Ella’s day started off well, but she did seem fussy on and off. I was especially surprised when it came time for physical therapy. Normally, she has such a great time. Yet, half of the session was her melting down. I guess she was just not in the mood to do any work. Fortunately, we were able to distract her enough to get some work accomplished, but it was a challenge!

Unfortunately, the main event of the day was not related specifically to Ella. As if the last few weeks were not already tough enough, there was more going on in our lives than we could publicly share on the blog.

We were having some problems with our live-in nanny that takes care of Ella. We’ve had ongoing problems and challenges through the past 7 months and it has been especially challenging since it is a live-in situation.

Things started to get strange and led us to be suspicious right around the same time that we got the news that the baby had a lethal birth defect. We were asking the Lord for guidance and direction. Obviously, we felt led to invite this person into our home last fall, giving her the huge job of taking care of our miracle baby girl. We thought that we shared a common unity in Christ. Keep in mind that this is someone who made a point on the first day of the job to let us know that she was a sweet, innocent Christ-follower that had never even kissed a boy. Apparently, we didn’t know our nanny at all and it took us this long to figure it out.

I think just describing the day’s events this past Tuesday will give you a sense of what had been going on. She was aware that we had to go to the hospital to deliver our son, yet she was out all night and returned at 4:15am to go to sleep. The prior evening, she offered to start early at 7am, but I ended up having to wake her since she was so sleep deprived. When we were at the hospital and she was being paid to care for Ella, she spent several hours on the internet, searching sites and having conversations with individuals that were highly inappropriate, explicit and immoral in nature. Upon arrival at home after a long day at the hospital, she expressed that her Dad was going into surgery the next morning. Considering all that was going on, we let her take the day off. During Wednesday, we also decided to look in her room to see if there was anything else that was concerning. That just led to more disappointment – we found things in her room that did not belong to her that she conveniently decided to place in her room to use, without our knowledge.

When confronted this morning with all the evidence, she did not deny any of it. She took it in and cried while we explained, in the most loving way possible, that we needed to end our relationship. Once she began to pack her belongings, she became indifferent and ended up just leaving and saying, “bye” and quickly walked away. She explained that she thought she could portray herself as someone she would like to be and if placed in a good home, she could change. In other words, she admitted that it has all been a lie.

It hurts so much to be deceived in this way, under the banner of Christianity. She portrayed herself as someone that she clearly was not. We cannot believe the things that were revealed over the last few weeks, but most especially, even from this past Tuesday while we were going through something so heavy.

Besides all of the drama, there must be a reason this young girl of 19 years of age was brought into our home for these past months. I’m not sure if we’ll ever understand the Lord’s plans, but there must be some purpose for her being here. We’re just hoping that she learns from this chapter of life and that she draws near to God, working on repairing her clearly damaged heart. Please offer up a prayer for her.

As far as our plans, we will continue to seek Him for guidance and direction on next steps. Until then, Mom is enjoying some good quality time with her little Bun. She is such a sweet child and we are so thankful to have her in our lives.