My Zoo

The stomach bug started in our house with Ian, then me..... Then tonight, Kk, Tristyn, Jared and Nana.  Nana was driving Kk home from practice in Tulsa when it started for them.  I surely think the last month of our lives is some sort of a mix of a very bad dream and a beautiful one.  I've laughed more in the last few weeks as situations have presented themselves because it's been all I could do to hold it together.  A freak accident started it all.  We couldn't have made up a story as silly as Austin hitting someone in the butt with his thigh and developing compartment syndrome.  Really??? 2 emergency surgeries followed by one miraculous one, 5 blood transfusions and we think we are out of the woods.  Everything that happened is the rarest of rare.  We headed home from ACH, desperately needing a break, but we had just started some renovations to our home before all of this happened.  The end goal being to have a bedroom for baby Ian and a kitchen that fits our family.  So that first weekend, my man spent the weekend breaking up tile.  White tile in a house, on a farm, with 7 kids, 3 dogs and lots of extras is a big no no!  It literally looks like a dust bomb blew up in our house.  It's everywhere!  Between cleaning and lots of appointments for Austin, we are all tired.  We need a break.  No such luck.  You see, we have goats and they never have babies when it's a good time.  Valentine's Day and I'm out with my girls trying to help one of our momma's birth her kids.  No luck.  They are turned all wrong.  I tried assisting but was unable to turn them correctly.  Called a dear friend, she's seriously the for real pioneer woman.  She's the one to call if the apocalypse ever happened.  She comes and tries with no luck.  Call the vet, no answer.  We decide to try one more time and help.  One baby boy, we just barely lost him.  Baby girl number 2, she shouldn't of been breathing, but miraculously, she was.  Sweet Miracle.  Baby girl number 3, she'd been gone awhile.  My sweet girls stayed out with us until very late.  Brityn was the last one to come inside with me.  Meds, milk, towels, blow dryer, warm snuggles with this sweet baby goat and her brave mama.  Headed in to bed, up 3 hours later and I knew my momma was in trouble.  I load Mary up and take her to the vet.  She's lost so much blood from pushing 3 breech babies.  We lost her sometime that night.  Our sweet miracle ended up at the vet the next day, but thankfully she's doing great now.  What do you do with an orphaned baby goat in the Pavatt house?  They come and live inside😂, play king of the mountain on your clothes and sleep in your bath tub.  My house is a zoo of sorts at the moment, well maybe not just at the moment, it's kind of always like that.  By now it's Friday. and between taking care of Austin and being exhausted, I'm ready for a break.  A real break.  A crawl under the covers and sleep for a few days.  Nope. Not going to happen.  My favorite goat.  The one I keep goats for.  The one who has special latches on her gates because she's so smart and once she's out, she lets everyone else out.  My sweet Delilah, she decides it's time to have her baby.   Fast and painless, praise the Lord.  She and her little boy are doing great.  Now, a break? Sort of.  A great, much needed date night with my man and dear friends on Friday was refreshing to our souls.   Delilah was even kind enough to be timely so we didn't have to miss this. Saturday it's time to start preparing for Muluken to go to London.  This is an amazing opportunity and one that we've had a million debates on who would go with him.  In the end, Austin was going to accompany him.  They were so excited to go together.  A senior trip of sorts for Bub and a phenomenal experience for both of my boys.  We even had Austin's hip surgery scheduled in time to be able to allow him to go.  A freak accident, lots of surgeries, no London for Bub, no brother bonding during an amazing experience.  Broken hearts all around.  Unaccompanied minor for Muluken.  He's not flown much.  My momma heart worries.  What if he gets lost? 2 seconds ago he texted and told me that they are sitting in the airport in London, waiting on a family that got lost.  Thankfully, he arrived safe and sound, with no sign of the stomach bug.  But a family lost......  Hmmmmmmmm.  Trusting, trusting.  Finalizing the paperwork for Muluken on Saturday.  Austin comes in and says, "Mom, feel this!" A long pocket of jello feeling mush in his leg.  Idk, maybe that's normal?  We'll watch it and see how it goes.  Sunday, I load my big girls and head to Tulsa for training.  Because, yes, we are that crazy.  Get home late, after a fun afternoon full of soccer, laughs, music and reliving silly memories, and Austin needs me to look at his leg.  It looks like someone cut half and orange and stuck it under his skin next to his incision.  Hmmmmmm.  Call the doctor.  Wrap an ace around it.  Surely it'll go away by morning.  No such luck.  Head to Children's.  Another surgery.  Another delay of Austin's hip surgery.  Another disappointment for my boy.  He says, "No! I need to be at my game tonight."  Surgery anyway, go to the game and spend the next 3 days in excruciating pain.  I had the tummy yuck, so I never posted.  They took the drain out, he has another incision on the top of his leg, tiny compared to the nearly 15 inch one down his leg, but 2 more weeks and stitches out of that little incision and where they opened part of his first incision up to drain the fluid.  Then we can talk about hip surgery.  He had a common complication that doesn't usually need surgery.  Ha! That's not Pavatt style.  Thankfully, Muluken's travel went great.  Praying he doesn't get the tummy bug that is running rampant through our house.  That's the last thing he needs.  I sat in the waiting room on Monday nearly in tears.  I'm tired.  My sense of humor is running low.  My sweet Gifte just came in, she's sick as well.  That leaves Muluken and Austin.  Oh, Lord.  Please spare them this.

Choosing Life and Love

         I haven't posted in years but, I feel an urgent need to write in response to the recent news about Planned Parenthood.  I was 16 the first time I got pregnant.  I was encouraged for many reasons to have an abortion.  I was young, terrified and vulnerable.  I remember very little about the actual procedure, I only really remember what came after.  Drugs, parties, and more pain then I can describe.  I tried anything to numb that pain.  Only I had no idea that is what I was doing.  I was hurting and I hurt many people as a result of my own pain.  I am forever sorry for that.  But you see, no one tells you about that kind of pain.  It is spoken of as something that is a decision, a choice, something that will make your life better.   I watched many of my friends do the exact same thing and walk through the same sort of numbing behavior I did.  Drugs, more sex, eating disorders, ruined years, ruined lives.

          I didn't understand all of that until a few years later, when I again found myself pregnant.  This time 18 and in my senior year of high school.  I walked into a Planned Parenthood Clinic in the city I grew up in.  I needed a pregnancy test.  I shared my fears with the nurse who seemed so nice.  How could I be in this place again?  Twice pregnant and on birth control both times.  I wasn't setting out to be pregnant.  The nurse and the doctor came in to tell me I was pregnant and share my "option" with me.  I was young, had my whole life in front of me.  Having a child now would only hinder my life in terrible ways.  I would struggle for the rest of my life.  An abortion would be the easiest, safest option.  Quick and relatively painless.  No one would ever have to know.  It would be over before I knew it and life would go on like nothing ever happened.  It was best for me.  I certainly wasn't ready to care for a child.  I was only 6 weeks along and the "baby" wasn't really a baby, not until they begin breathing on their own.  It would cost me $350 and they could do it right there in that clinic.  I would need to make schedule appointment and have a ride.  I wasn't the only girl, after all, that had this "procedure" done several times in order to secure a brighter future. That was the only option given to me that day.  They were kind but pushy.  It was, after all, the best choice I could make for myself.

        I went home and I don't remember much else about that day or the few days after.  The surrounding details matter little but I remember meeting my mom somewhere and telling her that I didn't care what anyone said, I was keeping this baby.  I couldn't go through that all over again.  How could I kill another one of my children?  I faced a lot of people who disagreed with my decision.  I was young, stupid and not thinking straight.  How could I raise a baby?  People judged.  Everywhere.  The grocery store, the movie theater, my job, my school.  Everywhere I went, my sin ever before my eyes and everyone else's.  Did anyone ever once stop to think what other option I may have had?  I could have chosen the hidden, again, and no one would have ever known.  Instead, I allowed that sweet life to grow inside of my young body.  I faced much criticism and it hurt.  It made it a daily battle mentally.  I didn't know how to be a mom but I was going to figure it out.  No matter what anyone else said.

         I gave birth to my baby on December 7, 1997.  I remember laying in the hospital bed with him in my arms that night.  How on earth did I deserve something so perfect?  I felt like it was he and I against the world.  I held him and cried for the child I had willingly destroyed.  I cried painful, hard sobs.  It wasn't what they said it was.  It wasn't quick and painless and you move on with your life.  It was my child.  As I lay there, holding my sweet Austin, I was so grateful that I was a stubborn, rebellious child.  It made my life hard, but I knew it was what would get Austin and I through all of the doubts, the hard times and the judgmental stares because I was young and unmarried.

         That sweet boy forever changed my life for good.  He taught me more about myself and who I really was. He opened my eyes, my ears, my heart to my Savior.  I was still remarkably lovable, no matter what anyone else said or did.  I was created for a purpose and God used Austin to show me that.  I wasn't forever marked, blemished, unholy.  I was a sinner, like everyone else.  My sin was just so incredibly evident.  How could I hide it?  It was right there, for everyone to see.  Yet, that sin was used in a beautiful way in my life.  Beauty from ashes.  God will use everything for our good and His glory.  Everything.  Everything.  Everything.  No matter what the world around us says.

         Austin was everything good and precious.  He is almost 18 and a joy to anyone he's ever been around.  He truly is a remarkable young man. Was it hard?  Yes!  There were some really scary, trying times.  But you know, the other day, he asked me to please go and stand outside of a clinic with him.  He desires to share his story, our story.  He could have easily been that "mass of cells" they are destroying and harvesting for parts.  I would have never known his love, his laugh, his hugs and his kisses.  His sweetness and his tenacity.  I will forever be grateful that I chose life that day and in the weeks and months after.  I chose my baby's life.  I chose Austin.  I would love to offer that perspective to the women walking into the clinic.  To put a face, a body, a life to that "blob of tissue".

           But what you have to understand is that women are believing lies.  We as a society believe lies.  Maybe not all of the same lies, but lies none the less.  These women need love and truth.  We need to value life.  We need to support crisis pregnancy centers that offer so much more to these women.  Truth, love and hope.  We need to be kind with our words, our body language, our thoughts.  Judgment screams through our pores, even if we put a smile on it.  These young girls and grown women, don't need our judgment or our thoughtless words.  They need kindness.  Because, you see, what other choice do they have, really?  Chose the easy way, hide it and suffer silently, or put it out there for all to see.  What do you do with your sin, your poor choices?  Put it out there for all to see?  Or hide it away silently, hoping no one will know and it will go away?

        Adoption is also a beautiful option.  It's hard, I know.  My husband and I have adopted 3 children, all with different stories.  My youngest, a little boy, whose mommy was an addict.  I don't know all of her story, but I know she was a courageous woman who chose to give her sweet boy life.  My sweet baby Ian.  No one would have blamed her if she hadn't.  Who wants a baby born to an addict with the chance of something possibly being wrong with him?  Would you?  Honestly, at first we weren't sure we did or if we could. But, I am so incredibly thankful we said yes.   Ian is beautifully perfect.  Our precious baby from the sky.  Our gift.

        
        While we are diligently working to defund Planned Parenthood and all of their lies, step back and please examine your own heart.  Planned Parenthood does do some good, but we cannot allow the horrific to go on for a small amount of good.  Crisis pregnancy centers offer a much better perspective for these women, especially when they aren't in the position to make a large sum of money off of the "product" of the supposed help they offer.  These are babies, sweet precious children.  Children who cannot speak for themselves.  Good never, ever justifies bad. 

          I ask you to examine your heart because your heart on this matters.  My sweet Ian, whose mommy chose life for him, not only was born to an addict, he also has a very rare chromosomal deletion and is special needs.  Would adoption be an option for you?  Would you be willing to take an "imperfect" child?  Will you be kind and gracious to the young moms' you see out in the communities you live in?  Will you walk alongside them and encourage them to chose life, whether they bravely keep that precious baby to raise on their own, or they courageously and sacrificially place that child in the arms of another woman to raise?  This is the world we live in.  We cannot say no more abortions if we are not also willing to walk alongside these women, young and old, and help them find truth, hope, and love, and in many cases, be willing to welcome these ones into our own families.  This isn't just someone else's problem.  It belongs to all of us.  We all have a choice.  What will yours be?

 
                                                     
                                         

Beauty from ashes. My heart, my life, my loves.



Sunday Morning

It has been a long time since I have posted and I really don't have any sort of great excuse.  Life has been busy.  We started soccer back up and the kids are so excited.  I love my children's passion for the sport and the conversations we get to have about the purpose God has for them all being out on that field.  This has been the best month of the last few years of my life, illness wise, that I can remember.  I have actually been up and around and I was able to walk and run with Gifte the other day.  I only ran for maybe four minutes total in thirty second intervals but it was fantastic and brought the biggest smile to her face and to mine.  Oh how I long to run again someday.  I know for many that isn't something that they would choose to do.  But I love to run.  I desire to run on the soccer field with my kids again and when they run complexes, I can too.  I remember reading a blog post by Sarah Frankl who had the same disease as me, she knew that she had accepted her disease when she stopped dreaming of running.  I thought that I was going to have to do the same thing and just accept it but I can't.  Lol!  In my house, if you say you can't do something what that really means is that you are saying that you won't do something.  The Lord led me to a book about going back to eat the way that God intends for us to eat and my whole family is getting ready to start this journey.  We've talked about it for weeks and prayed about it.  We are intently going through a change for 40 days and giving it to the Lord.  We are praying about many things as a family, one of which is healing for Kailyn and I.  Please pray for us as we go on this journey together.  Other then that, life has been busy with things around our small farm, church and just life in general things.  Jared, my brother and our boys (and help from us girls and a few others) have built a barn for our animals and our feed.  It hasn't reached completion yet on the inside but it is fantastic on the outside.  We have goats who we continually think are going to have babies and we haven't had one.  Our favorite horse abscessed on the bottoms of his front two feet.  It has been awful!  But as of this post, he is doing better and is able to be out in the pasture again.  He was so happy to be out of the barn stall that he went running through the pasture.  Austin said that he scared our cow and made him jump longways over the huge water trough.  The thought of it made me laugh in bed this morning.  I must move my tired self out of bed to go help make breakfast.  I hear the songs from "Fiddler on Roof" being sung in m /y kitchen and children very excited to help their daddy cook :-)  We will then be off to church to worship Jesus freely!  How easy it is to forget that so many do not have that opportunity.  The older kids have ODP for soccer and the little girls and I are going to my sister-in-laws baby shower this afternoon.  We started the Perspectives class at our church on Sunday nights.  While it makes for a very busy day, I love the classes and being there with my family. Our older four children are sitting through the class with us :-) Learning right along side us.  What better way to learn then together!  Hoping your day is full of joy!

A Blessed Day

      Today was one of those days.  The kind of days where making it out of my bedroom is a major chore.  Normally I hate days like today but not today.  My back hurts and I am tired.  I am a week out from my Remicade treatment.  This is my hard time but the good news is that it is better then it was last month.  Praise the Lord!  We were able to go to 2 movies yesterday at the dollar theater with the kids and it was fun.  We finally saw Courageous and Dolphin Tales.  Great movies!  My back hurt yesterday and I took my meds and off we went.  There was none of that today but it was still a good day.  I felt sort of sad when I woke up because I knew it was going to be a rough day and it was so pretty outside and I don't like being stuck.  I got a text from a friend and she asked if she could come visit.  She brought her daughter Tigist, who is Muluken and Gifte's biological sister.  So the kids got to play and visit and Elaine and I sat on my bed and talked.  We prayed for a sweet lady in our church who lost her husband today and marveled at how neat it is that in the last few months he had started coming to church.  He was just there this last Sunday morning.  I hope when I see Miss Leona that she will tell me that she is confident that he gave his heart to Jesus.  How faithful she has been to pray for him.  Such a testimony of a prayer warrior and an amazing love for Jesus!  My mom was so sweet and brought my meals to me in bed, loved on my kids, did laundry and let me rest.  The kids ran in and out to update me on their new books for their kindles and to get a hug now and then.  My man worked on our barn.  I am so excited to see the finished result of all the hard work he and my brother and our boys have put into it.  My sister-in-law came over with my nieces and that was so nice.  All in all, while I may have been in bed all day, Jesus didn't leave me here alone.  I know there have been so many other days that I haven't been grateful for the love he has surrounded me with and I am so sorry for that.  I remember the story in the Bible of the 9 who never said thank you and the 1 who did.  I desire to be one who says thank you. Thank you Lord for knowing what I need before I could ever think to ask.  Thank you for the blessing of a sweet day for my entire family!

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! " 1 John 3:1

The Twelve Days of Christmas

       In my last post I wrote about our Christmas Eve devotion for Advent and one of the things we talked about was the history of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas."  I said I would re-write the information because I thought it was so good and it led to some great discussion time around the table.

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not allowed to practice their faith.  In fact, being Catholic was a crime!  So to preserve their teaching and doctrine, someone wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.  It has a hidden meaning known only to members of their church.  Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality, which the children could remember. 

*A partridge in a pear tree represented Jesus Christ.

*Two turtle doves were the Old and the New Testaments.

*Three French hens stood for faith, hope, and love.

*Four calling birds were the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

*Five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

*Six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

*Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit: prophesy, serving, teaching, exhortation, contribution, leadership, and mercy; it also represents the seven sacraments; baptism, Eucharist (Communion), reconciliation, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, and anointing of the sick.

*Eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

*Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

*The ten lords a-leaping were the Ten Commandments.

*Eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

*Twelve drummers drumming were symbolic of the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

From "A Family Advent" published by Thomas Nelson

      Whether or not there is truth to the historical evidence of the song, the lyrics and what some people tied to them to remind them of the truths of the Bible are fantastic.  We talked about the Apostles' Creed some and about why there were only 11 faithful disciples.  As I read the words to the song, I asked the kids and my family to guess what each of the lyrics might be representing.  It was a sweet time around the table and a catchy way to remember some very important truths through a seemingly silly song. 

New Pictures

I love my gorgeous man!

Beautiful Children!

My beautiful girls!

Handsome boys!

The amazing men in my life :-)

Tristyn and Brityn

Bub and MJ

Gifte and KK

Merry Christmas!!!

        I love Christmas!  I have loved it since I was a little girl. The joy this season brings to my heart sings loudly within my heart.  This has been an extra special Christmas because my mom was able to fly down from Seattle to stay with us for a little over 2 weeks.  I haven't had Christmas with my mom since KK was a baby.  She has been so full of joy being here with us and getting to enjoy her 8 grandchildren.  My brother and his wife and my two nieces live right up the road so we have been able to spend lots of  time together. 
        Christmas Eve was a sweet time.  I made 2 different types of enchiladas and while we ate we read the final devotion in our advent book.  I have learned so many interesting things through the devotions we have done as we celebrated advent.  The most memorable was definitely that night.  We sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and then we talked about the reason that song was created.  We opened our Bible and went through what each of the twelve days represented.  It was so cool!  Then we opened our traditional gift of pajamas and watched the movie "Christmas Snow."  I highly recommend the movie because it was so so good.  The movie ended with Brityn in tears (I think we all cried) and Grammie and I had an opportunity to talk to her about heaven.  We talked about my step-grandpa (Grandpop) who passed away Friday night and how he is in heaven dancing with my Nana and praising Jesus.  While the death in the movie and the death of Grandpop is so sad, the reality is that they are so much better off.  What a day that will be when we get to look into the face of Jesus!  Brityn is slowly coming to really understand what Jesus did for us and how huge it really is.  She is so sensitive and full of so many questions.  We talked for a long time and prayed several times.  My mom (Grammie) read the Christmas story out of the book of Luke to all of us.  Precious memories!                                 
         Christmas morning began with sour cream twists and orange julius.  Yummy!  My mom was successful in her attempt to make gluten-free sour cream twists for me.  I definitely need to post a picture they were delicious.  We opened gifts and spent time laughing.  There was a lot of duct tape involved in the wrapping of some of the presents this year, which brought a lot of laughs with it.  Philip and Rachel and the girls came over and we opened more gifts and ate even more.  I think holidays are just a huge excuse to eat and believe me, we ate!  After getting everything picked up, we began preparations for our dinner.  The kids played with their toys and worked on setting up their Kindles.  We are truly blessed because our children love to read.  Grammie got each of the older four Kindles and they are so excited!  The younger girls played with their DS and sang in the new Karaoke machine.  I can't wait to get photos of them singing,  It makes me laugh just thinking about it.                   
          There were 24 for dinner tonight.  My mom is so fantastic and made the best turkey and ham.  Dinner was great and so fun!  We laughed and talked and enjoyed everyone's company.   It was a great day!  I am so grateful to have such an amazing family and group of friends.
         I think the best gifts that Jared and I received were the handmade cards that our children made for us.  I am going to post pictures of those also.  It isn't enough to re-write the words, you have to see them.  My sweet man got me a camera for Christmas so hopefully I can post lots of pictures.  That will be tomorrow though because it is much to late now.   More tomorrow.