My Life- it's as fun as puttin' lipstick on a squirrel

Hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride. - Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950) So it has REALLY been 3 months since my last blog. I have a great excuse. We have been growing a child. Adopting an orphan. But most of all we have been walking with the Lord. We were called and we showed up. We have learned that we are ENOUGH. We are REDEEMED. We cannot change Ambriel, BUT we can change the way we react to Ambriel. So I will break it down a tiny bit so you can understand what it has been like in the Niles household for the last three months. First some photos...so you really get the picture! Yes. When you parent a hurt child you pull your hair out a LOT...sometimes they pull your hair out. But most of all at the end of the day...you feel like a tornado hit your hometown. Where do you start. Where do you start? I am not a professional....but I play one every day in my very own home. Here is where I start: Cry out to Jesus. Yes. I do NOT call my Mom. I do NO...

OK folks, it has been a while since I last Blogged. Nearly a month. So welcome, Happy New Year and I pray that you all had a great Christmas and were blessed in many ways. Many of you know we are smack dab in the middle of an adoption. We have a 12 year old young lady from VA Foster Care placed in our home and we will adopt her in March 2013. She has waited over 7 years for a forever home. This placement has been awesome, scary, nuts, ridiculous, tiring and super all at once. When accepting a child into your home that comes from a "hard Place" you ask for nothing. You LOWER the Bar- this is the favorite thing I hear at my therapy sessions with a great man who specializes in attachment therapy. What is attachment therapy? well I am so glad you ask.... you see...there is this koala ....just kidding. here is the lowdown: http://attachmenttherapy.com/ad.htm  read that! :) Our dear daughter to be suffered from RAD- which is this: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/reactive...

Meditation for the Day Thinking about God in love and worship drives away evil. It is the thought before that the hosts of evil flee. The thought of a Power greater than yourself is the call for a life-line to rescue you from temptation. The thought of God banishes loneliness and dispels gloom. it summons help to conquer your faults. Think of God as often as possible. Use the thought prayerfully and purposefully. It will carry your thoughts away from material things and toward the spiritual things that make life worthwhile. The above meditation hit home for me  on June 17, 2011. And yet when I dust it off today it really feels relevant. With this Christmas fast approaching we all feel the pressures. Whether they be to decorate, bake 1,000 cookies, get the "right" holiday picture, or buy too many presents. What I want to feel this season is LOVE, JOY, PEACE and HOPE. So all of the above will be set aside so I can worship and praise God for giving his SON to...

  So. I am co-leading a recovery group and guess what step is next. Step 4. Each time I study a step I think to myself. Man...this one is a doozy...but the next one is as well! :) Love walking through the steps with a new set of eyes! here is what A.A. says about 4th steppin' it: "But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it." God Bless ya'll, Tracy

ahhhh. being a victim. dusted this off from June 2011 This was  a meditation for the day back in June 2011. words of wisdom for anyone "breathing today" I am not a victim of others, but rather a victim of my expectations, choices and dishonesty. When I expect others to be what I want them to be and not who they are, when they fail to meet my expectations, I am hurt. When my choices are based on self-centeredness, I find I am lonely and distrustful. I gain confidence in myself, however, when I practice honesty in all my affairs. When I search my motives and am honest and trusting, I am aware of the capacity for harm in situations and can avoid those that are harmful. perhaps I do need a meeting.... Here and today in 2012 I choose to walk in Faith with my Savior Jesus Christ. Good or Bad he gets me through. I hope you can walk with the Lord. And if you do God Bless you.

So many people have asked us how is the adoption going? I think it's going fantastic. Now if you asked the tween we are adopting she would tell you otherwise! A year ago today we were going to " adoption classes" . Today we are 30 days into 180 days of adoption. The trial period if you will. But as soon as the paint was dry on the hot pink walls and the last tote of miscellaneous have nots was moved in it was done. I don't need papers to say I am a Mom. My heart breaks for a child who has been disappointed over and over and over again for 12 years. The abuse/neglect did not end when she was taken from her birth parents, not the first time, nor the second. The hurts continued. In the form of many placements, residential centers, disrupted adoptions because people could not put up with what she put out. Failure after failure after failure. Ball dropped...too many times to count. So here we sit with a grenade. A fine product of the foster care system. Full of anger,...

Dusting this meditation off from July 10, 2011 ·   Meditation for the Day Expect miracles of change in people's lives. Do not be held back by unbelief. People can be changed and they are often ready and waiting to be changed. Never believe that human nature cannot be changed. We see changed people everyday. Do you have the faith to make those changes possible? Modern miracles happen every day in the lives of people. All miracles are in the realm of personalities. Human nature can be changed and is always being changed. But we must have enough faith so that we can be channels for God's strength into the lives of others.