I felt the need to write about my oldest son and some of the hard times we have faced as a family lately. He was 6 years old when we were blessed to have him be a part of our family. Norah and I adopted him and his brother because we wanted our family to grow and we opened up our hearts to the world of adoption. Our intentions are always to help our family members grow up strong, knowing they are loved, knowing that they are part of a family, and that they would always be part of our lives forever.
This past year and a half have been one of the most difficult times in my life. When our boys came to live with us we told them we would always be here for them, they would always have a home, and that family always sticks together no matter what.
We weren’t prepared for the baggage that my son was carrying from his past. He was part of neglect and abuse from his biological family the first 3 years of his life and the next 3 years he spent jumping from one foster home to another foster home. This has made life for my son difficult now that he is becoming a young man. He struggles with controlling his anger and struggles to share his inner deep feelings. At an early age we could tell that he was easily angered and it didn’t take much for him to throw a tantrum when he felt he didn’t get his way or that no one was listening to him.
We thought he would grow out of it and that we could handle his behavior, but as he got older his anger became worse. We knew he was not in control of his actions and that he couldn’t stop his anger. Everything that we tried didn’t work and we knew that it was only a matter of time before he would hurt himself or someone else.
We had to have our son removed from the house that we said was his and separate him from his family that was supposed to stick together no matter what. We placed him in a treatment facility to help him gain control of his life. This must be more difficult for him now, because now he must feel that he has lost everything again and that he’s by himself in this world, on top of the rest of the baggage he’s been carrying for the past 16 years.
As a father the thought of this makes me want to cry, I was supposed to save and protect him from the world and I failed. I know this is the way it needs to be right now, my son has to find tools to help him handle the anger and to find the tools on how to communicate his feelings so the people around him can understand and help. I try not to get too caught up in the guilt that comes, but it is very difficult.
I want my son to know that I believe in him and not to worry about any of the past mistakes or hard times, because some of the best things in life come from our mistakes. We will be together one day and it will all be behind us. When that day comes we can focus on getting his driver’s license and I can help him with a few pointers on how to get a girls attention. We just have to get passed this hurdle. My job right now as his father is to let him know that no matter what I will always be here for him. And that he will never lose his spot at the dinner table.
Today I encourage you to not miss the opportunity to let a loved one know that they are in your thoughts. If anyone would like to share how they did this I would love to hear it.
The definition of forgiveness is to stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offense, flaw, or mistake.
This makes sense when you’re the one giving forgiveness, but I lived on the other side. I was looking to be forgiven.
When I speak of forgiveness I am reminded of all the things I’m most ashamed of. The word forgiveness puts me on the road of regret, making me wish that I hadn’t done the things that I did. When I find myself using this word, I automatically start thinking of what I need to do, in order to fix what I have broken.
I always consider myself the offender. I started to feel this way from a young age. As far back as I can remember, after getting in trouble, I felt that I had let my family and the people around me down and that I was obligated to do what ever it took to correct what I had done wrong.
I struggled to look at myself in the mirror because what I saw was dark and ugly. Forgiveness always equaled out to guilt and then to shame. I walked around with this sick feeling nagging at my head, telling me to do or not to do; my conscience letting me know that it was there.
Like the image of myself looking into a mirror and seeing me on the other side saying the words “you’re an embarrassment, you’re a dumb, you’re getting annoying, and stop being a loser.”
I really never thought about how much these words weighed on me, even if I was the one saying them to myself. I carried the anxiety of not measuring up to the expectations of the world. I carried these emotions until my mid-twenties. Wow I was a mess, no wonder I got it to so much trouble. I was searching for something to show me that I had value, searching for someone to say that they were proud of me, but it took awhile before I could find that.
It took me some time after being baptized to truly understand what God had done for me! He had forgiven me, Sergio Sanchez, not because I had done something wrong to him. No, it was because he loved me. Enough that he gave his only son to save me.
The Holy Spirit started to work on my heart and exposed me to love. The lack of love in my heart was the reason I always felt I needed to be forgiven. I didn’t love myself and because of that I couldn’t forgive anyone or think I was worthy of forgiveness. If there is no love in your heart then the act of forgiveness is just an act. I had to face my demons by looking into the mirror and say “my life is forgiven!” I had to confront myself and find forgiveness from within my heart to free myself. Then the Lord took over.
I had to let God clean up my mirrors, accept His forgiveness, and to accept forgiveness from myself. These days my heart tells me that I am to love people, it tells me that I am to forgive so I can show love, and that I am to help others clean their mirrors. It tells me to do this because the Lord is with me and I am forgiven!
The bible speaks a lot about loving your neighbor, loving others, and loving God. That’s a lot of love if you ask me, especially knowing that love is a choice. And the best part is we can choose to love even if we don’t feel like it . Even when we feel someone doesn’t deserve it, we still can love. The more we start forgiving ourselves, the more our eyes are opened to how much others need the same thing.
We cannot love if we do not love ourselves. We cannot forgive if we do not forgive ourselves. We cannot show grace to others if we can’t recognize that we need grace. And how will we bring hope and healing to others, if we constantly look at ourselves in the mirror and say “I am not worthy”
Remember we don’t have to feel unworthy, we don’t have to feel ashamed, because we are forgiven. God made a choice to forgive us. So today ignore the image on the other side of the mirror and fight to find the love from within your heart and
Recently I felt myself in a free-fall and had no idea how to slow it down, let alone stop it. I was over whelmed at work and I felt the demand it has on my every day life. I was overwhelmed with taking care of my family while trying to balance work.
I wasn’t eating right or sleeping right. This didn’t just start happening, it had been growing for months and I kept saying to myself “What is wrong with you? Get it together, handle it, you’re a big boy.” But my pep talks didn’t help and things continued to get worse.
I needed to step back and ask what do I do next? Give up and throw my hands in the air?
After many hours of soul searching and praying for an answer the light turned on. The reason things got so out of control was I had forgotten that I had to have
Balance
Balance was missing and I felt like a one sided coin. The coin of life needs to get balance from each side; on one side you need achievement which is where you find success, fulfillment, production, and capability, on the other side of the coin you need enjoyment where you find happiness, pleasure, relaxation, satisfaction, thrill and where you find the WOW in life.
You cant have one with out the other. Trying to live on one side of the coin is why some successful people are unhappy and overwhelmed. They may find themselves feeling like I felt; in a free-fall. I needed to find balance before I started to damage myself with every day that passed. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed for a long period of time and not like what you see in the mirror. The opposite of achievement and enjoyment will be realized after time and you will start to suffer from depression, sadness, pain, misery on one side of your coin and on the other you will find defeat, failure, idleness and loss.
Once I came to see that balance was missing in my life I set out to fix it by making sure to I was focusing on the 4 areas of my life that needed balance.
Family, Work, Self and Spirit.
I now know that I need to contribute to each one of these area on a daily basis by focusing on achievement and enjoyment. It doesn’t mean that I have to spend equal amounts of time on each, just that each are visited daily. So that I don’t become one sided.
If someone were to ask me “What is your purpose in life?”
I’d say, “I want to achieve something today and I want to enjoy something today.”
If I do both of those things, I’m going to have a pretty good day. And if I do both of these things every day, for the rest of my life, I’m going to have a good life.
I think this is true for all of us. Life will deliver the value and balance we desire.
Simple concepts. And once you focus on them as key components of your day, they are not that hard to implement. So, make it happen, for yourself, your family and all the important individuals you care about…every day for the rest of your life.
If the walls could speak in our house, I wonder what they would say. I’m not sure what they would say about the first 90 years of their existence, because we only started roaming around these walls since 1997. That was when Norah and I were introduced to the place that we now call Home.
The first time I saw our home it was dark outside and very cool; winter was a few weeks away. Norah and I were unsure if we could afford to purchase the house. Pulling up I saw a wrap-around porch and 4 steps leading to the front door. I started to wonder how was I going to get in, but it wasn’t a problem because Norah turned my wheelchair around so my back wheels were against the steps and pulled me up onto the porch. As i wheeled myself through the front door the first thing that caught my eyes were two sets of French doors with glass going from top to bottom. The doors were stained a light brown showing the grain of the wood. I was speechless and all I could do was imagine me and my family calling it home!
The walls must have as
ked, “Who are these three new faces?”
I could imagine the walls saying the little one better not write on me, the mom looks like a painter, she better not think about it. The man is in a wheelchair, he’s going to bang us
up.
But the Lord said YES! He answered our prayers and we were able to buy the house. God is good!
Today the walls would say, “My, look at how beautiful Ashley has become, she’s all grown up, finished school and starting her own life.”
Maybe the walls would describe how they remember Ashley playing Barbies in her room for hours. The walls would wonder if she still had the phone that she helped wire in so many moons ago.
They would ask, “I wonder how many books she has read and if she still plays volleyball?”
The walls would have a story to tell of a young girl becoming a women and that when she was 14 her life changed from being the only child to becoming a big sister to Weslea age 5 and Jason age 4.
The walls would speak of how they saw Ashley give her all to her new brothers, and how she would protect them. The two little boys now belonged to her family. The walls watched Ashley become a great big sister.
The walls would hear that Weslea asked a lot of questions because he was very smart and very curious for a 5 year old. The walls knew that he never forgot anything, and he made you keep your word.
The walls could see that Jason was a cute kid who got his way just by smiling and showing his dimples. They knew that Jason wanted to be a football player, wrestler, and a basketball player.
BOYS! The walls would say, “What a joy these two boys are to Ashley, Norah and Sergio!”
They could see how the boys filled a gap in their lives. And how our family filled a gap in the boys’ life. God must have had this all planned the day we walked and rolled in the front door of our Home.
The walls knew they needed to expand to make room for the family of 5. One wall was torn down to make room for an addition. Each person in the family had a room of their own, and they no longer all had to share 1 bathroom.
The walls were just as surprised as the family was when Gese, age 2, came to live with
them. The boys were blessed with a little sister at ages 11 & 10. They had to teach her the rules of the house. As big brothers they needed her know that she wasn’t allowed in their rooms and that she couldn’t touch their stuff.
But the walls knew the boys were softies and enjoyed to watch them cuddle while watching cartoons with their little sister.
If the walls could speak today they would all say, “It is amazing how Norah and Sergio have grown as a family. They went from a family of 3 to a family of 6. God has his hands on this family, and they are blessed.”
For the past 17 years the walls of our Home have been filled with the noise of memories, the place where we played, a place where we grew, making us a family.
Remember having somewhere to go is a home, having someone to love is a family, having both is a blessing!!
me it was dark outside and very cool; winter was a few weeks away. Norah and I were unsure if we could afford to purchase the house. Pulling up I saw a wrap-around porch and 4 steps leading to the front door. I started to wonder how was I going to get in, but it wasn’t a problem because Norah turned my wheelchair around so my back wheels were against the steps and pulled me up onto the porch. As i wheeled myself through the front door the first thing that caught my eyes were two sets of French doors with glass going from top to bottom. The doors were stained a light brown showing the grain of the wood. I was speechless and all I could do was imagine me and my family calling it home!
