Remembering.

5 years ago today I walked out of a Russian court room with a paper that said I was the mother of two year old twins. I was ecstatic.  I chuckle remembering this because  I had absolutely no idea what was in store for us.  It was the best of times it was the worst of times.

The next day Ben and I arrived at Baby Home #1.  The orphanage director asked for our paperwork.  We were then literally handed the twins and placed in a small room where we were told to change their clothes.  (The orphanage needed everything so they asked us to leave their clothes for the other children)  Ben and I were then whisked away in a car with Anna and Brynn back to our hotel. 

I was told they eat anything...they didn't.  I was told they would take a 3 hour afternoon nap...they didn't.  I was told they were potty trained...they weren't.  I was told they would be shy and wouldn't want to be hugged and cuddled.... they did, they were wrong, very wrong about that.  Anna and Brynn wanted to sit on my lap, hold my hand and lay their heads on my shoulder.  I couldn't have been any happier.  I was happy because I knew all along it had been God's plan for me to be their mother and Ben to be their father. We had to go through so much to get to that place.  With all the chaos going on around us it was the most peaceful place imaginable. I knew 100 percent that we were in the center of God's will.

I knew from the minute I looked at their precious faces on my computer monitor 3 months before that these were my daughters and I hadn't even met them yet.

The first few months were hard.  Our days were full of adjustments and the reality of two year olds smacking us in the face.  However, through it all, we had joy and peace and many people praying for us!

Now, 5 years later, you would never know of Anna and Brynn's humble beginnings.  People don't even believe me when I say they were adopted from Russia.  They look like me and Ben and their sisters.  You see God takes care of the details.  He just asks us to trust Him and be willing to step out on faith.

I love to see Brynn run down the soccer field and watch Anna do her moves in hip hop class and remember how it all started.  God's plan is so perfect.  May it be your prayer today to be a willing vessel.  For God to use you and your life for His purposes.  For His purposes are perfect.....  not always easy but perfect!

Thankfulness.

Sometimes I am defeated before I even put my feet on the floor in the morning.  Some days I open my eyes, realize it is time to get up and start a new day, and I just want to pull the covers back over my head.  This all over again today?  Really?

A journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.

Truthfully, I love my job.  I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.  I would never  choose not to stay home with my kiddos.  But it's hard.  I have learned that my attitude about my job makes all the difference.

So this week, I am practicing something new.  When I am feeling negativity I fight that feeling with thankfulness.  I tell you people... it works.

It even worked on the sticky jelly prints that my daughter decided to wipe on every surface of my kitchen.  "Thank you Lord for my daughter's 10 little fingers."  When daunted by the task of cleaning my house (again) I said "Thank you Lord for the roof over my head that you have provided for my family. The roof that shelters us from the rain and the sun." 

There was one time this week that it was the most difficult to be thankful instead of ticked....  Let me paint the picture for you.  3 of my four children are at school and my baby is napping.  It rarely happens.  I spend my precious hours doing laundry and sweeping and mopping my kitchen floor by hand.  (On a side note..one of my pet peeves is walking into the kitchen and stepping on left over food and crumbs with my bare feet) (Most days I just wear shoes but today I decided to remedy the situation.)   I stop and admire my perfect, untouched floor before I leave to go and pick up my preschooler. I feel a sense of satisfaction.
After arriving home she immediately starts to unpack her bag.  In slow motion I see her pull out her opened bag of half eaten Doritos and dump it on my gleaming, crumb free floor.  "I sorry Mommy."  It was almost humorous.

I stood there for a second wanting to scream and then said, "Thank you Jesus for the children that I prayed for.  You have given me more than the desires of my heart." Totally not what I wanted to say, mind you!  Was that a test God?  It had to be.  I passed with flying colors.

I smile as my daughter and I pick up Doritos of the floor. I take another step on my journey.  I keep working on my thankful heart.  I am God's work in progress.

War.

I have a war going on in my head.  I am a foodie.  There.  I said it.  I think about food from the minute I wake up until I go to bed at night.  When I am out running errands I have to talk to myself to keep my mini van from pulling into McDonalds for a sweet tea and large french fry.  If I can spend my money on anything It will always be dinner at a nice restaurant.

You see I had two babies in two years.  I have some weight to lose.  So thanks to my wonderful girlfriends encouragement, I joined the YMCA.  For the first time in my life I work out regularly and it feels great.  However, exercise for me seems to be a license to eat.  I know, I know, why in the world would I spend all those hours at the gym and then devour a Big Mac on the way home?  I don't know.  But I do it.  Am I alone here?  Anyone else with me on this?  Can I get an Amen?

Since, it is fall already, I guess my "end of the year resolution" is to exercise and eat well.  Wow.  There's a concept.  Eat well.  It seems like a no brainer.  But it is hard!  Maybe then I won't undo all the hours I put into running, bodypump, zumba and bootcamp.

But now will you please excuse me so that I can hide in my closet so I don't have to share my chocolate snack with my little ones.  Oh yeah.  You had better believe I hide when I eat.  Especially when I eat chocolate.  You see I have four kids.  Who wants to share four bites of something that delicious?  Don't judge.  I did Zumba today:)

                      My sister Stacy's homemade toffee.  Oh, how I love to eat it.

Parenting fail.

Wow. What a week.  School and activities starting up again.  Papers to fill out.  Supplies to purchase.  Amid all of the hustle and bustle, I feel like I have failed as a parent this week.

The responsibility I feel to help my four daughters turn into God-fearing, responsible, kind and polite human beings overwhelms me at times.  I feel like all day my lips are flapping away with reminders to pick up the wet towel off the floor, sit down in your seat when eating, don't hit your sister, watch your tone of voice,  treat others kindly.  I guess I figured by this time with my older ones,  my rules and expectations would start to be ingrained in their  heads.  Nope.  Not so.  They still have to be reminded of many things and it's wearing me out.  My Mama always says that if kids were born acting like 25 year olds they wouldn't need parents.  So today I am hanging on to that.....

Yesterday, I woke up to Lucky Charms and milk all over my clean kitchen floor because "somebody" had decided to walk around while eating cereal.  Really?!  Throw me a bone here.  My other "somebody" lied to me about hanging up her towel and putting her clothes in the hamper.  They were found stuffed under the bathroom sink. I overheard my two year old screaming that she hates her sister.  Hates..did she just say hates? Who says that?  Where did she hear that?   Fail.

I'll be honest,  I guess because my main job is COO of Kneisley Inc. right now and all I do is pour everything I have into these 4 tiny humans,  that when they make poor choices,  I feel it.  I really feel it.

I guess I know deep down one day it will click and they will get it...I hope and you'd better bet I pray.

I lost it on them yesterday before church and I was horrified at my behavior. Did I really give myself permission to act in such a way to my kids?  What kind of example is that?  No I didn't beat them and hang them from the ceiling by their toes...but I felt like it!

This is a new week.  So for all of you mothers out there pressing away at the daily grind I'm thinking of you today.  It's not easy and it certainly isn't easy to do it RIGHT!

So, I will be asking forgiveness for losing it yesterday. (They really did look at me like I was insane)  Mom's need to say sorry when we act inappropriately too.
And as we say in our family...God grant me the patience to endure our blessings....all four of them;)

It's Gonna Take Some Crazy

I want to start by saying I DID NOT WRITE THIS.  My friend sent it to me this morning and I felt like it needs to be shared. Following God's will for our lives is most often not very comfortable.  



By marisol · March 15, 2011

My cheeks are hot and my spirit is boiling with the desire for justice for the unborn. Did you catch what that last dude said?



“They’re all about saving the fetus, but they’re not about raising the kid…if they’re more about the rights for kids…doesn’t make no sense to me.”“



He just hit the nail on the head. What are we doing, Church? Maybe the questions we should be asking are what AREN’T we doing and WHY aren’t we doing it? I know we have heard the adoption speech so many times, but maybe that’s the problem. We’ve approached this topic with too much of a familiar attitude and we assume that someone else is taking care of it since we’ve heard it so many times.



In John 15:13-14, Jesus lays out a command to us:



“Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.”



I am beginning to think that we don’t have a grid for the reality of what will happen when abortion is made illegal in this nation. 4,000 babies are aborted every day in this nation. Where will they go when Roe v. Wade is overturned? The ending of abortion in the U.S. leaves 28,000 babies A WEEK who will need to be matched with families. We cannot pray the life prayer and not consider that God may be asking us to be the answer to our prayers. That day has to come to an end. RIGHT NOW. Seeing the end of abortion in this nation is going to take laying down our lives for the sake of another. It’s going to take us getting out of our comfort zones, giving of our finances, and trusting that God’s leadership is perfect even when taking a child into our home doesn’t make sense to our co-workers, friends, family, or fellow church members.



Lou Engle states in the opening scene of the documentary Justice Waiting:



“When you have set your face to go after God, He will disturb your peace. And if you’re willing to follow Him, the voice will come and the voice will mess up your materialistic dreams, the security of your home. He will send you on circuitous paths that you don’t understand; people will not understand you. You’ll have to make decisions to leave the familiar to go to a land that is totally unknown. But if you take the risk, you’ll find that God is on the other side of that still small voice telling you to step out into the world of crazy.”



Too many of us are relying on the wad of cash that we place in the offering plate passed around at church for the cause of adoption, thinking that we have fulfilled our duty of looking after orphans (James 1:27), and not enough of us are considering taking the road of “crazy” and filling out the paperwork for a home study. The cash is good, don’t get me wrong, but there is so much more that we can do!



In this nation, it is considered crazy to adopt a child when you already have four of your own. Who am I kidding? Having four kids will get you strange looks nowadays. Refusing to be given over to the idea of retirement and adopting or fostering a child (or children) at the age of 50 looks crazy. Taking in women that you don’t know into your home because they have no place to go since their family has rejected them due to their pregnancy looks noble, but still can be considered a little crazy since they’re a girl you met outside of a Planned Parenthood one day while doing side walk counseling.



It was never meant to be the responsibility of the homosexual community, the Muslim community, or the social justice community to save the orphan. It is the calling of the Church to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, even the smallest of them. 1 John 3:17-18 states this heavy truth:



“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and truth.”



Clean out the spare bedroom that you really don’t use anyway and open up the doors to your home for one mother or one child. Cut off the cable TV and forfeit the daily purchase of a latte in order to save some money to feed an extra mouth at the dinner table. Squash the lie that says the wait for having a child placed in your home will be too long. The wait WILL be long if you’re waiting for that perfect child with the perfect hair, eye color and the gender you desire. In reality, if you’re really about embracing the Father’s heart for the orphan, you will welcome a child in regardless of those things. And for the men reading this, we need you. So many of you are willing to wait in the freezing cold for Super Bowl tickets that cost hundreds of dollars, paint your face and belly the color of your favorite team, and tell the whole world about your team winning the big game, but when challenged with speaking up for the ones in the womb, it’s too crazy and controversial. Stand up, men! We need you to be the protectors that God created you to be. Read Malachi 4:6 and go from there.



Let’s stop putting so much stock into temporal, materialistic things that, as we saw this week with the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, can be swept away in an instant. Store up treasures in heaven by putting aside what you think are the dreams and desires of your heart and cloth yourself with the dream of the Father’s heart. He longs to save these children, and He wants us to be the instrument in His hand to do so.



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Adoption: A match made in Heaven.

"Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone But still miraculously my own. Never forget for a single minute,You didn't grow under my heart - but in it"



Growing up adoption never crossed my mind.  I didn't ever really think about it.  When I met my husband Ben he told me he had always wanted to adopt at least one child.  His sister Beth is adopted.  Again, I thought ok.....  I'm not against it but why?

Life went on.  Ben and I decided it was time to start a family.  We tried and tried.  Nothing.  I never anticipated this for myself.  Why was this happening to us?  Finally, shortly after Christmas we got the news we had waited for.  We were pregnant!  I was in disbelief.  Ben and I immediately shared the news with our families.  The baby was to be born Sept 5th.

Then the horror.  A couple days later I had unimaginable pain in my abdomen.  I suffered an ectopic pregnancy and lost my left fallopian tube and the baby.

The next few years were filled with disappointment after disappointment, going through failed fertility treatments.   The doctors finally diagnosed us with unexplained infertility.  Why me God?  I believe Your will is perfect... but why me?  I look back now and why not me?

God was shaping me,  preparing my heart for the incredible journey He had planned for me.  A "different journey" to motherhood....the journey of adoption.  I had no idea the faith it would require.

After much research we decided to pursue an adoption from Russia.  The paperwork necessary to complete and international adoption would blow your mind.  We finally turned in our completed paperwork and then the wait began. 

It was crazy.  We were prepared to wait months even years and within 2 weeks of turning in our paperwork we were traveling to Russia to meet our twin daughters Anna and Brynn. 

"If we had it to do over again adoption is what we'd choose. We got more than we hoped for the day we adopted you."




The journey was similar to pregnancy in that I anticipated, I worried, I nested, I had baby showers, I got the nursery ready.  I did not carry these children in my womb but they could not be more mine.  They were always in my heart and the minute I saw them I had an overwhelming peace that we had listened to God and this was His perfect plan.


I felt a "wink" from God when I realized that the day we picked up Anna and Brynn from a Russian orphanage was Sept. 5th,  the exact due date of the first baby we lost.  I know adoption isn't for everyone but it changed my life.

Christ has adopted each one of us who are Christians as His children. Are we not to do the same?

I laugh now as I look back. Since Anna and Brynn,  we have had 2 biological "miracle" babies that we were told we would never have.  I am the mother of 4 beautiful daughters. We have gone from no children to four children in 4 years.

I no longer sit and cry in the floor because I don't have children, sometimes I cry because I have so many;) lol!

Sisters.

When I was a young I hated my twin sister.  I really hated her.  Stacy annoyed me and I spent most of my days asking God why he didn't make me an only child. 

After high school we attended separate colleges and something  changed. There was a void. Did I actually miss the very person that had bothered me all these years?  Stacy would come and visit me at Milligan.  I would cry when it was time for her to leave. I felt so empty as I watched her  pull out of my dormitory parking lot.



Rewind.  I was 11 years old.  It was summertime in London, England.   My whole family was having dinner at Pizza Express.  I remember like it was yesterday.  Mama: "Girls we have something to tell you."  "We're going to have a baby"  Was I in  a dream?  My parents waited until I was 11 to have another child?  Were they trying to ruin my life?  I didn't want another sibling.  I didn't care much for the one I had already.

My baby sister Sarah was born that December.  It was love at first sight.  She loved me.  Really loved me. And I was quite fond of her.  She made my every step for the first years of her life and I didn't mind a bit.  She slept with me, hung out with my friends and dressed like me.  Maybe having a baby sister wasn't that bad.  Actually,  I really liked it. 

God knows what we need in life.  And boy have I needed my sisters.

I truly admire the adults they have become.  Sarah and Stacy are my best friends.  They love me unconditionally.  And not a day goes by that I don't speak to one of them.

Stacy is sweet, and wise and a good communicator.  She is the most non judgmental person I know.  She has a zest for life and is totally hilarious.  Her walk with the Lord is something I try and model.

Sarah has grown up to be kind and confident.  She is extremely intelligent and caring.  She possess the ability to make a hard decision because it is the right decision.  (I was never really good at that)  She truly loves my kiddos.  She often texts me to tell me she is having a bad day and she needs a funny Kneisley girl story to make it better.  I love that!  (We have plenty of funny stories to tell about things that happen around this house!)

I have 4 daughters.  I can't begin to tell you how many comments I get on a regular day about not having a boy.  Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing but I don't care one bit.  I am forever grateful that my girls will know the blessing of sisterhood.  There is nothing like it.....

So when Anna, Brynn Caroline and Aubrey have fought all day (Yes!  Aubrey is in the mix now. She holds her own like a champ.)  and I am ready to throw them out the window....  I smile and know that someday their relationship will be different and priceless.