A New Theme

In the Christmas/New Years letter that I never sent, I was going to mention how we were glad it was a New Year with a clean slate that we hoped would not include anymore trips to the ER, Urgent Care or Hospital. Well, as usual I was late getting it done, and no longer can I say that I hope 2011 will not include such emergencies/inconveniences.

Yesterday, while playing with some friends, sliding down hills on cardboard boxes, David decided he could get momentum by jumping. I saw him doing it once and as I was saying, "You need to stop before you break your tailbone," he jumped again and got a spiral fracture in his right lower leg. We were approximately an hour out of town (an hour and a half when a child's leg is broken because of how slow Brent had to drive down the dirt roads). David was in excruciating pain. Initially, I wasn't sure if he was exaggerating some, but he wasn't calming down much at all. After the x-rays were taken, and we were given a diagnosis (along with a discussion from the doctor about how these kind of fractures are the most painful), I knew the pain was very much as he was reacting to it.

It was a horrible situation in so many ways. In addition to the pain, it's always much worse to have an accident happen on someone else's property. I felt horrible for them because they felt so bad that it happened. I can relate because we had friends here just about 11 months ago and Jake fell out of Jason's bed and broke his wrist. It just feels rotten, so I could relate to how they were feeling. In addition to that, these friends (whose house we were at yesterday) lost a friend to a heart attack last night after David's injury.

To be very raw, I was really down yesterday. I'm tired of having all these emergencies. Starting last May, we have been to the emergency room/Urgent care eight times for injuries, and in addition, James had cleft lip repair surgery. That coming to a head with a spiral fracture does not look good. Let's face it, I have investigated child abuse for many years, it's suspicious. There are emotions surrounding that. There are emotions surrounding the fact that it's hard to care for injured kids in many different ways. Quick example, it hurts David to move, so he doesn't want to go to the bathroom. I just walked into the other room to check on him and there was a funny odor. He had tinkled in Sarah's apple juice cup to avoid having to get up. He made a minimal mess, but anyone could have picked that up and taken a drink. I think that may be laughable in a couple days, but not right now. There are emotions surrounding the fact that I am physically and emotionally tired. There are emotions around the fact that I have to watch my child hurt like he does without being able to take away the pain. The list goes on and on.

However, I am having to remind myself and needing to receive reminders from Brent. This is not so bad. There are people out there whose lives are forever changing because of different things . . . someone being diagnosed with cancer or other life threatening illness, someone dying suddenly of a heart attack, someone's marriage falling apart. I have seen so much pain in the lives of others. My situation is an inconvenience for sure, but it is not going to change the whole course of our lives. I write this as a reminder to myself when I am feeling overwhelmed or burdened.

In the midst of all of this, David has sweetly and unintentionally reminded me and turned my eyes toward the fact that Scripture says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord . . . " A week or so ago, David and I were at Target shopping with his Christmas money. We ran into his teacher. It's always fun for kids to see their teachers out in public, at least when they like their teachers. Anyway, as we were walking away, David said, "I didn't know we were going to see my teacher . . . but God did. He knows everything." Again yesterday, in not such a happy tone, David said, "Why did this happen? Why did I jump? God knew this was going to happen." While he was upset, it took me back to the conversation in Target. What a difference in the way it was said but what truth. God knows the good and the bad, and He has a plan for it all. It made for a good quick conversation about God's plans with David yesterday.

I don't know why it's necessary for us to experience so many visits to the doctor. I don't know why our friends had to experience two difficult situations yesterday. I don't know why marriages end and children and adults have to live with that for the rest of their lives. I don't know why people are diagnosed with cancer. And while I think sin plays a role in some of these things, and God is sad about many of them and sad about the choices we make often, I also know sometimes what happens is out of our control and something God allows for some purpose in our lives. Sometimes we see the purpose right away; sometimes we don't. It's tough; it's a battle out there. Right now I just want to drown in self-pity, but then what Glory would God get? My purpose is to live a life that glorifies God. So, I continue to pray that I will do so. If you are reading this, please pray these "inconveniences" won't get the best of me. Yesterday I felt it might.

Here's my sweet boy at the end of the day yesterday.

A Textversation With My Oldest Child

James: If you bring me a Chipotle Burrito on your way from work, I will be full of happiness and my life will be further in debt to you!

Me: Debt is sinful and I am not supporting a life of sin!

James: Ummm, does that mean I no longer owe you 15 bucks?

Me: Oh no, you got yourself into that. I'm just helping you prevent further debt.

James: You can't fight fire with fire, Mom.

Me: I don't need to. I'm mom, so I win.

James: So no burrito then :( Well, I love you anyway.

Me: I love you too!

Blessed

Today a friend who I sadly haven't seen in a bit asked me if I have seen anything that has helped me to understand why the month of June played out the way it did. Has God revealed anything to me, she was wondering. It's interesting because looking back on June, it just doesn't seem like it was that BIG of a deal. Our trips to the ER and Urgent Care were inconvenient for sure, as was a casted foot. And those trips were expensive also, but our money is from God, so I have to rest in that (even though it is hard at times). But really it was not so bad. However, I spent some time as I drove home today thinking about it because hopefully I can gain or learn something from the "inconveniences" in my life. This is what I came up with.

WE ARE SO BLESSED!!!!!!

My family is all together, serving God together. Everyone is healthy for the most part. I am thankful that David's scare with his heart is something I can look back on and laugh . . . because it was heartburn!!! I am thankful that his concussion was mild. I am thankful that Sarah's break was straight and that it fully repaired and she is running and jumping and back in gymnastics and just doing well. I am thankful that Brent's back is feeling better and that he is up and about and being more conscientious about what he is doing and lifting (still a little bummed that he can't run with me, though). I am thankful that I had a silly migraine and not a stroke or a seizure. We are in good health. We have great friends. We have good jobs. God is an amazing provider. I could go on and on.

I think part of this thankfulness, besides the question being asked of me, is the result of my week . . . both good and bad. Wednesday was probably the worst and most stressful day of my entire social work career. I can't express the helplessness and hopelessness I felt in a situation that I was dealing with. I thought I might leave the situation and quit my career forever. I regained some sense later. However, in the midst of those hopeless and helpless feelings, while I was completely alone with only a voice behind a closed door and a voice on the other end of the phone, all I could do was pray . . . pray for God to protect and provide comfort, peace and hope in a situation that was anything but that. As Wednesday came to an end, I was emotionally and physically exhausted and fell asleep very early, only to have terrible dreams through the night. I spent Thursday continuing to deal with the events of Wednesday and just praying for the person I was trying to help and for my own peace because I was really struggling with what had taken place. I still am on some level.

Then today, which was a tremendously amazing day, we served a group of homeless people by taking a nice meal out to them, along with some toiletry items. At the last minute, we had a friend over for the boys to hang out with so that his mom could get some work done. Then we had our Community Group Worship service in conjunction with Downtown Christian Fellowship tonight. I ended up watching the kids, which I was bummed about initially, but even that turned out to be a blessing.

As I was driving home after lunch, contemplating the question about what God revealed to me after June, it was so clear to me that I am just so blessed. My husband loves Jesus with all his heart and wants so much to grow and to help others grow in their love for God and others. My children are equally the same. I watched as James struck up a conversation with one of the women at the park today. She had a severe cleft, which had obviously not been properly repaired, and while I do not think she was actually homeless, she has very little and was obviously delayed. Yet, James was able to draw her in with that commonality between the two of them. It brought tears to my eyes. I watched as he and Jason reached out to the younger kids in our group, playing whiffle ball with them and watching over them as we were around people who could not necessarily be trusted. I listened as James told his friend, who he invited to join us in our adventure with the homeless, why he enjoys serving so much and how he was so judgmental before we lived here and he had this exposure. I listened to David tonight as he expressed how he loves Jesus and prayed that Jesus would live in his heart and how he wants to follow Him and obey Him. And I was able to giggle as Sarah exclaimed that she doesn't want to be baptized because she "still can't breathe under water."

God may have other purposes for all of our medical emergencies in June, but maybe it was as simple as just causing me to contemplate on the question and realize how blessed we are!!!! I love my family! Tonight I am just really content with where we are. I love that God gave us an opportunity to hear tonight how he is using people in our Kaleo community to reach others and to love others. It's always nice when you can really see God at work and when you can be encouraged. It's at those moments that I want to say, "God is Good." But the truth is that God is Good all the time, even when it might not feel like it, even when I am feeling helpless, even when He seems so far away, even when my kids are driving me crazy and not displaying the behaviors evident of God being the Lord of their lives. The "evens" could go on and on, but you get the picture.

As I sit here tonight, I have some dear friends going through some serious trials . . . I am aching for them. But those aches keep me praying for them, too. I know I will have trials to experience in the future . . . And yet I know that I serve an awesome God who loves me and knows what is best for my life, even if what is best is not fun. And even in those moments of trial, I am truly blessed!!!

Sarah + A Hard Lesson = A Really Funny Story

Yesterday Sarah was outside with our neighbor, who is seven, playing in the front yard. James was out there, too, keeping an eye on her. However, I'm not sure his eyes were open!!! I heard an ambulance outside in the distance. Then I heard Sarah running into the house crying (very hard). She sounded fearful and I realized she was telling Japan (that's the neighbor girl's name) that they were coming to get her. I heard Japan tell her that it was just an ambulance. I ran to see what was going on, and Sarah was frantic, hardly understandable. I came to understand after a couple minutes, that she was in the yard two houses down and was picking flowers from their flower beds. She heard the ambulance and thought the police were coming to get her for stealing. I tried to calm her down, but she was so upset that I ended up laying her in her bed until she could listen and talk. I felt terrible that she was so upset, yet I was kind of glad that she realized what she was doing was wrong and that it scared her. I think this will probably cure her from picking flowers, at least flowers that aren't in our yard. We all got a good laugh out of it (well, all of us except Sarah) . . . but I also felt pretty sorry for her. I took her down later to apologize, but no one was home. We will have to try again.

Neighborhood Birthdays

We are surrounded by such diversity in our neighborhood, and we have gotten a much greater glimpse of this over the past three weekends. Three of our neighbors' children (three different homes) had birthday parties. We have celebrated with a family from here, a family from Mexico and other parts of California, and a family from Jordan all in three weeks. It's been fun and interesting!

First a little about our small cul-de-sac. 11 houses on our little circle. Going clockwise, the families are hispanic and caucasian, hispanic, asian, hispanic, caucasian, caucasian, caucasian, african american, caucasian, jordanian and swedish, and hispanic. With the exception of a couple of the houses, we are all pretty well connected. Of the 11 houses, eight have children of various ages, so our kids are in school together. Most of the time you pull into our cul-de-sac, there is a basketball game going on between all of the teen boys and bicycle/scooter riding by the smaller children (that or riding in those large power wheel cars). Two of the homes are multi-generational. Two of the houses are owned by the same man, and his parents live in the second house (almost multi-generational). It's really a pretty fun place to live with lots of activity.

Over the past three weekends we have had birthday parties. The first was for Alyssa, who turned three. Her parents are from Bakersfield (I'm pretty sure born and raised here). I actually missed Alyssa's party because I was off in Palm Springs with my grandma, aunt and cousins. Brent and the kids went to it. The next week was for Kylee, who turned 2. She lives with her parents and maternal grandparents. They are hispanic, and they know how to throw a fiesta!!! The party was last Sunday. It started at 4. I told my friend Marcy that I was going to the party but would be home by the time she arrived at my house at about 6:30 to drop off her son, but if I happened to not be there, she could text me, I would be across the street. The point is that I really thought I would be home. I was so wrong. We had barely started eating, and there hadn't been a thought about opening gifts at that time. I finally left at about 8, but they hadn't begun winding down!!! The food was delicious . . . Mexican food with Carnitas and Carne Asada . . . muy delicioso!!!!! Tonight was Amir's 4th birthday and his brother, Ali's 17th birthday. They are our Jordanian friends, who live directly next door to us. Again, I'm having to adjust to parties that are not "American". The party started at 5. I finally told them I just had to leave to get the kids in bed because of school. That was after 8:30, and they were just beginning to open gifts. I had never been in their home before. It was interesting. Lots of interesting stuff on the wall. One of their friends was there. He just returned from Jordan and was sharing with us all about his trip and the different things he saw that he took for granted as a child. I never was certain, but he almost sounded like he might be a Christian. I need to ask Brent more about his conversation because I missed a lot of it. This family is interesting in that they are not your traditional middle eastern family who had arranged marriages. The mother is divorced from her first husband, who she met and married in Sweden, so even though her kids have dark brown eyes and dark brown hair and look middle eastern, they say they are Swedish, and they are because they were all born there. The mother met her current husband over the internet (both are originally from Jordan). After they met online, he went to Jordan, met and married her, and she returned to Bakersfield to live with him. They have since had their son Amir. Like I said not a traditional middle eastern situation. She cooked lots of interesting food for the party. There was this rice stuff wrapped in grape leaves . . . it was sour. Then there was some kind of meat with potatoes, but the seasoning was like nothing I had ever tasted before. She made some desserts that were very light in flavor. One was a cookie; the other some kind of custard or flan. I don't know if these were foods from Jordan or from Sweden. I forgot to ask, but last weekend, the daughter, Nadias, said they normally cook swedish foods.

It's really fun to have such diversity around us. There is so much to learn from other people. There were things that took me out of my comfort zone a little, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And as we allow others to share their culture with us, we are invited more and more to share out culture with them, and thus share Jesus. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds!!!!!

Epilepsy

I can't recall if I have ever blogged about my epilepsy before, and I'm not going back through all my post titles, so this may be a partial duplicate entry . . .

When I was 17 years old, I suffered a grand mal seizure at church camp. I had been water skiing that afternoon and had a significant fall, hitting my head pretty hard on the water (which may seem kind of silly, but you can really hit water painfully hard). For years I never said anything about that to doctors because it seemed so silly, but just after that, I got in a car to go back to camp and dozed off only to be woken multiple times from startle reflexes. After we got back to camp, I had a seizure. Within a couple months I underwent a bunch of tests, had another seizure, was diagnosed with epilepsy and started on medication.

The first medication was tegretol, and the effect that had on me was terrible. There is about a month of my senior year of high school that I pretty much do not remember (and it's not due to age . . . I couldn't remember it at the time either!!!) I was then put on phenobarbitol and responded much more positively to that. It's hard for me to remember the exact number of seizures I've had in my life, but it has been very minimal and for that I am very thankful. I know I had one or two in college, several right after Brent and I were married (when I was not taking medication with doctor's permission) and another the day after James turned four. That was the last one, but also the worst one . . . lasting the longest and having the longest impact on me. Brent and I were at a marriage conference at our church that weekend. It was pretty much pointless for me to have attended. I cannot remember anything about it. I just felt groggy and out of it the whole time. That was almost 12 years ago now. Thank the Lord!!!

I really have nothing to complain about and I am really thankful for God's protection of me over all of these years. I had four babies and during the last three pregnancies I was off the medication for 16 weeks without a single problem. So I was shocked when I left my neurologist today with my eyes filled with tears. It should not be a big deal, and I'm sorry if there are others who have ongoing seizures who read this, but somewhere deep inside I have always thought that one day I might be able to be medication free. It's been 12 years now since my last seizure; 20 years since I started taking medication. But I'm pretty sure that without saying it directly, my neurologist confirmed that unless I ever live in New York City or someplace else with great public transportation, she will not recommend I discontinue medication. I went into the appointment knowing that she is conservative and concerned about my safety and the safety of others (regarding my driving if not on medication), but I held onto a glimmer of hope that she would say something like lets do one more MRI, and see what it looks like. Instead, she said she doesn't see any reason to do an MRI. There's nothing about it that would change her opinion. I really like her and respect her, and deep inside I feel like she is right. I would hate to be driving and hurt someone else because I had a seizure behind the wheel.

I don't know what it is about being on medication that is so bothersome to me. It really shouldn't be a big deal at all, but it definitely affected me today. I am on a new medication now, Keppra. I don't notice any side effects from it, but compared to phenobarbitol, it is a bit costly. I can think of a lot better things to do with the money each month, but I don't think that is what makes it so hard. I simply think it is the fact that I HAVE to take it. It's a little ridiculous. I am praying that I can let go of that and focus on the positives, the fact that I am overall healthy and that I am able to live independently and work. Many people who suffer from seizures cannot say the same. Their seizures have truly changed their lives, causing brain damage or emotional damage because they cannot cope with having them. Sadly, seizures can cause embarrassment to some people because of what they cause the body to do and because of the fear others have of seeing them.

I believe that as much as I do not like the news I got today, God must have some purpose, so I pray that I will be open and attentive to be used by Him in whatever way He wants to use me . . . in regards to my epilepsy and every other aspect of my life!

Wondering

I have been looking on craigslist lately at job opportunities. In case anyone from work reads this, not because I want to quit my job, but just trying to figure out if there is a way to work a few extra hours here and there in order to pay for all the many new expenses we are encountering with older children. Looks like all four kids are going to need braces. James's costs $5200.00 alone, and that is scaring me with the rest. Things could change, obviously, but Jason's mouth looks crowded. David's bite is off, and Sarah has been sucking her thumb for over five years now. The odds are in favor of braces. And then there's driver's ed and extra car insurance when James starts driving, which is around the corner, six months from tomorrow he will be sixteen. And then Jason will start in a few years, and there is college and athletics . . . you know, just stuff . . . lots of stuff!!!

By far the most "interesting" (for lack of another term) jobs I have seen posted are to become surrogate mothers or to donate eggs. I don't know if those posts are on Craigslist in Oklahoma, but they are certainly on there in CA. On top of that, shortly after we moved here, I met a nice woman who in passing mentioned that she had been a surrogate two or three times. I must have looked shocked because she went on to talk more about it, and it was interesting. The only time I heard of being a surrogate before that was in movies or in the tabloids. I guess I knew it was a real thing, but I had never thought about meeting someone who had actually done it. I think for some reason, I thought it was morally and ethically wrong, but as I talked to this woman, I learned that she was a Believer. She has great relationships with the mothers of the children and maintains some contact with at least one of the children, and the child has none of her genetic make-up. They used the biological mother's egg and biological father's sperm and implanted them into her. She was basically just the nest.

I walked away from that conversation with lots of thoughts and questions and not really sure what I thought about it. Just so you know, I was not and am not contemplating this for myself. I am certain that I could not do it (for a variety of reason . . . sadly one of them is that I am too old now!!!), but I have continued to contemplate whether or not I think it is "right". Scripturally, I don't think you can take a stance against it, unless you say that it is not the way God created things to be. But when you start with that, then there are a lot of things we do that go against the way God created them. You could take it to extreme and say God created me with a seizure disorder, so I shouldn't take medication, but I think we all probably agree that God created doctors and provided them with what they need to come up with ways to make my life livable. And I am so grateful for that!!!

But still, there is something unsettling about it to me. I'm not sure what. I am so curious what other people think. Personally I would have a really hard time donating an egg and knowing that there was someone that "belonged" to me out there, but many people give their babies up for adoption because of how much they love them, and I totally respect those women. I would have a hard time being a surrogate to another person's baby because I think it would be very difficult on my children. They get attached to babies in utero just like parents do. It would be a devastating loss for them. Not to mention, I don't know how I would part with the baby either. The other thing is that I am shocked at what they pay people to be a surrogate. Obviously they should pay medical expenses, and I guess there is wear and tear on the mother's body, but to me this seems like one of those things that if I was willing to do it, I would want to do it to be a blessing to someone who could not carry a child. If I am doing something for that reason, do I really want to be paid for it?

So, I'm just putting this out there, curious about what thoughts people have. It's one of those things I may never have thought of before moving to California. And who knows, maybe its not as uncommon in the Mid-West as I think.