Being Mom     

           The Joy I find in being a Mom is endless! But let's be real, it has it's most incredible struggles as well. I am one of today's most common situations where my children have different Fathers and I'm trying to be both Mom and Dad for them as a single parent. Many people use the term "broken home" when referring to families that are divorced. We hear that term so often and I think it's terribly negative. What is a "broken home"? I suppose it could be many things, but that is definitely not the words I would use to describe mine. I would say... We are a joyful home, a happy home, a loving home, a warm home, a peaceful home, where we are making wonderful memories everyday! We are anything but a "broken home". The daily grind can be stressful, it can be overwhelming and the tasks and homework projects can seem unachievable. But at the end of the day, I feel blessed to tuck my kids in at night and know that they are safe. As Mothers, we need to remember that the most important thing to a child is to feel Loved! Whatever else is going on around them will seem minuscule compared to the love and support that we shower them with. 

Losing My Babies

          As a young woman, before having my 3 beautiful boys, my husband at the time and I had a miscarriage and lost our first child at 12 weeks pregnant. It was a painful thing to experience, but we had no idea what we would be challenged with next... A beautiful baby girl named Victoria Lynn came into this world fully aware and as peaceful as can be. She was born with Trisomy 18, a rare chromosome disorder. During my pregnancy, I was encouraged by doctors to terminate my pregnancy as they said she would not live, if she even made it to birth. With my faith in God, I couldn't bring myself to do this. I felt it wasn't my decision to make and left it all in God's hands. She lived nearly 4 months. After many beautiful memories, heart ache and the struggle to let go, she finally left us to be with the Lord. God answered so many prayers during that time, allowing us to get to know her and her to know us. There was no denying she knew who I was as her Mommy. Her second day on earth, the doctors in the hospital wanted to do more testing on her to be sure she had Trisomy 18 because of how alert and responsive she was. She indeed had Trisomy 18 (aka Edwards Syndrome), but she was more than her condition. She was a fighter, she smiled, she giggled, she looked in my eyes, and she held her head up high with the little strength she had. There's not a day that goes by I don't think of her and thank God for the 3 beautiful children he blessed me with thereafter.