Here we go, yo...

2016 is back upon us.

Mom and Deb are back in California.  Have been, in fact, for nearly a week.

Robert and I are back to work. 

The younger kids return to school tomorrow.  Joshua resumed his ukulele lessons today and finished his driver's education instruction.  (Next step:  DMV for test to obtain his permit.)  Grace has been studying all Christmas break for a spelling bee when she returns to school tomorrow.  She has mastered all the words through 5th grade, and probably 90% of the words for 6th grade, most of the words for 7th grade, and about half the words for 8th grade.  We are really proud of her.

The oldest kid has been working and pursuing taekwondo, earning her yellow belt over the Christmas break.  She has yet to land on a plan for her future, but has been thinking about things.  Prayers are appreciated for wisdom and direction.

I make resolutions.  I know most people poo-poo it but I think it is good and healthy to assess your life here and there (I usually do at the beginning of the calendar year and the beginning of the school year as well) and make goals.  Sure, I fail a lot, but is that any reason NOT to strive for better?

So I have two floating around in my mind, not counting the spiritual goal of working on application as I mentioned in my last post.

First, I want to read more, and specifically, more Agatha.  I've long wanted to read all her published works in order, and I've yet to do it.  She has published more than 80 novels, so it is highly doubtful I can cover all that in a year, but I'm going to shoot for about half in 2016.  In addition, I'm reviving my Dear Agatha blog to help me stay on track.  (The linky is on the right of this page.)

Probably more importantly, I have a health goal, the first real one I've made in years.  Sure, every January, most "fluffy" people think in their heads that they'd like to lose weight, but this one is serious.  Weight loss may or may not follow ~ but the real goal is to get my blood glucose figures into target range.  They have not been where they are supposed to be for a long time.  I had a little bit of a "wake up call" discussion with my doctor last month.  It's time to do something.  Seriously.  So I've been working on baby steps with that for about a month now.  My numbers are improving, but I still have quite a ways to go.

You, faithful readers, are granted permission to keep me accountable.  :)  For both goals!  A healthy mind - one stimulated even by fiction writing, much more valuable than Facebook reading - is as important to me as a healthy body.

What about you?  Any goals for 2016?

From Grace's tournament in November

 

This was a forms event in a tournament in Aurora for elementary kids in northern Colorado.  Grace was a blue belt (just promoted to red belt a couple of weeks ago) and took first place in her group.  Forms is definitely her strongest category of the four main competitive genres (forms, grappling, sparring, and board breaking)  

All is well

I just didn't get a chance to blog last week while I was at work, and at home my netbook does not apparently like me to blog (although I'm kind of wondering if that new router my Ro installed this weekend might help that...)

But we are good, fine, A-OK, and still kickin'. 

Christianne has returned to work at the soup kitchen - I mean - Panera.  They were happy to have her back and gave her a little bit of a raise so that always helps.  She/we is/are currently processing her separation paperwork from the Navy and have quite a bit to figure out over the next few months - including whether or not she wants to go back in or not.  We are moving forward as if that were a yes, but there is still much to determine ~ whether or not she can re-enter as a CTI, whether or not she can get waivers for the items which separated her.  She just returned to work, so we will begin attacking those other things soon.

Master Scott (he is officially a Master, now, by the way, earning his 3rd degree black belt two days ago) has graciously been allowing Christianne to train for free at the dojang until she returns to the Navy.  She is finding that she is loving it, especially sparring, despite the beating (no pun intended) her body took last week.  Her foot was badly bruised and her sternum hurt when she laughed, or ran.

Joshua and Grace are out of school this week, and I dare say I will not likely see much of Grace as she has friends who seem to adore her and keep her for long periods of time.  She, too, has been doing well, scoring first place in forms at a tournament last week, and earning her promotion to red belt after testing last week as well.  She has been studying taekwondo now for about 3 and a half years and this red belt signals a definite turning point as all things now are training for her black belt.  It will be at least a year in the making, probably more.  She is so excited, though, as are we, and we're all very proud.  I will figure out how to upload some video of that in another post.

Josh has indeed earned all the money he needs for his trip to Europe in just a few months.  Actually, if you would, please pray for our boy and the trip and the circumstances in Greece and other parts of Europe that give us a little pause in our excitement.  Josh has worked so hard, and continues to work hard, and has been learning to balance a heavy work load on top of a heavy school load with a little bit of social life and driver's ed training thrown in.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My girls

Check out the essay Grace wrote while Christianne was in Great Lakes, unprompted.

I love how their relationship has developed.  Christianne is training with Grace in taekwondo now, and last week the three of us had a girls' day out.

Blessed.

True story, bro

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.  She may have believed that she was a princess, because she had wrapped her daddy's heart around her little finger and made him love her so much that he desired to give her everything her heart desired, and only princesses received treatment like that from their fathers, who are kings.  Sometimes, this granting of desires came much to the chagrin of the mother in the story, who believed that she was a queen (and rightfully so).   One time, for instance, the little princess-girl asked her king-daddy for a pet lizard, and the king-daddy said yes, without ever discussing it with the queen-mommy, who also enjoyed giving the princess-girl the desires of her heart, but would have found the idea of a pet lizard, if it had been discussed with her, bothersome, as the queen-mommy is greatly creeped out by the living creatures on which the royal pet would feed.

Yet, as we all know, the King trumps the Queen, and the royal pet household then consisted of a well-loved dog, a well-loved but also well-hated cat, an interestingly furred guinea pig, and a lizard.

The princess-girl named her lizard Ossey, and though it is spelled with two S's, it is pronounced like Ozzy and he/she/it was so-named because of its bright green hue which reminded the princess-girl of the land of Oz.  Ossey the pet lizard came to live with the royal family free of charge, if one doesn't count the cost of his aquarium/terrarium/tank/receptacle, the dirt and décor of such living quarters, the lamps and specialty bulbs (3?) that had to be purchased to keep him warm enough to survive, and the cost of food.  But the lizard itself was free. 

Oh, I mentioned food.  Let me tell you what the princess-girl's royal pet lizard prefers to eat:  Crickets.  Live crickets.

Now the one creepy crawly thing on the planet the queen-mommy has a problem with is crickets.  Not snakes.  Not spiders, unlike some people we know.  Not beetles or bees or flies or worms.  Crickets.  And now this royal family must regularly purchase a container of living crickets and transport them across town to keep the pet lizard alive, all the while fretting that the crickets will get out of the box in the car (quite possibly causing an accident), or even get out of the box in the castle, or whatever.  Even when they are in the box, or the aquarium/terrarium/tank/receptacle, the crickets can be heard, singing their little tunes that sound like little cricket fingernails on a cricket-sized blackboard.

Thus the royal family lived in this way for a number of months.  The queen-mommy learned to tolerate the creepy beasts, the princess-girl was quite happy (even though you really can't do anything with such a lizard but look at it and watch it shed its skin), and the king-daddy was happy that the princess-girl was happy.  The seasons began to change, and guests came and went as they visited over the holidays, and a new regular routine of life began with the new year.

One day, the king-daddy called the queen-mommy at work to tell her some horrible news.  The top of Ossey's  aquarium/terrarium/tank/receptacle had been pried open by some clawed animal, and Ossey was nowhere to be found!  Surely the culprit was the royal well-loved but also well-hated cat named Velcro, and surely the fate of Ossey the royal pet lizard was Velcro's intestines.

It was terrible, breaking the news to the princess-girl, who cried and mourned the loss of her beloved reptile.   The king-daddy removed Ossey's  aquarium/terrarium/tank/receptacle from its place of prominence in the living room, cleaned it out, and stored it in the basement, until at some point, a new owner could be found to purchase all of these supplies from us for their own "free" lizard.

And then life went on.

For three blessed weeks.

And then one morning, on a cold winter day, as the princess-girl was getting ready for school, she walked to the window to check the weather outside.  As she approached, she could see something on the cold window sill.  Something dark and gray.  Something lifeless and bloated.  She screamed, horrified.  It was Ossey. 

The princess-girl was so emotional she was unable to go to school.  That evening, the princess-girl led the royal family in a memorial service for the poor pet.  She gave a eulogy.  Her older brother performed an interpretive dance.  Her older sister played Taps.  The entire royal family, the queen-mommy and king-daddy included, joined together to sing Ossey's favorite song, Joy to the World.  Ossey lay in a make-shift Nike box coffin, and the pall-bearer king-daddy carried it to the frigid garage, because the ground outside was too frozen to bury him.  It was a somber evening, and all in the royal family went to bed with quiet hearts.

In the middle of the night, or the very early hours of the morning, before the sun was up and while she was in a deep, deep sleep, the queen-mommy was awakened by a loud whisper and a nudge.  "Queen-mommy!" king-daddy said as he shook her awake.  She looked at him, and truthfully, king-daddy looked crazy.  His hair was standing up and he had the look of a crazy man on his face.  "Queen-mommy!" he said, "Ossey is ALIVE!"  And with that the eyes of king-daddy grew big and full of wonder.  "What do I do?!" he said.

Apparently the king-daddy had had trouble sleeping, his thoughts going back to Ossey and the princess-girl all night long.  He pondered the fact that Ossey had not, in fact, been eaten by the falsely accused loved-but-hated cat.  He wondered where he had been for the past three weeks to suddenly show up in the royal window sill.  He considered if the lizard had died by the hand of the cat, as thought, or for lack of food or warmth.  For some reason, the king-daddy crawled out of bed and went downstairs and into the 10-degree garage.  For some reason, he found the box with Ossey in it and opened it, staring down at the lifeless reptile.  And for some reason, he thought, "I wonder what would happen if I splashed a little water on him?"

And so the king-daddy took the lifeless lizard into the kitchen, and indeed splashed a little water on him, and ~ oh my word ~ the lizard was alive.

The princess-girl rejoiced the next day when the king-daddy shared with her the news, following a Bible story lesson on Lazarus.  She smiled from ear to ear as she renamed him Ossey Lazarus, and she sang this little song:

It's a miracle kind of day

Pets come alive and say, "Hey!"

The king-daddy reestablished the aquarium/terrarium/tank/receptacle.  A new claw-proof top was purchased.  Fresh crickets were acquired.

And they all lived happily ever after.

That girl, today

This is about the fourth  seventh time I've started this post.  Technical issues abound.  Agh!  And I was gone a few days while we took our last camping trip with Christianne.  Thanks for your patience!  Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

I have so many thoughts in my head right now that I don't know where to begin.  Whenever I have a glimpse of Grace doing something wonderful, which is often, I am amazed, especially when my thoughts are reminded of that first bump in our pregnancy. 

And she is pretty amazing.  She has studied taekwondo now for three years and has earned a high blue belt and has a goal to be a black belt before she's 12.  She is intelligent and witty, and developing very nicely in our family's love language of sarcasm.  She is her sister's mini-me in several ways, takes after her brother in others, and still is her own unique little person.  She is charming.  Polite.  She loves the Lord and loves to sing.  She will belt worship songs from the top of her lungs whether watching her guinea pig in the back yard or sitting on a boulder on a camping trip or in the front row of church.  She completely changed our lives and I can't imagine life without her.

I adore this little girl.

Bump #2

Being considered a high risk pregnancy (first because of my age, and next because of gestational diabetes) has its blessings.  I do not make light of the fact that complications can occur because of the factors that got me lumped into that group, but as those did not come to fruition in my pregnancy (any of them, actually), I was able to sit back and enjoy seeing glimpses of my baby each month via ultrasound.

I don't think there is a woman alive who is looking forward to holding her baby soon that doesn't love to have an ultrasound.  The sound of her beating heart, a glimpse of tiny fingers... it's a joy, especially when you have one each month as I did, to see the development and growth of your child.

For some reason I was sent to Panorama City for my routine ultrasound in February 2005.  And because Robert, who worked for Kaiser at the time, was in Palmdale, he couldn't come with me.  I think it was the only prenatal appointment he had to miss in all three pregnancies.

The sonogram department at Kaiser in PC is a bit archaic.  After you are called from the waiting room, you go into the dressing room, which is separated by gender.  Fine.  Then you take off your top and bra and put on a gown, and sit on a bench with other like-dressed women until they call your name.  It's so odd to be sitting there with half a dozen other half-dressed, but gowned, women, mostly pregnant like yourself, waiting to be called into the ultrasound room.  Did I mention that it is in the basement of a very old building, which makes it feel cold and even a little dank? 

Didn't matter.  I was about to see my baby again.

The sonogram began in typical fashion:  greetings and smiles, and chit chat about the pregnancy, but shortly in the sonographer got a little quiet.  She did show me the baby ~ everything looked good to my untrained eyes ~ and took a kazillion pictures.  Then she told me I should go home and "take it easy" and my doctor would be in touch.

Yeah, no.  It was one of those moments where you know something is wrong, but the person won't tell you what ~ or can't, as it were, because of all those silly medical rules.

Initial diagnosis:  placenta previa.

We were sent back to Panorama City about a week later to have a second ultrasound to confirm the diagnosis.  We ~ meaning Robert was there.  Sort of.  Once I was called into the dressing room, he had to wait out in the main room.  I'm telling you, this system is really strange!

I was called back, and had the same sonographer.  I don't recall being overly anxious; I just felt like if that was what it was, we would deal with it.  Perhaps it meant bed rest or light activity; perhaps it meant a C-section.  Whatever.  We would deal.

The sonographer did her exam and quietly confirmed her diagnosis.  I asked her if my husband could come in and see the baby.  She told me no, that they were very behind and given the set-up, it was more difficult to bring him back.  "Aw, man," I remember telling her. "He'll be so disappointed.  He didn't get to come last week because he was working.  He works, you know, for Kaiser..."

The magic words.  It would be a few minutes so she cleaned the drying jelly off my belly and went to get him.  A few minutes later, he stood at my left shoulder with his hand on my tummy for several minutes while she went to work getting all her equipment ready again.  He was silent.  He was praying.

She began the ultrasound, pointing out an arm here, a leg there, on the screen for us to see.  Then she stopped talking altogether.  Her camera zipped around my belly as she focused intently on the screen.

"I made a mistake," she announced a moment later.  "There is no placenta previa."

"How could you have made a mistake?" I asked gently.  I still couldn't help but smile.

"It happens," she said.

"No," I said.  You did an ultrasound a week ago and thought we had placenta previa.  You just did a more extensive ultrasound a few minutes ago confirming that!  You did not make a mistake!  You witnessed a miracle.  My husband has been beside me praying for the last several minutes.  This was no mistake ~ God intervened."

She dismissed it!  She blew me off.  She would rather admit (to a patient even!) that she made a mistake ~ apparently twice ~ than acknowledge that our God is loving and gracious and involved in our lives. 

Loving and gracious, and with a plan for this little one inside me.  His story in her life began even before she was born.

Bump #1

A few months ago, I got to attend a parent-teacher conference with Grace's 3rd grade teacher, Miss K.  Grace had developed a great relationship with her teacher over the school year, and I could tell how much Miss K liked Grace as well.  It's always a pleasure to have a conference with your kid's teacher when it's going like that.  And yes, I have had the other kinds of conferences, too, although I'm grateful that those have been very few.

Miss K was telling me what a great student Grace is, and how she has been testing very high, how she is a leader among her peers, helpful and such.  She had just recently been tested into the Gifted and Talented (GT) program although she'd been attending GT classes since second grade.  We were discussing her abilities when something was said to the effect of, "This kid could make an impact on the world."

These moments always give me pause.  It's an interesting moment in time that I've experienced several times now, as, honestly, we do hear wonderful things about Grace from time to time ~ at church, taekwondo, among friends and their families.  I really, really do not want to come across as a braggart; it's just part of her story.  After a comment such as this, I generally take a big breath, and my heart is filled, both with love for her and with courage to share her story, and I say:

"Good thing I didn't abort her like I was advised to do when I was pregnant, huh?"

I was a few months into my pregnancy with Grace, still feeling fairly good, and went to Kaiser for a routine visit.  (Because of my "high risk" status, I had more frequent visits to the OB/GYN than most do in an uneventful pregnancy.) 

I was weighed and measure and ushered over to the little "in-processing" station where they take your vitals.  I was met by someone who was not my doctor ~ a physician's assistant or nurse practitioner or something like that ~ and she said:

"Now.  Your blood work has come back.  Your AFP results are high, which indicates that the fetus likely has Down syndrome.  But don't worry, because we can schedule the termination for you right away."

Whoa.  Process.  Just thinking about her words now, more than nine years later, my heart still begins to beat hard and fast just trying to make sense of what she just told us. 

And what she just told us was that their test results meant that we would just schedule an abortion, naturally.  Happens all the time.

It makes me sick.

I don't remember much of the rest of the appointment, other than telling her that no, we would not be aborting the BABY.  She encouraged us to have an amniocentesis to verify the test results, reminding us that if the baby did indeed have Down syndrome, we could still terminate the pregnancy at that time.

Process.  Tell the family.  Ask for prayer.  Seek counsel and wisdom.  Do research.  Figure this out.  We'd be okay, right?  I mean, why did Mom spend the last year or so working with special needs children, if not to prepare us for this moment?  And didn't I value all life?  And... we had the Lord... we would get through it, right?  Right?

I will tell you openly and honestly that I am ashamed that we did the amniocentesis.  It is one of the few big regrets I have in life.  God was gracious, and it turned out okay, but what I did completely reflected my lack of real trust in God.  It showed my immaturity.  It displayed my selfishness and pride, in that I claimed to "want to be prepared" and know what to expect.  Remember that control issue I mentioned in a recent post?  This was a way for me to stay in control, or at least try to.  And ultimately, it put our baby's life at risk ~ all for my "need" to know.

Amnio Day sucked.  We had to drive to the valley and meet with a genetic counselor to learn more about Down syndrome and other genetic issues that are more prevalent when the mother is over 35.  We did the amnio ~ unpleasant in itself, but brief.  And we had a quiet lunch and went home to wait for the results.  Unlike every other pregnancy appointment we had ever had, there was no joy in this visit.

{Okay, not in the last one either, but you know what I mean.}

We waited.  It was several days before I got the call, and Robert was at work.  I heard two beautiful truths in the one declaration:  Our daughter was absolutely fine.

The significance to this is so much greater than just the fact that we have a normal, healthy little girl.  The significance is in the What-Ifs.  I blogged about this a couple of years ago, and you can read it here.  I am SO thankful that I did have enough faith to not follow the woman blindly into the next room to schedule Grace's termination.  But how many women did?  Oh, Lord!

One more thought. 

Many times over the years I have seen children with Down syndrome here and there, like we all have.  And you know what I feel?  Sadness... for myself.  I am ashamed that I wasn't the one God entrusted to parent a child with Down's.  I am sad that in this trial I didn't measure up.  My reactions showed a weak faith and fear rather than trust in God and knowing that parenting a child with Down's (or any other special need) requires someone strong, someone fierce.  And that's not me.

Please don't get me wrong.  I am GRATEFUL beyond words by how God worked.  I am blessed to share this story with people ~ many non-believers ~ in hopes that they will reconsider their stances on abortion or share it with others, too.  I am THANKFUL that my child is healthy and loves the Lord. 

But I am a little jealous of the moms who have been called to parent a child with special needs.

God's plan, not mine

I'm a planner.  I like to know what to expect.  I like to have all my little ducks in a row.  I like to be prepared and to know that I don't have to worry about things, because I've got it all under control.

I suppose the first time as an adult that I had to face the fact that I am not, in fact, in control of anything ~ nor am I able to fix everything ~ was in January of 1995 when my dad left my mom after more than two decades of marriage.  But that's another story ~ maybe ~ for another day.

From early on, I had planned (planned ~ not hoped!) to have four children ~ four girls, actually ~ spaced 3 years apart, just as my sister and I were, but times two.  Christianne came along, just perfect.  Wonderful.  And 2 years and 50 weeks later (pretty stinking close, I think!), along came Josh.  Lesson number two about not being in control:  he was (and still is!) all boy.

Lesson number three came just over two years later when I didn't get pregnant again.  My timetable, my plan (albeit altered somewhat because Josh turned out to be a boy)... it wasn't working.  Over the next five years or so, we began to feel that perhaps God had graciously given us two children and our family was complete.  We began to give away all the baby things we had saved for years, just in case...

Well that did it.  In the fall of 2005 I was pregnant again.  Joshua and his new sibling would be 7 years a part.  Not my plan.

But the Lord's.

According to my plan, by this time I would already be a mom of four and finished having babies.  But God had another plan, a very special one, with my Grace at the heart of it.

This time, I was older.  Wiser, perhaps ~ even that is debatable ~ but older, for sure.  Meaning my body didn't embrace pregnancy the way it had ten years earlier.  I had just turned 36, which put me automatically into "high risk" status.  I remember a conversation with my doctor during the pregnancy, probably complaining about the uterine pain that I had for about the last six months of pregnancy, as he chalked it up to being older.  I said, "I see people all the time even into their 40s these days who are having babies," recalling the baby bumps I saw all over the covers of the magazines in news stands as well as the people who were sitting in the waiting room with me just a few minutes before.  "Sure," he said, "but that doesn't mean their bodies were designed to do that."

This pregnancy with Grace was very different from the two previous, which were, I have to say, uneventful for the most part and joyful.  And when I think of other stories that other moms have, I know I have no place to complain.  Other than two "little" bumps in the road, and other than the uterine pain that kept me on my butt and off my feet, we were good.  But these two little bumps in the road... they are part of Grace's story.

Pardon me.  They are part of God's story as He worked through Grace to build a testimony to Himself even before she was born.

Story #2: About the child who they told me to abort

... but she was born, and recently, she was born again.  I'll tell you the story of her life pre-birth soon, but for now, celebrate with me her baptism from last week.  :)

Yes, her daddy had the privilege of baptizing Grace, as he did with both Christianne and Joshua.  Knowing that your children have chosen to make a public confession of Christ as Lord and a public declaration to live their lives for Him... it just doesn't get any better than that.

I have no greater joy than to hear

that my children are walking in the truth.

3 John 4 esv