It Takes Things Off Of 'Me'

Whelp, I am now a mother of a school-age child. Yep, just dropped Skye off at school just over an hour ago. She was so excited about school that she threw on her back-pack and ran to her teacher with out so much as a wave good-bye to her parents. I found myself continually turning around in my seat to take another quick glance at her until we rounded the corner and drove passed the trees out of line of sight. I developed a huge lump in my throat and tried not to cry.

Then I had to thank God that He was with her and trust that He had heard my early morning prayers. At around 5:10 AM this morning, after attending to Ian quickly, I was unable to go back to sleep. I was restless. I kept tossing and turning. In a few short hours my little girl would be at school and in the hands of others. I started to worry. "Have they put in the buzzer system at the main door of the school yet?" "Will Skye be able to find her pencils?" "Did I pack enough for her lunch?" "Will she be able to open the packaging for her snack?"

The what-ifs came spilling in. So I went to God in prayer. I prayed over all of my worries and I prayed for protection around Skye. My worries, although they were still there somewhat, they weren't as daunting to me anymore and then the morning was off.

However, I got to thinking about how I go to God in prayer and thankfulness a lot more now then I used to and I am happy that I do so now. Makes life easier in a way and it reminds me of God and His blessings. I have learned to pray throughout an entire day--off and on; here and there. Some prayers are long while others are short and perhaps one word thoughts expressing thankfulness.

For example, here is how one day of prayer began two weeks ago for me. I began my morning with a run. And although I had upbeat music going in my ear, I found myself praying for the day as I ran. A thought of fear popped into my head. It wasn't of the Lord and the one passing thought started to set in like a weed in my garden of thoughts. I was growing fearful of something that was many, many, many months away and something that was out of my control as it was, so I prayed and kept giving the thought to the Lord every time the negative thought came in. I prayed over my worries.

Later that day when I would be in the middle of a task that wasn't so much fun as changing Ian's diaper or wiping Paisley's little bum bum, I would pray over that child that I was currently with, thanking God for them and asking God to protect them. While I was cleaning the toilets, a chore that is not on my list of favorite things to do, I thanked God that I had a toilet to clean, a house to live in and a family to clean up after.

I was attending a wedding at the end of the week and I had to wrap a gift for the couple. Now usually I would look at this task as "a must do" and try to do it as quickly as I can so I can continue on to my next task, but this time I prayed. As I wrapped the gift I prayed for my friends and their marriage as well as their future together. What an awesome way to wrap a present for someone.

Later that day, I received an email from someone with news that made me a bit angry especially considering the rocky road we have shared. And while these people are not high up on my "people I like" list, I started to pray that God would help me forgive them and such. While our relationship hasn't healed and I am continually finding myself to be very bitter towards them, I just continually ask for God's help when a negative feeling pops into my head. I pray that God would show me how to extend grace and forgiveness.

Cooking dinner is not always a fun adventure for me in the life of motherhood. Often times Ian needs attention, the girls have questions, Scot is calling and I can barely follow the recipe correctly, but I am now trying to pray as best as I can during this time. Thank God that Ian is healthy enough to cry like he can sometimes and that he has such a good appetite. Thank God that my girls are here with me and have lot's to say. Thank God that although Scot is coming home late from work once again, that he has a job that has provided us with the food that I am preparing.

This kind of praying and thanking God throughout my day has brought more joy to my hectic and sometimes crazy life. It takes things off of 'me' and places my attention on other things. So often I make life about me--even above my kids and husband and God. I often do things with an ungrateful heart--complaining and more. Praying places my thoughts off of me and onto other things and other people.

As I was making Skye's lunch last night and realizing that my evenings will be different from here on out and there will be less time for "mommy time," it was time to go to God in prayer and thankfulness. Thank God I have happy, healthy and growing children! Pray for them as I prepare their food and more!

Time To Get You Big Girl Pants On

This may sound a bit direct, and perhaps it is; but I am going to say it just the same anyways...



Time to get your big girl pants on (or for some of you, may be time to get your big boy pants on).

Yep, I read it again to myself and its blunt...real blunt as a matter of fact, but I think it needed to be said and so I said it.

Sometimes you need to stop having a "temper ta trim" so to speak. Stop with the pity-party. Stop just sitting on your butt complaining about what's wrong in your life, declaring that God and the world owe you something when in fact, they owe you nothing. Yep, they really owe you nothing at all in the great scheme of things.

Take responsibility for your own actions and decisions. Sometimes you just didn't so 'happen' upon the place you find yourself. In fact, many times it was your own choices that got you where you are at. And until you realize this very fact known as your "own free will" you may just stay stuck in a miserable place as the world continues on instead of taking responsibility and moving forward with grace and mercy.

God can't change free will. Nope. He can't make you do anything that you are not willing to do. Sometimes, however, God gives you the 'key' to a door but you have to be the one to take the 'key' from Him and unlock the door, turn the knob, open the door and take a step through it. Yep, you have to act and do. God just isn't going to hand everything to you on a silver platter. And I am sorry it is foolish if you think so, and if you are stuck in that mind set you just may be wondering through the 'hallways' of life.

For instance, you may wish to go on a diet. You have to be the one to be strong and stay firm when shopping for food. The grocery store has plenty of healthy foods to choose from but you know what else they have up and down their aisles? Junk food. It is you who decides what to put in your grocery basket. All the nutritional facts are on the cartons but you decide if you are going to read them and eventually partake in them or not.

Doing nothing but praying may not get you anywhere either. God may be waiting for you to act. It would be silly to sit on your butt, complaining of no money, and who knows what else, and not get up onto your feet and go find a job or something. He has given you hands, feet, eyes, ears and a mouth for a reason--to use them.

If you are using something as a crutch in your life, whether out of fear, or as a means of manipulating others around you for your own selfish needs and pride, take heed--you need to stop. At some point, you will find yourself discontent and discouraged. Your loved ones will grow weary of you. They can't enable you forever and they shouldn't enable you. And when they stop enabling you, you will be responsible for what befalls you and the repercussions it could bring. It is not their responsibility to hold you up.

Time to get your big girl/boy pants on. You can't be in diapers forever. Getting rid of diapers opens a whole new world up to you, one with out Desitin and diaper rashes.

When One Door Opened

 

In February, when we found ourselves walking through the entrance doors into the Pediatric Unit, I found myself oddly relieved that we were there. In fact, some people in that unit could have commented on the small smile that was accross my face. I watched them roll my daughter through the door into her large hospital room and I was...I was almost joyous that we were there. I mean what parent would be somewhat happy that their child would spend a night or two in the hospital? One that was very relieved that someone finally believed her--that someone took her seriously and that there was finally a diagnosis for her little girl after 3 visits with the pediatrician in almost just as many days. Thanking God that x-rays were done and pneumonia was found, and now her little girl would soon be on her way to recovery.

Unfortunately, this attitude would soon change as day 3, 4, 5 and 6 rolled passed and Sky Baby was still there and still very sick. As day 7 came and went, I found myself growing ever more worried about my little girl and as each morning went by and I found myself walking through the hospital doors with snacks, activities, and dolls for Sky Baby, as well as my Bible and such in tow, I slowly became more aggitated and angry at God that we were still there at the pediatric unit with Sky Baby. I was growing very weary leaving Paize behind, kissing Scot on the cheek as we did our "shift change" and sitting with my sick child while pregnant with my son. The hospital doors and the pediatric doors were becoming daunting. You know you had been there for quite some time, when all you had to do was press the button to the pediatric unit and they didn't even have to ask you who you were anymore or the name of the patient for whom you were coming to see--they knew me by face now.

As daunting and heavy as the doors were becoming, even the automatic doors mind you, the doors that were becoming more and more frustrating and frightening to me were the elevator doors. I hated the elevator doors. I hated stepping into them. I hated how they made me sick to my stomach when their little box of a room would make my exhausted pregnant self dizzy and queezy from its motion. But what I hated most about those doors...What made me even more angry and frustrated about those darn doors than I was already, was where they would keep placing me. Yep, they kept opening on the 4th floor. I HATED the 4th floor. Why couldn't the elevator just get me to the 6th floor? Why couldn't it just skip right over the 4th floor? Why would it open at the 4th floor in the comings and goings of the hospital and the other occupants of the forsaken small moving box!




You may be wondering what was so wrong with the 4th floor by now. Well, where this particular elevator kept stopping was right infront of a unit I just didn't want to be reminded of primarily because of how it made me feel--very, very fearful. It would often open at the entrance to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit; and as each day would pass by, and as I watched my daughter be placed on oxygen and antibiotics and more and more doctors were being called to work on her case, I was terrified of PICU.

At the beginning of Sky Baby's hospitalization, I found myself thanking God that we weren't there. We were not in PICU. However, as days passed and Sky Baby's condition was not changing, I found myself really thanking Him that we weren't there in PICU out of fear that He would place me somewhere I didn't want to be; and the elevator doors was a reminder of that, and I hated them for that fact.

Well, as Sky Baby's condition continued to barely improve after 9 or so days on very heavy IV antibiotics, Scot and I found ourselves behind closed doors in a conference with all of her doctors including her infectious disease doctor, pulminary specialist, the resident, and other nurses and doctors as well as my dad who was retired from a medical profession himself. The decision to walk straight into PICU was before us. After much prayer and information gathering, Scot and I decided to send Sky Baby straight into those doors that I had been praying to God that we would avoid entering!


 

The next day, Sky Baby was carted off to the 4th floor to have a risky bronchial scope performed--a procedure that had the risk of spreading the infection to healthy lung tissue and air ways, as well as carried the common risks that are often associated with being put under for a time as it was. I still to this day remember walking out of the elevator with my husband and daughter and my Bible in hand confused as to why God was placing us here at PICU. I remember seeing all of the staff and equipment as well as watching my little girl be terrified of her surroundings and trying so hard to be strong for her. As we watched her go under general anesthesia and we were told to leave, I was angry that I had to leave her in PICU, but thankful at the same time that it was for only a short time and after the procedure was completed our daughter would return to the 6th floor. I hated it when the PICU doors closed behind us, and our little girl was left in the hands of other people. I prayed for her and tried to tell myself that she was in God's hands as well.

When the estimated time of the completion came and went, I became very worried and extremely aggitated as I knew right away something was wrong. Very wrong. I wanted my little girl and I wanted her now. "Why haven't her doctors come for me?" "Where are they?" "What's wrong?" "They said it would only be a half hour." I became very verbal in my displeasure and insecurities. In fact, the rest of the waiting room was now alerted of my discontent as my dad and Scot tried to reassure me.

To make a very long story short, we finally found ourselves just inside of the PICU doors when we were informed that our daughter had problems with the general anesthesia and after her doctors were forced to use paralytics on her, her weak lungs had started to collapse. We were soon told that she was on 15 liters of O2 using the mask and she was still having problems breathing. I remember becoming very angry. Very angry--the kind of anger that everyone standing near us knew of my displeasure. I began to question our decision to have the scope performed for which all but one doctor had urged us to do. I wanted her out of TB lockdown. I wanted her little one room world that we had found ourselves in just days prior to end and her gastric tube removed. As the closed door to her big hospital room had begun to make her room smaller and smaller with the walls closing in around us, in desperation to have the restrictions lifted and my daughter released from her dungeon so to speak, and in desperation to solve the reasons as to why her pneumonia just would not heal, I was afraid I had made the wrong decision and in doing so, I was now in the doors for which I never wanted to be. As I realized the fate that was occuring and the realization that we were indeed where I never wanted to be--we had a very sick child who was now worse than before--I couldn't believe God would allow this to happen. And as we were asked to leave PICU briefly as the doctors went back to assess Sky Baby's condition, I became even more angry at God. And as the PICU doors closed behind us once again, and I was in Scot's arms, I burst into emotions. Tears came flooding out and I began to stomp my feet as a child does when a parent makes a decision that they disagree with. Yes, I was stomping at the predicament we were in and where God had placed us.


 

Shortly thereafter, we were told that Sky Baby was very agitated, and angry, and they were getting ready to intubate her. I refused. I told them they would not to intubate her until I saw her first. They quickly rushed Scot and myself into PICU and into her room. I flew through those doors at that point not caring in the world that we were there. I just wanted to see my little girl again and help her breath. Sky Baby was angry, and very scared, and she was letting everyone around her know it too. I saw the fight in her, and I knew that she was just scared and in a panic. I knew that all I needed to do was to calm her down and help her relax a little. I took over the nebulizer and started to tell her to take deep, slow breaths. Once she realized I was there and she was making the attempts to calm down, I sang Jesus Loves Me over and over again. I soon crawled into her bed and laid down beside her singing. Slowly Sky Baby's oxygen levels improved. The doctors informed us that Sky Baby would be staying the night in PICU for observation. I remember thinking here we are...

However, now that time has passed, and I have been able to reflect on everything, I am able to realize that when the one dreaded door opened, good came from it. In fact, in hines sight it needed to happen and God prepared me for it, even when I wasn't even aware of it. He even equipped me and was there for Sky Baby, Scot, and I as soon as it was realized that Sky Baby would be staying in PICU. Not one second did He not provide me with what I needed to continue on the painful road I had to travel to get to where I am today as I write. Do you know that as soon as Sky Baby's breathing had stabilized as I was singing to her, God was present? He was there for me. Just as soon as the doctors left the room do you know who's face peered into the room? Steve, an elder from our church. This just dawned on me the other day, and as soon as I remembered him entering the PICU room to pray with us and to encourage us, it gave me goose bumps. God knew I was weary and fragile, and when PICU doors opened and I was forced to walk through screaming and kicking all the way, He was going to equip me with what I needed to continue on. Simply powerful...powerful... And when Steve left the room I felt a calm that I did not think I could obtain in such a place as PICU; and I was ready to face it.

God had equipped me the whole time and I didn't even realize it. He prepared me for battle weeks before I was aware there was going to be a fight. For example, weeks prior to Sky Baby's illness, I had begun to experience bad back pain as a result of my pregnancy with Little Man and other factors. Who knew that back pain was going to lead to 'armor' for the battle ahead. I went to see a friend who is a certified massage therapist and who performs cranial therapy as well. One thing about her is that she is strong in her Christian faith and healing. She explained to me that our physical well-being is most often tied into our mental and spiritual well-being. She told me to find 3 Bible verses that claimed health for me and my family and to place them on my bathroom mirror so that I would be reminded of them every morning and that I would claim them in prayer for me and my family. Who knew that in doing so, I would find Bible verses that would equip me for the fight; and along with verses that my twin sister would find later, they would be amongst several Bible verses that hung about Sky Baby's hospital room.

The 3 Bible verses that I found and I still hang on my bathroom mirror to this day are as follows:

Do not be wise in your eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Proverbs 3:7-8

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10

...Long life to you! Good health to you and your household! And good health to all that is yours!" I Samuel 25:6

And although health didn't exactly find my family in the months proceeding the discovery of these verses, I believe that they equipped me for what occurred, and I was more prepared to deal with them than I would have other wise been. Plus, I can't help but shake the feeling that some outcomes and symptoms were averted through learning to trust in God and claim health in my life as well as my family's. I say that even as we are the midst of Little Man's kidney problems.

Also, I have to say that a positive came from PICU. Even in the first night we were in there, which included me expriencing the worst nurse out of the whole 12 days we were in the hospital and me falling backwards onto my butt slamming my head against the marble window sill at about 25 weeks pregnant, God was at work. Yep, after my fall that I had experienced, a friend of ours who was a prenatal specialist at the hospital, was kind enough to check on me and the baby so that I did not have to leave the hospital to see my OBGYN. In doing so, and although my doctor would have at some point learned of the problem, our friend noticed that our son was retaining fluid around his kidneys and informed my OBGYN that follow-up ultra sounds should be performed to re-evaluate Little Man's kidneys. I can't help but be blessed that we were made aware of his kidneys much earlier than otherwise would have; and hence, we were able to keep a closer eye on his condition and any complications that could have risen from it.

There are so many such blessings. And everytime I felt as though another hurtle was before us, God was there. From my sister being laid off from her job who ended up being our main sitter during the last few months to Pastor Steve coming in to pray with Sky Baby and myself the day we went on TB lockdown and I was feeling very low, there was God in the midst. I wish I could share them all with you. He was there with us as Scot and I had to administer Sky Baby's IV antibiotic of Merapennim (sp?) after only a half hour crash course on how to do so.  For two weeks, Scot and I handled her meds through her PICC line just to have her home, but God gave us a wonderful home nurse who helped us learn.

We can either choose to accept what God has to equip us for the battle that lay ahead or we can refuse them; that is our choice. But if we accept them as we go through the door that we wish would remain closed, we can learn and grow in a way that only God can provide us. I have grown so much with in the last few months.  Like I have said in prior posts, I have been changed in such a way that I just do not believe I would have changed otherwise if God hadn't opened an unwanted door--a door I much rather have remained closed. And as painful as it was, I am thankful too. God never said it would be easy, but trials can either help you grow in your walk or not--that is for you to decide. However, if you find that one door is either closing that you don't want closed or there is one that is opening that you prefer stays closed tight, just know that God has given you the tools to overcome them and pray that you choose to accept them.

GOD IS GOOD.

ANOTHER UPDATE

Skye and Ian had their physicals and check-ups today. Besides a small summer cold, Skye is healthy and ready for school to begin. However, she did cry more than Ian did when she received her one vaccine versus his 4.

Ian is 16.1 pounds!! He is in the 97% for his weight and length, but he is doing well and is healthy! I rather him be a larger breast fed baby than a small one esp. with his kidney troubles. Speaking of his kidneys, Ian will be having his second renal scan performed on Sept. 17th and then he will be doing a follow-up appt. with his urologist a week later. His follow-up ultrasound is being discussed and such. His pediatrician believes that although one has not been scheduled, Ian should have one performed. As this scheduler has been difficult to work with, I will be putting another call into tomorrow. As scheduling these appointments have been slightly frustrating, I have been giving my frustrations to the Lord and praying for Sharon, the scheduler, esp. when my attitude towards her has been well not the best. God does have His hands in this as well.

Ian also has a flat spot on his skull that we have to compensate for now too. I have new ways that I am to lay him down and to change his diapers. Hopefully, this will correct itself soon.