Archive of ‘Motherhood’ category

The Thorn. Keep Bleeding. Turn it into Love

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Gracelacedcover

The cursor blinks. I edit every thought before it can escape through my fingers. I’m back to a place of intense and unrelenting physical pain that clouds how I see myself, my family, my community and my faith. I’m at a point where talking about my suffering in any forum, even my close personal relationships, seems self indulgent. This thorn is not going to be removed. Be quiet. Try and make your life about something else. Anything else. 

Today I’m in bed with deep heat along my thoracic spine. I spent the first hours of my day making phone calls to follow up on recent adrenal testing I had at the hospital and pre-registering for one of several kinds of MRIs I need before my appointment next Thursday with my neurosurgeon in Maryland.  I wrote several cards to sister warriors recovering from their own surgeries. I was back and forth to the bathroom. I had a serious mast cell attack over the weekend leaving me more ill than usual. I cannot seem to recover. I will get dressed soon and drive to the girl’s school to deliver snacks for the golf team’s away match and pick up Danica. This will take any spoons I have left.

Yesterday I made a rash decision to take my Danica’s Rolo to boarding for a few days and nights. I spent Sunday in frantic pain, and I began to count the number of times I was bending to help put him on the leash or take it off or put him in his crate and get him out or grab him when he was chewing something he shouldn’t or was playfully chasing my little Twixie. I was doing more than before because Dan was working overtime again and Danica was still recovering from her fall last week. Her spine was hurting too. I woke with desperation. I had to know if being still could improve the suffering of neck spasms and the scary symptoms of dystonia in my limbs, neuropathy and loss of feeling in my hands and feet. Most of all I needed a break. The guilt overwhelmed me.

“What good is guilt? We ask. We like the sound of the question. It puts a crude finger on a heartbeat in us that won’t stop racing, a pulse broken in sympathy. It makes us talk. It makes us talk about ourselves. It makes us confess. We want to purge something even confession won’t justify…”–James Agee

Someone wise once told me guilt is not an emotion. You either are or you aren’t.  It is not my fault I am so broken and ill. But I did promise my daughter a dog if she would hang on those long days and nights following her brain and spine surgery. I let her draw pictures and dream of names and study breeds while she wore her brace and sat still. I took the money from my parents, and we drove her to meet this little dog who we all now love but wonder if we can keep. I am guilty of saying “yes” to something I should have known may be the literal straw that would once again break my back. And now I face the forever guilt of perhaps needing to give him away to another family better suited for his care. It is one more thing my children will have sacrificed or lost because of my disability. This is an overriding theme in their narrative. I’m missing for large chunks of time, either away for surgery, in bed recovering, skipping school functions, concerts and awards programs to avoid mast cell attacks, absent from volunteering in their classroom or for the PTF and building relationships with other families because I cannot commit to anything. I’m not guilty, but I’m confessing my heart breaks every single time my hard robs something from their good.

Gracelaced4

I’ve long loved the artwork and words of Ruth Chou Simons of Gracelaced. I was gifted a beautiful print that hangs framed in our bathroom. My 2017 calendar is from her stunning collection of desert watercolors, and I frequently mail her lovely notecards. Her beautiful book by the same name was delivered last week. Each page is a new gift. I am working through it slowly. I’ve stayed in the third chapter titled “Sufficient” for almost a week now. I’ve sat with the image of my thorn in the flesh, the one God has not chosen to remove. Ruth writes:

“We miss the lesson when we pick at the thorn…nurse it…bemoan it…curse it. The enemy would have us so blinded by the pain of the thorn that we can’t see the beauty of the rose garden. I’ve been there so many times…so consumed by the discomfort that won’t go away that I can’t experience what fragrance of grace lies just ahead. Look past the thorn to how Christ is enough in the midst of it. His Grace is sufficient for the thorn He chooses not to remove.

Friend, would we praise Him for His sustaining strength in our lives if it were not for reaching the end of our strength?

Would we consider Him enough if we did not find ourselves lacking?

Would we know humility if not for the discomfort of obstacles and the pain of intrusions?

Would we, as did Paul, rejoice to boast in weakness if not shown the truth of our Father’s seemingly backward paradigm of greatness–humility?

Today’s thorn stands guard over tomorrow’s rose. Don’t be surprised when our heavenly Father chooses to allow the wounding of our pride this day. He does so lovingly, sovereignly, and without mistake-in our unremoved pain-the rose we long to behold, just beyond the thorn.”

I’m weak. I’m poor. I’m humbled.

I’ve been meditating on I Peter 5:10:

“And after you have suffered a little while the God of all Grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” 

Restore. Confirm. Strengthen. Establish.

The rose in the bud closed so tightly. I prick my heart on the thorn. It’s bleeding, but there is love in the blood.

Our Hope remains.

(Thank you for continuing to pray for our family. We are hard pressed on every side.

We need great wisdom to know what to do about Rolo. I’ve been in contact with a trainer who could work to make him similar to a therapy dog for Danica and myself. This would be a two week boarding situation away from our home and then some learning on our end when he returns. This is very costly and not an option right now, but it is the desire of our hearts. Whatever we decide please pray for Danica most of all.

Please pray for my trip to D.C. next week. The flying, brutal scans and appointment and the courage to face whatever we see in those images never gets easier. My dear friend, Kristin, who many of you have been praying for as she fought Lymphoma, is flying from Denver. She will drive me, and we will have sweet time together as friends. I also plan to meet the founder of Healing Hearts, the respite organization hosting Option EDS (the retreat) with me. There are some very specific financial needs associated with this appointment. Please pray I will be able to negotiate payment. We have maintained access to care with always enough. I am weary of the fight. I become more panicked when collections interfere with actual needed appointments.

Please pray for Dan and I. We feel like we are drifting and out of sheer exhaustion and pain it is difficult to make the space and time to reconnect. Our family is only as strong as our marriage.

Please praise God with us for protection over Danica during a big fall last week. She is okay. Please praise Him for provision for the window that needs replaced in Laney’s room. God showed up in the most amazing way to meet the specific request.  It’s such a relief to know it will be installed before winter.

He is still good.  Thank you for being the one’s carrying our mat to Him over and over.  We suffer gratitude.)

Gracelaced1

 

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She is nine. A Team Danica Update

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“She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child’s perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here–the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.”–Annie Dillard

DanicaRolo

Danica has a journal where she’s kept heart longings for recovery after her surgery. In her innocent child handwriting she wrote healing wishes. They are hopes like swimming, running and playing outside at recess with her friends again.  Every numbered list is a little different but each one has a common desire.  She wanted a puppy of her own.

When your child is facing brain and spine surgery and months of restrictions and losses before and after you will promise them almost anything and worry about making good on it later.  The dog was a yes like that.  As the summer began to slip through our fingers and Danica’s next big scan and neurosurgeon trip to Johns Hopkins in early August approached her longing for a dog grew.  The finances, logistics and the energy to make this addition to our family happen were difficult.  I was particularly hesitant because I know the majority of caring for a new dog falls on me once the girls go back to school.  My parents offered to help with the purchase, but I was dragging my feet.  Danica was searching dogs online for hours each day.  She studied breeds and made lists of names.  She kept a log of the money she had and asked how she could earn more to help with the cost.  And then she prayed.  Every night when I tucked her in she asked God to please bring her a dog.

She is nine.  Everything she’s endured has not hardened her, but she is changed.  She can’t go back and reclaim the losses or forget the suffering.  But she can believe sometimes putting something on a list enough times is like saying the earnest prayer over and over. She can believe dreams come true through the people who love you most and would give anything to see your pure childhood joy just one more time.

Welcome to our family, Rolo.

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To Be Changed. Option B

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Option B Close
“This is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed.”–Jorie Graham

I’ve logged in to write here dozens of times since my last post. The cursor blinks, but I can’t seem to shape my ongoing heartache into words.

It’s been a month since I drove myself to the doctor to have my staples removed. Each chunk of metal she pulled loosened a deeply embedded piece of sadness. I wept. My dear physician gently reminded me of where I’ve been. She’s seen me worse. We talked about my adrenal crises in the past after surgery and the ways my very real physical symptoms feed my anxiety. We spoke about the trauma and grief of another wounding.

I’d seen my counselor earlier in the week as well. For ten years pieces of the life I thought I’d live have been falling away. I’ve begged God for restoration. Some kind of “magical thinking” has prevailed. I’ve still believed I will heal, and I will be more well. I’ve imagined the surgeries would eventually stop and the progressive nature of my EDS and all the resulting conditions would be slowed. Over and over I’ve visualized my body becoming strong again.

I’ve talked of loosening my grip, surrendering my life and opening my heart to this hard, but I’ve never fully considered that almost everything I hoped and planned for is ‘impossible’ now. In the face of permanent physical disability I have to accept the reality of my limitations.Rebellion

The only gift I wanted for Mother’s Day was Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant’s new book Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy. It’s rocked my world. How did I miss this basic truth for so long?

Option A is no longer available.

I began writing on two sides of my journal. The left side is full of all the things my life used to be and the ones I hoped and prayed for the future. I crossed through almost every goal or dream. On the right side is Option B. I’m still staring at the mostly blank page. I’m sitting in this empty space. I’m waiting quietly. I’m praying the words of Calvin Miller,

“Teach me the wilderness simplicity. Help me to point to You, honestly and joyously, as the threshold of all that really matters.”

This is the force of faith. I get to be changed.

My Hope remains.
Option B

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Struck. A Team Danica-Monica Update. And a Giveaway

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Struck Like a Bell

I get the notification every day on my facebook feed. You have memories. Most of the time they include a blog post from the old Team Danica blog where I was much more faithful about writing for you. They also include status updates about pain, sickness, medical tests, treatments, surgeries and hospital stays. Either I am asking for prayer and support or thanking you for it.

I’m tired of our story.
I’m sure you must be too.

Danica’s healing since her surgery has been a miracle. You know I don’t use the word without understanding the full weight of it. Our joy in the excellent news during her visit to Hopkins several weeks ago and celebration of removing her neck brace has been tempered by my suffering.

After a random April snow last week I’m convinced spring is here to stay. I am wildly in love with the birds and blooms. I want to slosh in the mud and hunt all things new. I want to sit still and study the rebirth of dormant life. This is the season when my hope is made visible. It is also when my mast cell disorder explodes. My skyrocketing histamines raise my intracranial pressure in tandem. My already hurting head and accompanying symptoms are somehow worse on these pollen soaked sunshiny days than when the roller coaster barometer reeked havoc on my fluid filled brain. I forget this happens every year. Social media memories remind me.

It’s holy week. Danica has been sick with a fever and headache since Saturday and home with me. After Dan and Laney leave each morning we’ve been reading through the Old Testament prophecies and New Testament Gospel accounts of the days leading up to Christ’s death and resurrection. We aren’t at the foot of the cross yet, but we see the sadness of Jesus as He nears and hear His aching lament. It comforts me to know my fully God yet fully man Savior understands the cry of a heart that trusts my Heavenly Father but wails just the same.

Tonight I am crying out.

It’s been hard for me to read and write since my shunt failed. I have always said the pressure is the one part of my complicated diagnoses that I cannot live with. A year ago I was so desperate I wanted to die. After three failed LP shunts God directed me to a vascular neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia who had only recently begun seeing EDS patients and was brave enough to help us. The VP shunt he placed gave me complete and lasting relief for almost a year. I didn’t take a day of it for granted. No matter how broken the rest of my body is I most desire to be mentally and emotionally able to think clearly, read, write and learn and form and nurture relationships. When my pain and brain fog cloud these abilities I become frantic. I’ve come to terms with all the other loss and disability, but I beg God to leave the core of who He created me to be in tact. My habit of voracious reading comes to a snail’s pace when I am in this much pain and lose so much vision in my right eye. I edit my list of books and slog through the ones I most want to read. “Struck: One Christian’s Reflections on Encountering Death” by Russ Ramsey moved to the top of my stack.

I read it cover to cover in one sitting. Like always, I read with a pen to mark up the margins and a journal to copy words I needed to save. I have to admit there were points in his story I felt upset. All the things he was experiencing with one sudden diagnosis, surgery and recovery I’ve been through repeatedly. In the last ten years many people have begun a conversation or note or email with something like, “It’s nothing compared to what you are going though…what you’ve been through, but…” I cringe. Every time I cringe. Here’s the thing I always tell people who are going through different but no less hard things,“There is no monopoly on suffering.” Once I got past the self indulgent contrast between my life and his I began to gobble his experience seasoned with truths.

Days before I picked up “Struck” I’d read an article on Desiring God by Matthew Westerholm titled “Lament Like a Christian Hedonist: How Joy in God Bears Real Pain.” I book marked it and returned to it several times. I found comfort in the reminder it’s biblical and okay to wrestle hard with your hardships. It was this prepared soil the seeds of chapter fourteen fell.

Because the Lord often withholds explanation for our pain, we must not look at suffering as though it is some divine gimmick designed to teach us some important life lesson. That would make too little of the reality. God’s people do not walk through suffering toward the moral of the story. Rather, we walk toward the eternal presence of the Maker and Love of our souls, This I must remember…Suffering is not an event. It is a path…There are plenty of advisers out there who would counsel me to dress this up with positive thinking. But I do not think it would be honest to try to pad my experience with cleverly contrived optimism that denies what is true. My faith in Christ provides a deeper, truer way. I want to feel my sorrow. I want to walk in it. If the Lord walks there with me, what possible advantage could there be in conjuring any other way? No, I choose the road of suffering, and I pray for the courage to walk it honestly. The truth is my heart is broken. I need time to say as the psalmist said, ‘When I remember God, I moan, when I meditate my spirit faints.’ As part of my confession of faith, I need to say that I am not okay–not completely.

Tonight I am not okay. I can beat on the breast of my Father God, and He will hold me close and listen to every cry. “Though I continue to ask why, more often than not the question on my mind is ‘What’s Next?’ Sometimes He will answer, sometimes He will not. And I will again have to lean on what I know of who He is when I cannot make sense of what He allows.”

The God of the universe. The same God who sees Syria tonight. The same God who sat with my beloved friend this afternoon as she met her oncologist to see if her brutal cancer treatment is working. The same God who watched my sister and her family bury their dear Pops today. The same God who sits in the psych ward at the bedside of a fellow zebra’s husband who tried to take his life because he cannot bear to watch his wife and children suffer any longer. The same God who formed my Danica in my womb, fearfully and wonderfully, errant DNA and all and knows why she is running a fever for so long. The same God who sees my CSF logged brain and feels the bulging behind my right eye. He is good. He suffered hell for me. Love like that can be trusted with ALL THIS.

As I lay my throbbing head on a tear soaked pillow tonight I pray Russ’s song of lament:

Lord, You are with me. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death together. Since I do not know the way, I have no choice but to trust You. To trust You means I walk a steady path believing you are with me. The sound of my footfall echoes the two operative words you use to call me to the communion table–remember and proclaim. I remember that You are a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, and I proclaim that I have no better guide. I have no better guide for two reasons: because You are God and because no one has stepped forward to lead me in a worthy manner. So I follow. What else can I do?

I haven’t asked for prayer lately.

I am tired of our story.
I’m sure you must be too.

But God is not tired. He does not grow weary or faint. Danica asked me to post something on facebook this afternoon when her fever spiked. Her childlike faith remembered your prayers for her miracle and wanted the same prayers for her sick body now. I was humbled. Won’t you please pray for her tonight? If she is still spiking by morning we will head to the children’s hospital. Please pray for my brain. I am terribly anxious about our trip to Charlottesville on Monday and my procedure Tuesday and what the next steps might be. I am terrified of a shunt revision. Please pray for Delaney. She is so sad about Dan and I leaving next week. She wants the joy of the sunshine and warm breeze to play as a song in our home instead of the dirge of sickness. Please pray for my Dan. He worked overtime this past Sunday offsite to help pay for another expensive medical trip, and he is working all week and then Saturday and Easter Sunday so he can take the days off to drive me to UVA. He is exhausted. He comes home to do laundry and dishes and look into the faces of a woman and children he loves desperately and wants to save somehow. Please pray for healing and provision and strength and Grace to do each next thing we think we cannot do.

Our Hope Remains.

What is your song of lament tonight?

I’m listening to Michael Gungor’s “Beautiful Things.”

I’m giving away a copy of “Struck: One Christian’s Reflections on Encountering Death”. Comment here on the blog or on social media with your heart cry by Sunday night. I will randomly choose a winner from the comments and send you a copy of this special book.

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Exhale. Learning to Breathe Again. Opening My Hands. A Team Danica-Monica Update

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ButterflyOpenHands

“Unexpected Grace always settles in the palm of Heaven turned hands.”–Ann Voskamp

It’s perfectly quiet here this morning except the achingly perfect coo of a morning dove. The comforting bird song I’ve treasured since I was a child lulls me into deep breathing. Since Arizona I’ve returned to practicing meditation. I’m learning much about how often my mind wanders away from truth to fear. Each breath in and out is a chance to BEGIN AGAIN. No judgment. Back to Jesus. I’m realizing how Grace can be simplified to gratitude for each next long inhale and exhale. Every intricate detail of my physical being is a miracle. As I scan my body for pain I pray through the suffering. I’m alive. I am filled with the Spirit of God. My body is not an enemy. I end each session with the words from Psalm 19:14, “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” I arise in strength and dignity.

March is a month of hard for us. Every spring break for my girls the past decade has included some kind of medical trip for Danica and I or surgery for me away from them. This year will be no different. During certain seasons I return to what I’ve written to gain perspective and remember God’s faithfulness when I am discouraged. I wrote this in March, 2014:

I’m looking at the flat, barren landscape of 71. This stretch of pavement between Columbus and Cincinnati is one I have grown to hate over the years. If you paint our journey with a broad stroke or view this piece of art from a distance you may only see the colors of hope and healing. They are vibrant and breathtaking. But for us, the ones who have watched this masterpiece morph, no matter what news comes at the end of these trips, the road is bump after bump of pain literally and figuratively. The dark shadows most think we should have moved on from are still looming at every mile post. We see the financial drain each mile we move closer. No matter how God has provided we still come to this thicket wondering when and where the ram will appear. Our new year deductibles chase us. Knowing the cost is thousands of dollars to even walk in the door is a weight we drag behind us like chains on our ankles. Because of my shunt revision surgery , Maryland trip out of network, more hotels nights, more driving, more of it all we gasp for air. There is no choice but to keep moving even though it feels like quicksand.

I canceled this important trip earlier this year, because I was simply not well enough, and I just didn’t have the strength to do this. Weeks before we come here I begin to have racing thoughts about the hotel, the hospital, the anesthesia, giving our girl up to strangers for hours while we wait, and the dark room where they show us the scans. I hate the smells and the glazed over look in almost everyone’s eyes as they wander from appointment to appointment or down from their child’s room to get a meal in the cafeteria. I have flashbacks of Danica in those days following her surgery when she thrashed insanely in pain, and I went days without sleeping trying to save her and orchestrate her care. In the end there is the obligatory gift shop trip to reward a little girl in some tangible way for her bravery in all this, and it seems like it is all a bad Lifetime movie. Only this is not two hours with a happy ending or at least some inspirational and didactic meaning to carry away. This is our life. My chest is tight. My head is aching. I know the exhaust of the cars and trucks on the road are adding to my increasing feelings of anxiety and manic mind and heart. The silence between Dan and I grows more caustic. He closes himself off. It has never been any different. I want to talk this all through for the thousandth time, and he just needs to drive and do what needs to be done. I begin to cry. Every single time tears begin to fall down my cheeks the closer we get.

I remember the first trip here. It was April 2010, almost exactly four years ago. We knew Danica’s decompression in November of 2009 for her Chiari malformation had failed. Many of her symptoms had returned and even escalated in the few months since we let them cut open her head and neck and shave away bone from her vertebrae to make more room for her brain. Her little neck falling to the right again was the most glaring sign we did not succeed and perhaps had even made her worse. Suddenly we needed to be much more informed about the condition and what underlying genetic mutations might be causing it. We were scared. Although the first brain surgery was scary, we still believed it was something really hard God was asking us to do just for a time. We thought it was something broken in our girl we could fix. Our first trip to Cincinnati solidified this “C” word was here to stay.

Our “simple” Chiari story which seemed like a miracle for the first few months became our entire life. You began to read here and raise money and pray. We were overwhelmed as people from all over the United States and the world wanted to support us here at our little blogspot blog which became Team Danica. I had always been a writer, but I never needed an audience for what I scribbled and pecked away in private. I even tried to hide my writing. Suddenly, I had hundreds of people checking in for updates, and not just to see how we were or what the plan was but to truly share our hearts in all this. Somehow, in all the lament and torment of those early days, this place became where I could honestly share what this kind of journey looks and feels like. Dan joined occasionally to show his husband and daddy heart. It wasn’t always easy or cathartic to keep coming back here, and I took breaks for sure because of fear or sadness or just plain exhaustion, but whenever I would stop writing people would email or message or call and tell me they needed to keep reading and following. Team Danica became as much a blog about my health and journey as our sweet girls’. Still you came to read and pray and support us.

Four years we’ve been here.

The well of love has always been deeper than the well of pain and suffering.

The strength and grace of our God has always been ENOUGH.

The provision has always come.

Our Hope has remained even on the darkest days, because we believe.

We believe because He causes us to trust and loves us even when we don’t.

. . . We are here in the hotel now. Michael Card’s “Sleep Sound in Jesus” plays on my itunes while I type. Dan and Danica are drifting off. I can see the Children’s Hospital sign lit up in the dark from our window. My prayers try to cover the hundreds of beds full of children who sleep there tonight fighting some illness, healing from a surgery, waiting for a diagnosis and the parents who sit vigil with them. I pray for the doctors and nurses who sacrifice to join in these wars. I pray for those who do not have a voice like we have to ask for prayer or support or a meal or a hug.

I feel a calm peace about our tomorrow. It may be my Ativan (smile), but more likely it is the prayer with Danica before bed and heading back to the arms of Jesus in the simple words of these lullabies. I am reminded of a God moment from my Tuscon trip when He allowed me to see a big picture view of our life as it intersects so intricately with people we don’t even know.

On my last flight home from Atlanta to Akron/Canton God sat me next to a woman from Wichita, Kansas. I was tired and grumpy and very anxious about how my body was going to react to the pressure and weather changes. I had the best and healthiest week of my life since before Danica’s diagnosis. Besides missing my family I did not want to come home. I politely settled into my window seat and asked her where she was from and where she was going. She asked me the same questions. I mentioned my shunt surgery and a trip to heal. She asked me why I had a shunt, and I shared a quick headline blurb. I really wanted to finish writing in my journal and listen to some music on this last flight. She told me her nineteen year old son Jack was born with a spinal cord issue and at four months old they flew him to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for surgery. Guess who Jack’s surgeons were almost twenty years ago? Yes, Dr. Kerry Crone, neurosurgeon and Dr. Alvin Crawford, orthopedic surgeon, banded together in a joint surgery that had never been done before. This was no coincidence. We gushed our stories to one another through tears. Then it came out and stopped us both in our tracks. It was the summer of 2010. Danica was scheduled for surgery and Dr. Crawford pulled out leaving us with a brain surgeon but no willing bone surgeon. Far away her son Jack was also scheduled for his last orthopedic surgery with Dr. Crawford to fix an issue with his foot. He was fifteen years old.

We now know Dr. Crawford was considering retiring that summer and so he was shying away from difficult cases he could not follow, especially a little girl with atlas assimilation and a failed decompression who no one else wanted to fuse until she was six or seven. Jack could have had one of Dr. Crawford’s up and coming surgeons, and it might have been fine, but it wouldn’t have been what their family needed or wanted after so much care from one man. I can still see myself praying on my knees by Danica’s door at our house on 35th St. I didn’t understand why God would bring us to this dark place if He wasn’t going to see us through it. If you go back in the archives and read my wrestling, the tension in Dan and I’s marriage, the palpable hysteria of not knowing where to go next you will understand in part my desperation. Suddenly, Dr. Crawford was back on board. He put himself completely into Danica’s case including designing the special hardware and having it made and taking her images and having a 3D model of her skull and cervical spine made to teach from. Jack got his surgery too. He is doing well four years later.

I can’t think of any other way God could have shown me how brilliantly He in charge and how little we need to know about it to trust Him. One of the most beautiful lessons I learned early on in all this was how most of what is happening to me and around me is much less about me than I ever could have imagined. Yes, He’s working in and through me but it’s for something so much bigger. Oh how I cheapen my life when I make my God small. I see in a mirror dimly what He will make clear someday. For some reason He chose to clean the mirror a little on my flight so I would SEE Him in even the last hours of my trip…

I promise for a quick update on the brain part of our trip tomorrow. Danica’s MRI is scheduled for 7:30 am, and we will see her neurosurgeon, Dr. Crone, at 11:15 am. The orthopedics scans and visit are on Tuesday. We have every reason to hope for a perfectly good scan. Danica has almost no symptoms of Chiari or any neurological deficit at this time. Thank you for praying for the anesthesia to go smoothly and for all the details of the day. We treasure your lifting us up! Please pray for our Laney who is back home with my mom. She was very emotional about us going and called crying twice today. This is not like her, and it breaks my heart. It was a reminder how much each one of us carry around because of Danica’s health and especially what Delaney has been asked to walk through since my pregnancy with her little sister. She is so brave and independent, but the first to say we should move to Arizona so she could have her mama back.

No matter what you are carrying tonight, I hope this wandering of words down our past four years and the glimpse He gave me of His sovereignty will encourage you to not crumble under the weight of what He asks you to bear. He is doing something bigger than you can see.

I know it for sure.

A year ago we planned the girl’s spring break as another trip to Cincinnati. We thought it would be a graduation of sorts. We were sure it would be a celebration of complete fusion and release for Danica to finally be able to return to the childish play she’d longed for. Instead we found her broken hardware. I took a long jagged inhale and held it. I am realizing now I hadn’t exhaled for the entirety of the past year. On my recent trip to Arizona I remembered to breathe again.

Monday we will leave for Baltimore on another spring break. We will see Danica’s neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins and look at new scans. We expect good things, but we go with open minds and hearts to whatever they show.

Seven years we’ve been here.

The well of love has always been deeper than the well of pain and suffering.

The strength and grace of our God has always been ENOUGH.

The provision has always come.

Our Hope has remained even on the darkest days, because we believe.

We believe because He causes us to trust and loves us even when we don’t.

Thank you for praying for us. I am still recovering from my chemo treatment Tuesday. My shunt is simply not working properly, and I cannot deal with the needed steps to move towards fixing it until we get through this Maryland trip for Danica. The financial avalanche begins to take us down by the third month of each year. I spend hours each day on trying to sort through what must be paid for continued treatment, what necessarily will fall into collections and what must be approved by insurance for the next access to care. I make hotel reservations not for fun but for bodies flung in exhaustion. Dan takes vacation for a road trip to doctors and hospitals.

I wonder what it would be like to heal without this stress. Could I be more well?

I believe Jesus paid it all. I cannot feel guilty about something I did not choose or cause. He has always been enough. He will always be enough. He is enough. Open Hands.

I’ve been listening to Laura Story’s new song by the same name on repeat this week. The Lord gives and He takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Our Hope remains.

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Bloom. A Team Danica Update and 2012 Repost

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Danica6weeks

Six weeks ago Danica was coming out of huge brain and spine surgery and getting settled in the PICU at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. If you’d been there and whispered in my ear that she would be home today doing math and language homework, playing Legos and breezing through an OT evaluation, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you’d told me the first weeks post-op would be the greatest test of physical, emotional and spiritual endurance we’ve ever experienced, but, if we held on, it would become the most miraculous part of our Gauntlet story yet, I wouldn’t have believed you.

It’s true.

The healing.

The absence of pain.

The hope.

The miracle.

It’s true.

Six weeks later it’s all true.

Twelve weeks ago I was coming out of a major spinal surgery at Doctor’s Community Hospital in Lanham, Maryland. If you’d come along side my bed while I was struggling for oxygen and writhing in pain and told me I would survive the trauma of the next three months, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you’d told me God would not only meet every single need but lavish love on us in ways we never could have asked or thought, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you’d told me I would have the greatest hope for my Danica’s life and perhaps even my own, I wouldn’t have believed you.

It’s true.

The provision.

The love.

The hope.

The miracle.

It’s true.

Twelve weeks later it’s all true.

I’ve been a ‘One Word’ person for a long time now. I began writing about my 2017 word last night. ‘Bloom’ was the runner up. I didn’t remember the following post from the old Team Danica blog, written on January 4th, 2012, until it popped up on my facebook memory feed this afternoon.

Tomorrow I have a meeting at Lake Center Christian School with Danica’s teachers, guidance counselor, special needs coordinator and principal to revise her 504 plan so she can return to school for half days next Monday. She will use the wheelchair initially to protect her fusion and her healing rib graft. I know she is ready and trust she will be safe and loved, but I am facing my own ache of letting her go. I’m facing the great mother “risk” so my girl can blossom again.

Getting readypschool
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”–Anais Nin

My dear friend Angie facebooked this quote to me today. It’s not strange that her kindred heart would know this is the very quote I was thinking of this morning as we walked our Danica Jean in the doors of Lake Center Christian School for her first morning of preschool.

It’s all been a risk with this child. The pregnancy was high risk for her and especially for me. Her birth was an emergency and very dangerous. The methods we tried to fix her tortocollis and find the real root of her pain and growing diabilities were risks. The many exposures to radiation were a risk. The first brain decompression was so scary. At her age we knew going in the outcomes were mostly just buying time. Just a few months later we began the fight to find answers anywhere we could because the first surgery was already failing. This led us eventually to her second surgery and fusion. It was riskiest of all. No one wanted to do this surgery although all the experts agreed it needed to be done. Every day after October 5, 2010 EVERYTHING became risk analysis. For more than a year we kept Danica from doing almost anything normal three year olds would do. We said “No”, “Be careful”, “Watch out”, “Hold my hand” and the words “We have to keep your neck and brain safe” more times than I could ever count. Have you seen her beautiful white swan neck? Have you? Do you believe in miracles? Have you ever witnessed one? Have you ever lived one?

Danica had many dreams of her own as she patiently waited in this bud of hope all these years. Attending preschool is one that fell right under her Disney wish trip. She is exceptionally bright and more than ready for this social interaction, time away from her mommy and lots of learning and exploring. We are beyond blessed she is able to begin it at such a special place where so many of the school families have been praying for her for years, following her story and loving us well. Danica is like a hero there. Everyone knows her face and name. My mom’s office is just across the hall from her room too. It’s pretty amazing to have your grandma be your principal!

This cold January morning was a day we will never forget because our family got up TOGETHER. Danica excitedly got dressed and was bursting at the seams with anticipation to bloom. She had no anxiety at all. She has lived in a world of adults and scary machines and pain and limitations. This day was not tapping into courage at all. It was only joy for her.

Hanging up stuff

We went in. Danica hung up her coat and bag in the little foyer area, and she signed herself in on the board. The other children were ready for her. Mrs. Barber, her teacher, was waiting with open arms. There was no look back to me for any reassurance. She was gone in a second to wash her hands and choose an activity. Dan and I stepped out of the door, and I let a few tears fall. Mrs. Pappano was just outside. She gave me a hug and reminded me how everyone there already loved Danica and would take such good care of her.

Signing in

Danicaand MrsBarber

I was supposed to begin physical therapy this morning, but there was some mix up with the prescriptions getting faxed over so instead Dan and I went to breakfast. He brought me back here to the lake house, and we snuggled for a little while which is such a rare treat. I can still smell him, and it makes me feel less alone. As soon as Danica left at 11:30 Danica’s teacher emailed me to share what a success today was and how Danica instantly blended in. She said they had a large motor skill activity that would be on Danica’s restriction list and Danica was sweetly compliant to sit out. I loved knowing especially they were taking her safety seriously and understanding the limitations that remain. I called Danica at home to talk to her about her morning, and Dan said she got home and said, “We need to take naps!” She had gone in her room to take some down time already. This is so Danica. She takes rest when she needs it. She is in many ways so much wiser than her age. She is a rare flower.

Last night I stayed at home and tucked each of the girls in like normal since Dan is working nights for the next month on her preschool days. Danica fell asleep in five minutes as “Sleep Sound in Jesus” played, and I rubbed her back and sniffed her sweetness. I lingered. Then I made my way across the hall to my Laney. She had so much new art to show me and we talked about print making and how her designs of colors and patterns could be used in fabric or wallpaper and other ways, expanding her understanding of how art could be her career. She talked and talked to me, trying to catch me up on the weeks I’ve missed, and then she said, “I’m sorry I’m so chatty tonight. I just missed you.” Oh, special girl of mine, me too. So much. We hugged and prayed and then I slipped out to my own bed. I cried. It’s going to be okay. There are so many more blossomings in our coming year. I know it. Thank you, God.

I’ve been working on my “vision board” for 2012. It’s like the quarterly collages I make only on a much larger scale. I found a picture of bulbs coming up through a late spring snow. I have this quote beside it,

“Underneath the drifts, seeds are waiting. Their courage is incomparable. Their patience unequaled. Hunkered down and hopeful, they sit out the frozen tundra, knowing and trusting that spring eventually will arrive. If ever you feel unsteady in the face of life’s winters, consider seeds and their faith.”–Tovah Martin

Spring always comes. Today was a little taste of how seeds of faith and patient waiting on God always bloom into something beautiful.

“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”–Psalm 126:5-6

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Quiet. Soft. Slow. A Team Danica Update

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Come
“The theology of the Tree, of the Cross, always seeks the presence of God in the belittled gifts of the world…Because in the rush, in the hurry, in our addiction to ­speed –—​­ there might be miracles if we slow and don’t step on the unassuming shoot that sprouts from the stump.”–Ann Voskamp

It’s Sunday morning. The Lord’s Day. Without attending church I still wake to play hymns and spiritual songs. I drink my steaming cup of coffee with my neglected Bible open. I desperately ache for a glimpse of God and a Word of truth.

I’ve forgotten how to do this still, quiet and sacred thing. I’m afraid of it, because I’ve felt so cut off from fellowship with God and others. I’m not ready to loose the dam of emotions that will surely flood this place when I allow myself to process what we’ve been through the past few months and particularly during the days and nights in the hospital with Danica. There will be a time. I can’t risk traveling there yet, but I can be HERE, NOW.

The continued pain I am having, Danica’s restrictions and gradual healing, our financial insecurity and all the wondering about what the new year will hold for us is being covered by the soft falling snow I’m watching outside my window. I’ve prayed for this peace over and over. I thought it might come in a crazy miraculous way like water into wine. I imagined something sudden we could shout from the rooftops. Instead it is growing like a baby in my womb. I trusted the seed was there before I could even feel flutterings. I have the stretchmarks to prove it. I am great with child. My hope and expectation are sure, and I believe new life is coming. He makes all things new. I believe this. Most of the time I believe this, but it’s true even when I don’t.

This peace and joy and hope are slow. At times they are barely perceptible in the hard, but they are a shoot straight from the stump of Grace.

Henri Nouwen writes:

“A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him . . .”–Isaiah 11:1-2

Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness.

I find this a hopeful message. Somehow, I keep expecting loud and impressive events to convince me and others of God’s saving power; but over and over again I am reminded that spectacles, power plays, and big events are the ways of the world. Our temptation is to be distracted by them and made blind to the “shoot that shall sprout from the stump.”

When I have no eyes for the small signs of God’s presence – the smile of a baby, the carefree play of children, the words of encouragement and gestures of love offered by friends – I will always remain tempted to despair.

The small child of Bethlehem, the unknown young man of Nazareth, the rejected preacher, the naked man on the cross, he asks for my full attention. The work of our salvation takes place in the midst of a world that continues to shout, scream, and overwhelm us with its claims and promises. But the promise is hidden in the shoot that sprouts from the stump, a shoot that hardly anyone notices.

I’m paying attention. I’m watching. I’m waiting.

I see Him in your cards and letters full of love. I see Him in the hundreds of facebook posts of prayer and shares I’m just now having a little time to filter through. I see Him in your generous donations to help with our overwhelming medical bills and new deductibles that take our breath away on January 1st. I see Him in the meals on our table prepared with tender care for us and yummy cut out sugar cookies I wish I had the strength to bake and decorate. I see Him in the gifts showing up on our doorstep making Christmas for my Dan, Delaney and Danica. This is something my mama heart will always long to give them, and something I couldn’t do at all this year.

Thank you.

All of this kindness creates the fertile soil for the shoot straight from the stump of Grace.

All of this is Dayenu. Enough. More than enough.

Three weeks ago we were arriving in Baltimore tangled in hope and fear. Two weeks ago we stood vigil by our little girl with a collapsed lung and burning with fever. A week ago we were in a hotel in Maryland aching to come home. We are here, now. Last night we all crawled into the big bed snuggled under a pile of blankets and watched Elf. It seems such a simple thing. For us it was a layer of healing over months of upheaval and survival. We belly laughed together. I felt a gentle kick…a quickening of Jesus in a silly and secular movie. Grace growing up in a least likely place.

Our Hope remains.

I’m playing this song on repeat today. QUIET. SOFT. SLOW.

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Yesterday’s Pain. Will You Give Us a Hand? A Team Danica Update

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miracles

“In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls of those who weep,
and of those who weep with those who weep.
If you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting the stars back in their skies
one by one
Yesterday’s Pain
Some of us walk in Advent
tethered to our unresolved yesterdays
the pain still stabbing
the hurt still throbbing.
It’s not that we don’t know better;
it’s just that we can’t stand up anymore by ourselves.
On the way of Bethlehem, WILL YOU GIVE US A HAND?”
–Ann Weems

We have weak hands and feeble knees this morning.

We were discharged from the hospital yesterday late afternoon and made our way to a Springhill Suites in Gaithersburg for our remaining time here until Danica sees Dr.Theodore again is cleared to travel. Discharge went as smoothly as any I’ve ever been a part of. Many departments assisted in helping us with the details of support and care after leaving. This included arranging for physical and occupational therapy to come here to the hotel so there would be no lapse in Danica’s healing progress. Danica and I had negotiated a plan for taking her oral medication that seemed to be working after a horrific period of trying to transition her that included vomiting and hysterics. They were ready to bring in behavioral psych for an evaluation…something I opposed as strongly as discharge to a rehab facility. She had taken several doses with no event, and I thought she was ready. There are several beautiful photos of us leaving the hospital smiling. The pictures I don’t take tell a larger part of the ongoing struggle.

DCvideo

We arrived safely to Washingtonian Center. Many of you know we lived here for over three years. Danica was born just down the road at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. This feels like home to us. The Children’s House was a convenient and much less expensive place to stay pre-op and a perfect crash pad within walking distance to the hospital for Dan and our things during Danica’s week long hospitalization. Unfortunately the building and rooms are very old. The rooms are not set up for the kind of accessibility and devices Danica needs for her particular kind of recovery. This hotel room is arranged in the traditional Springhill Suites style that has always worked best for our family during trips for medical appointments. We have a small refrigerator and microwave, a sofa that folds out into a comfortable bed for Dan and a king size bed for Danica and I to snuggle in that keeps me at her side constantly throughout the night. Most importantly the ground floor suite has the extra room for ambulating, grab bars in the right places to assist Danica and a handicap shower with seat and bars. It is perfect. We are close to every possible kind of food to help get Danica to eat, and the Target which includes CVS pharmacy is right here too.

We checked in and EXHALED. We had done each next thing and graduated to a place closer to getting home.

Within the first hour of check in the manager of the hotel knocked on our door with a gift bag of treats for Danica. I’ve written before on my old blog about extraordinary customer service at many Marriott hotels across the United States as we’ve traveled for the best care. These are not Ritz Carlton hotels, but they carry this level of service across their brands in the training of exceptional employees. This gift bag came from THEIR heart and not a company manual. This was unexpected grace.

SpringhillSuitesKindness

We dosed Danica with oral Tylenol and Valium and replaced her Lidocaine patches around the large wound on her back just before leaving to try and make the drive here the least painful as possible. She was so visibly thrilled to be here without the constant rounding of doctors and nurses coming in and checking vitals. We were all thrilled. Dan ran out to get her favorite macn’cheese from The Corner Bakery. She ate the most we’ve seen her eat in over a week. I held off on the Valium dose until closer to bed so we could possibly not do any meds in the night and really rest. She was hurting. Her biggest complaint is not actual pain but the tightening and spasms of the muscles cut in the neck and her back. The PTSD reared it’s ugly head. I was tired and having a bit of a panic attack myself as the struggle in coaxing continued. Dan was trying to be helpful, but he had not been part of the majority of our negotiating the deal to take this particular medication if we were allowed to leave the hospital. She did tip the tiny amount back but proceeded to gag and throw up the medication and ALL the macn’cheese. I fell apart. She kept crying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just can’t do it.”

I slept some last night holding her sweet little hand with our feet touching under the covers. She was restless. This morning I snuck out into the lobby for coffee and came back to begin my phone calls to make a new plan. In the last hour the neurosurgery resident has worked out for Valium in pill form to be called into the pharmacy here. Dan will go to pick it up, and we will try to crush it in something she will eat. We’ve tried this before. PLEASE pray we can find a way to get her to take this regularly without the battles and without throwing up.

Brain and spinal surgery is hard.
Hospitalization is hard.
Doing the next minutes and hours, days, weeks and months of healing and recovery on our own is perhaps the hardest.

Our hands are feeble.
Our knees are weak.

Thank you for all the ways, big and small, you’ve given us a hand. I’m receiving messages and emails about how you can help provide some kind of Christmas for us and how you can help when we return home. I plan to take some time today to work on the details and share. At this point I realize I will not be able to do any shopping or planning. Your love in these specific ways will be the hand we need.

Even miracles take time.
Our Hope remains.

“Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
‘Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come…'”–Isaiah 35:3-4

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Lost and Gained. A Team Danica Update

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Hardware

“I have lost nothing
in my life
that I could not find again
with God.”
-Corrine De Winter

It’s raining in Baltimore. (Cue Counting Crows.)

Over the past 48 hours Danica’s little lungs have inflated again with vigilant respiratory work. (Think bedside prompting to inhale and exhale deeply into two different devices every fifteen minutes even though you know every breath is hurting your girl in a place you’ve been wounded yourself.) Her lungs are only slightly diminished now. Her constant and sometimes burning hot fever of six days is gone. She’s stepping down from continuous dosage of IV narcotic pain medication to trying oral substitutions in movement towards discharge. She did some tough physical therapy and occupational therapy today. She joined other children for a fun science experiment making snowmen. She had a visit from the most amazing golden retriever, Milo, who loosened a full smile and prompted a deep belly laugh. She had a very painful complete shower. She cried through the entire thing. I felt relieved to see her allowing herself to lean into the truth of this hard. There is something innate from her struggle in the womb, her warrior past and also learned behavior from watching me navigate post-op over and over again…we move forward like soldiers. Dramatic emotion is mostly a waste of time and energy we cannot afford. The next thing comes. We hurt so badly and hope so fiercely we don’t need to even say it. The fact we are still here doing this is the proof.

PTStairs
PTC4
Snowman

We thought we’d made the most possible progress. Then the bottom dropped out. Danica refused to take her oral Valium. This is the one medication she needs no matter what. How does a little girl who can brave brain and spine surgery and call her ten pain a three refuse to take a few ccs of liquid medicine from a cup? It’s the second time since being here something prompted PTSD for her as well as Dan and I. We used to have to hold her down to squirt her meds in her little mouth. Often she would spit them out while screaming. She became so worked up, crying hysterically, turning on Dan and I who were trying to be her allies and fussing at the kind nurses trying to help. I called a time out. I left the room. It’s only the third time I’ve looked her in the eyes and told her I needed to step away from her. I found my way into a little sitting area and bawled my eyes out.

Sitting next to a beautifully decorated tree outside the room I remembered it is Christmas soon. I remembered tonight Danica’s classmates were having their Christmas program. I felt this jagged breath of complete sadness. Not self pity. Utter sadness. It was a deep seeded ache for simple milestones in my girl’s life she cannot make up. They are gone. Lost.

It’s easy to feed on loss when days and weeks and months have turned into years of giving up everything we are told means so much to focus on just surviving. Even after ten years there are still those who innocently say something pithy about this being a “season” that will pass for us. They head out to the park to watch their children run and play in the snow or facebook about a special concert or the ballet or a simple shopping trip to the mall to visit Santa. They pick out shiny outfits with matching shoes and decide on Christmas cards. They look at their December calendars full of invitations to parties and celebrations with people who are glistening in the fullness we are supposed to feel this time of year. Real or imagined I see the parts being played out around me like I am watching a perfect winter scene in a snow globe.

This loss is much longer than a season for us. This loss will not pass. This is our life. Wrapped in strange newspaper recycled with the stories of days of exhaustion and pain and long nights in the hospital…tied up with twine borrowed from something useful or given to us in charity our celebration is no less real than yours, but I can promise you it feels different because it has to be.

I think back over our “holidays” since 2007, and there are very few things that look or feel like I think they should. This year is no exception. My Laney will play the flute in her first high school Christmas concert Thursday night, and we will not be there. How many times since she was four years old have I been absent from the snapshot moments of her life? Someone else will take her picture, and I will miss it . . . again. Someone else will post on facebook my brave and beautiful girl, and I will be here losing the moment that can’t be lived again. Gone. Lost.

I’ve not left the hospital since my one walk and shower last Thursday when my parents were here. This is not a masochistic falling on my own sword kind of commitment to Danica. This is love. This is the sacrifice of a mother who is the best advocate for her best care in every detail of this difficult hospital stay. We know the really hard part begins the second we leave and have to do this on our own. Dan must return to work. I will not have a day to crash and regroup. I will need to be with my girl every second she is ambulating. I will be responsible for helping her to the bathroom during the day and the night, bathing her and dressing her. I will keep schedule of medications and document every detail of her recovery. I will lobby for the best home health and fight to get the adaptations we need to make our home as safe as possible for her recovery. My warrior mama heart drives this broken body farther than I ever thought possible. I can only describe this as supernatural strength and great Grace from a good God. Still, I wonder when the crash will happen. Not if it will but when it will.

Dr. Theodore, Danica’s spinal neurosurgeon, came by late this afternoon to check on us and talk about our discharge expectations and possible days and time to see him again in clinic before being cleared to travel home. He did the most telling thing. He came in and sat next to me on the little blue couch, looked me in the eyes and fully heard my questions and concerns. He showed me the first image I’ve seen of Danica’s new fusion hardware. I cried. I’ve felt like 2016 has been another lost year until right now. This image may mean nothing to most of you, but I can tell you it is everything. A second miracle.

We have challenges. My mind is swirling with the hundred things I need to do for continuation of care. We need to buy Danica a new mattress. We need to buy plane tickets home. We need to make further accommodations to our home for Danica’s safety and to assist me in her care.

I need to find some way to make some kind of Christmas for my family.

The day after Christmas, Monday, December 26th, I am scheduled for all day chemotherapy. I have to get one more treatment in before my insurance deductibles reset on January 1. I need to have a scan here in the Washington area to look at my recent fusion. I’ve not wanted to speak of the pain I’m in or the damage I may have done by my participation in Danica’s care the past week.

I’m lost. There is no way to plan these days.

I’m empty. There is literally nothing left in my tank.

I’m afraid. What if my brokenness impedes the best healing for my girl.

He is God. I am not.

This is Dayenu. Enough. More than enough.

Thank you for never tiring in your supplication for us.

Thank you for your giving hearts. It makes some of this needed care a reality for our Danica Jean to give her the most whole life possible. Thank you for showing me grace in slow gratitude for your love. I carry it with me into these days and nights.

Danica is sleeping quietly in the dark room, and I must try to rest before a 4 am med administration and the rounding that begins most mornings around 5:45 am. I cannot wait for a full night’s rest with all my medications on board.

Keep praying! I know He is doing a thousand things in this one thing. I know it. I believe everything lost will be restored in exactly the way Dan, Delaney, Danica and I need and even in ways we wish for.

#SoulBusiness #OurHoperemains #TeamDanica

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A Bruised Reed and The Broken Way. A Team Danica Update

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ICUBrave

I’m sitting in a hospital recliner facing my Danica’s bed in the PICU at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. She is resting comfortably, but I don’t want her to open her eyes and not see me here. She was in surgery for over six hours today. Just before 8 am I followed the anesthesia team into the huge operating room to hold her sweet hand. She looked up at the many masked faces and back to mine, and she began to cry until she breathed enough gas for her to drift off. In that moment my brave broke into a thousand pieces. I came out to hug Dan and see my dad and mom who were in the family waiting room, and I began to cry too. The doctors said the first update would come in an hour or so. It would take that long to place all her lines, prep her and get the initial imaging done before the first incision. I needed coffee and a distraction. Dan and I went right away so we could hurry back up to wait as closely as we could to our girl.

I stopped at the chapel alone.

Kneeling in the empty, dark and perfectly quiet room I prayed.

I’ve been reading Ann Voskamp’s new book The Broken Way the past six weeks. I’ve had to take it in bite size pieces, because I am a bruised reed. I’ve been feeling like a sham…saying the “right” things about hope and healing in the light while secretly covering a spreading hematoma of doubt, fear and even anger. The leaking has gone deeper than the surface tissue. It’s become a blood clot in the main artery to my spiritual heart. I’m not just bruised. I’m broken.

This morning in the make shift sacred space, prostrate before the good God I’d been forgetting in my pain and my daughter’s suffering, I took a ragged breath of Grace, and the oxygen of Jesus fanned the smoldering wick back into a tiny flame. The blockage cleared in the yielding.

Ann’s words underlined, copied on a note card and carried with me in the Bible I’ve struggled to read echoed in my mind.

“What happens if you just let the brokenness keep coming? Surrender. Let the wave of it all break over you and wash you up at the foot of the cross. What if I lived like I believed it: Never be afraid of broken things–because Christ is redeeming everything.

I am cracked open yes but not trampled. With my head on the ground the Spirit ministered with the truth from Psalm 34:18. “The Lord is near to the broken-hearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” Gently Jesus splints my snapped soul with bandages of compassion.

Broken

Danica’s surgery went well. Exceeding, abundantly above all we could ask or think. The details are amazing. The “Gauntlet” bringing us here may even be a gift. I haven’t given up on that yet.

“The fellowship of the suffering believe that suffering is a gift He entrusts to us, and He can be trusted to make this suffering into a gift. The fellowship of the broken take up the fearless broken way, are not afraid of brokenness, and don’t need to try to fix anyone’s brokenness, or try to hide it or mask it or judge it or exile it…Never be afraid of broken things–because Christ is redeeming everything.

Thank you for being part of the “fellowship of the broken.” You were praying us into today, through today and will continue in the coming hard days of recovery. Thank you for being the given in our need. Our Hope remains.

I’m quietly playing the achingly beautiful song “Image of God” sung by Christa Wells and Nicole Witt. Still your heart. Close your eyes and listen. Play it again.

Dan, Danica and I attended an intimate concert with Christa along with Jess Ray and Taylor Leonhardt the week before we headed here for surgery. It was soul food for us all.

Christa Wells

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