Today is a refill day.  This past weekend my husband worked overtime and there was no relief from mom-ing for everyone…You know that old rule that has been uttered by several classy looking flight attendants over the years? Put your own oxygen mask on first? Well at some point this past weekend several things went wrong.  The oxygen mask that was to fill my face with clean living seemed to have been snipped free from the source.  My wingless wonder of a boy was in overdrive to mash ever single button in this family to set us all into a competition for who had the most outlandish  nervous breakdown from his antics.  I can hold on to this planet for a little while, maybe five hours or so as their referee, but when everyone is plotting revenge on his RAD symptoms of family destruction, the air gets mighty thin.  My usual go to is hearty prayer under my breath for the holy Spirit to show up and make everybody see clearly that this is not the intended way of life.  I have a subconscious that is praying for a hurricane to take out everything and let me start over with just my family and we will be instant minimalists who love each other deeply for having survived catastrophe and have no messy house to conquer.  While the Holy Spirit is trying to get me to calm down and stop meeting my son in his own mess of hysteria, I repeatedly fail the lesson that I cannot out-yell these delirious trolls who started out as children not five minutes (hours?) ago.  I love them but I want it all to S-T-O-P!!!!! We are supposed to find words to say how we feel and take each other by the hand and look each other in the eyes DIRECTLY and breathe in through our nose and out through our mouth.  No lie, if you can get to this point it is a wonderful tactic.  You are picturing snorting like a bull staring each other down, but that is not the method here.  Just trying to relax and calm down, no snorting or death stares allowed.  I try and think that God loves that kid as much or more than He loves me. He created this boy and He has a plan for his life.  I want to be part of the construction of that plan and do a good job as a mom but sometimes without oxygen I cannot remember these details. I catch myself in the death stare and I think about what would happen if I snorted.  Somewhere deep inside I know I have no fuel in my tank and I am empty.  So today, in the dust of the weekend whirlwind I refill my oxygen levels through my fingertips.  My pen is mightier than my sword, or at least it is supposed to be.  The truth of this life flows out the ends of my fingertips into the keyboard, taking life on the cyberpaper.  In return I am regaining breaths of life, like oxygen from trees.

We have some big options this week to potentially transfer my wingless wonder into a new school with deep game changing behavioral managing tools in place.  I cannot for a minute imagine he will like it because I am not sure I do.  But he is growing bigger and getting harder to manage.  Love changes everything overall, but the details of learning to live in society might need some reinforcement if this child is not to be left behind.  I am a fierce life fighter from the word GO.  I do not take no very well and this kids major crime was being born into a family that never deserved him based on the way they treated him.  I know that this child DOES have a purpose and my family MUST survive.  I am their anchor-mom.  I am anchored in Jesus.  BUT…Sometimes I let go because I am human.  And human beings run out of fuel to carry on, especially mamas who are on the front lines of emotional warfare coming and flowing in all directions.  If I just had to clean the house and wipe noses I would fall gleefully into bed each night with a satisfied smile on my face.  But I am in the battle for their souls and the enemy will not prevail.  I told you earlier. I am a warrior princess. I have a big messy delicate job to do and my battle vantage point is not in the sky but here on the ground.  Today is a new strategy day, and filling back up from pouring out all of me is tactic number one.   Many a good warrior was taken down because they fought too long without clarity and sustenance.  Soon I hope to put the game plan to paper outline. Signing off, breathing in through the nose, and out through the mouth.  Sweet oxygen in. Poison out.