Questioning Faith and Catch Up

   Its been a while, yet again, since I posted last.... I have been trying to heal emotionally and all the while keeping up with what everyday life has thrown at us.... I still cry when I think about my little angel and it makes me question my faith in anything.... I was raised in a very strict Roman Catholic family and I stopped participating in organized religion, going to mass, around my junior year of high school. I didn't agree with some of the church's teachings and I have issues with how many religions turn their backs on certain people or how too many attend church every Sunday but the rest of the week don't really do much that would be Christian like, or that do the opposite of what being a Christian (or any religious person) should do and they do it in the name of their religion.... And again, which religion is right after all? To me, I think the basic concepts of religion have been forgotten and exploited. I feel I am doing more good in the world if I spend my free time doing charity work, trying to help out good causes and all the small acts of kindness in between than if I sit in a building listening to someone telling me to do those things once a week. Have faith that there is something out there bigger than us that we may not be able to explain, be a good person & always do what's right despite if its the easier thing to do or not.... This is what I teach my children. I have friends and family who are very religious and ones who are not and ones who are atheist too. I have been shaken to my core, especially this year, questioning if I actually believe in something out there, something bigger, an after life, etc... And I have questioned, after Pelia, after all the mass shootings, the children who have died from diseases, after everything, what kind of god, if there was one, would allow such pain and sorrow and not protect such innocent lives??  Then I find myself arguing with myself as there just HAS to be a god, a heaven or some sort of after life as that can't just be the end... I cannot come to terms in believing that death is the end, the end of your existence that your feelings and thoughts, your soul, is not there and no more... There has to be something else... Then my rational side kicks in arguing that the concept of an afterlife is derived as a survival mechanism  so that we don't go insane from fear of death believing that there is something else and allowing ourselves to live day to day without concern of the end... But even with that thought I still cannot come to terms with there not being something after. There has to be something.... I know there is.....

Despite my questioning I continue to believe things will get better as long as we as human beings strive for it to and take action and do something instead of arguing about it... My son has come so far with his therapies that other than his tics and some occasional meltdowns/being overly emotional usually being triggered by anxiety, OCD-tendencies or being over whelmed, he is doing amazing and you would not even realize these things about him without being told or have knowing him since he was younger and seeing the progress yourself. I am so proud of him. He still seems so tiny fragile as his such a skinny-mini but I blame genetics on that one... I just enjoy his cuddling whenever I can and am happy he enjoys playing chess with me.  His teacher tells me he seems like any "typical" child his age and would have never known anything was up if it wasn't for our meeting before school had started. He and his big sister even won Academic Achievement Awards at school this year.  My oldest daughter is such a little artist, she is very talented for her age. But we have to remind her that her art comes after her studies otherwise she gets carried away and doesn't complete her assignments... But I am not too concerned as she is super smart. She is a huge bookworm and science bug and I love to encourage every bit of it. I think it her passion for science makes her a very rational and logical child but I know she is a sensitive child too but worry that sometimes she is too introverted at times... She has taken a liking to doing charity work with me too- she helped out with a food drive my preschool did for our local food bank, we made scarves to send to the Hurricane Sandy victims and she and her brother sponsored another brother and sister pair through the Letters to Santa program and filled their stockings. I couldn't be more proud of her. And then my youngest daughter has grown into a very active toddler who thinks she is as big as her big siblings. She insists on participating in the activities with my preschool class and she loves to help around the house. But she also has that spitfire side to her too and has definitely entered the terrible twos... She is delayed a little in talking but she very clearly understands receptively what is being said to her, even a little advance things for her age and anyone who comes into contact with her is taken back by how smart she is and her enthusiasm. She does get a bit clingy to me but I think a large part of that is because, unlike with her big brother and sister, I have been home with her since she was born. But its okay as she is a total daddy's girl.

The year has had its ups and downs for us. I have a new preschool class who is doing wonderfully and the parents are just awesome. I have made some new friends and let go of ones who aren't worth the trouble of trying to keep in touch with, especially since they don't understand that friendship works both ways. My husband and I have had our ups and down as all marriages do at times and I feel we are really working on making things better and that things actually are getting better- not saying they are perfect but they are getting better.  We actually have had a couple of date nights/nights out recently; first time in almost a year. We attended the holiday party at his work and I think him loosening up there he realized how much we have been missing out on having fun with one another being out and so we traded babysitting with some friends of ours and went to some other friends' ugly sweater dinner Christmas party and we had a blast. Our son had his birthday in September and we allowed him to pick a friend to go to Chuckie Cheese with us as that was where he wanted to go and grandparents and aunts and uncles met us there to have pizza and play games. For Thanksgiving we went to my parents' for dinner and enjoyed spending time with family. The next weekend my oldest daughter had her birthday and we had the family come over that Saturday for cake and rootbeer floats and that night 5 of her friends came over for a slumber party.

    Last week my husband took the whole week off to be home with us more for the holidays so on the weekend we went up North to his grandparents' cabin and coincidentally they were there too so we visited with them and the kids got to play in the snow. Our youngest had never seen snow before then but seemed to like it and we had a family snowball fight, after which my husband helped the kids to build a snowman/alien-blob on the cabin's deck. We had hot cocoas and changed into dry clothes before heading back home- it was a nice day trip....

   Christmas eve we went to my in-law's house (my husband's grandparents' house).  We had soups, sandwiches, appetizers and desserts followed by our gift exchange. We had drawn names for "secret Santa" for the adults so we could just focus on the kids and it was neat to see what each of us got- I was very excited to get some new pajama pants and hot pockets! I seriously asked specifically for those things during the summer and my little sister-in-law had remembered which was awesome as her mom, my mother-in-law, had drew my name for secret Santa. The kids seemed to have a blast too and we didn't get home until almost midnight but we had fun and everyone was in a great mood. Christmas morning the kids woke up around 7ish to find that they had been baby-gated upstairs (we had told them that they couldn't sneak down and we would all go together to see what Santa had brought for them). They came into our room to wake us and we said to let us sleep just a little bit more and they gave us a couple of hours! We got to sleep until around 9 a.m.! - A gift in itself! Then we came down to see what Santa had brought. My oldest got the Lego set she had been wishing for, my son got the Mario Kart race track he asked Santa at the mall for, and my youngest daughter got a big Magnedoodle which is great as she likes to steal her big brothers' or sister's little ones to draw on all the time. My husband surprised us with some gifts we weren't expecting and I surprised him with a new St. Michael statue that was completely identical to the one his grandmother gave him when he was little that recently broke when the shelf it was sitting on randomly fell off the wall one night.  That afternoon we went to my parents' house to visit with them and my brother and exchange our gifts and have our Christmas feast. I felt bad as I forgot one of the gifts for my brother and the whole box that my grandparents had shipped from FL that had everyone's presents in it but I am hoping to have them all over for dinner soon and I will pass them out then. During dinner poor Lily had a blowout and had to take a bath but other than that it was a nice Christmas. As the kids said, "the best Christmas ever!"  I am hoping that next year things will stay in an upward track for us and get a little easier and a lot less stressful and less painful. If all goes well maybe I can go back home to FL to visit for Christmas.... Hoping and trying to have faith....