Thankful

 This year was my 5th Thanksgiving here in Mexico.  If you had asked me what my "5 year plan" was as I was graduating college, I never would have said that I'd live in Mexico for 5 years but hey - who knows what is best for us?  I'm pretty convinced that God has better ideas for our lives than we do.  We just need to say YES when He asks us to commit to something or serve somewhere - whether it's big or small - God knows what is best.

So here is an ode to what I'm thankful for:

I'm thankful for my parents.  I'm thankful for all the ways you took good care of me and made sure that I always had my needs met.  I'm thankful for the trips to Wet'n'wild mom and for your example of someone who had decided to put God as a priority in your life - through your career, your free time, the way you spend your money, and through all your battles with the giant football of cancer God placed in you.  Dad thank you for driving me to school for years and for making all my sports such a big deal.  Thank you for being such a die-hard Gator and teaching me that Florida State is a girls school.  SEC for life!  right dad?

I'm thankful for my extended family.  I'm thankful for all my grandparents - from Canada and West Virginia with all your accents and different family traditions.  Thank you for caring about me, encouraging me and providing for my college education.  Grandma Jones - thank you for sharing our family history with me, for playing board games with me, taking care of me when I was sick, picking me up from pre-school and hosting all the sleep-overs that Laura and I ever wanted.  Thank you for deciding all those years ago that our family didn't need Christmas presents but that we needed to be generous and grateful for all that we already have.

I'm grateful that God so clearly called me to live and work here in Mexico.  I'm thankful for Campus Crusade for Christ that led me to meet Alex who brought me here to Mexico that first time. I'm grateful for the 7 boys that he has put in my life.  I've always wanted to adopt.  But my boys aren't adoptable.  They live in orphanages, without family, without attention - abandoned by their families and by this society.  But on days like Thanksgiving - I'm grateful that I get to be their "mom" even though legally they will never get a shot at a family.

Thanksgiving day my boys had another soccer game.  Up until Thanksgiving, they hadn't won a game and it was starting to eat them up and fill them with anger.  But on this day, not only did we win - we beat the best team in the league.

After the game, we ran on the field just screaming.   My boys said, "Caroline!!! God answered our prayers!! He heard what you said!!!! We finally won!!!!"  At bedtime, we almost always pray for their games to not be canceled, for them to play like a team, and to win.  We always thank God for their soccer coach and for Enrique who paid for all the league fees so they can play.  They've NEVER had the opportunity to play in a league before so this is a BIG deal and you better believe we are thankful.

Right after their game, we went to Back2Back's property for a good ole American thanksgiving dinner with about 200 people.  We had some mission teams here with us that week, all our 50 some staff members and the 50 orphans who live with our staff.  

Miguel loved the conversation questions on the table.  Beth is pretty infamous for these dinner table questions.  Mikey really enjoyed asking everyone what 3 wishes they'd ask for if they could have 3 wishes.  He mostly wants to win his soccer games and go to a professional soccer game and have his favorite team win lots of games.  Notice a theme?

If you've ever wanted to know what a good Mom looks like - wonder no more.  Pictured here in the stripes is Sammy.  She's an awesome mom and together, her and I share the responsibility of mothering our 7 boys.


I'm also thankful for everything that I once took for granted that makes America great - as awful as many including me might claim our public education system is - it's FANTASTIC and I'm proud to say that I'm a product of American public schools - elementary, high school and college.  I'm grateful for our judicial system, for our social services, postal service, public libraries, right to vote, our interstates and the abundance of clean water.

In this season of commercialism, American greed, spending money we don't have for things that we don't actually need but rather want - I want to be thankful.  I want to ask myself what I can give rather than get.

Happy Thanksgiving

Tip of the Iceberg

Sometimes my 11 year old kids throw tantrums for hours and hours at a time like a 2 year old would for reasons that a normal sane person couldn't pinpoint.  Sometimes my kids get behavior reports from their principal for tantrums they throw at school.  Sometimes my kids break windows or throw chairs.  Why?  There are probably a million reasons but the majority of them have to do with trauma from events or abuses in my boys' pasts.  Each of my 7 boys comes from a hard, difficult, and painful past.  One might think that if something happened to a child at the age of 2 or 3 or 4 years old that they'd be "over it" by the time they are in 6th or 7th grade.  Well that's just not true.

The current behaviors that I see in my boys everyday are just the tip of the iceberg of what pain and hurt they harbor inside from their past.  I find myself struggling everyday to keep this in mind when I want to come down hard on certain behavioral outbursts they display.  The truth is - my boys need connection and encouragement and a helping hand instead of a lecture. They have NO self confidence. They need a hug instead of punishment.  This to me feels unbelievably counter-intuitive.  They scream at me and throw things at me and honestly the last thing I want to do in moments like that is get on my knees to get unthreateningly below their eye level, speak with a low-calm voice and tell them how smart and handsome and intelligent they are and that this current behavior is not a true reflection of the "real boy" on the inside that I know exists. 

 My precious, handsome, smart little guys are just a fraction of who God created them to be and how he created them to thrive and process information because of trauma from their early childhood years.  Beth Guckenberg has a video where she describes this.  click here to -- > check it out on youtube

At the end of the day, God is the only rock upon which I can stand.  There is nothing God can't do.  He holds the oceans in the palm of his hand.  Jesus came to heal, restore, and repair.  In Matthew 10:8 Jesus commanded his disciples to spend their lives "healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, and casting out demons."  My boys need Jesus to enter into the dark places of their past and restore them, repair their trust, and heal their wounds.  And in the meantime, I'm pretty sure they are going to keep throwing things and getting called into the principals office - so what?  I know that is not who they are - they are just hurt right now.  Somebody needs to come and pick them up.  God grant me the energy, patience, passion and power to help these boys heal and grow.

Pray for us.  Pray for restoration.

Do you Sponsor a Child through B2B?

For the past several years, I've been involved with Back2Back's Child Sponsorship program here in Monterrey.  What started with just one child has now grown to provide funding and relationship for almost 300 children in Mexico, India and Nigeria.

To those of you who do sponsor kids - thank you - thank you for helping us provide better round the clock care for the kids we serve.  Thank you for praying for your kids.  Thank you for the letters you send.  Thank you for the photos you send.  Thank you selecting that specific child out of the hundreds so that your child knows that he/she is important and valued.  Thank you for believing in them.

Several times a year, I sit down with a whole bunch of kids to help them write letters to their sponsors.  And I'll be 100% honest with you - when they receive a letter from you - when they hear that you are praying for them, that you believe in them, that you remembered them, that you got their letter, they are THRILLED and they just light up.  Your letters mean so much to these kids.  I know many children who own nothing - they have nothing to call their own - except for the letters or gifts that their sponsors have sent down.  You open up their one drawer and all you find is letters and photos from their sponsor family - literally.  But when they sit down to write to you and you haven't sent them a letter - many of them feel forgotten.  So please - write to your child.  Email a Back2Back staff member your letter if you forget.  And I saw this today on the Compassion blog for ideas for what to write in your letters to your kids and it's AWESOME.  check it out --->  http://blog.compassion.com/20-letter-writing-prompts-you-can-use/