1000 Days

1000 days ago, I was facing the most frightening day of my life!  My love was heading into surgery...major surgery!  The man, who had been to the doctor once in the almost 4 years we had been married (for a kidney stone), was headed into bypass surgery for his heart.  It was a day full of anticipation! Dread, fear & anxiety all kept welling up inside of me...but there was also assurance, hope & even moments of complete peace.  

As I think back on that day, I thank God for it!  Without that day, my life would be drastically different now...my husband's life was saved.  Our lives together were forever changed, but we know that God has been with us completely!  There are challenges that we will forever face now, but there is also a confidence in our tomorrows that we gained through that experience.  I thank God for guiding the doctors, for the support of friends & family during that time - there are people I had never met that touched my heart so deeply with their prayers & words of encouragement, but most of all I thank God for His constant presence with me when I felt I was facing an impossible situation! 

The 1000 days that have passed have taken us through some wonderful moments and some others that we would have rather not traveled through, but I'm reminded of the verse in Psalm 90:4 - "For you, a thousand years are as a passing days as brief as a few night hours."  God holds everyday.  Nothing slips by Him.  Each day may seem huge to us, but God sees it as a brief moment of the great plans He has for each of us.  He never leaves us to face, even a moment, alone.  His will is perfect & His plans prosper those who put their lives fully in His care.  His love is like no other. He is sovereign! 

In the past 1000 days we have...
Dealt with a serious medication reaction just a week after Mark got out of the hospital; welcomed a lovely little bundle, named KAMDYN; Mark dealt with pleurisy, which mimicked previous heart issues, giving us a scare; bought a foreclosed house, a HUGE blessing; discovered Mark has Bundle Branch Blockage; sent Mark off on his 1st missions trip since we've been married; begun a wonderful tradition with our family - our presents at Christmas are in the form of time away with our children & parents - PRICELESS; had our first "real" injury to Trenton - he's now proud of his scar ;); saw Mark go into surgery again, this time just a hernia repair & had great results; gone through the most challenging year of ministry, but also the year that we have felt the most love & blessings from our Pastor & congregation; watched our brilliant Trenton go from a baby to a boy, now getting ready to begin kindergarten, 
my list could go on & on....

This has been a time of crazy changes in our lives, but they all, through the work of God in our lives, have been turned to good & helped shape us into who we are today.  The next 1000 days are yet to be walked out, but I've learned to lean more on God & what He has today...we aren't promised tomorrow, but if it comes, let God be your guide through whatever challenges come because that's when you'll see Him most, sense Him closest to you & experience blessings you never thought you'd see!  They may not always come immediately, but they will come!

A New Season!

You hear it all the time, but life really can change in huge ways in such a short amount of time. Through FB, many of my family members & friends from far away have encouraged us over the past few days, but not even known what was going on... THANK YOU! That's the body of Christ in action right there! It has touched my heart & helped us through the really tough moments. I wanted to pass along just a little bit of what's going on with us. Bottom line, is that our church has divided. Mark & I love the church. We love working in ministry & doing whatever it requires, even though sometimes it's really tough or even weird! Haha! Although, this has been a shock & brought some hurt, we are walking through this with open hearts & open minds to whatever God has in store!

I don't want to say too much. Especially since there is hurt, anger, frustration, maybe even bitterness in the air right now, but in directing us, God has revealed some pretty cool stuff & taught me some valuable lessons over the past 6 days. I hope to be able to share these things in the future! In case you don't know yet, we are still at the same church. We are there because we believe it is the right place to be. We believe that, for us, submission to authority doesn't just apply in the home, or in corporate business settings but in church business settings as well, & we felt it important to do that in this situation. That's our personal conviction. It's not to say that we necessarily agree with the way everything was handled, but then, we don't agree with every law that is passed in our country, but still need to follow them. Our decision was not based on any earthly thing... not money, not people, not location. It also wasn't made in haste. We hope that our friends that we will still see every week & those we won't get to see as often, will continue to feel our love for them! Looking forward to a Bible study or something that will bring us all together again soon!!

Readers Beware...this one's stinky!

Hahaha! Okay, so this post is totally open and you may not want to continue if you don't have children or prefer not to read about digestive issues...well, let's call it what it is - POOP!

I'm writing this blog hoping that maybe someone who reads this knows someone or has heard of someone having similar issues so that we can find a cure, treatment, something, to help my precious boy. If you have been around us very for long, you quickly find out about Trenton's digestive issues....

It started about 2 weeks after his first birthday...diarrhea, lovely! Being the calm, let's not overreact, kind of Mommy that I am, I watched him closely, stocked up on pedialyte, diaper rash cream, bland foods and gave lots of love. After almost a week of this I called the Pediatrician, they said wait a few more days, (no fever was involved) and let the "virus" run it's course. Went to the Ped several days later after no change in his condition.... Long, very long, story made short...we're still having diarrhea! TWO YEARS LATER!

Here are a few more details... First we tried the BRAT diet, he got a little better, something like 3/day rather than 7/day....then it flared up again. BRAT diet again (+ antibiotic-just in case we were missing something), but this time after several weeks on the diet and significant weight loss (for someone weighing only 25{ish} pounds, off the diet, referral to a Pediatric GI Specialist. After several visits to the GI doc, blood test, diet changes, but still no real change in the digestive issues, the doctor suggests an upper endoscopy and colonoscopy and they were going to take biopsies all the way down his esophagus, some from his stomach and some from his intestine. I'm sure it was waaaaay, more traumatic for me than him, but poor little guy! It's very hard to tell your 15 month old he can't eat for 24+ hours!!! Then to try and "clean him out"....we'll just leave it at that ;)

The colonoscopy showed some abnormal tissue and we were glad to hear it. We needed an answer! They wouldn't know anything for sure until they looked at everything under the microscope and ran some tests on the biopsies. My heart sunk when they told us the biopsies were inconclusive...meaning they didn't show any allergies or genetic problems...I mean I was truly thankful nothing major was found ( I was sitting outside Mark's hospital room the day before his open heart surgery when they called, and didn't need anything serious ), but I was sad that we were back at the starting line again.

Our last visit to the GI doc was just a few weeks ago. The doctor (who we love, trust and feel is really great) said, he doesn't see anything that leads him to believe there is any type of disease in his body just and extremely severe case of toddler diarrhea. He said probably have another year of this (if it is what he thinks it is).

So, basically, on an average day, he is having 3-4 poops a day. He's never had a solid poop in his life - he's 3 years old. He gets what we just call "flare ups" where he will have 7-8 poops a day. His worst day was 2 weeks ago with 11 in just 24 hours. He is gaining weight at a slightly slower but close to fairly normal rate now. The doctor has us giving him benefiber, but in really high doses along with a probiotic every day. We have really increase this lately, but aren't seeing the results that we should or that the doctor expected. He also asked us to keep his diet high in fiber and fat (although T's Pediatrician wants us to really watch his fat because of the genetics of heart disease in our family). He is off of milk (lactose) and sugar. The milk is not so hard, but the sugar...it's in EVERYTHING!!

Up until now, Trenton hasn't even known or had any reason to think that what happens is not normal. I feel terrible for saying this, I guess selfish or whiney, but it is exhausting cleaning up after the mess and potty training has been a nightmare because of the diarrhea. Unfortunately, I think we have opened his eyes to the fact that this is not normal. We have had to resort to pull-ups (totally damaging his excellent potty skills-he was doing great, with TT, but the other comes so quickly...) because I felt nervous going out, there was always a mess!

Almost any given day involves, a couple of changes of clothes, an extra bath or two, and often a mess on the floor, carpet, high chair or car seat. I hope I don't seem upset or selfish about this...there are days when I do feel a bit overwhelmed by the mess but overall, I want to find what is causing this. So far, here are the things we think we've ruled out: milk, red dye, the inability to break down sugar, & glutens. I am trying to get him scheduled for allergy testing just to make sure there isn't something we're missing.

Please pray with us, for us & for his doctor, that we will figure this thing out! If you have any insight that may help us please feel free to pass that along to us~

Let The Waters Rise

(Written Wednesday morning ) Song on Pandora this morning fits this day, week, month of my life. Let the waters rise....still I will follow You. There's a raging sea right in front of me, wants to pull me in, bring me to my knees, so let the waters rise if You want them to....I will follow You! A few weeks ago, through a truly miraculous discovery, doctors found a tumor on my Dad's kidney. From what I understand, this type of tumor is almost always, cancer. No close family members have ever been diagnosed with cancer and I found it hard to even say that it appeared my Dad has cancer. Strange feelings for me...I can't imagine what has been running through his mind the past few weeks. Today, he is having surgery and the Dr will be removing the tumor and part of his kidney if necessary.

(Thursday morning) Well, we are praising God for a successful surgery and for a positive outlook for the future! The tumor was sitting on top of the kidney and made removal fairly easy. The Dr had some difficulty with dissecting which blood vessels needed to remain and which they could sever but blood loss was not severe and the Dr was very pleased with it all. Today Dad is up walking and sitting up in a chair, even going to try to get a shower soon. One Dr thought he may be able to go home today, but the other Dr's and Mom & Dad felt it would be best to remain one more day/night just to be sure healing is on the right track and there won't be any complications with his diabetes.

For family & close friends who were unaware of all of this....it started just a couple of weeks ago through a visit to his cardiologist. I won't go through every detail but a "spot" was found on an abdominal ultrasound. A CT scan was done 1 1/2 weeks later that confirmed the spot was a tumor and surgery was scheduled for 2 weeks later (yesterday). It all happened rather quickly and because of the type of tumor, everyone involved wanted it to be removed as quickly as possible. Although this type of tumor often spreads, typically you don't find it anywhere else until it reached about 7cm in size...the one removed from Dad was only 2 cm! I am are so thankful, first to God for His hand on Dad's life but also to the Dr that didn't create hysteria, but also dismiss a complaint and was proactive about figuring out what was going on!

We don't know what the road ahead holds....but then, none of us do. We continue to trust God, give our fears to Him and know that He knows what's best even if it doesn't make sense to us.

"Don't make the mistake of thinking the situation you're in right now is random. God has a purpose for everything that happens in your life." @MaryAlessi

Reflections

I wasn't able to blog about it over the weekend, but the past 2 days were filled with bittersweet emotions. Saturday, June 4th was one year since Mark's surgery. I am so blessed to have him by my side and I am so thankful that God chose him for me! Dealing with sudden health issues opens your eyes to how fleeting life on earth really is and how much can change in such a seemingly routine day.

The past week and a half we have been moving and it's easy for me to get into a mode where I want to get it all done and forget everything else that's going on in life at the moment, but reflections over the past weekend reminded me that although the stuff needs to get done, it can't be at the expense of missing a snuggle with my babies, a heartfelt conversation with my husband or just a moment of allowing God's peace to refill me.

Reflections can cause you to run away or make a change. I am choosing to make changes. If you don't like what you see in the mirror, but choose not to look, you've accomplished nothing, but if you decide to evaluate what's there, you can create a plan to change. For me it's the same with reflections about life...if I choose to ignore and not deal with reflections or I just focus on them without looking into them to see what God wants to do through them, then I live a life of fear, shame and even regret. Dealing with reflections and revisiting emotionally hard times allows God to make something beautiful through struggles, and free our hearts of pain, sadness, guilt or hardness!

Summer has begun, it's a new season and as we've made some changes in our life, my goal is to live more and more proactively instead of reactively. The last 2 1/2 years I fell into a rut of just being reactive - this can definitely give you a "victim" mentality and that's one that completely turns me off. One that I fear, I have emulated during this time period, and it's time to get back to being proactive. To taking authority over some things in my life....with God's help I can!

Boxes

There is so much going on in our little world! First, in case you haven't heard, we are moving.... the new house is just a couple of miles down the road, but meets a lot of needs that our current house doesn't and is a foreclosure, so we hope it will be a great investment. We still haven't closed though - we're going on 2 weeks past our original closing date with no real idea when this will actually happen...something that you know is very likely, but is still so disappointing when it happens. We started packing some things over a month ago and some things we've never unpacked at this house, so the boxes are beginning to multiply. I'm a planner and like to plan out exactly where everything is going to go and have everything organized in the boxes. Not to mention, having a plan for wrapping up things in the current house and transitioning to the new one. The Bible teaches about our "well laid plans" and how it's all truly in God's control...well that's so true :) We had visions of cleaning, painting, leisurely moving & organizing, before the official moving day... now we're less than a week and a half from "moving day" and still haven't even closed. Guess we'll be cleaning and moving and unpacking all at once and the painting - well, guess we'll have to take it a room a weekend once we move in. It's interesting, packing up all your "stuff" and realizing how temporary it all is, though. Not just the individual items, but also life...

Most people know about all the challenges in our lives last Summer, and although our lives forever changed, we eventually returned to a more normal state. Although, each month, when I refill prescriptions I have a little reminder, at some point we began living like we had overcome this great obstacle and would never face it again. I have studied and read and know that conditions like Mark's don't just magically go away, but once he fully recovered, I felt like, with a few changes of lifestyle, we could breathe again and hopefully wouldn't face this again for at least 10 years.

Well, some things have come up with his heart in the past few weeks and we don't know that outcome of everything (tests, ect) and obviously what treatment may be required, but it has definitely brought up a world of emotions that are not welcome and all too familiar. Last night, I was thinking about all that's going on in our lives right now and it made me wish that I could just pack up some of my emotions & fears & uncertainties in a box, tape it up and not come back to that box for years...but that is not reality. There's a song that's played a lot right now called "Blessings" by Laura Story and it has totally become my theme song. For anyone who is going through a low place in life or a time when things don't "add up", or maybe you just feel like "life" is trying to take away your joy, you should listen to this song. I don't like feeling out of control and this is most definitely one of those, "totally out of my control" issues. All we can do is pray & wait & trust that God's blessings come in ways we don't understand, through people we never expect & at moments that seem impossible!

Back to life...

So I'm trying to bring my blog back to life! As I've said in the past, I find my self "blogging" weekly, sometimes daily in my head. Anyway, this is a resurrection of this blog :)

Kamdyn Reece joined us just 3 days after my last blog. I knew I wan't feeling like myself the 19th of January and each day that passed let me know that something was up...my water broke January the 21st and almost 18 hours later, our sweet Kamdyn joined us! We are so blessed by her. She is a sweet, sweet baby. So laid back and just doing well in every way. She has rolled over both ways and is doing great with her feedings, playing, sleeping schedule. It's such a beautiful thing to see the love between Trenton & Kamdyn at such a young age and early point in their relationship. I know they will have plenty of times when they don't get along or disagree, but for now, I'm just loving every moment of watching them stare at each other and smile!

This Mother's Day was so special! Mark really made me feel loved and appreciated. It is different being the mom of two now...Mother's Day, that is. Not sure if other moms have experienced this feeling, but it's like you have fully submerged yourself into motherhood! Not that you can't be a great Mom of just one, but there are so many things you have to juggle and love to share once you add your second and it made me enjoy Mother's Day all the more. I have also really been challenged, in my spirit, to strive to be the very best Mom to Trenton & Kamdyn! This is the hardest and very best job in the world and I'm so thankful it's mine!!

I MUST get to bed...it's 1:45am and tomorrow is a big day! First baby arrives at 5:50am....