Anniversaries

Lest any of you freak out, have no fear.  Our wedding anniversary is months away and you have plenty of time to plan accordingly for the surprise party/cruise or whatnot.  (You must know that it took me a good fifteen seconds to remember the word cruise.  It must be that time of the evening where my words start quitting on me.  Perfect time to blog!)

Tomorrow, Wednesday, is the one year anniversary of Ada June's heart surgery.  I have been approaching this day with so much gratitude.  Ada has been doing so well, in fact, that many days we live life so normally and without a second thought to her heart.  She is growing and learning words, and slowly and quite independently and without coercion taking a few steps.  Her favorite food is likely still avocado, though she has become a fast friend to graham crackers.  You would never know...

But tomorrow, Nick and I will bring Ada to Children's Hospital, not as a patient but as a visitor.  We are hoping to say hello to the nurses, doctors, and possibly the surgeon, and to express our thanks to them for their care and expertise that was used to fix Ada's heart.  And we might bring some cocoa and candy.  How on earth do we adequately thank all those who had a hand in the process of helping our family?  "To whom much is given..."

I have had a tough year.  Only God knows just how much- or little- of it was spent in deep gratitude for the good things.  I am even "reading" (at such a snail's pace that I am not sure if I can officially count it) a book on thanking God for the many blessings we receive in each day and I have even managed to find fault in such a noble book.  But a couple weeks ago I found a portion I could wake up to.  The message hit home.  Don't expect a flowery Thanksgiving message, but here is a short quote for tonight...

"... I may feel disappointment and the despair may flood high, but to give thanks is an action and rejoice is a verb and these are not mere pulsing emotions.  While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving."
Ann Voskamp, Ten Thousand Gifts

We are thankful.  And we will give thanks.
Thank you to all of you who have and continue to journey with us.  We love you.

Fun with Bipeds!

... tumble dry low...

Ada at 10 months

Welcome, Visitor!

This past week, Nick and I received a “Welcome, Visitor, to our church” letter in the mail, signed by the pastor.  However, the letter came from the church we’ve been regularly attending for five years.  Whoops!  I understand what likely happened… the week before we had put Ada in nursery for the first time, and needed to fill out a card with her and our information, a card that likely is also usually filled out by first time guests to the church.

And perhaps this is a sign of our involvement in our church, that our names didn’t arouse any vague memory of familiarity to those on staff?  Yikes, that is a sad wake-up call if that is the case.  My guess is that this is just a thing that happens in large churches.  But of course it got me thinking.

I really like the people in my church… all those that I have met.  Some of them follow this blog, and if that is you…. I like you and am glad we go to church together!

But I totally struggle with a lot of aspects of going to my church… or maybe it is a struggle with going to a large church.  (Large is of course all relative.  I used to call it large, with an attendance somewhere around 1000-1200, and now it is likely closer to 3000.  That’s large to me.)  I easily spend a good five minutes during church trying to figure out how they get the lighting and backdrops to work…. Oooh, that’s shiny and pretty!  Another five or ten minutes are involved with me working through my frustration of the snazzy worship team singing about how God makes beautiFUL things out of us – least favorite song ever, sung at least every other week.

So I struggle with my attitude, wondering if it is just an attitude, or something more.  In talking with one of my good friends recently, I began to consider that perhaps my angst at church and big church is something that a whole lot of folks in our generation are also dealing with.  I am thirty.  I grew up with flannel boards, apple juice and animal crackers, while singing such gems as “Oh, you can’t get to heaven… on roller skates…” and other less Biblically sound kid songs.  I was a sheep in “Baa Baa Bethlehem”, and went on to write my own scripts to a couple plays that we also performed for our church in the jr. high, complete with bathrobes and straw hats for costumes.  Hmm…  Then in high school I played piano for “As the Deer”, and we had car washes to raise funds for mission trips.  I liked church, and I got church.  It was never a question of whether I would go to youth group or not.  And I know that our church didn’t have it all together, and there were heaps of issues.  Any time you have a group of people doing life together, there will be some amount of conflict.  But my point is that we did do a fair amount of life together.

This year our church sent invites to a special dessert (yay, food!), where we could come and see what God was going to be doing at our church – as in, how He was going to commission us to build a multi-million dollar wing onto our new building to accommodate the recent growth.  Well, the money didn’t all come in, and the church is in the process of figuring out what to do now.

I get it.  Our church is big and is busting out of its britches, and this Sunday our daughter couldn’t be in the nursery, because there wasn’t room.  But can’t we just say that?  We need more room, and we’re going to get a lot of money and build it?  Do we have to bring God into it, saying that HE is doing something big?  As in, big like our new children’s wing is going to be?  Because I don’t know… I don’t know that we can say that God wants for our church to be big and to have a really nice, super attractive facility, so that rich people will feel comfortable hanging out there.

The question I pose to myself, but also to all of you is this…. Is there a point where a church’s spending on, say, a building, becomes immoral? Or unethical? Or not pleasing to the One for whom it is being built?   I can trust my church elders that they know what needs to be done, and that they are being very careful and responsible with spending, but even after that is said, do you think that there is ever a point where you could say that God would not be pleased with the amount of money spent on the actual facility that His people meet in?  For me, I could hear that an addition costs $800,000 or $8 Million, or $8 Billion (!) and they all look like really big numbers.  So I’m not the one to be able to make any sort of assessment on what amount of money is reasonable to spend on an addition, and what amount of money would be decadent or unnecessary.

And this is what disturbs me.  Because I live in an area where the socioeconomic status is … higher than from whence I came?  Can I say that?  And there is nothing wrong with that… and many, many in my community have started to come to our church and hear about Jesus, which is obviously a great thing.  I think that many of them have come from other churches, however.  Smaller churches, perhaps.  Less snazzy churches, maybe. 

In the meantime, I realize that it isn’t just about a building campaign to me.  Churches get bigger and need more space.  I think most will agree that they would not think it a good thing to ask people not to come to their church, as a way to solve the space issue!  But for me, the root of the unease for me may be more in who we as the greater Church is becoming.  And I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but there is a bit of a fear for me of big, packaged, shiny things.  Is the church doing its job in the world?  Big doesn’t have to be bad, just like small isn’t necessarily good.

The ray of light I see is in our involvement with our small group.  Five couples and their kids.  When we were in the hospital with Ada, they showed up, prayed with us… brought meals to us afterwards.  We didn’t need to ask them to come to support us, they just did.  I yearn for being known, remembered, thought about.  I don’t do the best job of asking for community, but when I experience it, it is manna from Heaven.  

So, dear church, I thank you for the welcome.  Your letter has sparked deep thoughts from this momma who doesn’t often have the deepest of thoughts!

Now… what do YOU all think??

Hope

Hello, gang!

Uff da.  It has been awhile.  I must admit that I've thought of writing about 100 times in the last couple months, but as more time passes I am almost embarrassed by that, thinking that I must really have something to say if I'm going to write a post.  Who am I kidding?  This is the world wide web!  My writing may not be any more intriguing than watching a baby koala hugging it's momma, but I'm putting it out there, nonetheless!

Easter morning 2012 began dark and early...  Ada and I headed to the first-ever outdoor sunrise service at our church, bundled for the cold.  Too cold, in fact, for the precious dress I made for Ada, which proved to be completely impractical when it all came down to it.  Nick was home with some sort of flu bug which came on quickly last evening, and hopefully will leave just as quickly.

As I was sitting in the back row with all the other parents of infants, I just soaked in the presence of the Lord and ate up all the precious words of the sermon and musical numbers.  Well, that perhaps is not exactly true.  Two nights prior, at the Good Friday service, I sat alone - again in the back row, of course, so as to make a speedy exit when baby became too unworshipful for those around her (!) - and I cried.  I wish that I cried because of the powerful message of the Cross and what God has done for me through Christ's sacrifice.  That is, after all, the point of going to a Good Friday service, right?  To have moments to ponder the huge gift we've received in our salvation?  Nick had exited the service after 12 minutes with Ada.  I then could sit alone for the next half hour, and then we would switch.  Win-win. 

It was in the middle of "The Old Rugged Cross" that I got a text from Nick saying, "stay as long as you'd like... we're doing fine out here".  I began to cry.  Not only in the kindness of my husband in giving up an experience for me to have one, not only in the loneliness of rarely experiencing a church experience together as a family of three, but with the words "I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown." I lost it. 

Cling.  Clinging to hope.  Clinging to a symbol of where my hope comes from.  Wishing I had more of it.  Hope, that is. 

Life has settled in these last months into more of a routine.  We live in our new place, which is such a blessing... more space, nice kitchen, garage.  I teach music lessons, and Nick juggles his jobs and perhaps some of his sanity in the process.  Ada continues to grow and do well, slowly gaining more skills.

And perhaps the main reason that I've not written much in these last months is that even with all the blessings of life, these past months have been such a difficult time for me, for us, and I am struggling to "make it", spiritually.  I'm still dealing with so many questions and wish that I could just solve it all or forget it all.  Go back to when life was simpler or easier to understand.  So there have been many moments when I've been clinging, and that is tiring.


BUT... good news!  Today we went to the cardiologist, and got a new look at Ada's heart.  It looks very, very good, operating as it should be, and as a result she has very good oxygen saturation levels... in the high 80s, for those who care!  Excellent for someone who has had the Glenn procedure!  Ada continues in the same growth curve, and we were able to take her off of one more medication.  So currently, she only takes aspirin, which is amazing.  We've been given the go ahead to put her in the nursery, as the RSV and flu season is over, so that may help Nick and I to resume "normalish" living and have a bit of a break from time to time.  


In addition, we had an appointment yesterday with Developmental Pathways, a group that assesses whether or not Ada would be qualified for extra services from the county, as she has been a bit delayed in gross motor and fine motor skills.  However, she did not qualify, which actually is pretty good news, as it means that she is not enough delayed for anyone to be very concerned.  That was what I was thinking would probably happen, as Ada has been gaining all sorts of mad skills these last couple of months.  Army crawling is on its way, whenever there is the motivation of a sharp object or a cell phone on the floor.  She's not going to waste her time and energy trying to get across the room to a lame plush toy.  Not our girl.  :)


So yes, this has been quite a disjointed post, written over the span of two very different days, but of course all of life has its difficulties and its celebrations.  Thank you for hanging with us through both.  Love much...

Defining Moments

The day before a year ago today - we were pumped. At 3:30 in the afternoon we would discover what modern science would now allow us to find out- the gender of the little "Acorn" that I was carrying.  Yes, I'd dreamed that we had a baby but that I'd been too drugged to remember any of it, so I woke to find Nick telling others that our baby's name was Acorn.  So little Acorn, as we had dubbed him/her was starting to move and my belly was starting to grow, and now AT LAST we could find out if we'd be having an Ada June or a ... well, we didn't have a boy's name picked yet, so at least we'd know that we would have work to do!

Bladder full and excitement mounting, we were called back into the ultrasound room.  I laid out on the bed and smiled at Nick.  We tried to not be too junior high-ish, but who can refrain from a bit of giddiness at such a pivotal time?  The tech didn't speak English very well, and what she said was short and to the point.  She would point at a blob on the screen and say, "leg" or "heart" or "liver".  Good times, good times, but what about the gender, ma'am?  At one point she nonchalantly said, "...looks like a girl..."  Uh... okay?  Rather anti-climactic for me.  But we waited for her to speak definitively and tell us FOR SURE.  And we waited.  And... this was taking some time.  I got nervous.  The few things she had been saying had stopped completely now.  Silence in the room as Nick and I held hands and waited for it to be done.

The tech finished her work and told us we could leave and that a doctor would contact us with the results of the ultrasound.  Results??  As in, we have a baby in there?  It's proven now??  We walked out together into the hall and I started to cry.  NOT the usual response after such a great experience of learning we were going to have a baby girl, or having the unique experience of seeing her.

The next morning, one year ago today, right now, I was making pancakes.  Wild rice pancakes, I believe, my specialty.  Nick's family was coming over for us to announce the gender of the first Pitrone grandchild.  The pink whipping cream was all dished up in the fridge, hidden behind the salad dressings for the moment of the Great Reveal.

My cell phone rang.

I picked it up and heard the voice of Lori, my nurse practitioner.  She apologized as she started the call, saying that these calls were the hardest part of her job.

I handed Nick the spatula and left the kitchen and the warm griddle and the gathering family and headed into the office/nursery-to-be in search of a pen.  I scribbled out on two yellow post-its the verdict.  Our baby didn't have all the chambers in her heart.  Something was missing.  There was a hole.... a ventricular septal defect, I wrote.  I cried.

No.  That- that's just not fair.  It must be wrong.  What did that lady know, anyways?  It all looked like gobbledygook to me on the ultrasound screen.  I bet they make mistakes like this all the time.  How much training do they even have to become ultrasound techs?  Anger, fear, fear, anger.

Nick saw my scribbled out notes and asked me more questions that would've been nice to ask while Lori was still on the phone.  We had an appointment for later that afternoon for a follow-up with a REAL professional, a perinatologist, whatever that was.  But for now, the pancakes were done and it was time to celebrate?  I mean, CELEBRATE.  Muster it up, Anna, you can do this.  You've got stoic Swede running through your blood and Minnesota nice to top off the rest.

This was a defining moment in my life.  To have difficult, perhaps tragic news delivered, and to learn how to survive.  I cried at the table with Nick's family as I learned that there are times in life where putting on your best face or emphasizing the positive doesn't fix things.  It's not honest.

My life took a turn that day- in what direction, I am still not positively sure.  But it was a day that changed the course of my life and of our lives as a family.  A year later and that baby Acorn is out, is over 16 pounds, is rolling over and then crying because she can't roll back, and has a scar story to knock any of the rest of us out of the running.

Maybe another year down the road, or two, when the details are not so fresh and vivid, I will look at this past year as "such a year of growth", or as a "precious time of trusting", or as a "great example of the Lord's provision".  I'll shoot for that, don't you worry.  I know in my heart of hearts that this past year I have had far more moments of desperation, anxiety, frustration, fear, fatigue, and doubt than I'll ever really let you know.  After all, the pancakes are ready, and don't they smell delicious?

The Ada Update, 7 months!

We're now safely moved in to our new place, and just have a few boxes remaining... and they will likely sit exactly where they are for a good amount of time!  Amazing the quantity of "stuff" that we can't bear to be rid of, yet can't seem to put to use any time soon.

The latest update on our little babe is that she is a whopping 15.5 pounds, and climbing!  At our last visit to the cardiologist, she freed us from the sternal precautions, so we began lifting Ada from under her arms, etc.  She is delayed on her gross motor skills and hasn't yet turned over, but we are sure that after the memory of pain is gone and we spend some good tummy time together, she'll figure it out.  We all did at some point, didn't we?  Also, we no longer have to give her the multivitamin or the diuretic, so she now only has two daily medications (which she is rocking, of course).  The cardiologist was so pleased and noticed that the fluid around Ada's heart was nearly gone, so she will not need to see us for another three months!  Amazing....

And the pediatrician last week was equally happy with Ada's growth, so we can wait another month for a visit with her.  Longer space between visits is a blessing because it communicates to us that things are going well enough that the professionals can trust us to monitor our daughter.  So life can be more normal now?  We're still keeping Ada "in", and away from germs during flu season, but she is able to get out and about more than ever.

Her current favorite things: anything involving Daddy, watching us jump up and down, laugh-coughing, 6 a.m., her talking dolly, walks outside, and falling alseep over rice cereal breakfast (okay, that only has happened twice, but it was darling, and this was how I could fit that story into the blog!)