Justin

There is a little wooden heart plaque that I've had since Justin was a baby that still hangs in his room and says "Boy- a noise with some dirt on it." That is our baby. I often told people when he was smaller that if Justin had been born first he would have been an only child. He wore me out. I had been decieved into thinking that all children were sweet and obediant and calm most times. Jamie was energy, jenna could be shrill but Justin was a tornado that met a hurricane and left me lying on the floor in it's wake. I was blindsided for sure. He never stopped, from the time he could crawl at five months I was chasing after him.  Grabbing him off the counter, yelling at him to get down from the tree, daring him if he tried to slide down that bannister one more time he would be banished to a chair. I thought for sure if I had to call poison control one more time they would come and take him away from me.  Mom told me God gave me Justin so I would know how most people lived.  I'd had it too easy, she said, time to pay the piper. And pay I did. Now please don't get me wrong, Justin was a loving kid and very honest. If you hollared up the stairs and said, "What are you doing up there Justin?!!" He'd say "Just hanging the cat out the window, I want to see if he can fly!" And you'd have to calm his sister down because she was trying to get the cat from him, tears streaming down her little face and a look of pure glee on his.   Or he'd have all her little friends screaming and running because he was chasing them buck naked telling them he was going to pee on them. Jenna had a tramatic childhood with her little brother.  And as a teenager when every time she was still he'd try and put her in a half nelson or a sleeper hold. "Ugh get off me!" She'd yell "MOM!" Justin was and is a Daddy's boy.  He is cute too which makes it hard to stay upset with him. He was picked out of all of kindergarten at his school to be one of Apple Festival Princes. He is outgoing and smart. By first grade we let him play on the football little league, he had so much energy he had to burn some of it off. So the rest of our school lives were spent at football fields in the rain and the snow, but we wouldn't have missed it for the world. In sixth grade he joined the wrestling team. He made varsity every year, and I cringed even when he was a senior and I had to watch him wrestle.  I wanted to stand up and yell "Let go of my baby!"  I never did it, but sometimes I'd look at Earl and say "I wish they wouldn't do that to my baby." And he'd smile, and say "He's fine."

  He graduated High School in 2009- we were hoping he might go to a school here in Indiana, but my kids have this thing for Springfield Missouri.  He was accepted to Evangel University with an amazing scholarship, and that was all she wrote. I know when they are little and you dedicate them to God, he tends to take them, so I accepted that he was going to be 8 hours away from me and Earl and I were for the first time in 25 years going to have an empty nest.  So that fall he left for college. It was tough at first and we missed him. By that time Jenna was engaged and Jamie was falling in love, so we had other things to occupy our minds.  But sometimes I would look at that plaque on the wall and think does poison control miss my calls?