God is Good
08 Apr 2009 1 Comment
in faith, Russ' Fall & Recovery
As you read this blog you may at first wonder why I entitled this God is Good, but I have seen God’s hand in the way everything so far has worked out.
Monday, Russ and I were working on cleaning out our garage. It has been a work in progress since we moved into this house. He got a lot cleaned out and sorted out a couple of weeks ago, but had been waiting for me to help him finish it up. We both had gone up to the attic area above the garage and were surveying what was up there and getting down some of the things that we needed from up there. I had just made the comment that it wouldn’t been good if the ladder fell since neither of us had our phones on us, before Russ headed down the ladder. As he started going down the first few rungs, the ladder fell and he landed on the concrete floor on this rear. I was still in the attic. Tyler came out the garage to investigate and tried to get the ladder back up for me. He didn’t know/understand were to go to find a phone to call for help. Russ ended up lifting the ladder back up for me and holding the now bent ladder so I could get down. On after thought, I think that if Tyler could have gotten a phone, I think I would have ended up having Russ call 911 without moving to get me down and got him a little bit quicker treatment. I really didn’t know who to call to help us, if it had been summer and our neighbors were back I would have sent him over there.
As soon as he landed, I knew a trip to the ER was in the near future. I called my mom and got the boys packed up for the night. When we left our house I wasn’t sure which ER we were headed to the one 5 minutes away or the one 35 minutes away where our insurance covers better. It quickly became apparent that driving a long distance was out of the question, so as soon as we dropped the older boys we headed to the closest ER. On CT, they found that he has an L1 fracture (one of the bones of the spine). Defiantly explained the pain he was experiencing, they broke out the stronger pain meds. The plan was to admit him there, in fact he even had a room assignment. After they talked to the neurosurgeon who wasn’t going to be able to get to him soon (my guess people out of town for spring break), they were talking about transferring him. I told them to do it, since transferring him meant we could get to the hospital that we have better insurance coverage at (I think we would have had a 20% copay if we had stayed there).
He finally got admitted to a hospital bed about 3 am and I was exhausted by this time, but I didn’t want to miss any of the doctors. I had run home while they transferred him to get clothes for everyone, take a shower, and drop off to my mom what the boys needed for morning. I am so glad my mom told me to take a shower (I hadn’t managed to take on that day). I still managed to beat him to the second hospital. The nurses were very nice and got me a recliner that I could sleep in for the rest of the night and into the morning. Daniel has done well sleeping in the stroller.
The neurosurgeon finally came to see him about noon yesterday, at that point was not sure what if he was going to do surgery or not. He did finally let him eat, since they were not letting him eat not knowing if or when he would do surgery. The nurse came in about 5 pm and said that the office called and said that Russ was scheduled for surgery 8 am Thursday morning. We now know some of Russ restrictions – not lifting more than 10-15 lbs (Daniel is 12.5 right now) for at least 6-8 weeks, the older boys for up to 4 months or more.
I went home to sleep and gather up fresh clothes for Daniel and take care of my trashed house. I did stop at my mom’s to see the older boys. I think Tyler understands what is going on as much as a 5 year old can. William pretty much rejected me. I am pretty sure he will come around.
How I could see God’s hand –
- It is spring break in Midland. Mom is not working at the preschool this week and is proabably (in my mind) why they were having a hard time with the neurosurgeon, which brought up the transfer.
- He did not have worse injuries.
- In the last 2 weeks, I learned how to update my status on facebook from my cell phone. We were able to get lots of prayer from putting out short status messages (I hate entering text messages from my phone)
- I was still in the middle of a 5 day stretch of day off work, so didn’t have to worry about work yesterday. (I did call in for 2 days, Wednesday and Thursday and am hoping to work Saturday to help stretch out my remaining FMLA days).
- Our church just started an attender site, so I was able to put status messages up for our small group there.
- We got our tax refund last weekend, and I had paid all our bills before this happend and had gotten the bills caught up from maternity leave.
- Daniel is a good baby and still young enough to sleep most of the day and night, since I am keeping him with me. He likes sleeping in the stroller.
Things to pray for over the next few days
- The actual surgery will go well and he will heal quickly and correctly from the break and surgery.
- Everything will fall into place so I can continue to keep working while he is recovering.
As I started typing this I had started listening to Pandora.com on the Contemporary Christian channel. The first song was a song we sing in church, Strong Tower, by Kutless. The chorus is exactly what I needed to hear. (emphasis added)
You are my strong tower, Shelter over me
Beautiful and mighty, Everlasting King
You are my strong tower, Fortress when I’m weak
Your name is true and holy, And Your face is all I see
Gasp, I am actually blogging
04 Nov 2008 2 Comments
in Chronic fatigue syndrome, faith, family, health, illness, pregnancy, work
Life is busy, busy right now and the next few weeks are going to be even busier.
We are doing well. William’s lip has healed up very well. It is still sore to him sometimes, but most of the time it doesn’t seem to bother him at all.
I have been wanting to take him to the doctor for a while, since I suspected that he might have exema, we needed to discuss more of the concerns with his walking, his slow speech, and since our doctor retired shortly after we established in the practice we needed to meet the new doctors in the office. Well for those concerns — he does have exema. I was right in my guess. He is being referred to an orthopedic surgeon, as a second oppion, to make sure we are doing what needs to be done for him with physical therapy and that he doesn’t need any more treatment. As for William’s speech, she did feel like he needs to be evaluated, but instructed me to contact the local health department for a hearing test and the intermediate school district for an evaluation for speech therapy. I tried to contact both today, but was unsuccessful so I have to call them tomorrow.
I really liked the doctor we saw today. She works for Covenant, like I do, but actually lives in Midland, where we live and did her residency in Midland, so she knows the Midland doctors and who to reccomend for us to see so we don’t have to go to Saginaw for everything. That is great news to me, since I don’t like driving to Saginaw anymore than I have to. She didn’t blink an eye about my homebirth plans and actually has done a fair number of deliveries herself and has been told that she does deliveries like a midwife. I think we have a new doctor we can work with for our family.
The next few weeks are very busy for me. Next Tuesday our family has 4 appointments, 3 for me and 1 for William. That Friday, my mother-in-law is having knee replacement. The next week my best friend is getting married and I am in the wedding. Because of a scheduling conflict the rehearsal is on Thursday and the wedding is Saturday, so I have Thursday, Friday, & Saturday off work. I always have Tuesdays off because of William’s PT. Those 2 weeks I still have to get my 3 days of work in, so everyday is scheduled with something between now and the wedding. Our wedding aniversary also falls right in the middle of the craziness. I am actually working that day so I could get all my hours in. I am really looking forward to maternity leave, since I won’t have as many doctor appointments, I hopefully will be sleeping a little better, and will have a new little one to snuggle.
I also have a new stressor starting. My grandma has an appointment with a surgeon tomorrow. She had a routine mamogram done last month and a mass was found, so who knows what that is going to bring. I guess I will know more tomorrow. Thankfully not all the care falls to me, but most of it actually goes to my sister and my dad does what he can. Toi and I try to split the drives between us as we can and each of us have our own things that we do for her, though Toi does more than I do, but then she is not working full time and doesn’t have kids of her own.
So if you could pray for us over the next few weeks, the bullets would be
- whatever is going on with my grandma, that we as a family will know how to deal with it and make wise decisions
- energy for the next few weeks
- a safe birth
- wisdom in decisions about William’s speech and physical concerns
Praises
- Russ and I like the new doctor
- our household is primarily at our normal state of health, Russ has his daily issues with his health
- the main concerns with this pregnancy have been laid to rest
Works of God Monday
25 Aug 2008 1 Comment
I don’t think I can even come close to describing in words the beauty God allowed me to see this morning. Today I worked my 4th 12 hour shift in 5 days. On my way to work this morning there was a beautiful sunrise. There was a low lying cloud line perfectly over the roadway with the sun coming up behind the cloud line. It was so beautiful!!!! My first thought was this looks like I am driving into the mountains, especially coming up to an overpass. The way things looked reminded my of driving down the Pennsylvania Turnpike (you can tell I spent a lot of time traveling on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in elementary and junior high school.)
I was thankful to see it as it reminded me of God’s goodness. Today could have been very stressful at work. There is a lot of stress related to our unit, and only our unit, right now. Our management is very stressed. It ended up being a good day. We had a good crew working and I think I am finally getting to fully understand my job and what my responsibilities are. We had fun, even in the crazy moments and I got out very close to on time, much better than I did the end of last week. I even got to stop at Apple Valley Yarn Company tonight for knit nite, even if it was only about 20 minutes. It was still a chance to rest and unwind before going home.
God is so good at giving reminders of His grace.
Works of God Monday
04 Aug 2008 4 Comments
in faith
God showed Himself very real to me on Saturday. I was very out of sorts and I could not figure out why. I am sure that the pregnancy hormones were not helping. I just did not want to do anything, was grumpy, and short with Russ and the kids. I did start working on getting the dishes done, even though I did not want to. While I was doing them, I started praying. “Why God am I feeling this way?”
I heard the still quiet voice, “Because you haven’t spent time with me.” It is rare that I felt God talk to me in that way, but it was so true. It had been 3 weeks since I had been to church, I worked 2 weeks ago and this past Sunday and when we went up to Boyne we did not go to church the weekend between working. I do not know when the last time was that I read my Bible.
So after I finished the dishes, I took a bath and took my Bible with me. I decided to read the Psalms and Proverb of the day. Psalm 62:1-2 really helped.
My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
I can rely on God and trust him when I am feeling out of sorts.
While I missed church again because of work, I feel so much better and closer to God. I am striving to get back into the habit of doing my devotions daily. It helps to know that I can turn to God when I get so out of sorts, to get my attitude straightened out.
Works of God Monday
16 Jun 2008 1 Comment
in faith, family, job search
A friend several weeks ago started encouraging others to post how God has worked in their lives in the past week. While I have posted a few posts recently that could be posted with this title, I haven’t posted them on Monday. This week is different.
I have been trying to get a new job for a while. While I am not going to go into all the details of searching for a new job, I will say it has been tough. I thought there was a nursing shortage. I don’t know how many applications I put out, but I know I only got 2 interviews over the course of 2-3 months. At the encouragement of the HR specialist, I applied for the position I got. While I didn’t really want to continue commuting to Saginaw if I was getting another job, it just didn’t work out. Though it did become apparent that I needed to stay with the same company, since I am going to need short term disability for maternity leave come the end of December. One company’s short term didn’t kick in until 1 year after hire, so we would have been without pay for maternity leave. That would have been hard.
Purity
07 May 2008 2 Comments
in faith
Our church right now is doing a series on “Escaping”. So far some of the messages have been on escaping your past/regrets, escaping “religion,” escaping sexual addiction. This last Sunday was sexual addiction, but the focus to me seemed to be more on purity in our lives. It has been interesting this week thinking about purity in my life. I really have taken it beyond sexual purity, though a reminder of sexual purity is always welcome.
At the end of the sermon you could pick up a white silicone bracelet if you wanted. At first I felt funny wearing it, but I am finding it is helping me with my thinking and realizing when my thinking is not pure. Like last night when I wanted to fall into a pity party when I was tired and Russ had a bad headache and there was garbage to be taken out, boys to put to bed, remote to find (which didn’t get found until this morning), laundry to do, dishes to clean up, house to pick up and projects to finish. I did let myself have a pity party until God used the feel of the bracelet on my arm to remind me that my thinking was not right. I was being unkind to toward Russ and the kids I was thinking things that I never should have been thinking.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, THINK ON THESE THINGS.
Is there room for improvement in the purity side of my life? Absolutely!! Russ and I were talking about how the bracelets are affecting our lives. He said that he has tried to work on the purity side of this life before, but something about this time is different. I think we were spiritually prepared for thinking about purity by the series, knowing that both of us are thinking and working at being pure, knowing that we are not alone, but a large majority of our church is also thinking and working for the same things, and having a physical reminder of what we are working toward.
“Thank you God, for giving me the reminder that I need to become more pure and working in my life. Help me on this path as I work toward purity in You not only sexually, but in every area of my life, as I become more like You.”
Busy Weekend
17 Mar 2008 Leave a Comment
We finally made a long overdue trip down to the Lansing area (though we didn’t make it to Lansing proper, stayed about 10 miles east at all times). We hadn’t been down since Christmas, though my dad has been up multiple times. We hadn’t seen my in-laws since Christmas and they had Christmas presents (after Christmas extended family Christmas party) for both boys and birthday presents for Tyler whose birthday was over a month ago. We came back with so much more than we left with.
I think the boys are enjoying playing with their new toys. They both got Mr. Potato-heads. They also got this awesome collection of Illustrated Classics. We started reading Peter Pan last night. There are some books in this collection that I have never read. I am looking forward to reading them to the boys. Tyler also got a case for his matchbox cars, since he loves playing with them.
Our main reason for going down was Miriam’s (our niece) birthday party. It was held at Russ’ parents house. The kids all had fun playing together. The all remember the weekend they spent up here last fall and keep asking to get together again. It was a Dora theme and my sister-in-law, Michelle, decorated the cake. She did an awesome job. Both the girls and all our family spent the night at my in-laws. Quite a full household, 4 kids and 4 adults
We were going to try to go to our old church, South Church, but by the time we got up and ready to leave we would have been very late. When it came down to it, I would have had 15 minutes to shower and be ready to leave with all our stuff, which was mostly packed, but not entirely packed at that moment. So we ended up going to my in-laws church. I really enjoyed the sermon. He first read from Mark 11 about Jesus entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, then the main message was on the prophesy in Zechariah 9:9. I always knew that Jesus’ entry was prophesied, but I had never realized where the passage was.
After church we went to my dad’s for the afternoon, picked my mom (who rode down and back with us) up from friends from friends on our way back, then went to small group on our way home. (Mom got picked up from small group, before we went inside.)
Church Tonight
24 Feb 2008 2 Comments
Our church doesn’t have church every Sunday night, some Sundays they have small groups, some Sundays nothing or some the have a “special service” like communion. They did communion differently tonight than I have ever been around. The elements were available, after a certain point in the service, to come and get then take back to your seat and when you were ready to partake in them.
I started thinking today that Tyler, now that he is 4, needed to start learning to sit quietly in the church service. Granted a communion service in not necessarily the best service to train a kid. Tyler easily could have gone to the nursery, but I thought it was important to have him start to learn. We went prepared– toys, sippy cup, snack, coloring book and colored pencils. Tyler was very good sitting in the service. He colored for a while. Dropped his sippy cup twice until he figured out where to put it where it would not fall. Had a nice belch when he finished the contents of his sippy cup (nice in a quiet church service.)
When it came time for the elements of communion (bread and juice), I realized I hadn’t prepared Tyler for not being able to have the bread and juice. So I leaned over and explained to him that he couldn’t have the bread and juice because Jesus didn’t live in his heart. I don’t think he quite understood, in fact he told me “Jesus lives in my belly.” I had to explain to him that Jesus didn’t live in his belly. The whole time I am trying to explain these concepts that are sometimes hard for even adults to understand, I was in awe of what a responsibility God has given Russ and I in raising these boys. How it is my responsibility not the church’s, not grandparent’s, not other family members or friends, but MINE. God may use others to lead them to Himself, but still Russ and I have the primary responsibility for teaching our kids in the way we believe. What an awesome responsibility and privilege.
I don’t think I would have been as open to God showing me that if it hadn’t been for the fact Tyler was in the service for us. I know my thoughts probably would not have headed that direction if he wasn’t there.
Happy New Year
02 Jan 2008 2 Comments
in car trouble, cleaning, faith, family, Flylady, housework, money woes, orginization, planning
We did get everything done with returning the rental car, except it took us almost twice as long as it should have to drive down to Lansing to return the rental car. It was snowing pretty good when we left and it took us almost 2.5 hours to drive down (normally 1.5 hour trip). The boys both did pretty good. We split them up when we were in 2 cars, I did have to deal with a screaming boy for part of the trip especially since he didn’t have his brother to entertain him.
As I look back over the last few months I can see how God has been providing for us. The van is already almost paid off and should be once I get the check for the remainder of the payoff from the insurance company from the credit union that held our loan, thanks to an unexpected gift. Thank you.
2008 is definately looking up for us. I am starting to very clearly see some areas of my life that need some work and already have plans to work on them. So of them I have already started doing.
I do have a list of things I want to work on this year. I wouldn’t call them “resulutions,” but rather goals.
- Daily or near daily Bible reading and prayer. I would say I do pray daily, but my Bible study has really been lacking over the last few years and I know that is something that needs to change. I really stuggle to know what to read and need to have a “plan” to follow. I am just going to concentrate on reading through the New Testament this year.
- De-clutter my house. Russ is saying how the clutter is driving him nuts. We both really need to work on it. Moving last summer really opened our eyes to how much “stuff” we have and how most of it we don’t even use and haven’t used in years. I am planning on making good use of the van to haul stuff away from here. May make my first of many stops for the new year to Goodwill today. We really need to get the garage cleaned out so that we can park the van in there, especially since my uncle came and picked up the lawnmower so we could get the van in there.
- Get myself in better physical shape. Enough said.
- Budget and save money. We wouldn’t have had half the struggles we have had over the last few years if we had been following those steps. For our wedding anniversary my mom gave us Your Money Map, by Howard Dayton. Stop number one — live on a budget and have $1,000 emergency savings. That is my goal (and I dare say Russ’ as well) and should be possible long before the end of the year.
- Relationship building. I see some relationships that need a lot of work right now.
