Its the summer. I've been wanting to update this for so long, but just haven't been able to get here. Its tough. You think that no one is really watching, but then life comes crashing down and you wonder, is this a test, is someone there orchestrating all of this, or is this simply a matter of chance.
I always have high hopes for the summer. I always look forward to the opportunity to relax, be with my family, and maybe work on the house. At the same time, I make commitments to others to insure that I get work done, grow my business, make connections, etc... Then, when summer finally gets here, nothing works out like it was supposed to. (Bad grammar, I know, so sue me.) Moreover, since I live in a multigenereational house, I have a great desire to demonstrate that even though I am on vacation, I will accomplish house tasks so that the others who live here will not feel as though I am squandering my summer.
So then let me ask you....
If you knew you had a baby growing inside of you that had major problems and the doctors you counted on were giving you conflicting information, what would you do? It's important to trust your doctors, you need to have faith in their diagnosis, since it is their treatment you must endure if you are to advance towards healing. But if your doctors are in conflict, doesn't that suggest that there may be no healing? Perhaps in a no win situation, you wonder if the most likely outcome is to cause the least harm. People I care about are facing tough decisions in their future, but moreover, I believe that they face these decisions with blinders on.
Of course the truth is we are all blinded. We don't see things as they are, but we see them through our experiences. My daughter looks at everything as it brings happiness to others, while my other daughter looks at these same things as they bring happiness to her. Being a pessimist, I can only see the down side of all choices. Our past experiences shape how we view the world and although our eyes tell us the same things, our impulses, the fundamental connotations are all subjective.
On the bright side, these are the things that make life the most interesting. It is our differing viewpoints that create the intangible intricacies of human existence.
I fear pain. I fear a future with pain. I fear sadness and loss. I fear my brothers future will bring him sadness and loss. Moreover, I fear that although he is holding out hope for the future, he knows that the high road he walks will bring him to a place in life that will be difficult to walk.
As some of you know, I believe that God has brought me here with purpose, and although I came here with a clear understanding of what the purpose was, not two months after moving here, I found that God is not without an ironic sense of humor. So I have spent the past month lifting more weight than I ever thought I could. Exhausted, I was given an even larger burden to shoulder. Maybe I simply want this burden so that I can prove how strong I can be when necessary. Either way, this summer has been difficult. I have learned a few things.
First, being responsible for five children all under the age of eight and two of them in diapers is tough. You know that my last daughter is already a tough nut to crack. So when it became my responsibility to watch my niece, who must be the most easy going baby on the planet, I was presented with an interesting contrast. All this realy showed me is that my youngest daughter can not only reject me when my wife is around, but that she can be made to feel jealousy for the person that on a normal day she would simply offer abject indifference.
ADHD is real. I don't condone the use of drugs for children to make parenting easier (parents can have all they want ;) ) No one wants to admit that their child has problems, but sometimes when the symptoms are so obvious you just want to grab the parent and rub their nose in the evidence.
Five kids and two adults is the absolute maximum that can fit into a minivan and still have room for the stuff you need to keep them all happy.
Daycare teaches one baby how to keep another baby away from her stuff.
If there are three children all playing together in a bedroom, one of them will be crying soon and the other two are both responsible. Five minutes later, another one will be crying while the other two are responsible.
There I did it. I updated by blog with a bunch of random crap that is so nondescript no one will really know what has happened to me this month, but lets just say that June was quick and I fear that July will be even more challenging.
More soon I think.
