Josh and Shelly

I am in Phoenix, attempting to support Holly and family while their life seemingly falls apart. There are so many unknowns right now and all we can do is pray. We are crying out to God for mercy, to heal little Kate. The doctors have not been extremely encouraging and Holly has been in desperation mode many times over the last two days. Please pray for peace for the whole family. Pray that Kate is not scared. Pray that the doctors are wise in their decision making and that God's hand is used in the surgery.

Kate will be having brain surgery on Friday to take out the portion of the tumor that is reachable. The doctors have been clear that it is not completely operable. The risk to take out the entire tumor is too great. At this point, they are not sure of the type of cancer they are dealing with, only that it is aggressive and fast-growing.

Please be praying that the doctors are able to determine exactly what to take out during the surgery. The doctor did say that once in a while, they go in and the tumor "peals away nicely" from the vessels and is able to be dissected completely. This is our earnest prayer. We know God is able to heal Kate without the use of doctors, but we know He is also able to heal her using other means. We pray for a divine healing- for little Katie's life to be spared.

You can find her updates at www.caringbridge.org/visit/mcraekate  Sorry, you may need to cut and paste cuz this momma is not too computer savvy! :-)

Love you, all my faithful prayer warriors. It's time to rally around another family this time. Please keep them close to your heart.

I have talked, over the years, about my best friend Holly. She and her husband are out in Phoenix planting a church and are desperately in love with the Lord. She called about an hour ago. Her 5 and a half year old daughter Kate is in the ICU with a brain tumor they just found a few hours ago. Please be praying. Pray for peace, God's will, and healing. We know our God is able and we pray for this to be His will!!!!! We'll keep you updated!

So I know i was talking about posting every day but I have Josh on a mission. He is moving every blog entry, since Ava's home-going, to one central blog. We have been busy doing this. :-)

I went out with a few friends for a while tonight. It was nice to spend time with girlies and enjoy sharing "mothering" stories and where we are. Each one of us has our own struggles, our own issues. Josh was at home with a few boys enjoying his time also.

Look for our new space in the next few days...

The Lord is putting a call on my heart about where He is calling us to go. Kinda' scares me, kinda excites me. Please be in prayer. Right now, I feel my job is to pursue my relationship with him and just go after Him with all my heart.


*today I let Noah make the mac and cheese from start to finish. The mess was incredible, the noodles were undercooked, but he was sooo proud of himself. He needed a major bath after the debacle, but he was one happy boy!

My house is full of germs. Germs everywhere. I should invest in some more Lysol and try to get rid this virus. Josh has been running a fever since Friday (he seems on the upswing) and now Noah has it.

Noah is one of the most hyper boys you will ever meet. He finds trouble- EVERYWHERE. When I was in NYC last weekend, he nearly ran himself over with my dad's truck. He was unsupervised for a total of about 30 seconds (according to the adults present) and still managed to get into this much trouble. So, when this little boy is as quiet as he is today, you know he's sick. He just wanders around, waiting, I'm not sure for what. Josh let know use the electric leaf blower which would normally make his day, but he only wanted to do it for about 2 minutes and then was done. Makes me feel bad for the little booger. He's sleeping next to me on the floor right now so I don't have to worry about his fever getting out of control.

God's been teaching me some new stuff that I am looking forward to sharing but just don't have anything solid in my mind to say. Hope all you friends are well.

Nighty-night.

I guess I shared my sickness with Josh. It is 8:30 and all the kids are asleep and Josh and I are in bed. Weird. Kinda nice. I do love my sleep.

I left Josh home for the day for some quiet time and took the kids to my parents to do some swimming. We love hanging out there. The kids have all kinds of open space and do not need as close of watching. My parents live quite a ways back in the woods and the kids love to run all over. My mom and I sat around the pool and drank Diet Coke and the kids swam in the pool. Actually, Ephram "swam" in the tub we use to rinse off our feet. He was too scared to go in the pool.  He was also scared of the bonfire we made to roast hot dogs. He's mommy's little scaredy cat.

Quadriplegia and vomiting do not go well together. Need I say more???

Please pray for the sick boy. He is pretty miserable. I pray that he wakes up in the morning feeling better.

That's all for tonight. This momma's turning in early...

today I played the game "Perfection" with Noah. Does anyone remember that game? The babysitter picked it up at a garage sale last summer. It is so old-school. No batteries required. Love it!!! Anyway, Noah loves this game I figure it's good for his fine motor skills as he is lacking in this area. So we played Perfection HIS way. What you do is push down the tray, put in all the pieces (get really mad that one of the pieces is missing) and then turn the timer to 60 and wait. Then watch the pieces scatter. Wow. Fun game Noah. :-)

The weather here has been a bit on the bleak side. We went outside to jump on the trampoline for about 15 minutes and the kids got soaked. They were beginning to drive us a little mad so we decided to pull the cars out of the garage and let them run around. Most fun the little munchkins have had in a long time and this mommy got a little peace and quiet!

Why do mom's have to get sick??? Doesn't the Lord know I don't have time for this? :-) Josh is pulling daddy duty with movie night tonight and I'm heading to bed early. Throwing up is not a classy act. Oh well.

*Today I let Noah mow the grass with me, even though I could only go half as fast. I just wanted to get it over with. But if you know Noah, you know the boy is obsessed with tractors. So, I let him "help" me for a little while to get his fill. When he got off he says, "Aren't you going to say thank-you mommy?" Like he was my big helper...hah hah. Thought that was cute.

Today is our 9th anniversary.  All of our family forgot. Anniversaries are a pretty big deal around here. You can imagine the horror when my mom called about a half-hour ago, spitting apologies. The only reason she remembered is she got a reminder call from my sister. I had to tell my sister tonight. Josh told my brother-in-law. It actually makes me smile.

It was a pretty big one for us. Life has changed a lot in the last nine years. I'm happy with the choice I made when I decided to devote my life to this man who lays beside me. Life has thrown us a few curve balls but we're in this together.


FINDING MY JOY
*today I held up Ephram by the sink and let him play in the water for about five minutes. Even though I knew what a mess it would make...his little squeals made it all worth it.

I know my true joy comes from God but this is an area I struggle with.  I think laid back people are generally more joyful than intense people. I know I am intense. I am reminded of it every day, many times over (usually by myself as in I drive myself crazy).

So, I read a lot of blogs. There are so many women who have it all together. They wake up and their house is neat and breakfast is not a crazy struggle. They love cuddling with their kids and taking walks. They love baking cookies together and picking flowers. Don't get me wrong. I do enjoy doing these things. I just have to work at it.

When I wake up, it is usually to chaos. Noah needs his meds, Josh's nurse is coming in the door, Ephram has wet through his sheets for the third time this week, and Zoe is starving. Making eggs sounds like too much work because then I will have to clean a dirty pan. Who wants Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Healthy, I know. I have learned to make eggs in the microwave. I am the queen of microwave pancakes.

So, am I am normal? Why do I have to work at it? Why am I not just a bit more "chill," a little more "Urban Outfitters" which is a whole nother story all together.

One of my girlfriends sent me a Facebook request to join a page to "bring Urban Outfitters to Grand Rapids." I didn't really pay attention, just thought, hmmmm, I've never shopped there. Fast forward a few days. I was in NYC this weekend visiting my cousin and we went into Urban Outfitters. To say I was out of place was the understatement of the century. I told Josh that if I tried to wear their clothes it would all be a complete "hoax." Just me trying to look a bit more indie, chill, a lot more not me.

I'm more of a Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic clearance section type of girl.

So, back to my joy. I want to find joy in the small things. I want to enjoy my kids while they are small and not wish the time away because life is hectic. So, I have decided to do something about it. Every day, I'm going to do one thing that I would normally NOT do because I'm cleaning, doing dishes, talking on the phone, checking my e-mail...you get the picture. Just busy. I've been doing this lately. But now I'm going to update one time a day. It's going to force me to get back to blogging.

No, I'm not organic eating mom, not patchouli wearing, just a typical middle-class mom who feeds her kids Spaghettios for lunch and yells at them to get back in bed for the eighth time tonight. I yell at my husband, and I'm not always nice.

But guess what? Jesus loves me all the same. It is my responsibility to be the woman He calls me to be. He gave me this personality (neurotic as it is) and I'm going to be more proactive about finding my joy.


*Today I had a tea party with Noah and Zoe and we had real tea. We got out all the fixins and even had cookies. Wow. Supermom. (that's a bit of sarcasm for you...)

"Complacency and indifference leads to unhappiness." 

This is not some well known little saying, just something that kept banging around in my head last night while I couldn't sleep. I was laying in bed next to Josh, being thankful for where we are at.

When Ava died and we made it through that whole ordeal with our marriage intact, I thought we were indestructible. Maybe not indestructible but definitely not struggling. So, when Josh broke his neck, I remember leaning over his hospital bed, trying to talk to him while it was turning his body back and forth, and telling him, "We are going to make it!" I didn't really doubt this.

Until 6 months ago. 

So, after Josh got hurt, we were going on adrenaline for a long time. It seemed like we got closer at first. Then, once he got home and we were trying to establish a new normal, reality set in. It was ugly. I am naturally a very selfish person. I want what's best for me. I want what's easiest for me. So, when he needed me, I instead turned inward. I became somewhat indifferent to the struggle he was going through because I could barely cope with mine. When we were doing "okay," I thought that was good enough.

It's not.

It led to a wretched life that I could barely recognize as my own. One where my needs came before Josh's. Josh's needs came before mine. One where we were going completely separate ways. And six months ago, I was okay with that.

It seemed way easier.

Except, that's not what God had planned for us.

I'm not sure when we thought it was okay to stop praying together or spending time in the Bible together. I don't know if I thought we could do this on our own, but I know we can't. When we stopped spending quiet time together, things went really south. Really south. Like Antarctica South.

It's amazing to me that God can still restore a marriage that is falling apart at the seams. Even when, at first, I didn't really want it to. Am I allowed to say that? So much had happened that I wasn't even sure that I wanted to put forth the effort it would take to get things to where they needed to be. God changed that. He changed my heart and my desires.

We have spent a significant amount of time in counseling and trying to learn what real communication looks like. Not what it looks like everyone else, but to us. It is amazing to me to start figuring out some of the core issues we had long before we even lost Ava. I am selfish, and as Josh said in his last post, he is prideful.

We are ugly.

But God is working in us. I never want to be back to where we were 6 months ago.

I like laying in bed next to my husband and feeling an overwhelming sense of love for him. I like being able to snuggle up next to him while he's sleeping and hear him wake up with a smile on his face.

I never want to get back to that point of indifference and complacency. It's a dirty place, and oh so easy to get to.

God delivered.