through the mouths of babes

  

Well here it is folks.  Here is God using my 6 yr old to drive a point home.  If you can't read this it is a paper on why Mya is glad to be her.  She drew a picture of herself in the mirror (brown girl, black piggy tails) and the last sentence says, "I'm glad to be me because... I love dance"  
So after having an emotional couple of days deciding if we made the right decision or not pulling her out of dance, I got a phone call from God.  Oh, ok it was not him but it felt like it.  What he was trying to tell me is to get over my fears and live in this world while I'm here.  To be a beackon not a hermit and let my family live there own lives and make there own mistakes.  It was him telling me that what I didn't or couldn't see was that we have a whole community of dance team family who is willing to help us out however we need so that Mya can do what she loves.  She has worked hard this year and deserves to finish it out.  The fact that she was so mature and tried to hold in her emotions because she thought she needed to makes me proud and sad.  I am going to have to be careful with this precious girls emotions, she is a people "pleaser"- oh Lord!, here is payback from my life.
So, we are back on the dance train.  I am so thankful for everyone's kind words and understanding, no matter what.  I am on my knees thankful for times when God gently corrects our mistakes.  Sure, one day we will all look back on things we did wrong or wish we could have changed.  But sometimes we are allowed a second chance if we can listen and let go.
Some of you may know that almost all my test came back negative.  Most important was no crohn's or cancer in the bloodwork markers.  I do have an ulcer (hmm self induced I'm sure) and some inflammation   I am going to talk to my doc on what to do next.  Bottom line is I need to take better care of myself.  I am checking into the SCD (Specific Carb Diet) if anyone has heard of it I'd love feedback.  It's not for loosing weight but healing stomachs/ intestines.  I know I need to do something but for some reason jumping off this cliff seems horribly hard.  I was hoping for a test that shoved me into it.  Yet, I am grateful for these super "growing" moments (that was meant to be read with sarcasm).
Well that's it for my late night blog rant.  Just wanted to update you on life and how it can change from day to day ;)  It's good,  it all really is.  God is good if we could just open our pitiful eyes and see what is around us and stop peeking at the greener grass on the other side.  God isn't good "if only" a,b,c, and d change, he's good NOW.  amen and good night.
laura

Letting Go

I was under the assumption that when I made bold Godly moves in my life that it would be extremely easy and I would have this overwhelming peace and comfort in my heart.  I don't know where I picked up that assumption as it has never proven true, but I experienced nothing of the sort when making a "parental" decision this last week.
Yes, sometimes as parents we have to do what's right for our family and be real live grown-ups.  So, I thought that that meant it was hard on the kids, not hard on us....  After all this trauma with me being sick so much lately and us having NO margin for error in our schedule we realized something.  We where drifting apart as a family.  Every moment was, "where are you going? who are you taking? are you picking up...?", or "no we can't come we have (fill in the blank)".  We would have a saturday to do "nothing" and I kid you not it was the worst day ever.  You would think we would be relieved to have a day off but instead we were seemingly bored.  We were tense and anxiety filled, trying to absorb all the "rest" we could but never feeling it.  We didn't feel any peace what-so-ever knowing that this was possibly the only calm that we had scheduled for quite some time.  So I turned to my husband and said, "why don't we know how to hang out with each other?",  and he replied "I don't know but we need to change it"  You see we are sinking further and further into to this world and driving further away from the blessings of what God promises a family to be.  "Gifts" are supposed to be how we see our children, not burdens.  "Lovers and friends" are supposed to be our spouses, not ankle weights or annoyances.
Our daughter is getting older and older, sassier and sassier.  She is filling all her "off" time as far away from home as possible, I don't think knowingly so but this is where she is seeking her joy.  She is 6.  When I was 6 I played house with my sister, played with my barbies in my basement playhouse or maybe had a neighbor over.  The thought of a sleepover, weekend sporting event, or not stepping in my own house until 7pm was non existent.
So out of the blue, literally I can not even remember how this came up, we started to talk about how our year looked for her being involved in an extra curicular events.  Meaning practices and competitions.  Either all of us would be busy or just Mya and I away from home.  We have 2 hours of practice each week and 20 min of practice each day after school or after I get off work to help her get set up to practice, sometimes this is at 7pm.  This is us saying no to family get togethers  or spontaneous events.  This means me, the mom, being very overwhelmed by one more job in this house.  As I said before we have no room for error.  This means, Josh works.  We don't know what hours we don't know how many hours we don't know where he'll be, but for right now in this season, its often and exhausting.  I get sick, often.  For right now we are trying to find out why we are trying to find out how to fix it but in the end, it happens and when it does there is no one to pick up my slack.
So the thought of removing something out of our daughters life that she (and I) love literally made me (and still does somewhat) nauseous.  We talked and fought and talked some more.  I get it.  I get we HAVE to remove it.  That doesn't change that Josh and I both tossed and turned and couldn't sleep that night knowing we had to tell her in the morning.
And as we sat at the breakfast table and our daughter silently sat, tears running down her face, I knew that being a grown up sucked.  Making rational, parental, yet Godly decisions is not easy, comfortable or peaceful.  She wouldn't say anything.  We encouraged her to talk, she wouldn't.  Then after josh left I had her sit on my lap and we both cried (me internally) and then we talked about how that night since she didn't have practice we could pick a recipe from her cook book and make something.  She smiled.  I knew then that even though our hearts ached that this would be a blessed decision.  I want you to know though I kept holding on, I kept trying to make excuses, trying to fix it so she could still be part of her team.  I had this overwhelming thought in mind that it was my fault and I was letting everyone down.  The teacher, the other parents, my daughter.  Just in general, why couldn't I manage this ONE thing!!!  When I talked to josh it was like trying to convince him I could handle it.  And then he hit home.  "Laura, we can keep her on team.  It's up to you.  I want you to know though that YOU are putting this on yourself.  I can not help you right now with this and this is more stress you are putting on yourself.  If you get sick, you can not get angry that our family falls apart because we have too much going on.  We can make it work financially we can probably make it work time wise, but we will be stretched to the max."  UGH, yes I get it "God speaking through my husband".  Does God ever say to you, "child, I am trying to remove something from you, even though it hurts, it will be better once it is gone and the wound is healed, let Me help you."  and we just hold on.  We think we can do it, we think we are superhuman.  Know I know this may sound like rubbish to some, like "what's the big deal she's 6 she'll move on."  But I think you can see that we all have things in our lives more difficult due to other circumstances.
  Watching my daughter dance is the most beautiful thing to me, or so I thought.  Last night she was practicing her bible verse for church and after she read it we prayed it back to God as her prayer.  Her face lit up and she was said, "this is so cool mom! I'm going to keep reading it after you leave!" and "mom I had the best time practicing for the Christmas concert today! I think I want to try a solo this year!" Which by this way she couldn't have done before because we would have missed to many practices. I don't even know why for some reason that verse and prayer hit her heart but it connected her in her own way to God instead of through me.  I left her room knowing that this decision, this trial( not just removing her from dance) we are getting through is making us all stronger.  I need to put in perspective the things in life not just for her sake but mine.  There will be many many more events for our children.  I will be proud of them more times than I can even imagine.  I can't ruin God's plan for them but I can make it quieter for them to hear.  Maybe through my sickness and all this cRaZy right now He is doing a work in her.  Who am I to get in the way of that.  wow, way to make something about me that's not about me :)
It's amazing to me how as parents we take things on put our kids through things that we are trying to heal or battle through ourselves.  We discipline them for attitudes that we see in ourselves.  We watch them achieve and live vicariously through them.  I really want this year of painful growth to mean something for our family.  I really want to pay attention to what God is saying....  ok PS I JUST got a call from the nurse that the doctor is going to call me later today with results from all my test last week.  sigh** ok here we go......I should also mention that the forementioned teacher and parents where extremely supportive and encouraged us to put family first.  Proof that satan's attack on my ego and pride was outed by God's love and grace being poured on to this family.
thanks for making it through this huge blog today, Laura
  

20 min blog/prayer request

Well we will see if it's possible to do a 20 min blog post :-/ I kinda doubt it.  I need to share that I am a little nervous as I have a GI (gastrointestinal) appointment tomorrow.  Last week I had a doctors appointment and we checked iron levels, hemoglobin and for Celiac's disease.  Everything was normal and I will humbly say I was more than relieved to find I do not have Celiac's.  I know many who do and respect the effort they have to put into there diet.  I fear though that something in that court is on it's way to the Hejl household.  I have had the worst "feeling" year since all my surgeries and such.  I have had way to many outbreaks of flu like symptoms and episodes that really hasn't cleared up for a month.  I am not sleeping, eating or living well at the moment.  It is a struggle to look online and hear from friends about ways of eating that MAY help my situation.  For example I found I may be intolerant to yeast, egg yolks, nuts, and possibly meat.  Well, I decided to take on the yeast removal and I really haven't felt more horrible and with no energy to top it off.  My point being is I could literally take a year of my life trying all these things or I could just go see the doc and possibly get some answers.  My husband and I both feel we need to put all other things aside until this is figured out because we just can't live not knowing if I will be laid up for days or weeks at a time.  It makes are already stressed season in life that much more exhausting.
Yesterday in my Sunday school class our teacher, my handsome husband, gave us a verse he was praying for us all during the week.  Part of it stuck out to me and that's 2 Corinthians 12:9 "...'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."  So my friends I am boasting all my weaknesses to you in this moment!  I so badly need the power of Christ in this moment.  I know, I trust, I depend on the fact that this is God renew his steadfast love within me.  This is God ridding me of part of a strong hold I have carried with me for the majority of my life.  I say part of  because the "thorn" that is my cut up, duct taped body is not going to be renewed physically this side of heaven.  I will always have to deal with it.  But the burden it puts on my eating, the financial burden of continually searching and the stress it puts on our marriage, these are things I believe God is going to rid us of.  He has given me more resources for things I know what to do with right now and I have to trust that after tomorrow or after they do more testing I will know what to do with all these things.  I have to stop putting this off.  I am at my end, I am on my knees.  What an amazing place to be as God has shown me my excuses are gone.  My distance from Him is too far and it's time for Him to pull my back into His care and not my own.
My weakness of dealing with being an adoptive mom, having a business, having a husband who has a business, and so many insecurities are all things that you can look forward to me fighting to work through.  Right now though, my health and our families future health I believe is depending on this next week or so.  My dad says this year is going to be better, he says that every year.  God bless him he's right.  Not because each year I make more money, or because I have figured out how to parent, I have rid myself of guilt or we managed to have perfect 9-5 jobs with cheap daycare ;)  It's a better year each year because our issues our stresses get more refined they get so hot that we forced to deal with them so God can use us more and more.  He can't used sick Laura on the couch, taking pain pills, shaking from dehydration.  With my mind only able to handle TV.  He can't use Laura ridden with guilt about what and how she's raising her children and how she's failing to nurture and put her family first.  And so my friends God is going to fix this, maybe not in a way the human eye can see or ever figure out, but I can tell you one thing, my heart will feel it.  My joy WILL return.

God bless you,
laura