-fetched dreams before anyone else, and always gave me the room to run with them.

So when the devil comes after me, he doesn't come after me, he goes after her.  The last few months have been so hard, in my family there have been car accidents, beginning stages of Alzheimer's, broken hearts, strokes, broken hips, depression, loss of jobs, confusion, anger, and doubt.

  

I spent the last few months wrestling with God about things that I still haven't quite grasped.  I know that this time of testing has brought me closer to him, and brought me to a whole different level in my faith.  I started to think about moving to a small one bedroom apartment in a not so great area with Isaac just so that we could pay the rent, I had decided that it would be a fun experiment to see what kind of weird and interesting foods you could make with the bare essentials in the cabinets, and see if I could keep the two of us fed for under $5 a day.  All the while I just kept telling myself that it would be okay, because a job would come before it was too late.

I had to deal with Isaac acting out and testing me, unlike anything I had seen before.  For a while it was as if he was a totally different child.  I began to wonder what was I thinking, believing that I could do this on my own.

And then God reminded me "You are NOT doing this on your own!  You are doing it with ME!"  I remembered a promise God gave to me when I started this process to adopt Isaac and willingly become a single mom, he promised me that I would never be alone in this.  Though much of the world would look at me as doing it "on my own", that would never be the case.  He promised to always supply me with what we needed to get by, whether that was food, shelter, or support.

In the last week I have seen things shift in my life.  I got a job, out of nowhere.  It was divine.  The perfect job, with a great company, on a nice show!  I have watched Isaac's behavior change 180 degrees.  So much so, that he is getting along with J.  For the last month he has fought me tooth and nail about my relationship with J.  He didn't want him around and would thrown insane fits to try and scare him away.  I knew those days were on their way out the door when he asked me if J was coming over to eat dinner with us.  At one point I looked over at the two of them, and Isaac smiled at J and the smile was returned, and a few minutes later they were on the floor playing.

I have also been given a wonderful friend.  Someone who makes me laugh out loud every time we are together.  Someone who tells me I'm doing a great job, but isn't afraid to offer suggestions on how to handle things when I feel overwhelmed.  For this time in my life, God has  given me a true friend, someone who challenges me and makes me better!  Someone who is helping my son to understand though example what it is to be a good, patient, compassionate man.

I feel so blessed right now that though I feel as if I have no words, this blog is insanely long!  I feel blessed that someone has taken my hand, in the form of you all who have prayed endlessly on my behalf, in the form of my mom who has never given up on my dreams, even when I thought about it, in the form of a man who shows me what real patients is, in the form of smile from my son, when I thought there might never be one.

It's amazing how many ways God will come up with to hold your hand...and if you're not paying attention you might just miss it.

Disclaimer: This is not my hand in the photo I got it off flicker and thought it was beautiful...but wouldn't that be grand!