the wisk in my head

Quiet. All I can hear is the hum of the dryer. Wish all the laundry - all 10 loads of it - was folded. Not tonight.

Wish I had words to describe what God is doing in my heart and mind. Too tired tonight. But lets just say that today I felt like there was a wisk (is this the way you spell this word?!) in my head. Scrambled brain. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? (if you do, I'm quite sure you're a woman - no man can fully comprehend how this happens). I felt like I couldn't put two thoughts together. Tomorrow promises to be worse if God doesn't show up and take the wisk away!

Saturday - my hubby and I had one of the worse days we've had together in a long time - a little trouble readjusting to life together upon his return from Haiti.

Sunday p.m. - had life group here - around 30 people including our family

Monday pm. - helped RB lead a Bible study down at the apartments - awkward and beautiful

Tuesday p.m. - a few neighborhood girls had dinner with us (unexpectedly, of course)

Wednesday p.m. - 5 Mighty Men and one Mighty Mentor came and inhaled our leftovers from the past 3 days; they arrive after I send six other neighborhood kids home for the night

Tomorrow - we will celebrate Luke's b'day because I won't be in town this weekend and

Moriah will go to her first soccer practice; I'll have to send the neighborhood kids home because I don't think I can do 12 or 13 kids while trying to get Luke's bday dinner ready...

Friday a.m. - I leave to go to a mommy conference with Sally Clarkson until Sunday a.m. Can I just say that I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!! Think maybe I need a little break.

I have no idea why I'm writing all this down. I think maybe I needed to see that there is a reason my brain is feeling spacey! I just read this great blog post about this single girl who lives in Africa and has adopted 11-12 orphans. She was commenting about the fact that someone kept saying to her that they would love to do what she does and would do it in a heartbeat if they could. She got angry because she didn't believe the woman really would because she hadn't counted the cost. She loves what she's doing and wouldn't trade it for the world, but it is not glamorous. When I write about the events of my week, it would be easy to "glamorize" it and I could make it sound adventurous. Truth is that I've been clinging to Jesus in desperation this week. It has felt like transition in labor when you want to quit with everything in you, but that's really just not an option. Sigh. I'm thankful for these times in which I realize again how much I need Him - not to just come and give me something or "fix" some situation...I need HIM. I need HIM to come and LIVE HIS life through me, not just help me out. There has, and will continue to be, much grace for this adventure He has invited us to.

Can hear hubby snoring in my bedroom. Dryer has stopped. Time for this mama to go to bed. Will start again tomorrow with the new mercies that are mine at each day's dawn....Maybe a little snack first - I don't have to share at this time of night. :)

This is what my scrambled head knows: He. Is. Good. Infinitely good.

Here are a couple of pics:

MK took this one of Isaac and flower - like it!

Narnia like view from our front door a couple of weeks ago - beautiful

Nana, we really like our bench cushion and pillows - it's a favorite reading hangout for all the kids! :)

Back from Haiti

Boy with a broken arm. No that is not a backwards elbow.
This is the AMI team I went with. They were incredible. Prayerful. Hard working. Really fun people to be with. It was amazing how God put just the right people on our team to do what needed to be done. Several of the team members had been to Sri Lanka after the tsunami. Lexia (in the black hat) went on a 2 week trip and ended up staying there for 4 1/2 years to build a community with 80 homes, and help plant a church.
One of the many buildings that had been destroyed. The destruction was so wide, that there is no way to do justice with pictures. Haiti was broken before the earthquake. There is no hope for making things right except Jesus, and his people.

Back from Haiti

Alan was running the non-medical part of the Wesleyan camp. He had been there for about 2 weeks and got sick. This is him getting some IV fluids under the tree. He ended up going home the next day. It was amazing to see how God provided new people to fill in the gaps just when they were needed.
This is the middle of the clinic where whe did wound care. Almost everything was done outside because we didn't have much room, and because people were still afraid to be inside. This is one of the Haitian nurses who was volunteering to help.
The shed you see was built by the marines after the earthquake. It was our ICU where we kept really sick patients. The flag is marking the Spanish area. The Spanish Armada set up a clinic every day on our compound. They were great. They brought in an ultrasound some days, and when we had really sick patients who needed surgery, they were able to get some of them onto their floating hospital ship to operate on them. I enjoyed getting to use my rudimentary Spanish skills to communicate with them.

Back from Haiti

This is the delivery table where moms had their babies. We sometimes even covered it with a paper gown to make it more comfortable. Outside that window was the outdoor clinic where hundreds of people were sitting outside listening to the women as they labored.
This is Dr. Liza and her dad Bob. Bob is a retired neurosurgeon and Liza is a wonderful ER doctor from St. Louis. She basically ran the medical part of things. She was amazing.
This group of firefighters from Portland was a great help. They started IVs, treated wounds, carried people on stretchers, and did anything else we needed them to do.

Back from Haiti

This is Fred, who served, along with 2 of his brothers, as our translators. He is my new hero. He is a young Haitian man who lost several friends in the earthquake. He was sitting with 3 friends when the earthquake hit. He and one friend ran one direction and survived. The other 2 ran another direction and were killed. The night of the earthquake he heard a man crying for help. The man was distraught because his wife was in labor with nobody to help. It was her 5th delivery, and all 4 of the others had died in childbirth. Fred stayed with them for 4 hours and delivered the baby all by himself. He had never even seen a childbirth before. No gloves, no instruments, nobody there to ask questions of; just the love of Jesus in his heart--and the baby was born healthy and strong.
Moriah sent a sack of beanie babies for me to give away in Haiti, so each newborn baby went home with a little gift.
This is Michael Johnson, my new doctor friend. He is a surgeon from Philadelphia, who has been a missionary to Kenya for the past 20 years. He was in the US to speak at a Christian doctors conference, and his wife called him from Nairobe and encouraged him to spend a few days in Haiti. He ended up on the truck with us coming home from the airport and got adopted onto our team. He stayed behind after our team left Petit Guave and served as the director of our little "hospital" until the next doctor arrives from St. Louis.

Going to Haiti

Today around noon a friend of mine called me. He is the youth pastor at a church in Waco that has been working in Haiti since 5 days after the earthquake struck. They are sending their 4th consecutive team next Tuesday, and one of the doctors had to cancel. My friend asked if I would be willing to go. I had already talked about going later in the month with the team he will be leading, but the dates didn't work out. It just so happens that the dates for this 4th team's trip are about the only dates in February that I could go.

So I said yes.

We are planning to fly out of Dallas next Tuesday around 7 am and return the following Tuesday.

Please pray for me. I will need God's wisdom to know how to help people medically. I will need God's supernatural power to heal people that only He can heal. I need God to fill my heart with His love so I will be able to care about people and not grow selfish or weary.

Please pray for Anda, who will be staying home with 7 kids. No great adventure. Very little praise. Just faithfully serving in our home. She is wonderful. Pray for God to give her joy and strength. Her job as a mom right now is very physically difficult, especially with a baby.

I'm serious about asking you to pray. I wanted people to know I'm going to Haiti, but mostly I blogged this so that people would pray. Thank you.

Randy

Why I'm not good at loving the poor

What is it about loving the poor that is so hard? It’s me. I’m the problem. Yes, the poor are difficult to love at times, but most people enjoy helping others. When the earthquake struck in Haiti, just like with many other recent disasters, there was an outpouring of support. Do you wonder why? I think it’s because people want to help. So why, you ask, are people so reluctant to help in situations that are not so acute? Why does the monotonous march of serious, life-destroying poverty continue largely unnoticed by most? Here are a few reasons:

1. Commitment is hard. I can make a one-time decision to help someone, but when I am faced with the reality of a long-term need, I find that my resolve weakens. If I can’t fix the problem in less than a month, I will probably get distracted and move on to something else.
2. Trust is even harder. Lack of trust may be the biggest obstacle to overcoming poverty. Many of the poor are dishonest. Even if the people I want to help are honest, chances are that there is a dishonest person in the situation. Here is an example. I wanted to help a boy with musical talent, so I gave him a fairly expensive set of electronic drums for Christmas one year. The next time I went to his house the drums were gone. His mom had sold them to get something she wanted, or maybe even needed. Often the things we want to do to help people never really help the people we are reaching out to.
3. Poverty is confusing. Problems can get really complex. Every time we come up with a solution to a problem we find another problem waiting. Often, even our solutions cause problems. It doesn’t take many failed attempts at problem solving to make one want to abandon their quest to make things right.
4. People sin. Days, weeks, or even years of investing in someone may prove to have been fruitless as that person makes choices to live a destructive lifestyle. Addictions, habits, and even just plain sin cause people to turn on those who love them. It happens so often that we often find ourselves feeling hopeless about the poor and giving up on even trying.
5. Materialism is sneaky. We see it in others, but our own selfishness is easy to justify. Coffee, books, meals, gadgets--they aren’t such a big deal--they just add up. Before long we find ourselves too poor to help others because we have piddled away our money.
6. Time is sneaky, too. Every day fills itself whether we want it to or not. Rarely does loving the poor displace a few minutes on the computer or chatting on the phone unless we make difficult and deliberate choices.

The bottom line is that none of these reasons really matter. Jesus tells us to love the poor, so we should. Thankfully, he also promises that in spite of all the difficulties loving the poor is a wonderful investment. Whatever failures we encounter are temporary. The guarantee is that we will become more like Jesus, that we will have incredible joy, and that real tangible treasure will come to us in this life and in the life to come.

Happy Anniversary!

I took this pic on Dec 30th, our 16th anniversary. We went out to dinner that p.m. with McKenna babysitting all 6 of our kids. Our plan was to come home, sneak into our bedroom and watch a movie there so I could feed the baby. McKenna had completely cleaned the kitchen and living room and decorated our room. She and Josiah provided room service for us the rest of the evening. All we had to do was call them from our cell phones! hee! None of the other kids knew we were there and it would have worked out so well, EXCEPT for the fact that Piper had her worst night EVER! She fussed all evening while we watched our movie and I didn't make it to bed until 2 a.m.! At midnight I had a crying baby and was administering ibuprofen to Isaac who had 103 degree fever (for some unknown reason). These were the things on my nightstand at one point and it was such a perfect representation of this season of life that we find ourselves in! Thank you God for EVERY season! LOL!

sparkling cider, our wedding glasses, motrin, thermometer, and a dirty diaper...

Aunt Dot

A couple of weeks ago, the Brown family and friends went to the Cowboy game (a game they actually WON), and Piper got to meet Great Aunt Dot! Sweet!

our Moriah

It's hard to tell in this pic, but she fell asleep in her big tub of stuffed animals one night! We thought it was pretty funny when we found her there.

pretty sure she's the happiest baby I've ever had - joy girl!

God has answered some very specific prayers that we prayed for this baby! We asked for no colic and she's not colicky. Also asked that she be joyful - she really is super happy and easy. She's also starting to sleep all night already - this is HUGE! She's having a little trouble actually getting to bed at night, but once I get her there, she's making it 6-8 hours. Such a blessing during this exhausting season! Thank you, Lord, for giving us so much mercy!

sweet baby piper

"One feels less frustration with the tug and tension of family life when forsaking Hallmark-polished expectations and fully embracing the truth that love is the messiness of dying to self." A. Voskamp

Good quote for me to remember in these days of "running thru mud." LOL! I don't have the hands to type anything else right now and it's taken 2 days to write this much! sigh...

break over! :)

Today [I started this blog on Saturday and finished it on Sunday] we're just sitting around hanging out as we rest after a very busy week! I feel like my blog "fast" can be over now. The Lord had convicted me several times since Piper's birth that I was spending too much time on the internet and so it was good to have a little break.

Christmas this year was an experiment for us. We believed God was leading us to stay at our house and we are thankful for all that He did. We really missed all of our family in Midland and enjoyed trying to imagine what they must have been doing on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day! We're so thankful for grandparents and cousins who we love spending time with! We were also excited to see how God's hand was on our week here! It was definitely faith-building for us and our kids to see Him answer lots of prayers. The first one I think of is last Saturday. McKenna was sick with the stomach bug that attacked everyone in our family except me, Piper, and Malachi, and after hours of stomach pain and severe nausea she was very frustrated and discouraged. The kids and I gathered around her and prayed for rest and healing - within 15 minutes, she was asleep and never got sick again! Thank you, Jesus! Another HUGE answer to prayer was SNOW. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but my kids had prayed for 2 weeks that it would snow on Christmas Eve or Day and that it would be deep. 2 days before C Eve there was still NO chance of any precipitation on C Eve! On Wednesday p.m. they were still praying that it would snow and I almost wanted to defend God because I just knew that their little hearts were going to be disappointed. What did Jesus say about having faith like a child??!! They kept telling me that the weathermen were not God and God could do whatever He wanted! It snowed almost the whole day on C Eve and when it wasn't sticking to the ground, they and their friends started praying that it would stick...and it STUCK! By that night, it was DEEP in our backyard, and my kids woke up on December 25th to a white Christmas. A friend of ours whose parents have lived in FW forever said that there hasn't been a white Christmas here in over 50 years!! Thank you Jesus for this gift to my kids! Okay, one more answered prayer. We have a homeless friend who built our bookcases in our library and who has been doing more work around the house for us lately. We invited him to eat with us on Christmas, but he just asked if he could take a plate with him because he didn't want to intrude. He has never sat down to a meal with us - always refuses. We prayed that he would stay and eat. He was the first to arrive and stayed all afternoon - he ate with us. Thank you Jesus!!

As I looked around our makeshift long tables set up in our living room yesterday I was overwhelmed with what God has done in my family and in my own heart and with what He continues to do. It almost felt like an out-of-body experience because it didn't seem like I would be living in this "story". The orphan, the widow, and the homeless were at our table. Different races were at our table. Dear friends were at our table. For a few seconds, it was "everything made right" and was a little taste of heaven on earth. We are anticipating Him working and moving in BIG ways in 2010!

One more story. On Christmas Eve, we had three of the Mighty Men over and had a little "party" for Jesus. Everyone brought a gift for Jesus and had to share it with the family. D'Leeland didn't watch tv at all during the month of December, Alphonzo wrote a poem, Corey danced, Isaac colored a heart, Moriah drew a picture of our family loving each other, Luke read 77 Psalms over the last several weeks, Josiah memorized I Corinthians 13, McKenna wrote a poem, I made a list of 100 characteristics of God, and Randy memorized John 14-16 (and dressed up as he recited it!!). It was encouraging to see how each person expressed worship to Him! McKenna gave me permission to share her poem here - it made me cry because it was so real and beautiful! May it bless those who read it (we've ALL been in this place with Jesus before):

Choppy Prayers

My life is an open door.

Come and fill it, O Lord.

You are my supply. Come and steal away

The cup of my despair.

My prayers are choppy.

Uneven.

Do You remain satisfied?

Answer me, O God.

From You I am far.

The distance between You and I is unbearable.

Be near me, Jesus!

Come save me, Daddy!

I am in a far and desolate land.

I thirst for Your mercy, for it is far from me.

But You are not.

Now You race towards me,

Like a Father who misses His daughter

After an endless journey.

You lift me.

You swing me around

In Your thick, soft arms.

You cradle me

And begin to hum a song.

The song.

Your song.

A peaceful lullaby of love. You rock me, gently, sing me to sleep in Your arms.

the beautiful view from our front porch!

Malachi's gift to Jesus??

Christmas Day pics

During the month of December, all of the Baby Jesus figures from all our nativity scenes had mysteriously disappeared! When we woke up on Christmas a.m., there He was and all the wise men, shepherds, and even the animals were bowing down to Him!

Ready to open presents!

Thanks for the gifts, Nana and Papa!! :)

The only gifts our sweet Piper received were from her Nana and Papa - LOL! She loved her soft bunny!

This little baby is SO sweet - she had a wonderful first Christmas! We are so blessed to have her here.

We didn't know it, but Grandma and Grandpa had secretly sent our family's Christmas present to my friend, Charlotte, who brought it over yesterday morning. All the kids received a Mickey or Minnie Mouse doll and a recorded message from their grandparents announcing that their Christmas gift is a trip to Disney World!!

Isaac and Moriah were a lot more excited once we tried to explain what Disney World is!! :)

I really didn't take very many pictures and the ones I did take aren't that great, but I wish there had been some way to capture what 27 people crammed into my small house looked like on Christmas Day! In this pic: Ami, McKenna, Catherine, our neighbor Ms. Murray, and Richard. We had two families, 4 boys with no where else to be, our homeless friend, and our neighbor!
When you asked Moriah what she wanted for Christmas, she always said 100 stuffed animals. Randy decided to check on Craig's list a few days before Christmas and there happened to be a lady selling over 100 Beanie Babies for a good price! Her face was priceless and she had SO much fun with them all day.

blogging break

I'm thinking that it's time to take a little break from the internet for a while. So just FYI, I'll probably pick up blogging again after the first of the year! Have a blessed holiday season! :)

the first four members of the Brown Tree Decorating Crew

the rest of the Marvelous Seven!

the Brown 2009 Christmas tree

'Bethlehem Revisited' in Waxahachie

my frozen babies

we made a memory!!

Malachi and Laura Beth.

Malachi didn't move the whole night! Too many layers (we should try this technique at home)!

Two couples and 12 children - we didn't move quickly, but we had LOTS of FUN!!!!!!