These past two weeks have been rough ones. We've been having a lot of really difficult behaviors we've been addressing with our kids. I am not going to get into specifics because it would just bore you and annoy me...
Last night, at the end of my rope with my disobedient pre-teenage boys for about the 105th time in the previous hour, I walked (stomped) up the stairs and blurted out to Nick, "Seriously? This is our life? Why are ALL our kids disobedient ALL the time?"
Nick said, "I think that's the name of the game Gwennie."
And I said, "No, I don't think everyone's family is like this."
And he said, "Name one big family that doesn't have kids like ours."
And saying the first name that came to mind I said, "The Duggars."
And he said, "They also had the privilege of having all of their kids since birth."
I thought that was a good point. Which is not to say that having biological kids only makes all the problems go away. But man, we're talking YEARS and YEARS and YEARS (more than a decade in at least three of our kids) of time we've missed. We're talking years of living with a HUGE relational deficit. I will level with you-- most of our kids are SEVERELY relationally stunted.
Pray for us as we try to love these children God has given us-- children who need to be loved, but don't know they need to be loved. Children who purposely act out to test this love. Children who physically cannot look us in the eyes. Children who don't understand physical boundaries because their own boundaries were violated at early, early ages. Children who steal from us. Children who curse at us and mock us. And bite us. And hit us. And laugh at us. Children who have tantrums that are hours long, who tell us daily that they are running away, that they CAN'T live here anymore. Children (two of them) who HAVE tried to run away.
But they can't help it. They cannot help it.
These are children who have been:
- abused,
- abandoned,
- raped,
- orphaned,
- enslaved...
