trying to find humor in it all...

Tired and unshowered, I sit here trying to plan for this Friday's youth group lesson, desperately trying to find grace and patience with my youngest boy. As I'm typing away, he is sitting here on my lap whining and watching Netflix. I tried to put him down so that I could use the restroom but the whole time he just sat there crying, with my iPhone in hand. I found myself covering my ears and humming "Still", just so I could have a moments peace. These past few days have been nothing but nonstop crying (for no reason), refusing to eat (he's losing his cheeks!!) and pulling at my leg just so I would pick him up. Please don't get me wrong, I love to pick up my child and snuggle with them all the time. I love smothering them with kisses until they scream and squirm away. I understand Elon's pain and discomfort, but it goes on ALL day. Even a few times at 3am,4am,5am,6am....

Elon, my 18mo old has been running a fever since Monday night. We took him to the doctors and came back with "oh, it's just a summer virus, it'll go away on it's own" explanation. Obviously, an explanation like that does not appease a worrying mother's heart. I wish that I could do something more to please his discomfort. I've resorted to passing him our iPad or iPhone. Every time that I do that, I think back to some of my "mommy friends" who has rejected the idea of ever giving their child an electronic device. I am immediately filled with guilt and thoughts like "Am, I being a bad mother? Should I be looking for another way to keep my child from driving me insane?" I know that I already get a lot of judgmental views from other parents whenever I go out with the boys and they are watching something on my phone to stay quiet. I can feel the burn from their eyes. A few people have come up to me saying "oh, look..they can use the phone better than I can. How old are they?". In my head I translated their comment to "Wow, you've given your phone to your kids so often that they know how to use it. If I were the mother of your kids, I would never give them an electronic device, I would find a way to entertain him differently." It's not the first time a stranger questioned my parenting ability, but it stung nonetheless.

I feel like being a parent is such a "outward" ministry. Everyone sees what you are doing and everyone judges you on how well behaved and cooperative your child is. For example, I've heard people tell me that Enzo is stuck up and Elon is too "expressionlessly cold" and chilled. Which I find funny because Enzo is NOT stuck up at all, and in fact he is the most warm-hearted and well spoken child I know. Elon may be a chilled out kid, but he is not "expressionlessly cold", he's got the goofiest laughter and happens to be very talkative and silly. Both my kids just happen to get overwhelmed when a million strangers walk up to them and pinch their cheeks, poke their bellies and try to make them respond to their every command. I'm sure every adult would shun away from just a single stranger doing that to them.

Right now I am clinging onto this verse found in Psalm 18:32-34:  

It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze.


When I'm exhausted from picking up Elon endlessly, I will think of how much more stronger my arms are becoming, so that I can protect my children from anything flying their way. When I am tired from sleepless nights of getting up to tend to him, I will learn to cherish those moments because I know that he will soon become a teenager and think that it's lame to ask for his mother's love. When he refuses food, I will learn to accept that he just has no appetite, and I will etch this into my memory because I know that he will soon hit puberty and devour every edible item in my house to feed his hunger.

Putting a leash on Enzo

As much as I would like for this title to be true, it is not ideal. Although, I will no longer have to worry about him climbing into things and eating everything that looks remotely edible (like his liquid cold medicine). I realized that no matter how high I put things to keep him away, he always manages to get to them.

We may not actually have a physical leash on Enzo, but we do have an imaginary leash on him. As parents we are trying our best to train Enzo up to be a man of God. But, how exactly are we modeling ourselves for him? I've realized that we "help" him do so much that he's becoming too dependent on us. For example, during mealtimes we hardly have him eat on his own because we just don't want to deal with the mess and having to clean up after him. So, as a result he's never really perfected his spoon/fork skill...or chopsticks skills. But, he is a champ at eating sandwiches and mac n'cheese, those he can eat on his own with minimal messiness. And then there's brushing his teeth. Yes, at age 3 we still help him brush his teeth, because we can't trust him to do it properly. Lately, he's been much better at it though, he's learning to rinse and spit with accidental toothpaste swallowing here and there. It's a work in progress, I know.

Today's devotional was about trusting our kids with more responsibilities and the importance of failure. I loved how Rick Warren worded this: "Part of bringing out the best in your kids involves allowing them to fail. Our tendency is to protect our kids from failure; it's natural. We want to protect them from mistakes. We don't want them to feel bad. If they do fail, we want to bail them out quickly so they won't suffer. But what we're doing is preventing them from learning a valuable lesson. Everybody fails; nobody is good at everything. The key to this has nothing to do with not failing in life; it's learning how to rebound from a failure. When you don't give kids the opportunity to fail, you are saying to them, "You're not competent, and I don't trust you. You can't handle it, so I'm going to do it for you." That approach keeps kids dependent upon their parents." This got me thinking to myself, how many times has my parents allowed me to "fail"? Growing up in the Asian culture, the word failure is not even in our vocabulary. We needed to work really hard at not failing at anything. If we were anywhere close to anything that were a potential threat of "failing" (whether it be an extracurricular activity like youth group, or a friend who is a bad influence) we would be forbidden from it as a preventative. All of this leashing caused me to be afraid of failure, and if I ever failed at anything it hurt my self-esteem to the maximum, because it only caused my parents to bear down on me even more...yelling, hitting, name calling..etc. Very quickly I learned to blame/cast responsibility of my failure onto someone/something else.

"The Bible says this in Galatians 6:5: "We are each responsible for our own conduct" (NLT). When your kids fail, don't let them blame anybody else. Why? Because we must all learn that we are responsible for our own actions. That is a desperately needed truth today, because we're living in a nation of victims. Everybody is a victim! It's all somebody else's fault! But the Bible says we're each responsible for our own conduct. We're far better off trusting our kids too much than we are trusting them too little." Isn't it funny how sin works? From the very beginning where Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent...generation after generation we are still blaming others for our failures and differences. You would think that after all this time God would just be fed up with all this and just demolish this little blue and green marble that we live on and be done with it. But, He loves us way too much to give up on us. Despite our childlike behaviors He forgives us and continues to let us fail and then picks us up afterwards.

So working towards that goal of building our boys up to be men of God will eventually be something that they have to learn on their own. We have to learn to relinquish our leash on the boys to God. Trusting that whenever they fail at something they'll be ok because their mommy and daddy will be there to help them up again...readying them to fail again. Not only does our boys require this, but we as their parents need to fail too. Only then will we all learn that our God is perfect and that we need Him. Don't you just love how our God is constantly looking out for our needs and humblings us?! I know I do! :)

failing motherhood

I never felt more like a failure than I do at this moment. It's been a 2 day battle against Enzo...and each day I come out losing...aside from the usual him getting into things that he shouldn't and making a mess of our house, I'm getting so tired. I'm becoming like one of those Chinese parents who nags day in and day out.

The past 2 days I've been trying to get Enzo to take a nap. I'd put him down around 3pm and over and over again I find myself yelling at him to go to sleep. Multiple times of me stomping over to his room gently telling him, bribing him, begging him and finally threatening him to take a nap. It all fails. In the end I lose all control and resorted to spanking him multiple times, but he would still not sleep. By the time 5:30pm comes around I had given into my rage. I would drag him out of his bed and spanked him over and over again, screaming at him asking him why he won't go to sleep. (I know he's tired because he keeps yawning!!) Is he really that stubborn that he doesn't want to lose to me? Is it really that hard for him to listen to me?

I hate seeing myself like this. I hate losing control and lashing out on him. I know that he's only 3y/o and that it's normal. Why can't I control myself better? Why do I have to be...like my mother? Don't get me wrong...I am in no way trying to blame my mom for my rage. I was a bad kid and I deserved it. I remember that I used to vow to myself that I would not spank my children the way that my mom did. And here I am now...20+ years later...doing the same thing to Enzo. I envy those parents who are able to be patient with their children and just put them in "time out" and then come back to them and talk/explain to their kids why they were being punished.

I wonder if this is what God feels when He watches us. When we sin over and over again..when we disobey over and over again...He sooner or later punishes us.

My devotions for this morning really hurt my deep down. The title was "Don't Endure Your Your Children - Enjoy Them". It basically says that our children are a gift from God (Ps 127:3). Here's a quick excerpt from it : "Your children are gifts from God, meant to be enjoyed, not just endured. A lot of parents endure their kids; they don't enjoy them. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 16, “Celebrate with your whole family.” Party down! Have a good time. If you wait until all your problems are gone to start enjoying life, you'll never enjoy life." After reading this...I couldn't help but to feel like a failure. Lately, I have not been able to "enjoy" Enzo. I know that there are moments where I do...I know there are...but for some reason...right now I feel like all the bad moments of him rebelling are taking over. I'm trying so very hard at this, but I can't seem to do it. Every morning I'm bracing myself for what Enzo may do and afraid to see what he is up to because I'm afraid of losing patience. 

Working all these years with the (chinese) youth, I hear them complain about their parents and whine about how bad their parents are. Today, I finally understand why parents are the way that they are now, why my parents made my life feel like I was in hell. We (the kids) made them that way. We forced them into their nagging habits (when asked to do something we say ok, but don't move, we don't do it till many hours later, bc we feel what we are currently doing is more important...), we forced them into their raging habits bc over and over again we disobey them (bc at our young age we already know what's best for us and our parents don't know anything). Since we've been born our parents wanted to love us, they wanted to protect us from any harm..they never wanted to be mean, or yell, or hit us. 

Is this really what God intended for our families? For us to "endure" one another? B/c honestly I don't want to "endure" my sons. I want to enjoy them, I want to have fun with them. But, all of that won't happen if they keep disobeying me. All of this has really given me insight on how much more grace God has been showing me all my years of disobedience and prideful ways. I really have such a long way to go before I can even say that I am a good mother.

missing Enzo

Finally took the Radioactive Iodine pill today. Honestly, I don't feel any difference, but I guess I wouldn't feel anything until a few months later.

He was just playing outside of my door. I really wanted to see him to I asked Ames to open the door and hold him back. It was the worst idea ever! i never wanted to hold him in my arms more than i wanted do now. :( Ames had to take him away after a few minutes. Enzo cried and cried outside of my door. i felt so bad. how am i going to leave him for 3 weeks in Feb??? *sigh it will happen eventually..when he goes off to day care, to school, to college...

uh oh...

it always breaks my heart to see Enzo sick. To see him uncomfortable, and weak...

i'm worried about Enzo...he has been running a temperature since last night. all day today he's been walking around slowly, and not really showing much interest in eating or playing. so sad! he would just walk around, stop and look at his toys, then walk away or come over to sit with me. he NEVER chooses to 'sit with me', he thinks that he's too old to sit with his mommy. hopefully tomorrow he will be much better.

i started on my 'beta blockers' today. the first dose was baaaaaaad. basically, beta blockers are usually prescribed to patients who have high blood pressure and ppl who have had a heart attack to "improve survival". well, a couple minutes after i took it, i felt dizzy, lightheaded, weak, head was pounding, and i didn't have the energy to breath. breathing was really hard, i literally felt like i had to force myself and concentrate on breathing. yikes!

as i was trying to rest, Enzo woke up crying (probably from discomfort). realizing, i had no one around to help me i had to use every bit of strength in me to go downstairs to grab Enzo's meds, come up and hold him. at the time i really didn't have anymore strength in me and just hoped that he would fall asleep beside me. we both knocked out for about 40 mins and he woke up. poor little guy couldn't go back to sleep, he ended up just getting out of bed and playing on his own. i couldn't get up...all i remember was him standing at my bedside and trying to pull me up, poked me a few times, slapped my hand a few more times and resorted to playing with my hair...at which case caused me to fall into deep sleep. what he did after that, was totally between him and God.

right now Enzo is sound asleep...still feeling really warm...


Father,
You have blessed me with Enzo. he's wonderful! he's perfect in his own little way. right now he is sick. i really hate to see him suffer. to see him hurting. Father, please send your comfort to him. Father, please heal his little body and make him strong again. You know the pain of having to watch Your Child at a weak state. Please give me the patience and endurance to watch and care over him. Give A the rest that he may need to go to work and come home to tend to his wife and child's sickness. Help us as a family to encourage and love each other. Father, thank You for Your healing and blessings upon this family. You are our Lord and Our strength.

Love,
Julie

Postpartum Hyperthyroidism

whew! that's a lot of letters. i just heard from my Dr...my lab results definitely shows hyperthyroidism. i don't know if i should be happy or sad or worried. i mean it's possible for it to be cured. but, there are high chances that it'll come back again. i'm happy that i now have an explanation to my moodiness and "depression". sad, that enzo may be a carrier of thyroidthitis, and that there's a chance for it to pass down the generations.

it's so hard to stay a healthy mother these days. most importantly, it's so hard to stay a clean mom.

i've been sneezed on, snotted on, hurled on, ALMOST pp and poopoo'd on, spit at, drooled on, spilled stuff on, cried on and even boogered on!!! ah...the mark of a mother. :)

i'm much better today. had a nice long talk with D and it went well. i don't know what has been happening...it's been hard...but things seems to be working out. God, You made us friends...please guide us and reveal to us the path you want for us.

Day 2, lost will

Who would of known if you've lost the will power to fight, you lose the strength to fight too. Yesterday afternoon I found myself laying in bed sighing, while Enzo runs around on a mission, throwing his toys and our things all over. I realized that I lost the desire to tell him "no, don't do that". I tried to do laundry before I broke down. I dragged myself to the guest room and threw myself on the floor pleading God for help. Wondering if i just disappeared, would others' lives be better off. I wished that my life would end sooner.

God answered me, I think this was the fastest He's ever answered my cries. A came home just as I was wishing selfishly. I went over to our bedroom and waited for him to come up, while making sure Enzo wasn't doing anything harmful. I felt so gross and disgusting...I hid myself in the covers. A came over and found me in there. He asked me if I was ok...I said no, I need you right now. Just as he laid down next to me and held me close to him I couldn't fight my tears anymore. As if my last bucket of will power poured out. For the first time in a long time I felt like it was ok to cry, that I'm allowed to cry.

I really was hurting and I didn't know what to do with it. I cried for what seemed like forever. I constantly said to myself that I was a crappy person. It eventually came out of my mouth and was audible enough for A to hear. "No, you're not a crappy person. Stop that. You're not a crappy person, I married you." Then, as if Enzo knew what was going on, he came over and tapped me (in his own rough way) on the head. I looked up and he smiled and giggled at me. The tears stopped and I was able to collect myself again. But, inside I still wished that I would go away, I still felt as if everything will NOT be ok.

A left for work and Enzo is down for a nap, and I'm once again alone. I thought that after all my tears I wouldn't hurt as much anymore. That's how it always worked, but not this time. I knew that I had an appointment coming up and I wished that I would be diagnosed with something bad. I wished for weakness (physically) and death. I got part of my wish granted.

A couple hours later, I fell over weak all over and feverish. Enzo was hungry and wanted attention. But, I felt cold chills and had no strength to get up. A came home to find Enzo sitting next to me watching tv and me in a fetal position. We had dinner benefit to go to, but I couldn't go and pushed Enzo and A to go.

Few hours later I woke up to find myself in bed. I laid there in the dark and thought of how pitiful I must look. I resorted to facebooking my current status to seek acknowledgment. A lot of family and friends including a youth wished me well. I felt so shameful. I have a husband and a kid, how could I be so selfish to wish myself gone. What will happen to my family?? So what if I'm hurting right now! I have a family to care about and other friends who care about me. I mean yes, I may feel like I've lost something very important in my life, but I still have my family who are just as important. I have dreams that are not yet fulfilled.

The lost of your will to fight is such a scary thing. Darkness creeps in without you knowing...or rather darkness is invited into your life the moment you lose your will. The only thing to lead you through that darkness is a small light of hope and love from God, family and friends.

Today, I am still hurting and really want to throw myself into a wall...but, I won't, I will fight today and I will win! I have a appointment at 11:30, please pray for me. Pray that the enemy will not have his way. Pray that God and my family will be my strength and that everything will be ok.

Julie, everything will be ok. You will get through all of this hurt and come to cherish D more. Julie, your family needs you, don't give up.