A break thru..

Monday night, I came home from class. The kids were already for bed, chores and bible reading done. Then I walked into the kitchen and noticed that someone did not finish their chores.

You see on Monday's when Dad and I have class. I usually let the kids get their own dinner. (ex. soup, sandwich) When they do this they are all responsible for getting their dishes into the dishwasher, but it is also the person's job who has that chore for the week to make sure it is done. If not then they are responsible to take care of it. Well, this particular Monday, they seemed to think they were not. So they left it. I asked them to come downstairs to do it. They were mad, and it seemed to them that it was appropriate to be rude and disrespectful.

So, we knew that once the dishes were done it was going to be time to have a chat. I just love those late night chats. So as we talked about what we thought were responsibilities of a family. What are the responsibilities of being in the family. They proceeded to tell Dad and I, that we weren't a family. So we asked why. We sat there for quite a few hours with a whole lot of no talking going on. We compared family life in Ukraine to family life here. There were alot of similarities. So we were confused about why they thought we were not a family. We were told that families LOVE each other, take care of each other, do fun things with each other, talk nice to each other. So we asked then, if that is what families do and that we do all these things, and if all these things (that they felt made a family) were done to them in Ukraine, then why did they feel the need to treat the family the way they do?

BINGO... that is when the Lord spoke to me and I felt I was to ask a particular question. Are you being so mean, because your heart has so many hurts and pains?

Then that's when... Break thru.. They said YES!. WOW! I thought. HONESTY, what a great thing. Then I asked well do you WANT us to LOVE you? The answer was YES! WOW! Another break through. So we talked about choices. We talked about what they could do to help our family seem like a family to them. They want to change the negative behavior, but do not seem to think they can. We know that it is hard to TRUST someone. Especially an adult. Since all the adults that you previously ever had contact with failed, abused, and or abandoned you.

We are excited to see this Break thru take place. You see this particular child does not show emotion. The particular child keeps her feelings other then anger locked up. So now we just need to work on our child letting us LOVE them, without feeling stressed of the outcome. We talked about how we are not perfect parents and that we make mistakes. But the bottom line is, that we will continue to Love them anyways. We won't love the behavior, but we still love the person.