The Non-Negotiable Commodity


Sweet Family and Friends,

We've been home from the hospital for 18 days and two months from now we hope to have the first stage of Nathan's Finger/Toe release surgery completed. 

The thing about time is that it just keeps ticking...  7 months and 5 days ago we went to the hospital expecting to deliver our son and join our 16.5 month old daughter at home the next day.  After all, I'm not a first-time mom, I didn't need TWO nights in the hospital - I wanted to be home... with Madison.  And Nathan. 

And now, 82 Days and Nights of hospital life later, I am rejoicing to be home.  Rejoicing and trying to be thankful for and deeply engage the moments.  The little. boring. moments.  Oh, how I have learned to appreciate boring.  Moments where nothing is happening and yet I find tears stinging my eyes because it's just so precious.  Moments like these...
 Mother's Day 2014
Sibling bonding
This was totally candid!  How adorable!












Playing with one of Daddy's old toys

While we were pulling into the parking garage of the hospital for Nathan's post surgery follow up Jonny and I were commenting about the hospital is like a black hole.  When you are there, time simultaneously stops and flies by.  The minutes of the hours of the days of hospital life seem like an eternity.  Meanwhile, 7 months have come and gone.  The little girl who had just a few words before her brother was born now talks incessantly and turns 2 on Thursday.  And rather than dwelling on how much of that transformation I have missed, I am chosing to be thankful that (it looks like) we will be able to be together, as a family, to celebrate her birthday.  And trusting.  Praying and trusting that God has been more intentional and trustworthy about shaping her little heart over these past 7 months that I ever could have been and that he is using her and carefully growing her even now.  

I apologize for not updating sooner but the truth is that I have been kind of selfish.  I've just wanted to BE in every moment here.  I've not wanted to spend one second more than I have to at the computer...  not when I could be with my kids, with my husband or doing the things I'm committed to here that I've had to miss so often. 

Time is a non-negotiable commodity.  I had the painful privilege of attending a memorial service for one of the most beautiful women I have known last weekend.  Jo was like a second mom to me for so long and her daughter, my close friend, is due with Jo's first grand baby any day now.  But Jo's time is up and now my sweet friend will walk through the first days of mothering on the heels of losing her own mom to brain cancer...  Please pray for my friend as you think of her. 

Nathan's been a little touch-and go this week... High fever, junky cough, a few vomits.  Thursday morning, when he threw up, my heart instantly dropped and my mind instantly thought "we have to go back to the hospital" as I felt my body have a physical reaction.  However, so far we have been able to ride everything out here with the additional equipment and medicine we've now accumulated.  If he is able to stay at home and ride this thing out, it will be a HUGE milestone.  We're praying for that and hoping for it but also praying that we will not put our hope IN that outcome.  He is currently being fed through the g-tube and we will begin speech/swallowing therapy soon.

*****  Assuming there is nothing dramatic with Nathan over the net two months, there will probably be fewer posts and those will be more family/personally oriented.  There will still be updates but the plan moving forward is basically for continued therapies from now until surgery in Dallas on July 17th.  *****















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