Given A CHANCE {Adoption} and the CPap

The first night she lasted about an hour and was trying to tear the mask off her face. Vanessa took the cpap off for her and the kiddo woke up and asked "WHY you take it off me?"

Vanessa just said, "You had enough for tonight."

Last night she was up in a panic an hour after going to sleep and was wild to take it off. Steve went down to repositioned it and she was panicked and twisting and turning and trying to get away. Steve talked quietly and got it straightened up and she suddenly stopped clawing and crawled back into bed went to sleep. In the middle of the night I checked on her and unwrapped the pipe from around her neck and she slept with it all night.

I think she's going to do okay with it.

It was an area wide campmeeting. We had an excellent speaker - John Paulien speaking on Revelation. The girl's small group had special music for church. They sang a nice arrangement of My Faith Looks Up to Thee and it went amazingly well. The dentist who extracted her wisdom teeth did a double take when he saw Vanessa go  sit up front for the music. She gave him two thumbs up. Really, she's had little pain and hasn't needed the meds proscribed. He told her that even if she felt like she didn't need the ibuprofen she should take it for the inflammation, so she is. She really hasn't slowed down much at all.

Brianna offered to babysit so I could enjoy the evening meetings. I have a renewed sense of what it is like for mothers in the mothers room at the back of the church. They get NOTHING out of the worship service. It's a desert experience as far as being fed spiritually from the pulpit. Sometimes I wonder if there's even any point in going. I thank Brianna for allowing me to enjoy and fully take in the Word last night. I'm a second-pew-from-the-front kind of person.

James has a bad start to his morning yesterday and it is amazing how fast and how far he spiraled out of control. It's good to see progress and everything, but sometimes you get a glimpse of the direction things could turn and it's plain scary. It's frightening in that the good behavior is a thin veneer, easily peeled and cracked and not the true character, yet. We're on our knees for a TRUE and full conversion and healing from sin.

We were the last people in the foyer after church - this big gang of ours, and laughing together because we couldn't decide whether to stay for potluck or not. Nobody wanted to make the decision and we were laughing at the lunacy of our self-made predicament. The pastor's wife approached us and asked about the babies . . . she mentioned that her heart had the tuggings towards adoption and providing a home for children who don't have, but her husband was concerned that they are too old. I  had to admit that I am feeling way too old for getting up a dozen times a night with a baby. It's hard. PLAIN hard sometimes with the twins, but we have to remember that if someone hadn't given them a chance they very well may have, { MOST probably would have }, ended up in a group home eventually and been heavily medicated with little prospect of joy in their lives . . . At least now they have been given the chance to be all that they can be and they are given a choice in the direction of their lives. We can't know the outcome yet.... we only know we are giving them EVERY possible chance available to have a productive life and to give themselves to God's service. I'm not saying that adoption is right for this couple... in fact, I believe that people in the ministry have to weigh very carefully the fact that these children could limit their effectiveness in the ministry. I NEVER want to encourage anyone towards adoption if the CALL hasn't come directly from heaven. However, the conversation did encourage me that regardless of how hard it is, and how little assurance we have that the outcome will be everything we hoped, we ARE giving them a chance. And they deserve that.

This is a picture of a "cat in a rainbow". There is a little tiny cat on the outside of the rainbow, a girl above, the red sun like we have been seeing day after day in the smoke, and the stars and moon in the left hand corner. :-)