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FEBRUARY 2003 - ALPHABET SOUP MONTH I am in a place at the moment that I can't really describe but am sure many of you have found yourselves in. I am overwhelmed and my head is spinning! You want so badly to be able to put your finger on the exact problems and easily find a "fix" that will make it all better. You want to be able to explain that it is a combination of the worst of times and the best of times. Someone asks me how I am and I find myself wondering if I should even open my mouth to answer, because once I start, I may not stop and even then, they may still look at me puzzled………..or worse, think they have an easy answer that I must not have considered. My month has been filled with words like planning, schedules, chores, responsibilities, lack of planning, irresponsible children, irresponsible mommy, wedding, birthdays, anniversaries, pinewood derby cars, upcoming deadlines, missed deadlines, Valentine's Day, fetal alcohol effects, ADD/ADHD, discipleship, youth group, orthodontist, braces off, field trips, bible study, planting bulbs, back ache, domestic violence, game practices, diet coke, women's retreat, food handlers test, answered prayers, desires, reality, ID card, 1st job application, volleyball, date night, tears, laughter, overdue library books, a back brace, chocolate, headaches, income and property taxes, snuggling and quiet times, yelling and asking forgiveness, research, counseling, late night and early morning phone calls, songs that minister to my soul, invaluable advice from books, web sites and friends/family, heartache, listening, encouraging, consequences, suicide threats, slides and swings, integrity, truth, laziness, candy, broken engagements, grief, hope, love, hate, a funny joke, hugs and kisses………and the list could go on forever! My 14 year old daughter comforted me by saying that this month has not been my normal hectic life but my abnormal hectic life! How true…… I have decided that this month, my thoughts should be divided into just a few categories and then I can maybe come up with a statement that will cover it all. Though this may not seem at first like parenting issues, I assure you that whatever "mom" is dealing with WILL affect our parenting! I just explained to my husband last night (with mud pie piled high in front of us!) that life was like a huge mountain. I was going to rearrange them into molehills first and then line up the molehills and deal with each of them individually. I tend to be the concrete-sequential-linear type of thinker so this seemed to make great sense to me. Not in any particular order but dealing with the one that may have gotten your attention first is the category of friends. I had two major situations come up with different friends this month that took up a lot of my emotional and physical time. One friend lives on the opposite side of the U.S. but we have been friends since 1st grade. She is dealing currently with a broken engagement and a broken heart, not to mention continuing problems and consequences of a broken marriage and a rebellious and hurt teenage daughter. The 2nd
situation involves friends dealing with domestic violence, incomplete
counseling, a teenager who is crying out for help by writing suicide
notes, much research and looking for some answers on my part, along
with the many hours on the phone with too many people involved to mention.
I also need I have
other friends who I love deeply who are dealing with the anguish of
wanting a child, others wanting (needing) a home and still another who
lives across the globe who is hurting so badly from the pain of loneliness
and isolation. My mom got married this month, which was a huge deal
for our family. After almost 12 years of being a widow, she married
a wonderful man who we all love dearly. A wedding takes a lot of planning
and the last two months have been filled with many wedding related projects
and time consuming hours. Though my immediate family comes first, there
are many times that encouraging or helping someone else takes on an
urgent need. The time consuming but more exciting parenting issues this month were things like my daughter filling out her 1st job application, getting her state ID card, passing (with 100%) her food handlers permit test. The boys began playing volleyball and raced homemade cars in our Awana Grand Prix races. They all got last place but after a moment of encouragement agreed that it was not important whether they won or lost but just having the opportunity to do it was fun. (Daddy also raced and got last place and our 5 year old cried because he "wanted daddy to win"). We really wanted and needed a fun day so our family decided to spend ALL of Valentine's Day watching 8 DVD movies we rented, eating pizza, seafood and chocolate covered strawberries! The stressful and very time consuming issues with the kids this month were the realization that one of our boys may be dealing with some FAE (Fetal Alcohol Effects) from his birth mom's drinking (and drugs) during pregnancy. He has some other learning challenges also. Our youngest (also prenatal drugs and alcohol by birth mom) fits a pattern that falls into a category described as sensory integration dysfunction (SID) and it was such a relief (at least temporarily) to have my observations validated. I love to read and learn and the Internet and quick availability of massive amounts of information have been a God send to help me learn as much as possible, time willing. Another child is a challenge in the area of getting schoolwork and chores done and would probably have the label of ADD. (Side note: My goal is not to label and I have no professional diagnosis, only to give the reader an idea of the symptoms I am talking about. In fact, I found a great web site that referred to these "labeled" kids as "Alphabet Soup Kids". I thought that was clever.) All of this will be time consuming, but I want to learn how to best help my children in the areas that they are struggling in and to figure out what is a matter of disobedience and character issues and what is a matter of capabilities (or not being capable of). It will be ongoing and a roller coaster also, I am sure of. Another category could be my marriage relationship which always seems to be put on a back burner because of so many other urgent things wanting attention. My husband and I made a date night and went out for dessert and talking and walking around Lowe's looking at prices of wood and play set equipment and then off to Wal-Mart. It was WONDERFUL!! We talked about how we need to make sure not to ignore our alone time with each other and acknowledged that as challenging as that will be, it is worth it. I guess
personal would be my last category. I got braces off my teeth this month
and a friend gave me a HUGE basket of every kind of crunchy, sticky,
gooey, nutty candy that I have not been able to eat for the last 2 years!
It was so personal and thoughtful and I realized that I am surrounded
in so many ways by people who care. I have been comforted and encouraged
and counseled and loved by friends and family and it has often been
as a result of my being willing to ask for help and share my struggles. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such there is no law." Galatians 5:22-23 |
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 Teach your children essential tools for life. Heidi's husband Nick is the author of this educational workbook for children. |
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