Waiting

On Monday, my caseworker is supposed to contact me to go over the home study and ask a few last minute questions. I'm hopeful that this means that it will be submitted shortly and New Kid will soon be here.

Surely she will be here soon.

So tonight, with my Precious helper, I cleaned out her dresser and consolidated some of Precious's clothes into two drawers so that New Kid could have the other two.

There was a lot of talk from me to my helper about New Kid. I can only imagine my daughter... as a sister. I can hardly wait.

She's grown up so much in the last month. Saying more words, starting to respond a few times with "Yes" instead of just repeating whatever words you said. And saying things on her own, doing things on her own. Today, she did something that she liked and made herself laugh - so she rushed over to me laughing and pointed at it and said "look".

And then, during her nap all she did was cry - and I realized she was having trouble breathing. She was crying and very limp, didn't move much at all. I immediately gave her a breathing treatment and withing 30 minutes she was coming back to more like normal. I'd backed off the breathing treatments thinking she was doing better after catching some type of bug earlier in the week. Apparently I was wrong. I'll pick them back up again.

At the end of the night I told her to pick up her toys and she cried and screamed her whole way through it. You'd have thought I was beating her from her very loud distress. But nothing could have been further from my mind. Instead, by some strange act of the heart, as she screamed and cried and picked up her toys I loved her all the more. I loved her in her tears. I don't know how Godly that is but it always makes me wonder about Gods love for me when I love so much during a foolish moment like that one.

I'm praying that I am a good mother. That I'll be a good mother with two children. That I'll raise them in the fear and honor of God. That I raise them forever as Gods children - always aware that I am watching his children, and not my own.

Every day I'm well aware of the fact that it's so easy to fail. To let kids just "grow up" instead of raising them. Daily I feel like I'm trying to remember to fertilize, water, pull weeds, swat bugs. Constant diligence.

It's so easy to fail.

Only God could make me successful at this.