Another One?

Eating a messy snack at the kitchen table. Me: "Nan, don't put your hands up in your hair, please." Nancy: "I just stretchin', Momma!"

Excuses at age 2? Yikes.

I'm So Proud of Me

This is me at my Homeschool Mom best. Yes. BEST. Up until a few weeks ago, I was still wondering when the day would come that I would wake up and love it. Then I realized it is March. The seasons have changed 3 times, and we are on week 19 of 26. If I haven't loved it after these 7 months, chances are I'm not gonna. And I'm okay with that.

Happy Birthday Cohen!

Last night I went to the hospital to see some friends who had a new baby boy. He was so tiny (sort of! he was born 8lb. 15 oz.!) and squished up and pink and warm, and it was so fun to celebrate his arrival with them. I can't wait to see what kind of parents they will be and to watch their son grow up. 

But while I was there, I could not help but think about the last time I was in the hospital visiting a baby. It was a year ago today, and I arrived at the hospital with my heart in my throat, shaking hands and my mind racing. The baby was Cohen. It was Cohen's birthday, the day that God had chosen for him to be born. We just didn't know if it was also the day he would choose to take Cohen home to live with Him. We had prayed so many things for him, for Chris and Emily, Cort and their family. It was finally time to see what God had in store. It was a culmination of several months of fear, sadness, helplessness, confusion, but also hope. After the Concert for Cohen in February, I left feeling strangely hopeful instead of mournful and devastated. I felt like I had to explain to myself that it was okay to have hope and not make excuses for feeling so in a time that seemed to call for despair. God is so gracious, to give us the ability to feel the freedom of hope, even when there is none to be found from doctors or ultrasounds or common sense!

I had had dreams that Cohen would be born alive, well, breathing air and full of life. And Chris would come out to the waiting room and say "he's going to be okay." I wanted so desperately for Chris and Em to be spared the pain of losing a son; I learned I had to give that up, and instead desperately long for what God had in store for them in Cohen and pray we could be whatever He needed us to be for them. But, Cohen was born, crying! breathing! full of life! It is a miracle. He is still a miracle! And I get to feed him bottles and read him stories and watch Kate talk sweetly to him and Nancy try not to poke his eyes out. That is a miracle!!! And even though he may not be "healed" the way the world thinks of healing, but he is exactly like God wants him to be, and that is whole and perfect. And here, with us.

I will never forget that day. I will never forget that season of our life. It was the saddest, hardest, scariest thing Ryan and I have been through in our marriage...and it was happening to someone else! Watching Chris and Emily fully embrace the heartache and also fight to fully embrace God, it was a privilege to witness and walk with them through it. And it's also a privilege to know Cohen, and be able to celebrate his life, which brought so much heart change to me and in my family and people all over the country and world. It is a miracle, that God chooses to use us to spread His love and glory. I hope tomorrow night He gets all the glory!! Happy Birthday, Baby Co-ee!!!

In the waiting room, praying and waiting....

The first time we met.

The news: "We need a nursery!"

Cohen's 1 Day Birthday Party!

Painting Cohen's room - I love that Chris got the chance to paint a bit in between NICU visits!

Holding Cohen for the first time.

Cohen's first visit to our house!

New Year's Eve, Nancy "lay down" with "baby Co-ee". 

A sneak peek at the miracle, very late one evening.

Kate meets Cohen.

DHEC Gives the Green Light

Kate talking on the phone to cousins McKenzie and Paige. We like to call them the "NC Burnses".

The Department of Health has given us the green light to re-enter the world beyond our front porch. Kate is well and no other family members are showing signs of the flu. Kate was well just long enough to not be able to enjoy the snow - seeing she had a fever just over 24 hours ago, I didn't feel good about sending her out with her runny nose to play. Plus, due to the snow, her appointment to get her cast set was pushed until tomorrow, so she still has the soft splint on and I could just picture her falling off a sled into the street on her wrist.

I just want to say thank you for loving on us! Between all the phone calls, food, toys and videos for the girls, emails, cards and even flowers, we felt more blessed than cursed and your thoughts and prayers were greatly felt - we decided to do all we could to make the most of the weekend instead of bemoaning what could have been. Ryan used a projector from his office and we hung a sheet up and watched movies in our bedroom. Kate fared well, really only having a fever for 3 days, and the hardest part of it all was keeping Nancy away from her. They have spent some good time together today pretending the coat closet is a rocketship, and Rick, they even went to Australia to visit you and said they had a great time. Thanks friends and family, for loving us and being the body of Christ. We are so blessed by you, and seeing that you cared about what was going on in our hard week put our circumstances in perspective. I am really amazed with all the love we felt and am just so thankful for friends and family that are willing to serve us and our kids and listen to me whine and love me in spite of it!

Today was Ryan's first day "working" from home, which Jami declared a snow day, so I think our first day was not a typical day. He changed diapers, read to the girls, took out the trash and cleaned the breakfast dishes. I even got to go to the store this afternoon while the kids rested - I can't remember the last time I ran errands on a weekday afternoon - maybe July of 2003! I can see we'll have some ground rules to establish, and his being here will be harder to get used to than I thought. But it was fun to have lunch with him and to get out of the house for a bit.

One final note: Did you know that cauliflower has sugar in it? And when you steam it and forget about it, the water in the pot dries up and the sugar carmelizes in the bottom of the pan and stinks up your whole house on a cold winter day when you shouldn't open the windows? Kate: "Hey, mom, uhh, what are we having for dinner?" Me: "Not what you smell, I burned something." Kate: "whew. that's good, because I think you should open the windows, it smells pretty awful in here." 

For those of you in our community group, don't worry. The cauliflower puree will not be appearing in anything I plan on offering you at our next meeting. I have learned my lesson.

Uncle!

Today at 4:00pm, instead of dropping off the kids at my parents' house and breezing up to Flat Rock with Ryan and 120 of our closest friends for two nights for a retreat/getaway/marriage conference, I found myself en route to Target to get two Tamiflu prescriptions filled for the girls and crying on the phone to my mom that we were currently not arriving at their house because Kate has the flu. But she had the flu mist! Apparently, she is Dr. Few's first patient of the year to get the flu mist and still end up with the flu. And I may have been in shock, but I think, think he said she is the only patient he's ever had to get the flu with the mist. 

Not only are we not going on the retreat, Nancy, Ryan and I have to go on medication to help minimize the effects the flu would have on us should we get it. Nancy had a flushot...but we know how reliable those things are! And Ryan and I, well....we are neither pregnant, elderly or have immune deficiencies, so we'd rather use the $50 we'd pay for a flu shot for other things (like broken wrists?) I've had a strange feeling I couldn't shake all day that something bad was going to happen. I actually did call Ryan and say "I told you so." Not very wifely, huh? See God?!?! We really did need the marriage retreat!

It's really worst case scenario, to me at least. A really hard week, with Ryan's moving "home" to work and the energy and stress over getting Kate's wrist taken care of, and now we can't go on this wonderful trip that we have been looking forward to for...oh, 6 months. When I think we deserve it. Doesn't God think we deserve it? Doesn't He owe us for the pain and stress and exhaustion that we have been enduring for the past....6 weeks? 2 months? 4 months? I think back to October 13, and my life hasn't been the same since then. Just one thing after another. I feel like one of "those" families, where whatever bad thing can possibly happen most often does. And not necessarily tragic "bad", more like inconvenient, "oh, I'm so sorry" kind of bad. I personally like to call it "are you KIDDING ME?" bad. In that light, I don't feel like I have credibility where suffering is concerned, but have learned through the years that trials are trials no matter how big or small, and they all have to be overcome by trusting the Savior.

So now that some of my anger (that's always my first emotion when things don't go my way) and disappointment is gone, how am I going to trust my Savior? He obviously wants to keep us home for a reason. I must lay down my sense of entitlement for that reason, and trust that He has something much more wonderful for us than a weekend of, as our friends have put it, "sex, ping pong, and big breakfasts". (See, they are so funny!) I am going to miss the teaching, the fellowship with dear friends and making new ones, the time with Ryan, and time for myself. How can what God has be more wonderful that 2 days of that?!? I must tell myself that it is, even if it is learning through this process and the reward is simply more of God and less of me in our relationship. Oh, that I could treasure that above all worldly things! 

You might be judging me for being a horrible mother at this point: my daughter has the flu, how can I not show any concern for her and her health?! Let me say, her fever was 102.6 at 2:30pm today, was 98.9 at 3:30, and hasn't gone up since then. The doctor said we definitely caught it early, the next 48 hours will probably get worse before it gets better, but also said that since she had the mist plus the relenza, she should have a very mild case. See? I'm trying to look for the bright side. We've posted a video below to show you how she's holding up. You be the judge.

Our Kate a Daredevil?

We had lunch with some dear friends, the Hall family, on Tuesday. After lunch the girls went outside to play on the playground in the backyard, and Tonya and I chatted while they played around. Kate, being a firstborn and a girl, is a cautious thing. She hollers for help "just in case" she looses her grip hanging off of anything or jumping from anything, even her bathroom stool! So, when she fell off the  monkey bars and landed flat on her back and broke her wrist, I was truly shocked!! It knocked the wind out of her and she had a hard time catching her breath, and after that she complained of her belly, back and wrist hurting. After she calmed down, I asked her what she was doing when she fell, and she said she was reaching for the third monkey bar and her arm wasn't long enough and she lost her grip. I was amazed that she even jumped off the platform, let alone tried to go across. If she's anything like me, she'll never go on the monkey bars again! She could move her hand, but couldn't put pressure on it, so after sipping tea with Tonya and keeping and eye on Kate for about an hour, we left, called the nurse, put Nancy down for a nap, and went to the radiologist for xrays. It is a buckle fracture on her radius, we returned later that evening for them to put a splint on and we have an appointment to get a hard cast put on her left wrist on Monday morning. A pink one. Hot pink. With butterflies, if they can do that.

She'll only need the cast for a couple of weeks, which is great, and she is so pumped about showing people and telling the story and letting friends sign it. She asked why people sign casts, and I tried to explain that not everyone breaks their arm and gets one, and a broken bone is a bigger deal than a scrape and a bandaid (most of the time), so lots of people ask questions and once they hear her story, want to be part of it in some way. Signing the cast is a way to be a part of that story. So if we see you, I'm sure you'll be asked to be a "part of the story". I've been notified I need to keep a marker in my purse so we can have it "just in case we see someone who hasn't signed it and wants to be part of my story". 

We'll have pictures of the cast up next week!

Reality

Reality: One paycheck since January 16.

Reality: Ryan will be working from home for 3 months.

Reality: We are okay, even if God asks us to do crazy things.

January 20th, Ryan called me from work and said that they company he works for has no money in the bank and will have to let 4 of their 6 remaining employees go and the remaining two (Ryan and one other) have a job "as long as they want it."  What that means is Ryan has a job but not a paycheck. Potential clients are being extra cautious and exceptionally slow in choosing to give anyone their business. He has continued to go into the office, and they have been feverishly pitching jobs to potential clients that all react very positively to the proposals, but everything is just hanging out there and are just waiting for something to break. 

I'm finally writing about this because, first of all, written words make it more real to me. Secondly, Ryan called from work today and said yes, no matter if they get 4 new jobs in this week, by March 2 they will be working out of their homes for 3 months. 3. Months. It's an effort to save on overhead, which I think is wise, and I am thankful for the councel they have been given and the discernment they have to take care of their employees. We've been talking about this possibility for a month, and Ryan has slowly been moving his stuff home from the office and parked his desk, a bookshelf and cabinet in our bedroom, but the reality that he will be working in our bedroom during the day while I am out in the living room with the girls doing our daily thing....I kind of felt like I fell into a big hole someone dug on the beach that I had seen from a distance earlier in my walk, but thought "oh, that's a ways away, I'll worry about it when I get closer to it" and BAM, hole. It just was closer and bigger than I thought it was going to be.  What are we going to do? How is this going to work? What will we have to change? How will the girls deal with it? How can we make it fun? How will I take it seriously, that he really does have work to do...even though the whole reason he's working from home is because there is no work?!? It will be summertime in 3 months! And in 3 months, will we finally have a steady paycheck?

At first I felt like I had to conjure up panic and despair, because that is what people do when news like this hits. That's what we've done in the past. After we decided it was silly to get worked up because that's what our flesh would do, we realized that God has really given us a supernatural ability to rest in Him. Don't be fooled, though. I did have one day of total despair and fear and brokenness and cried during a date at dinner the entire time (to the point I had to leave before the bill came, and Ryan said the waitress treated him like she was sure he served me divorce papers!). I have had days when I've been short with the girls because we've been so tired talking about all of our options and what we feel like God is leading us to do, and it's been difficult to lay down the money and our dreams and trust that God has a better idea of how to spend it. I think a some dirt and seeds for a vegetable garden is not an extravagant request, but I am having to lay it down at His feet and trust that He has a perfect plan for us and if a vegetable garden is part of it, that will come when He sees fit, not according to my timetable. That is, though a bit superficial, just one example of many things we are having to hold very loosely. 

And reality is, I am glad that Jesus is reality, and that He holds all reality in his hands.  He is not surprised that any of this is happening because he is so powerful and omnicient, and He also wants to give us good things  - I just have to keep reminding myself that those "good things" may not be the things on my list that I think qualify as good. 

One night Ryan and I were talking and remembering all the ways God has been faithful in the past to provide for us and how He will continue to do that for us now. The scary part is, God is faithful even if we don't get a paycheck for a long, long time. And He is faithful even if we think we need something right now, but don't receive it.  He is still faithful and still providing even if our bank account is in peril. Ryan's put his resume out there, had an interview that turned into nothing, and continues to seek and pray what we should be doing, but God just seems to keep saying "wait." When the entire course of our marriage has had the undercurrent of financial strain and stress, sometimes quiet and managable and other times overwhelming to the point of drowning, God is saying "wait" ?!?!? He really is crazy. And we are crazy, too, for being okay with His "wait".