The Dream Come True
On Monday, as long as we find favor with the judge, three children will officially become Smiths. Over four years we have been on this journey, and there have been many significant moments in the midst of those four years as we have celebrated life and mourned death. We have expanded in some areas and retracted in others. We have simply become new, different, transformed people. We went from possibility to actuality.
In order to put in perspective what happens in four years here’s a short list:
I completed work on two Masters degrees.
We went from having four in elementary school to still having four in elementary school along with one in middle school and one in high school.
My 11 year old became a teenager, and my five year old became nine (lots of change there), and Kristi and I turned 40 (ouch).
My mother was diagnosed and the lost her battle with cancer, yet left us with a legacy of faith that will be impossible to forget.
Kristi’s grandfather lost his battle with age.
We went from adopting a boy and only a boy to a boy and two girls, from one to three.
We went from private Christian school to public school.
We went from three jobs to two, a working mom to a stay at home mom.
We went from four bedrooms to five, and from a minivan to a Suburban.
We went from none in diapers to one at night.
We went from times when the laundry hamper was empty to a perpetual laundry producing machine.
We went from having leftovers from dinner to barely having enough.
We went from three kids to six, two soccer teams to four, packing three lunches to six, from very little homework assistance to a lot, from kids who were at the top of the class to kids who are behind.
And I won’t even get into the change Kamri, Lucas, and Lilli have endured.
I stand in awe. How naive I was the morning I awoke to from a dream. All of this born out of the pursuit of a dream.
To God be the glory forever and ever, AMEN.
Hmmmm….I guess you’re never too young either.
I love the banjo! After this I think you’ll love it too.
Practice Makes Perfect
Practice makes perfect was a mantra in my household, and practice I did. I can remember shoveling snow off of the driveway, and eventually the basketball court out back, in order to shoot basketball. It could take twenty or thirty shots before the ball would fall through the frozen net without help. I would imagine being at the free throw line needing to hit two shots to win the game, or shooting half court shots at the buzzer. Sometimes I would even practice the celebration after one went in.
While I keep resisting the fact that I am getting older I am afraid that my basketball playing days will soon be behind me, sadly, but my kids still can play sports. One year my kids needed a soccer coach, and I knew very little about the game, but I was willing to learn. Now I enjoy playing and I even enjoy watching. I appreciate the technical difficulty of the game as well as the physical fitness necessary to play. Having five children all playing the sport I continually try to encourage them to practice. When I see a kid do what Iya does in this video I can only imagine how many hours went into perfecting each trick.
When I think about the effort it takes to draw near to the Lord, and how often when people need to experience His presence they struggle. Many times it’s because they expected to play the game of life without practicing life with Christ. We try to call upon the talent of faith without ever trying to perfect it. It’s like stepping up to the line with the game tied and time expired, but we’ve never shot a free throw before. What might we expect the result to be? Where in your life are you failing to practice?