Since I’m not writing a book here I’ll give you the short version. Wife to the most excellent husband around, Tom, and mom to ten, yes I said ten, kiddo’s, and just turned 64 years young! We are the epitome of a blended family with two mine, two his, two ours and four adopted teens from Ukraine. We’ve been together 30+ years and have twelve grands plus our Vizsla pup, Reagan. Two of our grown kiddo’s are married and our youngest is in college. Three of the four Ukrainians ended up being a nightmare for our family. I wrote a book about what we experienced – Adoption Combat Zone – available on Amazon. Many of my early posts on this blog are on this subject of adoption.
This blog is filled with various stories concerning raising teenagers, how to function in a blended family (which typically has a high divorce rate), communication, Ukraine teen adoption, and well, really anything that comes to me in the middle of the night. I have very strong opinions on a lot of things and thankfully before I starting putting things to writing I learned – somewhat – to temper how I say it. I say that word “somewhat” with a caveat that I won’t always hold my tongue. I say what I think and don’t hold back.
Some of my writings are about adoption, some just general things that come to my mind, like the woman at the shoe store. Others are going to be how Yahweh (God) is working in my life, like the story about carrying your sword. I also plan to get into sharing what I know about Biblical history, something I’ve studied for some time.
For quite awhile I’ve gotten nudges to write more on Bible history, a subject near and dear to my heart. For too long I’ve allowed the craziness of life to get in the way of that. As I neared my 64th birthday I was reminded by Him several times over the past weeks that this is where I’m supposed to spend my time. This morning I woke up to reading Psalms 105. It starts out with “Give thanks to Yahweh! Call upon His Name, make known His deeds among the peoples.” So that’s that.
I’m very conservative, a Bible believer, non-church goer (yes -true), and believe that everyone should make their own choice as to their beliefs – it’s your God-given right to choose Him, choose something else, or nothing at all. I am who I am, you are who you are, and I’m not here to convince you to believe like me. I’m simply here to give my opinion, set an example, and let things go from there. Yahweh is not in the convincing business and neither am I. And I’m not much into debates or arguing. Take it or leave it, it makes no matter to me.
Each of us is responsible for our own due diligence. As Scripture admonishes us we are to “study to show thyself approved”. What I write in this blog is MY opinion on things. It is up to you to search things I write out for yourself. If you don’t agree with my opinion on something, that’s great. Show me how you came to your conclusion and I’ll take a look at it. What I won’t tolerate is the standard, “That’s not true” or “I don’t believe you” or some other blanket statement that is emotion based without real facts. Christians today have been filled with a lot that is not true about the Bible and there is a lot of emotion attached to holding onto those ideas. Again, I’m not in the convincing business and I don’t like arguing without facts being shown.
We have had a crazy house the last few years with four Russian speakers, and the trials that we’ve experienced. From exposure to human trafficking, child protective services (CPS), runaways, the Russian mafia, and oh so much more, we’ve come through the fire. You’ll definitely want to read Adoption Combat Zone. Even if you’re not in the adoption world your eyes will be opened to a whole new level of bizarre. Again, if you haven’t lived in the world of scary adoptions, please don’t preach at me or tell me platitudes. If you’ve had a great adoption, awesome. I’m happy for you. I wish ours had been like yours. It wasn’t. Write your happy story. I wrote ours.
I hope you enjoy what I write enough to subscribe and spread the word by sharing. I love helping people and enough have told me I should write a book that I finally did and I have this blog, too. If someone can learn from my MANY mistakes, then it’s all worth it. I’ve broken every commandment in THE Book so I’m definitely no saint. Quick! Look them up and read down the list. YUP! Every one of them. Maybe I’ll write a post on THAT one day. Just goes to show that He can redeem and you can go forth and make a difference. Praise Yahweh for that!
I’m also an independent consultant and executive regional vice president with Arbonne International. I fell in love with their pure products 25 years ago and am still loving them today.
I hope you enjoy “Simply My Opinion”, spread the word about it, and have an amazing day!
Kathe