Off to the med center and more toddler fun! - December 7

It’s that time again.  Off to the med center day tomorrow for what we are praying is our final MRI trip.   We would ask for your prayers, as our entire household has been deeply under the weather with the flu this past week and we are just now barely on the mend enough to get through this type of excursion.  We are grateful that Asa is first on the docket in the morning, which unfortunately means we have to get up long before dawn, but thankfully means that we are not sitting waiting all day long with a ravenous toddler, just stuck in a waiting area with a sleepy one.  We also have an eye appointment after our MRI to look at Asa’s eye that does not drain properly as a result of the anti-viral given to him in such high doses when he was critically ill with adenovirus.  Tomorrow’s MRI will be followed up by a doctor visit later in the month. 

Thanksgiving in small possible steps - Nov 27

Thanksgiving shouldn’t be an I don’t want to crawl out of bed day, not that I haven’t felt that way about parting the covers just to shove a cold turkey in a warm oven.  But we think it shouldn’t be that way, that thanks should pour forth regardless.

Today I got to listen to my husband battle to be a family leader, grasp for words that are just…hard.  You know God is good and gracious and we hold hands in prayer in privilege, but we were all standing in that circle figuring out how to put words, out-loud words, to the thanks, that gut-wrenching, poured out thanks, thanks that really are just groanings.  The words were hard and fumbled.  Three down, two delivered and standing.  What do you say? How do you act? You want to be like Job and choke out the “and yet will I trust you” words, but how do you shovel sweet potatoes when there’s no spouse, much less offer thanks? 

Squealing with Excitement! - November 23

This is us.  Actually this is a very normal Asa activity, squealing in the floor, but today we are squealing with excitement for our friends, the Shaws.  If you haven’t read their story, the story of the little Gable from China, you are missing out on one of those extravagantly big God stories.  (Here’s the link if you missed it. http://graceinspades.blogspot.com/2014/11/on-behalf-of-orphan-orphan-sunday-2014.html ) Only God creates such beauty on the back of the tapestry and flips it around to show off his goodness to us.  I am still in awe at the sheer one in a million coincidence of it all (actually the odds would be much crazier than that, but I’m not mathematician), the linking of two little boys across the globe with not only the same cancer, but the same totally out of the ordinary treatment.  But that’s not why I’m posting tonight, but then again, it is. 

Repeated melodies and important smudges - Nov. 13

I giggled to myself yesterday.  It is just like God to close a circle with comical but quiet certainty, leaving his smudgy fingerprints all over an affair.  Yesterday Asa had his port a cath removed (see prior post).  It was pretty uneventful in every way, not that a toddler and anesthesia are ever a cakewalk, but we didn’t have any extraneous hospital blips like insufferably long waits for strange and unknown reason, no hunger cries or cookie tossing, just too much coffee and an overactive toddler running tripping up doctors with push toys.  Into that normalcy came a sweet realization. 

It's a marker day tomorrow - Nov. 11

It’s a marker day tomorrow.   I remember sitting with Asa on Feb. 11, Allen’s birthday, trying to celebrate and choke down cake when I had just heard the word “oncology” used in a sentence regarding my flesh and blood.  It’s odd.  Allen turned 15.  Fifteen years ago to that birthday date, a friend gave birth to another little boy within hours of Allen and about a year later, their son was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  And there we were, running full circle in their shoes, wrestling with the words no parent ever wants to hear.

They learn young - Nov. 4

On behalf of the orphan - Orphan Sunday 2014 - Nov. 2

If you know me, you know I love stories.  In college, I won a pair of tickets to see “Into the Woods” traveling-Broadway, probably the best and most expensive seats I’ve every occupied.  “Into the Woods” is just a menagerie combination of all the fairy-tales in the first act, Disney-perfect, the fairytale coming true.  The second act it all goes dark and everything that could go awry in the darkest way imaginable does.  For this Technicolor girl, it was a highly disturbing experience and I have never ever had any desire to see that musical again.  I’m sure I could drag something allegorical out of it, but I don’t want to.  I just want to know good ultimately wins, and even if the Big Bad Wolf goes psycho, that there is a victor and I don’t want anybody messing with my mind in regards to that truth, especially on a stage.  Not a fan of happily ever after either, but I want to trace the storyline looking forward and in retrospect and know beyond a doubt who wins.

I haven’t mentioned it here, but a funny little blip came across my radar two months ago.  At that point, we were truly just holding our nose above the drowning waters, knowing we were past the big waves. I got a random message from someone I know very loosely.  She knew Asa had liver cancer and asked if I would be willing to offer counsel to a family who was considering adoption of a child with liver cancer.  Easy answer.  But, of course.  And I sat back and began to watch God show off.