Please pray

Our family needs prayers right now.  It seems like it's a never ending cycle in our lives right now.  We were doing pretty good for a bit.  We felt like we were being productive, even had some momentum with taking steps of faith and working hard.  And this weekend brought that all crashing down.

It seemed innocent.  We'll just go to Canton for a few days since we had a wedding there on Sunday and we'll have a little birthday get together with Bart's family for Bart and Leah since we won't get to see them for a while.  That was Thursday night.  Leah loved it.  She got all kinds of presents (tons of Frozen stuff) and had a blast with her cousins.

But eventually things started to get messy.  Bart's parents were dog-sitting so Bart's allergies started to go haywire.  Between that and having the windows open the whole weekend, Bart was pretty much miserable.  Ever since Venezuela, whenever Bart's allergies get worked up, he ends up getting sick.  So now he's sick and more miserable than he already was.

Noah was sad in Canton.  He was ready to go back to Columbus.  It was really pretty heartbreaking because he is never like that.  He did love having time with his cousins but he just wanted to be "home."  He wanted to go to a place that wasn't home, but felt like the closest thing to it for him.

We did have a great presentation at a church in Canton to talk about our ministry.  I shouldn't say we.  I should say Bart.  I ended up trying to negotiate with an irrational almost 4 year old about her staying in her class versus coming with me, versus going in a random unused room to play.  She was ridiculous.  And her ridiculousness has only continued.  I can't leave my children in the same room to play anymore.  They are ALWAYS at each other.  Fighting non-stop.  And this is abnormal.  They fight periodically, but this is out of control fighting.

They cannot be reasoned with.  Threatening doesn't help.  Bribing doesn't help.  There is no sense of any control.  They are just like little crazy, disobedient people who keep feeding off of each other.  Non-stop.  It is incredibly draining.

I can't even tell you how many times Leah was spanked yesterday between Bart and I, because we don't even know the count.  And Noah.  He is regressing.  A lot.  He is behaving quite a bit like a 1 or 2 year old.  In the past month or so he has slowly started all of these really bad habits to console himself.  With that, he has no self-control anymore and that leads to some real messes with his sister.  He is constantly upset about something and we are at a loss.

To top it all off I slipped using a knife the other day and almost cut off an entire corner of my thumb.  No stitches, I'm hoping that was a good choice on my part.  But doing that has totally limited what I can do and it's super sensitive obviously.

At this point, we're just trying to push through.  We realized we only have 2 weeks left in Columbus and for some reason that just feels completely overwhelming.  We do have an appointment with a counselor who specializes in working with kids this week, so we're hoping she can help us know how to help Noah.  This is all just going to take time and we're just quite frankly sick of that phrase.  At this point, it feels like time is our enemy and only brings new challenges.  We can only hope that it can get better from here.  Hoping and praying the next post is positive and we've found new life....