I finally enter the high tech world, learn a little about the computer and digital cameras, start a blog and the computer gets fried by lightening. Well, it isn't fried, it just doesn't remember who it belongs to and so all our info is hidden in there or gone. We don't know yet. Have to leave that up to the computer experts. In the meantime, I'm trying to use Rick's computer which is a little slow, has none of my pictures and no memory chip slot and looks different on the screen so it is difficult for me to find things. It didn't even have letters on the keyboard (since Rick can type) and I had to write them on with magic marker. Pitiful. And that it what I feel like my parenting skills have been lately. I know, like my internet friend, Cindy, recently said, that all these non birthed children came to me by a plan from God for their lives. It's just that things don't appear to be going at all like I pictured. Cute kids, bring them home, teach them about Jesus, love them, give them some direction and boundaries and they will be grateful little missionaries in the army of God.Not. One or two things I didn't take into account. One was genetics. Forget the blank slate theory. Children from people who were so messed up that they lost their kids have kids with built in problems. #2, the devil wanted these kids like he wanted their parents (and all of us for that matter) and is fighting tooth and nail to keep them and ruin their lives. Every day is such a battle. I have one who wants to get away from me as soon as possible and make my life miserable in the meantime, another teetering on the brink of sanity, one who swings between angel and demon hourly. I am being clung to and kissed on, dissed (disrespected) and defied, can't leave the room for fights breaking out, yes, I am grumbling again. I am pretty sure, almost convinced, that women can't do what needs to be done for teenage boys. Several of mine pay about as much attention to me as a mosquito. Today I was called a liar, my words were met with "yeah, right, in your dreams", "whatever", I was mocked, talked over and treated like another child, and all this by at least two that were grounded for serious misbehavior already. They need a man, and Rick is still in Alaska and they treated him like a fly on the wall anyway. Most of which was my fault because I asked him to take it easy on them and try to win their friendship first. I thought it was a good idea but I'm not so sure. I probably should have let him deal with them in his own way and worried about the friendship or whatever later. That will all have to be started over when he gets back and whatever damage I caused undone.
I have been reading and hearing from God by way of books and people and remembering quotes from other books, Bible verses popping into my head, about the battle that we are in, the Last Battle, I believe, for our hearts, the battle for our kids. It is raging and I see it in the rebellion of some of my children, in the mental instability of some...the ones who have "something" that keeps them awake and driven to exhaustion at night..the one who still occasionally hears voices telling her untrue things, the cruelty that they demonstrate to each other at times. I have been praying like I never have before for God to intervene and protect us from the firey darts, no, bombs, of the devil and his rabble, to give me faith. I feel like the guy who brought his son to Jesus, the boy who the devil was throwing in the fire and water trying to kill him. It isn't quite that drastic with my sons, my daughters, but I can relate. The devil is jerking these kids around and has been since before they were born, since they were inside their mothers womb, some of them marinating in vodka. I find some of the same doubts, the desperation, "Lord, if you can do anything, please heal my son." And I hear Him say, "If you believe, all things are possible to him who believes." And I say "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief." Faith, the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for...I am trying to look at my kids with the eyes of faith, begging for more faith to believe that God can do what I can't. I don't have much evidence today that all my efforts are doing a lick of good, there isn't much substance to what I had hoped for- strong , secure young Christians, ready to be gradually turned out into the world to continue on their own to fight for what is right. I know that things aren't what they seem. The boy did get delivered from the demons. I just want to beat the demons out of them myself. (no, I don't want to beat up my kids, but the saying"whipping the devil out of them" may have been closer to what folks meant , really") It doesn't work that way, I don't think. God has to do it, and for some of them, they may have to choose to let Him, and I can't speed that up. Some days I'm just not sure what I AM supposed to do while I pray for them. Keep grounding them? Let them vent? I'll get up tomorrow and try again...