Silent Tears

Tonight as I snuggled little Jake and rocked him before I put him in his crib, tears just began to come.  I realized that a couple of times lately I'm holding on to him kind-of tight because I feel like, and I know this is strange so just humor me, I feel like I missed him and now he's home. I know it's weird, but come on.....aren't we all kind of weird.  Really, it's almost like I was without him (2 years, 2 months to be exact) when he was supposed to be ours.  I just "missed" him and now he's home.  Can't really explain it......

But the second thing that made tears come was what happened just before I began to rock him.  You see, in China, like the day we got Jake, we had to eat, right?  Well, we normally pray at that point so we of course thought we'd better teach this sweet little one how to pray.  Don't worry.  It was simple.  You just close your eyes, bow your head and fold your hands.  :)  I must admit that this was weird for all of us.  Not the praying part.  But the bowing the head and folding our hands (and for some younger....okay all CHILDREN....the closing their eyes was THE HARDEST PART!).  Anyway, I must tell you that I am a rebel at heart.  I just refused for the longest time to make my children consistently close their eyes (it was a "suggestion" mind you) because I knew that wasn't a condition for praying as our Lord kept his eyes open towards the heaven on at least one occassion that I remember.  But anyway, I know, I know.  It's hard to concentrate and we aren't the Lord.  Well, now we get to do all these things over so we taught this little guy to close his eyes, bow his head and we threw in folding his hands so that he'd really get what we were doing.  Well, he gets it.  At night when I am rocking him, at some point I'll say "I'm going to pray Jake".  I expect to keep snuggling and just pray, but he has been for weeks now, sitting back up, folding his hands, squeezing his eyes shut as tight as he can til his face looks like he's in horrendous pain...it's actually really cute, and in the last week or so, he's been muttering, in the midst of all my praying, his own requests.  Usually it's just a list of names of his family members, but tonight it was (read the code) "Denna, Ahber, Spider (there's a spider right outside his window that comes out each night and weaves a web and waits for food...he loves it), Denna, Ahmie, Daddy, {dog barks} Doggie, Ahhndrew, Denna, Ahber".  So finally I say "Amen" as he would go on and on or get down while I still have my eyes closed.  Anyway, his prayers and my "missing" him just made my face soaked.  I don't have time to cry.  I just find my face wet and then think about what I'm thinking about and realize how touched I am. 

We are so blessed.  We have certainly already had our fair share of adjustments and I don't want anyone to think it's been a cake ride (or is it cake walk?), but we are so blessed.  Jake is our child and our other children are his siblings and he is theirs.  Please continue to pray for us all.  Pray especially for my other little guys and for our homeschool efforts.  I have really had to revamp those.  It's working, but just slow.  And please keep checking back.  It's comforting to know we're not alone.