Will it ever stop?

The first hint of disaster came when the roof started leaking yesterday morning.  Again.  Last time, it was during a monsoon.  This time, just a regular old day of steady rain.  And this time it leaked all the way from the kitchen cupboards on the east wall all the way into the dining room.  The entire roofline.  My dad came over and helped me tarp it (scaling the roof is not a smart plan if you have double vision and may faint).  Didn't stop the leak.  The rest of the day was filled with the whir of the clothes washer as we went through scads of towels, and the hum of various fans and dehumidifiers as we attempt to dry out what is supposed to be DRYwall, along with whatever else got soaked in the process, like insulation and other expensive building materials.

Then we had the joy of visiting an old friend we haven't seen in a while.  And picking out baby clothes for Scott and Jamie's twins.  But on the way out the door, Caleb fell out of the minivan.  Onto his head.  Luckily, it appears he is only scraped up.  Maybe a mild concussion.  Nothing serious, but it started to feel like it was piling on.

Then Amy got stuck in a partial seizure.  I haven't attempted to describe partial seizures in much detail because they defy description.  Basically, she is normally a typical almost 4 year old sweetheart, quite intelligent, responsive to instruction, loving to others, etc.  Suddenly she morphs into some type of pre-verbal, emotional, dramatic child who is unable to balance, see where she is going, or respond normally to instruction or attempts to soothe her.  It is frustrating, at the least, and maddening when it hits full stride.  There is literally nothing anyone can do to help her, other than to restrain her and put up with the monotonous cry she loops into.  When she seemed to be coming out of this 1-2 hour partial, we decided to let her go outside to play with her cousins and uncles.  She promptly ran outdoors and lost her balance, falling headlong into a solid patio table that didn't give an inch.  She broke and dislocated her nose, which the ear/nose/throat specialist assures us is a blessing because otherwise she might have a brain bleed.  Apparently, your nose is specifically designed to absorb blunt force to your face so that you do not end up with a life-threatening head injury.  (I should be taking notes.  Next time I decide to face-plant into a toilet, I am definitely leading with my nose.  Hey, it's big anyway!)

So added to an already hectic - though fun-filled - weekend is an extra visit to the ENT surgeon tomorrow.  I also have to cancel a few appointments at Mayo so that I can have her nose re-aligned in the operating room at Luther next week.  I am guessing she will thank me later when her nose is not markedly crooked.  And she doesn't snore.  All definite pluses for a beautiful girl.

Luckily, Katy, Rosy, and Aaron had a fairly uneventful day.  Although Aaron might argue that fixing a roof qualifies his day as "eventful".  My day was full of revising or thinking about revising the comprehensive exam. And applying band-aids to other crises.  Hopefully tomorrow will just be hectic.  Not tragic.

Preservation

I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. (Isaiah 45:3)

Aaron took this portrait of preservation, so that we will always remember.

The very base of the toilet tank, shattered in a star shape from the force of my head as it hit the top.  The force from top to bottom shattered the tank all the way to it's base.

The razor sharp edge of the porcelain pieces that could have easily cut me and bled the life out of me as I fell through the shards to the floor.

I returned this toilet to dust with one sharp blow from my head.  Aaron described the sound like putting a ball-peen hammer to porcelain, as head hit porcelain and porcelain hit porcelain.  But God preserved me.  He says dust you are and unto dust you shall return and I hold the keys to death and hell. (Genesis 3:19 & Revelation 1:18)  He also says that all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16).  Every time I have shuddered in fear over the unknown, every time I have descended into the blackness as I passed out, every time I woke in the ER to alarms going off and staff shouting for help and my body shaking as though it would never stop...this verse has comforted me.  From high school and all through to the present.  I do not need to fear the hour of my death is now.  He knows the hour and the time, and it is the perfect hour and time for me, and for His plan.  He will shepherd me when that moment comes, and I will not be alone.

Miraculous that, once again, it was not then.  Although all the circumstances dictated that I should go to heaven that moment my head hit the toilet, or in the frantic hours that followed, it was not the time for me to go.

And He is faithful, beyond preserving my life, to preserve everything else...my brain, my emotions, my talents and abilities, my joys and heartaches, my relationships, my will.

He turns bruising into beauty and, indeed, upholds the broken reed.  (Isaiah 42/Matthew 12)

Though the mountains fall,

Though the earth should shake,

Though the seas should roar with all the heartache

Though our hearts should pound,

Though our throats be dry,

We will lift Your Name on high

You have been a shelter Lord

To every generation, to every generation, Lord

A sanctuary from the storm

To every generation, to every generation, Lord

~ Shelter (to Every Generation), Bill Batstone, 1992 ~

Lamenting the loss of normalcy

Sometimes it just hits you in the gut like a ton of bricks.  There is nothing left in your life that is normal.  You watch, on Facebook, at church, through blogs and e-mails, as your friends and most of your family progress through a "normal" life, with fun pictures of holidays, updates about jobs, all the little details that make up "normal".  And you realize there is nothing left you can claim as normal.  I found a photo taken a few weeks before we lost normal.  What brings the tears the quickest is my children, my husband.  He looks so young.  I look at Caleb - just born - and Amelia, not even 2.  They don't remember "normal".  I see Katy's innocence.  I had never asked to learn to do laundry or cook a meal or clean a bathroom yet.  She has had to grow so fast.  And Rosy, so easy going and self-motivated and happy.  She just gets lost in the shuffle of the non-normal.  How can I make my peace with these losses??  How do I see this as a gift??

One of our last days of "normal".  Two weeks before my cancer was found.

Life was messy, and crazy, and hard work.  And wonderful.

Most cancer patients go through this, as their life gets ripped to shreds by cancer, its treatment and the treatment side effects.  An even smaller number continue to go through this for a long period of time.  That is where our family fits, once again in the statistical margins, defying the definitions and the predictions.  Even worse, it's not just cancer that has our number.  It's everything from infections to accidents, and "normal" life problems gone awry, like food poisoning and routine surgery or vaccinations.  Nothing goes "normal" for us.  Not in 2 1/2 years.

I walked into the bathroom today because I forgot.  I looked, for the first time, at the remains of the toilet.  It's not just broken.  It's shattered.  It stuns me, when I see what I hit and with what force, that I am typing right now.  That I have one hairline fracture and a small amount of bleeding in my brain and this will probably go down in life's history as a fantastical and horrific...yet short-lived...memory.  Just mire at the very bottom in the clear water of the rest of life.

I have to write it, this broken heart that longs for the day when I look back and realize no one has been in the hospital for several months.  The day when I realize that I have actually managed to care for my own children for a whole month without asking any relatives for help or spending any exorbitant dollar amount on childcare.  The day when I realized I've cooked every meal and swept every floor and wiped every nose and taken every picture and maybe even passed a test or gone on a real...restful rather than healing...vacation.

I know, deeper or truer than most, that life is a gift and every day, however flawed, is a blessing.  I know that my life is already a half-blown seed pod, and I need to be mindful of how and when and where I blow those seeds remaining.  But there is such longing to just be normal again.  I remember with longing a day I was frustrated because I forgot about dinner until 4 p.m. and had to rush to defrost something.  I look back at a day when I cried over the 10th poopy diaper and pleaded with God for an "out" from the drudgery of motherhood, and I laugh at my near-sightedness.  I recall a vacation when I fought with Aaron because of a difference of opinion about a leisure activity, and I wish I knew then what I know now.  I also know that, should God ever grant "normal" life to me again, I will forget all of this, most of the time.  I will take things for granted, and throw away blessed moments for the sake of my pride, and I will choose the wrong things to spend time on, and I will wound people and shock myself at how stupid I can be again so quickly.

A cross-processed photo from Mother's Day.

It is kind of like yearning for childhood as an adult.  This longing for something easy for a change.  It is like looking at photo and wishing you could cross-process it and bring out a new color that you know is there, you just couldn't grip it with your camera lens.  God says to give up my life to find it.  Okay, Lord.  You've got my life.  It's long been given up.  Please help me find the new one in the wreckage.  Please heal us.  Please rescue us.  And please let me never forget.

Brokenness

I don't remember much about what happened, so I can't give you many details.  But I can write, read, speak, laugh, joke, smile, walk, and otherwise function completely normally.  Even though my head apparently went through our toilet tank last night.  When I saw this picture, it is amazing to me that I am alive and sitting in bed typing.  I did have a seizure in the emergency room, a first for me, but haven't had any more.  There is no sign of any broken bones in my skull or face or bleeding in my brain on the CT scan.  I am continuing to have a lot of head pain and some disturbing double vision.  This post will be short because of that.

I am okay.  I'm not really sure why I fell, if I fainted or tripped or what.  I have had no dizziness at any other point since getting the pacemaker.  My heart looks wonderful on all the monitors since getting re-admitted to the hospital again today.

It feels funny to forget something so important.  I think I lost about an hour of memory surrounding the incident, the ambulance ride, the seizure, the hospital admission.  At first I couldn't see hardly anything and I do remember the fear of feeling blind.  It was like looking through Picasso's eyes for a while - faces were all disorganized when I looked at them, with their eyes randomly on their face (my dad's were in his beard and that really freaked me out).  The only person I really could understand was Aaron.  I am so thankful that I lived long enough to marry him, know him, love him.  Words cannot express it. But often in my worn life's autumn weather, I watch there with clear eyes, And think how it will be in Paradise when we're together. (Christina Rossetti, "From Memory")

It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song
You can't believe it you were always singing along
It was so easy and the words so sweet
You can't remember you try to feel the beat
~ Regina Spektor