Ultrasound, but not the fun kind.

I had my ultrasound today and to my eye everything looks just about the same as it did 2 months ago when I had my first one. The gallstone is still there, still round, still rolling around inside of me making me say ouch. The report will go to my doctor on Monday, so it will be interesting to see what she will suggest.

In Sickness

Having a gallstone is no fun at all, in fact, it downright sucks. Spent this morning having fun with Anya at speech therapy, and the afternoon in the doctor's office talking about my options. Ultrasound is scheduled for tomorrow to check on my little round friend and see if it's moved or grown or what.

Finally, Good News!

Are you ready for it?

I GOT A JOB!

I feel very relived, and at the same time, nervous. I haven't worked full time as an employee for 7 years. So it's going to be a big adjustment, both for me and for the fam. But it's worth it. I'll be getting a pay check which we very much need, and I think it will be good for us to switch roles for a while, even though it's not what either of us had in mind.

To start out it will be part-time (about 25-30 hours a week) but it will become a full-time position within a few months. So maybe that will give us a chance to ease into it. I start Monday! EEEEEE!

Funny thing, I worked for this company 10 years ago for 7 months. I almost didn't send them my resume because I was never told why I was laid off. So I guess it's a good thing I got up my courage and sent it anyway! I still don't know what happened 10 years ago, and neither do they since nothing was written in my file, so I guess that's good!

When I got home from the interview/job offer this morning, we had letters in our mail box from Workman's Comp. And...

...

He's been denied again.

*SIGH*

I really have an idea of why some people have gone on rampages. Like, with guns and stuff.

It's SO frustrating!!!

But on a good note, he was approved for long-term disability through his work! Which means 12 months of health insurance and an actual regular pay check for 70% of his normal wage. HURRAY! This has lifted a gigantic weight off our shoulders!!!

So we're going to be fine.

Really.

Not that we thought we wouldn't be.

Well, maybe a little.

Anyway, for you lovely people who are still following this blog even though I haven't written much at all this year, I really appreciate you. Thank you for sticking with me even though I haven't been around much. In an effort to actually post here on a regular basis I think I'm going to do something a bit different. My new goal is to write 3 sentences a day. Just 3, should be easy, right? It will be good for me, to return to sense of routine with my daily postings, and at the same time not overwhelm myself or push myself to do more than I can handle. So, that's what you can expect from me from here on out, hopefully it'll result in more concise regularity.

Such Is Life

I haven't updated my blog in forever, so I thought I should, and then I thought, "But my life pretty much sucks, who would want to read that??" So I didn't. And then life started to suck even more, and more, and more. And now it's gotten to the point where I can't even put it all into words. I just don't have words. It's too vast.

How can one quickly sum up the incidents of a life that lead to this place? The place where sorrow and happiness meet. Where emotions run so high and so complicated that thinking about it makes you want to cry and smile at the same time. I have no idea. But maybe trying will help somehow, although I'm skeptical that's even possible.

To catch you up to speed, Workman's Comp denied Hubs' surgery back in April. Since then we've been waiting for doctors and lawyers and insurance reps to get their paperwork ducks in a row. We're still waiting, and praying, and hoping for the best. In the meantime Hubs hasn't been working. We're living on savings (thank God we have it!) and praying we won't have to much longer.

In the midst of this waiting, our 24 year old niece passed away on June 19th. We're devastated. I could write a whole post simply about this incident, but I'm not sure I could bear it. Let's just say, no one expects their 24 year old daughter to go asleep one night and simply not wake up the next morning. Alisha was a sweet bright light in our family, we loved her dearly, and miss her terribly.

We drove to California for a party in her honor, stayed for a week or so, went to Disneyland with Hubs' family (Who does these things? We do apparently. Although I'm sure Alisha would have approved.) and came home. A grueling 16 hour drive home, but hey, who's counting?

Our dogs were sick the whole time we were gone, and although we had excellent neighbors caring for them, our house was a poopy barfy mess when we arrived and we spent the following 6 hours cleaning and sanitizing. And then we fell down and slept like rocks.

We also came home to some scary letters from Hubs' work and workman's comp, and had to wait for 2 weeks for our lawyer to get home from his vacation before we knew what it all meant. Basically, they can't fire Hubs, but they can stop paying for his health insurance and force us to pay for Cobra. We learned this on our anniversary this week. Happy Anniversary to us! Eight years, and we're still chugging along. At our Anniversary dinner last night, in the same spot where we had our wedding reception, we decided that I need to start looking for a job. It's not what either of us had planned, but we gotta stay solvent somehow.

To top it all off, I found out yesterday that I have a gallstone. I had the ultrasound yesterday morning, and I am waiting to hear from my doctor about whether or not she'll recommend surgery.

Truthfully, we're pretty scared and sad. We're not sure where this road is leading but it sure seems like it's not going to a good place.

The bright spot of course, is our girls. Without them we'd be wallowing in self-pity right about now. Instead, we're having so much fun with them! They're at such an excellent age right now, learning new things all the time, excited about such simple pleasures, and constantly saying things to crack is up. Laughter really is good medicine. Amen!

Interesting Truth

*A conversation between me and my mom*

Me: I've learned an interesting truth. That as my kids grow so do my arm muscles!

Mom: *grins* Wanna know another interesting truth?

Me: Sure!

Mom: So does your heart.

The Birds of the Air

Today my yard is flush with fledgling birds. I feel a kinship with their parents, each with a squawking baby to feed. Often there is only one parent (I can only assume it's the mother) with two or three little ones following behind, each with their mouths open demanding their next meal. "Feed me! Feed me!," they say with gusto.

And then I inspected my freshly planted garden, and sure enough, they had already snacked on my bean sprouts. I growled as I tried to salvage the few with roots, carefully poking them back into the dirt.

Obviously, I'm just an instrument of God for their survival. Doing my part to feed the starling population. Begrudgingly.

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? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Matthew 6:26-27

Soul Comfort

"As the deer pants for water so my soul longs for you O, God." Psalms 42:1

Thanks to Amy Grant and Summer Bible School, it was one of the first verses I learned as a child. Repeat it, sing it, enough times and it tends to loose some of it's meaning. That as we have a need for water, the beverage that sustains life in all living creatures, we have an equally strong need for God. Without Him, we would die. And spiritually speaking, as we stray we experience spiritual and emotional death.

During hard times it's easy to forget. It's so easy to get caught up in routine. To rely on our own efforts to succeed (whatever that means). To accomplish items on our 'to do' lists, and then sit back and think, "Look what I did! I'm not doing half bad. In fact, look at all the stuff I got done today. I'm pretty awesome! Yay me!" Or just the opposite, to give up because we think we're not good enough. That it's better to avoid failure and just not try at all. Either way what we're really saying is, "Thanks God, but no thanks. I'll just take it from here. I've made it this far without your help, and I'm sure I'll make it through tomorrow just fine too."

Except, that God doesn't want us to be "just fine". He wants us to be MAGNIFICENT! And being magnificent requires us to rely on Him rather than our own efforts. Such magnificence requires just one thing, regular drinks of Living Water.

As most of you know, we've been going through a hard time. A very discouraging time. Every day passes, while we wait for miracles. So far, we haven't received any definitive answers, so we wait. And wait some more. Most of the time we spend trying to distract ourselves from all this waiting. We watch TV, we play computer games, we scour the internet for useless tidbits of info, and lately since the weather has been nice I've been outside gardening. But it's really just to forget. To pretend that what's happening isn't really happening.

And today something interesting happened...

I was thinking about back when I was in high school choir, so I did some searches on YouTube looking for songs we used to sing. Seems pretty harmless, right? Well, obviously God can work even within our time wasting because I came across one of my favorites, Sicut cervus by Palestrina. Within the first few bars I had a huge lump in my throat, and by the end I had tears. It's so hauntingly beautiful, the notes so beautifully express such longing. It aches with love. And so I wondered, because 14 years post high school I certainly don't remember, what does it mean? So I did another search and found this. "As the deer longs for springs of water, so my soul longs for you O, God."

Thank you, God. For speaking love into my life when I least expect it. For reminding me that you didn't design us to make it on our own, but to rely instead on Your strength and Your ability. I praise you Father, for caring for me. For lifting my burden. For filling me up to the brim with your Water. Amen!