Ironic Underwear

The girls are very upset about John (their only birth brother) being gone right now. Instead of asking us about him or dealing with it, they both started nasty arguments with us tonight ... picking up many of his manipulative techniques.

So, after the arguments, Bart and I were talking to each other, wondering if they were upstairs still crying or if they had fallen asleep. We were both nearly in tears after the stress of this week and I decided to check on the girls, expecting the worst.

I got up there and Salinda (which my auto spell corrector keeps changing to Slander) was sound asleep but Sadie was very bouncy. She started to tell me a long story that made Salinda laugh and I realized that she was faking sleep.

The story is about how they had spent the last fifteen minutes playing with a pair of my very large (large enough to fit MY butt) underwear. They both climbed in to see if they could fit at the same time, fully clothed (they can). They threw the underwear at each other, wrapped it around each others necks, blew snot into it, and Salinda was even attempting to put them down Sadie’s throat. Fortunately they were clean, but the comic relief it brought to all of us (them doing it and me hearing about it) could not be replicated. We laughed until we snorted which made us laugh more.

We made it through another day. . . but this weekend has shown me just how far things have slipped because our focus has been on John. It’s ironic that John is the child claiming not to have the attention, when our other kids are truly the ones being neglected. We haven’t even felt free enough to laugh in weeks.

I’m afraid I know where this is all leading, and it breaks my heart, but the girls especially suffer so (in a weird, being oh-so-manipulated way) when John is here. Such weighty, weighty decisions.

But anyway, leave this blog entry thinking of how much fun my daughters had playing with my larger than life underwear... Amazing that God could use something so small (OK, something so BIG) to break the tension, get us to laugh together, and help us to reconnect.