Triple Sleepover Sunday, June 28, 2009

God woke me up this morning and asked me if I could help be a mother to three little girls. One day I am too tired to get out of bed. Another day I can say, "yes" or "no" to a new opportunity. What will this day be like? Too hot to go outside to church. Too hot to breathe in the hot air, as it sucks my water right out of my body.

God is in charge. I miss being a Mommy. He knows that. I know that. So, He sent me a little troop of kids to care for. I had a lovely day. Slept to make up for overnight not sleeping. Now I can't stop the letters from being italics. Now, I have a sore throat from talking to the girls so much. We watched them swim and I felt like a happy mother hen, making sure no one slipped to hit their head. Watching children have pure laughter. Listening to the conversations of children who didn't know that I was listening. Hearing chatter, chit chatter, and some pretty funny stuff. 

I love tents in the living room, kids screaming in the pool, and looking around at what God has blessed us with. I was going to write today, but it is Sunday. A day of rest. I called my mother Renee and got more motherly advice out of pure love. I received messages from people I love, but was too tired to call any one back. I want to visit my mother, and my Maid of Honor's mother, too. Here we've been for three years, and sometimes I ponder the old days with much fondness.

Well, I have the best invitation of the day. I can sleep on the floor with my daughter, who misses me so much that she leaves her sleepover friends! :-)! I guess that if I can sleep in a hospital bed with people interrupting me with needles, cheery nurses at 3 am who have to get my blood pressure, and beeping noises all around me as I am on telemetry to keep a watch on my heart EKG patterns. Well, I will try. The little ones are begging for me now. It sure is good to be loved. I hope my daughter will love me forever. I know my son will, too. For now, that is all I need to know. Love. 

Next time, I won't select any italics, because I do not know how to get out of it. It's not that user friendly. My daughter. My daughter. My daughter. I love her so much. One day, many years from now, she will remember sitting and reading this note, while her girlfriends are downstairs for the sleepover. She will remember how I wanted her friends to come to our house. She will remember the little things I did to make times memorable. Tents to sleep in. Blankets and pillows for everyone. Good night for now. My daughter calls me away and I must go. 

June 26, 2009 Saturday in the Park

...I think it was the 4th of July. (who sang this? Dad had just picked us up from the airport, orange sporty car and all). Ate a local country-style picnic a few nights ago. So many people did not recognize me. Others glanced and walked away. While one shook my hand, another cowered in the corner. I saw people I never thought that I would ever see again. It was really strange, like going back to another time and place. LLllloooooovvvvveeeeeddd seeing the toddlers dance, the spontaneity of the moments, and the simple people-watching. Since I spent so much time in bed for the last three years, and this was my first summer picnic in the same amount of time, I wanted to try to have fun. 

Drudgery to be resting all day long, in bed so that I could stand after 6 pm. A little excited to go to this local picnic, but mostly because I get to go with my daughter in the car. Spend some time helping her eat. Spend some time looking for her, to make sure she is okay. Boy, if she ever got lost, I would be frantic. I wonder who, if anyone, would stop to notice that I had a problem and  I needed help. Would you stop eating your dinner and look up to inquire about the problem specifically, even if the music stopped? Who would be in charge, in a moment's notice, of gathering a possie to send troops in every direction? Are we all duped into believing that 'everybody' is suddenly 'watching my child(ren)' for me, as if we are all brothers and sisters and no one would or could ever kidnap a child from this area? Perhaps people want to think that things are not too bad, and they fool themselves into thinking they can talk and watch a child at the same time. Or perhaps, as many people have seen, we reach a 'comfort' zone wherein our defenses are down and we are just not thinking straight. Oh well. One can fester about human nature and the state of inertness to disaster. We all want to be the one hero that paid attention and helped this poor lost child get back to her parents. It seemed like 100 people could have been that hero. I am disabled and I can not just get up from my chair and start running around to solve this problem. However, my eagle eyes absorbed human nature in action and the memory still haunts me. I know that each one of us, had we known, would have intervened to save a lost child. But as a group, we were ineffective and inefficient. Confusion abounded. Confusion and ignorance; it was not any one person's fault, yet it was everyone's fault. I love love love seeing the couple that intervened without thought, as if by simple kindness. He helped figure the whole thing out, while she worked in concert as if it was practiced over and over again. So natural. So nice to see. Aaahhhh. Humanity is not all lost.

June 21, 2009 Sunday; Father's Day

Much has happened. PICC line fell out overnight; that was about 3 months ago, I think. I'm drinking 2-3 liters special water/day. I was on TV, the local KABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles. It was a profile on the rare syndrome of Dysautonomia and many people are happy that the story was done in a very fine manner. I finished writing the book I was putting together, finally. It was printed in time for me to present it to my Cardiologist. He is such a fine doctor. He saved my life, and every doctor that he referred me to? Believed me, helped me, made additional diagnoses, and are making my life easier to bear. 

The suffering has lessened, and like a thorn in your finger, it feels so much better than before. But the wound is still there, and the wound still bleeds. Father's Day and I did not have the energy to get out of our bed. But the words of my Mother Renee rang over and over again in my head...get up! Get up! Put yourself together!

I braced myself, I held my breathe, and I sat up. I braced myself again, and forged a Path in my head. One that led to me to stand up. Eat something. Drink a liter of fluid. Jobst stockings followed by a cup of pills. At the Stanford Medical Alumni Family Retreat in South Lake Tahoe, this was my accomplishment. Instead of counting pill by pill and gagging on every swallow, my Caregiver Sofia and Edward taught me how to swallow a whole cup of pills. Now my distress over swallowing a lineup of pills, one at a time, is replaced by a mouthful of pills and a few swallows. Took me three years to get that this line of thinking was in my best interests. Now, it seems so silly that I did not learn how to do this years and years ago. Would have saved myself a lot of pent-up, bracing myself, gagging, getting pills stuck sideways in my esophagus, and general disgust at waking up and having a line of pills to swallow. Who wants to start their day that way?

No one. But God led me on this Path, and He is finding ways to bless our household. We mailed something 'media mail', which I recall as being very slow. Someone finally got our Christmas present in February. But no, God was able, and we asked Him to use His powers to push this mail forward to get to its destination, Grandma's house. She was leaving for a week, and we were able to get this media mail to her in just a few days. Just in time for her to have it with her as she reads on the plane, etc. It was yet another reminder of how much God is looking after us. How He works in our lives every day.

I've been talking to God a lot lately about being so ever-grateful for His Mercy. For letting me come back to Earth, to be a person of conviction that helps the lowly and the vulnerable. For letting me continue to be a mother and a wife. For letting me help people and serve as an inspiration, however possible. May He continue to use His Powers in our lives, so that you are reminded of God's reality day by day. If we walk by faith and not by sight, we are living in a different realm of this world. We are not invincible, but we are humble and we bow down at the name of Jesus Christ, son of Joseph and Lord of Lords.

"Holy, Holy, Holy....Lord God Almighty..." I try to sing this song at the top of my lungs every morning as I open our leaded glass windows to peer at nature below and beyond. Two important things I have recently learned: 1.) My suffering. I turn it over to Jesus, since He suffered for all. My sufferings seem so little, by comparison. But 2.) I sing Praises to God. The worse my situation is, the more I sing from the bowels of my gut and the crevices of my soul. Truly, truly, truly. This must be a reality, a bombshell of an epiphany. Dedicate my suffering to the Lord, and  Praise Him in the same sentence. Sing to Him, who makes me whole.

Tomorrow, God will lead me to another day, to another path, to another person, or to another success. God is sending us people who are beloved and genuine, and He knows that all things will work together for good. For those who love the Lord, for those who are called according to his purpose.

I am grateful for another day, today. It was the first Father's Day that I could do much to help celebrate. Here we were this morning, with all the other 11 am last-minute shoppers, and we power-shopped. Then off to get new wireless router, then waited in the car for Father's Day cake to be picked up, then took a nap.

May God grant you the wisdom to believe in the depths of God's Word. May He show Himself to you daily, so that you know He is in your life, and that He is with you every step of the way. May He lead and guide your way, just as He does for all his Children. May we learn to love the way that Christ guided us: to be forgiving, loving, loyal, and an example that He may be ever so proud of us little human beings. Us and our big ideas. We get ourselves into more trouble than we get ourselves out of. That is why God is Our Father, Our Guardian, Our Protection.