This Kid of Ours is 9

God gave us this child 9 years ago and smiled the very biggest smile He could muster as the cradle care family handed him to us.  He knew what was in store for our son and in turn for us as his parents.  He knew how our bald, egg shaped headed baby would bring out the advocate fire in me and fierce patience and love in both of us. He knew how our son would help shape our faith and cause us to pause in awe at the wonder that is his little brain.  He knew that my world would change over and over and over as a direct result of feeble attempts at being his very best mom.  He knew how I would question myself as his figure head and turn to Him for direction and peace.  He knew how those around our son would be blessed by his presence and how people near and far would laugh and clench their hearts as they read stories from his old soul and deeply questioning mind.  God knew what he was doing with this quirky, joy filled, tenderhearted, unorganized, Jesus loving, well intentioned, distracted, musically gifted, giggling, pondering, honest as Abe himself, literal, inventive, ticking, irresistibly lovable son of ours.  He's Gods first and ours second and that combination is the best gift we could ask for.  Happy birthday non-so-little man.  We couldn't be more proud of you.

On his birthday, Dude would like to pose a few of his latest questions from the "Dude's Journal of Questions" for all of you to ponder.

1. How is God just there if no one created him?
2. How do satellites project images that end up on the tv?
3. Why do we have an appendix if we don't really need it?
4. How do people know where to mine for diamonds?  Do they look for lava first?
5. How did evil enter Satan if there was no sin yet?

You're welcome and good luck.  This is every day for us.

 

On the Cross...

As Easter approaches, I can't help but rejoice and grieve over the life giving reasons this holiday exists.  I want nothing more than to put myself on a temporary pause until Easter Sunday has passed because it would take that amount of quiet to truly grasp what it all means.  For me.  For my marriage.  For my kids.  For the screaming out in pain and flinching world.  For the cancer invading people's insides everywhere we turn.  For those leaning in to learn more about this concept of Christianity.  Easter is to be cherished and lamented in deep ways from deep, often dark places.  The Easter bunny can't stir up the heaviness of sin and resurrection and brokenness and healing.  Candy filled eggs don't speak to nails through hands, spit on his face and boulders rolled away from his tomb.  When I need to wrap my mind around concepts as intricate as Easter, I turn to my woman crush, Ann Voskamp's, blog... Anne says... And our God is not a God to merely believe, but to experience, not to only believe in, but be held by. A God who not only breaks for you — but breaks with you, a God to not only have creeds about —  but to have communion with, a God who not only who dies for you, but who cries with you, the God who touches you and binds you and blesses you and heals you and re-members you because He let Himself be dismembered and He is the God we not only believe in— but we know. We know – know beyond a shadow of doubt, death or despair. He has touched our tears. He has cupped our broken hearts with His scars. He has whispered to the howl, “I know, I know. And I’ve come to begin the making of all things new.” We believe. Because we know. He knows our grief. We know His goodness. And the truth is – we don’t need an explanation from God like we need an experience of God. And that is exactly what we get. We get that experience of God when He stretches open His arms on that Cross and cries, “For you. For all your regrets and for all your impossibles, for all that will never be and for all that once was, for all that you can’t make right and for all that you got wrong, for your Judas failures and your Peter denials and your Lazarus griefs, I offer to take the nails, the sharp edge of everything, and offer you Myself because I want you, to take you, you in your wild grief, you in your anger and your disappointment and your wounds and your not-yet-there, you, just as you are, not some improved version of you, but you – I came for you, to hold you, to carry you, to literally save you.”

Girls Trip

My "little" bro, KyKy, is having a baby.  Well, technically he isn't.  Our sassy Becky is doing all the work and because of this, my mom, Kira and I threw her a happy baby shower this past weekend in Chicago.  Squirt and I boarded a plane and made a long girls weekend out of it, which was a first for us.  It was fantastic on all fronts.  The boys did splendidly back home doing boys stuff and Squirt ate up her solo attention with Nana and Papa.  The shower was a lovely way to spoil Becky and baby Kwas - we can't wait to meet this little dude.  I don't suspect any additional Kwas grandmonkeys will enter the family through us or my older brother, so all eyes are now on Kyle and Becky.  No pressure guys.    

 Nana has 3x the amount of toy options as we do in our own home.  Most of them used to belong to me.  Sorry kids, as soon as you're done with a gadget, it's outta here.  Your kids are out of luck.

These two shots are just serving as proof that I was indeed present on this trip.  The top is a display of our happiness that Midway Airport added an actual seating option near our luggage claim area.  Big stuff.  The bottom is my high school home economics teacher,  Mrs. Van Loh.  My fondest memory involving this sweet lady is when she ran me off the road and almost killed me.  We reflect on this incident quite often.

 Oh sweet loves.

We spent Monday downtown in Lincoln Park, hanging with our cousins and Aunt Kira.  Oh how we wish we could do this regularly.  Aunt Kira is tons o fun.

 Grandma V made room in her schedule to join us for an impromptu lunch downtown and a very quick tour of her office overlooking Michigan Avenue.  My old stomping grounds for a year or so of my adult life.  Our visit very appropriately concluded with a video message from crazy Grandpa Marc.   

 Hudson James.

Southwest Airlines cancelled our flight home due to the threat of a snowstorm that never showed up, so we got stuck another day.  Nana didn't quite mind I don't think.  After a solid month of travel and not having one weekend together as a family, we're soaking in this first March weekend being home and together.  Happy March!

Endo

It's national Endometriosis month.  My guess is most people have no clue what Endometriosis is and rightly so.  It's not a visible ailment and it involves periods, which isn't a common dinner table topic. Well, at most dinner tables it's not.  It's fair game over here.  Endo, my pet name for the disease, has shaped our world in a sense.  It has dictated my fertility, my emotions, the medication I take, my intestinal health, the doctors I see...it's a boss of sorts.  A pain in the ass boss.  We all have a boss though, right? Very few of us walk through life without some internal foreigner dictating a portion of their world.  Some might seem easier to manage than others, but we all struggle with uninvited guests.  Mine is Endo and I would like to take this opportunity to recognize her for exactly what she is.  A disgusting, bloody invader who is so ingrained in who I am that I can't imagine life without her. Some days I deeply appreciate her dwelling in me and consider her a blessing, and others I want to void her existence outright.  She stays dormant quite often and then decides to have a disco dance party inside of my organs.  She's unpredictable and bi-polar most often.

If you're interested in learning exactly what Endometriosis is, feel free to click HERE to get enlightened.  It aint pretty, but it's definitely interesting.  Without going into a lot of detail, endo occurs when blood escapes surrounding your organs instead of flowing out as it should.  This causes an assortment of little gems, depending on where those growths decide to park.  For me, they've landed on my urinary tract, causing UTI's, on my Fallopian tubes, causing a blockade for Tim's swimmers to get through, on my appendix, causing acute appendicitis, on my upper intestines, causing pretty much a lifetime of intestinal struggles and inconsistencies....you get the picture.  None of this is life threatening - it's extremely rare that these growths are cancerous - it's just a giant pain in the arse and involves a lot of symptom management.  And of course there's the fertility piece.  That's a big one, but I've worked through that piece and I have my beautiful monkeys.  Thus the blessing aspect of my Endo.

1 in 10 women struggle with Endo and many have no idea it exists in them.  Unless you go under the knife, there's not way to diagnose it.  And for many women, they assume the pain and discomfort they feel is a typical reaction to having a period.  It's not like any of us want to climb 14ers when Flicka arrives - it's generally a gloomy couple of days.  Unless you're trying to get pregnant and are having a hard time or there's a family history (which there was in my case), docs won't always think to scope your insides for a cause.  Luckily for me they did and two surgeries later, I know exactly what goes on inside of my jacked up body.  A lot of disco dancing.

The latest in my world of Endo management is a new found discovery of a nodule in my upper intestine, which my new and detailed doctor discovered studying my charts.  Apparently my last doc didn't clue me into just how much disease he found on my intestines and IN my intestines.  He notes how he brought a general surgeon in to consult on these findings and they decided that it wasn't worth operating on back then but might become more of an issue in time.  I had no idea.  He just told me I was stage 4 and called it a day.  Thanks Doc.  This is quite enlightening to my daily intensifying struggle to maintain a healthy intestinal life.  It puts it all in a shiny new light and makes me feel less crazy.  But now what?  Well, we start with a GI specialist who can guide us down the path of determining what exactly this little nodule (it's a cute word isn't it?) is and if it's worth doing anything about.  The growths outside the intestinal walls aren't likely to be dealt with as excising them could perforate holes in my walls, forcing me to live with a colostomy bag.  NO THANK YOU.  We'll let them continue dancing as these see fit.

In addition to the GI doc, we're going to mimic menopause yet again and inject drugs into my backside in at attempt to stop the dance party and put those growths to sleep.  Luckily for Tim, they now accessorize the menopausal hormones with a drug that will hopefully keep the hot flashes and mood swings at bay.  This magic pill didn't exist the first time I went through this treatment, which was a real treat for my college counterparts and my new found boyfriend, Tim.  Hot flashing in the middle of a Michigan winter was a conflict for my 19 year old self.  Not something you can explain away easily to your classmates as you drip sweat all over your desk and break out in tears when your pen runs out of ink.  We're super excited about going through this circus again.

Every case of Endo looks and feels unique.  Some women are in so much pain they do a complete hysterectomy at very young ages, which isn't an option I'm willing to consider at this point.  I fear the emotional ramifications of that choice and can't put my husband through more emotional torture than I already inflict on him in my uterus baring state.  Some women grow tumors the size of footballs that need to be surgically removed.  I know a few of those women.  Most of us just deal and handle the internal dance parties in our own ways and manage the symptoms best we can with a little help from our doctor friends.  I'm grateful I just found a doctor who cares enough about my health and not just trying to get me pregnant to take me on.  That's not easy to find unfortunately.  Baby making is a lucrative business.  Maintaining women's overall health isn't.  Thank God for docs who care more about the latter.

I think that's all I have for today on this subject.  I had to give Endo it's spotlight this month and I promise not to talk about it again until next year.  Happy weekend.      

                A powerful clip on topic...