If you're a bird, I'm a bird

This is a blog post that has been burning inside. I do not know how else to get it out besides making a post. “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.” ‭‭Psalm‬ ‭68:5-6‬ ‭NIV‬‬ Several months ago, around June, I saw a post on facebook from Focus on the Family sharing information about Wait No More . I clicked on it and it led me to another website DSS: Heart Gallery-South Carolina where there are foster children available for adoption. There were pictures of children, a bio, and a short video. I scrolled through the gallery pictures. One stood out to me the most. A 15-year-old boy in South Carolina. Immediately, I felt a connection to him. For some reason, I felt drawn to the process of adopting a teenager, local through foster care. My thoughts, they are older, they may be out of hope thinking they’re least likely...

I am sitting in the public library to get out of the house and get some tasks accomplished; this blog post for one. Sometimes it is easy to get distracted at home. You see something that needs to be done or you want to watch an episode on Netflix or just lay in bed. It is hard to get silence with radio, television, children asking questions non-stop. Have you realized how weird it is to drive without the radio? It is such an odd void. I know this because my husband's car's radio is broken so there is an awkward silence when I drive it. I was hoping to come here to the library to be more focused for this blog. Even at the library I can't get silence. There is a table of three women whispering at a table. Not sure why they don't just don't get a table at a coffee shop or a restaurant so they can talk at normal tones and avoid annoying the patrons around them. I decided to delete the apps that occupy most of my time, my favorite platforms.  I asked myself how an...

I know this post is going to be lengthy and I have been wanting to write it, but the task seems daunting because I don't want to leave anything out and want to express myself fully. I'm trying to remember when I started feeling moved to try out the minimalism philosophy. I think we were living in our December-May rental. Prior to that rental we were in a 1,315 square foot house next door. Our neighbors moved and we moved into their two-story 2,081 square foot house. We actually made an offer on the house, but the whole process fell through, which ended up being a good thing. So instead of buying the house, we got to try it out and I found (and Joseph probably did too), that it was not the house for us. The house was sooo spread out, which I thought was a good thing at first. A l l  t h a t  r o o m. Our 2 & 4 year shared a room like they had in the previous house. Our 16-year old exchange student had his own room upstairs, who we never saw. Laundry room was upstairs...

We sold our house in Athens, GA July 2014. We've been renting in Beaufort, SC since July 2013. When we moved here we had intentions of buying eventually. Maybe not right away, but eventually a "forever" home. We tried to buy our neighbor's house in December to help them out because they had already been stationed somewhere else. I had just returned to teaching so my salary had increased. The house appraised for less than what they were asking so we could only get a loan for the appraisal amount. They were asking $200,000. The house is over 2,000 square feet, two story, private back yard, no mature trees, large and open. We ended up renting it from the neighbors since we gave our current landlord a notice so we needed a place to live. We are kind of glad we had the opportunity to "try out" the house before we purchased. We have found that we do not care for two-story houses right now. The kids do fine with stairs so that isn't a concern. We joke abo...

It has been so long since I have written a post. A lot has happened in the last few months. I'm actually home from work with no voice today. In November, I accepted a 7th grade math position. Today marks my 3-month anniversary at that job. Some days are better than others like any other job. I like that I teach the same lesson 4 times a day for an hour at a time. The kids rotate out and I get a fresh start every day. I like that I do not have to deal with tattling. Going up to middle school was a good change for me. I have inquired about my middle certification and a math add-on from the SC Department of Education. I am not under a contract now and the school isn't required to offer me one for 2016-2017 year. Before I left my part-time job at the granite store, I applied for a position in Colorado for English Language Institute China and I sent my resume to the boarding school in China that I taught in 14 years ago. I didn't even tell anyone because only if I was offere...

I've always been fascinated with dreams. I've prayed that God would give me the gift of interpretation like he did Joseph in the Bible. I've owned a dream journal and dream dictionary in the past to look up adjectives and nouns from my dreams. Never gained a whole lot of insight from them though. Similar to the green snake in my dream I found out that most of our dreams included things we thought of or saw in our waking day.  I was getting ready to say that I haven't thought about snakes recently, but just remembered that my neighbor told me about a huge dead snake in the road at the entrance of our neighborhood 5 days ago and I've thought about it since.  In my dream, snakes were curled up and stretched out everywhere. They would appear and disappear under furniture. One did strike at me and bite me as I was running by it. I was so paranoid-standing up on furniture, afraid to walk anywhere, looking over my shoulder and under my feet constantly. I ...

I remember sucking my two middle fingers when I was a kid. I was old enough to remember so I was old enough. I also bit my fingernails. My parents used a nasty tasting polish to paint on my nails and took my skating doll away when I sucked my fingers. They put her up in the closet. I remember I was determined to get her back so I put my fingers under my pillow and didn't do it again. As a 4th grade teacher in Athens, there was a girl in my class that still sucked her thumb. Her nail was mildewed and bumpy from being wet all the time. This is when Lincoln decided he prefered his fingers over a pacifier When Lincoln came out of my womb, he had a hickey on his arm from sucking it while he was waiting to come out. So when he started sucking his fingers a few weeks old, it didn't surprise, especially since I sucked the same two fingers myself. THEN Lincoln discovered satin tags on blankets, stuffed animals, and clothes. He rubbed the tags on his lips and nose. It co...