When Our Sand Bags Are Heavy

Our family has gone through some tough times over the past years and naturally there are times when we struggle with bitterness, frustration and the good old, "Why me's?"

 Dean and I have talked for hours and hours about the situations we deal with daily. We have each other to use as a sounding board. When one of us (usually me) collapses under the load, we revamp our parenting, pray, remind each other of the call we felt from God to pursue adoption and begin fresh the next day.

Tristan is the one who has perhaps sacrificed the most. Our family isn't like other families, we stay home the majority of the time because that is what our children need. There is daily screaming and raging going on while attacking me and he feels responsible to protect me, which naturally creates a rift in his relationship with his siblings. He watched another sibling nearly tear our family apart, seen us agonize under a CYS investigation and finally disrupt an adoption. 

That is a lot for a child to go through in a few short years and he struggles with it, who wouldn't? 

Last night he had a good talk with his dad. A talk Dean and I have had hundreds of times, the "Why is my life so hard when my peers seems to sail through life," talk. 

Dean told him, "Everyone's bag of sand feels heavy to them. You can lift a 90 pound bag and I can lift 130 pounds, those amounts feel equally heavy to us even though mine is heavier in reality. That is how it is in life, other people's burdens feel as heavy to them as yours does to you. We can help each other carry our sand bags but we can't dump our whole load on someone else and expect them to carry it besides their own because then they wouldn't be able to carry their burden. We need to help each other but we must each be responsible for what God has given us. This is going to be your "sand bag" for life, maybe God is making you strong by giving you this bag so that you have the strength to help other families like ours someday. Maybe he wants you to go into the mission field and what you are learning now will be invaluable, maybe it is neither of those things. We don't know why God gives us the "sand bags" he does, but we have to trust that he is doing it to fulfill his plan."

   I needed to hear that again because like Tristan, I sometimes wish life wouldn't be so hard both for my sake and my children's. I am human and it is easy to look around and wish our family could be like other families.