Postively Postive

/ Sara Lynn Payne / 4 Comments

Positively Positive

This week, I have to confess I got kind of annoyed with a sign. Yep. A Sign.

And all this offending sign said was, “Smile!”

I was taking out two of the boys to McDonald’s just to hang out when I was confronted by said sign at the register. Maybe I was just a little tired, but it seemed funny being told just to randomly smile by a sign that clearly had no self-awareness. I suppose that the management wanted to reinforce that McDonald’s was a happy place to be, but it’s symptomatic of an interesting trend.

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Choosing to Stay

/ Sara Lynn Payne / 10 Comments

Choosing to Stay

Last summer, of course at the very beginning, Luke had an accident and broke his foot. We went from, “I really hope that isn’t broken,” to “I think that might be broken,” and then finally, “I’ll be surprised if it isn’t broken” over the course of hours as it started to bruise and swell up. The x-rays the next morning were sickening. It is definitely bad when even I can tell that it’s broken since my expertise in radiology is limited to, “yep, that’s a foot”- it was really broken.

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The Myth of Finding Balance

/ Sara Lynn Payne / Leave a comment

The Myth of Finding Balance

I usually get a lot of funny looks when I’m out. Maybe it is the four kids or maybe it is the fact that the oldest three are boys, but someone inevitably says, “Boy do you have your hands full!”

And I laugh (though sometimes I want to cry depending on how many times I have told said boys to stop hiding in the store racks… and if I have had to help them become unstuck from their hiding places in the store racks).

But I really don’t like the question, “How do you do it all?”

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“Real” Parents

/ Sara Lynn Payne / 32 Comments

Real Parents: Adoption and Foster Care

I’m late in posting this because I feel like I am still processing what has happened.

Friday was a profound day: my foster daughter had a court hearing to make some decisions for her case. I’ve always hated court dates because they are such a poignant reminder of how broken everything is. It’s heartbreaking that a situation could go so off the rails that it ends up being debated and decisions made by outside parties in a court of law. Nobody wins. Ever. It is simply about mitigating the damages.

I’m feeling the strangest mix of emotions as I’m absolutely elated and wretchedly heartbroken. My foster daughter’s biological mom had her parental rights terminated on Friday.

We are going to adopt her.

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Thoughtful Reads: Till We Have Faces

/ Sara Lynn Payne / 18 Comments

Till We Have FacesThis post uses affiliate links. For more information see the disclosure policy.

Learning To Live

Five years ago this week I lost a friend. The word friend doesn’t seem to even adequately describe her because she was so much more. Emily changed my life.

I met her during a very dark period in my life since I was just diagnosed as being chronically ill and I was so bitter at the prospect of being in constant pain for the rest of my life. I was grieving since my plans were upended and life wasn’t going to be what I thought. We ended up in the same dorm at college and instantly, I thought she was one of the sweetest and brightest people I’d ever met.

And then I found out she had cystic fibrosis.

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Invisible

/ Sara Lynn Payne / 18 Comments

 

I love working in Photoshop; in fact, it is one of my favorite parts of my job. I get to take images and pull out the beauty from them, add text or graphics, and create. The way the program works though took me a while to get used to since it is very much unlike how I learned to create art by hand. The program uses layers to manipulate the images and that pull together at the end to create a finished product.

It’s eerily reminiscent of life in general. We don’t see all the layers of a person’s life at first glance, just the sum of everything. It’s even possible for us to turn off a layer so it isn’t immediately visible to those around us.

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The Easy Way

/ Sara Lynn Payne / 20 Comments

The Easy Way

I adore my three-year old. Jackson is hilarious, loving, and preciously protective of his siblings. He is still three, though, and doesn’t like going to bed.

He really doesn’t like being put to bed for the eighth time (per evening, and all of these times in the course of writing this post) and spontaneously appears around the house several hours after bedtime has commenced. I’m considering making a suit of pajamas out of Velcro and constructing special Velcro sheets to match: he is officially a night person.

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The Lucky Ones

/ Sara Lynn Payne / 29 Comments

The Lucky Ones

Have I ever mentioned that we have a two-story foyer? It’s not actually an important fact, but it has become a major facet of life around here. There is a small balcony over the entryway that the kids love the stand at and look down. I’m happy because the stairs are in the back of the house so the kids won’t fall down during this pastime, but they’ve come up with a way to make it just as nerve-wracking for me.

They don’t just stand there: they throw things down. On unsuspecting people.

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