Lord, That I May See

Me, walking into the kitchen and seeing Sunshine, who has been waiting for help peeling her orange: "Number 1, your shoes don't go on the table.  Number 2, you need help with your orange." Sunshine gets a grip on a bit of skin and says: "Number 3, I DON'T need help.  Number 4, I need a banana after this orange." Me:  "No, just an orange right now." A small silence while she plugs away at peeling that orange. Then, "Number 5, I need help!  . . . Oh, Number 6, I don't." As I leave the kitchen I hear her counting quietly to herself, ".... 5, 6, 7, 8."  Just to remember what number comes next, I guess, in case she decides she does need help after all.

I've switched my seating location in our car.  Turtle can't handle the stress of sitting next to the poor boy who often screams so hard in the car that he seems like he might pass out. My poor guy has colic and it's been really hard. I cry sometimes just because he is crying so much and I can't help him. It seems actually that often I am doing just the opposite as it is always nursing that starts up his cycle of gas and pain, writhing and screaming.  I'm trying not to go the route of blaming myself, as I know that isn't fair or true.  I just get so sad seeing his sisters confused and sad that he doesn't want them to hold him and that he cries all the time, even when they are showing him their pictures and toys. It's really, really hard, but I know that it will pass. Nothing is forever.  I have given up dairy and eggs and, as of today, gluten too. It doesn't seem to be helping completely but I keep doing it and giving him herbs, homeopathics a...

Today Turtle made her First Confession! As she says, now her branch on the True Vine is unblocked and even more "sap" is flowing! We went to Starbucks together afterwards to celebrate the truth that after every Confession Jesus lifts His sheep to His shoulders and the rejoicing begins! Isn't it beautiful? Confession is all about the joy! “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’"