A Few Of The Joys In My Life

I ran across this quote on another person's blog a while back.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

~Mark Twain

Isn't it just the greatest quote!?

I think it sums up our family so well. Whatever gave us the fortitude to go forward in enlarging our family the way we did with adopting our Liberian children,I do not know.

How did we ever have the courage to "throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your (our) sails" I do not know. I am a wimpy coward most of the time.

No I do know...I know it was the Lord.

Most who know us would not have thought this would be our life.They are SO right!This isn't us.That is one of the things that make me laugh at times. This large family thing is just SO from the Lord.

The funny thing is even after we have come out of the last few years of adjustments etc... and seen God do amazing things I can still forget how to step out in faith and see God work in more current areas of my life. Maybe it is a little like the disciples who had seen first hand Jesus doing mighty miracles but still had many doubts.

There are still things that hold me back from jumping head first into my new mom of a large family privileged role . I still feel like I hold myself at arms length emotionally at times.

I still feel that my 'need' for the pieces of my life to all fall into a orderly place affects life around here.

I sometimes feel that God has dug miles and miles into my inner hidden fleshly self and trimmed,clipped,pruned, and majorly uprooted more yuck that I'm sure there can not be anymore. Then there are other days when I am sure he has only been using a teaspoon and dug no more than a few inches because I can feel the yuck of my selfish self oozing out.I beg him to just rip it all out all at once so we can move on.God has his plans and his timing even with character growth.

So why is this blog post called A Few Of The Joys In My Life?

Because I get beautiful flowers



from a very sweet boy



and I hear things like "I could eat 30 of these" over a meal that really did not turn out very well.

(New recipe.looks good but did not taste good. Who puts oatmeal in pancakes anyway.Way too healthy for my white flour taste buds)



And I overhear conversations like this "Dad,the Ferengi really do not obey the Bible because they steal..." Sorry Quark.The kids call them as they see them.



See sometimes the small details I almost missed make me see life is good.

Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy