North Dakota "Deployment"

10 days and counting... that's how much longer Jason will be gone. He's been in Williston, North Dakota for 5 days now and I keep telling myself it has to get easier. You never know how much help your spouse is until they're no longer there.

I count my blessings though that he's so willing to go out and work in these wretched conditions (It's been freezing temps with snow and rain and hail for the last week) to provide for his family. I know it's not any easier on him being away from home than it is for us to be without him. Right now he's working a 14/7 schedule except with travel days it's really more like 15/6 but we'll just be grateful for any time he has at home. This stretch in ND will be the longest that our little family has been apart since we got married but we're tough and the babies and I, we'll just keep counting the days until Dad comes home.

You Grew in My Heart

Mother's Day- full of macaroni necklaces and pictures scribbled by chubby hands, the same hands you try to keep off you clean walls and tuck into bed every night- at least for those lucky enough to have children with whom to celebrate this day. These precious babies come to us in varying ways through birth or adoption or marriage all a part of the Lord's bigger plan. Even for those who don't believe they are mothers in their own right, every woman is one by nature, nurture or design. An Aunt, a Friend, A Co-Worker, a Mentor, a Teacher. One doesn't have to give birth to a child to be seen as a mother.

My children did not come to me through birth, but through grief and pain and personal miracles. Though they are not of my blood they are my babies always and forever. So on this blessed holiday I want to wish every Woman a Happy Mother's Day and thank all the women in my children's lives for helping to teach and mold and love them. It's true that it takes a village to raise a child and it takes all kinds to be "mothers".

Especially on this day I want to thank my babies' birth mother, Christina for giving me the most precious gifts that one woman could give another. I know she still watches over them from the highest courts above and I can only hope that she's proud of the mother I've become.


By: Fleur Conkling Heyliger

Not flesh of my flesh,
Nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously my own,
And don't forget for a single minute,
You didn't grow under my heart but in it.