4 weeks and counting

Can I just say I have a great mom?  Yesterday was our last visit to St. Vincent's before Caleb's big arrival, and on my way to Indy my mom calls and has, to my surprise, scheduled me a pre-natal massage in Fishers at Villagio Spa (super fancy!) right after my doctor's appointment.  You get Mom-of-the-Year Award for that one!  

So yesterday was my last appointment at St. Vincents before Caleb arrives.  I will continue to see my doc here in New Castle, and Caleb's arrival via c-section has been scheduled for... drum roll, please.... Thursday January 27th.  Wow.  Do you realize that's less than a month away?  Oh wait, do WE realize that's less than a month away???  Holy cow.  That's going to be here so fast.  I have nothing prepared in our house whatsoever.  If you know me well, you know that I'm not exactly the plan-ahead type.  I guess I need to start thinking about how on earth Jonah is going to share his 10x10 bedroom with his little brother.  There's not an inch to spare in that room, especially now that he got a few new toys for Christmas, so clearly I need to do some work.  Eh, maybe tomorrow.  In Africa, there would be 6 kids in a room that size, so I'm sure we'll survive.  I'll tell you, one good thing that's already come from this time in our life is that very little phases me.  That should come in handy soon enough.

Yesterday was the first time I went to St. V's by myself.  Daniel always goes with me, but he's off work this week and Jonah is sick, so we decided he'd stay home with Jonah for the day and I'd go by myself.  It was actually kinda weird, and it got me thinking about how much time will be spent just like that in the upcoming weeks:  Daniel at home with Jonah and me in Indy at the hospital with Caleb.  I'm not thrilled with that arrangement at all.  I'm not excited about my family being split in half for several weeks.  In fact, it's probably what causes me the most anxiety, thinking about Daniel and Jonah being here while I'm there.  So this leads me to my request du jour.  People ask me all the time what they can do for us, how they can help.  And I have an answer:  Come visit us during our hospital stay.  When Caleb is born, we will want all the encouragement and support we can get, especially the time when Daniel and Jonah are here in New Castle.  Visit them!  Bring them food while I'm gone, pretty please, and check in on how my boys are doing.  And visit me in Indy!  I'll be alone a lot, sitting in a little NICU cubicle and will want company.  And maybe bring some candy.  OK, that part is only slightly serious, but honestly, what we'll need more than anything is your presence.  I hope that there's not a flood of cards and visits the first few days and then little contact in the following weeks.  My dream come true would be if we could have at least one visitor a day, both Daniel in NC and me in Indy, during this crazy time.  Now you know.  If you want to know what we need, that's it!

Signing off for now.  Not that I'm going to go to work on the boys' bedroom... I'd rather join Daniel and Jonah in their snuggle-fest on the couch.
 

Life to the fullest, for sure

First things first.  At 10:30 pm this evening I was laying on the couch and heard someone on my porch opening my storm door.  After being startled and telling Daniel to be brave and go see what was going on, we discovered an envelope taped to our door.  I'm only blogging about this in the hopes that whoever was so kind and generous to leave that enormous and anonymous blessing will read this, since I have no other way to tell you thank you.  Thank you, mystery friend, from the bottom of our hearts.  You shocked us tonight and we are feeling pretty special and loved.  

God has been blessing us so much through the people in our lives.  I am so overwhelmed when I realize how many people are praying for us, supporting us, and surrounding us.  Whew.

So we are doing really well.  And not only because the holidays are a super fun distraction, and not only because people secretly leave us money on our porch late at night, but because God is helping us to accept life how it is and be thankful and joyful in all circumstances.  One example: I really thought by now we would have sold our house.  And we haven't had a single person even look at it!  But I don't even care; I'm not concerned about it in the least.  It's amazing how God has been working on me, helping me to be content and to just go with what comes along.  That's how I have been when it comes to Caleb too.  It seems like no matter what any doctor would say, I could probably look at him or her and say, "Ok, we can deal with that."  I'm in a peaceful place.  

It certainly helps each time we go to St. Vincents and learn more about what to expect with Caleb's birth and first few weeks of life.  Every time we're there I feel more secure; not because Caleb's condition has changed much, which it hasn't, but simply because there's less and less of the unknown.  Both of the pediatric cardiologists that we see believe there's a very good chance that the surgery planned for Caleb's first week of life might not have to happen.  While he would still require other surgeries later, this would make an enormous difference in his life and ours and almost feels like more than I could hope for.  But the whole team of doctors are so cautious when saying that.  There IS NO guarantee.  He could be born and need immediate surgery.  Or it could be put off until he's 6 months old.  We won't know until he gets here.  I feel bad because some people mistakenly heard our report from our last visit and thought that Caleb was healed, or that maybe his condition wasn't as severe as originally thought.  Unfortunately, that's not the case.  But we are trying to celebrate every bit of positive news while we're on this road.  And in my book, the possibility of one less surgery would be amazing.  Other than that, there's nothing new to report.  Please, if you ever say a prayer for us, pray that God would touch Caleb's heart so that surgery could be postponed and we could have a (relatively) normal delivery and first few weeks of life.

At one time I was hoping that the last few months leading up to Caleb's birth could be quiet and calm before the storm.  However, our life seems to continue to get crazier, and if you have room for one more prayer request, let me throw another one at you.  You may or may not know, but at the end of last spring, Daniel and I invited a teenage boy named Kyle to come and live with us.  Kyle is a teen dad that I met through volunteering at Cradles and he has become our unofficially adopted son.  (God must think it's funny to continue to fill this house with more boys.  Kyle even has a son, so when his son is here too, I'm outnumbered 4 to 1.  Soon to be 5 to 1!)  God is teaching me so much through my relationship with Kyle.  The thing is, when we found out about Caleb's heart defect, Kyle was away at AIT training for National Guard so he was gone for a couple months.  We started thinking that the best thing would be to tell Kyle when he came back that we still wanted him to be part of our family, but with the added stress of Caleb's condition, and the fact that our house is 900 square feet, we thought it was time for us to help him find another place to live.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed totally understandable, even wise.  Worldly wisdom would say, we have so much on our plates that we should really invest in our own family right now.  Or, there's a time and season for everything and this is a time to just hunker down and focus on our own needs.  While I realize that's probably the advice I would give to someone in my situation, God has been showing us something very different.  I have so just wanted to check out of all responsibility other than being a mom lately and God is continually drawing my focus off of myself and back on to the things He cares about.  Even though this is a particularly challenging time in my life, God still asks me to open my life up to serving others.  We're studying Matthew in our young adult group and recently we read a scripture that says if i try to keep my life for myself, I'll lose it.  But if I give up my life for Jesus' sake, I'll find true life.  My response at times to stress and suffering is to turn inward and just try to take care of me and my family.  Not that that's wrong, but I see how God still demands my ALL even when I'm suffering.  

We decided to let Kyle stay here and I'm finding that God is honoring my openness by giving me more strength and energy than I thought I could have right now!  From the world's perspective, it makes no sense to take in a teenage father into our tiny home when I have a rambunctious toddler, a sick baby on the way, and a tight budget as it is.  The world says I'm entitled to have some space, to have some privacy, to want some time to myself before this baby comes.  But as a disciple of Jesus, who cares about what I'm entitled to?  I don't want to be that way, and I am admitting that I have to pretty constantly recommit myself to God's will over my own.  The cool thing is that God's will leads to freedom and joy!  Our home, while I am beginning to think it will never be a quiet or even conventional home, is so full of joy.  As long as my heart is open to anything God would ask of me, He keeps giving me what I need to obey Him, whether it's patience with a teenager's messes, or trust in the face of scary doctor's visits, or unexpected cash to help with Christmas.  I need to remember this- I need to remember that no matter how much it seems like God is asking of me at the time, it's always for my best interest and He will always, without fail, give me the grace I need to do it.  This is real life!  This is true, abundant life!  An open heart, open arms, open checkbook, open schedule, open ears, open living room... nothing off the table as far as what God can have from me.  So this is my second prayer request: pray for us as we try to love and care for Kyle, pray for us to be wide open with our life and allow God to use us even in the midst of struggles.

I hope your day is as abundantly full as mine!                           

A good day

I know people are anxious to know about our day, and I apologize if you are one of the people that called us today that we didn't call back.  We were at St. Vincents until almost 6:00 pm and we were a little pooped, so we thought we'd wait to talk until later.  We had a good day!  Several things we learned today were good news and very encouraging.  Some highlights for now:

1) Our hospital stay looks like it won't be quite as long as we expected.  We are looking at more like one month instead of two months.  Of course, everything is up in the air, because they won't know for sure how Caleb does until he is actually born.  But as of now, his birth won't be as critical or dangerous as we anticipated.  Dr. Abraham, the surgeon, said that he expects Caleb to be fairly stable when he is born.

2) I might not have to have a C-section!  I had one with Jonah and at Henry Co they don't do a VBAC, but the ob/gyns at St. Vincents DO perform VBACs, and Dr. Harry today said that it is a possibility.  We will be talking more about this at later appointments.  This is very exciting for me because my own recovery would be so much quicker.

3) Caleb is a big boy!  The ultrasound tech asked me today if Jonah was a big baby.  I laughed and said no, he was scrawny and asked why she wanted to know.  She said, "Because this baby looks like a big one!"  We were thrilled!  The bigger Caleb is, the stronger his heart and the easier things will go for him.  I know people have prayed specifically for this, so it's exciting to hear my boy's growing big and strong.

4) Here's the big news of the day... after spending time in a consultation with the surgeon and a tour of the wing where Caleb's surgery would be, we had our actual appointment with our pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Abarbarell.  She looked at Caleb's heart and said there's a good chance he will not have to have immediate surgery when he is born.  Needless to say, I think my mouth came open.  She said that the blood flow in his heart is surprisingly strong and sometimes when these babies have good blood flow, surgery can be delayed for several months, which would be HUGE.  Not having to have surgery at 3 days old would be a huge advantage for Caleb and make such a difference for our family.  His hospital stay would be more like 2-3 weeks and he would get to eat without a feeding tube, and be held by his parents, and do all the normal things a newborn does.  We were thrilled when she said this was even a possibility, but again, it's not for sure.  She did say though that at this point she would guess Caleb will not need that immediate surgery.  YAY!!!  He would still need the later surgeries, but it would be SO good if he could just have a normal birth experience and first few months of life.

Now we know more things to pray for!  Please pray that I could have a normal delivery instead of a c-section, and of course PLEASE pray that Caleb's heart would pump blood at such a perfect balance that surgery can be delayed.  The doctors will look at him in another month and see what they think.

Thanks for your prayers today.  We felt them and are going to bed tonight worn out, but at total peace.  Good night for now!

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, to stay!

I woke up this morning on my own, earlier than Daniel and Jonah, and immediately wanted to go to God and spend time with Him.  I got in the shower to help me wake up and I randomly started singing that little Sunday school song, "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart", followed by verse 2 which is, "I've got the peace that passes understanding down in my heart".  Do you have the tune in your head now?  Well I do today and I can't get it out.  People must be praying for us because that really is how I feel today.  I went to pray and had such a rich time with God, just enjoying His presence and thanking Him for the peace and joy that comes ONLY from Him.  

Today is a big day.  In a few hours we are heading to St. Vincents where we have several meetings and appointments.  I am not in the least bit worried or afraid.  I'm actually excited!  No, there's nothing wonky in my orange juice this morning... I just have a security from Jesus that he is walking around this house with me this morning as I get ready for the day; that he will get in the car with us and go to Indy and sit with us in that hospital room.  It's just one of those days where it feels like if I reached out my hand I might feel his face right beside mine. 

Say a prayer for us, if you would, and lift us up to God as we get ready to go to the doctor.  Of course they will be doing an ultrasound and echocardiogram on baby Caleb to see what his heart looks like.  Whatever they see, I'm going to feel thankful, I just know I will, because I have a rock-solid sense of God's involvement in this situation.  Pray for us, and go ahead and sing that song while you're at it, until you feel that way yourself.

A great day

Today is Jonah's second birthday... and we've had such a great weekend.  Daniel's family (Uncle Thomas and Uncle Chris and Aunt Laura) were all here for the weekend and we had a fun little party yesterday.  Jonah has been in heaven, having people around all weekend and new toys to play with.  I've looked forward to it all week, and isn't it great to have something to look forward to? 

We of course went to church this morning and it was a special day.  There was a special time of prayer for us and baby Caleb during the service; and not only that, but our pastor asked Daniel to speak about what we're going through because it just so happened that the sermon was from Phillipians 4:4-7, which (fittingly) talks about having joy and thankfulness in ALL circumstances.  So Daniel got to share a little bit about how we are choosing to cope with our life right now, and I was so proud of him I could've burst.  I have to say, I am so blessed in the spouse department.  Daniel has such strong character and such a sincere love for God, and he inspired me today talking about how even though he is experiencing painful times, he is not despairing or fearing the future.  He really sets an example to me of being thankful at all times.  After he talked a little, pastor Jerry invited anyone that wanted to come up, to come lay hands on us and pray for Caleb.  We prayed for healing and we prayed for God to bring glory to Himself through our circumstances.  It was very meaningful to me and I felt a tangible difference in my spirit with all those people surrounding us and praying.  I am 100% confident that God is going to do miracles because of Caleb's condition.  I wouldn't be surprised if He healed him completely, and I also wouldn't be surprised if He allowed Caleb's heart to stay the same in order for some other kind of miracle to happen, like us getting to share about Jesus with other families in the hospital.  Wouldn't it be amazing if God uses us to show how good and loving He is, and how He can give hope and peace in the darkest moments of our life?  I am praying for God to show up and show His power in whatever way brings Him the most recognition.  And I can't wait to see how He answers that prayer!  Thank you to all the people praying for us.  And please, pray for healing for Caleb.  We go back to St. Vincents for our next appointment in 2 days, on Tuesday.  I am praying that the doctor will sit there dumbfounded, unable to explain why Caleb's little heart looks perfectly normal.  But I also have total peace that whatever the outcome of Tuesday's appointment, there will be miracles.  I expect it!  I'm expecting God to show up and show us how very real He is!  What a great story to be a part of!

Our other son...

I have spent the last four days straight with Daniel and Jonah on our first, and possibly only vacation just the three of us.  In light of what we've learned about how crazy our life will be once Caleb arrives in a few months, Daniel and I thought we should take Jonah and get away to spend some time making memories with our little guy.  I'm so glad we decided to do this.  We just got home this evening from Brown County state park (or "Brownie Park" as Jonah called it) and the three of us had a blast together.  A highlight:  Jonah rode a "horsie" for the first time.  We paid 2 bucks to let him ride a pony named Macaroni around a track and when Jonah returned, he insisted on going again.  And again.  It was great.  The cool thing was they just let parents lead the pony around the track, so Daniel and Cowboy Jonah got to go all by themselves.  Here is proof of this adventure:

 
I was pretty proud of Jonah, watching him go around the track and thinking about how he is truly not a baby anymore.  In fact, his second birthday is next Sunday.  I've actually been thinking about Jonah a lot lately, and spending more time than usual praying for him.  It's really difficult for me to think about how big of an adjustment he will have when Caleb is born.  Even now, as I write about it, I can't help myself from crying.  Not only will he have the typical transition of not being the center of attention anymore, but his mommy and daddy will be gone for weeks, and he will be passed around between family and friends while we pretty much live at the hospital for all of February and March.  I know kids are super resilient, but it breaks my heart to think about how he won't understand why Mommy and Daddy are gone.  Then, when we finally do all come home, his new baby brother will require a lot of attention.  I just wonder if Jonah will ever feel like our "other" son.  Of course he can't consciously reason on that level at age 2, but will he ever feel like that?  I pray that he won't.  I pray for Jonah to be the kind of boy that is full of compassion and grace for his little brother.  I pray that he will grow up to be the kind of person that notices those who are hurting, who cares about the ones on the sidelines; the kind of person who has a humble sensitivity towards the people around him.  I have prayed these kinds of things fervently for my oldest son in recent weeks.  And I'm not really worried about him feeling left out, because I know there is a lot of grace from God on my family.  God cares about Jonah as much as He cares about Caleb.  I like the fact that I have been inspired lately to help make my family as strong as we can be, and creating time for each other is the biggest part of that.  Thank you Jesus for this vacation.  Thank you for the blessing of time together, and riding horsies at Brownie Park, and wrestling and laughing and finding acorns to put in our pockets.  Thank you that our love for each other is going to grow stronger than we could possibly imagine through the hard times ahead.  Help me to appreciate Daniel and Jonah and Caleb and help me to have a thankful attitude, even when I am tired or frustrated or stressed.  I pray for the families around me, for the families of the people reading this blog.  Lord, help us to give our families more attention, more of our energy and time.  Help us to be ridiculously loving and patient with each other and to create an atmosphere of joy and peace in our homes.  You make life good, Jesus.  Thank you.

Soliciting prayer... hope I'm not wearing you out yet

Daniel and I have thrown around the idea of buying a bigger house for the last few months.  We've gone back and forth and thought we'd landed on just staying where we are, in our (tiny but lovely) 2-bedroom home.  The thing is, we're really content here with our 900 square feet and it's so cheap that our monthly budget is a breeze.  However, in light of the knowledge that we're about to have TWO little boys running around, we decided to put our house up for sale and see what happens.  This took a lot of thought for us; ever since we moved back from Africa, we always think of the fact that most people in the world have a lot more children in a lot less space than we have.  We try to be purposely careful with keeping our life and our possessions as simple as possible.  We have a peace about trying to move though, and we're excited to see how God leads us and where we land.

Would you do me a favor?  Would you say a prayer specifically about us selling our house?  We only have a couple months and then we'll have to take it off the market for a while when Caleb is born and we're in the hospital for a couple months.  Our hope is that God would provide quickly and we could move before the baby comes.  With the market the way it is, this would be a miracle in itself!  I appreciate, more than I could tell you, the prayers and encouragement people are pouring out to us.  THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.  You're shaping the way God is moving in our lives.