Surgery and the Move

Oh, this sad, sad, forgotten blog.  Days and weeks and months and years have flown by and I have not properly processed life internally or externally, or so it seems.  I have discovered as I have grown into more of a conscious and aware adult (sometimes I am) that there are days that I don’t know how I am until I write it out.  There’s an internal processor for you.  I journal MAYBE once every month- or two- and I would say that about 90% of those entries begin with alerting my reader (no one) that I am sitting in a coffee shop for some much needed time away with my journal, a nice pen, and a cup of warm coffee.  Seriously.  That is the first paragraph, explaining away how I have been so busy and how I dearly need to figure out how I am.  I then rattle off stream of consciousness for two to three to four pages, and generally abruptly cut it off in order to start the next page in my journal as either a to do list or a new budget plan or something else more pressing and practical.  ‘Tis the season of life, I suppose.  I think it has been a few months or years since I had much margin in my life.  Waa, waa, whine, whine.

I have wanted to write to the great and grand world out there and wax eloquently and think deep thoughts and inspire others to do the same.  Full disclosure: I haven’t had many deep thoughts of late.  I also haven’t slept more than four hour stretches for ¾ of a year, so I think those two things are related.  So this entry will disappoint if you were hoping for some inspiration.  This is merely a catch up on the life and times of our family, as there is a lot going on and a few of you who would like to hear!  And then maybe later I will share some deep thoughts, but I’m pretty shot at this point!

James- We added to our number ten months ago, and he is a little charmer.  Happy, inquisitive, content, and just entering a little stage of separation anxiety, so that should be fun.  Two bottom teeth and dark hair that sticks straight up on top, Mohawk-esque.  He is a spitten image of Ada when she was a baby, but all boy.  He can clap, crawl, click his tongue, and I promise you he says “Ada”.

Speaking of, Ada- she is nearing her fourth birthday and knows who in the family has to have birthdays first before her birthday comes.  She is bright and beautiful, sings and has an active imagination.  She has entered the age of the “why” questions.  Ada loves to help out with cleaning and kitchen projects and basically wants to be everywhere I am, doing whatever I am doing.  I need reminders that this is a precious stage, and that this too shall pass.  She is doing fairly well health-wise, but it is clear that her heart needs the next surgery.  She will tire out just walking up the stairs of our house or walking a block at a brisk pace.  Surgery is slated for June 22 at Children’s.  We will have the same surgeon, and feel comfortable with the staff at Children’s, as our first experience went so well.  This surgery is called the “Fontan”.  In general, this surgery is the final, and it connects the inferior vena cava to the pulmonary artery so that the end result will be a long loop…. Blood will leave her heart and go to the body and the lungs and back, rather than in our hearts, where there are two circuits- one to the body and back, one to the lungs and back.  Her blood oxygen levels should be much improved and I am hoping that she discovers that she feels much better overall!  It is hard to know with little ones, especially as she has never known what it feels like to have high/normal oxygen levels.  Length of stay in the hospital could be five days to five weeks, depending on how her lungs handle the increased blood flow to them.  So, a lot going on with our precious first born.  There is obviously a lot that I am feeling right now as the mom, as one can imagine.  We need wisdom in knowing how to prepare her for this surgery, as her experience will be one that she will remember, unlike her last surgery at 5 months of age.

And then the kicker- Nick got a transfer with work!  Bittersweet, to be sure.  He will be continuing with the same company, but working out of the Twin Cities in Minnesota.  Yes, folks, my homeland.  For years we have had it in mind to make a move to Minnesota and now that it is a near reality, my mind is spinning.  On the one hand, I am excited to reconnect with family and friends as well as places that I hold dear.  And on the other hand, now that it is happening we are feeling the pain and grief of leaving a place that has been home to Nick for his whole life and for me these past ten years.  Nick has already begun his work out there, flying out to MN for the weekdays and back to CO on weekends.  Largely due to the surgery that we have been planning on for so long, we have decided that we will not move as a family until after the surgery and hospitalization and hopefully a bit longer afterwards as well, as Ada has many adjustments to face.

We will have more to say and will use this blog again for giving information, particularly as the day of surgery approaches.  Please pray for us!  Oh, and bring by empty boxes, come July.  Our previous move was just long enough ago that we gave all our moving boxes away!

Peace…

40 years ago

It was about a week shy of two years ago when I became a card-holding pro-lifer.

I think about it particularly today, which marks the 40th anniversary of Roe V. Wade.

Now don't get me wrong, I have really never much dabbled in any other position than that of the Pro Life Campaign.  I remember speakers on the Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, and I believe that once in high school I picketed an abortion clinic.  I didn't feel very good about it, and even in the moment felt a little sheepish, as if perhaps I didn't completely understand how my actions were accomplishing anything other than arousing hatred and discord.

But I recall the day when I made my vote count.

The 20-week ultrasound had shown us the day before that I was carrying around a little baby girl.  And her heart was beating, and we were so thankful!  The previous pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage even before we knew if our baby was a boy or girl.  We had surpassed the magic 12 week mark on this pregnancy and had told our friends and relations.  This time would be different, we sighed with relief!

The following morning, the phone rang with the news from my nurse that not all was well in the womb.  Baby's heart was indeed beating... we'd seen that and reveled in that, and rejoiced in that.  But there were not enough chambers in her heart.

An appointment was set up that afternoon with a perinatologist, as well as a genetic counselor.  As we sat with the counselor with more questions than answers, she asked for our family's health history down to all the nitty-gritty male pattern baldness factors, etc.  She seemed to be taking a long time and not really saying much or knowing much about our baby so I began to wonder how this was helpful to us.  Apparently there MUST be some helpful piece of information we could give her about our health history that would in turn help our baby.  As the hour-long visit stretched on she encouraged that I undergo a procedure - somewhat risky- that would determine if our baby girl also had Down's Syndrome, as there is a strong link between heart defects and Down's Syndrome babies.  We didn't know... didn't see how it would be helpful information to have, since in a matter of months we would know anyways without putting our baby at risk.  It was then that our probing came to the heart of the matter - "At a certain point there is a legality of terminating the pregnancy."  Oh.  I see.  I get it.  NOW I know why we're talking to you.

We walked down the hallway for our second visit, with the doctor who would become our baby's perinatologist.  Dr. Stark confirmed the initial diagnosis of our baby's heart condition, and explained the course of action and the risks.  There were tears.  There weren't promises of success or health.  There was a strong declaration of the strain this could put on our marriage.  And there was hope given.

I am grateful for the doctor who explained the difficulty that was likely ahead, who respected us enough to give us the truth, and who pointed out the other parts of baby girl's body that were moving about on the ultrasound.  A culture of life pervaded that room and the miriad of other rooms we entered for the many months and now years ahead of caring for our child.

We had left the first visit with the genetic counselor with annoyance and a strong statement that terminating the pregnancy was not on the order of business for us.

And we walked away knowing that we were doing the right thing, though also recognizing that we were entering turbulent waters.  But in the quiet of that night and quite a number of nights to follow I cried, knowing that I was carrying a baby with big "owies".  My hope of a healthy baby was gone.  My fears of losing another child only increased.  I didn't do much to decorate or prepare the nursery, and I didn't let myself think too much of why that was.

That day, in the counselor's office, I felt I earned my card.  That day I had to face the reality that I could not protect my child from pain and illness even while I carried her inside me.  And I couldn't make her how I would want her to be - perfect, of course.  It is a realization that all parents must come to at some point; some sooner than others.

Tonight my baby girl sleeps peacefully in her crib, unaware of any of this.  But her life will always be affected by our choice.  And my belief in the sacred-ness of life has been strengthened by that day when I felt the cost.  The cost: that maybe I would say yes to this child, and would lose her in the first hours of her life.  Life is so very precious, such a gift.

May we live- really live, today.  And may we help others to do the same, particularly the little and big ones who need us to stand for them.

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??