Me Too

He came into the bathroom as I brushed my teeth, each stroke marking my thankfulness that this pit-full day had passed.  I hated this day.  I hated the day before even more.  In fact, the whole week stunk.  My grandfather passed away last week (step-grandpa really, but he was always there), and with his passing my childhood memories felt tainted. That whole group of people whom I love, the ones who gathered for Thanksgiving and I can picture in my mind...those old pictures, could never gather again because a key player is gone.  In a way, I felt like when my grandpa died, a piece of my childhood died with him.  The passing of an era.

We’d been away on a trip, and before that, another trip, so my house has been out of hand for weeks.  I don’t thrive well in the chaos.  In the same way, home school hasn’t been established well enough to have a regular rhythm for the year.

And now we're home from the highest of highs of the most amazing trip only to be kicked in the gut by death again.  I’m kicked hard and even more gut-wrenched because I live so far away from my family and my own kids didn’t know him.  They never will.  Just as they don’t know my Grandma.  

It takes my breath away as I’m crying over the sink and the familiarity of pain embraces me like a friend and I feel a strange comfort.  “Hello darkness my old friend…” runs through my mind and I think I finally understand what it means.

But as I’m flailing here, the days must go on.  The house and the school and the fighting kids and the looming list sit on my lungs and squeeze them hard, until I’m barely breathing, and I can’t keep anything straight, and everything feels like an effort and all I want is sleep, but that’s elusive too.

All too quickly, when my guard is down, those creeping lies enter my mind!  Suddenly they’re there where they weren’t before, and I knew they might come and I told myself not to believe them, but they’re there and I believe them and I don’t know how not to.  I know I’m a terrible mother.  I know I cannot home school well and I never should have tried in the first place.  I know I can never keep up with my house.  I know the list of ‘to dos’ is too hard for me.

Just the effort of the days suck away at at me.  And I’d rather give into it and curl up in my bed then make the greater effort of pushing against it.  But I’m a fighter, so I try.

I try to laugh with the kids, kind of.  I try to look beyond myself and listen, sort of.  I try to say yes when they ask of me, mostly.  And, on Friday, he asked me to play a game of rope tag outside - a game where, if you’re ‘it,’ you hold onto the rope and close your eyes and you try to tag the person running in circles around you.  Such exhilaration I’d not had in way too long.

But I still hated the day, generally.  

To my surprise, when he breezed into that bathroom as I brushed, he asked me what my favorite part of the day was, that hated day.  I had to push past all the mental mush of the hated and my first compulsion to cry out that all of it was terrible, bad, ugly….!  And that moment on the swing came to mind.  The laughter and the running and the freedom from those lies.

“Oh, the game on the swing, baby.  That was the best part!”

With a tiny smile he turns to leave almost as quickly as he came.  Reassured.

“Me too.” he says quietly and confidently as he hops away.

I’m a little awe-struck because it was just ten minutes of that terrible day.  But it was enough to pour into my boy, that one growing up too fast,  that he is important.  It was enough to make memories right where I’m at with the life that I have and the people around me here.  And that little “me too” from my oldest son, was enough to remind me that even on my darkest days, God has equipped me to be enough for my kids.

A Barren Field

A barren field.

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

Covered in limp leaves,

Blown off stickish grey trees

Surrounding.

Blown by misty gusts

Cold

Pushing and pulling to its will

And then frisking away

Leaving

A barren field.

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

A morning walk leads me there.

I remember the summer breeze.

The green hues.

The vibrant life.

The warmth.

The laughter-filled picnics.

I tighten my coat.

Shiver.

Hug my own self.

I hate this

Barren field!

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

Nothing can happen here now.

Not in this dead place.

I stoop down abruptly and pick up a leaf

by the stem

The leaf itself hangs limp,

Like tear-soaked slop.

It drops to the ground

To join the muck.

I hold a lonely stick.

My new banner.

Feeling foolish

I thrust it from my hand.

Nothing here.

I kick at a dead stick.

Frustration boiling.

Sadness overtaking

My heart 

In this dead place.

Lost hopes.

The muck sticks to my boot.

I stomp, stomp, stomp

On the barrenness

The brownness.

The quietness.

The stillness.

The deadness.

And through my kicking,

I am covered in,

Splattered by,

All that muck.

I stop to catch my breath.

Bend down,

Hands on knees.

Open my eyes.

To see tiny shoots of green

Uncovered

By my flailings

Surrounded by the mire

The smallest little life

Strong in its resolve

The push through the

Barren.

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

I touch its tenderness

and

I love it.

Straightening up,

in my dirtiness,

I look to the sky

and

Smile.

Honey Words

"Kind words are like honey-- sweet to the soul and healthy for the body."  

Prov 16:24

I noticed them at the beginning of the year - the words of my children - smashing, slashing at each other, at me.  The words flew like spiteful daggers, aimed to kill.  And they hit their mark.

I told them to stop.  I punished them.  But, like an epidemic, it spread rampant and worsened.  Until I realized that I, too, was infected.  In fact, I might have been the carrier.  I didn't know.

Nothing I tried worked.  Until God gave me a verse...I started seeing it everywhere. The honey verse.  Our family talked about words being like honey and how honey makes you smile, and makes you want more.  How honey words are good.

My kids tried it and they liked it.  That verse stuck.  Nothing I had tried did, but God's word worked in their hearts, and in mine.

My littlest daughter put a name to words that are not honey words, "coffee words" (a simile I appreciate since she and I are on the same page in our opinion of the taste of coffee).  So, although not completely biblical, we now have reference to honey words and coffee words in our house.

In thinking about honey words, another verse came to mind:

"A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.                               For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of."  
Luke 6:45

My words speak my heart.  

Coffee words spew forth from a dark heart.

Honey words ooze out of a sweet heart.

One of my sons struggles especially with his value.  He thinks he's worthless and unloved and he expresses it regularly.  I told him to stop.  I told him it's untrue.  I've angsted about it.

But only this last week did it come to me that he has bought the lie.  The lie fills his heart and flows out of his mouth.

My job is to show him truth.  It doesn't matter how often I tell him to stop speaking untrue words, or how often I tell him he's wrong, or how much I worry about it.  He needs to know and believe the truth.  The truth needs to infiltrate the lies until he sees them for what they are: dirty, old, rotten, coffee-lies.

And so I've been whispering honey words into his ear as often as I can.  I sing songs to him about how wonderful he is.  I squeeze his hand, look him in the eye, and speak the truth in love to him.

When he spews out his coffee-insecurities, I will rebut them with honey words of truth until he believes them.

But, you know what I've learned from this?

I'm really, really bad at saying honey words.  I mean, I have to really, really work at it.

Coffee words, however, come naturally.  

Oh, the black reflection of my own heart!

I pray for God to give me the discernment to see opportunity to pour honey words.  More importantly, I pray that my heart might become honey-filled so that it might flow forth more naturally.

Because, when I speak them, their faces light up!  The joy comes forth!  The contagiousness alights a new kind of epidemic.  They love me!  They hug me!  They speak those words back.  They smile so sweetly.  

A transformation from the angry roll-out of our home just a few months ago.  God is good!  His word changes hearts.

Undone

A house with small children is an active house.  In fact, every item in it seems to be unfixed or to come undone.  I cannot tell you where that hairbrush went, because there are eight little hands, or knees or legs which could have absconded it at any given moment and they put it...?  Only God knows where!  I've given up looking for things, because I know I'll eventually come across them in places I never could imagine looking...inside that shoe or toy, trapped in a box and hidden under the bed because it was a puppy waiting for her mommy, or with the bath toys.  I can't think like them.

Fortunately, my littles are getting bigger and so, oftentimes, they're able to bring that missing thing back to me and to explain to me why it was where ever it was!  Like yesterday morning, I was missing my phone, and of course, it was on silent.  I asked the kids about it and one child explained to me matter-of-factly that another child was her horsey and my phone frightened her.  So she hid my phone in their bedroom closet in order to protect her horsey from fear.  A valid, valid explanation.  And....I'm really glad she could tell me the story, because why would I look in their closet?

Then there's the epic time when I was putting lotion on in the park - the one time I took off my wedding ring and carefully placed it in front of me on the picnic blanket.  It must have been the most covert of operations because I didn't hear or feel the little dear slink up to me...not a bit.  Or I'm so used to their noise, and I never imagined my own flesh and blood might take it...I don't really know.  But I finished lotioning my hands (how long does that take - a minute??), grabbed for my ring...gone!  

I looked left, right, everywhere.  My heart in my throat, I glanced around in panic.  A park-full of kids, but no one looking suspicious.  I called my own over.  

"Have you seen my wedding ring?  I had it right here in front of me!"

"Oh, Mommy!  Yes!  We're playing pirates!  We needed treasure.  I buried it over there somewhere in the sand."

Don't these kids have any notion of personal property...or manners?  Haven't I taught them again and again to ask permission before taking something of someones?  Aaaagh!

"In the sand?" as I scan 200 square feet of sand and 25ish children running across it, "Where, exactly, in the sand?"

"Oh...somewhere over there."

The child walks me to the general location.  I say a prayer as I consider employing all of those 25ish children to help me dig if I don't find it soon.

Fortunately, after only a couple minutes of sand digging, we unbury that treasure, my irreplaceable wedding ring, and I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving as I vow to let my hands crack in half rather than moisturize in public again.

These are just two examples of a whole plethora of similar happenings in my life throughout the past 10 1/2 years.  All of my formerly static objects have legs, or if they don't walk away from where I put them, I find them disassembled and scattered about (the work of my insatiably-curious future engineer).  And, usually, nobody did it.  I have to pry it out of them.

Honest moment here:  It makes me feel batty.

It's an anger point for me that I'm actively working on.

So, yesterday, again - after the phone/horsey incident - I walk into my bathroom to put on my necklace, rings and earrings which I'd ceremoniously left in a pile inside a wooden bracelet, only to discover things scattered, and the back missing from one of my earrings.  My brand-new earrings which I'd only worn once - defiled and lost!

I just want to wake up in the morning and have my things not be moved or touched or tampered with.  I DON'T want to have to crawl around the floor looking for my missing earring back.  I DON'T want to have to take the time to investigate this new offense.  I CAN'T put everything out of reach anymore, because they all can reach everything...or if they can't, they monkey their way there.  I JUST want them to START listening and obeying and putting into practice what I've taught them!  If you drop it, find it!  Ask before you touch.  Please....show some respect for the sake of your mother's sanity!!!!

A scan across the tiles gives me nothing.

And so I start the dirty business of interrogating the locals.  I cut right to the chase.

"Who was messing with my earrings?  An earring back is missing.  My jewelry was in a pile, now it's scattered around and a back is missing.  They don't work without the back!  So, who was it?"

Silence.

Of course.  No one.

Yes.  I know.

So I take the most likely suspect and escort him to my bathroom.  I am really, really tired of this baloney.  I move to direct assault tactic.

"You did it, didn't you?"

"No, Mommy...I didn't."

"I'm sorry.  I don't believe you.  You've not always told me the truth.  I think you did it."

He stands there, fingering the said earring and considering.

"Well, maybe...." he starts to mumble something incoherent, a confession, in my mind.

Ummm hmmmm.  The truth comes out.

"Ok.  I want you to find that earring back, bud.  You need to stop messing with things that aren't yours!"

Head down, he agrees.

But I don't make him look for it just then.  After school will work.

We move forward with the day, uneventfully.

An hour, maybe two, later, I'm in the kitchen.  As I'm clearing the counter, what do I find?  The infamous earring back.

Why in the world would they bring it to the kitch....

I pause in my thoughts.  Disaster.  They didn't do it.  He didn't do it:  that little, fingering, head-hanging, sin-confessing boy.  He didn't do it.

"In your anger do not sin..." Ephesians 4:26

I did it.  It was me.  A plastic piece had broken off the earring back and I'd brought it to the kitchen as I was talking to James and putting it back together.  And I'd walked away and left it there and forgotten it.  And in the morning, I'd seen my own disarray and angered at the kids.

I accused them all and didn't believe them.  This time, they were innocent.

I was guilty.

But I couldn't see my own guilt.  Didn't remember it.  I was so blinded by my own idea of their guilt, again.  So willing to mete out justice expediently.

And so I didn't believe them, didn't trust them, like Marilla in Anne of Green Gables with her missing broach.  Anne confessed her guilt because Marilla wouldn't believe the truth.

Sure, these kids of mine have a track record.  They're kids!  Kids do these things!

But my job, my job, is not to sin in my anger.  My job is to train them in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16) and to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15).  My job is to show them grace and love.

And so, I show grace to myself as well.  We all fall flat sometimes.  Jesus loves me, little sinner, as much as he loves those little sinners.  It's true.

Father God, may I lean on you more and more as I walk this sometimes harrowing path of motherhood.  May I, like Solomon, ask for wisdom in a task that feels too big, too hard, for me.  Help me to be in your word every day.  I need you, God, in this!

A Beautiful Day

A beautiful day
A beautiful life
A moment by moment place
Falling down
Getting up
Wiping the hands
Looking up
Wondering why
Asking
Angry
Shaking fist
Rubbing brow
Looking down
A sigh
A breath - deep breath
A prayer breathed
Tears
Missing how it was
Accepting how it is
Thankful for what I have
A different day
A different life
More beautiful than before

Dirt

I walk up to the waterside
And sit down in the dirt
Coolness of grass on my fingertips
Mud squishing in my toes

I look out on the water, flatness
Disturbed by tiny ripples
Feel the coolness of the air
Kiss my hair back from my face

All my life behind me
The noise and din and swirl
Stop for these few moments
As I sit in perfect peace

Then comes a darkness, cloud of grief
As I chronicle the pain
I can't be sure how it will end
Or if it even will

Head down, eyes shut, nails digging dirt
Knees pulled up to my chest
Holding on to what I can

Which is nothing.
Nothing at all.

I weep.  Bereaved.  Lost and alone.
"I cannot do this, God!
A life like this? With nothing known? 
Nothing to call mine?"

Eyes wet with anguish, looking up
Upon the endless grey
Feel sweet whispers on wet cheeks
"Just be still and know..."

"Be still and know that I am God"
The words sink deep, hit hard
And in the stillness...mud
Mud covered hands held high

Lips crying praise with furtive joy
Remembering He is mine
How could I forget
That I am His created one?

Being still I hear His voice
Count it all my strength
Being still, I let go
Of all my worries and my hopes

Behind me echo childish voices
Calling me back to that place
Knowing I cannot run away
From the race I have to run

I stand up from the waterside
Clasping a clump of dirt
Reminding me that I am loved
I turn my face towards home

For Such a Time as This

I walked into my first MOPS session in September of 2006, green with motherhood, as I held my firstborn in my arms, only 4 weeks old.  I almost felt embarrassed to be there since, in my mind, I barely qualified as a mom, but someone, somewhere along the road had encouraged me that direction and I took the brave step forward.  It felt right to go somewhere where I could find some camaraderie and good advice.  

What I didn't know was that, two weeks later, I'd be standing in a hospital hallway watching my little one, a tiny form on a giant twin-sized gurney, blurred by my own tears, wheeled away through the double-doored path towards surgery.

"God, I don't even know this baby yet!  I don't even feel like his Mommy yet!" ran through my head as the doors closed.  As we waited in the waiting room, I realized that THIS was what parenting meant.  It meant that I would change everything and do anything for the benefit of this little guy.  It meant that my husband and I would share-sleep on one foldout chair and get up every few minutes to give him his pacifier and comfort him in his pre-surgery hunger.  It meant that it no longer was just about us, but about this new, helpless little screaming life.  Our little Isaac.

He'd been vomiting, vomiting, vomiting the past few days and we didn't even know, my husband and I, how small he'd become until there we were in the hospital scrolling through the pictures on our camera.  We saw him every day and we didn't see the change, only the stench pile of laundry by our bed since, in the past 24 hours, we'd had to use every towel in vomit clean-up.  "What??  How did we not notice?"

"A simple procedure."  "The best you could ask for, if you'd ever ask for surgery on your baby."  "Don't worry, Mom.  He'll be fine."  "Pyloric Stenosis.  I had it when I was a kid.  See my scar?"  The medical staff gave us all the best words.

The story has a really great ending.  He was fine!  They sent him home with a pumpkin-shaped piece of gauze on his baby tummy, and my MOPS table delivered meals and held this Mommy's hand through my baptism-by-fire into motherhood.  I couldn't help but revel, "God, you brought me to that place for such a time as this.  Thank you."

Sadly, my work schedule changed and, after that first semester, I was unable to attend MOPS for a long, long time.

Fast forward five years to September, 2012.  I am now a veteran mother.  I had quit my job after my third child but waited a year before rejoining MOPS because I was afraid it would interfere with my home school schedule.  But, here I am, a fourth on the way in December and - to heck with the home school schedule because I am so much in need of a break and I have another one coming - what am I gonna do?!  A real mindset flip.  I'm desperate, but at the same time I wonder if I should have signed up in the first place, if I really have the time for this.

My worries are swept to the side as, all that first semester, I come and breath deep of the wisdom of others, and eat well of all those breakfasts, and relish in my 2 1/2 hours of childlessness.  Midyear, before the second semester begins, my baby arrives, the day after Christmas nonetheless (8 days late!), and we call her middle name Joy because the delivery room buzzes with it just after her birth, and my eyes meet in ecstasy with my husband's - Annika Joy.  She completed a perfect boy-girl-boy-girl pattern for our family and we gleefully brought her home, excited to start life as a family of six.

Fast forward a little further to March 12th, 2013.  My baby is not doing well.  Two weeks earlier, at her two month check-up, the doctor labeled her Failure to Thrive.  She won't nurse unless I'm laying down with her, and even then she only eats half as much as she should.  She sleeps all the time.  They thought it was my milk output, so for two weeks I've been popping fenugreek, pumping between feedings, and my husband even took three days off of work so that I could solely sit in a rocking chair and nurse.  She's barely gained.  I am bursting with milk.  This is not the problem.  No one knows what is.  I show up at MOPS exhausted, but glad for a reprieve.

I look at the schedule and realize, with mixed emotions, that a doctor and a child life specialist are on the docket for the day.  I'm filled first with frustration, then relief: not more doctors, I'm here for a break....but maybe this is perfect timing...maybe this is just what I need...maybe they can help.  Up to the podium they walk bringing lots and lots of doctor advice: how to best relate with your doctor, how to list out questions so to use appointment time wisely...yes!  I am a copious note taker, so I'm scribbling and am in awe of the fact that this message came to me today, of all days!  But then the topic shifts to inpatient matters: what to do if your child is admitted to the hospital, how to make it less scary for your child through play, I'm still writing but my heart disconnects.  This has nothing to do with me, and definitely nothing to do with any of my kids!

"What if it does?" Bang!  The thought slammed my brain.  I vividly remember the minute I stopped listening and panned the room which was filled with at least a hundred other women.  There were so many of us!  

"No, God.  This isn't for me.  This is for one of them.  Why would this be for me?  It can't be.  I have no reason to need this!"

MOPS ends.  Two hours later, Annika has a scheduled weight check with her pediatrician, Dr. Parker. She's still not gaining.  She's lying on the exam table and he looks at her, perplexed.

"Does the left side of her chest look higher than the other to you?"

Squinting, "Yes...it does a little."  I respond.

"I'm ordering a chest x-ray.  Come back when it's done."

I carry Annika across the way to radiology.  The machine buzzes.  Even the most untrained eye can see that the entire chest cavity is filled with heart.  I exclaim something to the technician about it's hugeness and the badness of that, he agrees.

What???

Across the building again and into the little room where I feel set apart, alone with my babe on one side of the room, as the doctor and nurse stand on the other, and he tells me that her heart is clearly enlarged, but we can't determine why until she sees a cardiologist and has an echocardiogram and the words sound so calm and clinical and his face is so calm, but the meaning....the meaning.... is devastation.  What???  The nurse calls cardiology and they book an appointment for my little one in nine days.  Nine days, can she wait that long?  How will I live through the next nine days?!  

I walk out of there, stunned.  I call my husband, my mom, pick up my other three kids from and talk to my in-laws.  I'm numb.  I drive home.  I google "enlarged heart," a mistake.  My husband walks in the door and I'm a melted mess on the bed, laptop by my side.  We're eating chicken for dinner.  Doctor Parker calls.  My husband answers.  I'm in no shape.  After we'd left our appointment earlier, the doctor had found out from the nurse about the nine day wait to see cardiology.  He referred with the radiologist and they both agreed that this baby should not wait that long.  Dear Doctor Parker spent the afternoon arranging for the right group of people to meet us at the ER.  He called us around six instructing us to go right then.  We file out the door and down the stairs, leaving the chicken on the table.

Since we are expected, Annika's tiny armbands await her.

"Oh!  Is this our little CHF baby?  Ooooh, how cute is she?!"

My heart drops.  CHF?  Congested Heart Failure?  No one had used those words with us, and the nurses flung them around like she had a mere splinter.  Why do we have to wait if they expect us?  I'm huddled in the furthest corner of the ER next to my husband, holding my baby, cradling my baby, weeping into my baby.  Clinging to her life.  I turn her around, place her on my bent knees.  She's awake and smiles up at me the sweetest smile.  She knows me.  She trusts me.  She doesn't know she should be afraid and that everything's different and that this is something I can't protect her from.  I look up.  People are watching, wondering, pitying.

Finally, we're called back to a room.  The technician arrives to perform the echo.  I can't do it.  I can't watch.  I don't want to know.  I want everything to be normal and healthy again.  But, barring a miracle, I know that's not the case.  I'm not ready.  I need time to pray.  I tell my husband that I need to go to the bathroom.  "Now?" he wonders.  Yes, now.  In that one little square of a room, I lean against the wall, arms lifted high.  "Please, God!  Please, let me keep this little girl!  Let me be her Mommy here on earth for many years.  Oh, God.  Please!"

"It's good news, Chrissy!" my husband, faithful and strong, takes my hand as I walk back into the room.

The technician explains the situation, a VSD - a hole in her heart.  He tells us, "This really is the best situation for a heart condition.  If you're going to have a problem with your baby's heart, this is what you want!"  Once again, we got the best.  The best surgery for Isaac, the best heart condition for Annika.

I wish it ended there.  I wish I could tell you that they gave her medication and the hole healed and all was well from there on out.  But the story of my fourth has a different ending than the story of my first.  This time, the story didn't end quickly or well.  In fact, things quickly fell apart.

Within minutes after the VSD diagnosis, Annika is admitted to the hospital.  Over the next month, she spends twenty nights in the hospital, and five nights the following month.  She regresses in her eating to the point where she needs an NG tube, a feeding tube through her nose followed, in May, by a Gtube, a feeding tube in her stomach, which is surgically placed.  A whirlwind of events.  She vomits 5-10 times each day.  I administer eleven doses of medication each day.  For a time, she doesn't tolerate her feedings and we have to keep her connected to the feeding tube on a slow continuous drip for 24 hours a day.  Before the tube, she is so small, we can't allow her to cry or be cold lest she lose calories.  I keep an extensive notebook of her daily weight, output and input, questions that I have and doctors' advice.  We see doctors galore.  She undergoes angioplasty in her heart.  And remember I have three other kids to care for and I home school?  

Our lives changed almost instantaneously from normal life to a medical swirl and a focus on this precious, sick child.  Over the next three years, three more issues are discovered in her heart.  In fact, just this last spring, the cardiologist told us that her particular grouping of heart issues is called Shone's Syndrome.

Can I tell you that I weep?

I do.

But can I also tell you that I hope?  What a journey it has been.  I have walked in the depths.  But, God has been faithful.  He has held me, my little girl, and my family.  I have worked, and prayed, and striven like no other time in my life for the health and life of my daughter.  Our family has walked through the shadows and survived!  

On October 23rd, 2014, Annika saw her GI docter for the last time.  Dr. Nanjundiah ordered us to taper off the G tube for the next week and than to stop completely!  She exclaimed to me that it doesn't always happen this way!  She's seen families fall apart and babies not thrive because their parents don't listen and communicate well with the doctors.  She noticed we were different.  My husband and I weren't fighting as other parents did, but were growing stronger.  She gave me the highest honor I've ever received when she wrote on the paperwork, "Congratulations to mom-dedicated mother of 2014."  On January 29th, 2015, the Gtube came out!

Unfortunately, it's not all victory.  The heart condition will never leave.  The shadows may grow darker.  Just this year, in June, Annika had angioplasty again.  She is well for a time, and than her heart overworks and I am reminded of the frailty of her life, of all life.  Before angioplasty, she is tired, sweating and pale.  After angioplasty, she is life renewed.  I praise God for the hands and minds of these beautiful people he's created in his image who have found creative, innovative, and genius ways, medically, to save my baby's life, over and over again.

We don't know the road ahead.  If I allow myself to wonder about it all, it's easy to despair.  Yes, she will need surgery eventually, in fact, she'll need multiple surgeries.  In my mind, though, Annika standing here today without yet having had surgery is a small miracle in itself.  In January, our family stood, poised and ready, for the cardiologist, Dr. Sangodkar, to want to schedule her for surgery.  But, instead, Annika's heart improved! We vouched for angioplasty, and mercifully, it has been sufficient.  If I look ahead to all of the unknowns and probablys, I crumble.  But today, with God's help, I can handle today.  And I pray for the miracles, small and large.

Today, on this day, Annika is thriving!  She runs around the grass, hopping vivaciously and riding her little pink trike as my neighbor shakes her head in wonder at what Annika was and what she is today.  In December, she turns four.  Four!  I love to hear of her little hopes and dreams which don't move much beyond snuggling with Mommy, reading books and her imagined elephant birthday party.  She wants elephant clothes, elephant decorations, and to ride an elephant.  We shall see, my dear.  It is the day after Christmas.  Aah, my sick baby grown tall and dancing: my mommy-heart sings!

Throughout these past years, I don't even know how many times I've looked back at that MOPS session in March of 2013.  Sometimes I'm laughing at the irony, sometimes I'm wondering in awe at the perfect timing of it all, and sometimes I'm sad...but I don't know why.  I think I've pinpointed it.  That day, those moments in sitting with my sisters, listening to that doctor, eating that meal, those were my last hours of "normal."  Yes, my baby was sick, but I thought she was "normal" sick.  Those were my last hours before I knew the heartsickness of truth, a loss of innocence.  Those were my last hours of the old me, of my former life.  A kind of last communion.  I can draw up the memories in a heartbeat.  I remember her, that old me, before she knew! 

Together with my church family, the MOPS ladies brought the gifts of meals to the "new-me's" family for almost three months straight.  I don't even know how many meals, or who brought what and when, because most of the time I wasn't there and, an open apology, I didn't keep track or write thank you notes.

Each year when I sign up for MOPS, the question of whether or not I should is no longer there.  I go, year after year, because I usually need to hear whatever it is that is being discussed that day, on that day, and I need, oh how I need, to have other ladies to walk with through this tumultuous life-path.  And I am grateful.  I am so, so very grateful for God's provision in the midst of hardship.  Lastly, and most of all, I can't help but revel, sometimes outloud, "God, you brought me to that place for such a time as that, for such a time as this.  Thank you!"