My brown eyed girl

Five years ago today she was born to a mother who willing chooses to live on the streets of Houston.A missionary group from YWAM found her three weeks later at 2:30 in the morning on her mother's lap sitting on the street.
The mission field that YWAM is called to in Houston is the Montrose area of town.There teenagers and young adults have chosen an alternative lifestyle,selling their bodies for drugs just hanging out and living a life that most of us would run from.YWAM has set up a rescue system for the babies born to these "street kids".There are safe houses for the babies to go to, to get them off the street and out of the hotel rooms, and away form the drugs and sex...if even for only one night.We were asked to house such a baby, a little girl who had no where else to go.Little did we know it was because she as a "problem baby"...she cried a lot. We were hemming and hawing...right up til they sent us the email,yep the email with the picture of the big brown eyes that had the cutest baby surrounding them.I think it was 12 hours later that we were driving to a mall parking lot to pick up our little visitor.What was supposed to be a few days turned into weeks and then months. After two years the birth mother requested to see her twice and showed up once.

Now here we are 5 years later after sleepless nights, eczema,temper tantrums,home studies,social worker interviews,one very tense day in court plus more laughs than we could ever count, our family (as far as we know)is complete.

So happy birthday baby girl! If nothing else know that you are loved and to us you are love...my beautiful,intelligent, brown eyed girl

Treadmills and Such

We went to the gym a few weeks ago, me and my girls. Yep we hit the gym to start the New Year off right! They got to the machines a little before I did and were up and going as I climbed onto my new death machine of choice. They both run on treadmills and were several rows in front of my elliptical runner. I turned my IPOD on and started off a killer pace. As my oxygen ran short I began to notice some interesting things. The first was that even from behind you can tell my girls are related, not that they are identical but there is just a certain synchronicity to their movements. They each have different running styles but there is a grace they share that is hard to define but easy to see. They each have strong purposeful strides that they seem to be able maintain for ever. Then as my oxygen levels dropped even lower I began to see this trip to gym as a metaphor for our lives. My girls are growing up and moving on. they no longer need to hold my hand or even be next to me as they learn new things and just get on with their lives The cool thing I noticed was that we were still going the same direction and that as they finished one exercise they came back to see me and let me know what they were doing next and to chat for a bit before they moved on to their next exercise. This also mirrors our life, they no longer need me to make all the decisions for them, but they do come back to keep me posted and to touch base. You know what? Our lives are changing but it' gonna be OK. Sometimes I miss my girls but I love the women I see them becoming. So I guess as long as I can still see my brown eyed girls,even in the distance all is right in my world!