Pulling it together

Well, I have to say that I am very thankful for my husband and friends who have been a great help and encouragement as I figure stuff out.

Logistics were wrapped up by the end of Wednesday. Instead of my father-in-law coming to help after my surgery my mother-in-law will be coming.

So the "Who is going to take care of the kids while I'm in surgery?" question fizzled out quickly, but it's a different thing getting ready for a father-in-law than a mother-in-law. So it took me another day or two to get myself ready for that notion.

As far as my dad being sick, that is its own very weird situation. For all intents and purposes, my dad feels like a really healthy guy, no different from last week. But preliminary tests say he's got a rare cancer. At this point, if he feels sick it's going to be because of the chemo. There's one more round of tests this week and then my parents get to survey their options and choose their next steps.

A sustaining idea in this time has been what Brennan Manning calls the "present risenness" of Jesus. Present meaning both now and near and risenness meaning having defeated death and fully alive. So while I was feeling crushed by stress, I had this beckoning sense that Jesus was near and trying to push through the anxiety. I could see light creeping around the edges of the folds of darkness. This idea that the loving creator of the universe stands near me with such power that death was broken has been a lifeline of hope when the worst of myself cries out to be believed.

Pre-surgery planning: Family checklist

I scoured the internet (for 2 min) for a check list of what I need to have figured out before surgery to ensure my family keeps on trucking. Couldn't find anything. So here is my list of things to figure out before surgery given that as a "homemaker" I usually do a lot of our day-to-day home stuff.

Parameters:
Shoulder surgery
Week 1 in bed convalescing
Weeks 2-4 up and around with one usable arm
Months 2-3 w weakened arm
2 kids under 4, one in diapers
1 husband
No local parents/siblings
Good social support through church and friends

Medical:
--surgeon's contact info
--surgery location & map directions
--pharmacy location/ph
--physical therapy location & map direction

Everyone needs to sleep, pee, eat, & bathe
Sleep:
--Where am I sleeping ?
--What do I need to sleep: pillows, blankets, etc
--How could the sleep of everyone else be impacted?

Pee:
--Any special considerations for me? (Not this time, but yes post hip surgery)
--Any considerations for the rest of the family? (Kid in diapers will have to be taken care of by someone else)

Eat:
--How are groceries going to be acquired?
--How are meals going to be made/acquired?
Fortunately for us, N does some of our groceries already, and we have friends who have offered to drop of meals.

Bathe:
--How will the surgery site be kept dry?
--Who is going to bathe the kids?

Childcare:
--Who is going to watch the kids during the first week?
--Who is going to watch the kids weeks 2-4?

Housekeeping--who will:
--Mop/vacuum
--Clean bathrooms
--wash & fold clothes
(for week 1, wks 2-4, and months 2 & 3)

Planning, plans, change

So our summer 2013 is at about mid-point and warrants some review.

Going into the summer, here were my thoughts:
1) Let's go visit family in Seattle
2) Encourage my daughter's interest in drawing
3) Play outside in the mornings before it gets hot

In other words, we were looking at a very open ended, unscheduled sort of summer. We've been able to do the list: We had a great trip to Seattle. My daughter has been drawing and crafting her heart out. And the kids get time outside at a park about 4 times a week.

What we weren't planning on doing was buying a house across the street for my parents to retire into. Since they won't be retiring for a few years, we needed to rent the house in the interim period. That unexpected project has taken up a fair amount of summer energy. We got the renters settled in July 4th weekend and have been recovering since then.

Although somehow recovering has included hosting a neighborhood barbecue. That was fun, but not exactly restful. But it was supposed to inaugurate a peaceful, boring denouement to the summer ending with Labor Day weekend and the kids returning to preschool a couple mornings a week.

Well, at a routine visit to my family doctor last Friday, we were talking about my insomnia and how my injured shoulder would flair up making falling back asleep difficult, and one thing led to another, I saw my orthopedist and I have surgery scheduled in 3 weeks to fix it up.

That compresses the summer.

Since 2009, it seems to be a family pattern for us to putter around in our day-to-day routine and then turn on a dime and race off in an unexpected direction at full speed. I'm not sure what I think about that. I mean, I'm thrilled that we aren't usually frantic people who then shift into turbo-crazy. I think maybe part of us wishes we had longer stretches of puttering. But we have actually been really good at shifting gears and directions and doing that together. I think these changes push us out of our comfort zone into God-seeking mode and that's not bad either.

At some point I should look into the fall, but at this point, I'm just trying to figure out what needs to be done for the family the first month after surgery.

Praise-alluia

No cystic fibrosis! Booyea!

The Grace of Ducks Askew

A few weeks ago, Brennan Manning passed away. He's the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel and a number of other books that have been influential in my life. One of his last books was entitled All is Grace which I haven't read. But last week, I mulled over that title. All is grace. Is that true? Do I believe that?

As a couple, my husband and I are "ducks in a row" kind of people; we like to have and work toward having our ducks in a row, getting things that should be done done. While our ducks were never actually all in a row, since we've had kids we've gotten more ducks and more of them aren't in a row. And that bothers us, and we complain about that.

So what I pondered was, "Can my disorderly ducks be a gift from God?" And the answer is of course, yes.

Some people are actively aware that the order in their ducks is because of God's active grace in their lives. Like our friends who are in a pinch but have been able to pay down some medical bills because of, to make a long story short, God miracles. Ducks brought back into a row because of God. Awesome. That, however, is not us.

We would prefer to tell ourselves that we have aligned our ducks and that if we tried hard enough we could get them perfectly aligned and when we did that, God would have to smile on us. This is our tendency although when we talk in terms of ducks it's easier to see what a lie that is.

So this past Friday, we went in for a second cystic fibrosis test for D. The first one didn't collect enough sweat to test. So we've been in limbo these past 2 months wondering if CF is the reason for his lack of weight gain. We're hoping this new test gives us a clear answer one way or the other. Turns out. for other reasons, that whether this test is positive or negative we have to see a specialist for another thing. And the Friday test only produced marginally more sweat so we might get a no-test again.

D's health and development is a break-dancing, purple-plaid duck that is not playing nice with any of our other ducks. And this uncertainty is in fact a grace in our lives. As much as I think it is a deep grace that we are ducks in a row people who know our neighbors, pay our bills and have 529s for our kids, D's break-dancing, purple-plaid duck reminds us that God is not grading us on our ducks.

Instead, each duck is a gift, one we get to care for, one we are empowered by God to care for. Whether they are orderly or dancing out of our control, God already smiles on us and already knows what we're going to need.

Outliers, part 3: Rolling with it

Our son is a bona fide outlier in terms of his weight. He's got good motor and cognitive development for his age, but he hasn't really been gaining weight for the past year. Working with his pediatrician, we've kept an eye on it and kept giving him time to add some poundage, and it's never come.

So in February, we did a round of initial blood tests. These showed no reason why he wasn't gaining weight. So our doctor wanted to next check for cystic fibrosis. I have done very little reading about the disease because the name sounds so scary. But my understanding is that cystic fibrosis could be preventing him from absorbing the nutrients he needs to grow.

We went in for this test which measures the salt in his sweat. But he didn't sweat enough. So we're going to need to go in again which we'll do at the end of April. We could have scheduled earlier, but February was too full of tests. We all needed a break.

I think that people see positive outliers (those smarter, faster, taller, etc.) and think, man wouldn't that be wonderful and aren't those parents so lucky to have kids like that. And there are some great things about such a situation, but also some draw backs -- like what kind of bed and what kind of clothes did 7ft+ Yao Ming need?

Then I think that people see negative outliers (those sicker, dumber, slower, etc.) and think, isn't that terrible and aren't those parents so cursed to have kids like that? And as we peer into the (hopefully remote) possibility that we will care for a son with an awful disease, I don't think my heart is processing things that much differently.

Part of it is my own mess, from part 1, where I grieve the loss of "normality" that comes with giftedness. So grief for smarts? Check. Grief for illness? Check. But we're in a place where we don't know for either kid. There are signs and symptoms that suggest that our daughter's intellectual development may be ahead of her peers, and there are signs and symptoms that suggest our son may have cystic fibrosis or some other disease.

For now, we have to live by faith that God is providing what we need for today. And for May, if we discover our son does have a dread disease then we will move forward trusting that God will provide for that occasion. And if, in a year or two or three, we discover one or more of our children are unable to flourish in their school, then we will move forward trusting that God will provide for that occasion too.

UPDATE: links to Part 1 & Part 2