Do you spend more time with facebook than your kids?

Or, for those of you who profess faith, do you spend more time with facebook than Jesus?

I'm over at Dancing With The One You Love today confessing my addiction to social media. Would love for you to pop over and share your thoughts.

My grandmother's legacy

Last week my sweet 93 year old grandma went into congestive heart failure. Yesterday I got the call that she was in active death and I took off to MI to be with my mom and family.

This morning at 11:35am she died. I have to tell you...it scared the hell out of me to be so close to someone I love when they passed. It was just my mom and me and two nurses. I had been there for a while and had read some scripture (Romans 8 and Psalm 23) to her and sang a bit. Because of her pain she was on heavy meds and had not eaten or drank anything since last Wednesday (she was in a nursing home and under the care of hospice...they were wonderful, btw).

She started moaning and gulping for air. I literally hid behind my mom...crying... at one point I peeked out and yelped out...'love you gram'.

I know, wimpy.

But then, I sensed God...so strongly... I started praying asking Jesus to usher Gram into the presence of God... I'm generally not one of those Christians who breaks out into prayer with people I don't know. Probably should be one of those Christians, but, well, anyway...

I felt like I could cut the presence of Jesus in the room with a knife. When I finished praying and said "amen" grandma breathed out her last breath.

She was gone.

I am so thankful to God that he allowed me to be a part of that special time. It renewed my faith. God is. Jesus is the great I AM. Tonight I am rejoicing and look forward to seeing my grandmother again.

And I'm also thinking about the legacy Grandma has left behind.

It's not going to be noted in TIME magazine. Her legacy is not about wealth or power or talent.

Her legacy is her marriage, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. She was a sister to fourteen siblings, a wonderful aunt, a friend, a hard worker.

Memories from my childhood surface and glow in my mind. I will be doing the dishes or picking up a a loaf of bread at the store and a feeling comes over me. Something I can’t actually pin point. Sometime in my past that is blurry, but warm. I can’t remember if I was in first grade or fifth grade when it happened, if it was a sunny spring day or the dead of winter. But when I think about it, I feel good.

A lot of these memories involve my grandmother. Ask any of us grand kids about our grandma and our stories will be similar. We will tell you about playing with the tub of plastic red monkeys that hook one to another on the warm tile floor in the guest room, or about receiving a brown grocery bag full of presents every Christmas Eve. Someone will remember staying at Grandma’s house for a week in the summer, how she would take us to the dime store to pick out a toy. Her standing on the door step of the next door neighbors’ house, ringing the doorbell, coaxing the older neighbor kids outside to play. And almost all of us will talk about endless hands of cards, about five dice shaken and released, in the hopes of getting enough points to “get you on the board.” Someone will probably mention Mass with Grandma, the ominous Catholic Church…organ music filling the space so fully that we actually breathed the music in and out. Her faith affected all of us, whether we believe or not.

At grandma’s we ate what we were served. If she stayed with your family and happened to wake you up at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, and quietly ask you to ride your bike to the corner store for a gallon of 2% milk, you did it, without refusal or complaint, astounding even yourself. And after you grew up and moved away, whether it was down the street or to another continent, once in a while you received a note, scraggly lines from her own hand, telling of mundane every day things. “God bless” or “Love and prayers” from Grandma.

Now we grandchildren are sprawled out like a spider web, in different towns and States. We are interconnected by wispy lines of our childhood. The lines are thin, seemingly non-existent, but strong like fishing lure. We can't break them. Believe me, some of us have tried.

All because of one little woman who lived well for 93 years, with dignity, faith and smiling until it was her time to be called home.

Love and prayers, Lil' Gram.

Snow storms and grace

Today we spent a lazy Saturday at home.

I read, Sergei made pancakes, we all slept in until nearly eight o'clock. The girls played upstairs. There was a lot of commotion in their play. They made a book store and then later, an orphanage. I took stock, realizing that my children have been changed by God's stirring in our hearts to adopt Evangeline.

At some point Elaina and Zoya took a bubble bath by candlelight in their bathing suits. Oh yea, we're fancy.

In the midst of it all Polly's glasses were lost, which is almost comical if they weren't so expensive; my attempt at making her look less like she has special needs (incidentally, we are finding more and more that she does not, indeed, have special needs) and we had just gotten them replaced under warranty.

Polly and I took a nap for an hour in the afternoon. I fell asleep feeling privileged to be her mother, marveling at all the lessons this little soul has taught me. Her birthday is in a couple weeks. I cannot fathom how far we've come in four years. Her birth is a painful memory. And yet, daily, she holds out her hands to us and offers joy. It's like texting with Jesus.

I went to Nohea Cafe on Roscoe for an hour to write and got so excited that it's a cafe run by Christians. I have this bad habit of deciding people are going to be my best friends without giving them the chance to get to know me.

Sergei fed all four girls dinner in my absence. I am blessed to have him as my husband. Seriously.

My brother's birthday is today. I've been thinking about him and a time in my childhood when he watched me after school. It was when my family lived in a small town in Michigan; it seemed like half of the town was family, but looking back, now I know that everyone was family. Justin would make us a frozen pizza and he'd split it down the middle and we'd each eat half (back when I could eat half of a frozen pizza without consequence). We'd watch The Munsters and he'd try to coax me into playing with a friend so he could meet up with his high school cronies. My brother is funny and kind. He makes people feel at ease and I've always looked up to him. Intuitively, I know he is a good father. When I was little he would use me as weights; I'd be his dumbbell and he'd lift me up over my head ten times. When I'm around him, still till this day, I feel safe.

It snowed today in Chicago, after a week of temperatures upwards of 50 degrees. Waking up this morning, the snow blanketing our neighborhood was a disappointment. Before I knew it, our little family of six hunkered down for our last winter hurrah. I revelled in being inside for one more day, watching my children imagine a new world in the playroom. Our cocoon was happy, safe, healthy. For today, at least.

Don't be mistaken, I'm ready for spring. The flip flops are staying out. But today, surprisingly, was sweet.

Tonight after dinner I did my in-home walking video. I walked 3 miles with Leslie Sansone, feeling middle-aged. Evie loves the walking videos. She dances and jives; it's worth it to see her get so excited about the beat. There's a point in the video where we do kick backs, with our arms raised, "Hallelujah." After the birth of Polly, my brother advised me to buy a double cheeseburger from McDonald's without fries, if I really wanted to lose weight.

Elaina watched me well into mile two. "You've been exercising a lot more recently", she noted.

"I just want to be healthy," I lied. I don't want to tell my nine year old daughter who is probably smarter than I am that I desperately still, four years later, would like to lose my baby weight. And I only eat a double cheeseburger with fries like twice a year.

I feel like our family has really gotten a day off today... I don't know if Sergei would agree as he manned the children more than I did.

But it felt nice.

And at the end of the day, after the walking video and Zoya's turn at Bible story time (another gripping account of Jonah and the whale); after three out of four children were tucked into bed, I rocked Evangeline to sleep, totally enthralled with her. We've really started to connect lately.

"I hope it lasts forever," I say to myself as I sip a glass of Chardonnay.

And I am excited about church tomorrow morning; honored that God gave me the grace to believe His gospel and that each week, while sitting at Christian Fellowship Church, a place where immortals merge and focus their attention on the Almighty for two hours, I am fed and stupefied. Where does my husband come up with this stuff? Why does God love me?

And the answer comes: Grace.

Tomorrow is World Down Syndrome Awareness Day. Elaina and Zoya both have plans to do presentations for their class on Monday to honor their sisters. To them, there is no difference; adopted or not. To them, their sisters are not disabled; they are simply Polly and Evie.

I, myself, am almost brought to tears to think about the level of awareness God has brought to our Marchenko lives.

I give Jesus all the glory, realizing that some people who read this will think I am absolutely mad.

All I can say is I'm thankful, that my belief is outside of myself, something that was handed to me by grace. I'm a fish who grabbed the bait.