Wanna Make Your Dreams Come True?

Lots of people talk about their dreams.  Usually, it's how their dreams aren't coming true and they won't.  They're sucked into this never ending circle of dreaming and being disappointed. 

How does it happen like that and how do you change the cycle to be dreams and success?

A dream without action is nothing.  It's just a fantasy.  Even if you're praying, unless you're going to get a straight up miracle from God, a dream without action is simply time wasted.

What I have found is that people get into cycles of dreams and disillusion.  They dream a great big dream and hope and pray and nothing happens.  Then they get discouraged.  Then they dream again and the cycle repeats.  Often the dreams get bigger and the disappointments get greater.  It starts to taint their world, color what they see.  And suddenly all their life is a big fat unhappy moment.  Everything is about how they are loosing and not getting the prizes and rewards or even what they've tricked themselves into believing they deserve.

Thinking about deserving something is a scary place to be.  It's a place to be very cautious.  It can slide into entitlement.  And for me, I'd say, we really don't deserve anything.  We're not really entitled to anything.  We can sure want things, desire them and so on, but deserve, well, I think maybe only God can handle that one and I am not going to be the human that tells God He's doing it wrong or not giving me what I deserve or what I think I need or what I feel I'm entitled too.  No way.  I'm not going there.  Because I know what I deserve from God and I know instead I receive grace, mercy, forgiveness and love. 

Now, I wasn't saying something like you shouldn't get paid for working, not at all.  That's not what I was getting at. 

So what about those people that seem to have the golden ride?  You know the people, the ones who seem to always have their dreams come true. 

I'm going to tell you that they see the world through different eyes.  They are hopeful.  These are people who are optimistic.  Optimistic and practical. 

It's simple what they do.  Really.  We can all have their success if we want it.

They take those dreams and make them goals.  They just move the category or change the label if you will.  They look at the dream and see it for what it is, a final outcome of something.  Then, they break it down into it's steps and accomplish it one step at a time.  They realize and recognize that reaching these dreams/goals is going to take some real hard work on their part and time committed to the task.  They pray in addition to all this hard work. 

Am I good at this?  Nope.  Not at all.  But, I do finally understand it and just having that understanding has brought me some peace.

It helps me to not get caught in feelings and be able to see things for what they are.  Almost every dream can be pushed into a goal and worked towards. 

I'd even argue that something that is a dream of yours that you can't make into a goal with a plan of action is something that really shouldn't be a dream for you.  It's more like a wish. 

I've had just enough of the dreams pushed into the goal category and reach relative success in their completion or accomplishment to make me believe this is a part of how life goes. 

I'm sure to many of you this just isn't news, but to some of you, maybe it's an ah ha moment. 

Pick a dream of yours.  Break it down into it's steps and start working.  Work hard, without giving up, without giving in to all the cheap excuses that we all come up with when the job is hard and thankless.  Work hard and then when you reach your goal, be sure to look around at all those people you believed had the golden lucky streak in their lives.  The ones that live a charmed life where everything goes their way and it seems simple and easy.  I bet if you look at them real hard, real honestly, you'll find some people who really work hard to get to where they are and what they've accomplished. 

Don't Stop Now

Again with the prayer thing?

Why yes, again.

We're in that stretch where life is piling up, it's hard.

It's the waiting part of praying and having faith.

I cannot focus and so this will sound list-ish.

A concussion is not something you bounce back from quickly. In fact, being the parent of the concussion is a bit unnerving. The symptoms are enough to make you uneasy. Littlest Mr. is not himself. The simplest task is suddenly a challenge. His personality has taken a sharp shift. It is hard not to have concern that these will be long term consequences of playing a game he loved.

There are other consequences from this head hit too. Will he be able to come back at all this season? Is it wise for us to let him even play this sport again? Will it shake his lion heart? Should we push our Disney trip out further? Could we do more damage to him by letting him ride rides already in November?

I am simultaneously holding two seemingly opposite things in my head right now with Little One.

I cannot seem to reconcile or make peace with the idea that God will allow these 2 men to be the parents of these 3 kids. In my mind it doesn't seem possible that this could be God's will for these kids, regardless of whether they end up with me.

At the same time, they're likable, decent guys. They're doing a pretty good job with the siblings, especially considering they went from no kids to 2 school age kids overnight. That's a hard thing for anyone. And on paper, right now, it looks like there is no hope of anything but Little One going there.

I cannot definitively say we are the best home. I have a pile of reasons why we are, but there are a pile of reasons why he should go too.

I'm sticking my head in the sand on practical matters. I'm ignoring the time ticking away when it comes to sorting out his toys from ours and packing his clothes and so on.

I'm allowing the garbage talk to creep into my mind about all the to do's that are sliding, like my homework, my house work, my house projects and my home organizing. I've let my hair go, skipped my make up more days than I have in years and years and have enjoyed far to many bites of chocolate. I'm short tempered, short on sleep and patience.

I'm keeping appointments and going to meetings and even taking some time out with friends for the sake of sanity, but on the same hand, feeling guilty for missing a single minute with Little One and feeling the pull to hover over the recovery of Littlest Mr. With Little One it's that need to squeeze in enough of everything to last him the rest of his life just in case and yet simultaneously knowing in a matter of months, maybe even just a few short weeks we won't even be a distant memory.

It can't be sugar coated. That's really life and really how it is. And in a way, it's probably a bit of a blessing for him if he can't remember us after he's gone.

So I'm praying. A lot. For God to shake the foundations in this case. I need Him to do whatever it takes to make His will for these kids happen. At the same time, I need to have some sort of understanding or peace or some way to navigate what happens when there is no "miracle" and Little One moves on exactly as the court papers say he will. I'm praying for a bit of release from the guilt I'm feeling as I look around my life and see all the things that are happening as we've begun to pray in earnest for an about face in the case.

We're praying for the unthinkable and all around us things are going haywire. The kids got sick. Littlest Mr. got a huge injury. A car broke. Things in the house broke. People really close to us and really praying hard on our behalf are having major medical things happen in their families...to their kids. It is unthinkable that we should ask, no beg, for them to continue to pray on our behalf. The risks... An organization we are involved with is coming unglued in a weird way.

What can I say? If you don't believe, this is the mere grabbing at straws of a woman on the edge of loss, if you do believe, right now you have goosebumps at the force of the attack.

Foster The Grouch

I've been doing this foster care thing for a while now, and I like to think that I've learned well how to let things slide off me and how to leave things at the cross.

There are a few times though, when I feel like Foster the Grouch instead of a foster momma. Maybe it's just my momma bear in action. Who knows? What I do know is that there are two times when I feel cranky with a birth parent.

Now, there are plenty of times that I feel cranky about the whole dang system, the policies, the politics, the courts, the 10,000 people who all have their hand in a case claiming they're doing something "for the good of the child"--yeah, right.

Anyway.

One of the two times that I get cranked off with a birth parent is when they question my intentions, especially when I'm intentionally doing something I see as positive. Granted, I can be short sighted and forget to look at a situation thoroughly from another person's perspective, but still, when I'm the sole caregiver for your precious child, don't, I mean it, don't question my motives. I have yet to meet a birth parent that I didn't root for, pray for and sincerely hope that they would figure out all their stuff and get it together to have their kid back. That's the best thing for everyone, but sometimes it doesn't go that way.

The second time that I turn into Foster the Grouch is when I'm doing seemingly endless rounds of medical appointments or getting ready to take a child in for surgery. Every stinkin time I sit with a sick, crying baby in my arms, that has to endure some awful medical something, even a booster shot, I get cranky. I sit stewing just a little thinking where is that parent. This is the real deal in parenting. You should be here. This is where it all hits the fan because you have to be able to do these things for your child and for you to just allow someone else, some stranger, to be the one to hold and comfort your baby while he or she endures whatever necessary medical thing is happening, just plain cranks me up.

It's unfair to all of us. It's unfair to the child. They need their parent. Period. It's unfair to the birth parent. They need to learn to handle life with a child. They need to prove to everyone, themselves included, that they can do it. And can I tell you, even though I signed on for this, even though it's my "job", it's unfair. It feels unfair to be the go between, in this situation. I feel this way on holidays too. It feels unfair to ask me to fill up the hole that the birth parent leaves in a child by simply not being there. It's unfair because it's a hole too big for a simple replacement human to fill.

It's the rub of this job. Even the seemingly self-righteous crank drives me to prayer. I simply don't believe it's possible to live this life without dropping to my knees and being fully dependent on HIM to get by, to get through.