Liv’s friend Junior

Liv, our 2 1/2 year old daughter started school two weeks ago.

It has been an adjustment….for all of us.  Here’s some of the highlights:

• The first day of school Brent made us leave a smooth 45 minutes before start time.  I was livid…that is valuable sleep time for me and Liv.  But Brent, didn’t want to be late, and wanted to beat the traffic…which there was NONE.  We sat in the parking lot for 20 minutes…waiting on the doors to be unlocked.  That same day, Brent and I showed up at 12 to pick Liv up…thinking her pick up time was 12:30 pm.  We sat in the parking lot and watched her play on the playground.  We kept debating if we wanted to go in early and get her but kept deciding we wanted to give her her whole day.  So we sat and waited until 12:30.  We walked up to the doors and they were locked…and there were no children ANYWHERE to be seen.  A teacher finally came to the door.  We realized that pick up time was at 12 not 12:30.  So, our daughter had been brought out for pick up and sat as every parent came and went.  And we never did.  But….we were SITTING IN THE PARKING LOT.  So… the first day of school and it appeared that we were 30 minutes late to pick up our sweet baby.  Don’t ask me how that happened.  I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
• For a solid week Liv gushed about her friend Junior.  She told us stories about her new friend, we asked questions and she answered.  We grew to love this little friend named Junior.  At back to school night we looked at the class list….no Junior.  We asked the teacher, no Junior.  We asked other teachers, no Junior.  Turns out, there’s not a Junior in the whole school.
• The second day we dropped Liv off, I walked her to the door and opened it to go inside.  Liv pushed me back and said, “No mama, you leave from here.”  She wouldn’t even let me through the door of her school.
• School has become Liv’s territory.  She has learned that Brent and I aren’t there…and she loves that.  She will talk the paint off a wall but if you ask her about school she looks at you dead in the eyes and just sits there silently.  Or…worst…she begins to tell you about her day and you realize that she is saying extremely outlandish things that could never be true.  Like when I asked her what she did at school and she said, ” We danced together to no music and waved our Halloween flags.”  Pretty sure that didn’t happen.
• Brent and I had our first back to school night.  We were nervous…I felt like a fish out of water.  And then…it happened….before I knew it I had signed up to be room mom, to provide supplies for the class, sell cookie dough for the new playground fence AND to buy a new hamster cage for the class hamster, Skittles.  Brent was just staring at me…I don’t know what happened…I blacked out.
• We have learned that Brent has a deep, rooted issue with Principals.  Liv’s Principal is awesome…but she unravels Brent.  In one of our earlier encounters Brent just sat and stared at her while she talked, to which she replied, “I’m guessing you aren’t a fan Mr. Hammett.”  Brent’s response:  “I’m not a fan of anything.”  I wanted to murder him.  He avoids that lady like the plague.
• The mornings are not fun around our house.  The three of us collectively stink at getting up early and getting out the door.  Liv screamed at me one morning, “LEAVE ME ALONE!  I WANT TO STAY IN HERE FOREVER…..LEAVE!!!”
• I now have stress dreams about Liv’s uniform and will wake up in cold sweats and go check the washer and dryer to make sure they are ready… on that note… I have to do laundry three times a week to keep up with the uniform demands.
• I have already asked what the maximum amount of absentees Liv can have.  There have been several mornings that I just wanted to let her stay home (mainly b/c I wanted to sleep) …I know… I’m horrible.

Pray for us, dear Saints.  We feel like we are FOR REAL parents now, dealing with the ins and outs of school and the adjustment of our daughter being somewhere, learning, growing and NOT TELLING US ONE THING ABOUT IT.  It is driving me nuts.

But the other day as I plopped her on the sidewalk in front of her school, with her giant owl backpack threatening to tip her over, I thought of the first place I met Liv.  In a dirty, hell-on-earth, orphanage with no roof, laying on the floor surrounded by sickness and filth.  I thought of how far the Lord has brought her already.  I thought about the miracles He has already worked in her life.

And, all of a sudden, all the stress and annoyance of this new stage went away.  I rejoiced that my daughter was beaming, wearing a school uniform bee-bopping her way into school…no looking back at her mama, who she kicked to the curb and doesn’t allow in the doors.

He has restored her.  Do you know what it means to be RESTORED?  We think that when we restore something we return it back to its original condition.  Like an old table.  We find it all beat up and ugly…we clean it up, paint it and make it look as much like the original as possible.  But that’s not what God does when he restores.  TWEET THIS When God restores us, he gives back more than what was lost and makes us brand new, better than we were before.  BETTER than and MORE than!!  Has God restored you?  Have you thought about it in a while?  What has he given back to you?  Where are you now?  Do you need to be restored?  Why wait?