a Nick update and some reflections

Thank you for your prayers!! Nick is doing exceptionally well today.  He was moved to PICU on Friday night and spent the weekend on dialysis and oxygen.  Yesterday, they saw enough improvement to take him off dialysis and off oxygen to see how he would do.  He’s blowing them away!  All the catheters have been removed, oxygen—even at night—is no longer necessary, and Nick is smiling and laughing and playing hide and seek with his PICU nurse.  All signs indicate that he’ll be moved back to his ‘palace’ on the oncology wing sometime tomorrow!  Not bad, especially when you consider that the doctors told Pam to expect a 2 to 3 week stay in PICU!  We’ll take 5 days…

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Fall.  It’s a time that I love, with its glorious days and crisp nights, the renewing of friendships (on the bleachers at volleyball and in committee meetings) and settling in to a routine.  This fall, however, has been a bit unusual.  The weather has been just plain strange—as it’s been all year this year—and there’s not much of a routine going on here.  Sure, the little guys do school every morning and I teach preschool every Tuesday and little Emily comes to play every Wednesday and Thursday.  We go to volleyball on Mondays and Wednesdays and speech therapy on Mondays and Tuesdays.  And all that sounds routine, but for some reason it doesn’t feel that way.  I suspect it has very little to do with what we actually do and everything to do with the fact that all around us chaos, confusion, and hurt seem to reign. 

I tend to process the hard stuff by thinking.  I want…or maybe need…time to work things through in my mind.  This fall there’s so much going on that it’s hard to stay on top of it.  My nephew’s illness is hard.  Nowhere near as hard for the rest of us as it is for my sister and her family, to be sure, but wanting to help, trying to ‘be there’ for her without interfering, and helping my crew work through their feelings and emotions is a challenge.  Ryan, especially, has been hard hit by Nick’s hospitalization.  For some reason, seeing Nick in the hospital this time has awakened many of his abandonment fears, and it’s terribly painful to watch him return to nightmares and night terrors and abject fear when I don’t respond instantly.  I know it will pass, but in the meantime we’re tired.  Some of my children are walking difficult, painful paths, and it’s so hard as a mom to have to stand on the sidelines and watch.  My heart breaks for one, yet there’s simply nothing I can do.  My only option is prayer, and some days it doesn’t feel like enough.  I know it is, but it sure doesn’t feel that way!  A family close to us is dealing with the pain of loss.  A family in our small group is dealing with cancer.   All around is hurt and pain…and nothing seems to help.  It can start to feel a bit overwhelming at times.

So overwhelming, in fact, that on Monday night I put a VERY important piece of paper in the washing machine…and toasted it.  Totally destroyed it.  I had to email Jim on Tuesday morning and say, “Okay, just shoot me.  Clearly I have too much on my mind.  I’ve ruined our pass.  Do you think there’s any chance we can get a new one?”  Fortunately those in charge were gracious and that particular piece of paper has been replaced.  But I keep doing things like that.  And that’s NOT me.  Not usually anyway. 

In a perfect world none of this stuff would be happening.  In a less than perfect world, there would be time for me to process, to regain perspective.  I am so grateful for the little guys—they keep me occupied when I would instead be worrying.  But I’m still restless and out of sorts.  One of these days it will all get sorted out.  Know that in the meantime I’m still here even if I don’t post, trying to get enough quiet time to process everything, and working on keeping my focus in the right place.  It helps tremendously to keep some of these verses in mind.  Right now they’re written out in my journal and posted in my kitchen so that I can keep them in the forefront.

We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.  We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed……  Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  2 Cor 4: 7-10; 16-18

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Romans 15:13

Oh yeah, the Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch ice cream helped last week too.  Now, if I could get another pint or two and a good backrub to go with it…that sounds heavenly!  :) 

And because it’s been an absolutely beautiful day with a fun trip to the pumpkin patch, I’ll leave you with some fun pictures of my favorite little people.