Where I am at

Isaiah 58:11

The Lord will guide you always;

he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land

and strengthen your frame.

You will be like a well-watered garden,

like a spring whose waters never fail.

My husband's Grandpa sent this verse in a birthday card for me. How fitting. It is just exactly the truth from God's Word that I need to dwell on. Meditate on.

These days, sometimes, well actually if I am being completely honest, most of the time, I feel a bit like I'm running on empty. With four children and husband, the day is rarely just mine. Ha, I say rarely, but really I mean never. But I know that this is not unique to me. There are plenty of other mothers, sisters, wives, grandmas, friends out there who daily feel like they have nothing left to give. They feel spent. Tired. Just like me. Why is it then that I can feel isolated?

I have just recently begun reading Real Moms... Real Jesus: Meet the Friend Who Understands. I had seen that a group from a local church was studying this and I thought that it would be a good fit for where I am in life right now. I have read through the first two chapters and it very much seems like a wonderful book!

I know that no earthly things: friends, family, my kids, our church, our possessions, craft projects, even my husband is not going to be able to fill that “tank” in me that is designed for only God to fill. For some reason I seem to forget that. Or choose to forget it. Or let other things push it out of my mind. I will admit that I do not do a good job of spending time daily with my Lord. And I know in my head that I need to, but for some reason I have not been able to get past it. Get a good routine down. Maybe I'm not disciplined enough, don't have time, don't this, don't that. But they are all just excuses.

What I need most in my life right now is Jesus Christ and time reading His Word, being with Him, spending good, quality time with my Lord and Savior.

Chapter 58 of Isaiah is talking about how the people are fasting but it seems to them that God is not “seeing” them. But the problem is that they think the physical act of fasting is all they should be doing. They are fasting and “giving their day to God”, so, why isn't He doing what they are asking/wanting?

Because they were doing it for themselves. For what it would get them. For show. They made it look like they were seeking God. But God knows the heart. We can't fool Him. Maybe we can fool those around us. Or think we are fooling those around us. But not God. And as soon as their fasting was over they were right back to being terrible people. Fighting with each other as soon as they were done giving their “time” to God.

God doesn't want our fasting to just be fasting, in order to say we did it. {Or instead of fasting-our portrayed “Christian” behavior-our good deeds} He wants us to give ourselves to Him. Always. Not just go through the motions. Not just act like we are a Christian. To actually BE Christ-like.

He calls us to action.

To help those in need.

To Have compassion.

To not point fingers at people and judge them.

To not talk maliciously about or to people.

{verses 7 & 9}

Then comes verse 11.

...He will satisfy your needs....

God has promised to meet our needs. Even in a “sun-scorched” land. Sometimes it feels like I am emotionally “sun-scorched”. Meeting the needs of a 5 month old. A 3 year old. A 6 six year old. A 7 year old. My spouse. My extended family. My church family. Sometimes it feels like I am Sun-scorched. But praise God, He tells me that He will meet my needs. How amazing that the God of the universe will meet MY needs. My needs. Amazing.

And not only will He meet my needs but he says that I will be like a well watered garden. Have you ever seen a well watered garden? It is a beautiful thing. It produces so many fruits and vegetables. Good, delicious, nutrient filled produce. Produce that will fill bellies. Give those that partake of it-the vitamins and minerals they need. God says that He will meet my needs and then I will in turn be able to meet the needs of those around me. And then I will be like a {spring whose waters never fail}. I would love to be a source of never ending water for someone. To be able to continually meet the needs, physical, emotion and spiritual needs of those around me. Especially those closest to me.

God's Word is truly amazing. His promises are amazing. His timing is ALWAYS right and good.

So, I am going to be trying extra hard to make sure that I spend the time that I need with my God. I am craving His Word. Craving being with Him. Already He has shown me so personally how much He loves me and that He truly does want me to be close to Him.

I think it is just absolutely amazing the way God shows us Himself and shows us what He is wanting us to learn. How He orchestrates the sermons, the birthday cards, the blogs, everything- to give us His guidance and even reveal His will to us. To me.

So this was quite a personal post-I don't often do those. But I felt like God was laying it on me to write it out. Maybe He will use it to encourage another believer!

Our little peanut

No pictures in this post, our computer is down so I can't get to any pictures at the moment. But maybe this post doesn't need any pictures anyway. But just a word of warning, I am kind of starting from the very beginning so this is probably the longest post I have ever written.

This pregnancy has had its ups and downs. In some ways it has been very uneventful and in other ways it seems to be one thing or the other. We were so excited to learn back at the end of December that we would be adding another little one to our family. I quickly became quite tired and didn't feel well, but compared to a lot of pregnant women, it was nothing. No throwing up, just nausea in the evenings. But eventually that passed, as it always does.

At 18 weeks, we had our regular sonogram that the doctor always has his prenatal patients have. The images showed that we would be adding a third little man to our family and we couldn't have been happier! But it also showed a single choroid plexus cyst on his brain. Whenever you hear anything about something on the brain it is scary, especially when it is your own baby. But our wonderful doctor reassured us that since everything else on the sonogram was comepletely normal, that he had no doubt that is was of no concern and an insignificant finding. We were to have another sonogram in 6 weeks just check on it. So at 24 weeks we went back in for another sonogram and thankfully the cyst had dissolved and everything else was fine!

The pregnancy was going along great! No other concerns, I haven't even gotten sick or had to go to the doctor for anything else Other than my prenatal care. Sure, I was/am getting quite uncomfortable and felt like I was getting much bigger much faster than any of my other pregnancies, but I think that is mostly normal for this being my fourth child.

I had a doctors appointment at 30 weeks that measured right on and then in 2 weeks had another doctors appointment at 32 weeks. This time I was measuring 3 weeks ahead. Instead of just increasing 2cm, my uterus had grown 5cm. The doctor was not overly concerned, thought that maybe the baby was in a funny position but since it was such a significant increase he went ahead and ordered another sonogram. That was on a Friday. The next Tuesday I had a sonogram. My sweet sister in law, Natalie came along with me to get to see her littlest nephew. The little guy was measuring to be quite the big guy actually. His head circumference was 3 weeks bigger than the due date and overall he was measuring a couple of weeks bigger than the due date. But those measurements all actually were within normal range and nothing having to do with his growth was of any concern. He looked like a big boy but a healthy boy. Except for a very suspicious looking spot that the sonogram technician seemed quite interested in. I finally asked her what that was that she was measuring, and in a nonchalant voice just said, oh it's something in the liver. That answer seemed a little vague to me but I knew that they are not supposed to really say much anyway. But the way she told us bye and said "well, I don't know if I will see you again or not." made me a little suspicious that something did not look right to her.

The last appointment I had with my regular doctor was the last appointment I was to have with him before I moved my care over to the ob doctor. So just a few hours after the sonogram I got a call that my appointment with the ob had been scheduled for Thursday. As in 2 days from then.

Then that evening I got a personal call from my regular doctor to tell me that they had seen a mass of some sort that looked like it was on the liver but it was hard to get a real good picture of it on the sonogram and the radiologist that read the sonogram couldn't say at all definitively what it was. All they knew was that it was not there at the 24 week sonogram and now it is and it could be a number of things. He gave me several options of what it may be but the most likely thing was a simple hemangioma. (don't ask me what that is though, I don't really know). But he said try not to worry about it and when you see the ob on Thursday he will tell what the next step is in finding out more about it.

So on Thursday we(matt and i) went to the ob and had a regular appointment, he was planning on already having had talked to the specialist in Wichita about me coming to her office for a sonogram and having her read the sonogram and give us a clearer diagnosis but she was on vacation until Monday. And she is the only specialist in Wichita that deals with special fetal disease diagnosis. So he said he would call on Monday with what she wanted to do. Whether she wanted us to come right in or wait or whatever.

So Monday afternoon this week, I got a call from the specialist's office and they said to come in at 7:45 the next morning for a sonogram and then the specialist would go over the results with us.

So I called another wonderful sister in law, Tiffany and asked if she would stay at the house with the kids since we would have to leave kind of early. So she actually stayed the night that night so she could be there when the kids woke up and we were already gone. The kids loved having her there!

So Tuesday(the 17th) we went and had the sonogram in the specialist office. The sonogram technician was very proficient and was so kind and told us every thing she was looking at and measuring and obviously knew exactly what she was doing. When the sono was over we went back to our room and a nurse came and asked a bunch of questions and then a resident doctor came and talked to us and asked a few more questions, then we had a long wait until the specialist and the resident both came and talked to us about what the sonogram results were.

Now, I was expecting that, she was going to say something along the lines of, well it was great meeting you but the mass is nothing to be concerned about so just follow up regularly with your ob, thanks have a good day.

Well, that is not what she said. She started out by getting out a piece of paper and drawing us a little diagram of where the liver, kidney and adrenal glands are all together. She drew out that the mass/tumor was actually on the adrenal gland not on the liver like the previous sonogram reading had thought. Then she said, now we can't say for 100% certain that we know what it is since we aren't reaching in there and taking a tissue sample but we are looking at the pictures and information we have and this is our best diagnosis and we are pretty certain that this is what it is. And then she writes down the term Neuroblastoma.

Wait....what? I thought it was supposed to be nothing. Did she just say that my baby has cancer?

But then she quickly said, "now I want you to know that a fetal(instead of infant or child) diagnosis of this has a >95% survival rate."

And then a couple of minutes later she said again, "did you hear me that it is a greater than 95% survival rate?"

She said that the next step will be an MRI and then the surgeons will look at the MRI and the latest sonogram and decide what should be done. She was very kind and sympathetic towards us.

The MRI is actually scheduled for this afternoon. I am supposed to check in at 1:00 and the MRI is at 2:00. The specialist said that they will give me medicine that is supposed to make the baby sleepy so hopefully he won't move around too much. He is a real wiggle worm and they could definitely see that while they tried to do the sonogram!

Also she told us that we will have a weekly sonogram/biophysical profile of the baby to check on how the baby is doing and to check on the tumor. They are watching for abnormal fluid around the tumor and if that develops then the baby would need to be delivered right away. Also, because of the hormones in the baby that this tumor messes with, there is a greater risk of me developing Pre-eclampsia, so of course if that starts to happen the baby would need to be delivered right away as well.

We are praising God that he directed our doctor to order another sonogram, as it was not a routine one and he could have just as easily not had one done.

We are still processing this and we know what the statistics say about a 95% survival rate but at the same time, it is hard to know that our baby has cancer in his body and that he most likely will have surgery and all the unknown factors right now.

I don't know how long it will be for the surgeons to get a chance to look at the tests and decide what to do, but I imagine it will be sometime later next week. I will try to keep this blog updated and next time I won't have to write a book to play catch up on what is going on ;)

Thank you for letting me share this with you and for praying with us for our baby boy.

One Tuesday Morning

The towers still standing

Okay, so all my posts have pretty much been about my kids and such but this one is going to be a little different. I’m not a very good writer and don’t really know that this is going to come out the way I want it to but I’ll try.

I have been reading the books One Tuesday Morning and Beyond Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury, and they are excellent books. I have read a couple of other books by this author and I really like her. She just has a way of grabbing your emotions and taking them into the story right along with the characters. I have cried through every book.

Anyway, these two stories are loosely based on the tragedy of 9/11. I have finished the first book and am into the second. I know that these stories are fiction but that day was such a tragedy and there were so so many lives affected on that horrible day that this very well could have been a true story. I was a sophomore when this happened and I really didn’t pay any attention to anything political or the news or anything so when this happened and we were all at school watching I have to admit I didn’t even know what the World Trade Center was. I really didn’t have a clue about how devastating those planes crashing into the twin towers was and. There were so many lives lost on that day. The firefighters that rushed to rescue people even though they knew they could be a victim. They were such heroes. I am sorry that I didn’t realize the magnitude of what happened that day. And the reality of the pain and loss. Really, it wasn’t until I started reading this book that I got a good idea of what families went through that day. The book isn’t so much about the events that happened but about what some families went through that day and the days following. The two main stories were a firefighter and his wife and 4 year old daughter and also a business man and his wife and son. It is such a sad sad story of all the innocent lives lost that day and the pain that these families had to deal with and still have to deal with. I can’t imagine how they feel. As some of the characters in the book point out- it seems like everyone has forgotten but they remember everyday ad especially every birthday and anniversary and the anniversary of 9/11. For me, living out here in the Midwest and not knowing anyone personally who was affected by this, I don’t ever really think about the sacrifice of those firefighters and police officers who worked the scene. This book has been really good to remind me of what happened that day and that there are men and women who risk their lives and give their lives everyday so that we can sleep at night. I’m sure there are a lot of you who have a husband or son or daughter or family member or close friend who is in the line of duty and I just thank you for your willingness to let them serve. I’m sure this book can’t show me even just how much you go through but it has given me a glimpse into your lives. And I for sure thank everyone who is out there fighting with the military. And the firemen and women and the police officers here in America that are all working for our safety. Thank you for fighting for our freedom and our safety!

This book had made me want to visit Ground Zero and just be able to honor all those heroes who gave their lives. Maybe some day.

The towers no longer standing.



Just a small yet powerful scene of the destruction.