I am so thankful that a friend of mine chose to text me when she read online that Friday (yesterday) was a furlough day for government employees in Georgia. As a result, DFCS was also on furlough, Monday is a holiday, and I can now stop holding my breath for the next three days. There is no chance I’ll hear anything more about the girls until next week.

Please keep praying!

Have a great weekend!

~audrey

Repondez S’il Vous Plait

Please Reply!

My supervisor did indeed call our girls’ case worker yesterday for an update and to give her best efforts at getting them to move the girls to our house immediately. She had to leave a message on his voicemail. At the close of the business day yesterday, she had not yet gotten a call back from the case worker.

Praying for a response today!

I wonder if the agony of waiting has ever actually killed anyone?

As always, I’ll update if/as soon as I hear something!

~Audrey

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

The above referenced scripture are different translations of James 5:16b.

I can’t help but think it was the effectual and fervent prayers of my children that brought on this long-awaited breakthrough in our girls’ case. So today, I am asking for your effectual and fervent prayers! As I was walking with my supervisor at 6:30am this morning, she informed me that she would be calling the girls’ case worker today to find out how the staff meeting went yesterday and urge them to move forward with placing them in our home immediately.

I will update as soon as I hear something!

We’ll be heading to the pool to pass the time. 🙂

I look forward to the days of shopping for these:

How cute are those!?! Just FYI, they are on clearance at Gymboree.com! 🙂

~audrey

We hadn’t heard anything about our girls in several months and had all but given up. My boys actually began asking about them again just a few weeks ago.

“When are our baby sisters coming?”

I kept telling them we hadn’t heard any more about them and doubted they were coming, but if they really wanted them here, they’d have to pray! They certainly did. Every night for the last few weeks they have been praying for their baby sisters to “please come to our house very soon.”

As I wrote in this mornings’ post, our other three foster children left this afternoon. We had already begun to wonder what God has for us next. What would the next placement be like? Boys, girls, babies, toddlers? Wouldn’t you know, my phone rang this morning around 10:30am. It was our foster agency telling us that DFCS, from the county where our girls are located, called and requested our home study so they could begin the adoption process!! We still have a very long road ahead of us, and I need you to begin praying specifically that the Lord would bring the girls to our house SOON. They are in separate foster homes and desperately need to be together, preferably under OUR roof! 🙂 Want more?

Their names are Jessica (meaning “God Beholds”) and Sarah (meaning “Princess”).

GOD IS SO GOOD!

I’m still in shock, really.

There is a staff meeting at DFCS tomorrow involving our girls’ case. Please pray for favor and that they would all agree it would be in the girls’ best interest to be united in our home as soon as possible.

I will certainly keep you posted!

KEEP PRAYING!!
~audrey

Isn’t it funny how insignificant birthdays are when you get older, and have kids, and jobs, and responsibilities? Every year my kids ask when my party is. What party? I suppose we should have parties for our birthdays as we get older. Each birthday should get more and more important and have increasing worth and value.

This is going to sound weird, but I feel like I’m older than I am. I’ve been married for over eight years. I have a seven, five, and two year old. I’ve lived in five houses since Josh and I got married. I’ve been to two different colleges. I’ve taken care of six foster children. I feel old. I’m tired. I have small wrinkles outlining my eyes.

Today I turn twenty-eight.

I still have two whole years left in my twenties.

I got a call yesterday from the children’s DFCS case worker. They are leaving today at 3:00pm. There is laundry to be done and lots of packing…into trash bags unfortunately. They don’t have any suitcases or anything and I can’t pack their things into Rubbermaid bins because they won’t all fit into the case worker’s car. It will be very sad to see them go. They’re going to a family member; not their parents. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before we receive another placement. Please pray that the Lord gives us babies next time. I do not want another five or six year old. The younger the better. It is just too hard having extra older children while homeschooling in a household of eight. I don’t mind the three-child placements, but I’m praying for very young ones.

Well, I have lots of work to do. There will be no relaxing today…but I AM about to load all six kids in the car so I can use a birthday gift card to Starbucks! 🙂

Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me
I once had six children
but now I have three!

~audrey

An Evening In The ER (**originally posted 10/13/2009)

***WARNING***THIS POST IS NOT FOR WEAK STOMACHES.***GRAPHIC PICTURES BELOW!***

Today started out like any other. An uneventful Tuesday full of housework, school work with Joshua, a trip to the grocery store, and even an afternoon nap. Around 6:00pm I started supper. Owen had only been awake from his nap for about 20 minutes and all three boys were playing in the back yard. I had curly fries in the oven and both of my hands were covered in raw meat as I was making burgers in the skillet. Joshua ran into the kitchen and said, “You need to come out here. Jesse is crying.” I quickly put the meat down and washed my hands. As I’m lathering the soap, Joshua is trying to give me more details. “He fell out of the treehouse…I think he’s bleeding…I think he maybe knocked his tooth out.” By now, I’m pushing him out of the way and running through the backyard to the treehouse where I find Jesse on the ground crying, blood pouring out of his mouth. Oh no. I lift his upper lip so I can see exactly what has happened. There it was, the tooth next to his two front ones, completely bent upward and sticking out of his gums, straight into his upper lip. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve seen first hand in a very long time…if not ever! This picture just doesn’t quite capture the gaping hole in his gums where the baby tooth had been and how mangled everything looked with his tooth shoved up so far into his gums.

I immediately call Josh and ask him to meet us at the Children’s Medical Center parking deck. I can’t remember exactly what I said…something to the affect of, “Jesse fell out of the treehouse, busted his face, his tooth is sticking out of his gums…lots of blood…hurry up…don’t ask me anything…I can’t talk…”
Then I called my mother-in-law. Thankfully, she answered on the first ring. I quickly told her what happened and asked her to please talk to Jesse and pray with him over the phone while I got dressed. That really calmed him down for most of the ride to the hospital. Josh met us there and took the other boys back home with him, where, thankfully, the house had not burned down. I couldn’t even remember if I had taken the skillet off the stove or turned the oven off, which happened to be on 450, with the fries still in there!! Thank you Lord for your protection!
As we’re walking through the parking deck to the ER entrance, I felt something on my foot. I looked down to see that someone’s GUM had somehow found it’s way to my flip-flop and was stuck to my TOE!!! I kicked my shoe off and was frantically wiping my foot through the grass. As we entered the pediatric waiting room, I notice there are about 20 people already in there and most of them are wearing blue masks. Great. Just great. We don’t get flu shots. We never get sick. But here we are, in the ER, in the middle of flu season….and we’re the only healthy people in here!! My heart is racing and I’m just praying that my wimpering, bloody-mouthed, pitiful little boy will somehow be pushed to the front of the line! If only I had known then…it was just the beginning of a long night at the circus.
We’re sitting patiently in the waiting room as new patients walk in by the minute. I’m amazed at the way some of these people are dressed. I mean come on people…your child has a fever and you need to take him to the ER…I think you have time to put some shoes on…or at least a BRA!! Not too long after we arrived, the cops walked in with a teenager in handcuffs. This kid did not look hurt, nor did he look sick. We sat there and minded our own business until a cute little boy with ‘no filter’ turned to his mommy and very loudly said, “Uh-oh Momma. That boy’s goin’ ta jail when the doctor get through with him!”
The waiting room began to fill up. There was one seat left and it was right next to me. I don’t know about you, but if I’m a little nervous about my surroundings, I’ll put something of mine in the seat next to me so no one can sit there. Well, low and behold, a homeless man walked in and plopped down right next to me and my purse. He was about 6’4″, 140 lbs. He reeked of alcohol, smoke, and body odor. Just as I begin to pray even harder that God would speed up this process and get us OUT of the waiting room, I hear an announcement over the P.A. system…”Pediatric Trauma–Level Two–Penetrating…” Oh great! That sounds really bad and probably makes Jesse’s injury look like a stubbed toe…we’re going to be here all night. Then three young ladies walked in, pushing strollers that each had at least one child in them, and then there were several kids walking behind them as well. As they checked in at the front desk, the lady asked their names. One by one they responded, “Moore.”…”Moore”…”Moore…” I could see the look on the nurse’s face, and then she asked, “Um, are you cousins?” One of the girls said yes. I’m thinking, OK, what did ya’ll do, call each other up and say,

‘hey cuz, I’m bored and my baby got a fever, how ’bout your’s?”
…”yeah girl, my baby has a runny nose, you wanna meet up at the emergency room?”
…”sure! don’t forget to call your sister, I bet she’ll wanna bring her kids too!”
…”okay, cool, we’ll meet you there!”

People are coughing, sneezing, sweating, crying. I felt like an OCD, hypochondriac. I thought for sure I was going to break out in a hot sweat and have a panic attack. I began looking through my purse for hand sanitizer and wipes. I had to de-contaminate quickly…Oh my gosh, you’ve got to be kidding me!? No hand sanitizer? No wipes?? What kind of mom am I??? I probably looked insane as they brought us back to a room and I spotted the anti-bacterial foam on the wall. I ran to it and held the spout down until both of my hands were full of clean, white, disinfecting foam. I felt a little better after that; as if someone had removed us from the ‘line of fire’, which was the waiting room.

While looking through my purse for sanitizer, I realized that Joshua had left his Nintendo DS in my purse with a game and the charger. By this time, the bleeding had stopped and Jesse was able to put the towel down and play the DS for a while as we waited on the doctor.

The ‘resident’ had to get her ‘attending’, who had to page the pediatric dentist on call, who basically said, “we’re going to have to pull his tooth and send him tomorrow for x-rays.” The dentist was so sweet. She had to have been in her 20’s and was being shadowed by a young, male dental student. They did a great job helping me hold Jesse down as they gave him a local anesthetic and pulled the damaged tooth out. It was disgusting, bloody, and very loud. I’m pretty sure Jesse’s screams were heard all over downtown Augusta. By the time it was all over, the dentist was so shaken up, she could hardly sign my discharge papers. Her hands were shaking and she had this nervous smile on her face like she was about to pass out. All in a day’s work!

Jesse was such a trooper. I promised him ice cream on the way home. By this time it was 11:00pm. He wanted Sonic, but the first one we drove to was closed. He asked me to try another Sonic by our house. By the time I got there and realized it was closed as well, Jesse was fast asleep. I drove through McDonald’s instead and I tried to wake Jesse up, but he was OUT.

The lady at the drive-thru window said, “Um, is he asleep?” As I bit my tongue with the many different funny and sarcastic ways I could’ve responded, I just smiled and said, “yes, it’s been a long night.”

When we finally got home, Jesse didn’t want his ice cream…just his bed, and his teddy bear, Mr. Fatty. I pray he’ll get a restful night’s sleep followed by lots of soup and ice cream tomorrow.

Thank you to all of you who saw my mother-in-law’s facebook updates and prayed for Jesse while we were at the hospital. I’m so thankful it wasn’t any worse than it was and that Jesse did very well overall.

It’s 1:20am and I think the adrenaline is finally wearing off. I’m going to bed.

~audrey

It’s been a crazy, busy day, but before I post my third blast from the past I have to share this first for me that happened just an hour ago.

I was driving through McDonald’s when Owen decided he had to pee…BAD. He was crying and wiggling all over his seat. I did NOT him to pee on my leather seats, knowing I would not be able to get a towel for another 5-7 minutes (YUCK!). I did what any mother of boys would do in such a situation. I grabbed my mostly empty venti-sized Starbucks cup from this morning, flung the top off, shoved my arm and the cup toward the back seat and waited for Owen to quickly get his britches down. Funny thing is, he knew exactly what to do! Without even telling him, he hopped over to the cup and gladly filled it up. Without thinking much about it (clearly), I rolled my window down and poured the contents onto the McDonald’s drive thru flowers!

Apparently I Know How To Shoot A Gun! (**originally posted on September 23, 2009**)

I just realized, I don’t think I’ve posted anything about the squirrels that have been terrorizing my attic, roof, and my sleeping habits for the last month!!!  It all started while Josh was continuing work on the addition onto the back of our house.  Not exactly sure what he was thinking, but he left some major holes open that lead right into our attic.  The holes were safe from weather elements, but clearly not from squirrels.  I began hearing squirrels in our attic right above the master bedroom.  My dear hubby insisted that I was either hearing things, or I was simply hearing them running around on the roof.  However, he was finally present one night as the squirrel began gnawing away at who knows what right above our bed!  That weekend, he closed up all holes from our construction project.  A few days went by and we thought we had conquered the squirrel problem.  Boy were we wrong.  I began taking the squirrel invasion very personally.  I mean, come on!  I pictured President Obama having a sit down talk with my neighborhood squirrels.  It went something like this:

“Look guys, you have every right to be in the Wilkerson’s attic.  Every squirrel deserves to birth their babies into a cozy corner in someone’s attic.  It doesn’t matter that you aren’t welcome, you haven’t purchased space in their attic, and you’re destroying their home in the process.  As an American squirrel, it is your right to occupy attic space.  Go for it fellas!”            

Somehow they found a new way in.  I began hearing them above the laundry room, above the boys room, and even above the living room!  Of course Josh read online that squirrels usually have babies in August and September!!  LOVELY!

I began posting things on facebook, hoping for some good advice…or at least a good BB gun we could borrow!!  Last Friday, when I brought the boys to my parent’s house, my dad gave me his .22 caliber pellet gun with a brand new cansiter of pellets.  I was SO excited!!  On Saturday, Josh climbed up into the attic as soon as we heard the gnawing and scampering.  He sat patiently, waiting for a good target.  He fired a few times, pretty convinced that he had at least hit it once, but obviously not a fatal injury because it ran off.  Later that day…still more scampering in the attic.   By that time, Josh had gone to run errands and I was NOT about to climb into the hot attic with a loaded gun that I hadn’t the slightest idea how to use!

I have stood patiently in the front and back yards many days, hoping to see where in the world it is that they’re still getting in!  Never any luck. 

Yesterday, I was fired up.  I heard those darn squirrels above my kitchen and I knew they were on the roof so I RAN out the back door in hopes of seeing how they keep getting into my attic.  There were two squirrels, right there, staring at me!  They didn’t even budge!  These things are clearly way too domesticated.  They were bobbing their tales up and down and making strange noises.  I couldn’t tell if the noises were being made to each other or directed at me?  Eventually they ran to the other side of the house…right to the corner of the roof above my master bedroom.  I had a feeling that was where they built their nest, and momma squirrel was now guarding her territory.  I stood there for a long time and the squirrel never moved.  She kept her perch right there above my bedroom.  Suddenly, I became empowered.  I looked that squirrel right in the eye and ran into the house to grab a handful of pellets and the gun.  Much to my surprise, the squirrel was right where I had left it.  I loaded the first pellet and began pumping the gun.  Hmm, I wonder how many times I’m supposed to do this?  I pumped and pumped and pumped until the handle would hardly close…probably about 15 times in all.  That’s probably enough!  I aimed steady as I closed one eye, looked through the cheap scope thingy, waited, waited, and then POP!  Just like that, the squirrel was gone in an instant.  I’m 99% sure I hit it.  FIRST SHOT…IN MY LIFE!!  I was SO excited!  I ran to the side of the house and jumped up into the boys’ tree house to see if I could spot the injured squirrel.  Sure enough, it was still on the side of my roof.  Probably a bit stunned!  I sat there, reloaded the gun, in case it wanted more, and waited.  Some how while I waited, the squirrel moved and I could no longer see it.  Without even thinking, I ran around to the front of the house.  I didn’t even think before doing this.  It probably wasn’t the best idea to run through my front yard, sweating, holding what looked like a rifle!  But, hey, I wasn’t thinking clearly at this point.  I was a hunter!  I went back to the backyard and stood for a little while longer.  One of the boys came out back at one point and I quietly told him to get back inside and stay there.  I can only imagine what he was thinking as he saw Mommy in his treehouse with a gun pointing at the roof?! 

I looked all around, through the trees, trying to spot a squirrel.  Nothing.  BUT, I did hear squirrel noises and the occasional nuts or acorns hitting the ground around me.  For a brief moment, I was a bit paranoid.  As if there were squirrels up there in the trees aiming at me with their cheeks full of nutty ammunition.  I felt a bit like Matthew McConaughey in Failure to Launch when he got bit by a cute little chipmunk and then attacked by a sweet dolphin…as if all of nature was involved in a plot against him!  Stupid, I know. 

I finally went back inside.  I was so invigorated by my sudden take action attitude and accomplishment.  I even called my Daddy and left him a message on his cell phone.  I’m sure he smiled as he listened to me explain how I put his gun to good use.  Only in the south!  🙂

It has now been 24 hours and we have yet to hear another squirrel.  It just started raining, or I would go sit out back and just watch and listen for a little bit.  I hope the other neighborhood Obama squirrels take note and stay off my property…or they will end up with a pellet in their butt just like their buddy who chose to shack up in my attic for the last month.

I hope you enjoyed my squirrel adventure.  If any squirrels return to the Wilkerson home, I will be opening my back yard as a free shooting range.  I wonder if that would be okay with my sweet elderly neighbors…or the three cops that live down the street… 

…probably not. 

~audrey

You know, I think I got a headache just re-reading this post. You have to read the whole thing or you just don’t quite get the full effect of how much drama you can cram into one 24 hour period.

Enjoy!

…….Wax, Floods, and Flour (originally posted 03/02/2009)

Let me start by saying, I have never had such an eventful 24 hours in my life. It all centers around my mischievous little 20 month old. I’ve never had to baby-proof before. My kids just seemed to know better than to touch something like a glass vase or stick something in an open electrical socket. I guess I had more time to show them right from wrong back when I only had two kids.

Anyways, I had to stay home from church yesterday because Jesse was running a fever. I really needed to spend some time on the house because we had a home-study scheduled with our foster agency at 3pm, so it worked out well for me to stay home. Josh was getting Joshua ready to go to church with him when I realized that I hadn’t seen or heard Owen in a while. You see, Owen has unfortunately mastered the art of opening doors, so no room is off limits anymore and we have to watch him like a hawk. I ran to the hall bathroom expecting to find him swirling a toothbrush in the toilet or maybe playing with the water under the faucet. What I found was infinitely worse!!! Owen had some how gotten into my cosmetic wax. You know, the kind that your hair stylist uses to wax your eyebrows?? It was stored (at room temperature) with the top on, but even when cool, it is sticky and soft. It was all over him, from head to toe. Not only that, it was all over the boys’ training potty, my tile floor, my beautiful black rug, and a brand new pair of jean that Jesse had left on the bathroom floor. I was dumb-founded. I hadn’t the first idea how in the HECK I was going to remove all of this wax, which has the consistency of rubber cement…but thicker. Owen was literally stuck to the floor. One of his hands was stuck in his hair and when I was finally able to pull his shirt off, I think I got a clump of his hair with it. This stuff was such a sticky mess, even the bottom of my feet were now sticking to everything that I stepped on, so I could not leave the bathroom until I had cleaned my feet off too! I immediately called one of my best friends, who also happens to be my hair stylist. She said to use OIL!! Oil would break up the wax and allow me to clean up the disaster area. The only oil I could think of was my cooking oil. Josh brought me the large bottle of canola oil from the kitchen. By this time I had placed Owen in the tub…and now he was stuck there. I started with his hair and slowly worked my way down his body all the way to his sweet itty bitty toes. Luckily he had a diaper on or we may have ended up in the ER! YIKES! Owen was all greased up, and at this point, I was tempted to throw him in the frying pan!! LOL! It took quite a bit of Dawn dish soap to get all of that oil out of his hair. I think my cuticles will be soft for the next six months! Two and a half hours later, I had thrown several of our belongings in the trash and finally cleaned up the last of the wax.

Then I had to move on to the rest of the house before 3pm. Three o’clock came and went and the lady never showed up for the home study…VERY FRUSTRATING!! The rest of my Sunday was uneventful.

As many of you know, Mondays are one of my favorite days of the week. Today I started my morning off with some coffee and packed the kids up so we could take my brother-in-law to school. Right before I walked out the door, I started a load of laundry. When I pulled back into my driveway about 30 minutes later, I knew something was terribly wrong. My driveway has a dip in it before you pull up to the garage. The dip was flooded and the water had SUDS!!!!! Oh my Lord, the washer overflowed!!! I don’t even remember getting any of the kids out of the car, yet somehow they all made it in safely…YES, I spent the next two hours emptying the garage and using a carpet cleaner to suck all the water off the floor. The washer and dryer are in the garage, in case you didn’t figure that out, and the garage floor has berber carpeting..we don’t actually park the car in it. What a mess! Luckily, only a small amount of water got into my kitchen; and luckily, it is sunny out and a little breezy today, so with the garage door and the back door both open, the cross draft should air the place out by the end of the day. Seriously, what else could go wrong?? After emptying the water bin in the carpet cleaner for the hundreth time, Joshua poked his head into the garage and said, “OWEN DUMPED POWDER EVERYWHERE!” What am I going to do with that kid??? I ran into the house thinking Owen had gotten the baby powder and dumped some on the carpet in the living room, which is where I keep the powder, wipes, and diapers. Once again, I was wrong! He had gotten into the pantry and vivaciously emptied an entire new box of corn starch and a bag of flour. My kitchen looked like a winter wonderland. At this point, I was laughing because I thought, “Seriously Lord?? What next?? Is this some kind of test or a sick joke??” I was laughing because there were little footprints in the powder leading all over the house. Then there were white handprints on the couch, carpet, and pillows. And on the couch was my sweet, “innocent” toddler holding his tigger and his blanket, probably hoping that I would spare his life for the second time in 24 hours. I picked him up and put him in his room, shutting the door behind me, I told him to STAY! I cleaned up that mess too and now, every time I throw something in the trash, it is followed by a cloud of white dust as it hits the bottom of the can. Some how after all of these misadventures, we’ve had a great Monday. I’ve learned to take these events with a grain of salt (and preferrably a margarita!). I certainly could have had a fit, yelled at Owen, and sat down in my floury mess and cried, but instead, I kept on truckin. I fed the kids lunch, put Owen in bed for a nap, made a grocery list and menu for this week, and sat down to do school with the boys. Now here I am, in desperate need of a shower, but I survived the first half of my day and now I’m taking the time to tell you about it with the hope that the next time you have “one of those days”, you’ll choose to laugh and let it roll off your back. It could be a lot worse!

~audrey

Ashley let me borrow a great new book. It’s called, How Do You Tuck In A Superhero?. It’s a quick and easy read, full of stories from a mother of five boys that will make you laugh until tears are running down your cheeks and you have to cross your legs (if you’ve had kids, you know why you’re crossing your legs!!). Most of the laughter comes from the stories that you can most relate to because your kids have been there and done the exact same thing.

I started blogging in 2007, but my husband didn’t design my website until 2009, so a lot of my old posts are still on Blogger. With the busyness that is the last week of school, and in honor of this hilarious book I’m reading about mothering boys, I’ve decided to post some of my favorite stories from the last several years of blogging. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed re-living them as I read through the pages of archives. The first story is from January 10, 2008:

Plant Your Baby, Watch Him Grow
It was yet another frazzled evening of getting home late, rushing to get dinner started and making sure the boys were settled in front of the TV…but I’m getting ahead of myself…

As I unlocked the front door with Owen (in his carseat) fast asleep on my left arm, I turned the TV on for the boys and plopped Owen down near the front door. I rushed to the kitchen with my cape flapping behind me as I morphed into Wonder Woman and began simultaneously cooking supper, doing laundry, unloading the dishwasher, and checking school folders. About ten minutes into my duties, I heard a crash from the living room. Being the overly concerned and protective mom that I am (do you sense my sarcasm???), I yelled, “WHAT WAS THAT??”…**crickets chirping** no response from the living room. I ran into the living room to see what caused the noise, only to find Joshua and Jesse sitting nicely on the couch watching their cartoons. Suddenly my head jerked to Owen, still strapped in his carseat on the floor by the front door. Owen was five months old at the time and was exploring just how far he could reach while strapped into his seat. When he woke up, he was able to get ahold of one of the vines of my spider plant, which is on a plant stand about three and a half feet tall. He must have pulled hard, because Owen was black and looked like he was wearing some sort of Halloween prop on his head (that would be the plant upside down!) My knee jerk reaction was to grab the carseat and tip it upside down as to get all the soil off of Owen. I then removed him from the seat and did the best I could to clear his eyes, nose, and mouth of any remaining potting soil. Right then and there, I stripped down to nothing and put Owen in the bath with me. Of course my husband wasn’t home from work yet… that would have been way too much to ask! Needless to say, I got Owen all cleaned up in time for me to make it to a nursery committee meeting only 10 minutes late. I did however, leave the HUGE mess in the foyer for my hubby to clean up when he got home. And unfortunately for Owen, he had black nose and eye boogers for about three days and my plant has never been quite the same.

~Audrey

Did your momma ever tell you, “Be careful honey. You become like the company you keep.”?

Ashley and I were just talking recently about a friend of hers that she chose to stop hanging out with. Not because she didn’t like her or because they didn’t have anything in common, because that’s wasn’t the case at all. She made the tough decision based on a few things that the other girl esteemed highly in her life and Ashley did not. She knew that if she hung out with her regularly, she would surely be influenced by her. I was so impressed and encouraged by her decision. It is so incredibly true, and unfortunately, most of the time we do not make that hard choice and instead continue to subject ourselves to standards lower than we should. Would you have hung out with your future husband in a strip club while you were dating, just so you could spend time with him? Would you allow your children to play with children who had foul mouths and hit your kids, just so you could spend time with their sweet momma, who happened to be your friend? Then why do we do it to ourselves?

I’ve come to realize recently, just how much people change as we grow into adulthood and choose new circles of influence. My ten year high school reunion is in the fall and I will likely be a completely different person to those who haven’t seen me since graduation. It’s just a fact of life; people change.

This became more evident to me this weekend as I went to my friend’s bridal shower. The shower was in a new, million dollar neighborhood, and most of the close friends in the bride’s life right now have husbands or fiances who are doctors, dentists, lawyers, or are merely a year away from one of these professions. They are very career focused and many of their conversations center around their houses, neighborhoods, job opportunities, or upcoming vacations. Please don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. But everything seemed so shallow. To be honest, I tried to keep to myself without being rude. The last thing I wanted to do was gain attention by someone asking about “all my children” and “how I do it” and “bless your heart, what a good thing you’re doing”. All the while, I’m thinking to myself, in my circle of friends, I’m NORMAL!. I’m a stay-at-home mom. No career. No crystal. No china. No extravagant weekends. But I love my life. I love having three (or six) children. I love homeschooling. I love that my husband does what he loves for a family-friendly company where he can go in late because his son has a recital or a doctor’s appointment.

So why do I leave company like that feeling inadequate? Why do I allow their different choices and different lifestyles make me feel like my choices and my lifestyle is wrong? Most of those girls love the Lord just as I do and one day will have a few, or even several, children of their own. I suppose deep down there is jealousy and a bit of pride. But most of all, I yearned to cross back over the tracks to my middle class neighborhood and my house full of kids, whom my husband so lovingly sat with so I could spend five hours with my mom.

I hope that if the Lord chooses to bless us with abundant finances one day, our conversations will not waver from God’s goodness and what is truly important in life. Our stuff does not define us. I am a child of God. I am royalty! Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves. 🙂

~audrey