Enjoying every minute

My firstborn is graduating from Highschool!  This has been a year of many 1st for Olivia.  She is just shocked that she is graduating, she has been learning how to drive this year, filled out her first application for a real job, and is turning 18 years old!  All this has come together the past few months and is coming to fruition next week!  It is overwhelming for her and me as well.  Although, I can't say I feel overwhelmed but just an immense amount of gratitude to God for guiding and leading her all these years.

Am I proud of her?  Of course I am!  She has made some very good choices and still looks to her parents for advice, for which I am grateful.  I'm grateful I still have a "say" in her life and yet she is becoming more and more independent.  It's still nice to know, though, that she wants our approval and will ask us for our opinions about her options for her future.

I find myself realizing that she is not an outcome of our great parenting but of God's hand upon her.  Oh, I'd like to think I had a huge part in the beautiful person she is, but really, I know my weaknesses and my faults are glaring at me on a daily basis.  I fight constantly with my flesh and can say that I don't always model Jesus in our home.  In fact, some weeks I rarely model Jesus at all!  So really, God has blessed us with a daughter who desires to serve Him.  When I look back over her life thus far, I can see how He has had his hands all over her life teaching her of himself through many different people along the way.

So her graduation will not be a ceremony to flaunt her accomplishments.  Her success is not from human hands.  It is all God.  So it will be a celebration of what God has done in her, through her, and for her.  This is what's so nice about planning your own graduation.  Instead of focusing on the graduate, you can focus on Him who takes our mistakes and makes them wonderful! I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Imaginary Friends

Two of my children have been on my mind so much lately.  That is not to say that I don't think about all of them a lot but sometimes life's struggles and joys with specific children can be consuming.

I haven't written on this bog since January which is just shocking to me.  I don't feel guilty about it though because there are times when some things just have to be left behind to survive.  This blog was one of many for me that I had to put down over the past few months.

Most of you know about our trial with Micah's health so I don't want to recap all of it.  He has been consuming and continues to be sometimes.  I have to repeatedly release him into God's hands and I'm learning more each day how to believe for something I cannot see.  We seem to take a few steps forward and then a few steps backwards.  We are waiting for his healing in several areas of his body.  His gut is messed up, his brain is full of toxins and his levels of minerals and vitamins are terribly low.  But I'm encouraged that now we know possibly why he was seizing and I'm encouraged because we are seeing some really good, normal days. All seizure activity has stopped since about 6 weeks ago. This is truly an answer to prayer.

He is on a detox program, a special diet and a whole slew of vitamins, minerals and yeast and parasite fighters.  I know he will get better because he is already getting better.  When I get discouraged and have a set-back with him, I just remember back to how he used to be a few months ago.  Then I realize that he has come so far!  Just the fact that he is going to bed without a fight and sleeping through the night in his own bed is a true miracle!

 God has taught me many things during this period so I thought I'd share just one.  A few months ago, Micah was spending large amounts of his time in an imaginary world.  Now this troubled me mostly because I've never had a child live in a fantasy world for more than an hour or so.  But Micah would wake up talking about things that just didn't make any sense.  He would continue this all morning and I couldn't talk to him about anything else so I was forced to play along.  Now, I knew this was a result of his brain trying to get back on the right track again.

We've all heard of imaginary friends before when dealing with children.  It's not uncommon but this was a little over the top for me.  I had to buckle her in her car seat, feed her lunch too and give her kisses at night.  He never forgot about her.  She was always there and he wouldn't hear of her being "pretend." When I would ask him where she was he would say, "right there" and point to the air where nothing was.  So as I was praying about it one morning, God spoke to my heart.

I felt him saying, "How can you discourage an imaginary friend when you tell him to believe in Me but he can't see me?"  We always tell Micah that Jesus is his friend and is with him always.  He often asks us, "Where is he?" as he looks around the room.  We reply, "He is with you everywhere you go."

I understood at that moment that God wants to be my "imaginary friend."  He wants me to talk to him all day long and remember that he is with me in the car, at mealtimes, and with me when I lay my head down at night.  How often do I go about my day and forget about my Lord?  More days than I can count, sad to say.

This all lasted about a week with Micah and I think it was just to teach me a tangible lesson about God and his desire to commune with us as much as possible.  He really is with us all the time, everywhere we go and we can talk to him just like Micah did with his "friend."

The other child that has been consuming my thoughts and time I'll have to post about at a later time.  I hope to have time next week to blog more since I'm trying to pick this back up again.

Thanks for reading!