identity...

Well today has been a funny kind of day.  Thought when I went to bed I would stay in my pj's until about... oh... say noon.  Then found out it was the Egg hunt I thought was next weekend.  I was very much excited for that to be the reason to get going earlier than planned so we rushed around and off we went to meet our friends.  Once there, we all realized that it was next weekend after all, so we did a practice run with our kids, decided at least now we know exactly where to go, and ended up at CiCi's pizza.  While pulling up to CiCi's my heart dropped as I realized we had forgotten to find out the time of a birthday party that my youngest was invited to but had lost the invitation.  I made a call... it was starting... about 20 minutes away... and we hadn't even bought the gift yet.  So, no egg hunt, no party, but good food with some friends. 

Later this afternoon, we went to pick up our cats from being spayed.  We had three there... yes... THREE.  I am allergic to cats, never intended to own ONE... and today we payed for THREE to be fixed.  What could I do?  One of them adopted us.  Before we had her fixed, she was tragically assaulted fully against her will, by the neighborhood Tom Cat, and that's where the other two came into the picture.  None of my so-called friends would help me out and take one home before my Dramatic Flair fell in love, cried BIG crocodile tears, and melted our strength of saying NO right down the tube.  Yes... we are the "proud" owners of THREE cats... that make me sneeze, wheeze, snort, and have watery, swollen eyes if I touch them and don't wash immediately after.  They cannot live inside.  They can't.  Dramatic Flair can play with them inside, they can visit here and there, but they just can't live here... not if I am supposed to live (not live here.. live in general!)  We started making calls trying to find a place to spay them.  Good grief, we need insurance policies.  Their surgery is almost as much as having a baby!  (Okay maybe that is a LITTLE dramatic.  No... I still have NO idea where my Dramatic Flair gets it! ;))!!)  Anyway, my sweet hubby was getting tired of making calls so the last vet he called, he threatened to just bring them and drop them off, which would force them to fix them and find them a home (fully knowing he would NEVER do that to his baby girl, but THEY didn't know that! ha!)  I guess they felt sorry for him, heard his desperation, and told him about Spay Houston, a place that exists to try to help control the stray animal population in Houston.  Vets give of their time and you can bring in animals you have taken in and have them spayed for minimal costs.  Our THREE plus their rabbis shots, cost us what ONE would have cost at the vet.

Okay... I really do have a point here... So Todd took them in this morning and I picked up.  Turns out, we were the laughing stock of the place.  We took in three females... Zoe (the mama cat who adopted us and is so ugly we felt we had to give her a sweet name to try to help her out), Lucy (the black and white baby who was born with no tail... NO TAIL! so weird!), and Daisy.  We left with Zoe, Lucy, and ...... DUKE!  Poor Daisy has been Duke all along, but because we are not cat people, and I was the only one who tried to diagnose gender in the kittens, we missed the boat on her.. er... I mean him.  We have kept them sheltered inside together for the last six months so that we could avoid anymore tragic assaults that would lead to more babies that none of my "so-called friends" would refuse to take... and Dramatic Flair would fall in love with and shed crocodile tears over our trying to give them away... and my eyes would permanently swell shut along with my airway... and.... well, you get the idea... back to topic here... so we have kept them sheltered all this time, with a MALE in the mix, and from what I understand, once that male reaches a certain age, he could care less if that female is a part of his direct blood line!  Just my luck to think we have covered the bases only to have a sad case of inbreeding and freakish kittens born, because I don't know how to tell if a male kitten is... well... a male. 

And then you have to wonder... does Daisy... er... I mean Duke, now suffer from Identity crisis?  Poor thing! How many times has she... I mean he... been held by Dramatic hearing in a very baby talk, chipmunk-ish voice, "Pretty kitty.  What a sweet girl!" He hasn't had a chance to go out and prove to the neighborhood Tom Cat that there is a new guy on the block!  Heck, with a name like Daisy, he probably wouldn't have even if we would have given him the chance.  So, we will let his surgery wound heal, and we will begin to call him Duke, hoping any confusion the name Daisy, or Pretty Girl, or now this very embarrassing spay surgery that became neutering, will begin to heal as well.  Poor ol Duke... Poor, poor Duke!

Got me to wondering... how many people are like Duke?  Not in the mistaken gender way, but in the Christ way?  How many people have been labeled by people... their family, their friends, their past, their job, their secrets, their poor choices, and not one person has taken the time to see who they really are in Christ?  How many times have  I made the same mistake in judgement over someone as I made over Duke?  As much as I laughed... and those vet people laughed at me... I still come to this place of seeing the lesson.  Just because we think we know someone, appearance is only skin deep.  I think of the verse in Proverbs, "Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart."  How thankful I am that God looks at my heart!

I have taught my kids that verse their whole lives.  It is not the outside, but the inside that matters. My parents taught it to me and I send it on to my kids as often as I can.  And I desperately desire to live that way.  I really make effort to see people for more than skin deep.  I tend to be the one that is sort of drawn to the homeless and the dirty.  I want to know their story and find a way to help them make it better.  No one really WANTS to be homeless and outcast.  They may accept it or take advantage of others while living it, but no one set out in their childhood with a plan to grow up and be lost, lonely, dirty, and judged.  Every single time I see a person on the street corner, in a shelter, under a bridge, my heart yearns to know... what was so bad for you, that you are here, like this. 

Yes, I know... many are there because of poor choices.  They are alcoholics... drug addicts... run aways.  I get that.  And many of them are unwilling to do anything about bettering the circumstances.  They just lay around and beg for their daily existence.  I get that too.  But again, my heart yearns to know what was so bad for them that they have no will left to live a life worth living.  They weren't always that person.  It wasn't what God intended.  What failed along the way?  Did they not have a family to love them?  Did they make a mistake that was so bad they could no longer stand themselves which made them give up?  Did they lose someone they loved and then lose the will to live well?  Something, somewhere went tragically wrong that led to their choices.  It's not my job to fix them... but my heart aches and wants to help somehow anyway.

My goodness... if I didn't have a husband to keep perspective, I would be the local animal and homeless shelter.  I get so caught up in what led them out there to that lonely place that I forget I am not the one to save the world.  That job has already been filled.  Todd reminds me of that often and how glad I am.  But I can't help but wonder every single time I seem them... "What is your REAL identity?"  I missed it big in Daisy... er... Duke.... but I don't want to be so careless with those that God loved enough to not only create, but send His son, our Jesus, to die for. 

I shared in my last blog about some of the struggles with my own adopted children.  Sometimes, people that have walked the painful path with us, have asked, "How do you keep doing this?"  The reality is, I don't have a choice.  God didn't give up on me, so who I am to give up on them.  I am not to enable them.  I am not to allow the sin to be acceptable.  Love isn't sweet butterfly moments pretending everything is bliss.  Love is the tough stuff... the hard stuff... but love none the less.  They have lost their TRUE identity and are holding on the the bondage their pre-adoption early years and bloodline imprinted on them. 

But the thing is, my adopted children, the homeless people, even me in whatever personal struggles I have with accepting myself along the way, are all just suffering from identity crisis.  We are accepting our names as DAISY when we are really DUKE'S!  As silly as that sounds, is that not the flat out truth?  We are accepting about ourselves and others the LIES from Satan.  Lies to me about my kids like.. they will NEVER overcome their hard start before you adopted them.  They will ALWAYS be broken!  Lies to the homeless.... your sin is to great! No one ever cared about you.  Your life is worthless so you should live a worthless life!  Lies to ourselves... you will never be a good enough mom.  You aren't pretty like you used to be.  You will never measure up.  You can never stop eating brownies (Yes... that is one of my biggest struggles!  I love those darn sweets!... what? We needed humor, didn't we?  Thinking about the lies we accept can be heavy stuff people!)  Just like I labeled my poor MALE cat wrongly, we take on wrong labels all the time... and we accept them as truth.. about ourselves and about others.  That darn satan is vicious and good at his game.  And if we aren't careful... if we aren't in the word and putting on our Spiritual armor that the bible warns us to wear... we will accept the Daisy label... and just like that poor Tom Cat... will never even know until it is too late, that we had any other option. 

You know every blog leads back to a nugget of the day learned because of my sweet Eathan.  This is his legacy.  It is huge.  In every single thing I see in life, I can see how he "got" it.  It amazes me that he was only three.  No wonder God took him home so soon.  He was too close to heaven to stay here long!  The nugget he left was he never EVER accepted a label.  He was terminally from the first breath.  We all are.  He became obviously terminal as the disease struck and ravaged his little body for 18 months.  But he never... NEVER... lived terminal though.  He lived victorious.  I cried over surgery.  He laughed before and after.  I cried after every painful dressing change of his sweet little hurting head.  He patted my arm with that chubby little hand and said, "I okay Mama!"  I cried over every doctor across the country saying there is nothing more they could do, Eathan said, "I go see Daddy?"  That boy NEVER lived terminally.  He lived joyful.  He didn't receive that disease's label.  He kept his identity... until his very last breath.  Ask any single person in his life, from family, to friends, to the precious medical family we loved and shared him with on a daily basis.  Every single person can attest that boy was NEVER terminal!  His identity was SAVED and HEADED HOME! 

I laugh so hard at how I missed the mark on Daisy.  (Confession...we had a barn cat back home that I did the same thing to.  She crawled up in my engine as a kitten and I didn't know it.  Drove home with her under the hood of my car, only to find her burned and pathetically needy when I found her.  I thought SHE was a HE upon investigation only to find HE had KITTENS a few months later!  People should learn now I am NOT a cat whisperer.  I don't even know what they are for goodness sake!) And I miss the mark on others and myself.  But God NEVER misses the mark.  Before we judge another... we need to read His word and remember that each and every person, no matter what they have done, where they have been, or who they have hurt, are all still someone God loved enough to create and die for.  It will help us avoid deep bitterness through forgiving even when we don't want to after they wrong us.  And before we judge ourselves, we need to read His word and remember He knew us even BEFORE we were in our mother's womb.  He knit us together with a beautiful plan.  We are FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made and He loved us enough to die for us.  It will help us forgive ourselves when we need to along the path. 

I think Daisy didn't mind being Daisy in a Duke body... because she... er.. he knew, even as I snort and sneeze and my eyes swell shut, I love her... er... him.  How much more should we know the same about others and about God.  Our identity is in CHRIST ALONE!  Like Eathan, I am gonna live today embracing only that... no matter what circumstance or person might try to say different.  Identity Crisis... GONE FOREVER!

Here's to who you REALLY are!

Robin