Hope is a Four Letter Word

I once read a Chinese Proverb that likened hope to fear and insinuated both were for fools. What does hope do but lift us up to higher heights from which to fall? I know many times I have cursed myself for being hopeful and blamed that hope for the pain of the subsequent fall. So this Chinese Proverb made me feel so much better. Hope is for fools! I can tell my hope to get bent without a guilty conscience. Yea! Confucius say, it is good!

In addition, Noah and the Whale (one of my favorite bands) agreed when they penned the lyric,

"If you gotta run, run from hope." ~ Love of an Orchestra

First Confucius, now Noah and the Whale?! It has got to be true! And, so it was my firm belief until I read 1 Corinthians 13:13. I was shocked to see that God put hope in that holy trinity.

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; …" ~ 1 Corinthians 13:13*

I thought maybe Paul (the prophet speaking in this Chapter) took one too many beatings to the head in all his persecution and misunderstood the message he was supposed to be delivering to the Corinthians. But this is THE.BOOK. Perhaps it was my head that needed some straightening out. So I began to really research the meaning of hope and in doing so I have come to wonder if I have ever experienced true hope. True hope needs companions like faith and charity, not bitterness and jealousy. Oh boy am I familiar with the latter two! The first two, I feel I barely know.

So how about you, dear readers? What are your thoughts and experiences with hope? I would love to hear everyone's thoughts whether religious or secular in nature. THE.BOOK. is good and all but it is certainly not the only source of wisdom! 

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick:

but when desire cometh, it is a tree of life."

Proverbs 10:28*

*I roll with the KJV of the Bible.

Gender Bending

Hello, my name is Jill and I'm a feminist.  Not because I believe that men and women are exactly the same but because I believe each gender has great strengths that should be celebrated instead of pigeon-holed.  So to those who believe that we should stick to the acceptable activities and life pursuits that our gender has been "assigned" I say...

Girls can play football!

Boys can paint their toe nails! (Even pink if they like)

And DAMMIT girls can do math!

Three… is a magic number

River turned 3 today and as a result I'm considering changing my blog topic from adoption to government conspiracy because I can think of no other way that time could have moved so quickly without my knowledge. I believe it was either the government or aliens but if I've learned anything from watching the X-Files there might not be much of a difference between the two J
This day seems so much more fresh than 3 years old to me:

I hope this day, and each day of my life with this precious little boy remains just as fresh:

Here we go, feet first into our fourth year with three in the family.  With Blind Melon covering the famous song about the magic number as our soundtrack: (note, the sound takes about 7 seconds to pick up.  No need to adjust anything.  Just enjoy the awesomness)

Three is a magic number,
Yes it is, it's a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number.

 

The past and the present and the future.
Faith and Hope and Charity,
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number.

Turn a Phrase

Before you read this post you may want to get yourself a bowl of tortilla chips because I am about to get all cheesy proud momma and it may just be the only way you can make it through… Dip away! River's vocabulary and sentence structure have literally EXPLODED over the past few months. Just this spring if you wanted River to say any sentence larger than 2-3 words you would have to feed it to him one word at a time. Now he is throwing all sorts of words together and the results are both hilarious and thought provoking.

Snow is coming. He has been saying this since the beginning of August. Every time he sees storm clouds he points to them and says, "Snow is coming." What the math? It is still summer! This observation is generally followed by "Hard to drive (or walk) in snow." How does he know that? Does he really remember? We certainly don't talk about it. To me the word fall is another "f-bomb" right now and yet River has already made his way to winter. Where on earth did he get this from? I blame Calliou and that rogue Christmas episode on-demand...

Hard to reach. Anything that isn't within his immediate grasp is "hard to reach." That includes everything from the spoon he threw on the floor, to the moon (which he loves to point out whenever he sees it and kid has a spankin' eye for that fickle moon).

Heard a noise in there. This one he started to say while we were in MT visiting Angie. And when he said it, it scared me real good! While visiting we stayed in the guest bedroom in Angie's basement. Right next door to the guest bedroom is the downstairs family room/man cave of Angie's husband. It went unused while we were there and the light remained off until one night when we were getting ready for bed and River said, "That room, scary." I didn't think much of this comment because the room was dark and children all have a healthy fear of the dark. He followed that up, though, with, "Heard a noise in there." Thanks, Bug. We still have to sleep down here tonight. Thus the light was turned on and stayed that way for the rest of our visit. Since that night he has said it several times thankfully not scaring me as badly.

Look Mommy, River is strong! This is generally followed by a silly walk that looks like he just got off of a horse all bow-legged and decided to start flexing his muscles.

Not all of his favorite phrases are easy to hear, though. One of the more recent phrases he has begun to use cuts me to the core and makes me question the decisions I have made as an adoptive and working mom.

River miss Mommy. It isn't always "miss Mommy." Sometimes it is "River miss Daddy (or Mimi, Papa, Abby, Grandma, Angie, etc.)" Sometimes it is even cute when he randomly says, "River miss Toby." You may not consider this a big deal. I got into an argument with one of my business partners (who is also a good friend) over whether this is just a standard child thing. My concern, though, is that he uses this phrase more than any other. He uses it when he is playing with his toys or reading books. The other night we read a book about Noah's Ark which had an animal matching game. Because the matching animals were not together he said repeatedly, "Animals miss their mommies." Recently I was watching him starry-eyed, proud mommy-style during his individual play time. As part of the conversation he was having with his vehicles he said, "Tractor miss his mommy." When I hear this phrase or any variation thereof I question myself and despair over the impact that the decisions we as adults have made about the course of River's life and how they are now and will continue to affect him.