nine lilies

the trouble with going so long between blogs is that it is often hard to know where to begin. I have quite a few drafts I have started and left unpublished over the past year. but I didn't seem to have the words or the direction to finish any of them. quite frankly that has been my life as of late. the past year has been a whirlwind. I have not caught up on laundry or sleep or sanity in that time. and for about the last 6 months, I have been desperately grasping on to the end of my rope, trusting in the Lord that relief was near.

tonight, Aaron and the boys and I took their other mom out to dinner for mothers day. it was everything I hoped it would be. we truly all enjoyed a wonderful evening together. our lilies are also finally starting to open. last year, after we adopted the boys and they had been baptized, a friend at church bought an Easter Lily in their honor. I re potted it and it promptly died. about a month ago they started to come back. but not one lily. nine. and I couldn't help but see the connection. nine children have called this house a home in the past 3 and a half years. 9! 

numbers 9 & 8 are our red headed sisters. they have been with us 13 months. towards the end of this month, they will be reunified with their mom! this has been long awaited and highly anticipated. we are rejoicing in the fact that they will be back together as a family soon!

we are also frankly looking forward to our life being a little simpler for a while. we have told everyone at DFCS that needs to know that we intend on taking a long break. at least a couple years. we have put in 3 years. so my goal is 3 years out. we are keeping our home "open". we don't want to have to re certify later if/when we decide we are ready to foster again. we also would very much like to provide "respite" to our foster parent friends. this means we would be a certified option for children to stay with us for a few nights at a time while foster parents take a break or go out of town and so on.

we have had our own respite as the girls have been spending some weekends with their mom. this is their second weekend with her. it fell at a good time because it meant them being with her on mothers day. it is also an incredibly busy time for us so it made life simpler. 

today my mom and I took Isaiah and Von to an appointment in Fayetteville. Isaiah has had lots of ear infections. I have asked a couple times if we should see an ENT. the pediatricians never thought it was quite that bad. a couple months back, he had an ear infection that wouldn't go away and we finally got a referral. we saw a local ENT and after about 10 minutes with us, he said we needed to see someone thru Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. today at our appointment with CHOA the doctor looked at his ear and we did a hearing test. he is scheduled for a CT scan at the end of this month. there is a mass in his ear behind the ear drum. if the doctor is right in what he thinks it is (which we are pretty confident that he is), Isaiah has a cholesteatoma which is a tumor formed from excess skin cells, produced as a result of lots of ear infections and the ear drum rupturing multiple times. this is hindering his hearing and will continue to grow and get worse. it will require at least two surgeries (if not more) to remove the tumor and repair his ear. I know this is a lot of detail and information to drop in a blog, but I need 2 things from my readers to help us through this process:

1) PRAY! we are all anxious. especially our precious Isaiah. this little guy has been through so much and has had his share of struggles. he has come so far. I could write a whole blog of how proud I am of the boy that he is today. but he is truly terrified of this reality. this is going to be a stressful and challenging time and we need all of the prayers we can get.

2) DO NOT TALK ABOUT THIS IN FRONT OF ISAIAH! I can not stress this enough. he knows what is going on and he is not at all happy about it. our goal for now is to let him just be a normal 7 year old boy as much as possible. Aaron and I are happy to talk to you about it and answer questions or listen to advice. but we believe it is best for him to put it out of his head right now as much as possible. please do not constantly remind him of the inevitable.

I had decided a couple of weeks ago that I would blog about the girls leaving and say something poetic about mothers day and foster care awareness month and officially close down the blog for now. but it is now after midnight. I have been up since 7 am and crammed a lot of emotional things into this glorious day. so as we say at our house, "you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit"! and as for closing the blog, who knows where I'll go from here. I haven't been blogging regularly anyway but in light of our recent news, I will still probably have just as many updates as ever. and we will definitely still need the support of our village. 

so keep reading and praying. and even though we won't be "fostering", we'll keep "fostering love".