Archive of ‘Prayer’ category

Beautiful, Terrible Finitude

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Finitude
“…These are such small decisions, really. But aren’t they all? Trying again. Getting back up. Trusting someone new. Loving extravagantly inside these numbered days. Someday we won’t need to hope. Someday we don’t need courage. Time itself will be wrapped up with a bow, and God will draw us all into the eternal moment where there will be no suffering, no disease, no email. In the meantime, we are stuck with our beautiful, terrible finitude.”-Kate Bowler, No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)

Finitude. The state of having limits or bounds.

I was introduced to this word in Kate Bowler’s newest book, and I’ve held it close as my girls and I continue to press against the physical limitations of our bodies while our hearts ache with a seemingly endless capacity for loss and grief wrapped tightly in gratitude. I’ve not written here or really at all. I have met the frustrating bounds of my own ability to process suffering through words. This has been perhaps one of my greatest wounds ever.

Early this morning Danica’s 8th grade class left for a week long trip to the east coast. Ninety-one students and chaperones are traveling to Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania to tour some of the most important places, monuments and museums of our country and to be together, forming bonds with one another they will carry into their high school years. She is not with them today.

Initially we didn’t consider her going because the trip costs thousands of dollars per student. We talked about the emails coming in over the summer. Danica has always been quiet about wanting anything. She knows how much healthcare two thousand, eight hundred and sixty-nine dollars buys. When I was in Ohio in early July for my Rituximab infusion a woman from Danica’s school called because she didn’t see her name on the trip list. I explained the particular constraints of our family finances. She prayed with me and told me there are generous people committed to helping with this specific trip. She urged me to register Danica and believe God would make a way. Of course, He did. He always does.

I flew back to Arizona on a Wednesday. The next morning I drove Danica across town to meet with the cardiologist who performed her tilt table test several weeks earlier. Her symptoms of Dysautonomia and POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) present differently than Delaney’s or my own. Her heart would begin to gallop dangerously while simply making her bed in the morning. She struggled to walk up the hill in our neighborhood. She would need to lie down and rest after taking a shower. She was exhausted all of the time. The doctor immediately prescribed her several medications including a very expensive drug used in rare cases like hers. He referred us to a Phoenix Children’s pediatric cardiologist to manage her long term. It was just a few weeks until school started. We knew Danica needed real cardiac improvement for her to be able to attend in person school at all. If you follow my now infrequent social media updates you know about our insurance company’s denial of the critical drug and how we cash paid week after week during multiple appeals and then ordered it from Canada and continued to cash pay waiting for it to ship and arrive. We saw our girl drastically improve on her medications. Her heartrate slowed, and she could handle more activity. She began school with additional restrictions in place but making it through entire days.

We seek to discern the will of God in our lives, especially when we are faced with big decisions regarding our health, through prayer and provision. This is the gift in the gauntlet. When the funds were anonymously given to the school for Danica to go on this trip east, a trip she secretly wanted so badly, we were all in. For those few weeks when Danica thought she might go she was lit up. My dad gave her a nice camera to take special photos. She made a list of clothes she would need for a week of real fall weather. The school was having frequent meetings with the kids about the trip and took roommate requests for the hotel stays. The excitement was building. Then we received the actual trip itinerary.

It was immediately clear to Danica there was no way she could physically do this trip. From early morning until late evening they would mostly be on their feet and walking or standing. There is very little if any time for rest between a packed schedule of touring. With limited chaperones and the bus dropping them in an area for most of the day there was no way to make accommodations for her either. We sat together that night and cried. Danica’s heart was broken. My heart was broken. But then my girl looked me in the eyes and said the thing I’ve preached for most of her life, “Mom, It’s okay. Option A is no longer available. We will find an Option B.”

Since then I’ve been thinking of something I wrote on the old Team Danica blog in 2013. It was a a post titled ‘It’s Just Not True’. It’s long, but I will share the entire text here:

“Before our children were even born we began dreaming for them about what their lives might be like. We hoped and prayed for health and happiness and some measure of success while doing something they loved. We wanted them to know the joy of giving back to the world in a meaningful way. It seems we began to whisper the “lie” to them in our arms as wee babes, “You can be anything you want to be.”

Yesterday our Danica had her last day of preschool. There was a time we couldn’t have imagined her independently learning and socializing and being safe. Because the weather was so cold and icky the preschool picnic was held inside. We all spread out blankets on the floor to share the last hour of time together with lunch and goodies. The kids began playing after eating. One of the little girls in Danica’s class had a rhythmic gymnastic kind of streamer. Danica was in love. A group of girls began doing somersaults. Oh my, Danica’s little heart was aching. She was dreaming. As soon as we got in the car to leave she began telling me all about how much she wanted to do gymnastics as soon as her neck was all better. I was quiet. I know we have said this too often. “When your neck gets better you can . . .” We never mean to be dishonest when we say this. There are some things she may be able to actually begin doing if everything is fused and stable in October, 2015, her five year anniversary. There are plenty of things she just won’t.

When we got home she asked to put on the American Girl movie “McKenna”. Later I heard thumping in her room and rushed in. I could tell she was trying to do some kind of gymnastic type moves on the bed. I sat down, and we talked about it. I reminded her how much we had invested in her neck and how well she was doing. I talked about how even though everything seems all better she is still growing and fusing. Now is just as important as ever to obey Dr. Crawford and be careful. I explained this was not a punishment for anything. It is just part of her special life. She told me there is a gymnastics place close to our house where her friends “train”. She asked if as soon as her neck was healed she could begin. With tears in my eyes I told her the truth. Finally, I was brave enough to say it. “Honey, you will never be able to do gymnastics. It is too dangerous. There are hundreds of other things you can do, but this isn’t one of them.”

It would have be easy for me to jump to some kind of story about kids in wheelchairs who are so sick they can’t get out of bed and remind her how incredibly lucky she is. This is the internal dialogue I carry on in my own head when I begin to feel badly about all the things I simply cannot do any longer. No amount of wishing or hoping or willing or trying will make most of my old dreams a reality. I know many who are worse off than I am. If I focus on that won’t I be more grateful? Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I used to think of this only in relation to people who had the good, better and best I desired. I realized yesterday comparison to people who have less can also be a bandit. Growing up my mom would often tell me how much worse something could be to try to bring my heart back into a right place. I know she meant well, but it frustrated me. Our family was in ministry. There were always people much worse off. This too was taking away cultivating authentic gratitude for my right now, exactly how it was, whatever it was. I’ve wanted to change this in my parenting, but it’s a strange default.

Last night Danica decided to have a sleepover in my bed. It wasn’t even dark yet and we snuggled under my covers. We entwined our fingers, one of my favorite rituals. Our breathing became the same. I never knew a child could be so connected to their mama in this many ways. Danica’s sweet little voice said, “My neck and my head hurt so bad, mom.” Yes, my child, I know exactly how it feels when you push your body to do something you want so desperately but God just didn’t intend. Tears welled up as I rubbed her little spine and the base of her neck.

We can’t be anything we want to be.
We can only be what God intended.

Aligning these two can only bring real peace and happiness when we admit the loss and grief are oh so real too. Our days are written. I have been feeling a little better (I promise to tell you about all this soon), and I find my head pushing my body to get as much mileage from what could be fleeting good days. I end up hurting and cycling back to discouragement and discontent instead of the real gratitude I should be experiencing. I am so much healthier today. This is my joy. I want to tell the truth about all this to my girls. I want them to believe in impossible things but temper this hope with the realism that brings them continually to God’s plan for their lives.

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written,
every one of them, the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”-Psalm 139:16 ESV

DanicaTMA

Today Danica and I will pack for a little trip we’ve planned to San Diego. It’s our Option B. We’ve made a list of the few things we’d like to see or do there, but we will take breaks and afternoon naps and know it’s all flexible based on how each of us are feeling. We are admitting constraints. Oh how I pray we will fill our time together with curiosity and discovery while resting in our beautiful, terrible finitude.

Thank you for your continued love and prayers even when I am so very quiet in all the places I used to tell our story. November 1st Delaney and I meet with her neurosurgeon and will set a date for her December fusion surgery in NYC. We cannot see our way from here to there. My mother grief is a brand I’ve never tasted before. I’m broken in new ways. I am terrified this will be the surgery that takes medical trauma too far for my girl or derails her from her college classes or her job at the art museum. She is pushing herself past her bounds right now. I taught her that. I pray I’ve taught her as much about surrendering things that are no longer true, allowing herself to mourn them while genuinely trusting God’s Option B for her is the best. I will update here and on her gofundme when plans are made. We will need your prayers and help.

Audrey Assad’s Shiloh has been on repeat for weeks here. It’s my prayer for both my girls.

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Dear Delaney…On Chiari and Seeing and Staying with Pain

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LaneyLemon“Finding grace in suffering is less about cognitively assenting to the truth of God’s goodness than about letting our souls and bodies be seen. If you are a sufferer, be seen. If you encounter someone’s suffering, tuck your words of God’s goodness away until you’ve first listened with the eyes of your heart determined not to look away from pain.”-K.J. Ramsey, This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers

My darling girl,

I’ve been writing in a journal to you since before you were born. Many of the entries are full of wisdom I’ve collected through the years and want to make sure I share with you. Most of them begin with the word, “On…”

When you were almost three years old we enrolled you at a Montessori school in Akron, Ohio. I would drop you there on my way to work. It was the first time I’d left you with someone who wasn’t family. Just a few weeks into our new routine I received a phone call from the school. “There’s been an accident. Delaney fell and cut her head. We need you to come right away.” It was a twenty minute drive from my office to the school. You tripped while running and the corner of a cabinet split your forehead wide open. When I rushed into the school I gasped at all the blood. A pediatrician mom told me the head is very vascular and not to worry but to take you to the children’s hospital emergency room right away. Your dad met us at the school and drove us there. I sat in the back seat holding a cold cloth to your wound and tried to keep breathing. When the time came for them to hold you down and place thirteen stitches in your perfect brow I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t hold your hand. I couldn’t tell you it was going to be okay. I began to black out and a nurse took me out of the room to sit on the cold floor with my head between my knees. I sobbed while you screamed. Your dad stayed with you.

Next Saturday you and I will fly to New York alone. You have Chiari and need a brain decompression. But it’s not that “simple.” We aren’t sure if your Chiari is being caused by something else like a leak of cerebral spinal fluid. Sixteen days from now you will be rolled away from me and have something called an ICP bolt placed. It will measure your intracranial pressure for twenty-four hours. Eighteen days from now you will have brain surgery.

One of my biggest fears is that you will wake up and look at me in the terror of post op pain and ask me why I didn’t tell you how hard it is.

I don’t want to take for granted you understand what will happen just because your little sister has been cut three times and we are just calling my surgeries “countless” now. I know the trauma of watching us climb into the car or on a plane and leave you behind all these years has settled into a hum of reality. I also know you have been protected from seeing the worst because we always needed specialized care so far away. By the time we made it home we were hurting but healing. You didn’t hear the screams when our IVs blew and no one could get a new vein. You didn’t see the hours without pain meds while we suffered and waited for IV therapy. You didn’t see the delicate dance with each new shift nurse and resident doctor fighting for the best care while not tipping the scales to crazy. You didn’t experience the dreaded day two, the day after the triumphant Facebook posts about being a warrior, the day when all the anesthesia wears off and we wondered how in the world this hurt could be better than the pain that brought us there. You didn’t see the endless parade of helpers that took our vitals and checked the equipment and cleaned the room and brought the meal tray and took it away along with the nutritionist and pain management doctor and physical and occupational therapist and social worker. You didn’t smell the antiseptic hospital odor that oozed from our pores. You didn’t taste the flush of the IV over and over or feel the tearing of the tape off skin while checking wounds. You didn’t see the desperate need to be released from the hospital just to be anywhere else just so we could finally rest.

Today I explained the process of hospital admission and getting ready. I talked about the questions you will answer over and over again. I discussed the awful moment when they will take you away from me and you will be alone in a freezing cold room with masked faces and cold hands moving you to the operating room table while placing sticky leads all over your chest. My body has become just a container for my soul but you are seventeen and no one has ever touched you like this. You are most worried about the catheter and knowing someone will be in your private places after you are put to sleep. It may be the hardest part. They will ask you your name and birth date one more time and do you have any allergies and what surgery you are there for. You will be scared and so ready for the mask and the gentle voice asking you to take a deep breath and another…

I will fight like hell to be there when you wake up. Because you are a minor and we will be at a children’s hospital they tell me I can. You will be confused and groggy. Your throat will hurt from the intubation and your mouth will be so dry. They will say your name and ask you if you are in any pain. And you will begin to grapple with what’s just happened. You will want to know how the surgery went, how large the incision is and when we can go home. From the moment you wake up you will begin thinking about your own bed, and Dad and Danica and Twix and every hard thing after waking up will be the next hard thing you do to make it there.

You rushed me through all this and began to cry. A Delaney cry. Your little nose quivered like a bunny and a tear slipped down your cheek as you quickly wiped it away and said, “It will be okay, right?.” You reminded me you are in pain every day and this is just something you have to do to move on to the life you want. You asked me while you were telling me. And I wanted to reassure you, but I’m afraid too. I’m most afraid of lying to you about any of it, because that’s not what we do. You and I have always been impeccable with our words to one another, one of the four agreements I raised you on.

It was easier for me to have faith with little Danica. I’d been fighting for her since I first heard her fetal heart beat. Laney, I always believed you were meant to fly away from all this chronic illness and suffering. You were to leave with a hard scrabble story of a character building childhood resting on the foundation of God’s faithfulness and the multitudes of kindness that were miracle to our family. I said a thousand times I was holding you loosely. It turns out I’m clutching you girl. But I know every impossibly hard thing I’ve lived and learned about Chiari has brought me to be your mother right now. I have seen the goodness of God in the land of the living. I’ve seen miracles. And I’m pleading with God for one now.

Laney, I promise you I will not look away even once during these next hard weeks and months. I won’t faint and be ushered away. I will not tell you how good God is to clean up the edges of the suffering. I will write this story exactly as it unfolds with the vulnerability of being seen. I will stay. And God will be there too. Nothing about Him will change. He will watch over us and be faithful and work out His great love for us through the pain.

Please Jesus. In the chaos of pandemic and the necessary and holy work of fighting for justice and change please see us too, a broken mother and a hurting daughter who will be far from home in a strange city fighting demons. Please be with Dan and Danica as they are left here. Comfort them. Protect their minds and hearts. Thank you for the community of love surrounding us as we move forward. Please continue to provide our needs and access to care through the generous hearts of others giving and sharing so many will pray. On Chiari, I’m begging you to lead us in the perfect plan for surgery and bring healing in the multitude of ways we need to make this a success. Help us show that honest suffering will always point to You and inspire hope. Our hope remains. We know this too is Grace. Amen.

(Friends, I’m humbly asking you to please add Delaney’s surgery dates to your calendar. They are Wednesday, June 24th and Friday, June 26th at Columbia-NewYork-Presbyterian, The Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. Please share her story and ask your friends and church to pray. Use the hashtag #teamdelaneyjayne. If you want to follow her story and receive updates while we are in New York please follow me on Instagram @MonicaKayeSnyder or through Delaney’s gofundme page at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-delaney-jayne-overcome-chiari

Thank you for giving and making a way. Thank you for praying when we are weary and cannot find the words. Thank you for encouraging. This is such an incredibly hard and lonely place for all of us. We need our people to see us and stay.

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Home. Returning and Remembering

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Weighted
“…Why does the Scripture echo with the twin commands to return and remember? It is because God’s promises always intersect with places. We relate to God and to one another in some place. To remember is to return. To return is to remember. Rootlessness is a kind of forgetting. And home is the dwelling place of memory.”-Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky

Day 571.

It came through an email and then a formal letter. A notice that our lease here will not be renewed. The children held under the trust would like to move back into their home. The home where they lived with their mother when she died. The home they had to vacate immediately so it could be rented while the finances were handled. I’ve prayed for them. I’ve wondered about their hearts.

It’s a beautiful story. How God not only brought us to Tucson but prepared this house for us. I’m crying now because I cannot imagine having lived anywhere but this healing place. Although I’ve had two shunt surgeries since relocating I have healed more than I thought was possible in this life. I’ve lived more days out of bed, driving my girls to school, making dinner, doing a load of laundry and sitting outside with my face in the sun than I did in the ten years prior. I’ve had suffering but so much less pain. Almost every night I step outside and take a picture of setting sun. I walk barefoot across the pebbly desert path to the fence looking down into the wash and out towards the Tortolita mountains. I feel the evening air on my face. And I say, “Thank you.” I thought I held this miracle time here loosely. Faced with the vacate date on the letter I realized I’ve begun to take root.

Shelter is Dan and I’s shared insecurity. We have childhood reasons and young adult reasons. Both of us felt at one time or another we didn’t have a safe place to land and made desperate decisions out of the deep need and desire. When I met Dan I fell in love with his townhouse as much as I did him. It was the first home he purchased on his own. I worked in the real estate boom in Northern Virginia and Maryland, and he worked in the early days of internet sales. Between 1999 and 2002 we bought and sold five homes, all of them new construction. I was gifted at creating beautiful spaces and several of our homes we sold with most of the furniture and decor. All of them sold within a day or two. People walked into these places and wanted to stay.

If you’ve read through the days of Team Danica you know we’ve left homes. Perhaps the most painful was in 2011, after Danica’s second brain surgery and fusion when we moved into my parent’s basement. The facebook memory came up today, “Took a huge leap of faith and gave notice on our house today.The windows are open, and I hear a bird chirping. It reminds me, ‘Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?’-Matt 6:26” I had to quit my job to take care of her while she was in her brace and wheelchair. I was also at the point I could no longer function with my own Chiari and instability and needed surgery. It was a miracle, a year and a half later, when we passed our little Rockingham ranch with a ‘For Sale’ sign and prayed for the impossible and God said, “Yes.” We weren’t even looking and barely hoping we could have our own place again. And oh how we loved that little home. I lived in my nest chair or in bed and friends would come to just sit in the sweet and peaceful space. Leaving our house, safely in my parent’s name to protect it from our endless medical bills, and affordable because of my own disability, was the riskiest part of this move west. Dan and I would have lived there until we died if it hadn’t been in Ohio, a place that was slowly killing me.

Now Delaney needs brain surgery. Out of state. Out of network. More daunting than anything we’ve faced. And we have to move. It’s heartbreaking for us all, but for Delaney to not be able to picture where she will recover is particularly agonizing. She inherited the gift of creating beautiful spaces and her room is her refuge. Dan and I’s great grief is we cannot give this stability to our girls. We could rent again. But we’ve learned how unstable that is. Apartment living is not really an option because of my mast cell. Even our neighbor’s dryer sheets here make me very ill if a window is open. For so many reasons where we live is medicine. It’s the safe place to be most well. We need some control over that.

I promised Dan we would face this problem head on when Delaney and I returned from NY and DC. When our trip was cut short by the health crisis and we flew in Sunday he pressed me. I was still in mama warrior mode. I needed to get the consult from my Maryland neurosurgeon. I needed to schedule actual surgery dates in NYC. I needed to take a breath and scan my own body for the pain and infection I’ve been ignoring. I broke apart. I told him we would look at apartments in the city of Tucson. This is what we can afford. No, we can’t, but we can try. How can we ever settle when my health and the health of our girls is forever in jeopardy? There will always be another surgery, more treatment, more than we can pay. We have been called to the achingly beautiful life of manna. No safety nets. No savings account. No college fund. No retirement. Still, we wake every day and there is Dayenu. Enough. More than enough.

As I was praying this morning I realized most of the world is now being asked to at least consider what it is like to live in this way. When everything else falls away what remains? Returning. Remembering. Home.

I picked up the contents of the girl’s lockers at their school today. They were bagged and put in the passenger seat of my car curbside. I drove to a little house north of here that’s for sale. It’s exactly the price we can afford if we could get a loan. I asked God to reconcile the struggle in my heart and make it clear through providence and provision where we are to go and to please pry my heart away from this dream of rooting in a specific place if He’s asking me to wander the desert instead. I prayed the verse I’d read this morning, “Give me a sign of your goodness.”-Psalm 86:17 As I pulled into our driveway I saw a large box on the front porch.

When Delaney and I went to New York last week we stayed in gorgeous condo in Hudson Yards. It was offered to us through a friend of a friend. It’s one of the most beautiful things we know through all our hard. There is so much kindness. This woman didn’t hesitate to open her home to us but also stocked the fridge with healthy food and left fluffy white towels, pillows and duvets. On the bed in my room was a throw blanket that looked loosely knit but was actually weighted. I slept like a baby. The first night I thought maybe it was my sheer exhaustion. But the second night I knew for sure it was magic. My relationship with rest is complicated. I’ve taken strong sleep medication and ativan every night for a decade. I swallow my pills and wait. And wait. And wait. Every synapse in my body fires. My legs twitch. My mind races. And I wait. This was a different kind of falling asleep and staying asleep. I texted gratitude to the angel who gave us the gift of staying there and asked her where in the world she got the blanket. Today my very own blanket arrived on my doorstep. I laughed and cried. It was God’s sign of goodness. Another beautiful story in this epic life of humbly receiving love. It was hope.

There are other signs today. There was a rainbow over the Catalinas in the pouring rain and the expressed heart of a church praying for us and the beauty of my parents loving us in the urgent and particular need of finding a home.

As the world shelters in place I think more than ever of Tony Woodlief’s words from Somewhere More Holy,

” . . . This is the story of how we reclaim the things that are lost. It’s also a story about how a home can be become sacred, and how in the process it can sanctify us as well. I can tell you these things because I have been in dark places–which is the only way any of us learns to love the light. . . Home is more than a place where we eat and sleep; it is where we learn grace, where we glimpse heaven. It is where we find or lose God, or perhaps where He finds us if we will only be still long enough to listen for Him.”

I can feel the collective world stilling themselves. These are dark times. As everyone returns home, whatever that looks like, may we remember the light. If we lose our way. If we forget the goodness. let’s remind one another.

Thank you for all your love and prayers. I’ve been particularly quiet this week. Tomorrow morning Delaney and I will have a phone consult with the Maryland neurosurgeons we were supposed to see in person. It will bring clarity to the surgical decisions made in New York. We have surgery planned for Monday June 8th for an ICP bolt to measure Delaney’s pressure for 24 hours and then the brain surgery on Wednesday, June 10th. It will be days in the hospital and then another week after discharge until a post-op visit that will clear her for travel home. It all seems impossible. But that is the awful place where miracles happen.

Our Hope remains.

Rainbow

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How Are You Feeling? Two Arteries

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Hope in the Desert
“This is not despair,
not the retreat into the deep wound
but a conscious living of each day

This is the placing of one foot before the other,
not the free stride of the unencumbered
but the careful tread of the initiated foot

This is learning how to walk
without familiar landmarks, alone
even in the company of others,
not ready yet for new direction

This is the living of each day, aware
that what you cannot predict
may still loose sudden tears, yet
that laughter too is possible

This is when you struggle
as plants in arid soil
strive without conscious knowing
to stay alive until the rain

This is a time for faith
that this most naked agony of loss
will ease, and not corride the spirit

This is the time to trust that day after
labored day you will move forward,
open to joy as well as pain;
two-sided coin, you proffer for remembrance.”–Maude Meehan

I’m sitting in my new nest. I shuffle to my spot just before dawn and settle in to watch the pink glow grow over the Catalinas. Dan and I share coffee here most mornings before he leaves for work. These quiet moments together are an intentional touchpoint. It’s often the only time in a day we may sit face to face and focus on one another. He leaves, and I turn to my morning rituals of meditation, reading, journaling and prayer. To be home. To be in a kind of sustained rhythm is something I was made for. Something I longed for. I don’t take a minute for granted.

The life of chronic illness doesn’t set you up for regular soul nourishing habits. There are days you simply cannot get out of bed. Meditation is impossible unless you count focusing on the pain. Scratching down feelings often magnifies the ache. Prayer is mostly, “Please, Jesus.”

Everyone asks how I’m feeling. They want to know if I’m as well as I look in the sporadic photos I’ve shared on social media since arriving here in Tucson on August 25th. It’s a tricky question. It’s a difficult answer. I often say, “I’m healing but never healed…” Everything I experienced during my previous winter visits to Tucson has been realized. But I will always have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. This genetic mutation is forever embedded in every part of my connective tissue. I know I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

I have significantly less pressure headaches and symptoms. This was the main reason we relocated here. My Intracranial Hypertension was unbearable. After nine various shunt surgeries we understood current shunt technology coupled with my challenging anatomy and EDS would never bring lasting relief, especially in northeast Ohio. Quite frankly I wanted to die. After surgery on July 4th and again on the 9th I was back home lying in my dark room in unspeakable pain, and I couldn’t see my way back to Hershey for a revision. I was done. I’d felt this hopelessness before, but the miracle that arrived in a text and a phone call on August 2nd gave me the courage to crawl back into the car and take the long turnpike trip back to Pennsylvania for another revision. Removing a mess of old tubing from my abdomen and rerouting the tubing to empty the cerebral spinal fluid into my heart was something I said I’d never do. I have a cardiac condition called Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). I have a Pectus Excavatum, a bone malformation of my breast bone that curves inward and pushes on my heart and lungs. I have chronic Strep infections (PANDAS/PANS) that cause heart inflammation. I have stenosis in my right ventricle because of multiple central lines placed for plasmapheresis. When my neurosurgeon came into my room and so calmly stated what he needed to do I didn’t think twice. The hope of the move gave me courage and faith. The surgery was a success.

Do I need my shunt here? Yes. I now have two working shunts. On calm and sunny days I still hear my brain shunt buzzing when I move positions, particularly from sitting to standing. On rainy days or when the pressure is changing more drastically, something that happens much less frequently here but is still a catalyst, I can feel it working overtime. I can also feel it in my heart. It cannot always keep up. I’ve a handful of days I needed to be in bed because of the pain and symptoms. If nothing else changed about my health except this one thing it would be enough.

The above poem describes the “conscious living of each day” my new home allows. It is a slow and careful movement through foreign or forgotten neuro pathways and literal paths too. The smallest thing can trigger the trauma and tears. Much of the reason I’ve been so still and quiet is to process and unpack the accumulated grief and suffering. But I am finally in a place where I can bury some of the hurt.

I catch myself laughing. Even out loud. I’ve stopped biting my cheeks. My face has relaxed from the constant furrow of pain in my brow. I walk past a mirror, and I see a woman living not just surviving. Ann Voskamp wrote, “Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don’t numb themselves to really living.” For oh so long I was necessarily numbing myself. Now I lift my face to the sun and listen to the strong beat of a heart that knows joy and pain and can celebrate them both equally. The rise and fall of my chest is a new song of praise. I don’t want to forget. My God wants me to remember so long as I tell the story rightly and point to the healer of the heart’s eye through which He is seen and glorified.

“Come and hear, all you who fear God; let me tell you what He has done for me.”–Psalm 66:16

(For those of you specifically interested in the other areas of healing I’ve found since moving here I will slowly continue unpacking them in future posts. My heart’s desire to invite you into a respite place in Tucson is perhaps the most real calling I’ve ever had. I’ve seen miracles. Nothing is impossible with Him. Stay tuned.)

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Feeling Forsaken. Knowing I’m Not. Moving West

by

“I have called to God and heard no answer,
I have seen the thick curtain drop, and sunlight die;
My voice has echoed back, a foolish voice,
The prayer restored intact to its silly source.
I have walked in darkness, He hung in it.
In all of my mines of night, He was there first;
In whatever dead tunnel I am lost, He finds me.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
From His perfect darkness a voice says, I have not.”–Chad Walsh

Light

Two weeks ago I sat on the North Carolina coast with the sun in my face, the clean ocean air filling my head and my heart and my bare feet grounded in the sand. I was without pain. It was the perfect and oh so rare cocktail of environment, weather and wellness gifted to me a few days during our family vacation. I didn’t take a minute for granted. I scribbled in my journal all the beautiful things that flow from the kind of hope born in pure light. Mary Oliver’s words echoed in the ebb and flow of the waves, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  

This is day seven of unspeakable suffering I don’t understand.

In the fall of 2013 I had my very first lumbar peritoneal shunt placed after several years of struggling with Intracranial Hypertension. Of all my pain, the brain pressure puts me in bed, holding my head, weeping and even wanting to die. I lose vision in my right eye and hearing in my right ear. On the worst days I am completely debilitated. I knew that shunts, both lumbar and ventricle, are not engineered well and are especially problematic in EDS patients, but I was desperate. The first LP shunt clogged quickly, and I had a revision in February, 2014.  A week after surgery I flew to Arizona to heal. I arrived being pushed in a wheelchair with a large wound just under my ribs where the device was replaced and incisions in my side and back where the tubing snaked around into my spinal cord. I left having hiked over a mile the last day there. It was the most well I’d felt since 2007.

Since, I’ve had another LP shunt revision and a VP shunt placed in my brain that needed revised last April. The brutal Ohio months of January and February were always a catalyst for failure. Escaping to Tucson became a way for me to get relief. Because of planning and executing my first Option EDS – the retreat in May I didn’t plan on traveling west this year, but my tell-tale symptoms of a clogged device escalated. Delaney and I took a last minute, emergency trip in February. My relief was instant. On the flight home we both wept.

The following weeks of drastic weather changes battered my brain. I was more scared than I’ve ever been. My vascular neurosurgeon moved from Virginia to Pennsylvania since my revision last spring. I reached out, and he had me come immediately. March 22nd Dan and I drove five hours to Hershey Medical Center. I was admitted through the ER, and he revised my shunt late that night. The device and tubing were clogged. The next morning Dan asked him how long he thought this one would last. He said maybe a year at best and next time he would have to place a shunt on the left side of my brain instead of the right. It’s too much cutting.  It’s stenosis in the arteries and ventricles. It’s trauma that cannot be healed anymore.  I’ve had six shunts in four years, and there is no real fix in sight.

With thirty staples in my head I returned to Tucson with my dear friend Janet. It was another unplanned trip. I spent my time there seriously considering what I’ve known I need to do to save my life. I looked at schools for the girls. I looked at real estate. I spent the few days imagining what moving there would look like.

Several weeks later, in early May, my family and I and my parents traveled to Tucson together. The girls visited their possible schools and shadowed students that may become their friends. We looked at short and long term housing options. We spent time exploring what we’ve known we have to do to save my life. We put an application in on an apartment even though we felt the multi-family environment may be unstable for my mast cell disorder. We took a step in faith.

The day before we left I received my insurance EOB for my most recent shunt revision surgery at Hershey. The cost is shocking. $145,566.16.

We can’t afford to move. We can’t afford not to.

We flew back into Cleveland on Sunday afternoon. A pressure system was bringing rain. I literally walked off the plane to an escalating headache. I cried. I sat on the baggage carousel and cried.

We can’t afford to move.  We can’t afford not to

In all the preparation for the retreat I also began to ready our home for sale. It’s complicated because this house is in my parent’s name. It was…is a miracle, and we are deeply rooted in these literal four walls. Dan began sending his resume to job opportunities in Tucson. I wanted to ask you all to pray, but I didn’t want to distract from the important work of the retreat. Dan had a Skype interview the Monday of the retreat week. It didn’t go well. He was distraught. I was not here. He became afraid. The girls were absorbing the weight of his emotions. I was experiencing the untold beauty of a calling fulfilled. It was exhausting and exhilarating. I flew home to a storm of doubt and backtracking. The expectation of a plan to relocate so quickly was not easy for Dan. He is a man of faithful doing. He has not hustled or sold himself even once during the last ten years. He’s sacrificed any personal ambition to care for our family. I did not fully realize the kind of inadequacy he was feeling about a job search. The girls and I met and prayed. We had a family meeting and removed the “deadline” date of the beginning of school in early August. I watched my husband reappear just a little. We leaned into our family beach vacation. While sitting on the beach I wrote an email canceling our lease which was to begin June 15th.

We flew back into Cleveland in pouring rain. My head felt like it would explode. It’s been hurting since. The past week has been a testing of everything I’ve said about not cutting my brain open again. I’ve tried every possible treatment. I went to the ER Saturday and asked for IV meds which only took an edge off the constant debilitating pressure. I’ve hid in my cool, dark room and cried out to my God. I’ve been in touch with my neurosurgeon who suggests a large volume lumbar puncture to remove fluid and provide some relief and also give information about a shunt failure. I would have to travel to Pennsylvania for this. I believe I am not supposed to have another surgery.

I received an email from the realtor in Tucson last night. The community we would love to live in is releasing their first lots. There is an opportunity to build a small home with a suite where family could stay or we could host EDS warriors who need to know there is a place they could heal and feel more well. This has been a dream of mine since I began traveling to Tucson. The retreat only reinforced this desire to minister to others in such an intimate and life changing way. In my desperation I wanted to delete the email. I couldn’t even get out of bed. How in the world would we ever make it to Tucson now?

I had a Toradol injection yesterday and began a medication that has helped in the past when my shunt has failed. I am trying to write this clunky post while I can.

My life doesn’t seem wild or precious at all. The long hours curled up in the dark feel like wasted time. What are my days worth?

I spent time with a wise counselor this morning. She has walked every step of this journey with my family and I for so many years. She’s seen the medical costs that could have bought a half dozen homes. She’s seen me heal and even blossom on trips to Arizona and regress when I return. She knows my complete devotion to and admiration for the man who has loved and served my family and I through a decade of doing the faithful and sacrificial next thing. She championed the purpose that grew from my pain and became Option EDS – the retreat. She understands this particular hurt is the one kind of suffering that brings me to the utter end of myself and makes me want to disappear. She believes I am supposed to stay. Today she reminded me of what’s been possible, because we’ve been vulnerable enough to admit we could never do this on our own and then humbly ASKED. This has been no easy thing. Especially for my Dan.

You all have been invested in our story from the very first blog post on Team Danica. You’ve prayed and encouraged and supported and loved us into miracles. This is big. We are ever grateful. I cannot even begin to imagine how God will do this new thing. But I’m asking you to pray. Plead with us for a way in the wilderness. I want the story to have some kind of restoration, celebration, land of milk and honey resolution here in this life.  It may not come.  But the changing of our hearts day by day and the healing of our eyes to really see Him and know Him is preparation for the eventual total healing of my body and our souls forever and ever.  This is Grace.  Our Hope is built on nothing less.

In my crying out today I echo the voice of the one who endured the ultimate suffering for me. We share the same Father who has a perfect plan for our good and His glory.

I feel forsaken. I am not.

I believe. Help my unbelief.

“For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen.”–Romans 11:36

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Dear God, (About Laney)

by

LaneyLookAZ

“Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands.”–Isaiah 43:19

Dear God,

I found a letter Delaney wrote to You. It was a gift, because all mamas wonder where their children’s hearts truly lie. I’m loving my girl in a more desperate way lately. Each day is one less I have with her across the hall. I question if I’ve loved her in the right ways, and if I’ve pointed her to You before anything else.

I’ve sat in this tiny corner of the world for so long now. She’s seen my faith in private ways. My open Bible in the morning. Music streaming about You. My knees on the floor at the bench where I go for the crying kind of praying. She’s seen my service to others through piles of letters waiting to be mailed or care packages sitting out until I get them just right. She’s listened to me take phone calls late at night from people I’ve never met, sharing our story, helping them take the next brave step in their own. She sees my eyes light up when I talk about the Option EDS retreat. She’s seen meals show up on days I could not feed her. She’s seen checks come in the mail from all over the world and understood they were Your provision for us through other’s hands and hearts. We haven’t been in church regularly. She doesn’t have the muscle memory of every Sunday worship and preaching. Instead we mostly gather around the living room and have “home church.” She says it’s one of the most special things about our family. I hope she knows the Body of Christ is as big as we’ve been loved, but the local gathering of believers is important and necessary too. I’ve failed her there. I’m sorry.

You’ve cared for her all those times I’ve packed my suitcase and went away. I always left her a letter to find. Surgery after surgery I wrote her as if I might not come back. I never wanted her to guess about how much I love her or how much peace she could find in You if it was time for me to go. You’ve given her a way of moving forward with joy even when things were so painfully stuck here at home. She’s seen me in unspeakable pain. She’s watched her sister suffer. She’s felt her daddy’s breaking heart for it all. And still she gets up and does life with a fierce expectation of good.

Lately I’ve felt the world pressing in on her. I’ve seen her scratch her head about people who call themselves by Your name but do and say things that look and feel so completely different than Jesus did. I’ve had to talk about nuclear war, sexual harassment and abuse, divorce and drugs. I don’t know if I’m getting any of it right. She is thinking about her future. I haven’t raised her to be looking for a husband or dreaming of having babies at fifteen. She knows my greatest calling has been in my role as a wife and a mother. I think this is enough. You’ve given her gifts. I tell her over and over again if she seeks You first all these things will be added unto her.

A few weeks ago I felt Delaney’s spirit hurting. Looking through her eyes I could see how small this cold and snowy street in Ohio seems. I was in so much pain. I was paralyzed with the fear of my brain shunt failing again. You made the way for us to travel to Arizona together. Just my girl and I. She fell in love with the desert. She could scarcely believe how happy and well I was when we were there. We spent every moment together, and it seemed to fill in empty spaces of time we thought we’d lost.

She talks about all this in the letter she wrote You. Moving our entire lives across the United States feels too scary. Four times I’ve left Ohio in February to find relief and heal. Four times I’ve come home knowing I could have a more well life in that place. But I was afraid. She believes us staying here. Me hurting like I am today. Me risking another invasive brain surgery. Me not being able to lift my head some days. Me biting my cheeks to try and hide the suffering. That it’s not the role of a martyr so she, Dan and Danica can have the better choice here. She believes what Dan has always said. She is only as well as I am. Why would I not take the risk to have the best life?

God, It’s true. I’m scared.

On our last hike through the saguaros we built an Ebenezer. “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” I believe You direct our paths through providence and provision. I know for sure with You all things are possible. I want Delaney to see You make the way in the wilderness. I want her to see You doing a new thing.

Give us the faith. Show us the way.

From You. Through You. To You. Glory forever.

Amen

Ebenezer LaneyandIAZ SaguaroShadows

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A Felt Risk. Good Gifts. Paying Attention

by

Fall Bookcase
“Did you ever imagine that what we call ‘vulnerability’ might just be the key to ongoing growth? In my experience, healthily vulnerable people use every occasion to expand, change, and grow. Yet it is a risky position to live undefended, in a kind of constant openness to the other—because it means others could sometimes actually wound us. Indeed, vulnera comes from the Latin for ‘to wound.’ But only if we take this risk do we also allow the opposite possibility: the other might also gift us, free us, and even love us. But it is a felt risk every time. Every time.”–Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance

I’m sitting in my favorite place in the world. It’s not the beach or the Shenandoah Valley. It’s not the Tucson mountains. It’s my worn “nest” chair in the corner of our little ranch in Uniontown, Ohio. It’s chilly today. I have the windows cracked and the screen is still on the open front door. I’m listening closely for the change in the bird songs. The cicadas are gone. The breeze in the leaves has a different tone as if they are saying a sweet farewell to one another before they let go. Five years ago God gave this home to us. Do you remember the miracle? So many of you prayed. It’s the longest Dan and I have ever lived in one place together. There is not a day I don’t utter gratitude for this sacred space. I follow the light from east to west. I know which plants will bloom first and where the cardinals will make their nests in the spring. I cherish the sound of the rain on the chimney flue. I love the old Magic Chef stove that bakes more evenly than any oven I’ve ever had before even though it doesn’t match our other appliances. The seasons change in the farmland around us. The corn is mostly harvested now and the fields feed the geese and birds beginning their journey’s south. Great is His faithfulness. Good gifts. I’m paying attention.

It’s almost time for the girls to get home from school. A dear friend began bringing them every day she can for me. It’s out of her way and takes a half an hour off her afternoon, but she does this thing that saves me anxiety and spoons. It protects my spine and keeps my children and others safe on the days I truly shouldn’t be driving. Last week she grabbed us Panera for dinner on a day we would have eaten cereal. Good Gifts. I’m paying attention.

Lying beside me on the side table is beautiful hand designed letter from a friend who has followed our story since we were on a book launch together. She and I finally met in real life at a retreat this spring. Their family has been praying for us. Over the past decade of hard I thought I’d seen specific kindness in almost every form. Their love is fresh. Dan has been working any overtime he can to help with our always challenging financial situation. This friend’s husband is a physical therapist. He committed to taking at least one extra client a week in solidarity with Dan. They have been sending what he makes to us to help with our bills. Good gifts. I’m paying attention.

I scroll through the texts on my phone to find the one I received Friday from the same friend who flew from Denver to Maryland to drive me around to my most recent appointments. It says, “Booked November 13-17th. Woohoo!” I was confused. I thought maybe she meant their condo at Winter Park. No, she booked plane tickets to come be with me in the hotel after my surgery. I’ve been most frantic about being alone after my operation. Dan has to leave Sunday, the 12th, to return home to work. My surgery instructions clearly say I need a caregiver four weeks post-op. The first few days after discharge are rough because of pain and wound care. I was worried about coordinating rides to my appointment where I’ll be cleared to come home and to the airport, my desired mode of transportation back to Ohio, while trying to keep my spine straight and juggle my things. She will be there to help me. This friend who just fought Lymphoma, who works full time, who has young children with busy lives is the answer to my prayer, “Please, God, I don’t want to do this alone.” The sacrifice is not only hers but her husband’s as well. He will step in once again and hold the fort down while she shows up for me. Good gifts. I’m paying attention.

I spent a few weeks after finding out about my re-tethered spinal cord and needed surgery in grief and shut myself down emotionally. I needed to move through Danica’s sadness about having to adopt Rolo out to a new family and throw myself into making her tenth birthday a kind of redemption for this huge loss I felt personally responsible for. The birthday surprise would not have been possible without the great love of a friend and her daughter who took Danica and I to Columbus for an overnight American Girl celebration. I pushed my body to make a long ago planned trip to Jacksonville, Florida with my family to attend my little sister’s wedding. It was good, but I paid dearly. I had a kind of breakdown last week when I returned. I didn’t move from the bed Tuesday. I had a video session with my counselor, and everything I’d been holding in came rushing out. I hadn’t shared my fear, my sadness or my shame with anyone. Another surgery is incredibly painful for the people I love. I especially try to protect Dan and the girls from how close I am at times to just quitting this fight. My support system has shifted. People I relied on previously have been called away to care for others in their lives. I don’t want to lay even a bit of this burden on their already full plates. I most of all didn’t want to share specifics about the money we need for this necessary surgery to even happen. I want to give everything back tenfold and never receive again. I want my husband to never feel the guilt he experiences when someone else meets our needs, because he has done all he can, and it feels like it’s not enough.

The kind of wound that comes from being vulnerable hurts even when good blossoms from it. My wise counselor encouraged me to once again take the risk to be loved. She reminded me how continuing to tell our story here, allowing provision to come and then paying attention and telling about the gifts, is the place where we change and grow and invite others into this exquisite dance of caring for one another. She reminded me of my ministry of prayer and #pentopaper and beautiful dream of the EDS beach retreat being realized. She reminded me I am giving too.

The girls had off school last Friday. Delaney and I were listening to Adele. She was singing passionately about “Turning Tables.” Laney said she couldn’t imagine a relationship making her feel that desperate or sad. This led into a conversation about the great risk of giving your heart and mind and body to another human being with very little control over their response and their ultimate decision day after day to stay or turn around and leave you. Knowing this we can decide to protect ourselves by never risking, but we would miss the gift, the freedom and the love possible because of vulnerability.

As we talked I realized the writing I do here is a long and meaningful relationship with those of you who’ve invested in us. Shutting down now or becoming informational instead of baring my heart, because it feels too risky, is a little like walking away from the great love of God through you.

I’m ever humbled. I’m opening again to allow the hurt and the healing of this next surgery to expand, change and grow my family and I. I’m stepping out hoping someone shows up and just maybe they will receive a gift through our fleshy bare and trusting souls. Good gifts. I’m paying attention.

(If you would like to donate towards my surgery deposit and the two weeks of hotels in Maryland you can give here and through the gofundme link on the right of this blog. We trust and wait and suffer gratitude.)

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Kingdom Currency. Where Life is Found

by

FamilyCorolla

“We didn’t need our own miracle to believe that God can perform miracles. His word already speaks this truth. We needed His perspective, sown into our inner understanding of Him, to be able not just to witness but to receive the real miracle He was working. Again, it was looking at Him, long and rightly, that was performing miracles. Adoration makes walking with God more than just reacting to a series of externals. Adoration calls the circumstances, no matter how high or low, into proper submission in our hearts. Adoration roots us in a reality that no amount of pain and no amount of blessing can shake. Adoration steadies us. It repatterns our thinking. It centers our lives around a God-man instead of forever trying to make sense of the God-man through the lenses of our circumstances. Adoration aligns us under Him. This is the place where life is found.“–Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God In All Things

I am sitting in my bed with pillows propped around my braced neck and crumbling spine. I’m in pain. I’m in the kind of pain that makes me bite the insides of my cheeks raw and cry without warning. I’ve done basic hygiene and made my bed. I wrote a note to a friend who is struggling. I answered one text. I drove Delaney to Sable Creek golf course, there and back home, twice today. Driving is the hardest thing I do. I’m done. That’s all I have to give. It’s 4 pm. In my body’s demand to completely stop my mind begins to race.

The tree company arrived next door early this morning. They are still working. The sound of the vibrating machines is almost more than I can bear. Every synapse is firing. I’m so overstimulated I might go mad. It’s the third time our neighbors have had tree work done this summer. Both our homes back to woods. We have one towering dead tree on the hill behind our house. Dangerous branches have fallen during recent storms. It threatens us, but we can’t imagine a time we will have the money it would take to have it removed. We haven’t been sitting on our deck this summer because we can’t bear to look at the dead tree or the bank leading to it without mulch for the second year in a row. We haven’t grilled once because the propane tank is empty, and we don’t allocate the money to refill it. The ‘replace filter’ light is blinking on the thermostat. I’ve added it to a list of escalated things I need to rearrange the budget for. Delaney’s bedroom window is taped shut and literally falling out of the front of the house. We planned to replace it this spring, but there was my shunt surgery, and it never happened. We should not live in a home we cannot maintain. This little ranch rescued me. It saved our family in a hundred ways after living in my parent’s basement. It was a miracle, but it was a stretch. Five years later we are worn thin.

I was hospitalized two weeks ago. After finding out I was in serious adrenal crisis, most likely since my April shunt revision, I began taking a medication I’d used before after surgeries for Addison type symptoms. For some reason it began causing horrific peripheral neuropathy in my legs. I suffered in writhing pain for days until I surrendered to the fact I needed medical attention. The sixteen hours in the emergency room and days admitted there were traumatic. They are always traumatic. Only my EDS family can fully understand how hard we have to fight and how vigilant we have to be with every interaction. With all due respect to the wonderful men and women who give care in these settings, it is a brutal exchange for those of us with a rare disorder, a rap sheet of surgeries and accompanying conditions and a scary list of medications. I was released in less pain but completely broken. I am waiting for an endocrinology appointment while barely dragging my body around.

In counseling I tried to explain this never ending life of ‘fight or flight.’ The financial part of this is as real as the physical. We cannot catch our breath or ‘rest and digest.’ We have reached a point where we must take stock of what we’ve lost, what is owed and seriously consider if this survival mode is sustainable any longer. If it’s not, where do we go?  What do we do?

I quit writing because my old, hand-me-down laptop crashed and died. A new one showed up on my doorstep just as I was needing to create a website for an exciting dream coming true. (I can’t wait to tell you all about it!) Delaney needed golf clubs to begin practice for school and a family we hardly know from Cleveland drove some down to her. Enough. My parents took Danica to shop for her school supplies. A friend texted me to let me know she mailed a gift card to help with some of the other things the girls need. Enough.  At Rolo’s first vet visit last week we found out he has a few health issues. I cried and hyperventilated as she went down the list of medication he needs. Checking out, I had twenty dollars left over after paying the staggering amount we owed. Dan was getting paid the next morning. Enough. A gofundme donation came through as a medical bill escalated in collections, and I could pay it. Enough.   

Our God has been ever faithful. He’s always provided enough. But what if His ‘Dayenu’ is a different currency? Would I recognize this kind of wealth? Would I call it abundance? What if enough is only ever found in knowing and adoring Him?

We had a family ‘come to Jesus’ meeting last weekend. We looked our girls in the eyes and talked to them as straight as we always have. We tempered the reminder of our reality with the goodness of God through the love of so many. We assured them we would be okay, but let them know we are at a crossroads that requires input from each one of us and a lot of prayer. Somehow we came to the question about choosing. If I could choose a fresh slate…all our debts forgiven…a new start for my family or complete healing for myself which would I pick. I answered too quickly. I would choose to set them free. I would take the pressure off Dan. I would have a college savings account for Delaney. I would hear the phone ring and check the mailbox without fear and panic. Even as I thought it I realized how flawed the question was. Either answer would be wrong, because this place of perceived lack is exactly where God wants each of us to be. He is working a thousand things we cannot see in my suffering and in our need. These are fashioned for Dan, Laney, Danica and I in a perfect way to train our hearts to know Him and depend on Him alone. He has been glorified in my pain and in the pouring out of provision over and over again. We are rich in Kingdom currency.

I’ve been living in the Psalms this year, and they have slowly retrained the way I see and know God’s character. I visit them first thing when I rise. Dan makes me coffee. I sit in my nest chair and open my Bible to a book of songs and poetry about God. Tim Keller’s little gem of a book, The Songs of Jesus, has guided me. Several days ago I was in Psalm 86:1-7:

“Hear me, LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God; have mercy on me, LORD, for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to your servant, LORD, for I put my trust in you. You, LORD, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you. Hear my prayer, LORD; listen to my cry for mercy. When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me.”

Tim ends the devotional with this prayer:

Lord, I am constantly asking You to give me Your strength, to change me and heal me. But nothing is more empowering and life transforming than simply adoring You. Inject the truth of Your wisdom, love, holiness and sovereignty down deep in my heart until it catches fire there and makes me new. Amen.

I’m grinding my teeth as I type. I have to focus to relax my face and my mouth. My neck literally twitches in spasms. It’s easy to stay fixated here, because my pain screams at me. This is when I call out in distress and believe He will answer me, because I know who He is. He is forgiving and good and abounding in love. And He is enough. His Grace is enough. And even this is Grace.  

Kingdom currency.

This is where life is found.  

(Will you please pray for us. We feel pressed to make some kind of change. We need wisdom to know each next thing. Please pray for my health. I have chemo next Tuesday, and I will see the new endocrinologist in several weeks. Until then I have to keep functioning. Please pray for Danica. Her scan and neurosurgeon appointment in Baltimore are on the 15th. Her neck has been hurting her. I rubbed it last night as I tucked her in and felt the all too familiar lumps of knotted muscle around her hardware. She is so hopeful for most of her restrictions to be lifted before school begins. Something in my gut says this is too soon. It will break her heart. Please pray for Dan. I see him crumbling in a new way. We have always stayed close in our hard, but this feels different, and we are both struggling to connect. Please pray for Delaney. Oh how I wish I could make this different for her somehow. Her compassion and empathy has grown. We talked candidly about her personal faith yesterday, and it reminded me again of all the soul business God is doing in what looks like a hot mess from the outside. I have to trust Him with the most precious currency, the hearts and lives of my husband and girls. Our Hope remains.)

Photo by Audra at 12th Street Portraits

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When All Else Falls Away. A Team Danica-Monica Update

by

Winterlight

There is a poem titled “The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. (Totally made up name or hippie parents!) I have loved it since college and lean into the last few stanzas over and over again,

” . . .It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away. . .”

Everything is packed. Danica is tucked in her own cozy bed for the last time before we step out the door into the unknown. We prayed with our fingers laced together and tears running down my face. “God, bring us back here to this place.” I told her how I take a mental picture of my bed and my room in my sanctuary, and it becomes the thing I fight to get back to when I am in the hospital or hotel after. When I think I’m too far into the pain or the trauma of all these trips and all these surgeries I think of home.

I am weary and bruised to the bone. My recovery has been slow. I know the stress of the fire we are headed into is part of the reason my body has resisted rest and healing. My cervical spine continues to spasm, but the searing pain is below my fusion rod in the thoracic spine. It is learning to hold my body and sustain all the movement I need.

Our entire family has moved back to survival mode. This is something we know. We understand these relationships are built on something stronger than good days. We have loved one another through very hard times before. As we move towards Danica’s surgery on Wednesday morning EVERYTHING ELSE FALLS AWAY. What will sustain us THIS time?

I read these beloved verses from Deuteronomy this morning. “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now CHOOSE LIFE, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life.” My heart was hard and there was a root of bitterness. This powerful message dug it up in one big chunk and then watered my parched soul. We will keep choosing life. He will sustain us.

Your outpouring of love is part of His plan and purpose in our lives. Thank you. Your cards and gifts and continued donations to our family are sometimes the way He reminds us, especially on really bad days, He has not turned away. Your faithfulness mirrors His faithfulness.

We are humbly asking you to be prayer warriors for us. Please pray for travel mercies tomorrow as Dan and Laney drive the turnpike to DC. Danica and I will fly direct from Akron-Canton to Reagan. Our hope is the easy security, no luggage, close gate and one hour flight will save spoons and cause much less pain for Danica and I’s necks. Please pray for our last night together as a family for quite some time in the hotel in Baltimore. Please pray for Dan and I to grow closer not apart. We both have a hard edge about us today. It’s difficult to be so wounded and know we are heading to allow wounding to our daughter and not lash out or pull back. Please pray for Delaney as she visits family, comes to see Danica post-op and returns here while we stay on. She has such a brave face, but we’ve been leaving her and sending her away since she was four years old while I was fighting to give life to Danica. It’s a painful reality, and she’s conditioned her heart to protect it.

I checked my email tonight. I found the promotions tab which was emptied yesterday full of 405 Black Friday sales sent today. What if there is nothing in this whole wide world that matters except your little girl making it to one of the best hospitals and two of the best neurosurgeons in the world and surviving a rare and difficult brain and spinal surgery? What if all you want is to see her through this…out of danger and out of pain…back in her bubblegum pink room with “Sleep Sound in Jesus” playing her to a peaceful and comfortable sleep? This is when ALL ELSE FALLS AWAY.

I’m going to crawl into my bed now. I’ll play my hope playlist and try to sleep a little. I’ll try to pray a little too.

“Father God, Love us as a mother loves her children. Pull us to your breast and give us comfort and rest. Hold our hands and our hearts in this hard and bring us through the gauntlet to give you praise and glory. By Him. For Him. Through Him. Amen.”

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Morning Prayers. For Dan. A Team Danica-Monica Update

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Dance2

I love to slip out of bed when my husband and girls are still sleeping. Tucked under warm covers with their precious heads cradled in soft pillows, I watch their bodies rise and fall with sweet gift of breath. I see their faces relaxed in perfect peace. I quietly sneak out to a mostly dark living room and settle in my nest chair with a steaming cup of coffee. My chunky throw is wrapped around my legs, and my dear Twixie pup is snuggled beside me. I watch the night become day as light slowly rises in the east and in perfect quiet I pray.

I pray for my Dan, lover of my heart, my mind and my broken body. He cherishes me like Christ does the church. He is the man who says, “Whatever is happening to you is happening to me.” When I returned home from my Maryland trip last week we sat on our bed looking at the calendar trying to make sense of the days to come purely from a logistics stand point. At first it seemed it was truly impossible for him to come to Maryland this week with me. He wept. He said, “You know you’ve reached rock bottom and are a failure as a man when you cannot be there when your wife goes into major surgery.” Many times before we’ve made Dan staying here with the girls the priority. He needs to work. The girls need continuity and the comfort of one parent being present with them. Now, more than ever, it is difficult to leave Danica. The situation with her neck is precarious, and she fell and fractured her wrist and elbow last Saturday. There is something about this particular operation, the bigness of it and my own anxiety, that makes Dan want to be there more than usual. We’ve made a plan. Dan will drive me to Maryland Tuesday and be there forty-eight hours to make sure I come out of surgery okay, and then he will rush home to Ohio. Yesterday, I was sitting here in my usual place of morning ritual, and he brought me a #pentopaper card. He knows I’ve been doubting the value of fighting any more. He reminded me of my own vows. “If I do nothing else but love Dan, Delaney and Danica well it will be ENOUGH.” He reminded me of the deepest parts of myself, my love for others and my good God that transcend this brokenness.

Father God, If there was no other evidence of Grace in this life, the abiding love of my husband Dan would have me completely convinced. You see how he is hurting. You know the shame he feels when we once again have to beg others for provision, as if any family, even a wealthy family, could have carried such a heavy financial weight for this long. Encourage his heart by each gift of support. Help him to find joy in the love we continue to receive. Help him to know his wife and children, those who are giving and especially You do not see him as inadequate in this regard. Please give him strength in the days and weeks to come. He is a servant leader in our home. Help him know the groceries and the laundry, the cleaning and the yard work and the care he provides the girls and I are not small things. They are a living sacrifice. Protect his body from illness. Please give him mental and emotional strength to move through the drive to Maryland, the long waiting during my surgery, the seeing me in such a wounded and pain filled state, the hard drive home alone and the many days here working and loving on our girls while I am away. Help him know for sure You love him and have plans for a future and a hope. Amen.

Dave Matthew’s “Steady as We Go” is one of the love songs on our life playlist we slow dance to in hard times. It is exactly the way my Dan loves me.

I’m pushing over the next forty-eight hours to do all the things a momma does before she leaves her family for two weeks compounded by the fact I will be in great pain and recovering when I return. We have exactly six weeks between my Wednesday, October 19th surgery at Doctors Community Hopital in Lanham Maryland and Danica’s Wednesday, November 30th surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore Maryland.

We are grateful for your great love for us. It is God making a way. Many of you have asked how you can specifically help in other ways. There are needs. After my surgery I will form a private facebook page where we can post how and when we need help and you can respond in kind.

Our Hope remains.

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