This is NOT life

Just when I begin to think that life can't get any crazier, there it goes! Our normally chaotic life has gotten completely out of control. I almost don't want to get into it because I know anyone reading will think I'm just a whiner looking for sympathy. Sadly, it is true...things really are that insane. I promise I'll try to make the run through as quick and "not looking for the sympathy vote" as possible. Here goes...

Mr. Wonderful's health just isn't any better. In fact, he is feeling worse. He's not just tired, but beyond exhausted all the time. He's not just uncomfortable, but in constant pain. He's been through all the medications and treatments and nothing is working. The doctors have scheduled several tests that he will go through over the next few weeks. We are just in a "wait and see" mode for now. I'll let you know exactly how I'm handling that in a few minutes.

Amazingly, our little family survived Fall and the first part of Winter without any sickness. Then one week into the new year, Addie was at After Hours with an ear infection. Ten days later, the last day of her antibiotic, she woke up with a runny nose. A week or two after that she was at the doctor's office for another ear infection...in the same ear. That night, she was in the ER for a febrile seizure (only the second one of her life, thankfully, because it is a completely traumatizing experience for both of us). Today, ten days later, the last day of her antibiotic, she was in the doctor's office again with an ear infection...in the same ear. We've been sleeping on the couch together for about a month now (it is the only way she can sleep without coughing) and about a week ago, I caught the same stuffy nose/coughing/runny nose/annoying virus she had. I just finished sneezing at least 45 times in the last hour. Don't believe me? Ask Mr. Wonderful and Avie who have been trying to sleep on the couch but keep waking up to "bless" me!

So here is. The worst part of it all...I'm not handling the "wait and see" very well at all. Maybe I'm tired. Maybe I'm scared. Maybe my faith is too weak. Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I'm impatient. Maybe I'm bitter. Maybe the past 12 months have just been too much to handle. Maybe the weight of everything going on is just too much for me to bear. Maybe I'm beginning to get angry about it all. Maybe it's all the above, plus the fact that I don't want us to be going through this in the first place.

Yes, our life has always been chaotic. But we liked it that way. This that we are living right now is NOT life. This is going through the motions. This is doctors and medicine and side effects. This is doing what you can to get by. This is the definition of frustrated. This is crying yourself to sleep. This is laughing hysterically at nothing. This is making the most of little moments. This is enjoying those moments to the fullest. This is being too depressed to get out of bed. This is packing on 15+ pounds of emotional eating. This is separating yourself from the people and things you love. This is not being able to physically or emotionally handle others. This is running as hard as possible to the people we love. This is looking to them for support. This is spending every minute doing only the things you love. This is wanting more than anything to have answers. This is being too afraid to pray for those answers. This is spending every second possible with my husband and children. This is being terrified to leave them. This is clinging to my best friend with all I have. This is loving him more every day. This is being frozen in fear at the thought of this going on any longer. This is a constant contradiction of emotion. This is the feeling of being completely helpless.

The thing is, I know what to do. I know exactly how to get through this. We've been here before. We have lived this "NOT life" before. The answer is so simple. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Focus on Him, not your problems. Take it to Him in prayer. Ask Him for peace and He will give it to you. I know that it probably seems that I am searching for that sympathy vote. But I promise I'm not. I'm searching for the strength to do what I know I need to do. I'm searching for a way to survive all of this and not lose my mind. I'm trying to remind myself that God will not give me more than I can handle. I'm trying to remember that God has a plan. I'm trying to remember that He sees the big picture. I'm trying to find a way to "get" whatever it is that He wants me to take away from this experience.

I'm also trying to use my blog as a healthier way of dealing with it all. I've become such a grumpy person lately! Love and prayers for you all!

almost 2011

I can't believe that Christmas is over and it is almost 2011. Mr. Wonderful and I started dating on New Year's Eve 2001, so this year makes it an official 10 years together. I know that because we've been married over 6 years some may consider it a bit silly to recognize a "dating" anniversary, but I plan on celebrating anyway! We waited much too long to be together for us to not enjoy every second of it!! I'm hoping that our sitter will come through for us so we can have a date night. I absolutely love spending time with Mr. Wonderful and the girls, but after such a difficult year, I'm ready for some alone time with him.

  I hope everyone has had a great holiday season. We certainly did. We spent Thanksgiving in Nashville and came home just in time for me to shop with my mom and sister the day after. We spent Christmas Eve with the grandparents and Christmas day with my parents. Christmas morning was extra special for us this year. Because we stayed up so late wrapping gifts for the girls, we slept a little late before getting up to finish cooking for lunch. We had been up for about an hour before the girls got up. Mr. Wonderful was in the middle of something, so I took the girls straight into our room to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. Just as we were getting ready to bring the girls into the family room, Addie looked down the hallway and shouted, "I see a baby stroller!" Actually, it was a baby car seat. It took them over an hour to open all the gifts. Addie's were all wrapped in red princess paper and Avie's were in purple Tinkerbell paper. 

I always say that my sweet little girls are completely opposite, and I mean it. Even their approach to opening gifts was different! Addie opened them all as quickly as possible and didn't really pay attention to it all until after the paper was gone. Avie, on the other hand, wanted to play with each thing as she opened it. We had to persuade Addie to slow down and Avie to speed up! It was so much fun watching them. They were so surprised by it all. Everyone had been talking to them about it, but they just didn't know what to expect. This was the first year the girls were both old enough to really have fun and play with their gifts and we spent the entire morning together, just the four of us. It was such a special time.

Mr. Wonderful started some new meds last week and we are praying that they work. He seems to be feeling okay on them, just not as great as we had hoped. I am so ready to put all of this behind us. I know that God has a plan and a purpose for everything. I believe that with all of my heart. I'm not sure what His plan is for all of this, but I am certain that it has made me appreciate my little family even more. Every night we put Addie and Avie in bed and I think that it just wouldn't be possible to love them any more than I already do. Then every morning when I first lay eyes on them that love grows even stronger. The sound of their voice makes me smile and their sweet face makes my heart sing. For me, being a mother is the absolute greatest blessing in life. And as much as I love my precious little girls, I love my husband even more. He is the perfect partner for me to share my life with. Having him beside me makes every experience in life even better.

I'm not really a believer in making new year resolutions. It just seems that if a person were really going to do all those things then they wouldn't wait until the new year to start. I do, however, want to carry this "extreme appreciation" of my family throughout the year. I want to be able to look back not have any regrets about how I spent my time. I want to live in the moment, every moment. I want to drop what I'm doing and play dolls with the girls every time they ask. I want to run outside with them and teach them to ride their bikes. I want to jump on the trampoline until I can't take it anymore. I want to go out on more dates with Mr. Wonderful and us not feel guilty about leaving the girls. I want to spend our entire Spring doing yard work and our entire Summer at the lake. I want to cook and read and sew. 

But most of all, my prayer for the new year is that Mr. Wonderful will be healed. I pray that his symptoms will be relieved and that he will feel like enjoying life with us!!   

Train a child

As I was getting ready to go to my church's annual ladies ornament swap this week, Addie was following me around the house. She was questioning me about every move I made. "Is that the shirt you are going to wear?" "You doing your hair like that, Mommy?" "Who is going to be there?" "Is Micah's mommy going to be there?" "Is Brooks' mommy going to be there?" "What other friends are going to be there?" This questioning continued until my mother arrived and distracted her by starting to cook spaghetti for supper.

I was chatting with Addie's Sunday School teacher when I arrived and was telling her about the questioning I had gone through. She laughed because that is so typical of Addie to be so inquisitive. And then she said that Addie was just being "motherly" and wanted to make sure I was going somewhere that she approved and that I would be safe. 

I ended up staying a bit too late because I was having such a great time that I just didn't want to leave. When I got home, Addie met me at the door, "did you have fun with your friends?" I sure did. I walked into the kitchen where the pile of dishes I had left in the sink were gone. Warm spaghetti was on the stove. Both girls had been bathed and were in pjs. My mom was sitting on the couch reading to Avie, and my dad & Adam were in an intense debate over football. I sat down and told my mother every detail of the night. She listened as if it were the most interesting thing she had ever heard. After my parents, the Incredibles, had left, I sat on the couch for a long time, consumed with just being grateful for them. I began to think about Addie again and how sweet it was that she wanted to know everything that I was going to do. It reminded me of when I was younger and my mother's line of questioning before I left the house. I wish that I had thought of it as sweet back then.

When I was growing up, I felt like my parents were more strict than anyone else's, and they probably were. I remember so many times that I wasn't allowed to do things that everyone else did. Simple little things like wandering around with friends at a football game...I had to stay put. Or going to a dance at the rec center by myself...I went once and my dad had to stay the whole time. Or getting dropped off at the movies...Or spending the night with friends who my parents didn't know their parents. If I went to a baseball game, I wasn't allowed to walk over to the park next to it with all my friends, I had to stay inside the ball park. I wasn't allowed to go out both nights of the weekend, and I wasn't allowed to go out several weekends in a row. I wasn't allowed to talk on the phone for too long, and I certainly wasn't allowed to call boys on the phone. Whew, even now it sounds a little excessive. But I am so thankful for it. I certainly didn't appreciate it then, but now I intend to raise my girls the same way.

I have the greatest memories of my parents growing up. My dad has always been such a hard worker. He went through school and worked at the same time when we were little and worked two jobs after that. He was gone a good bit, but he made up for it when he was home. I remember him letting us put every single hair bow we owned in his hair, and that was a lot because there were three of us. I remember him playing and wrestling with us in the floor even after he had worked all day and was probably exhausted. I'm pretty sure dad is the one who taught me to Indian leg wrestle and I bet I can still beat anyone at it. Riding in the truck with him I got to hear a lot of great music, most of which are still my favorites and still remind me of him. And after a long day of shopping with my mom, my dad would sit and watch me model everything that I got, even though he didn't care one bit about clothes and probably didn't approve of most of them. I can remember sitting in his shop with him while he filled shotgun shells and that sometimes he would let me help. I remember him teaching me to ride my bike. I never was great at it because I am the least coordinated person in the world, but I can still hear him telling me to look out ahead of me instead of looking down. Without fail, my dad would be cleaning his guns whenever a boy came to the house. Most importantly, I remember waking up every Sunday morning to find him sitting at the table studying his bible.

Although my mom stayed home with us when we were young, she was a hard worker also. She always kept the house so clean and everything had a place. I remember when she went to work that she made us a chore chart of things that had to be done before she got home. Our chores even rotated each day so we all did equal amount of work. More than keeping the house clean, I think that was her way of keeping us from eating junk in front of the tv for the entire hour and a half before she got home. Because dad worked away from home so much, I remember my mom always being the one who cut the grass. After she cut the grass, we would have to go rake and clean it up. She went to my grandmothers probably every week and cleaned. And after my grandfather got sick, she went more often than that, cooking, cleaning, and helping take care of him. She has always been such a great caregiver. I got very sick with mono when I was in the 7th grade. (And, no, I hadn't kissed anyone...how unfair is that? Get sick with the "kissing disease" and have never even been kissed?!) I was extremely sick with it. I don't know exactly how much school I missed, but it seemed like months. I couldn't eat and lost a lot of weight. I ran a fever all the time and was very weak. I don't think my mother ever left my side. I remember her picking me up, a 7th grader, and carrying me down the hall to sit me in a cool bath when my fever was too high. She was just as great when I was in 10th grade and my sister and I were involved in a car accident. I was a little traumatized by the whole experience, I wasn't saved yet and it scared me to death, and I treated my mother horribly. But she stayed right there with me and even came to school with me my first day back to carry my books. She spent countless hours helping me catch up on all the work I missed while I was out. She was always great at that though. Every evening after school when I was little, I would sit at the kitchen table and do my homework while mom cooked supper. In the 9th grade, I was given the opportunity to go to New York City with a small group from school. I was a little nervous to have my mom go with me, but didn't really want to go without her either. I had the greatest time being there and experiencing that with her. We did all the tourist stuff, a lot of which I don't remember because we were all over the place. But I do remember getting to see the twin towers and I have a beautiful picture of them that I took. I'm not sure what it was, but I began to see her in a different way on that trip. I remember that there was a girl there who kept being rude to my mom, and my mom never said anything to her. At one point I got so fed up with it and felt so protective of mom that I finally stood up to the girl, who was twice my size, and I told her that she was not allowed to speak to my mother for the rest of the trip. Thankfully, the girl didn't pound me into the ground and just backed off.  

I can look at my life now and see so many similarities between the things my parents did and the things Mr Wonderful and I do. We think it is important to shelter the girls from the world...they will have to deal with it soon enough. When I blog, I refer to my parents as "the Incredibles" and that is exactly what I think of them. Mr. Wonderful and I respect their opinion so much and ask for it often. They are the most thoughtful and generous people I know. I have never called my mother for anything when she didn't come running. And often, I don't have the opportunity to ask her for anything because she is already offering. My dad is the same way. If I just mention something that needs to be done, he immediately makes plans to handle it. Watching him spend time with my little girls thrills my soul. I love to see them together. Oh, and the girls think my mother hung the moon. They squeal with delight at the slightest mention of either Gran or Papa.

I know that I am 29 years old and I need to grow up. I shouldn't be so dependent on my parents when I have children of my own. But I can't imagine my life without them in it. I call my mother almost every day just to chat. She is still my mother, but she is also my closest friend. With her I can confide anything. She keeps me grounded. She tells me when I'm out of line. She listens to me vent. She doesn't take it personal when I'm in a bad mood. She cries with me when things aren't going well. She is genuinely happy for me when I am happy. She holds me accountable. She understands me in a way that no one else ever has.

I am thankful for my sheltered childhood and for the incredible influence of my parents. Proverbs 22:6 says that if you train a child up in the way he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it. I may have strayed pretty far from the way my parents taught for a while, but I am happy to say that I am older now and have no intentions of departing.