hey.

i’m trying out this new thing called blogging.  

ha.

i keep saying i’m going to do this and then i never do.  but finally i decided to hell with it.  i’ll write when i want to write about what i want to write.

so.

currently…

listening  to justin bieber’s new album  because, why not?

watching The Good Wife because i cannot get enough

eating nachos!  specifically the pioneer woman’s recipe.

drinking orange selzer with a splash of fruit punch.  hopefully it will curb my caffeine addiction.

wearing old navy sweat pants all day errday.

feeling tired.  maybe because i ran for the first time in forever this morning?  maybe because i have tiny children?  maybe because it’s the end of the year?

wanting hot chocolate. but my recipe is so rich that i gain a bazillion pounds with each mug full. so i guess i’ll wait until christmas eve.

needing a nap. but it’s almost school pick up time, so that will have to wait until tomorrow. or the next day. or the next…

thinking about all the goods and bads of 2015 and how i’m almost too tired to even begin to prepare for 2016.

enjoying time alone with the little’s nap time and the oldest’s school time.

Respite Redefined Episode 3: The Need for Community with Alli from @ourmisfitisle

It took me a bazillion years, but I finally figured out how to record an interview.  WOOO!  Where’s the celebration emoji when you need it???

(ALSO!  I’m officially putting in a call for anyone who is a million times more technical than I am to help me out here.  Because I know the sound quality isn’t that great.  But the content was, and I forced myself to stop stressing about perfectionism and decided that since what was said was so awesome I had to just go ahead and post it.  But help me out here.  Seriously.)

In this episode I’m joined by Alli from @ourmisfitisle where we talk all about community and its importance in our lives and how beneficial it will be in your life.  If you can’t find community in real life, then find it online.

Connect with Alli:  instagram  //  blog  //  shop (where she sells stuff to pay for Baby Bear’s formula, trips to the hospital, etc.)

RESPITE REDEFINED EP 2: I don’t know how you do it…

I KNOW.

I’m always sooooo late writing these shownotes.  Especially since I’ve got episode 3 already finished recording and I just need to edit it together and post it.  I’m trying to get better at this.  But I’m not gonna apologize anymore.  You just need to know by now that I’m a huge procrastinator.

Annnyyyywwaaayyyyy….

In this episode, you’ll hear me vent about the worst response I get when I say that we’re adopting.  What my response is, what I want it to be, and maybe what it should be.  Also we answer the question of why did we buy tickets to this crazy train?   

I don’t have many shownotes, except links to articles I read about the terribleness that is the Texas state foster care system. (I urge you to read and really listen to what they’re saying.)

• Fostering Neglect
• More foster homes are needed
• Closing the Gap:  Seeking Better Care for Foster Kids in Texas

There are over 100,000 kids in the foster care system. Find a way to get involved.

Connect with Respite Redefined on instagram {@respiteredefined} and twitter {@respiteredefine}.

Respite Redefined EP 1: The Pilot {Shownotes}

Guys I did it!!  And whew, was that hard.

As of today, Respite Redefined the podcast can be found on iTunes and all podcasting apps.  (Except Stitcher.  I can’t figure out how to get it on Stitcher.)  So feel free to listen to your heart’s content.

And please, if you like what you hear, share it with someone who might also like it.  Don’t be stingy.

In this first episode, you’ll hear the story of how Respite Redefined came to be, why the name, and my story of how we became fosteradopt parents.

• My favorite podcasts:  Around the Table, Inspired to Action, The Popcast, Elise Gets Crafty
• Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle site (because I have to link to the stupidity)
• A terrible definition of respite
• The Frosts’ “meet cute” story
• The Frosts’ adoption story

Connect with Respite Redefined on instagram {@respiteredefined} and twitter {@respiteredefine}.

Just Wait

I was all set out to bring back my Bold Intentions.  Because I haven’t done them in a while–on the blog or in my life.  Well, I take that back.  For the first time in 5 years of marriage, my husband and I are actually on the same page and have been doing three sets of Bold Intentions over the 2015 year.  But that’s a story for another time.

I haven’t really been doing a lot of personal goals.  I’ve been taking a lot of small steps, and I’ve definitely seen fruit (finally!) come from practicing discipline, but to me, those small steps are not the same as goals.

Here’s the thing.  There’s a lot going on right now about goal setting and doing work and chasing your dreams and getting your life plan and then planning it to action and then actually acting on it.  Everyone’s got dreams, right?  Everyone wants to be doing something more than what they’re doing right now.  Everyone has hobbies and passions and ideas and so now there’s a plethora of information about how to take one of those hobbies or passions or ideas and turn it into a goal and then turn it into a plan of action.  We wouldn’t want all those hobbies or passions or ideas to sit in the back of your mind without you doing nothing about it, right?  Because that’s the ultimate “sin,” isn’t it?  To not do something about it?

I’m coming up on a year of motherhood.  A year that I feel simultaneously relieved and anxious about because this has been a tragically hard (and terrific!) year and parenting has really only just begun.  At the end of a very easy first year of marriage, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “If this is marriage, we’ve got this in the bag!” and then fist bumped each other.  But at the end of this first year of parenting, we looked at each other and said, “If this is what parenting is…I’m going to need a nap.”  In the last five years of marriage this has most definitely been the hardest year–physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

So how am I supposed to be reaching these goals?  How do I turn a hobby into a plan of action?  How am I supposed to have an entrepreneurial spirit when my body aches from moving all the time?  How the hell do I get that bikini beach body the magazines tell me I need when I spend free time playing Old Maid?

I’ve been told many times by many people that if there’s a “trend” or something that a large majority of the population is doing or liking, I automatically won’t do it or like it purely to be different.  I’m not sure how true that is.  When there’s a large group of people doing something, I’m more likely to immediately question the communal thinking and then decide for myself.  It just so happens that oftentimes I decide differently.

Just like everyone else, I, too, have been swept up in this goal-making frenzy.  But instead of getting all excited and feeling my heart beat fast with nervous anxiety, I start to feel panicky.  My palms sweat.  I can’t catch my breath.  Homeostasis fails me.  And instead of questioning whether I should get caught up in the craze or not, I just allowed myself to make lists and charts and plans, thinking that that’s all I need to get my body to calm down.

Lately I’ve felt very much like a failure, in a lot of different ways.  I feel like I’m failing as a wife when my house isn’t clean or when my husband yearns for time with me and I don’t respond to him.  I feel like I’m failing as a mom when I feed my kids cereal for dinner because every.single.dish is dirty or when my youngest wants to snuggle but I don’t respond because there’s too much other stuff to do.  I feel like I’m failing as Caitlin when I get home and don’t do anything “for myself” (unless it’s Netflix after the girls are asleep) and if I do it’s not anything “productive.”  And then I feel like a failure when all I want is time for myself but I have three other people depending plus a dog depending on me for survival.

This morning I made a list:  All The Areas I Feel Like a Failure and Why and What Small Step I Can Take to Do Something About It.  And I wrote it all out.  And I decided I would write until my hand cramps and my mind can’t produce any more failing thoughts and I’d have it on paper with all my small steps and I would just work on those.  At the end I went over my list and realized that there were really three categories:  My Spirit, My Body, My Home.  There was no category labeled My Dreams, or My Goals, or Me Time.  It’s full of simple things like not talking to Jesus, not doing morning yoga, not cleaning my bathtub.  And when I lay it all out, as long as the list actually is–and it is long–it’s not overwhelming and it’s not really life-draining.  Actually, it’s just a list of life-giving things I should be doing on a regular basis.  Like washing dishes.  Folding clothes.  Cooking dinner.

So here’s my giant Bold Intention for the summer:  JUST WAIT.  I’m going to literally put every thing on hold–any passion, any goal, and hobby, any dream–and just wait.  I’m going to settle in my comfy chair in the mornings and pray.  I’m going to play Old Maid until I get one hundred paper cuts.  I’m going to scrub the dishes until I form callouses.  And I’m going to love all of it.  I’m going to enjoy every crumb I get to pick off the floor and every time I get to hold my husband’s hand.

And I’m going to pray for grace every time I begin to feel like I’m failing again.  Because of all the steps to take, I’ve got to get at least that one right.

Respite Redefined

I DID THE THING.

I realize that phrase most definitely has a million innuendos attached to it, and I’m already hearing Michael Scott’s “That’s what she said,” in my head.  So let’s all just take a minute to chuckle 12-year old style and then move on.

Okay.  Ready.

Because I totally did the thing.

I stole this phrase from my friend Mandi, because I’m a klepto like that and because I like it.  Because it takes a lot for me to just start something.  In fact, I never really know how to start.  I actually have no clue how to go out and do anything.  Really.

But for some reason, I did it.  And I have no idea how I did.  I just did.

And now I have my first ever podcast.

I was just really frustrated at there being a lack of something I truly needed.  An outlet to vent my frustrations about this whole foster-adopt process to.   Even if my venting goes on in my head while listening to a recorded voice.  I needed a podcast about things relatable to me.  A podcast where the speaker will make me laugh, and then cry, and then she’ll pick me back up and we can laugh again.  I needed someone who just gets it.

I am so hoping that I have created just that.  A place where you can come and listen and just get some much needed rest and a break from your life and for just a moment you can “talk” to someone who just gets it.

It’s not on the internets yet.  There are actually three versions of the first episode sitting on my phone right now because I have absolutely no idea how to do an intro or an outro.  But I have it.  And it’s really good.  Like, promise.

Watch out for it.  It’s gonna be good.

100,000

A couple weeks ago I saw through the instagram grapevine that this semi-famous blogger was going through the adoption fundraising process to adopt their next kid.  And I was like, Sweet!  This is great!  We need more of you!  But when I clicked over to her profile and read the blogpost that explained what they were doing, I just got so angry it was all I could do to not throw my phone across the room.

This is where I’m going to put a disclaimer and say that I understand a lot of what I’m going to say will make me sound like I think I’m better than people, or that I’m not sympathetic, empathetic, or I just don’t care.  If you talk to me in real life, I hope you know that’s not true of me at all, and that yes, what I’m about to ramble on about will seem at times to be completely irrational.  And to that I can simply only shrug my shoulders.

{via}

So this blogger-who-must-not-be-named is adopting their next kid through private domestic adoption.  Which means a pregnant woman is choosing to give up their baby to a family willing to take it and that waiting family must pay money to cover all these expenses in order to adopt a tiny infant.  And that’s why I’m mad.

For someone going on and on and on about how adoption is great and beautiful and how God is calling you to go out and adopt, why aren’t you guys adopting through foster care?   Why does everyone insist on adopting babies, or international children?  For that matter, why isn’t anyone adopting children with special needs?

{infographic using statistics in 2012}

On any given day in the US, there will be over 400,000 kids in the foster care system, with only about 100,000 kids eligible for adoption.  And then those kids usually have to wait 1-3 years before they’re adopted.

Do you know what can happen in 1-3 years?  A LOT.

I can’t help but look around and see all these people are prancing about raising money for their private or international adoption, when there are 100,000 kids sitting in some sort of foster home, homeless shelter, or group home.  Some are going to be reunited with birth parents.  Some will be adopted by a relative.  But so many others won’t be chosen for anything at all.  While birth moms are choosing to give their child to someone else, while people are buying t-shirts to support a friend’s domestic adoption, while there are fundraisers being held to raise money for international adoption, there are 100,000 kids who are not being chosen for anything.

100,000 kids.

Here’s the thing.  Adoption is awesome.  And it’s not.  It’s this big, beautiful tragedy all wrapped up that gives one of the most glorious pictures of life when you don’t stop to think about the tragedy that comes when children are born to one woman, but call another one mother.  Or, in most cases, they don’t get that chance at all.  Most foster kids end up becoming homeless, or having kids at a young age and continuing the cycle of abuse and neglect.

{statistics of children on AdoptUS kid website}

The bible tells us to take care of the homeless, the orphans, and to love our neighbor.  But why is it we can’t see that sometimes our neighbor is the homeless and the orphan.  Why can’t we see that all three of these things can actually be the same?  Why must we compartmentalize, and serve soup at a homeless shelter, donate toys for Toys for Tots, and have a neighbor over for a Barbeque.  Why can’t we recognize that there are children in our community who have no home, no family, and no one to take care of them.

I heard it once said from someone who adopted children from another country that the reason they chose international adoption is that even the poorest Americans are still rich, and that kids in different countries face so much more neglect, abuse, and tragedy than American kids do.

And then I got my two, beautiful, amazing daughters.  And learned that the statement above isn’t true at all.  My daughters have seen war, hunger, and death.  And it all happened one hour from where my husband and I were living.

There are so many foster kids that the state literally have a hard time placing kids in homes.  They have so many babies that they can’t find families for them.  Who wouldn’t want a baby, you ask?  People that are already caring for a dozen or so children.  It’s not that there aren’t people out there willing to help, it’s that there aren’t enough people to take on the burdens of 100,000 kids.  It’s because people want their tiny, perfect babies, or a picture-perfect trans-racial family.  It’s because people don’t know what to do with a 5 year old boy who has PTSD.  Or a 10 year old girl who still isn’t potty-trained.  Or a teen mom who still has no place for her or her baby to call their own.

Sometimes I just feel so alone.  While I know there are others out there (and I’ve met you all on Instagram) I just feel as if there’s no one that takes the time to understand that every child has the right to a family.  Every child has the right to be loved, to be safe, and to be healthy.  It can be so depressing to feel as if you live in your own little bubble, the plight of the nation’s kids constantly on your mind, while you have to keep reminding yourself that you can’t help 100,000 kids, but you can help these two.  You can be a parent to these two. You can love these two.

I just wish more of you would help out the other 98,000 kids out there.

On a side note, I have the genius idea of starting a podcast all about the foster care system, the process of adopting through foster care, and the joys (and frustrations) of motherhood to foster/adopted kids.  At least, I THINK it’s genius.  But tell me, how many of you would listen???

Obedience is the Most Important

There are some mornings when I’m reading my Bible, that I get a glimpse of a peacefully calm life where everything is peachy keen and I’m floating around wearing rose colored glasses with a dopey smile on my face.  Because that’s what God can do for you.  Let you know that everything is A-OK.  That time with him can be calming and peace-giving to your hectic soul.

But then there are mornings when I’m reading my Bible that God takes the ideas I’ve formed over the last 27 years and blows them up in my face.  I can see these ideals laying in a pile before me, and I see a grenade careening to the air hitting the pile with a thud the second before the mushroom cloud ascends and everything is obliterated to dust.  Because that’s what God can do for you.  He opens your eyes to see that while you didn’t necessarily have His Word wrong, you also didn’t see the bigger picture until that moment when he destroyed the old to make way for the new.

Like today.

Hebrews 5 talks all about how Jesus was called by God to be a High Priest; to die on the cross for my eternal salvation.  I’ve heard this a bazillion and one times every time I sit in a straight-backed church pew.

But what no one has ever told me before was that Jesus was in agony over his role in the Gospel.

I knew that He prayed to God the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane that He would be delivered from the cross.  Obviously that didn’t happen.  I really thought that’s all it was. A simple, “Do I have to?  Really?  Okay then, I’ll do it.”  I had no idea that he cried, he pleaded, he sent up prayers of agony that His Father would release him from His calling.  And God heard him.  And instead of releasing Jesus from death, He allowed Jesus to learn true obedience through His suffering.

That’s when it hit me.  Discipline, Suffering, and Obedience are not neat little ideas wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string to be given as presents.  No.  Instead they are abstract and complicated thoughts that have been put into a blender with the setting on high and have been pulsed so hard you can’t extract one without also pulling out the others.  I can’t have suffering without also learning obedience and discipline.  I can’t learn obedience without going through suffering and using discipline.  I will never be disciplined until I go through suffering and learn true obedience.

For Jesus, in this particular example, it was obedience to His ultimate calling.  He wanted out of what He had been preparing for for 33 years.  He didn’t want to suffer humiliation or death.

I hear a lot about this calling Jesus has placed on all our lives.  That we must obey the calling.  That we must go forth and do it.  That we must not be scared or use excuses but to know that He has called us for a reason.

And I believe it all.  But I also think that we’ve started captializing it and putting it on a pedestal and shrouded it with fog machines and stuck a spotlight on it and preached it so many times that the Calling gets all the focus and all the attention.

But what about the day-to-day?  What am I to do when God has Called me to His plan, but right now I still have to clean poop off the floor.  What do I do about my Calling when I spend 40+ hours a week in a classroom teaching students–a calling unto its own, but perhaps not The Calling.  What about those times when I’m being called but I literally don’t have a single dish, utensil, or pan that is clean in my house?  Do I pursue my Calling then?  Or do I pursue my latex gloves and a sponge?

It might sound a little crazy, comparing suffering through my daughter’s potty training to the suffering Jesus felt when He was told to go die for the world, but that’s what it is.  Suffering.  And perhaps spending three hours cleaning things that are just going to get dirty again isn’t going to save the world, but it is being obedient to my Jesus, who has called me to be a wife and mother alongside my other Calling.  And you might scoff at the bags under my eyes formed from getting up early every morning, because who isn’t tired, but to me I’m suffering from lack of sleep.  But I’m gaining discipline every time I obey God’s call to read my Bible.

I think this is something worthwhile to keep unpacking:  Obedience in the form of Suffering and Discipline.  And I’m starting to think all this talk about intentionality, discipline, and thriving in the midst of toddlerhood is overshadowing and belittling what is Most Important. Obedience in the day-to-day mundane.

 

The Art of Practicing Discipline

One thing that I’ve been praying for lately is discipline.

This may sound way too over dramatic, but there are some days where I feel as if the day has run me over and I am left sprawled on the pavement, my limbs spread out and bent at weird angles, blood coming out of my ear and pooling on the ground, and all I can do is wonder How the hell do I get up from here?

As I’m lying there on the rough concrete and let my mind do a quick flashback review of how I got to that point and I can almost always point it back to a lack of discipline.

I’ve always thought of discipline as “not cool.”  Like, if I want to fit in and be popular, discipline is not the attribute that I want to possess.  But now that I’m an adult, I see it being more terrifying than anything else.  It’s an attribute I so desperately want to attain, and yet it encompasses so many parts of my day–the big ideas and the minutiae–that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to have even a smidgen of it.  It’s too hard to fail at it, ergo, I shouldn’t even try.

But I know now that this is not true.  As I search my soul and my heart to determine what the most important things in my life are, I’m realizing that discipline is an absolute necessity if I want to be intentional in the areas that call for my present state of mind.

Here’s the thing, though, the Thing That Keeps Me From Getting Up:  What exactly is discipline and how can I attain it?

Because I recognize that I am a failure.  I will massively fail at discipline when I attempt to do it on my own.

But God.

But God lifts me up and gives me grace and shows me that spiritual discipline is merely forming a habit that will repeatedly point me back to Him.  Spiritual discipline involves having God–not me–in control of everything, and that all of my actions should continuously point me (and others) back to Him.  And with God, I literally can’t fail.  Because perfection can’t ever be attained.

I’m learning that everything can’t be important, and I’m finding that in the area of discipline the same holds true.  I have a list of a zillion different areas I crave to be disciplined in.  But I can’t do it all at once.  Being disciplined in some areas is more important {right now} than being disciplined in others.

For example, not making my lunch the night before means I’m rushing the next morning and I’m spending time doing a menial task instead of eating breakfast with my family.  It’s not the absence of a lunch I miss in the morning when I’m driving to work.  It’s the absence of spending time with my family, which is one of my Most Important Things.

And when I figure out what’s most important to my soul, {Family} and then I figure out what’s preventing me from making it actively important in my life {not making a lunch the night before}, that’s when I figure out the Most Important Disciplines I need to have right now.

So I’m practicing.  I’m practicing discipline every time I make a lunch after my daughters are in bed.  I’m practicing discipline every morning when I wake up before 5:45 in order to spend time with God.  I’m practicing discipline every Saturday when I make it a goal to do all errands and all cleaning so that I can relax with my family on Sunday.  I’m practicing discipline every night I get everything on my to-do list accomplished so that the hour before we go to bed I can spend that time intentionally talking to my husband.

And knowing that not everything is important is what gives me the courage to slowly get up off that pavement and start again.

Everything Can’t Be Important {Part One}

Lately, I’ve been learning what I’m identifying as the most important lesson I’ll ever learn in my life:

Everything can’t be important.

I’ve been getting caught up lately.  Caught up in being a wife, a mother, a teacher.  In goal setting, praying, dreaming, scheming, running, healthy eating, and so on and so forth.

How do you do it all?  Seriously.  How do you do everything?

I sat down one night in the middle of my laundry, sniffing each article of clothing to figure out if it were dirty or clean because we hadn’t done laundry in so long that I didn’t even know anymore and I just thought, “How do I create a laundry system?  Especially now that I’m working and mom-ing.  How do I wash my clothes when I also need to do all the other gazillion things in my life?”

That’s when it hit me.  Everything can’t be important.  Some things are more important than others.  .

So I did just that.  I identified what’s important.  Prayer is important.  God is important.  My kids are important.  My husband is important.  Having a liveable house is important.  Being a hard worker is important.  Getting healthy is important.  Actively being active is important.  Eating better is important.  Writing my book is important.  Writing book reviews is important.  Giving my husband time to go after his dreams is important.  Finding/Creating/Being in community is important.  Laundry is not important.

But even looking at that list makes me overwhelmed.  Look at how important all those important things are.  And that’s when my thoughts became a little more clearer.  I forgot to tack on a couple of sentences.

Not every important thing can have the same value.  Some important things will be more important than others.  And they will change with the season.

And when I think about that, everything becomes clearer.  Not even everything I deem as having high priority in my life can have the same level of priority.  Even in my list of important things there will always be some things more important than others.  And as the seasons continue, those things will begin to fluctuate and change.

I can’t do everything.

But that’s okay.  Because everything isn’t important.