Here I sit in a hotel room, miles and miles away from home. Just minutes from here, my birth mother lies on a special compression airbed to prevent bed sores.  It's what many bed ridden, terminally ill patients are using these days.  I have had two glasses of wine to somehow numb the... what?  What is it that I feel?  Privileged, because I have been called out here to see to her final days. Overwhelmed, because I have been called out here to see to her final wishes.  Confused, because I have been called out here to see to my duty as a daughter.  My search on the internet for some wisdom and advice about how to handle the complications that come from meeting your birth family have come up with pages and pages of how to find them.  Got that one down.  But no one navigates you through the weirdness and emotional disconnect. There are no words of validation or comfort for when a daughter has to watch her birth mother die.  What, my dear internet friends, do I do with the thoughts of feeling like I just want to let this one go but am driven by an ancestral, almost primal instinct to answer the call of a daughter.  However disconnected.  However withdrawn. However broken hearted over what never was and what could've been.  Because as deeply as my heart wanted to connect to my mother, my head or rather, my armor, could not allow a bond which should have happened already.  At birth.  How do I soften my heart long enough to give her the peace she needs to grab hold of the children she kept, to forgive the mother who made her give me up, to let go of this broken world and receive the grace and forgiveness offered to her by the One and Only Lord of Lords?  How, my world wide web world, do I say to the woman who let me go, to let me go again and go, to the One who has her future in an eternity free of wrenching decisions or tears or wickedness?  And then turn, to look into the eyes, eyes that I know like I know the eyes in mirror, eyes of my brothers, and explain this strange love I have for her, for them.  How do I give them the peace to let go of a mother so damaged by the past, so brutalized by evil and sin and selfishness, so overcome by her own shame, but still sacrificing everything for them?  A mother who let me go and kept them.  Who, made me favorite, in an effort to atone. But still, not the one whom she kept.  How, do I convey the reality of the blessedness of being kept?  And help these, my handsome young brothers, to step into the right that is theirs to claim as sons, as heirs, as kept.  For, I do not need to have been kept but really, I need to be let go.

Horrible Sad

42 mile bike ride, a little sunburnt, an afternoon of graduation parties, day off. so nice.  Was having dinner with my girls while the husband was at church doing his pastorly duty.  Phone call. It's Grandma. Have I talked to my mother? No, I hadn't.  As a matter of fact, she hasnt returned my emails or FB messages.  What's going on?  Grandma says my Mom has cancer. It's bad. I should call her.  I should have called her a long time ago, not just sent an email.  So, I called.  She is coughing so bad and weezing that I barely understood her. I had to work hard to get Grandma off the hook for calling me. WHY did I have to find out from my grandmother?  WHY would it be an issue? she's been sick for 2 months.  didn't tell me. she's my birthmother.  I've already lost my adoptive parents.  I must watch two sets of parents die.  And she cut me out of the knowing, the preparing.  I cannot put anymore words to the grief and anger and sadness.  She's terminal.

Same hour, different Day

My youngest was home sick today.  Which means I was working from home today.  Working from home is usually a joke because while I can reply to the occasional email, I am far too distracted by home demands which are the worst and most awful.  Because it's not laundry or dishes or projects.  It's TV and Angry birds.  When at work, I am not capable of slacking.  At home, oh the story is all together different.  So, after a couple hours of actual productive work (no, really!!), we watched 19 Kids and counting.  She lost her 20th baby in the second trimester.  Oh how sad.  How so so sad.  I cried and cried.  Then spent the rest of my day wondering if I should've had more children.  Did I step out of what the Lord had for me? No, because it was my husbands decision to do that.  Don't get me wrong- I don't want anymore children.  But did the Lord want me to want more children?  To take all the kids he would give me?  Like the Duggars?  ya, no.

Late Night and I'm wishing I was sleeping

It's not hard to imagine a sound slumber. Snoozing and Woozing and Dreaming.  It's just so difficult to actually experience it.  So, here I am again alone late at night as the rest of my family sleeps watching bad TV, trying to read verses in my Bible but succoming to the calling of the DVR and other such silliness that will take away the thoughts and worries that creep in the dark.  Why is it that I remember everything I forgot to do during the day at 1am?  That's number one of what keeps me up at night- those dumb little things that I didn't do.  The one phone call I didn't make, the i that was not dotted, the sentence not finished.  Whatever.  So, out of desperation, I have started this blog.  Who knows how long I will keep it up.  Knowing me, this could be the only post I ever post.  But I am the antithesis of all things cliche such as the put it off, self defeating, not finish anything type.  At least that is how I REALLY am.  But that is not how most see me.  I do come off as all together to most.
I would love to be able to really read my Bible on a night like tonight but my head swims and try as I might, there doesn't seem to be much focus.  Though, not a morning person and not really able to complete a sentence before 8am, I do have an amazing ability to read the printed word in the wee hours and focus totally on what I read.  But that 's good I suppose seeing as how there are over a hundred verses about reading God's Word in the morning.
I am a Christian. I love Jesus.  That's the long and the short of it.  Beyond that, I'm a pastor's wife, mother of girls, church administrator- the new word for secretary. full time work.  full time ministry.  full time insanity. I've no idea how I ended up here. Tis true that the Lord uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise for I am the master fool. And so, I will be used.  Because I am such an outrageous fool.  Oh, you don't know.