Yikes! I can not believe it has been almost two months since my last post. All I can say is that having two children changes things. You have twice the work to do in half the time. (Please try hard not to laugh if you have three or more). I look back at life when it was just Anna Cate and wonder how I got so much accomplished!
Remember the Friends episode of Pheobe and Rachel running in Central Park?
This is pretty much how I've felt the past few months. Like a totally out-of-control, spastic, crazy woman. And the harder I tried to get a handle on things, the faster they would unravel into a mess. I felt the Lord urging me to give up my busyness (blogging, sewing, crafting, decorating just to name a few) to focus more on my family, but I was so reluctant to do so. I'd find myself spouting off excuses to Him (and myself):
"If I just stay up later, then I can get more accomplished in the evenings."
or
"After I just finish up _________ (fill in the blank...this bathroom, this sewing class, the girls' summer dresses, etc) THEN I can focus on getting back on a schedule and the house back in order."
However, something else would always come up that I thought was just too important to pass up.
Then one night as I was browsing through the archives of one of my favorite blogs, Kisses from Katie, I stumbled upon this post. She is a 21 year old girl from Alabama who is living in Uganda with the girls she has adopted...all 14 of them. Can you even imagine? No husband or mother to call when she needs the help. No network of support or girlfriend to meet for coffee when she needs the support. Her blog is incredibly challenging to read and makes me embarrassed for all of the times I think that I've overwhelmed with my responsibilies in parenting.
But in this particular post she was describing how one of her daughters came to her. If you have the time, you should go and read the post because it is amazing, but to summarize, she wasn't interested in adopting anymore children, but felt the Lord telling her her next daughter's name would be Sarah. Several days later, a crippled 3 year- old was brought to her door. Her grandmother had carried her 7 miles to Katie's house and when Katie asked her name, the grandmother answered, "Sarah."
Chills.
And I as read her testimony, I was convicted of how I've never heard the Lord speak to me so clearly. And I realized it is because I stay so busy that I don't give Him the time in my day to show me what He would have me do. I come to Him in the morning with more of a laundry list of "needs" that I ask Him to supply me with to get me through the day.
But I was packing so much into my days that I left no room for anything the Lord had planned for me to do.
As Miss Lula would say I wasn't protecting my margins. I was filling up my pages from end to end and my family was suffering for it.
So what started out as what I had hoped to be a short blogging hiatus, turned into several months of silence. I've let waaaaaaay too much time go by without an update. I had no idea how much time blogging consumed until I let go of the expectations of posting. I've enjoyed this new found "free" time; however, I do regret that I haven't been documenting our family's life for the past few months. I was reading some of our old blog and really enjoyed being able to look back over Anna Cate's first year.
All that to say...I'm back.
I'll be better about updating, but it may just be pictures.
We'll see what happens!
Our computer has been sick and we just got it back. I haven't had time to wade through all of the photos I've been taking while it was away, but here are a few photos for all of the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family and friends who have been requesting updated photos of the girls!
